Caleb Carr - The Angel Of Darkness

Kat was standing over the room’s lousy mattress, a small wicker suitcase open before her. The other two girls, who I also knew, were drinking and obviously had been for quite some time. The look in Kat’s eyes said that she wasn’t far behind them. A big smile came into her face when she saw me, and the other two girls started to laugh as they said hello; then Kat came over and threw her arms around my neck, reeking of benzene.

“Stevie!” she said. “You decided to come to my goodbye party! That’s sweet!”

I put my arms around her awkwardly, causing one of the other girls to say, “Go ahead, Stevie, get it while you can!” Then another round of giggles broke out.

“Hey, Betty,” I said to the one with the mouth, handing her a couple of bucks, “why don’t you and Moll go chase yourselves around the bar?”

“For two bucks?” Betty looked at the money like it was the Federal Depository. “You got it, lover-man!” As they went out she mumbled, “Give him something special, Kat, for his last whirl!” Kat laughed, the door closed, and we were finally alone.

“I mean it,” Kat said, looking drowsily into my eyes. “It’s sweet of you to come, Stevie-” She caught herself, then took her arms away. “Oh, no. Wait a minute. I’m mad at you. Almost cost me that gentleman, you did, with your damned whip. What’d you go and do that for, anyway? He was old, it didn’t take but a few minutes to make him happy. Easy jobs like that are tough to find, you know.”

I winced inside at that, but tried not to show it. “Things’ll be even tougher at the Dusters’.”

“Unh-unh,” she said, shaking her head. “I’m gonna have my pick of customers there. My new man says so.”

“New man? And who’d that be?”

“Ding Dong, that’s who.” She put her hands proudly on her hips. “How do you like that , Mr. Errand Boy?”

If her previous remark had brought a wince, this one hit like a sledgehammer. “Ding Dong,” I whispered. “Kat-you can’t-”

“And why not? If you’re thinkin’ he’s too old, the fact is he likes his ladies young-told me so. And since he’s one of them what started the gang, I’ll have protection all over the city. I don’t service nobody without he says it’s okay, neither.”

I didn’t say anything for a few minutes. I’d crossed paths with this Ding Dong many times during my days with Crazy Butch: he ran the kids’ auxiliary of the Hudson Dusters (whose turf was the West Side and the waterfront below Fourteenth Street), and he did it through the simple but brutal trick of turning kids into cocaine fiends and then controlling their access to the stuff. The Dusters were all what we called burny blowers, addicted to snorting powdered cocaine, and a few of them even jabbed the drug: it tended to make them wild, reckless, and violent, so much so that most other gangs just steered clear of them altogether, since none of their territory was what you’d call vital. They were darlings of the moneyed Bohemian crowd, who shared their craving for cocaine and liked to come down and slum it in their headquarters, an old dive on Hudson Street; and the sickening sight of the Dusters’ leader, Goo Goo Knox, having his praises sung in ditties and poems dashed off by educated but misled fools was, I’m sorry to say, not uncommon.

The blood I’d seen on Kat’s glove the night we’d run into her on Christopher Street had clued me in to how she’d been enlisted by the Dusters; and if that hadn’t been enough, she now sat on the bed and produced a sweets tin what was filled to the brim with the fine white powder.

“Want some?” she said, in that half-ashamed way that all drug fiends do when they can’t resist going to the well in front of another person. “I can get all I want.”

“I’m sure of that,” I said. Then urgency set my blood afire. “Listen, Kat,” I said, sitting on the bed next to her. “I’ve got an idea. It could get you out of all this. The Doctor needs a maid-a regular, live-in housekeeper. I think I could convince him, if you’d be willing to-”

I was interrupted by the loud sound of her snorting the burny off her wrist. Her face winced with the sting, then settled into relief. Finally she began to laugh. “A maid ? Stevie-you ain’t serious !”

“Why not?” I said. “It’s a roof over your head, a good roof, and steady work-”

“Oh, yeah,” she said, “and I can just imagine what I’d have to do for this Doctor to keep it.”

A sudden wave of anger flashed through me, and I grabbed her wrist hard, spilling the cocaine off of it. “Don’t say that,” I growled through clamped teeth. “Don’t ever talk about the Doctor like that. Just because you never met people like him-”

“Stevie, goddamn it!” Kat cried, trying to salvage the cocaine I’d spilt. “You never get it, do you? So I never met people like him? I got news for you, boy, I met people like him ever since I came to this town, and I’m sick of it! Old gents ready to give you something, yeah, I’ve met ’em-but they always want something back! And I’m sick of it! I want a man , Stevie, a man of my own, and Ding Dong’s gonna be it! He ain’t no boy, no silly little kid with foolish ideas-” She stopped herself there and tried to catch her breath. “Ah. I’m sorry, Stevie. I like you, you know that-always have. But I’m gonna be somebody-maybe, I don’t know, a revue girl or an actress-and a rich man’s wife, someday. But not a maid , for Pete’s sake-I’m gonna have maids, plenty of maids!”

I got up and wandered toward the door. “Yeah,” I mumbled. “It was just an idea…”

She followed me over, again putting her arms around me. “And it was a nice idea-but it ain’t me, Stevie. If it’s a good place for you, that’s fine. But it ain’t me.”

I nodded. “Unh-hunh…”

She turned me to her and put her hands on the sides of my face. “You can come see me sometimes-but you gotta behave. Remember-I’m Ding Dong’s girl, now. Okay?”

“Yeah… okay.” I started to open the door.

“Say.” When I looked back, she was smiling. “Don’t I get a kiss good-bye?”

With some reluctance but more desire, I leaned over to comply; but just as my face was nearing hers, a big drop of blood ran down out of her nostril to her lip. “Dammit!” she said, turning away quickly and wiping at the blood with her sleeve. “That always happens…”

I couldn’t take any more of it. “So long, Kat,” I said, and then I ran out the door. I kept on going, through the bar, past the baiting pit, and finally out onto the street. Kids whose faces I couldn’t make out called to me, but I just kept on moving, faster and faster, near to tears and not wanting anyone to see it.

By the time I stopped running, I was near the Hudson and quickly made for the waterfront, the comforting smell of the river keeping me from breaking down and crying. It was foolish, I told myself, to feel so strongly about Kat’s fate, for it wasn’t like anyone was holding a gun to her head and forcing her to follow the path she was taking. She’d chosen it; and sorry as I might be, it was just plain ridiculous to take it so hard. I must’ve repeated that statement to myself a thousand times as I watched the night boats, ferries, and ships move up, down, and across the waters of the Hudson. But it wasn’t any attempt at being rational that finally mended my spirits; no, it was the sight of the river itself, which always made me feel, somehow, like there was hope. She has that quality, does the Hudson, as I imagine all great rivers do: the deep, abiding sense that those activities what take place on shore among human beings are of the moment, passing, and aren’t the stories by way of which the greater tale of this planet will, in the end, be told…