POE MUST DIE (27 page)

“You met
Byron
?” The English poet, dead for twenty-four years, had been the most dashing and romantic figure of his time, the most controversial poet to emerge from England in this century and he had been a major influence on Poe.

“I see you are impressed, squire. Yes, I met him and a right sorry lot he was, too. Him and me was both young men but he was throwin’ away his life chasin’ the ladies or lettin’ them chase him and he owed money and he gets hisself into some kind of scandal concernin’ his half-sister.” Figg shook his head sadly. “Wasted life, if you ask me. Dies in Greece fightin’ somebody else’s war. Damn stupid, I say.”

“A glorious way to die,” said Poe, eyes on Figg.

“Squire, we all are goin’ to end up as food for the worms but I think it’s better to die fightin’ for somethin’ that’s your own, get me meanin’?”

Poe nodded. This ape sitting beside him with the bulldog face had actually
met
Byron. And Dickens. Thackeray. Carlyle. Tennyson. And damn little of it had rubbed off, it appeared. He was still rude, crude and not one to take to the palace. Change that. He
had
been to the palace. Poe shook his head.

“Mr. Figg? Mr. Figg?”

But Figg had slumped down in his seat, top hat covering his face.

“Gots to gets me beauty nap when I can squire, when I can. Long night in front. From the Irishman it’s back to them Renaissance travellin’ players. Wake me when we gets where we’re goin’.”

Poe wanted to talk about Byron and Figg wanted to sleep. The poet sighed. The ape sleeps in ignorance of the greatness around him. He absorbs it not. Surely God is a buffoon to have created so many buffoons in his image.

Poe, shivering in his greatcoat, licked his lips and thought of the taste of gin. And rum. And wine. He hadn’t had a drink in almost two days. Forty-eight hours. His mouth tasted of ashes yet his head felt clear and he was functioning. But he was writing little and giving no thought to his job at the
Evening Mirror,
or the fifty cents a page he earned there for scribbling anything that came to mind. He smiled. No money, no liquor which was not unusual. Rachel. The thought of her was enough. He smiled again.

The cabdriver flicked the whip and both horses strained against their harnesses. Poe breathed in the cool night air and thought of Jonathan, demons and Dearborn Lapham. And the very dead, still immersed in ice somewhere on this stinking island, Justin Coltman.

TWENTY-ONE

H
AMLET
S
PROUL SAT
on the floor, Ida Sairs’ cold hand pressed against his cheek. He had never known such terrible sorrow in all his life. He wept, moaned, rocked back and forth and he vowed revenge.

Jonathan. Mr. Poe. Yes, even the Englishman with the ugly bulldog face, who had climbed down the ladder to kill Chopback and Isaac Bard. Him, too. They would all die for what had happened here this night. Hamlet Sproul would have his revenge for the killing of his boys and Ida. Dear little Ida, who had hurt no man and who had been hurt by all men. Ida, who had brought a welcomed sweetness into the hard life of Hamlet Sproul.

He screamed at the top of his voice, a wordless cry torn deep from his pained soul.

What kind of beast would carve the heart and liver from small boys and a gentle woman?
And burn them.

Jonathan.
With help from that bastard Poe. This was
his
vengeance for trying to kill him in the stable. To do this to a woman—

Woman. Poe had a woman. Yes, that was it! Let
him
feel this same unholy agony that was tearing apart Hamlet Sproul. Let Poe weep and shriek for
his
dead woman. Oh yes, Poe would die and so would Mr. Ugly Bulldog. And Jonathan.
That
would not be easy, but anything could be done if a man put his whole self on it and Hamlet Sproul had every reason in the world to put his whole self on killing Jonathan.

He squeezed Ida Sairs’ cold hand again, kissing it and tasting the salt of his own tears. On her dead head and that of his two sons, he vowed to kill Rachel Coltman as soon as possible. And her death would be most unpleasant.

TWENTY-TWO

F
IVE
P
OINTS
.

Figg doubted that the devil himself would have the nerve to show his horned head in this bit of hell. The cabdriver, strong on self-preservation, had stopped on the edge of the slum, refusing to go further. So it was step down into mud shoe-top high and with Poe as guide, trek through narrow streets and alleys lacking all gaslight. There was light, if you could call it that. A stub of a candle flickering in a window lacking all glass. A lantern in the hands of passing, hard-faced strangers. A burning end of a cigar in the mouth of a filthy whore calling from a doorway. Small bonfires of trash in the streets where adults and children in rags warmed their hands, their dirty faces blank with despair. The cold night couldn’t hide the stink; nothing but foul air everywhere. Figg walked past rotting tenements worse than anything to be found in London’s Seven Dials slum or even
The Holy Land.
He and Poe brushed past men, women and children wrapped in dirt-encrusted rags, most of them drunk and surly, cursing each other and anyone unfortunate enough to be near them. Children fought each other over the last few drops in a whiskey bottle. There was less hope here than in the breast of a man standing on a scaffold with a rope around his neck.

And Figg knew what a man’s life wasn’t worth a farthing in Five Points. Keep your eyes open and your powder dry. Figg’s hands were in his pockets around the butts of his two pocket flintlocks. Lord bless and keep the gunsmith.

He and Poe reached the Louvre.

Inside the smell of oil from lamps attached to wagon wheels hanging from the ceiling was heavy in the air. Figg smelled whiskey and sweat from the crowd of people packed on the dance floor and sitting on long wooden benches against the wall. The dance hall resembled a dark tunnel filled with men and women clutching each other and dancing crude polkas and waltzes, the men bearded and chewing tobacco, the women with pinched, somber faces and bad teeth.

Harp, drum and trumpet furnished the music. A tiny woman with a sad face gently plucked the harp strings, her eyes closed as though imagining herself to be somewhere else. The trumpet player was a lad who Figg guessed to be no older than fourteen. From the sounds of him, he hadn’t had the instrument to his lips more than a few times in his life. The drummer was old, small, bald and had only one arm. Pounds that bleedin’ drum like he was shoeing a horse, thought Figg, hands still in his pockets.

He and Poe found a seat on the bench, the wall to their backs which Figg preferred. He turned to Poe. “Ain’t no tables ‘ere.”

“One comes here to dance rather than converse.”

“And drink, from the looks of it.”

“The waiter girls will indulge your every whim, be it alcoholic or more intimate.”

“Figured more than rum was for sale down ‘ere.” Figg looked at the waiter girls. Young ones, some of them. Babies. Maybe fourteen, fifteen years old and the oldest not much over twenty. Short black dresses, black net stockings and red knee boots with tassels and bells. Waiter girls. Whores for a few coins.

Johnnie Bill Baker of the crossed eyes was not a man to spend much on inside light. Figg could see that and damn little else in the darkness around him. Whale oil lamps hanging from the ceiling, some tallow candles on the wall and behind the long plank-on-barrels bar, but other than that, a man needed good eyes and good luck in order to see his hand in front of his face.

Cheap dresses on the women. No crinoline, no puffy skirts with ten petticoats underneath. Just faded cloth with unwashed flesh underneath. Dark clothes and shirts without collars and cuffs for the men. Worn boots on a dance floor sanded to give boots a better grip. The usual tobacco spitting going on, with more juice hitting the floor than the inside of a spittoon. And on air that reeked of people who didn’t bathe and didn’t care one way or another about it.

Poe stood up to stop a waiter girl, whispered in her ear then sat down. “She will bring Johnnie Bill Baker to us.”

“You knows the gent, you say?”

“I have encountered him during my travels in the lower depths of our republic.”

“What kind of man is he, besides what you been tellin’ me?”

“Shrewd. A killer. Concerned with himself and all that concerns him. If you are not already aware of it, this place does not welcome strangers and the people who populate it are quick to prey on the unwary.”

Figg unbuttoned one button on his black frock coat. “I will bear that in mind, Mr. Poe.”

The young waiter girl returned. She was bone thin, looked younger than her fourteen years and had eyes that were much older. She spoke with a slight lisp. “Mr. Baker annountheth that he ain’t in the habit of talkin’ to people what geth drunk and patheth out in the rat pit on his premitheth.”

Figg looked at Poe, who mumbled. “There is a rat pit in back and I did—” He stopped, then raised his voice. “Please announce to Mr. Baker that our business with him is urgent and—”

“Little girl,” said Figg behind an unfriendly grin as he grabbed her wrist. “Announce to Mr. Baker for me that it would be best for the peace of ‘is premises if ‘e were to come ‘ere and talk with us. Otherwise I shall get up from where I now sits and seek ‘im out. Announce that, if you will be so kind.”

The frightened girl backed away rubbing her sore wrist, then turned and disappeared into the crowd of shuffling dancers. Figg looked at Poe. “You passed out in a rat pit?”

A rat pit was a circle six feet in diameter and surrounded by a wooden fence four feet high. Several dozen rats were turned loose inside it, along with a starved dog. Bets were then placed on how many rats the dog would kill in a given period of time. Ratting, as it was called, was popular in both England and America.

Poe said, “I had succumbed to my intemperate habits while in this establishment and I passed out. When I came to, I was in the rat pit and Johnnie Bill Baker, along with some of his acquaintances, were keeping amused by tossing dead rats onto me.”

“My God!”

“And you have challenged this man in his own lair.”

“So long as he comes to us, squire.”

“He shall and with an attitude of belligerence. Nor will he arrive alone.”

Figg took a hand from his pocket to adjust his black top hat, then put the hand back into his pocket again. “So long as he arrives, mate. From ‘im to Sproul to Jonathan. Ain’t that your plan?”

“My plan includes survival.”

“You let me do the worryin’ about that, squire. You jes’ think up some more quotes. I finds them fascinatin.”

Johnnie Bill Baker stood in front of them.

And he wasn’t alone.

A path had cleared for him on the dance floor, then the path had closed behind him and two men plus a woman the likes of which Figg had never seen in life or in picture books. The woman was black, gigantic, with dyed yellow hair and fists as big as Pierce James Figg’s. She wore a shiny green silk dress, with a stiletto sticking from the top of a man’s boot (feet as big as Figg’s, too!) and a
slung shot
—a leather thong with an egg-sized lump of iron tied at one end—dangled from her wrist. The woman was frightening to look at and Figg, who knew the look of people who could kill, knew that this huge Negro woman was a killer.

Johnnie Bill Baker, legs apart, fists on his hips, looked down at Poe. “You can’t be the bucko who talks in such a hard manner. Nor are ye the ugly one the little girl spoke of so—”

He looked at Figg. “It must be you, friend. And I do so want to hear your story, which is why me friends and I have travelled so far. Make it a good one. The last story should always be a good one.”

Figg, hat low on his forehead, stared at him. Handsome, he was, with a face as clean as a baby’s bottom and clothes that cost a pretty penny. Gray suit, gray waistcoat and gray silk ascot, with a fancy white shirt and lace cuffs. Red hair parted in the middle. Diamond rings on both hands. Johnny the Gent. And damn me if he
didn’t
have crossed eyes. Not too tall, slim and the kind to set a maid’s heart to flutter, but he was as cross-eyed as somebody’s idiot child.

Two men just behind him. Irish thugs by the looks of ’em, with pistols in the belt and both itching for a punch-up. The kind who gouge out your eyes, bite off your ear and put the boot into your temple, then go to church on Sunday. And don’t forget the black woman. Dark as the inside of a mine shaft. Probably more of a hard case than either of the men backing Johnny the Gent.

One of the Irish thugs, a squat, unshaven man with eyebrows that met over the bridge of his nose, spat on Figg’s outstretched leg. The thug said, “It don’t talk much, Johnnie. Sits there like a bleedin’ Buddha. Think I’ll write home and tell me mother it’s ugly enough to curdle milk.”

Baker said, “You have a name, ugly man. Let’s hear it before we apply ourselves to dealin’ with your forward ways.”

“Figg. Pierce James Figg.”

Baker frowned, stroking the side of his nose with a slim finger. “Figg. Figg. Name strikes a response.”

“Figg is a delicate fruit,” said the squat thug. “By the sounds of it, it’s English, though it don’t look too delicate to me. Stand up when you come among the Irish, English swine. We don’t care to be summoned by the likes of you.”