Frederick Busch - The Night Inspector

I said, “No such vessel was part of the arrangement.”

“No word of it was mentioned?”

“None,” I said, and M shook his head.

“That,” he said, “is the matter with plans. They are important only if lives or reputations hang upon them. And plans do so rarely eventuate as conceived. If that vessel is not of the tissue of our planning, and it isn’t, then I begin to have fears.”

“Perhaps there’s an innocent explanation.”

“Perhaps the only innocence within a hundred yards is that of Adam and the children laid like anchovies inside those tuns. Billy, we have broken the laws of the Port, the Surveyor, and the Customs Department. Must I bid my pension farewell?”

“I’ll see to this,” I said. “Perhaps they decided to take them upriver, or around to Brooklyn.”

“And did not wish to bother you with their amendments to the plan which originated with you?” I thought that he might lean his shadowy face back and laugh the silent laugh. If he did, I might have bellowed something terrible at him. But he shook his head and offered me a glance so full of disgust and disappointment that I understood, for an instant, how his son might have felt under the weight of such a dismal evaluation.

“We’ll see,” I said.

“He is dangerous,” Sam told M, “when he employs that tone.”

I said, “We’ll see.” I set my hand in my right-hand pocket, and I pulled my hat down hard, then set off. By now, I could see, Delgado was behind Adam and was directing the working of the boom. Small tuns came up two at a time in the netting now, and Sam and the other fellow labored without cease in spite of the weight of the load. That, I was certain, could be laid to Delgado’s powerful persuasion.

I went down the wooden steps, which were slick now with the hot rain, holding on to the rail for my life. Out on the river, an incoming ship had hove to and was making for the Jersey shore before the wind; with luck, she might make the Atlantic Street harbor, at the intersection of North Twelfth, a kind of jagged pocket on the coast in which vessels had, in other hard storms, found shelter. A barely discernible light at the ship’s pole, above the royal mast, dipped dangerously low and then swung laboriously to. Little else that far out was visible and, even close by, in the stairwell I descended, or upon the docks beyond the boom, I could not see much.

Adam’s shirt had collapsed into darkness upon his dark skin. He worked, I saw, with his eyes closed. And I could not blame him, for how to understand what he saw: a majestic slender woman, even under a cloak and hood, her face animated as if she watched a sport of brave dimensions; a matched set of broad, tall men, one white, one black, whose heads and eyes in response to her commentary swiveled and roamed; a clearly dangerous man in a leather coat that glistened like a serpent’s skin who tapped Adam’s shoulder with the handle — threat enough — of his knife; the gallery, above and behind, of M and, behind him, Sam, solemn, pale-faced observers; the heavy, wet tuns that were swung and set, swung and set, from the hold of a pitching schooner to the deck of a steam-driven lighter.

He saw me as Delgado did. I said, “Adam, I do not know of this. Why not stop your labors while I learn what I can?”

Delgado, in his calm and uninflected voice, said, “Good evening, Mr. Bartholomew.”

“Mist Bartelmy,” Adam said. “We did all that walking in the Loin, saw all that misery, to help somebody make up their mind to come here and get fooled? Is that what I hear in your voice?”

“Yes. I think it is possibly so.”

“Do you feel foolish, Mist Bartelmy?” He did not cease to work, nor did the other man, also Negro, far more slender than Adam, but apparently quite powerful. They wheeled, they swung the boom, they let their cargo down, and then, the net emptied, they swung the boom back and let down its rope for the next load.

I said, “I may be heartily sorry to have involved you in this.”

“What is this, Mist Bartelmy?”

“I cannot tell you, Adam, for I do not know. I think now that I must find out. Delgado?”

“Ask her.” He indicated Jessie.

“Will you let these men rest while I inquire?”

“I cannot, Mr. Bartholomew. Our schedule is a difficult one.”

“Shall I try to force you to cease, Delgado?”

“I fear for their safety if you do,” he said politely, tapping the handle of his knife upon Adam’s straining back. Water had gathered upon the shiny, pocked patch of skin beside Delgado’s nose, and it looked as if it were constructed of something artificial, a kind of pale gutta-percha. His eyes were unreadable, as ever, and he looked more confident than a minister taking the pulpit.

I backed away, then walked around Delgado, and away from the boom, toward Jessie and her escort. The tuns brought the lighter lower in the water, and I found it fascinating to watch the cargo press the ship upon the river, and to see it drop in comparison to the level of the dock. It seemed that at any moment it might sink away from us. But, knowing Jessie as I did, I was certain that she had calculated the load.

“Billy,” she said, smiling from within the hood with her sad eyes and with a kindness at her mouth. “Hello, Billy. We are more than halfway done.”

“With what?”

“Oh,” she said. Then: “Billy, these gentlemen are among the principals in this … affair. Mr. Henry Porter, who is, in a managerial capacity, a purveyor of the services of laborers.” The burly white man nodded, almost in a kind of bow, and demonstrated no surprise at the mask with which he was confronted. “Mr. Porter is well known for having sustained at Gettysburg a savage wound from which it was thought, at first, he might not recover. He wears the mangled bullet, which spun and bounced inside him, upon a chain at the throat.” I knew, of course, how Jessie knew about the chain and about the nature of his wounds, and I knew, too, how she had comforted him.

“And this is Mr. North. He has assisted me in matters of administration and finances.”

“I would have—”

“I know, Billy. But you were the overall organizer. And you secured the assistance of our friend who has signed the documents. Each man has his part.”

“Of you?”

She said, “I must ask you to leave your emotions to the side in this, Billy. It is the children, after all, whom we serve.”

“And you are donating to them a river voyage on a coal-fired boat as part of the service? I cannot recall our discussing this. I remember wagons. I engaged wagons, Jessie.”

“Mr. North, at my request, informed the carters that we had reconsidered. It is always useful, I’ve been told, to have a number of plans and to see that no one knows all of them. Mr. North, for example, was unaware of the services of our … friend.”

“Our friend. Just so,” Mr. North said, in a handsome, well-spoken baritone.

“Just so,” I said.

“We have two-thirds, I would say, on board,” Jessie announced. The rain now was almost horizontal, and her face was running with it, although she barely blinked and she never wiped at her eyes or mouth. The wind pulled Mr. Porter’s umbrella backward over its frame and peeled it away. Mr. Porter merely held his hat brim and leaned into the wind. I looked into his eyes and then into Jessie’s. The boom swung over, and another tun was on the deck of the brig. I might shoot them all, I thought. Kill the two men, turn and fire twice to hit Delgado, and then deal with Jessie at my leisure.

I wondered about the children, and where they must be taken, and in whose care.

Jessie said, “I am reading you, Billy.”

I saw her light, cold eyes, and I knew that I feared as much as desired her. She was of the madness I had always thought was in, or about to envelop, me. But her astonishing beauty, her willingness, and not for the money, to go anywhere in the darkness in any kind of sudden savagery and pain — and not for the money, I’d insisted, sleeping with a whore for whose company I paid by the block of hours to a laudanum addict.