their wearisome rounds.
Dipping the steel nib in my inkpot, I wrote:
Report made by Officer T. Wilde, Ward 6, District 1, Star 107. Upon investigating the activities of one Ronan McGlynn, now incarcerated under prisoner number 52640, discovered that claims of manufactory employment were a front for abducting female emigrants and forcibly ruining them. As witnessed with Roundsman Jakob Piest, Star 341, nine women were led . . .
My handwriting—always perfectly legible when recording human indecencies—steadily filled the foolscap. Which never fails to disgust me.
When I’d finished, I chewed my pen and debated warning George Washington Matsell over the Symmes debacle. After some unfocused staring at the watercolor-coded map on my wall found my eyes uneasily tugged back to Ward Eight, I concluded that disclosure was the better part of valor and pushed to my feet to visit the chief. Not on my life would I have confided in anyone else ensconced in the Party’s upper echelons—but Matsell trusts Wildes and makes plentiful use of us, so we trust him and occasionally request assistance in return. Up and up I went through the Tombs’ vaultlike stone halls, finally knocking at the chamber with the plaque reading GEORGE WASHINGTON MATSELL: CHIEF OF NEW YORK CITY POLICE .
“Come in,” he called in his flat, sober baritone.
Chief Matsell wasn’t doing anything I’d expected him to be doing. He wasn’t working, for one, nor was he fiddling with his lexicon. Matsell finds flash patter both fascinating and necessary, and thus, for copper stars yet damp behind the ears, he’s compiling definitions of street slang. The dictionary is like his kinchin—he dotes upon the project, lends it every spare minute. Which is why I was so queered at finding him idle. He was merely sitting. All three hundred robust pounds of him, face deeply scored in inverted V-shaped lines from the edges of his noble nose straight through to his porcine jowls. Looking neither at the framed portrait of his hero, the original George Washington, hanging high above him, nor out the massive barred window sending dark, scarlike lashes across his polished floor.
“Wilde,” he grunted. “Have a seat. Whiskey?”
“Thank you.” Dropping my hat on the chair back, I hesitated. “Is something the matter?”
“Plenty.” He poured neat golden drinks into two tumblers. “But why don’t you talk about what’s in your hand first, so I don’t spend any more time trying to guess at it.”
I set the dubious report on his desktop, tapping it. “Ronan McGlynn, newly in custody. He’s a rapist and a fleshmonger who deceived nine emigrant Irishwomen into accompanying him to a clearinghouse this afternoon. And they were far from the first, God help us. Piest was on hand to assist, of course, along with Connell and Kildare.”
“Your usual complement, then. Any snags?”
“I think Val gave him a concussion, but that’s hardly a snag. The man is a fiend.”
The chief scowled even deeper than his perennial frown. When a man’s neutral face appears already highly displeased, some find that man difficult to read. But I could see urgent business
tap-tap-tapping
within his huge pate.
“So you wrote out this report and delivered it personally.”
“Yes, sir.”
“And for some reason that is inexplicable to me when discussing so simple a task as arresting a rapist, your brother was also present today.”
I took a sip of the whiskey. For bravery, not flavor. It seared my empty stomach nicely. “We encountered Valentine there. He’d been summoned by a Party man to partake of the merchandise, as a gift to secure a favor. My brother . . . didn’t take it well.”
“No.” Matsell pressed at his temples. “No, he wouldn’t. What unfortunate Party man would that be?”
“Alderman Robert Symmes, sir.”
I was prepared for diverse reactions to this information. Including but not limited to stony silence, sanguine discussion, and being ordered out
Dipping the steel nib in my inkpot, I wrote:
Report made by Officer T. Wilde, Ward 6, District 1, Star 107. Upon investigating the activities of one Ronan McGlynn, now incarcerated under prisoner number 52640, discovered that claims of manufactory employment were a front for abducting female emigrants and forcibly ruining them. As witnessed with Roundsman Jakob Piest, Star 341, nine women were led . . .
My handwriting—always perfectly legible when recording human indecencies—steadily filled the foolscap. Which never fails to disgust me.
When I’d finished, I chewed my pen and debated warning George Washington Matsell over the Symmes debacle. After some unfocused staring at the watercolor-coded map on my wall found my eyes uneasily tugged back to Ward Eight, I concluded that disclosure was the better part of valor and pushed to my feet to visit the chief. Not on my life would I have confided in anyone else ensconced in the Party’s upper echelons—but Matsell trusts Wildes and makes plentiful use of us, so we trust him and occasionally request assistance in return. Up and up I went through the Tombs’ vaultlike stone halls, finally knocking at the chamber with the plaque reading GEORGE WASHINGTON MATSELL: CHIEF OF NEW YORK CITY POLICE .
“Come in,” he called in his flat, sober baritone.
Chief Matsell wasn’t doing anything I’d expected him to be doing. He wasn’t working, for one, nor was he fiddling with his lexicon. Matsell finds flash patter both fascinating and necessary, and thus, for copper stars yet damp behind the ears, he’s compiling definitions of street slang. The dictionary is like his kinchin—he dotes upon the project, lends it every spare minute. Which is why I was so queered at finding him idle. He was merely sitting. All three hundred robust pounds of him, face deeply scored in inverted V-shaped lines from the edges of his noble nose straight through to his porcine jowls. Looking neither at the framed portrait of his hero, the original George Washington, hanging high above him, nor out the massive barred window sending dark, scarlike lashes across his polished floor.
“Wilde,” he grunted. “Have a seat. Whiskey?”
“Thank you.” Dropping my hat on the chair back, I hesitated. “Is something the matter?”
“Plenty.” He poured neat golden drinks into two tumblers. “But why don’t you talk about what’s in your hand first, so I don’t spend any more time trying to guess at it.”
I set the dubious report on his desktop, tapping it. “Ronan McGlynn, newly in custody. He’s a rapist and a fleshmonger who deceived nine emigrant Irishwomen into accompanying him to a clearinghouse this afternoon. And they were far from the first, God help us. Piest was on hand to assist, of course, along with Connell and Kildare.”
“Your usual complement, then. Any snags?”
“I think Val gave him a concussion, but that’s hardly a snag. The man is a fiend.”
The chief scowled even deeper than his perennial frown. When a man’s neutral face appears already highly displeased, some find that man difficult to read. But I could see urgent business
tap-tap-tapping
within his huge pate.
“So you wrote out this report and delivered it personally.”
“Yes, sir.”
“And for some reason that is inexplicable to me when discussing so simple a task as arresting a rapist, your brother was also present today.”
I took a sip of the whiskey. For bravery, not flavor. It seared my empty stomach nicely. “We encountered Valentine there. He’d been summoned by a Party man to partake of the merchandise, as a gift to secure a favor. My brother . . . didn’t take it well.”
“No.” Matsell pressed at his temples. “No, he wouldn’t. What unfortunate Party man would that be?”
“Alderman Robert Symmes, sir.”
I was prepared for diverse reactions to this information. Including but not limited to stony silence, sanguine discussion, and being ordered out
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