Caleb Carr - The Angel Of Darkness

He liked kids; he was kind of a big, strange boy himself, and he was always happy to see me (the same could not be said for some of the Doctor’s other friends). By 1897 he was famous and successful enough, among those who understood art, to be able to live pretty much as he pleased-which was basically like a pack rat. He never threw a thing away, not a food carton or a piece of string or a pile of ashes, and his rooms really could get a little frightening at times for most people. But his gentle, quiet kindness and the definite pull of his hazy, dreamy paintings more than made up for all that, especially for me, a boy from the Lower East Side who was used to garbage piling up inside flats. That, combined with the fact that he shared my taste in food-he kept a kettle of stew always on the boil and, when out, preferred oysters, lobster, and baked beans in a waterfront restaurant-made his place a destination to which I was always happy to accompany the Doctor.

It was just the three of us-Miss Howard, the Doctor, and myself-what made the pilgrimage that night, as Cyrus (who admired Pinkie’s paintings but, like Mr. Moore, didn’t think much of his living habits) begged off to get a full night’s sleep. Pinkie’s building was just west of Eighth Avenue on Fifteenth Street, and was one of thousands like it in that neighborhood: a simple old brick row house that’d been converted into flats. We traveled by hansom, moving uptown with the thickening stream of traffic what was heading for the Tenderloin at that time of night and then branching off to find that a small kerosene lamp was burning in Pinkie’s front window.

“Ah, so he’s home,” Dr. Kreizler said. He paid off the cabbie, then took Miss Howard’s arm. “Now, Sara, I must prepare you-I know that you find courtly deference to your sex abominable, but in Ryder’s case you really must make an exception. It’s perfectly innocent, and perfectly genuine-he does not intend it as any veiled attempt to keep women fragile and weak, I assure you.”

Miss Howard nodded in a not-completely-convinced way as we climbed up the stoop of the building. “I’ll give anyone the benefit of a fair trial,” she said. “But if it becomes insulting…”

“Fair enough,” the Doctor said. “Stevie? Why don’t you run ahead, so that Ryder has some warning.”

I dashed inside the building and up the dark stairs to the door of Pinkie’s flat, then knocked on it hard and called out to him in a loud voice. I knew that he sometimes didn’t let even good friends in, if he was in a fever of creation, but I felt sure he’d respond to me. “Mr. Ryder?” I shouted. “It’s Stevie Taggert, sir, come with the Doctor!”

From inside I heard the kind of rustling that squirrels make when they get into a pile of autumn leaves, and then some heavy, slow footsteps moved toward the door. The footsteps stopped, and there was a long pause, accompanied by heavy breathing that I could hear even in the hall. Finally, a deep, rich voice what was at once slow but a bit skittish asked:

“Stevie?”

“Yes, sir,” I answered.

A lock was undone, and as the door was pulled away from me a large form moved in to fill the opening. I made out the beard first, then the high, glowing forehead, and finally the eyes, the color of which-light brown or blue-I could never quite figure.

I moved inside with a salute. “Hellooo, Pinkie!” I announced, marching past the piles of books, newspapers, and just plain trash in his front room toward the back of the flat, where his studio-and the kettle of stew-were located.

He smiled in his particular way, what Dr. Kreizler always called “enigmatically.”

“Hello, young Stevie,” he said, wiping his paint-covered hands on a rag. For all that he’d lived in New York for years, there was still much of the old-time New Englander in the way he spoke. “What brings you to these reaches at this hour?”

“The Doctor’s following me up,” I said, moving between walls covered with unframed canvases that, to the untrained eye, would have looked like finished pictures: beautiful golden landscapes, stormy dark seascapes (or what the art crowd called “marines”), as well as scenes from the poetry, drama, and myths what fascinated old Pinkie. He was quite a poet himself, and, like I say, his interpretations of “The Forest of Arden” or “The Tempest” would’ve looked to anybody else like they were ready for shipping. But it was near impossible for Pinkie to consider a painting done, ever, and he fussed and fidgeted with them, as Mr. Moore had said, for years before he’d release them to the usually exasperated patrons what had paid for them long ago.

Grabbing a wooden spoon, I helped myself to a nice scoop of Pinkie’s hearty lamb stew, which he’d sweetened with some fresh apples. Then I took a turn around the studio. “Quite a crop, Pinkie,” I called to him. “How many of them are sold?”

“Enough,” he answered from the front room. Then I heard the Doctor’s and Miss Howard’s voices and raced back out, so that I could witness the ritual that Pinkie went through anytime a woman came to his hideaway.

Making a deep bow, he said, “I’m deeply honored, miss,” with rumbling sincerity. Then he held out a hand. “Please…” Next he started to quickly clear a path through all the garbage in the room to the one easy chair he owned, a beat-up but comfortable old thing that sat by the front window. As he finished clearing the floor in front of the chair, he grabbed a small oriental throw rug and spread it out so that Miss Howard could rest her feet on it once she’d sat down, like a Bohemian queen on a throne. Ordinarily, she wouldn’t have been a woman to go for such treatment; but coming from Pinkie, such things were just so sincere and so peculiar as to make anybody suspend their usual reactions.

“Well, Albert,” the Doctor said cheerfully, “you look well. A bit swollen, perhaps, in spots. How is the rheumatism?”

“Always lurking about,” Pinkie answered with a smile. “But I have my cures. May I offer you both something to eat? Or to drink? Beer? Water?”

“Yes, I’ll have a glass of beer, Albert,” the Doctor answered, looking to Miss Howard. “It’s a pleasant night, though not as cool as I’d expected.”

“Yes, beer would be lovely,” Miss Howard said.

Pinkie held up a long finger, indicating he’d only be a moment, then started for the back of the flat. As he went, I noticed that his feet were making little squishing sounds. I looked down to see that he was wearing oversized shoes filled with straw and what appeared for all the world to be cooked oatmeal.

“Say, Pinkie,” I said, following him, “I guess you know you’ve got oatmeal in your shoes.”

“The best thing for rheumatism,” he answered, fetching a few bottles of beer and running a couple of suspicious-looking glasses under a cold tap. “My walks have become a bit painful lately. Straw and cold oatmeal-that’s the answer.” He started back for the front room.

“O- kaay ,” I said with a shrug, still trailing him. “You oughtta know, ain’t nobody in New York walks as much as you do.”

Moving with little huffing sounds, Pinkie set the beer bottles and glasses down on a table made of an old wooden crate and then started to pour. “Here we are,” he said, handing the glasses to the Doctor and Miss Howard. “To you, Miss Howard,” he toasted, holding his glass up. “ ‘I look upon thy youth, fair maiden, I look upon thy youth and fancy laden, Would that I a fairy were, That with magic wand I could deter, All evil chance, and spare thy coming years, All unwrought by rain of tears, With a rainbow bright.’ ”

“Well said, Albert,” the Doctor replied, holding up his glass and drinking his beer. “Your own?” he asked, though I could tell that he knew it was.