The Fifth Heart (61 page)

As he walked, James questioned himself about his reactions during his time clinging to a beam high above thieves, robbers, rapists, arsonists, and Professor James Moriarty in that old chicken warehouse. He had been frightened, to be sure—especially when the man had yelled “Rat!” and the shotgun blast had rattled all around him—but along with the fear had been something unexpected and rather new to Henry James—simple excitement? A sense of thrill? A strange, inexplicable joy at the wild strangeness of it all?

He wondered if his pounding heart and excited sense of everything slowing down during those tensest moments he’d spent above the mob, the moments when he thought he’d been discovered, the rifle shots, if he had been sharing something he thought he would never have the opportunity to experience after having avoided service in the Civil War. Had his brother Wilkie thrilled to such danger in the minutes or hours before receiving his terrible wounds? How else to explain Wilkie’s eagerness to return to his unit months after suffering such undignified, suppurating, and impossibly painful injuries?

And his brother Bob, who had said he’d “enjoyed” life in the army during the war. Could James’s experience that afternoon connect in any way to the simple joy of action that his brothers had written about? James thought of his cousin Gus—that beautiful pale, red-head’s naked body in the afternoon light on the day James had walked in on the life-drawing class—had Gus felt such a thrill of danger and the joy of risk in the months of service before being killed by a sniper, his body never recovered? Had Gus heard the sound of the shot that had taken his young life? The veterans insisted that one never did—never heard the fatal shot since science had shown that the ball or bullet was traveling faster than sound itself—but James remembered hearing the loud rifle shot just before the beam he was lying on reverberated like a struck bell. It had been . . . thrilling.

He walked for what seemed like hours as the last of the light left the skies. His sense of direction all but gone now, James headed for lights reflected from lowering clouds. That way lay street lamps. That way, whichever way it was, must be toward civilization.

Several times men broke off from some group and crossed the street toward him and each time James thought—
This shall be it
—but no one accosted him. No one even addressed him except for a bizarrely madeup lady of the night—what the Americans called a “crib doxie,” he felt certain, whose place of business was one of the canvas-covered stalls in a reeking alley—whose chalk-white and crimson-rouged face opened to show yellow teeth when she called “Looking for a good time, are you, Mr. Gentleman, sir?”

James nodded toward the apparition and quickly crossed the street.

He had finally reached a cobblestone street—trolley tracks in the center!—with gas lamps at each corner and allowed himself a sigh of satisfaction. There would be street signs here. The slums were behind him.

And just at that moment, three men stepped out of an alley and blocked his way.

“Lost, pal?” asked the tallest one, bearded and filthy. The second man was equally as tall but heavier and had short whiskers rather than a beard. James glimpsed a gold tooth when the light from the corner street lamp briefly touched the first man’s face. Both tall men wore wide-rimmed hats that were soiled with sweat and grime and looked to have been gnawed upon by rats. The third man blocking James’s way could hardly be called a man yet: a boy of sixteen or seventeen, almost as tall as his two mates but infinitely thinner. The boy’s face was mostly nose and with his hair hanging greasily over his eyes and his oversized teeth catching the light, James thought of the rat the gang members had shot off the rafters.

“Let me pass, please,” said James and stepped straight toward the bearded man with the gold tooth.

That man stepped aside but the second big man moved to block James’s way. The three stepped closer, encircling him. James looked over their shoulders but could see no police officers, no pedestrians, no decent folk he might call out to.

“Nice spats,” said the ruffians’ leader. And then he hawked and spit, quite deliberately, a gob of brown tobacco onto James’s left foot.

The second man touched James’s torn right sleeve. “You’re bleedin’, pal. Better come with us so we’s can bandage you up right.”

James tried to step to his left, into the street, but the boy and the first man blocked his way again. They stepped forward aggressively and James realized that he was giving way, backing toward the darkness of the alley from whence they’d stepped. He stopped.

The leader stepped so close that James could smell the whiskey and garlic on his breath when the tall man ran his ragged fingers over James’s jacket and waistcoat front. “Fucking spats, fucking top hat, fucking silver-headed walking stick,” the bearded leader said, “but no fucking watch in your vest. Where is it?”

“I . . . I lost it,” said James.

“Careless sod, ain’t you?” said the second man. “But I bet you didn’t lose your fucking billfold, did you, Mr. Spats?”

James drew himself to his full height, his right hand gripping the cane tightly even though he knew they would be on him before he could lift it in his own defense.

He felt something sharp touch his belly and looked down to see that the youngest man had set a knife point there.

“James!” cried a familiar voice from just across the street.

James and the three thieves turned their heads at the same instant. James had to suppress a giggle—possibly a hysterical one—since the two men he least imagined running into were now hurrying across the empty street toward him. It had been Theodore Roosevelt who had called out and with him, in a finer suit than James had last seen him in, was Clarence King.

As the two men trotted up to the sidewalk, the bearded thief—well over six feet in height—looked at the five-foot-eight Roosevelt and King, two inches shorter than Roosevelt, and said, “I bet you a bottle that
they
got watches.”

“Not for fucking long,” said his equally tall, brawny, and filthy partner.

T
he youngest thug pulled the blade back from James’s belly and held the knife down at his side as Roosevelt and King stepped up to the group.

“James!” said Roosevelt again, ignoring the three hoodlums and showing his huge, perfect-toothed grin beneath his gold pince-nez. His blue eyes were very bright, as if in joyous anticipation of something. “How fortunate to bump into you! King and I were hoping to find you . . . we’re headed over to Hay’s home for dinner.”

Clarence King’s hazel eyes were much colder than Roosevelt’s blue gaze. While Roosevelt had no walking stick with him, King was carrying the elaborate one that James had first seen at Hay’s home: the top was of some burnished stone naturally curved almost like a bird’s beak.

The two tallest thugs exchanged glances and the bearded leader nodded. James assumed that they’d just silently agreed to rob and beat—and possibly kill—all three of the “swells” they’d just encountered on the edge of Night Town. James didn’t know if these three thugs had been at Moriarty’s meeting or not . . . and realized it didn’t matter. He’d tried to warn his friends away with not-so-subtle shoving motions of his hands when they were across the street, but now it was too late. The six men were clustered in a rather tight circle here at the entrance to the dark alley.

“Good evening, gentlemen,” young Roosevelt said to the thugs, still smiling that impossible white smile. “Thank you for escorting our friend this far. We shall walk with him from here.”

The two tallest men shifted to their right, blocking any easy retreat for King or Roosevelt. The scrawny young man closest to Henry James had his blade raised and visible again.

The leader flicked his grimy fingertips up and then down Roosevelt’s waistcoated thick torso. “There’s a good watch at the end of that chain, ain’t there, four-eyes?” he said, showing his brown teeth.

“Of course there is,” young Roosevelt said coldly.

“And a billfold in your pocket, too, ain’t there?” added the bearded man.

Theodore’s grin somehow grew broader. “Yes,” he said softly. “And it’s going to stay there. You three go about your business now and no one will get hurt.”

The two largest thugs began laughing at this and the youngest one joined in with his unpleasant cackle.

The leader reached forward. The second man produced a short-bladed knife almost identical to the one the youngest thug was again holding against the curve of Henry James’s belly.

“Do not touch me,” said Roosevelt to the bearded thug. The tall man in the hat must have had twenty pounds and six inches of height to his advantage.

“What’re you going to do when I
do
touch you, four-eyes?” The broad, filthy hands were poised in front of Theodore’s thick torso and gleaming watch chain.

In fairly fluent German—which James could follow—Roosevelt said, “I shall kick you in the balls, make your teeth eat my knee, and then head butt your paltry brains out.”

James noticed that young Theodore hadn’t been sure of the German word for “butt” and had just used
Kopfbütten
as an approximate. He’d also used the informal
du
form which an adult would use with an intimate, a child, or an animal. His intention there was clear when he’d used the
fressen
form of “to eat”—dogs and other animals
fressen
—rather than the human
essen
. Theodore carefully removed his pince-nez by its ribbon, set the glasses in an inner vest pocket, and patted the pocket. His smile was thin now with his huge teeth no longer gleaming.

The tall leader laughed and said, “We got a couple of midget Dutch-men here, boys. Let’s beat the shit out of them.”

The two tall men stepped forward. Roosevelt and King took three hasty steps backward, as if they were preparing to run. The leader widened his stride to cut Theodore off.

Roosevelt opened his arms wide, leaned backward with that massive torso, and kicked the tall man between the legs with the kind of full-force, wound-up, full-legged kick that Henry James had only seen on rugby fields. The polished toe of Theodore’s small, expensive boot all but disappeared in the leader’s vulnerable crotch. The impact was so great that James saw the leader-thug’s feet actually leave the ground.

The big man fell to his knees and started to crumple, his hat falling forward as his head came down. He was using both hands to hold his testicles and the moan that came out of him did not sound human.

As the man’s face arched down, Theodore’s right knee came up more rapidly than it had in the kick. James heard teeth snap and the man’s huge nose break.

The thug’s upper torso rocked back—his face smeared with blood—his eyes closed but now on the same level as Teddy Roosevelt’s blue gaze. Roosevelt grabbed the thug by the shoulders, jerked him toward himself, and smashed that great, square, Roosevelt forehead against the leader’s face and temples so hard it sounded like an ax smashing against thin wood.

The leader went down on his back and did not stir.

The other big thug had not been watching idly. He had his knife out jabbing forward and swinging from left to right even as his long arms went wide as if to encircle Clarence King before stabbing.

King had hefted his heavy cane to his shoulder and now he swung it like a baseball bat. Henry James had never played baseball as a child, but his brother William had . . . and loved it. And during the last two weeks, James had suffered John Hay’s enthusiasm for the sport, so when King made his powerful swing, James guessed that it was more like one of the batters from the Boston Beaneaters—expected to win the pennant this year—than a hitter from the perennially last-place Washington Senators.

The beaked stone at the head of the cane caught the advancing thug full in the face. James saw and heard the cheekbone snap, the nose break, and both he and the youngest thug next to him actually had to jump back to avoid the geyser of blood and teeth that came their direction. The big man dropped his knife and fell to all fours.

Five-foot-six Clarence King had grown a belly but the decades of mountain climbing and mine digging had turned his thighs and arms to powerful engines. He kicked the man in the backside so hard that the thug skidded forward on his ruined face on the alley cinders, his arms and hands trailing palms up.

The boy, who was left-handed, swung away from James and swung his arm back to stab Clarence King in the side.

Henry James had written William just before Christmas that he’d been putting on far too much weight, that he was going forth belly-first into the world these days and it did not please him. He’d told William how he’d hired a fencing coach for three two-hour workouts a week, but also how—while James very much enjoyed the exercise—it hadn’t taken an ounce off his weight.

Now James raised his own walking stick and brought it down on the boy’s wrist as if he were driving a tent peg with a mallet. Surprisingly, his aim was perfect—he heard the head of the cane make loud contact with the scrawny young thug’s wrist bone and the knife dropped to the alley cinders.

The young thug shouted in pain but he was very, very fast. He dropped to one knee to retrieve the knife before James could even get his cane raised again.

King stepped forward and planted his polished but heavy boot on the knife blade. The young thug tugged but the blade snapped off at the hilt.

“Trade knife,” said Roosevelt from where he stood astride the fallen leader. “They give them away to the Indians by the gross out in the Badlands. Not worth a damn.”

King had shifted his cane to his left hand and suddenly, from a coat pocket, he pulled out a jackknife which he flicked open with a snap of his wrist. The blade was enormous for a folding knife—at least seven inches long, James thought, and tapered to a terrifying point.

King set that sharpened point a millimeter under the young thug’s left eye, pushing strongly enough to draw blood and a terrified gasp from the would-be highwayman. James half-expected King to pop the boy’s eye out like a street vender scooping out ice cream on a hot summer night.