Ripper (7 page)

“It’s an excellent way to begin your education, a mystery you’ll be motivated to solve. If you think you can handle it. You’ll have to do most of the legwork, but you’ll have access to these facilities—”

Tudd interrupted. “Only to an extent. I want to help, of course, but we’re stretched as it is. I suppose I could have someone take a look at that letter you found. Check for fingerprints, analyze the handwriting…”

Carver swooned. Use this place to find his father?

Hawking leaned forward. “Mr. Tudd has a new forensic document examiner who dabbles in graphology. You know the difference?”

Carver nodded. “The examiner tries to confirm the identity of the author; a graphologist tries to figure out their personality.”

“Well, then,” Tudd said. “Maybe you
will
be running this place one day. Um… did Mr. Hawking have you bring the letter?”

“I didn’t have to. I assumed he’d keep something so precious on his person. Am I right, boy?”

Carver grinned. “Yes.”

Tudd put his hand out. “It won’t be a priority, but no reason we can’t put it in the queue.”

Excited, Carver reached into his pocket, only to have his hand blocked by Hawking’s cane.

“Wait,” Hawking said. “If you
are
going to be my assistant, I want you to have complete access to the facilities. You can’t analyze the handwriting yourself, but I want you doing everything else.”

“That’s not possible!” Tudd said, blustering.

“To the contrary. It is.”

Tudd exhaled so hard, his mustache quivered. “May we discuss this privately?”

Not wanting to seem as if he were someone who might need “babysitting,” Carver promptly stood. The two men were silent as he opened the door and stepped outside, his head ready to explode from all the questions it contained.

THE TWO
younger agents were waiting when Carver emerged.

“The older guns wanted some words alone, eh?” Emeril said. He put his hand out for Carver to shake. “John Emeril. Been with the agency three years now.”

Jackson did the same, though with a considerably stronger grip. He also had a bent nose, as if it’d been broken in a fistfight, and a slight scar on his right cheek. “Josiah Jackson. Quite a place, isn’t it?”

“I felt like I’d stepped into a Jules Verne novel first time I set eyes on that subway,” Emeril put in. He was unblemished, though paler, and perpetually squinting, as if reading tiny print.

“I’ll say,” Carver answered. After the grim Hawking and the blustery Tudd, these two were a relief.

“Subway’s not the half of it,” Jackson said, unbuttoning his jacket and leaning against the wall. “They’re developing things that’d make Verne’s head spin.”

“I just wish they could invent a steady paycheck,” Emeril put in.

“So you’re both detectives?” Carver asked.

“That’s right,” Emeril said. “We don’t stand outside doors all day. Matter of fact, we asked for the duty because we’d heard Mr. Hawking would be here.”

“What sort of cases have you worked on?”

“Not certain we should say,” Jackson said. “But nothing as exciting as you might read in a book.”

“Don’t tell him that!” Emeril said. “Jackson and I have handled kidnappings, blackmail and bank robberies! Not that we’re allowed to discuss specifics. And he’s right about one thing. It’s not all running around in sewers with pistols drawn, ruining your best clothes to sneak up on a thief.”

Jackson warmed to the bragging. “That’s the trick, isn’t it? Catching them before or during. Afterward, the damage is already done. There’s a lot of research and guesswork, trying to peer into the workings of the criminal mind.”

“Which Jackson usually leaves to me,” Emeril said. “Of course, Mr. Hawking knows the most about the criminal brain. I hear he keeps one in his desk. Quite a fellow, old Hawking.”

“You’ll be training with the best,” Jackson agreed.

“Why did he retire?” Carver asked.

“He didn’t tell you?” Emeril said. “Don’t know much about his work with the original Pinkertons, but the story goes that by the time he started up here, he was the brainy sort, like me.”

“Oh? I heard he was more the brawny type,” Jackson said, flexing his muscles. “Like… ahem.”

Emeril rolled his eyes. “About eight years back he became obsessed with a street gang that specialized in kidnapping.”

“Extortion, too, no?” Jackson said.

“But it was mostly kidnapping,” Emeril said. “As luck would have it, or lack of luck, they kidnapped the wife of a very wealthy fellow. The crooks gave him the usual bit about not contacting the police. Given the corruption, he had no reason to think the police weren’t involved themselves, so he hired us.”

“Hired?” Carver asked.

Emeril shrugged. “We’re not averse to taking money…”

“…from those who can afford it,” Jackson corrected.

“Anyway,” Emeril continued, “Hawking jumped on it. No leads, no clues. He pulled the answers out of the air…”

“Out of his ass, you mean!”

“Does it matter from where? He got things right. Figured out where she was being held.”

“A warehouse. He went down there with a vengeance. Brought five agents…”

After sounding terribly excited, both men grew suddenly quiet.

“And?” Carver finally asked.

“Turned out the police
were
in with the kidnappers. They also had new pistols that fired off rounds faster and more accurately than anything else at the time. Hawking hadn’t bargained on stumbling in on so much firepower. The wife was killed, along with all the agents. Hawking took five bullets.”

Carver exhaled. He’d imagined the operation was dramatic, just not that it’d also been a tragic failure.

Jackson spoke softly. “He went overseas for surgery, gone nearly a year. Best they could do was return some of the use of his arm. You see what he’s like now. Didn’t want anything to do with the work anymore, handed the reins over to Tudd… and Tudd’s…”

“Not a bad man… Wouldn’t trust him to invest my savings, but he’s a solid detective.”

“Though no Albert Hawking.”

Carver’s new mentor was beginning to make sense. Who
wouldn’t
be bitter and cranky after that?

Tudd’s voice, hollow and tinny, erupted from thin air. “Send Carver in.”

Carver looked around, unable to figure out where the sound was coming from.

“Voice pipe,” Emeril explained. “Carries sound along a tube. Been used on ships for a hundred years. Best offices have them.”

As Jackson reached for the door, Emeril pulled a small rubber hose from along the wall molding and spoke into a brass funnel at the end. “On his way, Mr. Tudd.”

When Carver stepped in, Hawking waved at Tudd with his gnarled right hand. “Give him your letter.”

Carver paused. “What… ?”

“I’ll tell you shortly. For now, hand your precious note over to Mr. Tudd. Maybe in a year or so, when they get to it, you’ll find out you’re the Prince of Wales. Go on.”

Carver reached into his back pocket and pulled out the folded note. So much had happened so quickly. A short while ago this was the most precious thing in his life. Hawking, Tudd, the New Pinkertons—they still felt unreal. The note was solid, real. He wasn’t sure he should hand it over but couldn’t imagine why not. Even though he could close his eyes and still see every blotch of ink, he felt a pang as he relinquished it.

As he took it, Tudd, sensing its importance, gave Carver a sympathetic smile and treated it with the utmost care as he unfolded
and scanned it. “A year? Not
that
long,” he said. “But it will be a while, son.”

“I’m… so grateful…,” Carver said, stumbling over the words.

“Mmm,” Tudd said. He rummaged about his desk until he found a glass tube about three inches wide, stopped at both ends with rubber caps. He pulled one cap off, carefully rolled the letter and inserted it. After resealing the other end, he inserted it into a thicker tube behind his desk. With a sudden
thok
it was sucked in.

“A pneumatic message system courtesy of the gentleman who built the subway,” Tudd explained cheerfully. “They’ve been using a similar system at the London Stock Exchange since 1853, but I suppose our dear Mr. Hawking would think that a waste of money as well.”

“If they were going bankrupt, I would,” Hawking answered. He pushed himself to his feet. “The laboratory is only a few hundred yards away, isn’t it? I thought I was the one who had trouble walking.”

Hawking loped toward the door, giving Carver a twitch of his chin to indicate he should follow. “Be seeing you, Septimus.”

Once they were in the hall, Carver figured it was safe to start asking questions.

“What… ?” he began.

Hawking sliced the air with his good hand. “Not in front of the agents. Good night, Jackson, Emeril.”

“Always good to see you, sir.”

“Good night, Mr. Hawking.”

Between the voice pipes, pneumatic subways, and spyglasses, Carver never wanted to leave, but Hawking led him back to the subway. He didn’t speak again until it was gliding back along the tunnel.

“It’s been settled,” he said. “You’re to be allowed full access.”

Carver let out an amazed laugh. “That’s terrific, sir. But Mr. Tudd seemed so against it. How did you get him to agree?”

Hawking shrugged. “A white lie. I told him part of the reason I wanted you to have access was because, from time to time, I’d have you run errands here for me. Giving you access would be the same as giving me access.”

“But… you have no interest in solving any crimes?”

“Not since the incident I’m sure Jackson and Emeril told you about in all its timeworn glory. There’s more they couldn’t even begin to guess and you shouldn’t bother asking about. My prime interest is passing along what I know with what time I have left. As for you, boy, now that you’ve seen all the fancy nonsense, we’re going to take a real look at how to study the criminal mind.”

The odd smile on Hawking’s face made Carver remember the conversation from the office. “Mr. Tudd said you spent all your time among the mad.”

Hawking tipped his head left, then right. “Some would call it a madhouse. I call it… home.”

“BLACKWELL
Island Ferry,” Hawking announced to the cabdriver. Turning to Carver, he warned, “Don’t get used to this. It’s late and I want to get home. You’ll be hoofing it most of the time.”

That, Carver didn’t mind at all. Aside from hanging on the back of a streetcar or dodging past the ticket box on the elevated trains, he’d always roamed by foot. Two things did worry him, though: the surrender of his father’s letter and the fact that Blackwell Island held only a prison and an insane asylum. Oddly, the letter bothered him more. Try as he might to lose himself in the lazy, hypnotic clopping of the horses, he couldn’t shake the nagging feeling he shouldn’t have let it go.

At the ferry, the old detective insisted on climbing
to the open top deck. They’d made it up the narrow metal steps to the prow when the captain gunned the engine. The sudden movement nearly threw Hawking. Carver moved to catch him, but his claw-like right hand snatched the railing.

“It’s a game he likes to play,” Hawking said, sneering back at the captain. From behind the wheel the grizzled fellow chuckled. If only he knew, Carver thought, that he was insulting a master detective.

A fine wet spray hit Carver’s face. The trail of coal smoke drew back. The smell of brine came through. It was cold, but so hard to worry about anything with the lights of New York and Brooklyn on either side, reflecting in river water that rippled black as oil.

After about a mile, the tip of Blackwell Island came into view. It was so low and flat, the grim gray stones of the Penitentiary Hospital seemed to sit on the water. The ferry neared a pier. Well, living among medical staff wouldn’t be
so
bad. But when all the other passengers exited, Hawking shook his head.

“Next stop.”

The boat chugged along, passing the last vaguely pleasant sight he’d see, a garden where the prisoners grew their own food. Moments later, they reached a tall, forbidding wall that severed the island. Then came a second wall, with watchtowers and armed guards. The rest of the land was dominated by a dark, monstrous structure. At its center was a domed, five-story octagonal rotunda that seemed more a place for torture than for the treatment of the mad.

The ferry stopped. “Here,” Hawking announced.

Carver tried not to show how hard his heart had dropped.

As they walked, his mentor pointed at the choppy waters beyond
the island’s northern tip. “Hell Gate. Hundreds of ships sank there until the army used 300,000 pounds of explosives to blast the rocks. It sent a geyser of water 250 feet in the air. They felt the rumble as far off as Princeton, New Jersey.”

Numbed by the realization he’d be living in an asylum, Carver nodded politely.

Hawking stopped and put both hands on his cane.

“What is it, sir?” Carver asked.

“Do you expect me to believe that a boy like you, raised in this city, wouldn’t know about the largest man-made explosion in history?”

Carver was confused. “I… never said I didn’t know.”

“No, but you nodded as if you didn’t. If I’d said Broadway was given its name because it was a very wide, or should I say
broad,
avenue, would you nod then, too?”

“Yes, sir? I mean… no, sir?”

Hawking studied him dispassionately. “In the future you will tell me exactly what you do know and ask about what you don’t. I can’t waste time giving you what you’ve got, and I don’t want to skip anything you’re missing.”

He laid his bad hand on Carver’s shoulder. It weighed heavily, like a dead thing. Too frightened to stare at it, Carver tried to focus on his mentor’s somber face.

“If we’re to accomplish anything, I need your mind; I need it open and I need it honest. Lie through your teeth to whoever else you like, but not one false word, not one false nod or wink, to me. Understand?”

“Yes.”

Hawking narrowed his eyes. “What
year
was that blast I just told you about?”