Suspension Page 22

  Patrick had watched, craning with the others, as Farrington swung out from the Brooklyn anchorage and started to slowly make the ascent to the top of the tower. The crowds cheered as the master mechanic rode his little seat, much like the seat Sullivan used now. If he had been afraid, it didn’t show. In fact, he actually had the nerve to loose his safety ropes and stand up on the swinging board, like some sort of highwire act. It was the hat waving that Sullivan remembered. The crowds cheered themselves hoarse. Farrington became an instant celebrity.

  Sullivan hadn’t really appreciated just how brave an act it was until he got his job in the cables about two weeks later. At first, just being up on the anchorage made him nervous, and he didn’t like to go too near the edge. The anchorage was taller than any of the buildings in Brooklyn. Looking down chimneys was something that took a little getting used to. He had seen Farrington up close that first day, and he stopped his work to look at him. He remembered thinking that maybe there was something about the man that marked him for his courage, the set of his jaw or the tone of his voice. He couldn’t be sure he saw any evidence of it, but he had gone over to the master mechanic and shook his hand, saying “Hell of a ride you took, sir. My hat’s off to you.”

  Farrington had smiled with almost an aw-shucks kind of shrug. “Made me kind of famous in a little way. Never thought to see my picture in Harper’s. Wasn’t that grand a thing,” he said modestly.

  “Not to my way of thinking. Anyway, just wanted to say I shook with you. You’re a man’s got sand, and I respect that. How’d it look from up there, anyhow?”

  “Well, if you’re working cable, you’ll see soon enough, ah … ?”

  Patrick had introduced himself shyly.

  “Well, you’ll see, Sullivan. It’s a sight. From Coney Island to Jersey, it’s all at your feet from the top. Nothing like it on the continent,” Farrington had said with great satisfaction. As Patrick Sullivan sat in his boson’s chair high above the city, he had to admit it was a sight indeed. A gull lighted on the main cable, just a few feet away, its feathers ruffled with the wind. It turned a glassy, black eye at him, head canted to one side.

  “Didn’t think to see me up here, did ya?” he asked the bird. The bird said nothing, just shifted from one foot to the other, all the while regarding him with a shining pitiless eye. “If I was you, I’d stay clear of here in a couple of months. Just one bird to another, ya understand. Might not be healthy.” Patrick looked down to his work for a moment. When he looked back the gull was gone.

  Broadway was crowded with carriages. Their fine teams and fancy equipage dueled for the attention of the shoppers on the Ladies Mile. The day, though a little blustery, had turned brilliant, with a sun that Tom could feel on his face and the backs of his hands. It was Mary’s idea to get him out for a stroll. Though he didn’t care for shopping as recreation, he enjoyed the crowds, carriages, and life of this part of Broadway. Gentlemen in top hats, starched collars, and cravats with gold and diamond pins escorted ladies in full bloom. Tight-cinched waists and wide-brimmed hats in white, peach, rose, and lavender reminded Tom of a movable garden, its flowers having slipped their roots to parade down the avenue. The sidewalks, especially on the slightly more fashionable west side of the street, were alive with strollers. They stopped to look in the windows of Lord & Taylor, Arnold Constable, J & C Johnston, and at the southern end of the Ladies Mile, A. T. Stewarts on Tenth Street. From there to Twenty-third Street was gathered the very finest collection of retail establishments in the city. With Union Square anchoring one end, Madison Square park and the incomparable Fifth Avenue Hotel the other, this was the most pleasant and fashionable place in the city to shop, stroll, and be seen.

  Tom, still a bit unsteady, enjoyed the show, but mostly he enjoyed being with Mary. Their relationship had been an almost unnatural nocturnal affair. Between Tom’s unpredictable hours and Mary’s virtual round-the-clock business, they usually only found time for each other in the evenings. They had gone out, of course, to the theater and dinner. Being out in the day, with the sun and the wind and beautiful people, was a thing almost unknown to them. Tom felt as if they were somehow coming out of seclusion. Having Mary on his arm, in public, on the most fashionable street in the city, taking the air like any other couple was an unexpected joy. Though his head still had a small bandage and he favored his left side, he was surprised at how good he felt. Maybe it was just being with Mary.

  He noticed how people looked at her. The women, at least those who didn’t know who she was, could sometimes be caught casting an appraising eye. Tom could see the curiosity. She was beautiful. She dressed well, she obviously had money. Who might she be? Others who seemed to know exactly who she was, did their best to look right through her. Some even made a small show of turning at strategic moments or sniffing as they passed. Tom figured their husbands were clients. He wrote them off for hypocrites, scorning the woman who provides what their husbands can’t get at home. Tom didn’t give it much thought, he just held Mary’s arm a little tighter and smiled to the world.

  They were almost down to Union Square when Tom started to feel a little tired and more than a little dizzy.

  “I think maybe it’s time to turn back home,” he said with a tinge of uncertainty in his voice, as if maybe they’d come too far already. It scared him some that he was still wobbly. His old wound throbbed, setting his temple to aching dully.

  “You all right? Do you need to sit for a minute?” Mary asked with a small frown.

  “I’ll be fine. Let’s just stop, take in a store window. The head’s a bit wobbly is all.” As it turned out, they had stopped in front of a children’s store. The window was full of clothes on one side, toys on the other. There was an army of tiny lead soldiers, parading off to bloodless nursery battles, their uniforms shiny with new paint, their rifles not yet bent by careless little hands. Tom thought he wouldn’t mind having a set of those himself, they were that beautiful. He thought for a moment of all the parading he had done during the war. Every time some general or congressman took a notion of visiting the corps, they all trotted out for a review. The bands would play, the battle flags would wave, thousands of feet would tramp together, pounding the earth with measured tread, and afterward the bigwigs would retire to brandy and cigars, feeling very pleased indeed. Tom didn’t have many fond memories of parading, except at the very beginning and the very end of the war. Those parades were different; like bookends, they bracketed the experience for him, brash exuberance on one end, tearful accomplishment at the other. Real marching was like neither.

  He focused again on the store window. There was a hobbyhorse, with a real horsehair mane and tail, there were cast-iron wagons, fire engines, banks, and carriages with prancing teams. There were even a few clockwork toys from Germany. Tom forgot his woozy head and marveled at the display. The child in him stole across his face, lighting his eyes and painting a grin under his broad mustache.

  “Never had anything this fine when I was a kid,” Tom said wistfully. “Hell, I thought I was lucky to have an India-rubber ball.”

  “I had a doll for a while,” Mary said. “She had real glass eyes, real hair too. It was red. She used to sleep with me every night.” The memory softened her words. “Even after my father started … well … she always slept with me. Her name was Amanda. Wish I still had her.” Tom saw his old enemy flit across Mary’s face: He tried to think of something to say.

  A family appeared behind them, reflected in the glass of the window. They were a beautiful family, a perfect family, with a boy of maybe eight or ten and a girl of perhaps six. The parents beamed patiently as the children charged the window, pointing and laughing. Small noses pressed the glass. They giggled about some whispered secret and debated on which toy they each would have if they could have only one. Tom watched them from the corner of his eye. A smile crept across his face. He thought of dirty-faced Mike Bucklin.

  “You know, we’ve never talked about children, Mary. Do you like children?” To
m asked brightly. The question seemed to catch her off guard for a moment. She had been staring into the glass at the parents behind them. Now she looked at Tom as if just hearing what he’d asked. Small wrinkles creased her forehead and were around her eyes. It was a strange look, one Tom hadn’t seen before.

  “Haven’t given it much thought,” she said too quickly. “I don’t have the luxury. I mean, with the house and all, I haven’t …” She paused for a moment. “There’s that … and then … well, then there’s what I am.”

  “What do you mean, ‘what I am’?” Tom asked, knowing what she meant but challenging her notions.

  “You know very well. My … profession,” Mary said, as if any fool would know, and he was a fool for asking.

  “What’s that got to do with liking children? I mean, you either like them or you don’t,” Tom said, not giving it up, part out of stubbornness, part from the resentment of her tone. He never did care for anyone using that tone with him, not even Mary.

  “Tommy, for a smart fella, sometimes you can be so thick,” she said, shaking her head at him, exasperation clear in her tone. “You sure that knock on the head didn’t shake something loose?”

  “Pretty sure. Still don’t see what your … job has to do with liking kids or not,” Tom said, not realizing how deep this was cutting.

  “Tommy, I’m a whore and a madame,” Mary said, too loudly. “I sell sex for money. That’s why I can’t even think about children. It’s not that I … well I’m just not …”

  Tom looked at her, surprised at the sudden play of emotion, swirling and eddying about her eyes and mouth.

  “Jesus, Tommy, I want to but I can’t,” she said, her words part exasperation, part plea. It was a hopeless, sorrowful tone that sank into him, fanning out like a shot of cheap whiskey, except it wasn’t warm, not warm at all. The family, he noticed, was suddenly gone.

  Tom looked at the glass, seeing nothing, not even their reflections. He knew this was a turning point, a fork in the road. But these sorts of things never came when he was ready. He wanted to shout at whatever fates had conspired to bring them to this. It wasn’t time. His head hurt. The sidewalk moved when he walked. What was he supposed to do? He needed time but there was none. He had to do something, and he knew that what he did right now, right this instant, would ripple through his life in sunlight or darkness.

  “Mary,” Tom said, reaching for her hand. He turned to face her. The crowds on the sidewalks, the clatter of the carriages on Broadway, the sunny, blustery world around them, faded, growing quiet as if the world listened.

  “Mary.” He saw the dampness on her cheek, the sadness around her eyes, his old enemy. He reckoned then that he wouldn’t mind whipping that old ghost through all the years that would be.

  “Mary?” He pulled her to him, and for an awful instant he thought she would resist. But she came to his arms on Broadway, on a sunny guster of a day, this April of ’83. People stared. It wasn’t proper to embrace so close, nor so long in public, not even in the park at Madison Square.

  “Mary,” he whispered in her hair. “I’d make a life with you, for the rest of my days, if I thought you’d have me.” She tensed and pulled back from him. He was afraid to let her go, afraid of her eyes. But when he looked in them, he was afraid no longer.

  “You mean that, don’t you?” she said with almost a touch of wonder in her voice. “Don’t say it if you don’t mean it, Tom. You don’t have to—” She stopped herself, shaking her head. “But you know that,” she said almost to herself. Mary looked hard at his face—the little crinkles around the eyes, the mustache, the scar at the temple, the small shock of white hair there. It was a strong face, a good face, a face she loved and trusted.

  “I have my dreams, Tommy,” she said, looking into his eyes. “I’ve locked them away. Doing what I do, I can’t afford dreams of a normal life. Family and children; they’ve been just dreams to me. I can’t let myself be dreaming like that but once.” There was a powerful, desperate seriousness in her words. Tom knew the risk she was willing to take with him.

  “If I take those dreams out again, it’ll kill me if—” She paused for a long moment, looking off as if seeing something far off. “It would just kill me,” she finished.

  Tom believed it was so. “I just want to make you happy, is all. We’ll take it slow but I’m thinking we’re dreaming the same dream, you and I.” He smiled a tentative, hopeful smile that said as much as his words. Mary hugged him with a ferocity that almost startled him. He knew he had taken the right turn.

  Funny how the choice unmade is so uncertain but, once done, looks like no choice at all. Mary’s hand was in his as they walked back up Broadway. The sun was warmer now. The wind had died to a whisper. They walked in silence down the road they had chosen.

  Chapter Eleven

  But when it comes to planning, one mind can in a

  few hours think out enough work to keep a thousand

  men employed for years.

  —WASHINGTON ROEBLING

  Captain Peter Coogan, commander of the Fourth Precinct, sat with the rest of the “corps” in Coffin’s office watching as he stalked back and forth like a caged animal. Coogan and Coffin had been near-equal partners in the corps for three years. Coffin most always took the lead in things, though. August carried a cigar in his right hand that he was using to stab the air as he made a point. In between, he’d suck on it, so it glowed like a little furnace.

  “I’m going to ruin that son of a bitch, then I’ll see if he don’t whistle a different tune.”

  “What’re you going to do, August?” Coogan asked, almost amused by the show Coffin was putting on.

  “Well, we’ve got a pretty good idea where Tom is getting his money, right? We know the bars, the whorehouses, the gambling dens as well as he does. It don’t take an Edison to figure who’s paying him off, does it?” Coffin almost shouted.

  Coogan put his feet up, enjoying Coffin’s tirade. He locked his fingers over his middle, twirling his thumbs in silent satisfaction. He’d warned Coffin against taking action against Braddock, and he was enjoying his little gloat.

  “One by one we shut them down. It’s got to look right: standard procedure, all that bullshit. Make it look official. Cracking down on the criminal element following the Venkman and Finney thing,” Coffin said, waving his cigar. “That’s the story. The fact that it’s actually true is merely convenient. Hell, we arrest enough of them, we can hurt Braddock bad. Maybe then he’ll knuckle under. What do you say, team?” he asked, challenging the others of the “corps” grouped around the room.

  Coogan spoke first. “Never thought Braddock was a solid member of the corps, but he’s a solid man. A good cop too. Can’t say I want to make an enemy of him.” A couple of the others seemed to nod in agreement.

  “Not scared of him, are you, Pat?” Coffin asked sarcastically.

  “Not scared,” he said evenly, choosing to ignore the slur, “just not stupid. Ain’t saying I’m not in, mind. Just saying let’s be careful.”

  “And the rest of you?” Coffin peered around the office, his wide-open stare a challenge to each. “Good. We do this right, and he’ll get the message in double-time. He’s no fool. He’ll see which side his bread is buttered on.” There followed a general discussion of who they’d hit first. Once that was decided, Coffin dismissed the men. There were an even dozen. Coogan stayed behind.

  “Why want him back in so bad, August? We can do fine without him.”

  “Well, I tell you, Pat, sometimes it’s a puzzle to me too,” Coffin said. “He’s a burr under my saddle, but he’s solid. He can be counted on to do what he says. That’s more than I can say about some of the rest.” Coffin knew that for an understatement. “And it’s a whole lot better having him on the inside. We’ve got more control that way. Out of the corps, we can’t be sure who the hell he’s talking to.” Tom knew a great deal about Coffin’s extracurricular activities, enough to put him away forever. “Third thing, it’s dangero
us to kill the man, though I’ve been tempted. Don’t know what went wrong with Venkman and Finney, but you saw what those two looked like. For God’s sake, Finney’s head looked like it got run over by a freight wagon, and his arm … how Braddock did that, I don’t know.” Coffin didn’t bother to mention how Tom had disarmed him earlier, but it echoed in the back of his head, like a schoolyard taunt.

  “Well, August, it might surprise you to know that I agree with you. Surprised you took the chance of riling him in the first place.”

  “Hmph. Plan went a bit overboard.” He shrugged. “Figured Tom could be taught a little humility. Was getting on his high horse lately, complaining about who we’re taking protection from and the like. Figured I’d put the screws to Finney for the beating. I’d have Tom in my debt and a bigger percentage from Finney in the bargain. It would have been pretty.”

  Coogan chuckled. “August, only you would call that deal pretty.”

  “Would have been,” Coffin said defensively, “except those boys got carried away. I didn’t want him dead, just ‘rearranged’ a little. That Dutchman didn’t have the intelligence of a stump. Should have made allowances for that, but what the hell; what’s done is done.” Coffin never was one to dwell on his failures. He was always ready to get on to the next plan. It was one of his real strengths.

  “Humph. But now we gotta be puttin’ the squeeze on Tommy’s payoff. Don’t want to be doing that for long. Some of that money trickles into our pockets too, ya know,” Coogan said, ever the more practical of the pair.

  “Don’t have to tell me. This won’t take a lot of doing.” Coffin sat back in his swivel chair. The spring in it gave out a long screech that Coogan could feel in the fillings of his teeth. “Gotta have somebody oil this goddamn chair,” he said absently. “Hell, maybe I’ll just put in a requisition for a new one.” He put his feet up on the desk and smiled. He was more than willing to sacrifice a few dollars in the short run for a greater profit in the long. August twirled a pencil in his fingers like a bandleader’s baton as he struck a reflective pose. He flipped it by one end, and it spun in the air at least three times before he caught it without seeming to try. Coogan sipped his coffee and watched the little show: the feet up, the pencil spinning, the pensive look. He knew something was coming.