The Blackest Bird Page 3

  Stepping into sunlight, Hays signals his driver that he is needed. “Yes, suh, Mr. High,” Balboa says, breaking off his conversation, and without a further word he opens the carriage door.

  Hays climbs in and takes his accustomed seat facing forward in the back, supported by a brocaded East Indian pillow. The prison gates open and the carriage exits onto Elm Street, to make a sharp left.

  Nassau Street began one block from the southeastern edge of City Hall Park, a winding street just beyond Park Row, home to the city’s publishing and newspaper industries, what is known as “the City Brain.”

  Some twenty-six newspapers and magazines maintained offices on Nassau Street. The Rogerses’ boardinghouse stood at number 126, between Beekman and Ann streets, a flat-roofed three-story red brick building, nondescript among a block of similar structures.

  After using the large brass knocker, introducing himself to she who answered, and asking for the Widow Rogers, Hays was ushered into the home by the colored maid.

  The front door of the boardinghouse opened onto the parlor floor. Two matronly women and a sullen girl of about fourteen were gathered in the dark-draperied room, surrounding a seated old woman, dressed in black, Hays immediately recognized from his previous audience with her three years before. The high constable took the grieving mother’s cold hand in his. Her lap was covered by a pink and black wool crocheted coverlet despite the warmth and humidity of the day. Hays peered into the mother’s bleary, reddened eyes, noting her blank stare.

  “Mrs. Rogers,” he said gently, “do you remember me? I am Jacob Hays of the constabulary.”

  She said nothing, and the expression on her face, faraway and otherwise distracted, did not change. It was as if, standing in front of her, holding her frail hand in his, he had made no impression of being there on her whatsoever. At one point her glance did seem to wander in his direction, but she did not focus.

  Those attending her as she sat stiff and wan in the parlor were her aforementioned colored servant, one Dorothea Brandywine, now standing off to the far side behind her, the two matronly women, and a girl, also mentioned, introduced as a cousin to Mary, a resident worker in the house; the two older women, one Mary’s cousin, Mrs. Hayes, and the other her aunt, Mrs. Downey of Jane Street.

  Hays inquired of Mary’s cousin, Mrs. Hayes, if it was not her home on Pitt Street where Mary had been living and from which she had vanished from sight three years previously. Mrs. Hayes said that it was, the high constable noting she was pleased he remembered.

  Mrs. Hayes explained that shortly after that incident Mary and her mother, financed by funds supplied by Mary’s half brother, a seaman, had rented this residence from one Peter Aymar.

  They eked out a small living running the boardinghouse here. Mary’s mother was able to do little, feebleness and bone fatigue having set in, so it had fallen on Mary to take charge of the daily chores and administration. Mrs. Downey said that of late, there had been an air, nearing desperation, surrounding Mary, but when pressed, she could not speak of what disturbed her.

  Hays returned his attention to the grieving mother. If she had been listening to the course of his conversation with Mrs. Hayes, she gave no indication. In deference to her years, her loss, and the devastation such tragedy had obviously wrought upon her person, he chose not to press her personally with any undue questions at this time.

  Instead, he requested of Mrs. Downey if a list of all boarders over the last year might be prepared for him, any tradesmen who frequented the house, and any visitors.

  With that Hays bid his leave. He once more took Mrs. Rogers’ frail hand in his thick fingers and told her he was sorry for her loss. He said that he hoped God would give her strength, and then left.

  Once outside, against the hubbub and racket of the district’s afternoon traffic, the daily standard commerce and hurried foot transit on Nassau Street, Balboa had already helped his superior up into the police carriage in front of the boardinghouse when a tall, thin-faced gentleman in a great rush made his appearance from the rear of the building.

  “High Constable, a word with you, please!” he shouted, running at great speed to catch up.

  Balboa reined the horse at once.

  Hays glanced at this individual, a florid man in a gray suit, with matching vest, white cravat, and well-combed and oiled hair. This gentleman’s flinty gray eyes met the high constable’s steady gaze momentarily before breaking off.

  “Pardon me, sir,” the thin man said, stepping close to the carriage and speaking through the open window. “I am Arthur Crommelin, perhaps you have heard of me.” His breath came heavily from the exertion of having run to catch the carriage. “It is most urgent, High Constable, that you are made aware of certain elements involved in this case,” he continued, his intake of air now regulated. “Last night, following the medical examiner’s inquest, much to my annoyance, I was forced to lay over at the Jersey City Hotel due to a delay in my testimony in front of the coroner. I returned as soon as I was able early this morning on the first ferry across the Hudson. High Constable, excuse me, but I must express my feelings,” stated Crommelin. “There is something amiss, sir.”

  “Amiss beyond murder, you mean, Mr. Crommelin?” said Hays, studying the man. “Because, indeed, sir, murder itself strikes me most assuredly amiss enough.”

  Crommelin blinked. “Without question, of course. A most unfortunate choice of words on my part. But what I mean, sir, last night, while I was delayed, my friend and companion Mr. Padley returned to the city after giving his coroner’s testimony in Hoboken. He told me that he entered the Rogerses’ home with a certain intent neither to render harm nor fear unto the widow or intrude on the grief that would surely descend upon her as soon as she was informed of the horror that had befallen her poor, wronged daughter. But upon delivering the terrible news, sir, it was Mr. Daniel Payne at her side, and although, according to Mr. Padley, she, the elderly and bereaved mother, took in air in great sucking gulps to steady her breath and seemed shocked with the most certain knowledge of her child’s death by murder, Mr. Padley has confided in me that Mr. Payne was strangely calm, as if the fact of his intended’s death was already a foregone conclusion, if you see what I mean. As if he knew; had foreknowledge, sir.”

  “Foreknowledge?”

  “Exactly, High Constable.”

  “Meaning?”

  “Meaning, sir,” Crommelin cried, “in deference to you, it seems suspicious, sir, that Mr. Payne’s reaction—the man who was lover and betrothed to the deceased—would not show a forewhisker of emotional reaction, if you see what I’m getting at, and when last night Mr. Padley came right out and in no uncertain terms suggested to Mr. Payne he cross the river to attend the coroner’s inquest and perform the duty of a gentleman, he declined. All this strikes me as strange, High Constable Hays.”

  “Strange. And suspicious?”

  “And suspicious, too, sir,” Crommelin admitted. “Most certainly.”

  Hays ended the conversation, hoping his distaste for this gentleman was not evident. “Just so,” he said—what might have been taken by a certain kind of inferior mind as agreement.

  6

  In the Lair

  of the Green Turtle

  Due to the fact that Mary Rogers’ body was found in New Jersey, by law the high constable was required to procure the approval of the mayor’s office before embarking on a full investigation.

  Mayor Robert Morris had taken ill with gout, however, and to Hays’ irritation, the acting mayor, Elijah Purdy, an effete, ineffectual man not much to the high constable’s liking, refused to be forthcoming.

  “The morass and implication,” declared Purdy, “the potential for disaster, are more than needs to be undertaken on the behest of our city at this time. If this poor young woman was indeed murdered in New Jersey, High Constable, as indicated by her body washing up on their side of the North River, it follows it is then New Jersey’s responsibility to pursue inquiry, not ours.”

 
“I think their local authorities might refute that conclusion,” Hays responded without trace of a smile.

  “What, might I be so bold to ask, would those in authority in Hoboken desire to happen?” asked the acting mayor.

  “Coroner Cook and Justice Merritt both would be happy to see the constabulary here in New York take charge. Although they acknowledge the tragedy of the murder, both feel strongly that the crime falls neither under their general auspice nor within their expertise, and that they, therefore, would be better served, as would the victim, if they were not made responsible for its solution. They assert the crime of murder has been carried out on one of our citizens within the confines of our own city limits. Their contention is the body of Miss Rogers has only by chance and current found its way to their shore, perhaps even after being dumped on our side of the river.”

  “And what do you think, High Constable?”

  “I see their point. Dr. Cook and Justice Merritt are both respectable men. Both feel we are better suited to proceed with such an investigation. I do not disagree. My single concern is to see justice done for this unfortunate young woman.”

  “As is mine. But the fact is, High Constable, dead bodies found floating in the waters surrounding Manhattan Island must not be so uncommon. I can only say, occupy yourself elsewhere, High Constable. Have the good grace to allow Jersey to take care of herself.”

  Hays reminded himself so went the swagger and sway of this fair city. The hidden subterfuge of power, its whim and whimsy, never failed to infuriate him, no matter who was stuffing the ballot boxes. Having dismissed Balboa, Hays angrily strode up the Broadway to the clip of his constable’s staff, muttering to himself.

  His daughter Olga awaited him in the kitchen of their home. Dinner was kept warm in the coal oven. His favorite, a flat beef roast, called brust deckle, purchased from a Hebrew butcher at his small stall in the Centre Market. (This particular cut of meat from the underside of the cow, which Olga had prepared with root vegetables and tomato gravy, tended to be very tough, marbled as it is with fat and lean between the bone and main muscle of the animal. If cooked slowly at low temperature, however, the strong connective tissue will turn into a kind of gelatin that dissolves back into the meat and breaks down very slowly and flavorfully. It was her father’s favorite. Her mother used to make it for him once a week, and Olga thought it nothing less than her duty to continue the practice.)

  Hays kissed his daughter’s warm cheek. “Good evening, Miss Hays,” he said.

  “By the look of you, Papa, you’ve had a hard day,” she remarked.

  He told her about Mary Rogers, his frustration. He confessed, “A young girl alone in the city, it is what gives me pause with you, my daughter.”

  She smiled. “With me, Papa, you have nothing to worry about.”

  While her mother was alive Olga worked six days a week in Brooklyn, teaching English at the Female Academy. Since then she had quit her job to stay home and look after her father and the house, only taking occasional print and copyediting jobs as they came along from the Harper Brothers, Publishers.

  “I worry about you, too, Papa,” Olga chided her father. “An old man alone in the city …”

  She told him, if he did not mind, she would attend later that night with her friend Annie Lynch, a colleague and friend from the Female Academy, a lecture at the New York University.

  “Edgar Poe, the poet and critic, is scheduled to lay his tomahawk into Longfellow and Halleck,” she told him. “I admit to being captivated!”

  THE NEXT MORNING, via Balboa, Hays sent a card to Dr. Cook in Jersey City with his request for the coroner to leave the body of Mary Rogers where it lay in its interment for the time being. Because of Acting Mayor Purdy’s restrictions on his investigation attributed to jurisdictional objections, the high constable wrote, there was little he could do presently, but problems of this nature had their way of working themselves out.

  Have patience, Old Hays urged.

  Meanwhile, at 11 a.m., the high constable undertook to pay a visit to Forty Little Thieves gang leader Tommy Coleman, the youthful irreverent that the reverend doctor of the Scots church had mentioned as being a possible suspect in the pilfering of the copper sheathing off the church’s steeple.

  From the Tombs, the high constable made his way north across Canal to Prince Street, where, underneath the arch between Sullivan and Thompson streets, lay headquarters to Coleman’s gang in a bucket of blood operated by a giant colored woman, known in her district and beyond as “the Green Turtle,” owing to the fact she resembled nothing less than a huge reptile of the order Testudine, family Verde.

  The dirty and dingy double doors descending into the Turtle’s lair stood open to the street, although half hidden below ground level. Upon entering, Hays took pause for his eyes to adjust somewhat to the darkness, before continuing cautiously down the narrow fifty-foot subterranean passageway, painted dead black. At the passage end he found the front room dim and half full, but immediately the occupants, seeing who had entered, chose to abandon the premises, scurrying for the door, faces averted or half covered by caps. After some moments, with no further acknowledgment of his presence, the high constable took opportunity to pound his constable’s staff hard against the much-trudged and splintered floor in order to attract attention. With the sharp resounding of the staff, the smattering of filthy sawdust on the black boards jumped.

  When still no response came, he turned from the bar, a tattered and dented sheet of metal, hammered to planks extended between two empty hoop-staved tar barrels, and took a seat at a nearby three-egged table in order to wait more comfortably. He made subtle show of continuing the light tapping of his long ash baton on the fetid floor.

  Behind him there now came the rustle of movement. He turned as the Green Turtle, her skin as deeply shaded as the color of a ripe plum, entered the groggery through a curtain in the rear. She was a massive woman, weighing, Hays would guess, something in excess of three hundred and fifty pounds, outfitted with two huge Colt five-shot Paterson pistols stuck in a wide leather waistband buckled around her ample middle. Pressed against the small of her back but very nearly concealed by layers of flesh, he observed, she carried two bone-handled daggers.

  She hesitated momentarily before strolling heavily behind the bar, where she stood, without saying a word, ham-sized arms akimbo, her gaze measured and glaring. In this manner she assessed Hays through bloodshot eyes from underneath a tiny black hat adorned with droopy black feathers, her black hair beneath in severe rolls.

  “Madam?” He signaled her.

  Taking no heed, she began polishing the sheet metal in front of her with a vigor that led Hays to imagine she applied herself thusly lest the hidden microbiology residing thereon rise up and infect her or her valued customers. Hays very nearly smiled to himself. What would have been the audacity? Could the bar top have been the copper absconded from the steeple? He rose and approached to stand directly in front of her. At closer scrutiny, he took the alloy for zinc. So not pilfered from the church, but likely from somewhere else.

  Making one last swipe with her polishing cloth, she finished what she was doing as he watched, the surface in front of her now duly damp and disinfected to her satisfaction.

  Again without a word, she poured a large portion of rhum from a cracked blue flagon into a chipped yellow ceramic bowl. Sloshing the drink, she pushed the yellow vessel unceremoniously in front of him.

  “I need to have a word with Tommy Coleman,” Hays said to her, not touching the poteen.

  “You don’t say.”

  “You know who I am, madam?”

  “Truefully, I don’t care who you are,” she said. “I don’t care your business. But I know who you are, Mistuh Ol’ Hays.”

  He pushed the bowl of swill away from him. “I repeat myself, madam. Tommy Coleman. I am after him.”

  She said, “A bit of the devil might do you some good, Mr. High.” Then, thinking better, she picked up the cracked bowl he had reject
ed and drank deeply of the elixir she had poured out for him. “Mr. High,” she commended, “here’s to your health and the Lord our God looking out for you and your kind.” She glanced at the back curtain. “You’ll find him through there.”

  The curtain in front of Hays trembled ever so gently in some secret draft. He reached the heavy drapery, pushed it aside, and moved through it into a back room not so different from the front: several ordinary battered wood tables, dusty floor, dirty sawdust, two filthy windows, one half open, painted black. Three young men stood, one sat, inside the curtain, lounging. Hays knew them all for who they were. Standing: the bugger Tweeter Toohey, an adroit pickpocket despite him having one withered arm, and one withered leg; Pugsy O’Pugh, known to be no nocky-boy him, Tommy’s second-in-command; and Boffo the Skinned Knuckle, a squat boy built like an outhouse, the gang’s strong-arm captain.

  And seated: Tommy Coleman himself, slouched against the wall, feet up, underneath a portrait of George Washington, at a much-knife-scarred table, the smirk on his youthful face bearing witness to his youthful bravado.

  Hays rewarded each young gangster the benefit of his studied glance before descending on Tommy, looming over him.

  None of the boys looked away.

  “Mr. High,” Tommy pronounced.

  “Master Coleman.”

  “Are you in search of me?”

  “I am.”

  “You don’t find me venturing north past Canal Street to do my business, and no leatherhead, not even no high constable, better dare come here to my den if he values his life and the life of his family.” Tommy spoke soberly; Hays hoped more for the impress of his cohorts than for him.

  “Is that so?” said Hays.

  “I make no idle threat, suh,” Tommy persisted.

  “No?”

  “No.”

  “Do you know why I am here, Tommy?”

  “Should I?”

  “You were reported outside the Scots church.”

  The big grin reappeared. “Church?” Tommy shook his head at the other boys. “Not likely.”