“Had to change,” Jack called over his shoulder as he sprinted up the stairs two at a time. Really he should have stopped to see the barber—he ran a hand over the bristle on his jaw—but better unshaved than late. He paused long enough to make sure that his collar was straight and slipped into the back of the room, where thirty of New York’s detectives sat talking among themselves, steadfastly ignoring the men at the front of the room.
He found a chair next to his partner in the last row. Oscar Maroney had a dearly held theory, one Jack had never been able to disprove: it was best to be humorless and forgettable while in the station house. Invisibility was a valuable skill that had to be practiced. But today Maroney was violating his own rule, because the expression on his face was anything but blank. Oscar was not just unhappy, but unhappy in a way that he would not be able to keep to himself.
“Brace yourself, Jack.” Maroney could summon, temper, or banish his brogue as needed, and now it simmered just below the surface. “Comstock’s on the hunt for victims. Pardon, I mean volunteers.” He wrinkled his substantial nose and lifted a lip at the same time so that his mustache jumped. He had a wide range of insulted, angry, accusatory, and reproachful expressions, and he used more than a few of them now.
Jack turned his attention to the front of the room, where the captain stood leaning against the wall, arms folded, chin on his chest. Front and center was the focus of Oscar’s hate. Anthony Comstock, dressed as he always was, summer and winter, in a black wool suit somber enough for a pulpit.
The postal inspector was a squat, solid plug of a man with muttonchop whiskers that stood out like bristles on the face of a boar, a shiny pale pate, and a small mouth as well defined as a woman’s. He had the censorious gaze of a bantam rooster, his eyes darting back and forth, ready to draw blood to keep his flock in line. Eager to draw blood. He was a bully of the first order, the worst Jack had ever seen in a career populated by bullies.
Baker knocked on the wall to get their attention, and Comstock threw his shoulders back and raised his arms like an orchestra conductor.
“My name and mission will be well known to you,” he began. “I am Anthony Comstock, senior inspector of the Society for the Suppression of Vice and special agent to the post office by appointment of the postmaster general of the president’s cabinet. I’m here to talk to you as officers of the law about a matter of grave importance.”
He drew in a ponderous breath that filled his cheeks and escaped with a soft hiss.
“Any God-fearing, thinking man knows that lust is the boon companion of all other crimes. In their wisdom the Congress of this great country has vested me with the responsibility to stop the posting, sale, loan, exhibition, advertisement, publishing, dissemination, or possession of the obscene and profane. You will all be familiar with the kinds of materials I’m talking about—” He paused, brows raised, as though he hoped someone would contradict him. Jack saw now that there was a small box beside him on the desk on which he rested a fist as if to keep some vermin safely within.
“His own personal treasure chest,” Maroney said in a low voice, following Jack’s gaze. “The Larkin brothers are determined to have it before he leaves the building.”
There were five Larkin brothers on the force, two of them sergeant detectives sitting in the front row, two more roundsmen on duty somewhere in the city, and the youngest new to the force. Good officers, for the most part, but irreverent practical jokers of the first order, a leaning that would have cost them friends if they had not practiced on each other with such obvious enjoyment. But they couldn’t be called incorruptible.
Of course, Comstock was by far the biggest crook, and worse, he was spiteful, vengeful, and mean to the bone. In Comstock’s case Jack could not begrudge the Larkins whatever larceny they were planning.
Comstock was saying, “It is also my duty to seize any drug or instrument of any kind that may interfere with conception or bring on abortion. Items I have seized range from informational booklets to objects made of rubber and designed for immoral purposes. The punishment for the guilty is severe. Anyone engaged in these pursuits is subject to a sentence of hard labor for a minimum of six months and a maximum of five years, and a fine of up to two thousand dollars.”
He paused to survey the room. Most of the squad looked back at him as if they were deaf and hadn’t taken in a word, while a few others—Maroney among them—were openly contemptuous.