Suspension Read online

  “You know, Jus, I wonder about Harry sometimes. I mean, if anybody was sure to live through the wire rigging it was him. That man was born in a tree, I swear,” Pat marveled.”Wasn’t none of us could keep up with him.”

  “Damn near killed myself trying,” said Justice. “Gave it up. Couldn’t out-supple old Harry.”

  “Yeah, but he’s the one that’s gone. Don’t make sense.” Pat looked out over the harbor toward Staten Island. “I mean here we are, planning to do … well, you know, and we’re still breathing, whilst a good man like Harry is in the ground. Makes you wonder about things.”

  Justice could see now where Pat was heading with this. He kept silent, listening.

  “Like God’s will, sort of. You know what I’m saying?” Pat asked.

  “Well, I don’t claim to know about those things, Pat. Any notions I had on them subjects got bleached out by the war, I guess. Tried to see some sense in it back then … but I gave up trying.” Jus was silent for a moment, then said, “Want a pickle? I got an extra.”

  Pat took it. For the next minute all that passed between them was the crunching of the big dills.

  “I know what you mean,” Pat said at last. “I used to lie awake nights, wondering why I was still alive. Like the captain and his brother. Why was Frank the one to go like that? Thaddeus always said Frank was the better of them. But there he was, his guts spilled out and the captain couldn’t catch a ball if he’d a-paid for it.”

  They both sat thinking, watching the river traffic.

  “I don’t know, Jus, maybe the Lord’s been saving us for this. Maybe all our lives have meant to lead us here. Ever think about that? What if this is the only real thing we been put on this earth to do?”

  Justice had been thinking the same thing, especially lately. It wasn’t something he talked about, not even with Pat. He wasn’t sure just how far he should go, so he answered warily. “Thought … occurred to me.” “Reckon if that’s so, then there ain’t much I can do about it. God’s gonna do with me what he will, I guess.” It felt better to think that way.

  “But we got a will of our own, Justice. God gave us that too.” Pat looked straight down toward the river, something he didn’t do much of. “I could jump off this cable right now, and God can’t stop me.”

  “Yeah,” Jus admitted slowly “but it was God’s will, put you here,” he pointed out. “You gonna go against God?”

  That sort of talk got under Sullivan’s collar. “How the hell you know what God wants? How can anybody? That’s just a blind so’s you don’t have to think the hard things for yourself.” The exasperation was clear in Pat’s voice. His tone didn’t seem to bother Jus. He had always been more of a believer than Pat, more willing to let his faith do the thinking for him.

  “Don’t take a crystal ball, Pat. Gotta see inside yourself … like. It’s like God’s in your head sometimes and all you gotta do is look for him,” Jus said softly. He’d been looking more himself lately.

  “What if I do and he tells me things I don’t want to hear, Jus? Suppose he says what I’m doing is wrong?” Pat said, voicing both their fears.

  “Can’t decide such things for you, nor you for me,” Jus answered. “I think that if a man goes searching for the Lord’s truth, he’ll find it. I mean … if it’s inside his own self … or out there somewheres”—he waved vaguely out at the river and harbor below them—“if you look for God, you’ll find him.”

  They both sat there for a while, Patrick munching a pickle and Justice nursing the last of his warm beer. Pat wasn’t so sure about finding God’s will. To know the will of God would be to know certainty, like knowing the winning numbers in the Kentucky lottery before you bought a policy. He just didn’t believe things were that certain.

  “We doing God’s will, you figure?” Pat asked, hoping for … what? he asked himself. He felt as if he were groping in the dark.

  “Fact is, I don’t know. I think so … but.” Jus veered off to a familiar refrain, the anchor they all clung to. “We got a score to settle with Roebling. I know that much. The captain’s got a debt too. Makes me see red sometimes, when I think what the Yankees done to us.”

  “I know. I used to feel that way a lot,” Patrick said, seeing into himself. Those feelings had been slowly fading for years. “Takes longer to get there now, like I got to try to bring it out.”

  Justice knew exactly what Pat was getting at. It scared him though to let go. “We got our oaths, Patrick. We all swore to do this thing.”

  Pat could hear the warning in his voice. “I know. I swore too … but it’s hard. Things aren’t as clear … now.” Pat was trying to make it clear for himself and Lincoln too. “This job—the bridge, I mean—guess I didn’t expect to like it so much. Didn’t expect to lose my hate neither.”

  “I don’t hate like I done in bygone years,” Jus admitted. “But that don’t mean I don’t know what it feels like, nor why I’m here.” Lincoln sounded as if he were trying to convince himself.

  “Reckon. Be honest with me now, Jus. Aren’t you going to feel just a little bad to see her go down?” Pat slapped the cable he sat on, then slapped it again, softer this time, almost a caress. “It’ll be like losing a piece of myself.”

  Justice was quite for a long time, so long that Pat almost wondered if he’d heard him.

  Finally Justice turned, his battered face wearing a sadness Pat had rarely seen.

  “I don’t like to think about that,” Jus said, his eyes saying more than his words. Here was the one thing that stood in the way, the thing that was in danger of cutting across faith and mission and vengeance: the bridge itself. Its hold on him had grown to the point where he could not speak of it with the others, hardly even with Pat. But he had just then, in more than words. The horse was out of the barn now. Jus waited to hear what Pat would do with it.

  “Me neither, Jus” was all Pat said. It was enough.

  “Funny. After blowing all them bridges in the war, it’s kind of odd getting attached to one,” Justice mused with a softness in his voice that he didn’t mean to be there. It crept in anyway. Finally he decided to voice something he had only thought before. “Listen, I never said this to nobody, Pat, and you got to promise me that you won’t tell … the others.” Jus twisted back toward Pat.

  “Sure. It’s just us talking,” Patrick said with a shrug.

  “Well … sometimes, like times when we’re up in the cables and the sun is just right, I swear I see the Lord’s work here. And … damned if I don’t feel proud. Shit, Patrick, I ain’t never felt like I was doing the Lord’s work—never except maybe at the start of the war.” The strain was clear in his voice. “That’s why I try to see what we’re doing here in the right light … see my duty.” He squinted back at Sullivan, the conflict clear in his face.

  Sullivan knew the feeling, but had been scared to even think it in light of what they’d all sworn to do. Still, he confessed.

  “I know, Jus. It’s as close to a thing of beauty as these hands ever made.” Pat held his hands up as if looking at them for the first time. Justice grunted his agreement. Patrick mumbled, half to himself, half to the winds in the cables, “This will be a trial for us all.”

  Mike wasn’t going to cry. He sat in a small cell in the basement of 178 Delancey Street. The Thirteenth Precinct station house was old. It still stood much as it had in the 1840s when it was first built. The cell Mike was in was windowless. The stone walls were cold. Water beaded and dripped on their irregular surfaces. The iron bars of his cell were damp too. Rust blossomed on the old iron like fungus. When he put his hands on them, they came away brown. The homeless the city sheltered in police stations every night had gone their way at first light. There had been maybe a dozen of them, all ages and sizes. But they had left. Their doors weren’t locked. For the first time, Mike envied them.

  There was a cot and a small washstand, with a metal bowl and pitcher. The water in the pitcher smelled funny, so Mike didn’t drink it. He did use some to was
h the blood off though. Harlan the cop had not been easy on him. The backs of his legs were so sore he could hardly sit. Long welts from the cop’s nightstick ran across them in hot, angry streaks. Harlan had whacked him all the way to the station house. It hadn’t helped that he wouldn’t rat on his friends. Harlan seemed to have no respect for Mike’s silence. Each time he got no answer to his questions, he whacked a little harder. His butt had taken a few too, and he felt like he’d been kicked by a mule. His “accident” on the stairs hadn’t helped either. He’d taken no more than two uncertain steps down, the musty putrid air pushing back at him, when a shove came from behind, and he was launched into space. The next thing he knew he was in a cell, on a cot … alone. Bedbugs already crawled in his hair and on his clothes. A swipe at his sore head left his hand streaked with crusty brownish blood. The funny-smelling water stung when he washed the cut by his hairline. He whimpered a bit but it wasn’t the bruises and cuts that hurt most. He’d had his share of fights on the street. He’d taken his share of lumps. When his ma and sis died, he’d tried to be strong for his da. But at least then his da was there, and he had someone to be strong for. He was alone now. Though he loved his grandma and gramps, they were not his da. In the gloom of his small, damp cell, he felt the loss down to his bones. It hurt in a way no physical pain could.

  The only thing Mike could think, when they asked him whom to contact, was “Detective Braddock.”

  The desk sergeant had looked at him with a raised eyebrow, and asked, “Detective Braddock, you say? And what would your relations be with him?”

  Mike didn’t want to explain how he came to know Braddock nor that he knew him barely at all. All he could think to say was “He knew my father.” He wouldn’t say more.

  “The nerve of this kid, eh, Theron?” said Harlan. “Wants us to think ‘e’s got big connections. Well, we’ll see about your friend Mr. Braddock, but for now you’ll be spending some time as our guest. And … if by and by we find out you’ve been tellin’ tales about this detective, it’ll go that much harder for you. Come along, boy.”

  Mike figured that maybe his naming of Braddock had earned him his “accident” on the stairs.

  Mike sat with his head in his hands. He thought of the coins he had put in a small pile on the sergeant’s desk. Would he ever see those nickels and dimes again? He thought about Mouse and Smokes. If he knew them, they were staying away from home, watching for cops from down the block. He wondered if they’d go to the circus. He mourned the circus already. There was no way he’d get there now. Bragging to the other boys in the neighborhood had been something he had relished in advance. But there would be no bragging, no Jumbo the giant packy-derm, no nothing. He’d be lucky not to be sent to the Juvenile House of Detention. Even if he got off, his grandma would punish him forever. The future did not look bright from the basement of the Thirteenth.

  Mike thought about his da too. Small rivulets ran down his cheeks, carving lines through the coal dust and dried blood. He tried to cry quietly. He didn’t want to give Harlan the satisfaction, but his chest heaved and his throat felt chokey. As he cried, he suddenly thought of the black-faced man by the outhouse. He hadn’t thought about that for days, but now it wormed its way back to the surface of his mind. Even though he was in a police precinct house, he knew it would be useless now to tell anyone. They’d just see it as a wild story, a kid’s way of trying to get off lightly. They’d laugh at him. Maybe they’d do worse than push him down the stairs. Some of the older boys from the neighborhood had to go to the hospital after a visit to the Thirteenth. Besides, even Braddock’s name had been met with sneers. This wasn’t the time to tell what he knew about men behind outhouses. He’d have to wait. Maybe if the detective came, he’d see if he could tell him. Right now, though, that was not at the top of his list of worries.

  After his talk with Coffin and a predictably unproductive and uneventful visit to Gotham Court, Tom had gone back to get Sam and a roundsman who happened to be with him.

  “Nobody ever heard of Watkins in Gotham Court,” Tom told Sam as they marched to the bridge. “Fuckin’ dead end. No record of him ever being there, far as I can tell.”

  Sam shook his head. “Smells bad. You figure someone set you up or just sent you where you’d be likely to find trouble?”

  Tom shrugged. Either way it stunk. The three of them went back to the bridge approach and brought Matt Emmons and Earl Lebeau in for questioning. Tom was certain they hadn’t killed Watkins themselves. That would have been impossible. But it was equally improbable that these two knew nothing of who might have done it. They had to know what was going on. But two hours of grilling didn’t reveal a damn thing. In fact, their stories were too tight. It was rare to get the same story from different people. In his experience it was more common to get differing accounts from witnesses to the same event, let alone the same relationship. But Matt and Earl’s accounts left hardly enough room to pass a knife between them. It could mean nothing, or it could mean a great deal. There was no way to know.

  One thing that was significant in his eyes was that they both seemed surprised by the news of Watkins’s death. They were hostile at first, thinking maybe that Tom had killed him. But when they were told of how Watkins was found shot in the back of the head, they couldn’t hide their shock. From that point on though, nothing seemed to fluster either of them. Most people brought in for questioning showed some raw nerves, sweaty palms, dry throats. Even the innocent ones had a right to be nervous. With the exception of some fidgeting, they were both as cool as lemonade on a hot afternoon. They didn’t appear to hold anything back. It was just the same story in different voices, of their years together serving the Confederacy, the drifting back to their homes after the war, the despair at finding little to go back to and the eventual journey north. The three of them had been working on the bridge on and off since 1870. They liked the work, they said. They had to, to stay on that long, Tom figured. “Any other boys from your unit come up here with you?” he asked both of them. He got virtually the same answer: Just the three of them. Tom didn’t think much of it. One thing he thought a little odd was that none of the three had married. Of course, neither had he, but he didn’t consider that. What he did consider was that the odds of three young men coming north, living and working here for thirteen years, without at least one of them finding a wife were pretty long.

  Something was sure as hell going on. Two men were dead. There had been an attempt on his life. Though it could have been just bad luck to meet up with those four at Gotham Court, Tom didn’t believe luck had much to do with it. There was a connection to these men from the South, but what that was, he couldn’t establish … not yet. Tom figured to take a different road with them. The War Department might have their records, and Tom hoped there’d be something in them to give him a clue. So much was lost in the closing days of the war, especially in the frantic retreat from Petersburg and Richmond. But if records existed, the War Department would have them or at least know where else he might look. Tom didn’t know what he was looking for, but he had to start somewhere. He sat at his desk once they’d released Emmons and Lebeau. With his feet up and hands behind his head, he stared off into space, trying to make the pieces fit. He reached absently into his pocket fingering the little key. Taking it out, he turned it over in his hand, examining it for the hundredth time. He frowned. Trouble was he was missing half the puzzle … at least.

  “Braddock! Detective, I need a word with you in my office.”

  Tom was startled for a second, but tried not to show it. He knew what Byrnes had on his mind. In a way he was surprised the chief hadn’t summoned him sooner. Tom closed Byrnes’s door behind him, knowing this would be a closed-door talk.

  “Yes, sir?”

  “Tell me about Gotham Court, Detective.” Byrnes stood with his back to Tom. He looked out the windows behind his desk and appeared to be watching the ebbing activity on Mulberry Street as the day faded into night. Tom could see the light of his eyes th
ough. They watched him in the glass of the dirty windows. His cigar glowed like a little furnace in the dim light of the office.

  “I heard about the Plug Uglies, sir. Maybe I should start off by saying that they were alive when I left them, though none too healthy.”

  Byrnes grunted and let the smoke drift from his mouth as he spoke. Tom had the odd thought that Byrnes was on fire inside, like a potbelly stove.

  “If I believed otherwise, Thomas, we’d be having a very different sort of conversation.”

  “Yes, sir, I suppose we would. Well, first off … I was at Gotham Court to apprehend a suspect in the Bucklin murder. Name of Watkins.”

  That brought Byrnes around, his cigar poised, ash drooping. “Watkins, you say? Isn’t that the man you pursued this morning and found shot on the ferry?”

  “The same,” Tom said evenly, a slight grin on his face. He knew what Byrnes’s reaction would be.

  “Interesting.” Byrnes looked pointedly at Tom. “Go on.”

  Braddock proceeded to fill Byrnes in on the Bucklin case. The chief seemed fascinated. His cigar ash dropped to the floor unnoticed. By the time Tom finished his report, the cigar had nearly gone out and Byrnes puffed on it in haste, making little sucking pops with his lips as he tried to get it going again.

  “So, you have two men dead … executed, to be precise. You have an apparent attempt on your life, and you have a man’s word that his son was afraid of something in connection with the bridge. It would seem, as well, that these former Confederates are involved. Whether that’s just coincidence or part of the bigger picture, we don’t know.” Byrnes pointed his cigar butt at Tom with raised eyebrows.