"My mother's funeral is on Wednesday," I said. "The day after that is my birthday. On Friday, I'll go back to New York. You'll never see me again."
Mullan spun away and went back to the police car.
•77
•The remaining firefighters aimed their hoses at the smoldering mound beneath the rows of concrete blocks. A corner post jutted up into the smoke like a used kitchen match. Somewhere down there, whatever was left of OttoBremenwaited to be unearthed. A photographer set off a heartless flash of light that exposed the remains of a shattered wall, a picture frame, a twisted metal lamp. Side by side in front of a fire engine, Helen Janette and Mr. Tite numbly watched flames poke out of the wreckage.
At the sight of me, Helen Janette quivered and stepped back. Mr.
Tite moved between us. "What are we supposed to do now? Got ananswer for that?"
"Someone will find you a place to stay," I said. "You're not the first people to be burned out of their house."
Enraged, Helen Janette moved beside him. "You should be in jail, you lunatic! Burn me out of house and home."
“I'm not the person who burned you out of house and home, Mrs. Janette." She muttered something I could not hear. "Can you tell me what happened?"
“If you think you have to know. I woke up and smelled smoke. I went out of my room. There was fire all over the floor and fire running up the stairs. You could hardly see for the smoke. I banged on Mr. Tite's door, and we ran down the hall to help Miss Carpenter, Miss Burgess, and Mrs. Feldman out the back door. Mrs. Feldman almost got me killed looking for her fur coat, which is the last time I do a favor for that woman. The girls climbed out through their window, and we all came around and tried to wake up Mr. Bremen. One of the neighbors must have called the Fire Department, because the trucks came about two minutes later. By then the whole house was burning."
“It started in the basement," I said.
"You know where it started," she said. "What I want to know is, where am I going to stay? All my cash is down in that hole, along with my credit cards and my checkbook."
"Some money recently came to me," I said. "Four hundred and eighty dollars. I'll split it with you. You and Mr. Tite can get a room for the night and buy some clothes in the morning."
"You're joking."
I reached for my wallet and counted out $240.
"We don't take blood money," said Mr. Tite.
"Speak for yourself, Frank." She held out her hand, and I put the bills onto her palm. “I'm not too proud to accept charity."
“I'm glad I can help," I said. "And I'd be grateful for whatever you can tell me about the night I was born."
She thought about it for a couple of seconds. "For an even three hundred. Clothes cost money."
I counted out another three twenties. "You were supposed to bring out a baby that night. But everything went crazy during the storm, and the baby died."
"That baby was born dead."
“I know. But then my mother unexpectedly delivered twins, and the second one came out so easily it might as well have been the placenta."
"Came outwith the placenta. It was so dark, I didn't know what was going on until I caught it in my hands. I'm going to give you a good home, I said to myself."
"Through Toby Kraft. Who set you up in the rooming-house business after you served your time."
"What the hell are you people talking about?" Mr. Tite said. "There was no other baby, the night of the storm."
"You don't know," she said. “I never told you, but now I can say what I like. I served my time." She looked back at me, her eyes dark with anger. "We had asystem. Our system rescued innocent babies from terrible homes. The judge admitted that."
“It was for the good of the children," said Mr. Tite. I almost laughed out loud.
"You took the second baby from the delivery room in the middle of the storm. Where did you put him?"
"Same place I put you. Down the hall, in the nursery."
"Only that didn't happen," said Mr. Tite.
Helen Janette whirled on him. "What jail did they put you in, Frank? I forget the name." She turned back to me. “I cleaned him up in the dark, same as you. In the nursery, there was a cradle marked Dunstan, and I found it with my flashlight, and I picked you up and put him in it. Then I brought you back to your mother. 'I had twins,' she said, 'where's the other one?' I told her it was only the placenta, and then the lights went back on. I made my report to the doctor. I told him what your mother said, so he wouldn't be surprised later. Then I went back to the nursery. Nearly died of a heart attack. The Dunstan cradle was empty. I thought I put it in the wrong cradle by mistake, but the ones on either side were empty, too."
"Someone else grabbed the kid?" said Mr. Tite.
“It didn't get up and walk out by itself. I think it was that Mrs. Landon, the one who had the stillbirth. I think she snuck out to the nursery, picked up the baby, and hid it in her bedclothes. She checked out of the hospital as soon as the storm was over. I didn't realize it was probably her until the next day. Her records said her address was the Hotel Paris, but she checked out of there the same morning she left the hospital."
"You tried to find her," I said.
“I was thinking about the health of that baby."
She had been thinking about the health of her wallet. And then I thought:Maybe Robert did get out of the cradle and leave by himself.
“If you burned down my house to get back at me, it was all for nothing."
She tugged at the sleeve of Mr. Tite's robe and led him to a policeman seated at the wheel of a squad car. After a few words, the officer let them in, turned on his lights, and drove down the street toward me. Helen Janette was looking straight ahead. I followed their tail lights as far as Word Street.
•A minute or two after entering the first of the lanes, I got the same prickly feeling I'd had before seeing Frenchy La Chapelle's imitation of an innocent pedestrian. I glanced over my shoulder at an empty lane and shuttered buildings. I began walking faster as I turned into Leather. Either one of Captain Mullan's dirtbags had taken an interest in me, or recent events had made me unreasonably jumpy. The latter sounded closer to reality.
On the other hand, Frenchy had trailed me to the rooming house. Maybe he had set the fire and discovered that he had killed the wrong person. Where Fish crossed Mutton, I came to a halt beside a burned-out street lamp and looked back at a dark, dimensionless well that could have hidden a dozen men. A few cars swished along Word Street. In a nearby lane, a man hawked up sputum. I heard no other sounds, but the back of my neck still prickled.
Fish Lane intersected Raspberry and Button before meeting the fifty feet of Wax leading to Veal Yard. On an ordinary night, this distance would have been no more than a short, not uninteresting walk; with the specter of Frenchy La Chapelle lurking behind me, it felt like a wasteland. I quickened my step and moved into the next length of the narrow lane.
A nearly inaudible sound like a footfall came from behind me. If I had been walking along Commercial Avenue in daylight, I don't think I would have heard it. In the confines of Fish Lane, the little sound made me spin around. I could see only empty buildings and the dull reflection of starlight on the cobbles. Joe Staggers had not stopped looking for me, I remembered.
I ran the rest of the way to Raspberry, darted across the intersection of the lanes, and raced toward the hovering gray haze marking the crossing of Fish and Button. Although I could not hear footsteps at my back, Ifelt the approach of a pursuing figure. I shot across Button and heard another delicate footfall. My heart nearly burst. I raced up the lane and glanced over my shoulder a second before I swung into Wax.