“Who put it there?”
“God.”
I made a face. She ignored it, which is usually the best thing to do with my face, and went on.
“We rebuilt the ministry around it,” she said. “We survived.”
“I’d like to see where it appeared.”
“Go. I’ll check on Enoch. Tenderhearted boy. Mam shouldn’t have made him come.”
She left me behind and I walked on to inspect the rough pile of half-buried stone. There I found the strange drift of snow and the body of the redheaded man. It was only a vagrant, I told myself. No one could get killed over a missing finger. His mystery was not mine.
As we walked out of the Thicket, I hung a few feet behind. Part of me still doubted the Byrds could be as innocent as they appeared. Part of me always doubts. That is the part that thrills at the sight of a murdered man, that relishes questions whose answers can be fatal. That is the part I wish I could silence forever.
“When was the last time you came by the church?” I said, seeing the blood, the red hair, the skin frozen and cracked.
“Years ago,” said Enoch.
“Does anyone ever come here?”
“No one in the family,” said Judy. “But there are people who live in the Thicket, and people who pass through. Why?”
We stepped onto Houston Street, where the trees stopped as sharply as a sentence. The wind blew in icy from the Hudson. Clouds hid the stars.
“I’ve spent a week and a half on this case,” I said. “I’ve heard nothing but good things about you and your family. I’ve turned up no trace of the finger, no sign that anyone would do you harm.”
“So?” said Judy.
“This is the Westside. No one is so pure. Everyone has enemies.”
Judy looked at her brother, asking permission to say something she had been trying to keep to herself.
“It’s not right,” said Enoch. “He’s family.”
“He’s a scoundrel.”
“Still.”
“Who?” I said.
And she told me about her other brother.
The Basement Club went on forever. The bar ran the length of the room; the earth floor was studded with melted snow, vomit, and blood. Built in a pit where a Bleecker Street apartment house used to be, it was below street level and had a low ceiling of irregular boards that kept out snow but let in damp. Rubber hoses snaked out of the bar at one-foot intervals. Drop a nickel in the slot and out slid a trickle of gin to be caught with a cup, if the patron brought one, or a mouth. A tangle of machinery ran the length of the place, whirring and clanging as the poison poured. There was no music, no talk, no chairs—just the cheapest drunk on the Westside. It was fiendishly popular.
Judy and Enoch left me at the door, proving that there were places of sin too filthy even for them. I entered through a turnstile that shot a ticket into my palm, which told me I was the seventy-third patron of the night.
I paid my nickel and cupped my palms under the hose, slurping up whatever didn’t run through my fingers. I wiped my hands on the patron to my left, who was glassy with drink, his mouth stained bloody by the beet red liquor. The bartender surveyed his automated gin mill from a high chair, a lifeguard ignoring an ocean of drowning men. After several minutes’ concentrated effort, and another few mouthfuls of gin, I caught his eye.
He was short and broad, with bushy hair and a nose like a ball of cookie dough squashed flat. His candy-striped uniform was a dizzying mess of black and green. On his chest was a wrinkled slip of paper, held with safety pins, that read “64.” He smoothed it with his wrist as he climbed down from his perch and walked my way. His name was Abner Byrd.
“He’s a scourge,” Judy had said. “I’m sorry, brother, but it’s true. Walked out on us when he was sixteen, and he’s spent the last thirty years sinking deeper and deeper into sin. Doesn’t speak to us except once or twice a year, when he crashes into the church, blind drunk, to scream that there is no god but death.”
“He is a difficult case,” admitted Enoch. “But God would ask us to forgive.”
“I’ll forgive when he gives us the finger back. He’s the only rat on the Westside low enough to steal it. He’d do it just to watch us cry.”
As I looked Abner in the face now, I wondered if that was true. The prodigal Byrd leaned on the bar and spoke, sleepy and slow.
“Trouble with the tube?” he said. “Sometimes a roach’ll die in there and it’ll get plugged. Let me get the pipe cleaner.”
“The gin flows free.”
“Then why the eye?”
“I’m looking for the finger of Saint Róisín.”
I flicked out a card that read g. carr: tiny mysteries solved. It landed in a puddle of gin on the bar and soaked up the liquor thirstily. Abner glanced at the panel of smoked glass mounted above the bar. A bell rang.
“I’m on the clock,” he said.
“Your siblings think you took it.”
He stalked mechanically down the bar, clearing each tube with a swift jerk, smacking awake any sleeping drunk and telling him to buy another round or get out. I followed him, calling questions from across the trench.
“But why?” I said. “A pickled finger’s worth nothing. All it does is hurt your family, and why would you wound such fine people?”
“If you’re not drinking, you need to leave.”
I dropped another nickel and refilled my mouth. I swallowed without gagging and kept my eyes locked with his. He did not look like the vicious bastard Judy had painted. He was just another flop scrambling to hang on.
“Where were you on the night of the twenty-third?” I said.
“I don’t know.”
The bell rang, then rang again.
“What’s that bell?” I said.
“My timekeeper. Behind the glass. Adjusting my rating. I’m only a 64. If I fall any further . . .”
“Did you take it?”
“No!”
“Can you prove it?”
He marched down the bar on that windup-toy gait, past glass so dark it was impossible to see what the timekeeper was doing or if he was even there. He came back with a fat ledger, which he dropped on the bar, taking care to keep it away from the gin.
“The twenty-third?” he said, opening to the most detailed time sheet I had ever seen. “What time?”
“Between dark and dawn.”
“I was here. I’m always here. More specific? From 6 to 6:07, I’m in the chair. 6:08 to 6:22, I’m greasing the mechanism. 6:23 to 6:34, I’m fighting with that fat bastard at the end of the bar about how he can’t bring food in here. 6:35 to—”
“I understand.”
“I’ve had a lot of bad jobs,” he said. “Sweeping floors. Hauling trash. This is the only place ever left me feeling less than human.”
The bell rang three times, then a fourth, then a fifth.
“Oh, hell,” said Abner, his puffy face suddenly oozing sweat. “Hell, hell, goddamn it to hell.”
Abner slammed the ledger and rumbled off in an imitation of running. The bell rang faster and sharper until it was one long tone. The patrons responded with a dull, animal roar. I launched myself across the deep wood. One of the gin swillers tried to drag me back, but I loosened his grip with a kick to the jaw. I ran after Abner. He threw open a panel on the far wall, gripped a smooth wooden crank, and whipped it around with all the speed he could muster. The drunks cheered him on.