Smithback heard a hearty yell. “Hey, friend!”
He turned. There were the two bums, fiery-faced now, holding on to each other, staggering up the sidewalk. One of them lifted a paper bag. “Have a drink on us!”
Smithback took out another twenty and held it up in front of the bigger and dirtier of the two. “Tell you what. In a few minutes, you’ll see a thin lady dressed in black come out of this building with two guys. Her name’s Millie. Give her a really big hug and kiss for me, will you? The sloppier the better.”
“You bet!” The man snatched the bill and stuffed it into his pocket.
Smithback went down the street toward Broadway, feeling marginally better.
EIGHT
ANTHONY FAIRHAVEN SETTLED HIS LEAN, MUSCULAR FRAME INTO THE chair, spread a heavy linen napkin across his lap, and examined the breakfast that lay before him. It was minuscule, yet arrayed with excessive care on the crisp white damask: a china glass of tea, two water biscuits, royal jelly. He drained the tea in a single toss, nibbled absently at the cracker, then wiped his lips and signaled the maid for his papers with a curt motion.
The sun streamed in through the curved glass wall of his breakfast atrium. From his vantage point atop the Metropolitan Tower, all of Manhattan lay prostrate at his feet, glittering in the dawn light, windows winking pink and gold. His own personal New World, waiting for him to claim his Manifest Destiny. Far below, the dark rectangle of Central Park lay like a gravedigger’s hole in the midst of the great city. The light was just clipping the tops of the trees, the shadows of the buildings along Fifth Avenue lying across the park like bars.
There was a rustle and the maid laid the two papers before him, the New York Times and the Wall Street Journal. Freshly ironed, as he insisted. He picked up the Times and unfolded it, the warm scent of newsprint reaching his nostrils, the sheets crisp and dry. He gave the paper a little shake to loosen it, and turned to the front page. He scanned the headlines. Middle East peace talks, mayoral election debates, earthquake in Indonesia. He glanced below the fold.
Momentarily, he stopped breathing.
NEWLY DISCOVERED LETTER SHEDS LIGHT ON
19TH-CENTURY KILLINGS
BY WILLIAM SMITHBACK JR.
He blinked his eyes, took a long, deep breath, and began to read.
NEW YORK—October 8. A letter has been found in the archives of the New York Museum of Natural History that may help explain the grisly charnel discovered in lower Manhattan early last week.
In that discovery, workmen constructing a residential tower at the corner of Henry and Catherine streets unearthed a basement tunnel containing the remains of thirty-six young men and women. The remains had been walled up in a dozen alcoves in what was apparently an old coal tunnel dating from the middle of the nineteenth century. Preliminary forensic analysis showed that the victims had been dissected, or perhaps autopsied, and subsequently dismembered. Preliminary dating of the site by an archaeologist, Nora Kelly, of the New York Museum of Natural History, indicated that the killings had occurred between 1872 and 1881, when the corner was occupied by a three-story building housing a private museum known as “J. C. Shottum’s Cabinet of Natural Productions and Curiosities.” The cabinet burned in 1881, and Shottum died in the fire.
In subsequent research, Dr. Kelly discovered the letter, which was written by J. C. Shottum himself. Written shortly before Shottum’s death, it describes his uncovering of the medical experiments of his lodger, a taxonomist and chemist by the name of Enoch Leng. In the letter, Shottum alleged that Leng was conducting surgical experiments on human subjects, in an attempt to prolong his own life. The experiments appear to have involved the surgical removal of the lower portion of the spinal cord from a living subject. Shottum appended to his letter several passages from Leng’s own detailed journal of his experiments. A copy of the letter was obtained by the New York Times.