inauguratory contribution, except to escort Sara earlier that day; and as we fairly well carried Lucius Isaacson to a cab, the clock in Del’s having long since tolled two, I combed my rather fuzzy mind for a way to right that situation. What I came up with was equally fuzzy: after getting Sara and Kreizler a hansom and saying good night to them (he would drop her off at Gramercy Park), I turned south and made for Paresis Hall.
CHAPTER 11
Knowing that I would need to be on my toes once I reached the hall, I decided to walk the mile or so to Cooper Square and let the cold air sober me up a bit. Broadway was nearly deserted, except for the occasional group of young men in white uniforms who were shoveling snow into large wagons. This was the private army of Colonel Waring, the street-cleaning genius who had tidied up Providence, Rhode Island, and then been imported to work the same magic in New York. Waring’s boys were unquestionably efficient—the amount of snow, horse manure, and general garbage on the streets had declined sharply since their advent—but their uniforms apparently made them think that they had some sort of enforcement status. Every so often a kid of about fourteen, dressed in one of Waring’s white tunics and helmets, would catch a less than stellar citizen throwing refuse carelessly onto the street and try to make an arrest. It was impossible to convince these zealots that they had no such authority, and the incidents continued. Sometimes they ended in violence, a record of which the boys were proud—and one which made me cautious as I passed them that night. My gait must have given away my condition, however, for as I walked by several teams of broom- and shovel-wielding vigilantes, they took my measure suspiciously, making it clear that if I wanted to soil the streets, I’d better do it in some other town.
By the time I reached Cooper Square I was feeling fairly alert and mighty cold. As I passed the big, brown mass of Cooper Union I began to think of the large glass of brandy I intended to order at Paresis Hall; I was thus caught thoroughly off guard when a workmen’s truck, bearing the legend GENOVESE & SONS—IRON WORKS —BKLYN., N.Y., came careening around the north end of Cooper Square Park behind a huffing gray horse that looked like he’d rather be anywhere than out on such a night. The truck ground to a halt, and four toughs in miner’s caps got out of the back, rushing into the park. They soon reappeared, dragging two expensively dressed men.
“Filthy fags!” one of the toughs shouted, catching the first man a nice blow across the face with what appeared to be a piece of pipe. Blood came instantly from the man’s nose and mouth, spattering across his clothes and onto the snow. “Get off the streets, if you want to bugger each other!”
Two of the other ambassadors from Brooklyn held the second man, who appeared older than the first, while a third put his face close. “Like to fuck boys, do you?”
“I’m sorry, but you’re really not my sort,” the man answered, with a composure that made me think this had happened to him before. “I like young men who bathe.” That one cost him three solid blows to the stomach, after which he doubled over and retched onto the frozen ground.
It was one of those moments for fast thinking: I could jump in and get
“Hey!” I shouted at the toughs, and they turned their cold-blooded stares on me. “You boys’d better watch it—there’s half a dozen cops on their way, saying no guineas from Brooklyn better start anything in the Fifteenth Precinct!”
“Oh, there are, eh?” said the tough who seemed to be the leader, as he moved back to the truck. “And which way’re they coming from?”
“Right down Broadway!” I said, jerking a thumb behind me.
“Come on, boys!” said the tough. “Let’s settle some mick hash!” That brought shouts and cheers from the other three as they piled into the truck and headed up Broadway, asking if I wanted to come along but not waiting for an answer.
I moved over to the two injured men, but could only say, “Do you need—” before they ran off in full flight, the older man clutching his ribs and moving with difficulty. I realized that when the toughs failed to find the cops, they’d probably return for me, and I therefore moved quickly across the Bowery under the tracks of the Third Avenue Elevated to Biff Ellison’s place.
Paresis Hall’s electric sign was still burning bright at close to three in the morning. The joint had taken its name from a patent medicine that advertised in dive toilets, promising protection and relief from the more serious social diseases. The windows of the Hall were shaded, and honest citizens of the neighborhood were grateful for that fact. Inside the busy doorway—around which stood a wide range of effeminate men and boys, all of them attempting to drum up business with entering and departing customers—was a long, brass-railed bar, along with a large number of round wooden tables and simple chairs of the sort that were easily broken in fights and easily replaced afterwards. A rough stage had been built at the far end of the long, high-ceilinged room, on which more boys and men in various stages of female dress cavorted to lively yet discordant music provided by a piano, clarinet, and violin.
The essential purpose of Paresis Hall was to arrange affairs between customers and the various types of prostitutes who worked there. This second group included everything from youths like Giorgio Santorelli to homosexuals who did not favor women’s clothes to the occasional bona fide female, who hung about in the hope that some one of the souls who wandered in would rediscover his heterosexuality to her profit. Most of the assignations worked out in the Hall took place at cheap hotels in the neighborhood, though the second floor had a dozen or so rooms out of which young boys who particularly pleased Ellison were allowed to conduct their business.
But what was more distinctive about the Hall, along with only a few other such places in town, was a near total lack of the secretiveness that usually marked homosexual dealings in the city. Released from the need to be in any way careful, Ellison’s patrons cavorted raucously and spent freely, and the Hall did enormous business. In the end, however, neither the scale nor the unusualness of its operations could keep it from being at heart like any other dive: sordid, smoky, and thoroughly disheartening.
I hadn’t been inside the door thirty seconds before there was a small but strong arm around my torso and a cold piece of metal at my throat. The sudden aroma of lilac alerted me to Ellison’s presence in the general area behind me; and I assumed that the metal I felt was the signature weapon of one of Biff’s cronies, Razor Riley. Riley was a skinny, dangerous little miscreant from Hell’s Kitchen who, though a Gopher, occasionally ran with and worked for Ellison, whose sexual preferences he shared.
“I thought Kelly and me made ourselves pretty clear the other day, Moore,” Ellison boomed. I still couldn’t see him. “You ain’t tying me to the Santorelli business. You gutsy or just crazy coming in here like this?”
“Neither, Biff,” I said, as clearly as extreme fear would allow: Riley was notoriously fond of cutting people up. “I just wanted you to know that I did you a good turn.”
Ellison laughed. “
“I told the commissioner you didn’t have anything to do with it,” I gasped.
He came close, his thick lips parting to release the stench of bad whiskey. “Yeah?” he said, his little eyes gleaming. “And did you convince him?”
“Sure,” I said.
“Oh? How?”
“Simple. I told him it wasn’t your style.”
Ellison had to pause as the mass of cells that, in his case, passed for a brain mulled this over. Then he smiled. “Say—you’re right, Moore. It
At that the several employees and customers who had gathered to see if there would be bloodshed dispersed in disappointment. I turned to the wiry figure of Razor Riley and watched as he folded his favorite weapon,
