The Six Messiahs

Bendigo pretended not to hear their insults but dropped the poetic approach in favor of a more direct line of reasoning. 'We've another train to catch, lady and gents, and if you expect to collect your wages this morning, you will remove your rear ends from these seats in short order and carry them along with your luggage to the station!'

Perpetually vulnerable to economic arguments, the Players began to grumble and stir. Peering up from her position on the seat, Eileen saw two enormous pheasant feathers bouncing up and down the aisle: He's wearing that ridiculous Tyrolean cap again, she realized, the one that makes him look like Robin Hood gone to seed. God, what an annoying man!

'Will you be staying in Phoenix long, Jacob?' asked Eileen, as she stumbled out of the car, shielding her eyes against the bright desert sunrise. Her legs felt rusted from sleeping in her seat, and one glance in a hand mirror proved traumatizing; hair tangled as a bramble bush, makeup ruined; mornings were frightful enough ordeals for a woman to begin with and far worse while on the road. Why did he have to see her like this?

'To be perfectly honest, my dear, I haven't the slightest idea,' said Jacob good-naturedly, breathing deeply. 'This air is marvelous, isn't it? Dry but with a refreshing warmth to it and heavily scented with flowers.'

'It's a little early for me, Jacob,' she said, thinking he could make a trip to the dentist sound like a country picnic.

'But can't you smell it? It's almost sweet to the taste.'

'Life on the road, love; for we jaded sophisticates, one stop is pretty much the same as another.'

'What a pity; think how much you must miss.'

'This from a man who hasn't left his library in fifteen years.'

'And realizing the error of his ways, I assure you. But how fantastic to travel so much; you must have seen the entire country by now. Where are you off to next?'

'Our head thespian has booked us a week in some godforsaken whistlestop somewhere out west of here____'

'Where is that?'

'Don't know; some sort of religious settlement—what's it called again, Bendigo?' she asked Rymer as he hurled by them. 'This oasis you're taking us to.'

'The New City; capital T on the 'The,' ' said Rymer, racing to oversee the transfer of sets and costumes to their connecting train. 'A joy to meet you, Rabbi. May God always shield you from the storm.'

'And you, sir.'

'Lord, he makes my teeth hurt sometimes,' said Eileen.

When they reached the planked platform of the terminal, Eileen set down her makeup case, looked at Jacob frankly, and smiled, a winsome blend of affection and regret. 'I'm sorry to say we're moving on within the hour actually.'

Jacob swallowed hard and looked down at his feet, shuffling them on the knotted wood. What's the matter with you, Jacob? She's a beautiful woman less than half your age that you've known for twelve hours whom you're never going to see again and you're behaving like a heartsick schoolboy. He groped through his thoughts, desperate for a conversation starter.

'What sort of religious settlement is this place you're going?'

'Like the Mormons, I guess. Bendigo's been as evasive as usual,' she said, hearing the man's raised voice and turning to see him in the distance screaming bloody murder at some poor railroad hand transferring their sets between trains: Rymer had a gift for terrorizing menials.

'Like the Mormons in what way?'

'He didn't say. They probably all keep twenty-five wives apiece; a regular Sodom.'

Jacob blushed and Eileen instantly regretted her off-color tone, unused to censoring herself and feeling unladylike, realizing how long it had been since she'd kept company with a man who made her feel any other way.

'Actually all he's told us is it's in the middle of the desert and they've built themselves an opera house and they're very keen to have some first-rate entertainment come through. So why they hired us is anyone's guess.'

'I hope this place is not too dangerous.'

'Compared to some of the dumps we've been, how bad could it be? Looking forward to it, actually; he said they're building a great big black castle out there that's really something to see.'

Ice water would not have been more effective: Jacob snapped instantly to his senses. 'What sort of castle?'

Before she could answer, a sharp whistle cut through the clatter of the station; her eye was drawn toward Rymer and the trains: fifty yards off, halfway between them, some kind of commotion behind a stack of cotton bales. She could see people moving toward the disturbance: a struggle?

Two guards rushed out of the station behind them; Eileen and some other passengers on the platform pointed them toward the cotton bales. The guards blew their own whistles and pulled their pistols as they ran.

Somewhere a shot was fired.

'What's going on?' she asked.

'I don't know,' said Jacob.

'Which way to the roof?' asked Jack.

'I'll show you,' said Stern. 'What about the books?'

'Bring them both,' said Doyle.

'I thought we wanted them to take the copy,' said Stern.

'We do but we don't want it to seem too easy,' said Jack.

'We don't even know if these are the same men,' said Doyle.

Footsteps crashing up the stairs. Stern slipped the original Zohar into a well-worn leather pouch while Jack picked up the copy.

'And we don't care to wait and find out. Which way?' asked Jack.

'Follow me,' said Stern. He stuffed the Gerona Zohar under his arm like a football and led them out the nearest door, through a warren of cramped rooms connected by tiny L-shaped corridors, and up a seldom-used set of back stairs.

'They' were the Houston Dusters, a street gang with a talent for prolific, unparalleled violence. The Dusters had ruled the Lower East Side from Houston Street to East Broadway for a generation, but new gangs were always stepping up to challenge their borders, in addition to their traditional antagonisms with more established outfits like the Gophers, the Five Pointers, the Fashion Plates, and the rising tongs of Chinatown.

Economic hardship, collapse of the immigrant family structure—nearly all the Dusters were first- or second- generation Irish—and society's failure to provide a legitimate toehold for its disadvantaged undoubtedly contributed to the flourishing of gang culture, but when you came right down to the heart of the matter, the matter, the Dusters were a bunch of wrong guys, a character flaw that had never proved a detriment to getting ahead in New York. These ruffians absorbed the lesson early in life that a career in crime might be a disreputable path to prosperity and the American dream, but it was a crowded shortcut.

Unmistakable, intimidating figures in their neighborhood, well over two hundred in number, the Dusters communicated with a vocabulary of savage war whoops inspired by the Indians their leader once saw in Buffalo Bill Cody's Wild West Extravaganza at Madison Square Garden. The nattiest of East Side gangs, they sported round, heavily padded leather caps that pulled down over the ears and doubled as protective helmets, steel-toed hobnail boots—the better to stomp you with— and pants with a loud red stripe running down the leg, symbolizing their fleetness of foot. Blades, concrete-filled lead pipes, and home-crafted blackjacks were their weapons of choice. The gang's code of honor considered shooting your enemy at a distance a coward's way to settle disputes. Blood on your hands, that was the Duster motto.

For the last nine years, the Dusters had been commanded by a ruthless evil-eyed weasel named Ding-Dong Dunham, an unusually robust term of office in the gang racket. Ding-Dong had clawed his way up through the ranks, equipped with the sociopath's advantage of caring not a penny for the value of human life: His nickname derived from the greeting Dunham used to gleefully scream in the ears of robbery victims after his spiked cudgel connected with their hats. He also had a penchant for writing epic poems about the more fanciful acts of mayhem he and his