“These two are from a family of seven children living in one room in Rotten Row in such filth, you can’t imagine. The mother didn’t want to let them go, but in the end she made the right decision. Not a sound tooth in her head, a drunkard for a husband, and her still putting out brats like rabbits.” He huffed. “There ought to be a law.”
Anna’s voice sounded rough to her own ears. “What kind of law do you mean? Against toothlessness?”
She felt Jack’s surprise in the way he tensed. Surprise, but not disagreement or disapproval. At least not yet, but Anna was not done and would not be condescended to.
Mr. Johnson cleared his throat. “Overpopulation is not a joking matter, Dr. Savard. The underclasses are not capable of restraint and not willing to work hard enough to support so many children, so that we—you and I—must bear the financial burden. And what is the solution to that?”
“Why, birth control,” Anna said, holding on to her temper with all her strength.
“Artificial contraceptives are illegal, as I hope you are aware.”
Anna drew in a deep breath. “I am aware. So let me ask you, Mr. Johnson. Contraception is illegal and so is abortion. History makes it clear that human beings are not capable of abstinence. The poor—wait, what did you call them? The underclasses. How do you suggest their numbers be kept to levels you find acceptable?”
Mr. Johnson’s gaze shifted away and then back, the muscles in his jaw pulsing and jumping. “Is that a serious question?”
“Oh, yes,” Anna said. “I would like to know what measures you advocate.”
He stood a little straighter. “The first problem is the influx of the worst of Europe. The moral and intellectual dregs must be turned away. If such a policy had been put in place at the right time, Michael and Dylan Joyce would have been born in Ireland, and feeding them would not fall to us.”
“At the right time,” Anna echoed. “So, after your forefathers arrived.”
The muscles in his jaw were clenching again. “You misunderstand me.”
“No, I don’t think so. I think I understand you very well.”
Very dryly Jack said, “Do you have any information for us?”
Mr. Johnson turned his attention to Jack with obvious relief. “Not yet. I came back because I forgot one important point. Does this boy”—he checked his notes—“Tonino Russo. Does he speak English?”
Anna couldn’t remember Tonino talking at all, but she was angry now and willing to cause the man as much discomfort as possible.
“He is bilingual.”
“So he speaks English?”
“He speaks Italian,” Jack said. “And French. And some German too, so I think you’d have to say he’s at the very least trilingual.”
Anna took one step back and poked him with her elbow even as she smiled at Mr. Johnson. Her dimples stayed hidden. “A very bright boy.”
“Dr. Savard,” Mr. Johnson said. “We do not send children west for placement if they don’t speak English. Now, does the boy speak English, or not?”
• • •
THEY HAD BEEN walking a full block before Anna broke her silence. “You said that they place orphans with families. But that’s not where they stop, is it? They take children from their parents.”
Jack knew her well enough already to understand that any effort to calm or placate her would be received very badly, and so he gave her the truth, as he understood it.
“The majority of the cases are orphans, but they aren’t above separating children from their parents. From immigrant families, especially Irish and Germans. And Italians.”
She stopped and turned to look him directly in the face, as if she expected to see some hidden truth written on his brow.
“It seems I do disapprove of the Society for the Protection of Endangered Children. And most especially I do not approve of Mr. Johnson’s Malthusian philosophy. But thank you for arranging this interview. It was instructive, if not productive. I think I’ll look for a cab.”
Jack said, “There’s one more visit we could make today, if you have time. The lodging house on Duane Street run by the Children’s Aid Society.”
“As we’re already under way,” she said, and then pointed east. “We should be walking that way. To the elevated train.”
“No cab?” Jack said, amused and irritated both.
“No need,” Anna said. “The elevated will take us all the way downtown.”
She started off again, then stopped when she realized she had left him behind.
“Are you coming?”
“I don’t know,” Jack said.
She had a very expressive face, so mobile that Jack could see her irritation giving way, slowly, to confusion and then a kind of abashed awareness. He kept his own expression neutral and waited. After a moment she let out a long breath and started back until she stood directly before him, her face tilted up.
“That was rude of me. I apologize for taking my irritation out on you.”
“Hold on with the apology,” Jack said, as somberly as he could manage. “Maybe I’m a Malthusian and don’t even know it.”
The corner of her mouth jerked. “Malthusians believe that overpopulation will cause economic disaster and the end of civilized society. They put the blame for overpopulation—for everything, really—on the immigrant poor. It’s xenophobia disguised as economic theory.”
“So you’re on the side of the Catholic Church, then. The more children, the better.”
Her mouth fell open and then shut with a small click. “I’m on the side of women,” she said, her voice hoarse. “Those individuals who actually bear and raise children. The human beings whom Malthusians and priests see as no more than mindless breeding stock.”
Jack said, “Now it’s my turn to apologize. I shouldn’t have made light.”
For a span of three heartbeats she studied his face as though she could read his thoughts. Quite suddenly she nodded, and took his arm.
“Children’s Aid,” she said. “Let’s go.”
• • •
“I HATE THESE trains,” Jack said with a vehemence that took Anna by surprise. Standing in an overcrowded car, she looked up at him and then dropped her gaze immediately.
“They turn the streets into dark tunnels, shower everything with dirt and cinders, and screech like banshees.”
The wagon swayed so that Anna’s nose almost touched the handkerchief pocket of Jack’s suit coat. He smelled faintly of mothballs, of starch and tobacco. And of himself. People had very distinctive smells; it was one of the first things she had noticed as a medical student. Certain illnesses had distinct smells, too, and Anna attempted to list them for herself in an effort to stem the impulse to raise her head. Because if she did, it would look like she was wanting to be kissed. She had worked hard to put the memory of kissing Jack Mezzanotte out of her head, and she had even managed to do that for as much as an hour at a time.
He shifted a little and, leaning down, spoke directly into her ear. “Maybe I have to rethink this elevated train business. There might be some advantages to it, after all.”
Anna bit her lip in an effort not to laugh, and instead let out a small hiccup of sound.
“What was that?”
His breath warmed the shell of her ear and stirred the few loose hairs that curled against her temple.
“I didn’t say anything.” She was talking to his handkerchief, which was a brilliant white and beautifully embroidered, something she knew because she had its twin at home, the one he had given to her along with half his dinner in the taxi. The next morning she found it in her pocket, and now it sat on her dresser, laundered and ironed and folded to show the initials on one corner. GLM. She had been wondering for days what the L stood for. Lorenzo. Lucian. Leonardo. Lancelot. Lucifer. Lunatic.
“Am I embarrassing you?”
; She studied the way his feet were braced against the sway of the train’s motion. Her own two feet, much smaller, between them. Feet entwined. She felt him smiling against her hair.
“I’ll take that as a yes,” he said.
Jack could resist the swaying of the train because he was holding on to one of the overhead straps that were out of Anna’s reach. She had nothing to hold on to—nothing she could, in good conscience, hold on to. She must brush up against him at every curve.
“What is it you want, Mezzanotte?” she said, putting some backbone into her voice. “Did you want to kiss me on a crowded train?”
“Is that an offer?” Now his lips actually touched her ear, and gooseflesh raced down her neck and her spine to spark in places best not considered just at this moment.
The train stopped and the passengers inched toward the doors, flowing out over the platform and spreading to the stairwell where they came together again, a river pulsing through a canyon. With the car half-empty there was enough room to step away, but somehow Anna found it almost impossible to move.
It made her angry, how easily he took her calm from her. She said, “You clearly have the wrong idea about me. I’m not a girl looking for an adventure. I’m not even a woman looking for an admirer.”
“Too late,” Jack said. “On both counts.”
She drew in a sharp breath, took three steps back, and forced herself to count to twenty. Then she looked up at him just as the train began to slow again and she saw where they were.
“This is where we get off.”
He caught her wrist as she passed him and drew her back. Jack’s hand was large and warm and rough, the hand of someone accustomed to hard work. She set her jaw and refused to raise her head, but she heard him laugh anyway. A short, low laugh, a satisfied sound.
“This is where we interrupt the journey,” he corrected her. “But not for long.”
• • •
THIS TIME THE passengers were in no hurry, lingering on the platform in a way that made no sense to Anna until the train pulled away and the new suspension bridge came into view. It was monstrous in size, a long neck arching out over the river like a predatory bird watching for prey. Along the metal flanks tenements cowered, saloons and dance halls and alleys all lost in shadow that would never go away.
And still it was beautiful. Anna couldn’t remember the last time she had looked at the bridge closely, and she saw now what had once seemed unlikely: it was very near done. In just over a month it would open to traffic.
The bridge itself crawled with laborers, with drays and wagons and carts laden with building materials. As they watched, a wagon pulled out of the barn-like terminal that stood between the bridge itself and Park Place.
“They just started test runs,” Jack told her.
There would be a huge celebration with bands and fireworks and speeches, a summer party of sorts. She planned to walk from one side of the bridge to the other along the promenade, but she would likely wait until the early crowds had had their fill. She turned to Jack, who was studying the men at work.
“Have you been on the bridge yet?”
He glanced down at her and grinned. “As often as I can find an excuse.”
“What is it like?”
“Windy.”
She raised a brow at him, impatient.
“I think you must be a hard taskmaster with your students,” he said. And when her scowl deepened he said, “It’s like being a bird, looking out over the world.”
“I was just thinking that,” Anna told him. “It’s like a bird of prey.”
“If you want to see it for yourself, I’ll take you up.”
“To the top of the tower?” Her voice broke, but she was too startled at the idea to pretend nonchalance.
“The tower is solid stone. It’s not like a church steeple, you can’t climb up from the inside.”
“That can’t be true,” Anna said. “The towers didn’t grow like beanstalks, after all. There must be ladders fixed to the stone. Look, there’s a flag flying at the top. Unless they’ve got fairies working for them, a human being climbed up there to mount it. I could do that.”
She had surprised him out of his composure.
“You’re telling me that you want to climb the outside of the tower.”
“I said so. Don’t you? Or have you already?”
Jack glanced around himself. Most everyone had drifted away, but he lowered his voice. “A stunt like that could get me suspended, if not fired.”
Anna had to bite her lip hard to maintain a serious expression. “I see. You have been up to the top of one of the towers, but you won’t take me up. Because I’m female?”
“Because you could break your neck.”
She fluttered her fingers. “I was climbing trees at four.”
“Falling out of a tree is a different proposition than falling off a suspension bridge.”
“So you won’t take me up the tower.”
“No. But I will take you to the highest point on the promontory. Just as soon as weather and my schedule—both our schedules—permit.”
Anna considered, and decided to save the battle for another day.
• • •
THE INTERSECTION OF Duane and Chambers Streets was jammed with omnibuses, wagons, coaches, cabs, and every kind of dray, all competing for space with vendors hawking cookware, tools, knife sharpening, shoeshines, buttons and sewing needles, oysters on the half shell, pickles, nuts, sausage, cheese and curds, meat pies, and hard candy. Newsboys shouted for customers, bellowing the more exciting or salacious headlines from the three o’clock editions.
Anna saw a younger man lounging against the wall of a coffeehouse, his eyes roaming the crowd and then stopping on Jack. He disappeared almost instantly, which was proof of what she had known in theory. Jack was known to more people in the city—good and bad—than she could ever count.
The lodging house constructed and run by the Children’s Aid Society was an imposing four-story brick building that took up most of a city block. A clothier occupied the front of the ground floor, but the rest of it provided shelter and food for homeless boys. During the day they hawked papers and matches, shined shoes, played battered violins on busy corners, lifted and hauled in factories and on the docks and wharves. There were scullery and stable and errand boys, rat catchers and wharf rats who stole what they could not earn or beg.
Anna did not see them as hapless victims or as hardened criminals, but as children who simply refused to give up and die. An unprotected child who survived the streets of the city for even a month was a child who had learned to take advantage of any opportunity, or to create opportunity where none existed.
Though she was watchful and aware, Anna had had her pocket picked more than once; early in her career she had learned that poor children could not be left alone in an examination room or office. Even the youngest of them would take anything that might have value on the street, from a few inches of gauze to wooden tongue depressors and once in a while, scalpels and retractors.
Jack opened a door and they went up a staircase, the floorboards swept clean, the banisters polished, and not a single mark on the whitewashed walls. She wondered how the housekeeper managed it with so many boys under her roof.
The reception area was almost empty in the middle of the afternoon but for a high counter and off to one side, a smaller table where a single boy sat frowning at an exercise book. Behind the counter a middle-aged man in shirtsleeves was writing in a ledger while a woman sorted through the afternoon mail. Jack made a polite sound in his throat to get their attention, and succeeded.
“Jack Mezzanotte!” The woman held out both arms as if he were a favorite brother come home unexpectedly. She was red-cheeked and rounded, her hair piled up into a fuzzy topknot, but there was a sharp intelligence in her eyes and a stubborn set to her chin, an
d Anna had the sense that she was not to be trifled with.
She was saying, “It’s been too long. Where have you been keeping yourself?” Her gaze moved to Anna and her smile broadened. This time there was a dimple.
Jack introduced her to Mr. and Mrs. Howell and presented Anna first just by name and then, quite formally, added on the fact that she was a physician and surgeon. He did this as though a lady surgeon were nothing out of the ordinary, and still the cheerful look on both faces before them went momentarily blank with confusion.
Then their enthusiasm and good manners reasserted themselves and they lost no time ushering Jack and Anna into the manager’s apartment just off the reception area. Mrs. Howell called to someone in the kitchen for tea, and then they sat down on well-used couches in faded chintz. For the next few minutes they peppered Jack with questions about his well-being, his family, goings-on at police headquarters, the activities of the Italian Benevolent Society, and the case of one of their charges who had been arrested for theft.
Once the tea had been set out by one of the Howells’ daughters, Mrs. Howell’s attention turned in another direction.
“And how do you know Dr. Savard, Jack?”
Jack leaned back and smiled at her. “I’ll let Anna tell the story. It’s why we’re here.”
It was beginning to feel like a set piece, but Anna told it all. Mr. and Mrs. Howell listened closely, stopping her once in a while to ask questions.
“You examined all four of the children?”
“Yes,” Anna told Mrs. Howell. “They were all comparatively healthy. Tonino was very well grown for his age, quite strong. The baby was alert and not fearful.” She described them in as much detail as she could give.
“Jenny?” said Mr. Howell, looking at his wife.
She shook her head. “The baby wouldn’t come through our doors, and I haven’t seen the older boy. It doesn’t mean he hasn’t been through here, but it’s unlikely. I’ll ask our Thomas when he gets home from his classes; he takes the desk every day for a few hours. And there’s—”