The Angel of Darkness Read online

  Mr. Moore was interrupted by the sudden appearance, behind Cyrus and me, of the woman he’d just minutes ago been in bed with. She’d apparently retrieved her clothes from the hall and was fully dressed and ready to depart.

  “Excuse me, John,” she said quietly. “I wasn’t sure what these people wanted, but it does sound important—so I thought I ought to go. I’ll see myself out.”

  She turned to leave, and Mr. Moore suddenly looked like he’d done a few seconds in the electrical chair: He cried “No!” desperately, secured his sheet around himself again, and bolted toward the bedroom door. “No, Lily, wait!”

  “Call me at the theater tomorrow!” the woman answered from the front door. “I’d love to take this up again sometime!” And with that she was gone.

  Mr. Moore stalked over to Miss Howard and glared at her what you might call hotly. “You, Sara Howard, have just destroyed what was well on its way to becoming one of the three best nights of my life!”

  Miss Howard only smiled a bit. “I won’t ask what the other two were. No, really, I am sorry, John.

  But this situation is desperate.”

  “It had better be.”

  “It is, trust me. You haven’t heard the best part yet.”

  “Oh. Haven’t I…?”

  “Señora Linares came to me in the greatest secrecy, after normal business hours. In order to make sure that she wasn’t followed by anyone from the consulate, she took the Third Avenue El downtown. When she got off the train at Ninth Street, she walked along the platform toward the stairs down to the street—and happened to glance into the last car of the train.”

  Miss Howard stopped for a moment, causing Mr. Moore to get a bit agitated. “Sara, you can dispense with all these dramatic pauses. They’re not going to improve my mood. What did she see?”

  “She saw her child, John.”

  Mr. Moore’s face screwed up. “You mean she thought she saw her child—wishful thinking, that kind ofthing.”

  “No, John. Her child. In the arms of a woman.” Miss Howard allowed herself one more smiling pause. “A white American woman.”

  Mr. Moore digested that little tidbit with a kind of tormented but interested moan: the newshound was winning out over the libertine. He turned to me, still not looking much happier, but clearly resigned to his fate. “Stevie—as a means of atoning for this invasion, will you help me find my clothes? Then we’ll get down to Number 808 and, God willing, find out what this is all about. But so help me, Sara, derringer or no derringer, if this case is a bust you will regret the day we ever met!”

  “Oh, I regretted that ages ago,” Miss Howard answered with a laugh, one that Cyrus and I picked up on. “Come on, Stevie. Let’s see if we can’t get our distraught friend here cleaned up. We need to move quickly.”

  CHAPTER 3

  It was a walk I hadn’t made in a year, that down to Number 808 Broadway, but you wouldn’t have known it from the way my body moved along the route. I remember reading in The Principles of Psychology—that doorstop of a book what Dr. Kreizler’s old teacher at Harvard, Professor William James, had written some years back, and which I’d fought my way through along with the rest of our team during the Beecham case—that the brain isn’t the only organ that stores memories. Some of the more primitive parts of the body—muscles, for instance—have their own ways of filing away experience and recalling it at a moment’s notice. If so, my legs were proving it that night, for I could’ve made the trip even if somebody’s cut my spinal cord below the cerebral cortex and left me running on nothing but my brain stem, like one of those poor laboratory frogs what Professor James and his students seemed to be always chopping into little pieces.

  As we made our way along Gramercy Park and then down Irving Place, I once again kept a sharp eye out for any Gashouse boys what might be out to pick off drunken swells who were on their way home from the gaming houses of the Tenderloin. But there wasn’t any trouble hanging in the air, just the same moist, clean scent that’d followed the day’s rain, and as we moved south I began to loosen up. Miss Howard still didn’t want to divulge any more information concerning her case until we got to Number 808 and actually met the lady in question, so our efforts were applied with singleness of purpose to getting Mr. Moore to that location. This job was a little trickier than it might sound. We’d chosen to go downtown on Irving Place because we knew that if we headed over to Fourth Avenue and then south to Union Square we’d pass by Brübacher’s Wine Garden, where many of Mr. Moore’s drinking pals would doubtless still be engaged in the customary activity of that establishment: laying bets on whether or not passing pedestrians, carriages, and carts would be able to successfully avoid grievous collisions with the streetcars what came screaming down Broadway and tearing around the square at top speed. Faced with such a temptation, Mr. Moore would likely have proved unable to resist. But Irving Place had its own distraction in the form of Pete’s Tavern at Eighteenth Street, a cozy old watering hole what had once been a favorite retreat of Boss Tweed and his Tammany boys, and where in recent days Mr. Moore could often be found passing the evening with several of his journalistic and literary friends. Once the glowing orange lights in the smoky windows of Pete’s were behind us, however, I could tell that Mr. Moore knew his last chance for salvation had also passed: his grumbling took a decided turn toward whining.

  “I mean to say, tomorrow is Monday, Sara,” he protested as we reached Fourteenth Street. The deceptively chipper front of Tammany Hall rose into view on our left, looking the way it always did to me, like some crazy giant brick wardrobe. “And keeping up with what Croker and those swine are doing”—Mr. Moore pointed toward the hall—“requires constant and irritating effort. Not to mention the Spanish business.”

  “Nonsense, John,” Miss Howard replied snappily. “Politics in this city are dead in the water right now, and you know it. Strong’s as lame a duck as ever sat in City Hall, and neither Croker nor Piatt”—by which she meant the Democratic and Republican bosses of New York, respectively—“is about to let another reform mayor win in November. Come this winter it’s going to be back to business as filthy usual in this city, and nobody needs you to tell them so.”

  As if to punctuate Miss Howard’s point, a sudden roar of laughter cut through the night as we waded through the rain-thinned horse manure and urine that coated Fourteenth Street. Once across, we all turned around to see a small crowd of well-dressed, drunk, and very happy men emerging from Tammany Hall, a fat cigar sucking out of each of their mouths.

  “Hmm,” Mr. Moore noised in some discouragement, watching the men as he followed the rest of us west. “I’m not sure it’s quite that simple, Sara. And even if it is, that doesn’t clear up the larger issue of the Cuban crisis. We’re at a critical point in our dealings with Madrid.”

  “Hogwash.” Miss Howard paused just long enough to grab Mr. Moore’s sleeve and pull him along faster. “Even if your area were foreign rather than metropolitan affairs, you’d be stymied for the moment. General Woodford”—referring to the new American minister to Spain—“hasn’t even left for Madrid yet, and McKinley doesn’t intend to send him until he’s gotten a full report from the special envoy to Cuba—what’s his name, that man Calhoun.”

  “How the hell,” Mr. Moore mumbled despondently, “am I supposed to argue with a girl who reads more of my damned paper than I do …?”

  “All of which,” Miss Howard finished up, “means that you’ll have nothing more to occupy your attention at the office tomorrow than the usual run of summer violence—oh, and there’s Queen Victoria’s jubilee, no doubt the Times will milk that dry.”

  Mr. Moore couldn’t help but laugh. “Right lead column, all the way through the festivities—there’ll be special photos on Sunday, too. My God, Sara, doesn’t it ever get boring knowing all the angles?”

  “I don’t know diem on this case, John,” Miss Howard answered, as we started down Broadway. The sounds of the carriages in the street became a bit smoother as they
hit the Russ pavement of the avenue, but the slight softening of the clatter didn’t ease Miss Howard’s edginess. “I don’t mind telling you, it frightens me. There’s something terrible about this business …”

  A few more silent seconds of apprehensive walking, and they hove into view: first the Gothic spire of Grace Church, reaching up and above the surrounding buildings with a kind of easy majesty, then the yellow bricks and cloisterlike windows of Number 808. Our old headquarters was actually closer to us than Grace, bordering the churchyard on the uptown side as it did, but in that part of town you always saw the spire before anything else. Not even the ever-bright windows of McCreery’s department store across Broadway or the huge cast-iron monument to huckersterism that was the old Stewart store on Tenth Street could hold a wet match to the church. The only building that came close was Number 808, and that was because it had been designed by the same architect, James Renwick, who apparently had it in mind that this little crossroads of Broadway should be a memorial to our medieval ancestors instead of a pure and simple marketplace.

  We approached the swirling, pretty ironwork of Number 808’s front door—art nouveau, they called it, a name what always struck me as pretty pointless, since I figured that the next artsy fellow who came along was always bound to lay claim to the nouveau part—and then Cyrus, Mr. Moore, and I all paused before entering. It wasn’t fear, so much; but you have to remember that just a year ago this place had been our second (and sometimes first) home during an investigation that’d seen unimaginable horrors brought to light and friends of ours mercilessly killed. Everything on Broadway looked pretty much the same as it had during those dark days: the department stores, the shadowy, ghostly yard and parish house of the church, the fine but not too fussy St. Denis Hotel across the street (also designed by Mr. Renwick)—all was as it had been, and that only brought the memories more vividly to life. And so we just waited a minute before we went inside.

  Miss Howard seemed to sense our uncertainty and, knowing it to be well grounded, didn’t push too hard.

  “I know I’m asking, a lot,” she said, glancing around the street and speaking with rare uncertainty. “But I tell you—all of you—if you see this woman, talk to her for just a few minutes, hear her describe it—”

  “It’s all right, Sara,” Mr. Moore interrupted, abandoning complaint and softening his voice to suit the scene. He turned first to me and then to Cyrus, as if to make sure that he was speaking for us all. We didn’t need to tell him he was. “It takes a moment, that’s all,” he went on, looking up at the façade of Number 808. “But we’re with you. Lead the way.”

  We passed through the marble lobby and into the great cage that was the elevator, then started the slow, laborious drift up to the sixth floor. Looking at Cyrus and Mr. Moore, I could tell they knew as well as I did that, all nervousness aside, we weren’t going to come back down again without having gotten into something we might regret. Part of that was our mutual friendship for Miss Howard; part of it was, well, something that born New Yorkers just carry in their blood. A nose for the thing, call that thing whatever name you want: the story, the case, the ride—any way you cut it, we were getting on board. Oh, sure, we could pray that it wouldn’t involve the kind of devastation what the Beecham case had; but pray was all we could do, for we didn’t have the power to back out now.

  The elevator came to the kind of heavy, sudden stop typical of commercial jobs, for Number 808 was a commercial building, full of furniture builders and sweatshops. That was part of the reason Dr. Kreizler had picked it in the first place: we’d been able to carry out our investigative affairs under the harmless cover of small businesses. But secrecy was no longer an issue for Miss Howard, and through the elevator grate I could see that she’d had a very tactful sign painted on the sixth-floor door:

  THE HOWARD AGENCY

  RESEARCH SERVICES FOR WOMEN

  Drawing the elevator grate aside, she unlocked the door and then held it open as we all filed in. The big expanse of the near-floor-through room was dark, with only the light from the arc streetlamps on Broadway and McCreery’s upper windows across the street throwing any illumination inside. But that was enough to see that Miss Howard had made only a few changes in the decor of the place. The furniture what Dr. Kreizler had bought at an antique auction the previous year—and what’d once been the property of the Marchese Luigi Carcano—still filled the room. The divan, large mahogany table, and big easy chairs rested on the green oriental carpets in their usual spots, giving the place the sudden, unexpected feel of a home. The billiard table was now in the back by the kitchen, covered with planking and a silk drape. It wasn’t the kind of thing, I figured, that would have given Miss Howard’s lady clients much reassurance. But the five big office desks were still there, though Miss Howard had arranged them in a row rather than a circle, and the baby grand piano still sat in a corner by one of the Gothic windows. Seeing it, Cyrus went over and lifted its lid with a little smile, touching two keys gently and then looking to Miss Howard.

  “Still in tune,” he said softly.

  She nodded and smiled back. “Still in tune.”

  Cyrus put his bowler on the bench, sat down, and gently started to play. At first I figured he’d go for one of the operatic tunes what the Doctor always had him give out with at our house, but I quickly realized that it was a slow, sad rendition of some folk melody what I couldn’t immediately place.

  Mr. Moore, who was staring out another window at the barely visible glimmer of the Hudson River in the distance, turned to Cyrus and beamed with a little smile of his own. “‘Shenandoah,’ “he murmured quietly, as if to rightly say that Cyrus had found the perfect tune to summarize the strange and melancholy feelings what had only grown stronger in each of us at the sight of the room.

  In another shadowy corner, I could see that Miss Howard had made an addition to the furnishings: an enormous Japanese screen, its five panels fully open. Peering out from behind one end of the screen was a section of a large black standing chalkboard, bordered in oak: the board, as we’d always known it. How long had it been hidden away? I wondered.

  Miss Howard, having given us a few minutes to adjust to our return, now rubbed her hands in anticipation and again spoke with a kind of hesitation what was unusual for her.

  “Señora Linares is in the kitchen, having tea. I’ll just get her.”

  She glided back toward the rear of the building, where a dimly lit doorway indicated some sign of life. Again automatically, I walked over and jumped onto one of the windowsills that overlooked the church garden—my accustomed roost in this place—and took a small knife out of my pocket, using its blade to trim my fingernails as Cyrus continued to play and we heard the seemingly faraway sound of the two women’s voices in the kitchen.

  Soon a pair of silhouettes appeared against the faint light in the kitchen doorway, and even in the near darkness I could see that Miss Howard was helping the other lady walk—not so much because the woman was physically unable to stand on her own (though she did seem in some pain) but more to help her overcome what I sensed was a kind of terrible dread. As they came into the center of the room, I could see that the woman had a fine figure and was richly dressed in black: layer upon layer of satin and silk, all of it crowned by a broad hat from which drooped a heavy black veil. She held an ivory-handled umbrella in one hand, and as Sara let go of her arm she steadied herself on it.

  The rest of us got to our feet, but Señora Linares’s attention was fixed on Cyrus. “Please,” she said, in a pleasantly toned voice what had obviously suffered through hours of weeping. “Do not stop. The song is lovely.”

  Cyrus obliged but kept his playing soft. Mr. Moore stepped forward at that point, offering a hand. “Señora Linares—my name is John Schuyler Moore. I suspect that Miss Howard has informed you that I’m a reporter—”

  “For The New York Times,” the woman answered from behind the veil as she shook Mr. Moore’s hand lightly. “I must tell you frankly, señor, t
hat were you in the employ of any other newspaper in this city, such as those belonging to Pulitzer and Hearst, I should not have consented to this meeting. They have printed abominable lies about the conduct of my countrymen toward the rebels in Cuba.”

  Mr. Moore eyed her carefully for a moment. “I fear that’s so, señora. But I also fear that at least some of what they’ve printed is true.” Señora Linares’s head bent forward just a little, and you could feel her sadness and shame even through the veil. “Fortunately, though,” Mr. Moore went on, “we’re not here to discuss politics, but the disappearance of your daughter. Assuming, that is, that we may be certain the two subjects are not connected?”

  Miss Howard gave Mr. Moore a quick look of surprise and disapproval, and Señora Linares’s head snapped back up into a proud position. “I have given my word to Miss Howard—the facts are as I have represented them.”

  Miss Howard shook her head. “Honestly, John, how can you—”

  “My apologies,” he answered. “To you both. But you must admit that the coincidence is rather remarkable. War between our two countries is spoken of as commonly as the weather these days—and yet of all the children of all the diplomats in New York to mysteriously disappear, it’s the daughter of a high Spanish official.”

  “John,” Miss Howard said angrily, “perhaps you and I had better—”

  But the Linares woman held up a hand. “No, Miss Howard. Señor Moore’s skepticism is, we must grant, understandable. But tell me this, sir: If I were a mere pawn in some diplomatic game, would I go to these lengths?” At that the woman pulled her veil up and over the black hat and moved further into the light that drifted through the window.

  Now, in the part of the Lower East Side where I was born and spent my first eight years, you tended to get pretty used to the sight of women who’d been worked over by their men; and given my mother’s taste in male companions, I’d gotten some especially close looks at just how that work was done. But nothing I’d seen in all those years exceeded the outrages that somebody had committed against this very comely lady. There was an enormous bruise that started above her left eye, then moved down to swell the eye shut and end in a gash in the cheek. A rainbow patch of purple, black, yellow, and green spread out on either side of her nose and reached under her right eye, the one she could still see out of, showing pretty clearly that the nose itself had been busted. The flesh of the chin was all scraped away, while the right side of the mouth was dragged down into a continuous frown by another bad gash. From the painful way she moved, it was pretty apparent that the same kind of injuries had been inflicted to the rest of her body.