Hot time, p.3
Hot Time, page 3
As he climbed into the carriage, he gave the boy a reflexive pat on the head. “What’s your name, son?” he asked.
The boy gazed up with big hazel eyes. “They call me Dutch. What about you?”
He smiled at the boy’s cheekiness. “They call me Rafe.”
Before Rafe could settle himself in the jump seat, the driver flicked his whip, and the brougham sailed up Roosevelt Street, toward the next port in Riis’s archipelago of misery.
Dutch watched the carriage retreat. The big man with the dark hair and the kind dark eyes was with Mr. Roosevelt, so the boy would have figured him for a policeman, but he wasn’t wearing a uniform. Dutch had seen the commissioner at the Newsboys Lodging House, and he seemed nice enough. But no copper, not even Mr. Roosevelt, had ever given him a pat on the head before, just a swat of his club and an order to move on. Was the stranger a newspaperman then, like the famous Mr. Riis?
The brougham made the corner, and the newsboys began drifting off in groups of two or three to find their beds for the night. But Dutch stood alone. Just a few months ago, Dutch—or William, as he was known then—used to pass gangs of newsboys on his way to school or church. Dirty, ragged, foul-mouthed, they would be crying the headlines in a language he could barely understand—“Extry! Getcha Woild heah!”—and he would cross the street. Now, even though he lived among the newsies, he hadn’t lost his wariness of them, and he kept to himself as much as he could. Mistaking the reason for his aloofness, the other boys called him stuck-up, made fun of his grammatical English and middle-class clothes, and bullied him off the prime selling corners. None of which worked to temper his opinion of his fellow entrepreneurs. It didn’t matter, he told himself, because soon he would be home again, restored to his rightful place, like the boy heroes in The Prince and the Pauper.
Like the other newsies, Dutch turned to the question of where he would sleep tonight. There was a coal chute on Hester where he sometimes went, and some cellar doors on Cherry that were generally left unlocked. But lately, owing to the heat, he’d been tending toward a place he’d discovered off Rose Street, around the corner from the Newsboys Lodging House. He ambled in that direction, keeping to the gutter and kicking a stone with his bare foot.
Farther up Roosevelt Street, he saw a cluster of women lingering under a gas lamp. They turned painted faces in his direction. Then, seeing it was just a boy, most of them turned away again. “Come here, big man!” a tall blonde called, and the others laughed. But Dutch didn’t see the particular face he was looking for, and he kept moving.
Several blocks later, he came to the brick headquarters of the Rhinelander Sugar Company. Behind it was an alley, and halfway down, along one wall, a stack of wooden packing crates. He climbed until he reached the top, about six feet off the ground. Then he lay on his back, studying the narrow patch of sky between the buildings. Cloudy tonight, no stars.
He hated the night. During the daytime, there were people on the street, and he heard all the familiar city noises, the clop-clop of horses’ hooves, the clanging of streetcar bells. At night, the few sounds that reached him were strange and alarming—a woman’s nervous laugh; a man’s drunken shout; a sharp, faraway crack that might have been a gunshot. But even worse were the times in between, when no other living being made its presence known. Then he would pray for sleep, and daylight.
Tonight he was tired. After a while he gave a yawn and rolled onto his side. He settled himself on the crate’s thin slats. Unfastening a shirt button, he pulled out a small, folded handkerchief. In the darkness, he ran his thumb over the threads of an embroidered violet. He held the fabric to his face. If he breathed deeply, he could still catch her scent, a blend of rose water and talcum powder. Turning toward the brick wall, he clutched the scrap of cloth to his cheek. As he drifted off, he thought he heard the roll of thunder.
TWO
Monday, August 10
RAFE AWOKE TO the rumble of the elevated train. The sun was well up. Taking his watch from the small table beside the bed, he saw it was past seven o’clock. The sheet was in a tangle at the iron footboard, and his brother, sixteen-year-old Harry, was still stretched out beside him. Across the tiny room, their father’s bed was empty. Rafe rolled onto his back and rubbed his eyes.
Last night, after leaving Roosevelt Street, Riis had conducted them to another, even grimmer tenement on Cherry Street, where ten ragpickers and all their wares were crammed into a one-room basement apartment. Afterward, the three men were driving down South Street, along the river toward the Fulton Market, when a violent wind came up and sheets of lightning lit the western sky. The commissioner called through the brougham’s hatch, and the grateful driver reversed his course.
It was still blowing and thundering when they let Rafe out on Allen Street. He jiggled the lock on his father’s meat market, then climbed the unlit stairs to the second story. After visiting the water closet on the landing, he turned toward the family apartment. The transom was dark; everyone was in bed. He slipped in his key and let himself into the kitchen. The smell of chicken fat still hung in the warm air. He draped his clothes on the wire hook beside the door and stole into the bedroom. The wind was gusting through the only window, and Rafe lay for a long time, sweating and listening to the thunder. Maybe the hot wave was about to break at last. But the breeze died and the clouds passed without yielding a drop. It was long after midnight before he fell asleep.
Now, standing before the pine wardrobe, he slipped on a clean white shirt but left it unbuttoned. In the kitchen, Sarah, his older sister, was standing at the sink with her broad back to him. Their father, Raphael Raphael, was seated at the plain table in the center of the room, only his graying hair visible above the pages of the morning’s Sun. Without glancing up, he asked in Yiddish, “So did your hero Mr. Roosevelt save any lives last night?”
“Morning, Papa,” Rafe answered in English.
His father read the lead headline: “‘34 Killed by the Heat.’” He looked up and went on, also in English, “That’s one day. In Manhattan they took over fifty people to the hospital. Even your Mr. Roosevelt can’t do nothing with that.”
Rafe sighed. “He’s a good man, Papa. He’s trying to help people.”
“I told you before, Otto. He’s your boss, not your friend. With all his money, what does he care about the poor?”
Rafe took his pants from the hook near the door and pulled them on. “How did you sleep?”
“Who can sleep in this weather, with his business going down? Ice is so high, nobody buys meat. Me and Harry stand at the counter all day and look at ourselves. I can’t hardly afford ice neither. If I don’t get ice, my meat goes bad.”
Rafe hiked up his suspenders. “The heat has to break sometime. The customers will come back. They’ll want their chicken soup again.”
“I wish you was still in the market with me. Harry goes back to school soon. Then what?”
Rafe studied his father’s thin, dark face and waited for him to return to his newspaper. But Raphael Raphael’s black eyes were fixed on his son. Finally, Rafe inclined his head toward Sarah and whispered, “Papa, you know we can’t all live on what the market brings in. With the thousand dollars they pay me, Sarah doesn’t have to take in piecework. Harry can stay in school. After I get a promotion, maybe we can get a place uptown and you can open a market up there.”
Raphael Raphael let the paper fall to the table. “And when they give your Mr. Roosevelt the boot? They say he fights with the other bosses and they can throw him out anytime. Then what? Who’s going to promote you then? You know the Irish, they don’t want you there.”
Rafe slumped in his chair. “Then I guess you’ll get your wish, and I’ll be back at the meat market. Though God knows what we’ll live on.” He added silently, And God knows how I’ll survive.
Sarah came to the table and set a glass of water in front of him. She hadn’t pinned her hair up yet, and it hung beyond her shoulders in a frowsy tangle. “It’s so hot, I didn’t light the stove for coffee,” she told him. “There’s some bread and butter.”
“Who can eat?” Rafe said.
She went to the other bedroom to look in on her ten-year-old son, also named Harry, and her and Rafe’s little sister Nellie, just seven. Rafe moved to the chipped enamel sink and took a bar of soap from the shelf along the wall. After he finished washing and shaving, he combed his hair in the little mirror hanging over the sink, then pulled on his woolen police coat. As he fastened the long row of brass buttons, he thought of the poor patrolmen. It was bad enough having to work outside in the relentless sun all day, just tending to normal police business. But now they also had to ferry the hot wave victims to Bellevue Hospital, and they were even being called on to cart away the hundreds of stinking horse carcasses that clogged the city’s roadways. Every day some officers’ names appeared in the newspaper lists of the prostrated. No wonder there had been so many fights in the precinct locker rooms.
He put on his helmet and picked up the paper lunch sack that Sarah had left on the table. He didn’t need to open it; there would be two hard-boiled eggs inside. As he closed the door behind him, he took a last glance at his father. He thought, Oh, how we miss you, Mama. “Papa,” he said, “don’t worry so much.”
His face buried in the paper, Raphael Raphael didn’t answer.
As Rafe made his way down the steep flight of stairs to the street, he shook his head. The only thing worse than his father’s stubbornness was the guilt Rafe always felt after one of their arguments. The squabbles had grown more frequent since Rafe joined the police force. But even before that it was always, “Be careful of the Irish, be careful of the Italians, be careful of the Americans.” Sometimes Rafe wondered how his father had gotten up the nerve to leave Poland.
Out on the sidewalk, it seemed that last night’s bogus storm had only added to the humidity. The sun was streaming across Allen Street, and Rafe guessed the temperature was already well into the eighties. Some housewives had draped their sheets over the fire escapes for airing, and even at this hour some of the shops had set out their barrels and crates of produce. On the flagstone sidewalk, a few mothers tugged at whining children, hoping to finish the day’s errands before it got even hotter. The egg lady, Mrs. Kulesh, was in her usual spot in front of the meat market. Rafe raised his hand to the brim of his helmet. “Gut morgn,” she called.
Farther up the block, Mr. Abramov was building a pyramid of deep-purple plums. Rafe chose two from the pile.
As he took Rafe’s money, Mr. Abramov asked in Yiddish, “Think we’ll get some rain today?”
Rafe dropped the plums into his lunch sack. “From your lips,” he answered in English.
At the Bowery, he crossed under the elevated tracks, grateful for a moment’s respite from the sun. His usual newsboy was on the corner. Brown hair stuck out from under his woolen cap, and he stood with a habitual hunch, like a stray dog wondering whether the next passerby was good for a handout or a boot in the ribs. The boy sold the Sun and the World, and he made it his business to remember which of his customers took which. Recognizing Rafe, he folded a copy of the Sun and held it out. Rafe realized that, although he had bought a paper from this boy every working morning for the better part of a year, he had no idea where he came from or where he went at night. Just another of the city’s fifteen thousand homeless children. Rafe fished a nickel out of his pocket. The boy had his three pennies’ change ready, but Rafe waved him off. “Bless you,” the boy said.
As Rafe walked west on Hester, the Hebrew lettering in the shop windows was replaced by Italian, and the street vendors’ carts became piled with tomatoes, peppers, onions, and fava beans. He turned onto Mulberry, passing store windows showing cheap clothing and used furniture. Two young men in a doorway were arguing in Italian, but on seeing his uniform they grew quiet and began to take an uncommon interest in the sidewalk. Except for the newsboy, he hadn’t heard a word of English since leaving the house.
Between Houston and Bleecker, he came to an unassuming four-story limestone building. Across the flat facade was carved: CENTRAL HEADQUARTERS OF METROPOLITAN POLICE. Rafe mounted the long flight of granite steps to the entrance, then crossed the lobby to the central staircase. But instead of climbing to Mr. Roosevelt’s office, on the third floor, he trotted to the basement, where, along with jail cells, patrolmen’s lockers, and the police museum, the departmental telegraph office was located.
The note the commissioner had given him last night listed two addresses for the publisher, home and office. Not knowing the man’s schedule, Rafe decided to send his message to both places. He took a slip of paper and a stub of pencil from the counter and wrote:
Mr William d’Alton Mann, the Kenmore, 353 W 57th St “Town Topics,” 17 Madison Ave
Dear Mr. Mann
Commissioner Theodore Roosevelt requests that you appear in his office at Police HQ, 300 Mulberry St, at 11:30 this morning, Aug 10.
Sincerely
Otto Raphael, Asst to Commr Roosevelt
He handed the sheet to the operator. Then as he darted into the hallway, he walked directly into the path of two plainclothesmen. The closer and bigger of the two, a beefy Black Irishman named Gallagher, drew himself up. “Look, Jimmy,” he glowered, “it’s Roosevelt’s pet.” Gallagher generally wore a pinched, put-upon expression, as though the world owed him something and was behind in its account.
Jimmy Walsh’s face split into a bony grin. “Not for much longer he ain’t. That’s one job we’ll be getting back, huh, Tommy?”
After the commissioner was forced out, he meant. “I sure miss you boys around here,” Rafe told them. In January, Mr. Roosevelt had transferred most of the plainclothesmen out of headquarters and assigned them to the various precincts. But since the new chief of detectives, forty-five-year-old Captain Stephen O’Brien, kept his office at 300 Mulberry, the other plainclothesmen still showed up here on a regular basis. There were two kinds of cops, Rafe had learned, those who welcomed the commissioner’s reforms, embracing professionalism and integrity, and those who clung to the corrupt ways of the past. From all appearances, Gallagher and Walsh were in the latter category.
Like most of their colleagues, they had been appointed by Captain O’Brien’s predecessor, Thomas Byrnes, probably the most famous detective in the world and inventor of harsh techniques like the third degree. But after being promoted to superintendent, Byrnes had somehow amassed a personal fortune of $350,000 on his policeman’s salary. Mr. Roosevelt had forced his retirement last year, and since then, Byrnes’s minions had been directing their fury not only at the commissioner but at anyone working for him, especially if he happened to be Jewish.
Under Mr. Roosevelt, Rafe told himself, men like Gallagher and Walsh would never have been promoted to New York’s celebrated detective force, the pinnacle of the profession, the envy of police departments around the globe. Yet Captain O’Brien didn’t seem to notice the problem. More than once he’d called Gallagher his hardest worker, his best man. Rafe saw the weekly reports, and it was true, Gallagher had more arrests than any other detective. But Rafe wondered, did he get them through the unorthodox techniques he’d learned from Thomas Byrnes?
“Not to worry, Raphael,” Gallagher was saying. “We’re only at the Fourth, just a few blocks away, so we can still drop by and pay our respects anytime, can’t we, Jimmy?”
Jimmy Walsh gave a choking laugh. Then he said, “You know, Tommy, it’s just like Mr. Ward was saying—”
Gallagher’s grin turned to ice.
“You know, last night—” But Gallagher’s look kept him from going on.
Rafe shook his head. That would be Robert DeCourcy Ward, the climate scientist who had joined with some other Harvard alumni to found the Immigration Restriction League. Rafe had seen in the Sun that Ward was in town to spread some of his pseudoscientific hatred. Anglo-Saxons were genetically superior to Southern and Eastern Europeans, he believed. As immigrants, these inferior creatures brought poverty and took jobs from Americans. Ergo, they must be excluded. Rafe was hardly surprised that Gallagher and Walsh had been in the audience.
Gallagher poked Walsh in the ribs. “Come on, Jimmy. I don’t want to keep Captain O’Brien cooling his heels, now do I?”
The pair edged past Rafe and headed up the stairs. “Dirty Jew,” Rafe heard, though he couldn’t be sure which one had said it. As he watched them go, he unclenched his fists and shook his head again. Not only had Rafe’s kind made the mistake of getting here a few years after Gallagher’s family, they had the poor judgment to speak a different language and practice another religion.
He began the long climb to the third floor. With each step the temperature in the building rose, until by the time he reached Mr. Roosevelt’s office Rafe had removed his helmet and was reaching for his handkerchief. In the anteroom, he found Minnie at her typewriter, her head bent over her stenographer’s notebook, her white pleated shirtwaist already wilting in the heat.
“Morning,” he said, going to the desk across from her, just outside Mr. Roosevelt’s office. “I see the commissioner has been dictating.” Rafe was often the first one in, but after the late night he was running behind today.
Minnie looked up. “Oh yes, we got an early start.” She nodded toward the circular iron staircase leading to the floor below. “He just went down to speak to Commissioner Andrews. Then he said he was expecting Captain O’Brien at nine thirty.”
“That’s not on the calendar,” Rafe said. “He must have spoken to the captain this morning.” He set his helmet on the filing cabinet. “How was the streetcar?”
