World Made by Hand (21 page)

I took off in the direction of State Street, Albany's old main drag, with my pulse quickening, worrying whether Joseph meant something other than payment of these fines and charges and how I might figure in the transaction.

It felt strange to be in a place that had been a functioning city last time I saw it, now transformed into a vast ruin. I walked past James Street, once the haunt of lobbyists and lawyers, to North Pearl Street, where a few shabby vendors sold salvage from carts, a sort of permanent flea market for the riffraff who lived in the ruins. The office buildings and old hotels on State Street, dating from the 1920s heyday of the business district, were desolate after years of neglect. Bricks had spawled out of the facades, and littered the weedy sidewalks. One actually fell from an upper story as I walked up the empty street and missed splitting my head open by a few yards. I wondered if somebody had lobbed it at me from above but didn't see anyone skulking up there. The plate glass shop fronts were blown out, of course, and everything of value inside had been stripped.

The once meticulously groomed grounds of the state capitol building, an impressive limestone heap in the Second Empire style, were now choked with box elders, sumacs, and other woody shrubs. Knapweed, vetch, and blue chicory sprouted from the cracks between the broad front steps where a few ill-nourished layabouts sat listlessly surveying the scene. Inside the grand old building, every surface had been stripped down to the bare masonry. Carpets, draperies, chestnut wainscoting, metal fixtures, all gone, probably long gone. The stink of urine and excrement told the rest of the story. I would have turned and left had I not heard a familiar tapping sound seeming to come from distantly above somewhere up the southeast stairs. I ventured warily to the second floor. The tapping grew louder, echoing off the limestone blocks in the stairwell. I recognized it now as the sound of a typewriter, something I had not heard for a very long time, something that I had only really heard in old movies.

Off the stairwell and down the hall, I came to a set of rather grand arched oak double doors. They stood ajar. Gold-on-black lettering on the window said OFFICE OF LIEUTENANT GOVERNOR EUGENE FURMAN. I knocked on the glass. The tapping within stopped. A voice said, "Come in." I shoved the door open. It creaked on its hinges. Inside at a large and ornate desk, bathed in glorious afternoon light from a ten-foot-high window, sat a man in a clean dark suit complete with a blue oxford button-down dress shirt and necktie, behind a pink portable manual typewriter. He was neatly barbered and even shaved and looked like he had come to life out of a photograph.

"What are you doing here?" I said.

"Carrying on," he said, cheerfully, without any guileful overtones. "I'd ask the same of you."

"I came to see if there was anyone here."

"I'm here," he said. "Please come in. Have a seat."

His office was tidy to a fault, an oriental rug on the floor, bookshelves groaning with volumes, a sofa and chair set arranged before a carved limestone fireplace on the far side of the big room, the U.S. and New York state flags deployed on standards in a corner, his desk full of documents and papers, all neatly arranged around the surface. The pervasive stink of decay intruded on the scene, but everything else gave the weird impression of decorum and normality. I sat down in one of a pair of tufted leather armchairs at a side of his desk.

"What's your name and where from?" he said. His manner was smooth, practiced.

"Robert Earle. Union Grove, Washington County. Are you really," I glanced back at the door, "the lieutenant governor, Eugene Furman?"

"Yes," he said and nodded with a boyish smile. "I am."

'What on earth is going on around here?"

"Well, obviously, things have changed," he said. I wondered whether he was a crazy person. Perhaps he sensed my thought, because he quickly added, "I'm not trying to be cute."

"Of course not. But why are you still here?"

"I was elected. Swore an oath to serve. Here I remain."

"But there's nothing left."

"Well, I don't know about that. We're in rough shape. I mean, look at what a pigsty this building has become. But the state of New York is still out there. Washington County's still there, right? A physical fact. Populated with citizens."

"The ones still left. Yes."

"Your neighbors are still there, doing things, living their lives."

"Getting by, barely."

"Okay. And St. Lawrence County's still there too, where I'm from. Potsdam. Though I haven't been there in some time."

"If you're here, where's the governor?"

"I honestly don't know. He was in Washington when, you know."

"What was his name?"

"Eric Champion."

"I don't remember voting for any Eric Champion."

"Out of Rochester. The Energy Diet campaign?"

"I don't think we heard about it."

"Yeah, the election was carried out under, uh, less than ideal conditions."

"I don't even remember the two of you running. But, wait a minute, you mean to tell me there's still a functioning government?"

"There's a few of us left in this building. Stan Obermeyer in budget, third floor. Hector Oliveres over in emergency services, a few others-"

"What emergency services?"

"Well, there's not much, but there could be, if we had resources.

"If the governor is dead, then you must be governor now."

"He hasn't been declared dead. Officially. He's missing."

"But that was years ago, the bomb in Washington."

"Okay, he's been missing for a while now. But I wouldn't presume to just declare myself governor. Look, I'm not that kind of pushy person, or else it would have been me heading the ticket and not Champ, right."

"But someone must have declared you acting governor."

"To be perfectly frank, there's nobody around with the authority. But let's say I'm acting as if I were the acting governor even though I haven't been legally declared any such thing."

"Where in the hell did everybody go?"

"Everybody?"

"In the state government. You had tens of thousands of workers, agency heads, department chiefs, appointees, staff, civil service, judges, police."

Furman just blinked at me.

"I mean, as a practical matter, there is no government," I said.

"Oh. I see what you're driving at. Well, again, frankly, that's a fair appraisal of things. I guess you could say we're keeping the chairs warm, under the theory that this ... this whatever it is ... this rough patch we're going through ... that it eventually comes to an end."

"What do you think the chances of that are?"

Furman leaned closer to me, over the top of his typewriter. "Again, to be really candid, it doesn't look so good. You asked about the government. The people who worked here? Well, there's an answer to your question. Most of them stopped coming to work when they stopped getting paid. Another bunch of them diedyou get that Mexican flu up your way?"

"Yes. Sure."

"Well, you know what that was like." Furman made a kind of whistling sound sucking air between his teeth. "The ones who survived just walked away, walked home, wherever that was, or walked somewhere else. There's a term for those few of us who stuck around here running this ship. I forget what it is just now-"

"A skeleton crew."

"That's right! Sailing a kind of Flying Dutchman of government. Doesn't mean we're a bunch of ghouls, you understand. We do what we can. Which leads me naturally to ask if there's anything in particular I can do for you? Or did you just stop in to chat?"

At this point I told Furman as concisely as possible how I had come to Albany with four other men to find the crew of the Elizabeth, and how Dan Curry was running a hostage and ransom racket down at the waterfront, which these men fell prey to, and finally I asked whether there was any state authority or legitimate law enforcement that might intervene.

Furman swiveled toward the window and gazed out across State Street at the empty Empire State Plaza, Governor Nelson Rockefeller's long-ago fantasy of a futuristic administrative utopia. Now it looked like an abandoned UFO landing strip.

"There's not a damn thing I can do about Dan Curry," Furman said. "I know exactly what he's up to. His operation has nothing to do with us. It's not authorized. It's beyond our control. But politics hates a vacuum, if you know what I mean." He swiveled back around to face me. "On the bright side, Mr. Curry says he's going to run water back up the hill here pretty soon. That'd be nice wouldn't it?"

"He wants us to pay half a million dollars to release these four men.

"Can you pay it?"

"I think so."

"Half a million isn't what it used to be. You better pay it, if you can. He's a ruthless son of a gun."

"I guess you've answered my question," I said.

"Sorry I can't be of more help. I wish you the best of luck. If they get the mails going again, drop me a line and tell me how it all worked out."

"Sure," I said. "Only you tell me something before I go: what if I was a picker or some psycho coming up here looking to steal something?"

"Is that what you are?"

"No. I'm just asking out of curiosity. How do you protect yourself up here in this nasty building?"

I barely saw Furman move a muscle but he seemed to instantly produce a very large automatic pistol, which he held level with my chest.

"I think I understand," I said.

"You're not a psycho, right?" he said.

"No."

"That's good. You had me going there for a moment. This is the U.S. Army model Colt.45, first issued in 1911. Used through most of the last century. My father carried this piece in Vietnam, sixty-six through sixty-nine. It'd blow your liver clean out of your ribcage."

"I wish you wouldn't point it at me, though."

"That's exactly the feeling it's meant to impart."

The odd thing was, I had a pistol every bit as lethal tucked in the rear of my belt, next to my skin, underneath my shirttails. I'd been carrying it so many days that I had almost forgotten it was there. This was the kind of world we now lived in.

"Good luck with Mr. Curry," the lieutenant governor said as I left his office.

I hurried down the hill through the ruins of State Street to the grassy riverbank in front of Dan Curry's headquarters as quickly as I could, reentering another world, another reality. In the time I had been away-under an hour, actually-Curry's minions had managed to hang two men from the gallows down beside the pump house. Apparently, the hanging had just concluded. Some spectators up front were turning to walk away, while a separate contingent remained up on the broad portico gazing over the balustrade down at the scene in muted conversation. The legs of one victim still twitched, and I recognized that they were the two young Marsden brothers who had importuned me only a little while ago to contact their father in Greenport. I wondered whether this was an object lesson for our benefit. I was still goggling at the swinging bodies when I felt a hand on my shoulder and reflexively spun on my heels. It was Joseph.

"Look what this monster has done now," he said.

I was speechless.

"Well, let's go and get Mr. Bullock's boys before he stretches their necks too," Joseph said.

"Where are the others?" I said.

Joseph cocked his head. Seth and Elam waited at a remove beside a warehouse under the freeway overpass, perhaps a hundred yards away, mounted, with two more of the horses.

"Where's Minor?"

"I sent him up ahead with our goods. We'll catch up with him later. What did you discover up yonder at the statehouse?"

"There's nothing left up there that can stand up to this."

"I didn't think so," Joseph said. "Well, then, let's go pay Mr. Curry, then, and be gone, and leave them to their wickedness."

My knees knocked from the sight of those boys hanging as we climbed the stairs and entered the building. We stopped at the first floor desk as we had before. Joseph told the guard that we had come to pay the fines owed for the release of our four men in custody. He scribbled a message and sent a boy up, as before. A minute later we were ushered back into Curry's office. Curry was in the act of being barbered in his seat behind the desk with a smock tied over him. An old factotum had just finished shaving the whiskers on Curry's neck with a straight razor and took up a pair of scissors to groom the beard and mustache.

"Ah, gentlemen, I'm told you've come to the right decision."

"Yes, we have," Joseph said.

"Excellent," Curry said. "Birkenhaus, draw up discharge papers on these birds."

"Yes, sir," the secretary said.

"People complain about these taxes and duties," Curry said, "but how else would we pay for the many improvements we've started, not to mention the ones planned? They don't give out grants for this kind of thing anymore, you know. We're on our own here-that's enough, dammit. Get away from me!" he said to the barber and shoved him aside. The old fellow gathered up the tools of his trade off the desk, rolled them into the smock, and slunk out of the room like a whipped dog.

"Where was I?"

"Civic improvements," Birkenhaus said.

"Right. It all comes down to good government. And local government is all that's left, so we have to take every advantage where revenues are concerned. The people expect it. You see what I mean?"

"What about the cargo that was taken off the boat?" I said.

"What cargo?"

"Ten kegs of ninety-proof cider among other things."

"I don't know a thing about it," Curry said, putting on a face of indignant surprise.

"Don't you have some record?" I said.

"Why should we have a record?"

"How could you calculate an excise tax if you don't know what the cargo was?"

Curry seemed to flush for a moment, as though embarrassed to be caught in an obvious lie.

"My tax people calculate that," he retorted, a moment later. "And I'll thank you to show a little respect for this office. Remember, I still have these persons of interest in my custody, and I enjoy hanging riffraff."

Curry shot out his cuffs. He was wearing cufflinks in the shape of little acorns. He seemed to make a show of recomposing himself.

"Please, sit down," he said. "All I know is what my people tell me. I can't concern myself with every detail of what goes on around here. I'd go insane. A good leader knows how to delegate. These operations run on trust, on my ability to depend on people to discharge their duties. Now, if everyone were as honest and diligent as the people who work for me, we might become a great nation again-and perhaps we will be. And so you see another reason for weeding out the criminal element, the parasites, the tax evaders. Anyway, you can remit payment directly to me. You have the cash, right?"

"What about gold instead of U.S. paper dollars?" Joseph said.

Curry's eyes widened perceptibly.

"What do you propose?" Curry said, obviously relishing the idea.

"Would an ounce satisfy these charges?"

"In lieu of half a million U.S. scrip?"

"That's right."

"You've got gold?"

"I do," Joseph said.

"You just carry it right on your person?"

"In some situations only gold will answer."

"My motto exactly-but one measly ounce for four men?"

"That's what I said."

"Seems ... less than altogether required."

"We're talking about some tax owed on freight, aren't we?"

"Why, yes, of course," Curry said. "But each man is charged with evasion so the fine is additional and would be multiplied by four. Plus all the other misdemeanors. And there's the slip fee for that boat of theirs-"

"Maybe you could find a way to calculate the total so it all worked out to what I am offering you," Joseph said.

"Well, the thing is: is that all the gold you have?"

"You're a piece of work, sir," Joseph said.

"I know." Curry said. "Nervy bastard, aren't I?"

"I'll say."

"But you! You drive a hard bargain."

"An ounce of gold is a tidy sum these days."

"You're right there," Curry said. "But does it equal the pleasure I would get from hanging these four river rats? That's what dogs me."

"How much pleasure did you derive from hanging those two young fellows yonder just a while ago?"

"At least half as much," Curry said and broke into a braving laugh. Birkenhaus, meanwhile, sprinkled some blotting sand on a document, waved it around to dry, and dangled it before Curry, who snatched it out of the air. "Ah, look, your paperwork's ready. Now, you sir. Show me the goods."

Joseph got the leather purse out of a pocket inside his coat. He untied the cinch and drew out a gold coin, placing it in the center of Curry's desk. Curry hesitated a moment, then reached for it, emitting some little grunts of satisfaction.

"Is there anything prettier in this world than the shiny yellow metal that never tarnishes?" he said, admiring it in the sunlight from the big window behind him. "What've we got here? Hmm. Mexican gold peso. Oro puro. I like that." He bit into it, then held it very close to examine it. "What do you think, Mr. B?" he said, passing it over to his secretary, who used a penknife to check for lead.

"Appears to be the real thing, Mr. C," Birkenhaus said.

"By the way," Curry said to Joseph, "how'd you come by this?"

"Earnest toil," Joseph said. "May I ask you something, Mr. Curry?

"Sure, what?"

"Do you know the Lord?"

"What? You mean, like, Jesus Christ?"

"Yes."

Curry stood, puffed out his cheeks, looked to the left and then to the right of himself and said, "Frankly, I don't have time for that crap.

Just then, gunshots rang out down below. There were shouts and imprecations. Screams. More gunshots.

"What the hell?" Curry said.

"Don't worry. You're headed there directly," Joseph said.

"Excuse-"

Before Curry could finish, Joseph had drawn a small pistol from his pocket and emptied the chamber in Curry's forehead. A little red spot appeared there, just under Curry's dark forelock, and his athletic body crumpled behind the desk like a puppet whose strings had been cut. Joseph then turned the pistol on Birkenhaus, who tried to dodge the line of fire only to be hit in the neck. Joseph must have gotten an artery because Birkenhaus spun around screaming as bright blood shot out between his fingers with such force that it literally splattered high up on the wall. The older woman who worked on the opposite side of the room watched all this agog.

"You shot my son!" she said, as Birkenhaus crashed to the floor.

"Which one was yours?"

She pointed where Curry lay.

"Him! You raised up a fiend!" Joseph said. "I ought to shoot you too, if I weren't a Christian."

"Oh, please, no," she said, sobbing. "Don't kill me!"

"Abominable wickedness the Lord hates," Joseph screamed at her, with the tendons standing out in his neck and blue veins bulging in his forehead, while he waved his pistol at the terrified woman. "Then the just shall rejoice to see his vengeance and bathe their feet in the blood of the wicked. . ."

More gunshots resounded outside.

"For Christ's sake," I said, "let's go!"

I had to drag him away. The woman collapsed in sheer fright. Joseph pulled himself together quickly. He remembered to retrieve his gold coin from Birkenhaus's desk before we hurried out of the room.

"I thought our boys'd never make their move," he said as we faced the stairs. "Good thing I actually had that dang peso."