“Mr. Stacey,” I answered, ignoring Harvey altogether.
“Am I right in assuming that you come empty-handed?”
This caught me very much off-guard—: I’d expected, and dreaded, the necessity of accounting for myself. Was failure writ so plainly across my face?
“You know already, then?” I mumbled.
“Bechair yourself, gentle traveler,” Stacey said, digging idly at his nose. (Stacey, it was clear, had no health complaints to speak of. I wondered which of the fever cures he subscribed to.)
I did as I was told.
“That’s better.” He set his pipe down decorously. “Now, then—: how long since you and my property in derelictum parted ways?”
“Fifteen minutes,” I answered, staring dully at the floor.
He consulted a hide-bound ledger. “Since the corner of Shelby and Union, was it?”
I practically swallowed my tongue. “I must tell you, Mr. Stacey—”
“That I astonish you?” Stacey beamed side-wise at Harvey, who in turn leered mincingly at me. “I’d like nothing better, Mr. Ball, than to prolong your wonderment—; my conscience, however, won’t permit it.” He gestured over his left shoulder, to the corridor that led out to the pens. “We’ve had a visit from a confederate of yours.”
“Parson,” I said at once. My stomach began to knot together.
Stacey nodded smugly. “Go have a look in the yard. You may find that you are amazed anew.”
“I don’t have to look,” I said. On another day I might have cursed, protested, cried out that it was impossible—; it was impossible, after all. “He brought them all in, didn’t he.”
Stacey only scratched his nose.
“I suppose I ought to feel indebted,” I said.
“You’re upthet, of course,” Harvey put in solicitously.
“Nobody enjoys surprises,” Stacey agreed.
I glared at them both in stony silence. “Where’s Parson now?” I said finally.
“Gone off.” Stacey waved a hand, as if the question were an idle one. Harvey grinned at me and shrugged his shoulders.
All of my impotent anger and disgust settled on Harvey in that instant. If he had a purpose in the Trade other than to annoy me, I had yet to discover what it was. What in hell was he up to? Why hadn’t he met us at the dock? Why in Jesus’ name was he grinning at me that way, like a pig dipped in shite and honey?
“Where was Parson headed?” I said, keeping my eyes on Stacey.
Stacey gazed up at the ceiling, as if to say—: How for us the ways of the clergy?
“He mentioned Jew-town,” Harvey offered. “The houtheth of fun down along the river.”
For all I cared, Parson could have been summoned to the Vatican—; it mattered only that he was well away from me. “In that case I thank you gentlemen very kindly.” I turned to go. “Is there any paperwork to sign?”
“Everything is quite in order, Mr. Ball.” Stacey was looking at me in a way that made me feel uneasy in my skin. Harvey beamed at me me insipidly. The urge to flee was full upon me, but I compelled myself to move toward the door as slowly and lackadaisically as possible.
“Mr. Ball!” Stacey said, just as I took hold of the latch.
“Mr. Stacey,” I answered, turning back to him with a sinking heart.
“There is one thing you might do.” He fussed with a pouch of shag tobacco as he spoke. “A buyer stopped in this morning, asking for you expressly. Amiable sort—; neatly got together. All the trappings of a sucker. He requested that someone fetch him when your coffles got to town.” A wad of leathery-looking leaf was worked free of the pouch, inspected with care, then jammed into the meerschaum’s grimy bowl. “He’s staying at the Pendleton. Bring him round for me, would you? All my boys seem to be under the weather.”
“Why not send Harvey?”
Stacey took a moment to light his pipe. “He asked for you, Mr. Ball. He asked for you expressly.”
This puzzled me not a little. “How did he know I was due?”
Harvey gave a nervous cough. “Because we told him, of course! He knew the path-word, after all.”
“Pass-word?” I said, frowning.
Harvey glanced at Stacey, fiddled with his collar, then gave me a grudging nod.
“That’s the first I’ve heard of any pass-word,” I said tightly. I was beginning to lose my temper. “What in blazes is it?”
“You are,” Harvey said, and coughed again. “That is to say, your name is. Virgil Ball.”
I passed a hand over my eyes. The whole of Memphis had evidently lost its wits. “If I bring this sucker round to you, Mr. Stacey, do I have your permission to quit this wretched place?”
“Your colleague seems in a frightful hurry to absent himself, Mr. Harvey,” Stacey said, squinting at me sharply through the smoke. “One might almost suspect that he was prejudiced against us.”
“I feel nothing but affection for your fine city, Mr. Stacey,” I said sourly. “But there’s a touch of yellow fever going round. Have you perhaps not noticed?”
Stacey regarded me blankly for a moment. “Yellow fever?” he said.
Had I felt one crumb less indifferent to the world, less bone-tired and defeated, I might have wondered at this reply—; by that point, however, I had less curiosity in me than a teak-wood Indian.
“Does this sucker have a name?” I said, already three-quarters out the door.
“Morrith Barker!” Harvey chirped.
THE PENDLETON STRADDLED THE BOUNDARY between the east and west halves of the city — between the stricken and the hale — and as such should have found itself balanced precariously between its customary function as a glorified brothel and the more novel one of a charnel-house—; whatever force it was that kept the Yellowjack at bay, however, had been magnanimous to the old hotel. Aside from the inexplicable presence of seven tame white ducks, I saw nothing out of the ordinary as I stepped into its tastefully gas-lit lobby—: only trades-people sipping grandiose-looking drinks, and grandioser whores beside them, tittering and dipping their cigar-ends into brandy.
I found Barker crammed between two buffalo-hipped octaroons who outweighed him by at least a hundred pounds apiece.
“Evening, Your Honor,” I said to him, doffing an imaginary cap. “You like your chicken frying-size, I see.”
“Guilty as charged, Virgil—; guilty as charged,” Barker said quickly, freeing himself with no small amount of effort. “I was hoping you might find the time to call.”
“Wanting to purchase some niggers, were you?” I said in my most professional tone of voice. The two octaroons glared at me, unmoved. I could only guess how much they’d soaked him for already.
“Not precisely, Mr. Ball—; no,” Barker said, taking me by the arm. “Would you be so kind as to accompany me upstairs?”
“Only to talk business, Mr. Barker. None of your French amusements.”
Barker flushed deeply. “Naturally, Virgil. Yes. I’m up this way.” His voice dropped, for no apparent reason, to the flimsiest of whispers. “The mezzanine, you know.”
I followed Barker’s neatly attired back-side up the stairs, wondering what he wanted of me, how he could afford to stay at the Pendleton, and why in heaven’s name I’d agreed to come at all. There’d been nothing in our first meeting, certainly, that led me to think I’d stand to profit from another. I’d have written him off as a moderately cunning fool, best kept clear of, if not for the Redeemer’s reaction to his name—; it was this mystery, I decided, and nothing else, that kept me climbing the Pendleton’s gilt-trimmed stairs.
And yet, even as I recall that day — that fateful day which was to invert my life, which had up-ended it already, leaving me kicking helplessly in mid-air — I see that I had a second motive, more telling than the first. My confidence in Reason, under slow but relentless siege since my admission to the Trade, was suddenly on the verge of full extinction. That the Yellowjack should lay waste to one side of the city, then stop short, as if held back by surveyor’s tape, leaving the other side chaste and industrious and bright, was too much for my battered brain to fathom—; but I’d seen beyond all doubt that it was so. I’d begun to question the evidence of my clear, hale, unwavering right eye, the eye that had never once endeavored to deceive me.