Caleb Carr - The Angel Of Darkness

“Yes, sir,” Cyrus answered. Then he looked down at me. “Might be enough time for you to get a little rest, Stevie. You could use it.”

I just shook my head. “I don’t want to sleep,” I said, remembering what’d happened the last time I’d drifted off. “Make that coffee strong, though.”

“Always do,” Cyrus said. “Oh, and Doctor-the detective sergeant asked me to tell you that he’s gone down to headquarters to give his brother a hand. Says he’s worried about how long it’s taking.”

“As am I,” the Doctor answered, checking his watch. “It would seem, on the surface, to be a fairly straightforward matter. Like so many things about this case…”

Not really feeling ready yet to talk about the particulars of what we were going to do next, I wandered on upstairs, where I found Mr. Moore in the parlor. He’d turned one of the Doctor’s easy chairs around to face a window what he’d opened, so’s he could get a good view of the storm what was continuing to batter the city. Collapsing onto the nearby settee, I joined him in quietly studying the wind-tossed trees in Stuyvesant Park.

“Hell of a storm,” I mumbled, looking over to see that Mr. Moore’s face was full of the same kind of sadness and confusion that was eating away at my own soul.

“Hell of a summer ,”he answered. “But the weather’s always crazy in this goddamned town…” He managed to turn to me for just a few quick seconds. “I really am sorry, Stevie.”

“Yeah,” I answered. “Me, too. I mean, about Mr. Picton…”

Mr. Moore nodded and let out a big gush of air, shaking his head. “So now we’re supposed to catch this woman,” he mumbled. “Catch her and study her. It’s not exactly what I’m in the mood for.”

“No,” I agreed.

He held a finger up like he was lecturing the angry heavens. “Rupert,” he said, “never believed you could learn anything from killers after you’d caught them. He said it was like trying to study the hunting habits of wild animals by watching feeding time at a menagerie. He’d have been the first to say that we should kill this bitch if we get the chance.”

“It might happen,” I said with a shrug. “El Niño’s still out there somewhere. And he won’t stop to ask her why she does the things she does. All he’ll want is a clear shot when she’s not holding the baby.”

“Well, I hope he gets one,” Mr. Moore answered flatly. “Or, for that matter, that I do.”

I looked at him again. “You really think you could kill her?”

“Could you?” he answered, going for a cigarette.

I shrugged. “I been thinking about that. Might as well be me as some electrician at Sing Sing, if she’s gonna die. But… I don’t know. Won’t bring anybody back.”

Mr. Moore hissed out smoke as he lit his stick. “You know,” he said, his face still looking sad, but irritated, too, “I’ve always hated that expression.”

For a few more minutes we sat quietly, starting every now and then when a big clap of thunder boomed or a bolt of lightning shot down into what seemed like the heart of the city. Then the other three joined us, Cyrus carrying a coffee service and setting it down on the rolling cocktail cart. The Doctor could read Mr. Moore’s and my moods well enough not to start talking about any plans right away, so we all just drank the coffee and watched the storm for another half hour or so-until a hansom pulled up at the curb outside and produced the two detective sergeants. They’d pretty obviously been bickering inside the cab, and they kept right on going when they got into the house: things, it seemed, had not gone well downtown.

“It’s cowardice,” Marcus explained, after taking a careful moment to tell me how sorry he was about Kat. “Absolute cowardice! Oh, they’ll get the warrant authorized, all right, but if apprehending the woman means going up against the Dusters, they’re not interested.”

“I’ve been trying to remind my brother,” Lucius said, pouring himself a cup of coffee, “of what happened the last time the Police Department attempted a large-scale confrontation with the Hudson Dusters. An embarrassing number of officers ended up in the hospital. Kids on the West Side still taunt patrolmen by singing little ditties about it.”

“And let’s not forget who can generally be found hanging around the Dusters’ place,” Miss Howard added. “A lot of well-connected people in this town like to go down there to take cocaine and romanticize about the lives of gangsters. The fools.”

“That doesn’t excuse cowardice,” Marcus insisted, himself going for some of Cyrus’s brew. “Damn it, we’re talking about one woman who is a mass murderer , for God’s sake. And the department doesn’t want to get involved because they’re afraid they’ll lose face ?”

“The department doesn’t want to get involved,” the Doctor said, “because no one that they view as being of any importance has yet been killed. You know as well as I do that such has always been the rule in this city, Marcus-we had a brief respite under Roosevelt, but none of the reforms really took hold.”

“Then what’s our answer?” Lucius asked, looking around the room.

I knew what I was thinking, and I knew that Mr. Moore and Marcus probably felt the same way. if nobody else was going to take care of the job, it was up to us to go down there, bust into that hell house on Bethune Street, and do what had to be done. But none of the three of us was going to give voice to this opinion while the Doctor was in the room, knowing, as we did, that he placed such a high value on our taking Libby Hatch alive.

Which was why his next line of thought came as kind of a surprise: “The navy,” he said quietly, his black eyes lighting up.

“The what ?”Mr. Moore responded, looking dumbfounded.

“The navy ,”the Doctor repeated, turning to Marcus. “Detective Sergeant-we know that the Hudson Dusters relish conflict with the New York City Police Department. How would they feel, do you suppose, about an encounter with the United States Navy?”

“Kreizler,” Mr. Moore said, “you have obviously gone around some bend-”

Ignoring Mr. Moore, Marcus began to nod. “Offhand, I’d say they’d back off-navy men are, as you know, pretty renowned brawlers. And they carry the authority of the federal government, not just the city-political connections and local rivalries wouldn’t get into the thing.”

The Doctor began to bounce the knuckles of his right hand against his mouth. “Yes,” he said quietly. Then another thought seemed to flash in his head. “The White Star Line’s pier is, I believe, just a few blocks around the corner from Libby Hatch’s house on Bethune Street, isn’t that right?”

“Yes, it is,” Miss Howard said, looking puzzled. “At Tenth Street. Why, Doctor?”

Seeing a copy of the morning edition of the Times tucked into Marcus’s jacket pocket, the Doctor stood up and snatched it away. Quickly ruffling its pages, he searched for what seemed like some small but important piece of information. “No White Star ships currently in port,” he eventually said with a nod. “Then he could have a vessel land there, and we could approach the house from the rear-taking the gang by relative surprise.”

“ Who could?” Mr. Moore near shouted. “Laszlo, what in hell-” All of a sudden, his jaw dropped as he got it. “Oh, no. Oh, no, Kreizler, that is insane, you can’t-not Roosevelt !”

“Yes,” the Doctor answered, looking up from the paper with a smile. “Roosevelt.”

Mr. Moore scrambled to his feet. “Get Theodore involved in this case? Once he finds out what’s going on, he’ll start his damned war against Spain right here in this city!”