The Angel Of Darkness

CHAPTER 55

Just as the Doctor’d figured, the gigantic, two-story housing of the White Star Line pier provided us with the kind of cover an ordinary, open wharf couldn’t have. As the torpedo boats closed in on Tenth Street, the commander of our vessel ordered our little fleet to slow up some, and then we cruised quietly in toward the waterfront, slipping alongside the long, green shed of the pier and tying up on pilings near some ladders what led up from the water to a doorway into the structure. Leaving behind about half of the crews to watch over the boats-but taking all the additional sailors what’d been assigned to the job-we scrambled quickly up the rungs of those perilous approaches and then into the bottom floor of the pier: the baggage claim area, an enormous, open space what was usually a madhouse of crazed activity. Empty as it was that night, it had a very ghostly feel to it, and for the first time my feeling that we were on an unstoppable mission began to mix with a healthy dose of anxiousness. The few guards and White Star officials what were in the place had, it seemed, been alerted to our coming, as they cooperated with Mr. Roosevelt (whose face was all the identification he needed in New York City, just as it would soon be all over the United States and the world) by guiding us out to the front door without any questions at all.

As we walked, the Doctor pulled alongside me. “I have not,” he said quietly, “brought up the subject of your sudden departure from Ballston Spa, Stevie, given the events of the day. Nor shall I do so now. I ask only this: please stay close to someone larger or better armed than yourself at all times. It’s not that I doubt your ability to defend yourself, but this woman-”

“You don’t have to tell me,” I said, trying to reassure both him and myself as we moved out of the pier and into the darkness of the waterfront. “I got no ideas about going up against her alone. Though I might like to.”

The Doctor reached around to give me a quick embrace. “I know. But she is a creature of infinite resource. In fact, even with this force, I hope that we are adequately prepared.”

There were some gangs of longshoremen roaming the waterfront, but they knew better than to tangle with or mouth off to fifty or sixty armed sailors who looked as full of purpose as our men did. We decided to stick to West Street, what ran alongside the river, for the five blocks between the pier and Bethune Street, figuring that the Dusters wouldn’t be expecting anybody to enter their territory from that direction and we’d be able to at least get close to Libby Hatch’s place without being detected. We hadn’t gone two blocks, though, before dark, mysterious shapes began to move around on the inland side of the wide street. They appeared in pairs at first, but those pairs quickly grew to become packs, the way mangy, tight-ribbed dogs’ll do when they spot a possible source of food. It didn’t seem like they had any idea of why we’d come, because before long the usual idiot taunts and challenges began to echo out across to us: it was just gang members pissing on their territory to let other animals know it was taken, I knew that-but I also knew that, given our mission, it could quickly turn into something much worse.

By the time we’d reached Eleventh Street, the shadows across from us had grown to about fifteen in number, and they were feeling bold enough to start throwing rocks and bottles over our way. Mr. Roosevelt and Lieutenant Kimball weren’t standing for any such behavior, and they made as much clear pretty quick: as soon as the first missile landed, Mr. Roosevelt barked out, “Kimball!”

The lieutenant responded by turning to one of his officers. “Lieutenant Commander Simmons! Take ten men, sir, and deal with those persons!”

Now, I didn’t want to pipe up and tell those navy boys their business; but it seemed to me that this might’ve been a wrong move, being as the Dusters were not likely to be expecting such a response, and the forcefulness of it could very well tip them off to the fact that they weren’t just watching a party of sailors on shore leave making their way uptown for a night of gambling and whoring. Still, there was no small satisfaction in watching one of the torpedo boat commanders and his detachment move at double time across the cobblestones of West Street, sidearm and nightsticks at the ready, and plow into the burny-crazed, confused Dusters with such determination that what followed couldn’t really have been classified as a fight. One or two of the gang members took nice shots across the head, and a couple more got good swift pokes in the gut; but the rest, alarmed by the sight of the lieutenant commander’s pistol, just ran. Unfortunately, I knew only too well that they were running back to Hudson Street, to fetch reinforcements and weapons and let Goo Goo Knox and Ding Dong know what was going on.

“Here we go,” I whispered to myself nervously, as we crossed West Street at Bethune and the detachment what’d sent the first group of Dusters running rejoined us. All of a sudden the block and a half to Libby Hatch’s house was looking very long to me, now that contact had been made, and when I saw Miss Howard and Lucius pull out their revolvers, I decided to move in behind them. Cyrus, meanwhile, slipped his right hand into his jacket pocket and got his brass knuckles on: something ugly, we both knew, was most definitely coming.

We saw a few more shadowy figures bolt out of doorways and alleys on the north side of Bethune Street, and also out of the construction site of the new Bell Telephone Laboratories on our side. The sailors with us seemed to take all this scurrying as a sign that the Dusters had already gotten the message and weren’t going to be any trouble; unfortunately, we civilians knew better. Like most gangs, the Dusters didn’t favor any fight where they didn’t enjoy an advantage in both numbers and weapons, and it was pretty obvious that they were just regrouping, probably for some kind of a stand at Washington Street. This collecting of forces would, I was sure, only take place after a considerable amount of burny blowing, which meant that when we faced the gang they’d be wound up to the point where they figured they’d be a match for the entire U.S. Navy, let alone the few men what were now entering their territory.

For several long minutes, though, Bethune Street in front of us remained quiet and empty, a fact what struck me as odd; and my nervousness began to let up a bit, as I allowed myself the thought that maybe I was just being what you might call an alarmist.

But, of course, I wasn’t.

Just before we reached the intersection of Washington Street, they began to fan out in a thick line in front of us: more Dusters-maybe sixty or seventy in all-than I’d ever seen gathered in any one spot in my life. Ding Dong’d brought out most of the kid auxiliaries, and these young hell-raisers were all making the same kinds of moves what we’d seen them get up to when we’d first come to Libby Hatch’s place: slapping big slabs of wood into their palms, polishing up brass knuckles, and looking like it was all they could do to keep from rushing straight at us. To top it all off, every member of the gang’s eyes were lit up like the windows at McCreery’s department store on a Thursday night, showing that I hadn’t been wrong in supposing they’d gotten themselves good and wound up before they moved out to meet us.

Leading this very dangerous-looking mob were Goo Goo Knox and Ding Dong, who had, it seemed, patched up their squabble of earlier in the day-or, more likely, they’d just put off one good scrape in favor of a better one. As usual, Ding Dong was grinning like an idiot, in that way what, to my everlasting confusion, Kat’d found so charming. Knox, on the other hand, though the look on his face and the axe handle in his hand said that he was ready to go at it, was wearing an expression what also made it clear that he had a much better idea of who he was up against. This was understandable: for, as leader of the Hudson Dusters, he’d crossed paths with Mr. Roosevelt during our friend’s term as police commissioner many times, and he knew that if the burly swell with the spectacles showed up looking like he was ready for trouble, you could count on the fact that such wasn’t a bluff.

Knox was a scary-looking little package, wild-eyed and strong-armed, to be sure, but with skin so pale as to make him seem like a ghost. This was due partly to his heritage, but mostly to the fact that he almost never saw daylight: before becoming one of the founders of the Dusters, he’d been a member of the Gophers, another frightening, unpredictable group of violent Irishmen who ruled in Hell’s Kitchen and got their name from the fact that they spent their days in the cellars of that neighborhood, drinking, carousing, and doing whatever else passed for “living” in their book. Only at night did they come outside, to raid the train yards on the West Side, lock horns with other gangs, or engage in their other favorite outdoor sport: beating cops unconscious and stealing their uniforms to give to their girlfriends as trophies. It was partly because so many Dusters were former Gophers that the newer gang was feared by the Police Department: along with the practice of raiding the train yards on the West Side, the Dusters’d maintained the Gophers’ taste for going after men in uniform. I didn’t know whether that taste included the uniform of the U.S. Navy; but from the look on Knox’s face that night, I figured we could be pretty sure that it did.

“Mr. Roosy-velt,” Goo Goo called, as our party drew up close to the gang. “I heard you was in Washington, playin’ wit’ boats. What brings you ta Duster territory?”

“When last I checked, Knox,” Mr. Roosevelt answered, “the West Side of New York City was still part of the United States. These are men of the United States Navy, and they are here to assist the detective sergeants”-he pointed a thick finger at the Isaacsons-“in the performance of their duty.”

“And what duty might that be?” Knox asked, though it was easy to see that he knew the answer.

“What it might be is none of your business,” Mr. Roosevelt answered. “You and your-followers had better step aside.”

“I don’t think you get it,” Knox answered, looking to his boys with a smile, then sniffling and running his tongue around his upper gums. This was a sure sign that he’d been blowing a lot of burny: the drug, taken that way, had the effect of making the upper part of people’s mouths go numb, so that they seemed to have to check and see that their parts were all there every few seconds. “Like I said,” he went on, “this is Duster territory-other gangs don’t come in here, city cops don’t come in here, don’t nobody come in here, if they don’t wanna take a beating.”

“Really?” Mr. Roosevelt said.

“Yeah,” Knox answered, with a confident nod. “Really.”

“Well,” Mr. Roosevelt declared, glaring at Knox, “I’m afraid there’s one exception to that rule which you may have overlooked.”

“Oh? And what might that be, you piece of-”

As he said these last words, Knox made a sudden sweeping move and tried to swing the axe handle on Mr. Roosevelt: a bad mistake. With a speed what was always surprising, given his size and thickness, Mr. Roosevelt snatched the stick of wood out of Knox’s hands, making all of the Dusters’ eyes go wide. Then, in another quick motion, Mr. Roosevelt gave Goo Goo a wicked smack across the side of the head with the weapon. “That might be the United States federal government!” Mr. Roosevelt bellowed, as Knox fell to his knees, moaning like the injured animal he was.

The other Dusters took a couple of steps forward, like they might charge; but they were still too confused to take definite action. I could tell, though, that said situation wasn’t going to last very long: I pulled on the Doctor’s sleeve, nodding my head in the direction of the river and trying to tell him I knew a full-scale battle was about to break out and that while it was raging we’d do best to get back down to West Street and come at Libby Hatch’s house from another direction. He got the message, and as the sailors closed ranks and got ready to receive the coming attack, all of our group started to walk slowly backward-all, that is, excepting Cyrus, who’d locked eyes with Ding Dong and wasn’t going anywhere.

Second by second the air got more and more charged; then Knox, his forehead bleeding, gathered his wits, looked up at his boys, and shouted, “Well? What the hell’re you waiting for?”

At that the storm finally broke. In a solid, screaming wall the Dusters rushed forward, and the sailors did likewise. Both sides mixed it up so fast that the use of pistols by either group became pretty near an impossibility from the start. It’d be a contest of fists and sticks, that much was obvious, and it’d likely take up the whole block we were standing on: we had to get away fast.

“Run!” I told Mr. Moore, who nodded and, together with the detective sergeants, started to dash west. Miss Howard and the Doctor, though, hung back, waiting for Cyrus.

“Cyrus!” the Doctor commanded, as Miss Howard covered our big friend with her Colt. “Come with us, now!”

But Cyrus was way beyond taking any orders: as soon as the brawl’d erupted he’d reached out to grab Ding Dong by the shirt, then literally lifted him off the ground and thrown him about six feet behind the line of our sailors, where he wouldn’t be able to get any help from his pals. Hitting the ground hard, Ding Dong’d dropped the stick he was carrying, and Cyrus quickly kicked it away. Then he pulled Ding Dong to his feet and said:

“No sticks, no knives, no guns-and I’m no fourteen-year-old girl, either. Now let’s see how you do.” With that he started to pummel the Duster, who had to work hard to cover himself and get in a few shots of his own.

Sighing once, the Doctor turned to Miss Howard. “We’ll have to leave him, Sara-there is the matter of accounts to be settled. He’ll be all right, but we must go!”

Nodding reluctantly, Miss Howard turned her body west but kept her eyes on Cyrus-and it was a good thing she did, being as just as we started to move away two Dusters managed to break out of the brawl further up the street and ran over to try to give Ding Dong a hand. They were both carrying metal bars wrapped in burlap, and Cyrus had his back to them: once again, it looked like he might get blindsided by the gang.

Miss Howard, though, smoothly spun back around toward the fight, then raised her Colt and, holding it steady with both hands, let off two rounds, their explosions echoing off the buildings and the cobblestones thunderously. When the smoke of the shots cleared, the two Dusters with the metal bars were lying on the ground, each one clutching at a shattered kneecap. Miss Howard smiled and, seeing that Cyrus was now pretty well having his way with Ding Dong, turned to follow the rest of us.

Catching me staring at her in amazement, she said only, “I told you, Stevie-there is nothing like a bullet in the leg to make men mind their manners.” Then she pushed me along toward West Street.

The howls of rage and pain from the brawl were now filling the whole neighborhood; and as the six of us ran around the corner to Bank Street, it began to sound like Hell itself had opened up on Bethune Street. Even the longshoremen on the waterfront were keeping clear of the action, and the residents of the neighborhood stayed locked up very tight in their homes: we could hear bolts being thrown on doors as we passed by on our way to Greenwich Street. But the overall effect of the battle turned out to be a helpful one, for as we turned north again and approached Bethune Street, we didn’t catch sight of a single Duster: they’d all gone to join in the “fun.” This left us an open road to Libby Hatch’s place from the east, and in just a few more seconds we’d reached it.

“I doubt,” the Doctor said breathlessly, “whether knocking will prove useful. Detective Sergeants?”

Marcus quickly produced his crowbar, and wedged it into the jamb of the door just to the right of the knob. He and Lucius both laid hold of the thing and got ready to put their full weight and strength into heaving away at it. “When we pull,” Marcus said, sweating as much as his brother by that point, “the rest of you try to push on the door itself. Sara, I think you’d better keep your Colt at the ready.” As Miss Howard stood back to obey this request, the Doctor, Mr. Moore, and I gathered around to fit into whatever spots we could reach on the door. “Ready?” Marcus asked, and we all grunted replies in the affirmative. “All right, then, one-two-”

As he called out “three!” he pulled hard on the crowbar with Lucius, and the rest of us shoved. The frame of the old door began to crack and splinter almost right away, and a few more good blows and yanks destroyed the right side of the structure completely. With a kick Marcus burst the door open, and then we all stepped to either side very fast, so that Miss Howard could train her gun immediately on-

Nothing. There was no sign of life in the little entry way to the house, and the steps against the right-hand wall led up into darkness what showed a similar lack of human activity. Miss Howard led the way in, still keeping her Colt trained on the darkness, and then the rest of us followed, frightened, yes, but also starting to feel tremendous disappointment.

“She can’t,” the Doctor whispered. “She can’t have slipped away again …”

Inching our way into the dark house, we began to spread out, Lucius producing his revolver and taking a couple of steps up the stairway. He would’ve gone farther, followed by Mr. Moore and Marcus-but then we heard the sudden sound of a door slamming in the sitting room. There was only one such structure in that area, I knew that from my last visit:

“The basement door,” I whispered, and then the three men on the stairs came back down. Again on Marcus’s count, we all burst into the sitting area, led by Miss Howard and Lucius.

But the room was too dark to reveal much of anything, at first, except the general outlines of the furniture nearest to us and the entrance to the kitchen hallway at the back. Which was why the voice, when we heard it come out of the shadows, was all the more frightening:

“It doesn’t matter, now,” said Libby Hatch, very quietly. “You’ve found your way into the house-but you’ll never find what you came for.”

Lucius opened his mouth, seeming like he wanted to announce to the woman that she was under arrest, but the Doctor touched his arm, and spoke in a calm voice: “Listen to me, Elspeth Franklin-you need not face death-”

But Libby Hatch only spat and cursed, “Damn you all!”

Then we saw the sudden movement of a shadow in the hallway, going toward the kitchen. It was nothing more than the briefest blur, and it was followed, much to our increasing confusion and frustration, by the sound of feet climbing upwards.

“Stairs,” the Doctor said. “There are back stairs!”

“I sure as hell never saw ’em,” I said.

“She may have had a concealed passageway built,” Marcus offered, “when she had Bates reconstruct the basement.”

“One which will no doubt prove as difficult to enter as the chamber below,” the Doctor agreed with an agitated nod. “Quickly, then-Marcus, you, Lucius, and Moore get downstairs! See what you can do to break into the chamber! Sara, you and Stevie come with me!”

With the sounds of the brawl still echoing out on the street, we all exploded off in our assigned directions, the men heading down the basement steps and Miss Howard and I following the Doctor up the staircase, past the second floor and on to the third. There we found a steel ladder what led to a hatchway in the ceiling. Miss Howard led the way up it and, opening the thing, tried to quickly jump out onto the roof.

We might have known better than to go chasing an enemy as clever as Libby in such an obvious way. Being the last one up, it was hard for me to see exactly what happened next, but the Doctor later related it to me. Once she’d stuck her head out of the hatchway Miss Howard got pistol-whipped hard, a blow what forced her to let go of her Colt (which fell back down to the floor at the base of the ladder) and rendered her unconscious right away. With surprising strength-increased, to be sure, by the desperateness of her situation-our enemy hauled Miss Howard’s body up and out of the hatchway, laid it out on the tar-covered roof, and then trained a pistol of her own on the Doctor.

“You, of all people, should know that I’ll use this, Dr. Kreizler,” I heard Libby Hatch say. “Now get up here-and move very slowly.”

As the Doctor climbed on up, I saw that I had a moment where I’d be out of view; so I scrambled down and fetched Miss Howard’s gun, shoving it into my pants and covering it with my shirt so’s to make it look as if I was still unarmed. Then I hurried back up the ladder, hoping to make Libby think that I hadn’t had time to make the play.

It worked. Once the Doctor was up on the roof I saw Libby’s golden eyes-wide and crazed by this point-move into the hatchway and fix on me. “You, too, boy,” she said, obviously not knowing I was now armed. “Get up here!”

I followed the order, making sure to keep my movements slow and easy enough so as not to shake the Colt loose. When I’d got clear of the hatchway, Libby slammed it closed and, pointing the gun first at the Doctor and then at me, used her free hand to drag Miss Howard’s body over on top of the hatch cover, a move what would make it tough for anybody to open the thing from below. Standing up straight, Libby kept moving her gun back and forth from me to the Doctor, trying to decide what to do and looking more unbalanced and wild than I’d ever seen her.

“Which one, which one,” she mumbled. Then she grabbed the Doctor’s arm and stuck the pistol to his head. “Put your hands in the air. You do the same, boy, and then stay very still, if you want to keep the Doctor’s great brain in one piece.”

Looking over to see that Miss Howard, though out cold, was still breathing regularly, I raised my hands halfway up: any higher, and I would’ve revealed the Colt tucked into my pants. Believing that both the Doctor and I were going to do what she told us, Libby seemed to relax a little: she used one hand to straighten first her hair and then her dress, which I noted was the same red-with-black-lace job what we’d first seen her in. At that point her look of craziness gave way to something what might’ve almost passed for regret.

“Why?”she asked, looking at the Doctor.

“I should have thought that would be obvious,” he answered, keeping his hands up.

Before Libby could answer, a particularly loud round of hollering and screaming came rising up from the street, and she turned toward it. “Do you hear that?” she said. “That’s your fault-all of yours! None of this had to happen!”

“If we’d left you free to continue murdering children, you mean?” the Doctor asked.

“Murdering them?” Libby answered, now looking positively injured. “All I did, all I ever tried to do, was help them!”

The Doctor gave her a sideways glance. “I believe you mean that in some way, Elspeth Franklin,” he said quietly.

She nodded once, her golden eyes filling with tears; then she stamped a foot suddenly and angrily. “If you believe that, then why have you been hounding me like this?”

“Listen to me, Elspeth,” the Doctor went on. “If you surrender yourself, there may be a way to help you-”

Libby’s voice grew cold and mean: “Of course-in the electrical chair, you lying bastard!”

“No,” the Doctor insisted, still quietly. “I can help you. I can try to make the authorities understand why you’ve done these things-”

“But I’ve done nothing!”Libby hollered, full of new desperation. “Can’t you see that?” She paused, studying the Doctor’s face. “No. No, of course you can’t. You’re a man. What man could understand what my life has been like-why I’ve had to make the choices I have? Do you think I wanted any of this? It wasn’t my fault that it happened!”

I figured the only way I was going to be able to make a move for the Colt was to try to get the woman even more upset and off balance than she already was: so, though I knew the Doctor wouldn’t have approved, I began to taunt her. “Yeah? What about the kid you buried with the dog? Whose fault was that?”

“You be quiet!” she seethed, turning to me. “You’re not even a man-just a boy! All you understand are your own damned needs, your own damned wants! A woman probably worked herself raw raising you, and how did you ever repay her, except by spitting in her face? By disobeying, by whining, by-” Tightening her grip on her pistol, Libby glared at me hotter than ever with those gold eyes. “You want to know about the boy in the grave, do you? I didn’t ask for him, and I didn’t want him. I had a beau-a respectable boy, from a family that had a place in our world-the kind of boy I could have brought home to my mother, to show that I could-that I could-” Her voice starting to wander, Libby glanced down at the tarred roof for an instant. “He would’ve done anything for me. And I did do anything for him-but then his family found out, and they wouldn’t…” Quickly, she looked back up. “And I was left with his lying, dirty seed in me! It wasn’t wrong, to prevent the disgrace! What could it have been but a bastard-something else, something more, that I’d done wrong? So I did what was right-but I couldn’t even tell anyone!”

Seeing that my plan was having the desired effect, I kept pressing: “And when you shot Matthew and Thomas and Clara? I suppose you didn’t want to do that, either-your finger slipped on the trigger, or they asked you to shoot them-”

The Doctor was by now staring at me, perplexed and alarmed. “Stevie, what are you-”

I ignored him. “What about that?” I went on harshly. “How did you do the right thing there?”

Her breath now coming in quick heaves, Libby shouted, “It was better for them! Do you think I wanted to shoot them? It was better for them, to be finished with this world-”

“Yeah!” I shouted back at her. “Better so’s you could take their money and go off with your boyfriend the preacher!”

“Be quiet! Goddamn you children, can’t any of you ever just be quiet?”Swallowing hard, Libby tried without much success to get a firmer grip on herself. “You know what this leads to! I’ve warned you, and now I have to show you!”

Looking at me all of a sudden the way she must, I figured, have looked at all the children she’d killed just before the act, she raised her pistol into the air and brought it down on the Doctor’s head, causing him to tumble to the ground, still conscious but bleeding from a cut above his temple. Brutal as the deed was, it gave me all the time I needed: when Libby yanked the Doctor back up by his collar, she turned again to find me holding Miss Howard’s Colt with both hands and training its barrel on her.

“Okay,” I said, my own heart racing. “Now, you want to start killing people, you go ahead. But I promise-you’ll be the second one to go.”