“That Cole feller. Is he one of them Jefferson County Coles?”
Billy spat tobacco juice out the window and nodded. He’d been able to catch his uncle coming back from the privy after lunch and ask him briefly about Cole while beyond earshot from the others.
“Grandpa Abel knowed his daddy from way back,” he said. “Orville Cole. Uncle Hoyt told me our families been working together almost twenty years. Delmond and his brothers are running the business for the Coles now. Delmond is the fixer.”
Tyler knew the basics – that half of the whiskey the Emorys sold up and down the C&O Canal was produced by the Cole family in West Virginia, and that it took less than a day for the Coles to boat barrels from their home in Jefferson County down to Weverton. Just ten miles down the Shenandoah River to Harpers Ferry, across the Potomac, through the feeder lock, and two miles down the canal to a landing at the end of a dirt road. So Billy filled him in on what he’d heard about Delmond Cole.
“There was a feller that worked for Orville Cole about ten years back. Been with the family since Delmond was a kid. I guess he had some kind of dispute with the family over money, and he got sore enough to shoot up a half-dozen barrels of Cole family whiskey. Ruined almost a month’s production. Delmond was younger than you are now, but he walked into that feller’s cabin, found him sleeping off a drunk, and cut off his thumbs with garden shears.
“After that the word started to get around, so most folks played it straight with the Cole family. But there was a judge in Charles Town who didn’t stay bought – sent one of the Cole brothers to jail for tax fraud. Someone shot that judge and cut him up, left the pieces for the crows at the town dump. They was never able to make a case against Delmond, but people always said he done it. They said he never got over his wife dying when she had their first kid. The baby died too.”
Billy pulled into his father’s driveway, cut the engine, and let the truck coast to a stop in front of the shed. He shifted into neutral and turned toward Tyler.
“Then a few years back a jailbird that knowed Clyde Cole in prison cut a deal with the Jefferson County prosecutor. Told him where one of the Cole family stills was hid. The Coles got wind of it in time and took it apart before the police showed up. After that they went looking for the rat. Clyde passed word out from his cell that the feller was in Florida, staying with another jailbird on Marco Island. Delmond found him in one of the bays a month later and fed him to the gators.”
Billy grabbed his Stetson from the seat and swung the truck door open, so Tyler did the same. “What does Cole do when he ain’t tracking down fellers the family don’t like?” Tyler asked as they headed for their father’s front door.
“Special projects. That’s what Uncle Hoyt called it,” Billy said. “And he cuts firewood. The logs that Kevin and Tom was taking down to Georgetown on the scow, covering up the barrels. Delmond runs that part of the business.”
Chapter 6
House Call
Sunday, April 6, 1924
Jake stood on Gladys’ uninjured left side with his arms around her upper neck while April used two fingers to stroke the mule’s nose between the bridle bands. Gladys was tethered to a rail behind the lockhouse, but they needed to keep her as still as possible while Doc Cushing examined the puncture at the base of her neck. Jake felt her neck muscles tremble and twitch as the doctor gently palpated the area and used his hands on the surrounding skin to slowly dilate the wound. He peered into the defect for a long time.
“I think whatever stabbed her is still in there,” he said, releasing his hands and looking at Jake. “I’ll need hot water, a bar of soap, a clean towel, and an empty jar.”
“April, you know where everything is,” Jake said, removing his arms from Gladys’ neck. They’d already put a kettle of water on the stove.
“That’s a nice name,” the doctor said as they watched April cross the flood-stained yard to the lockhouse.
Jake turned to look at Doc Cushing, who was pushing his eyeglasses back up to the bridge of his nose. He’d met the horse doctor yesterday at his farm outside Poolesville after riding Bertie into town and being referred by the manager of a general store. Before visiting, Jake had stopped by the post office to mail a letter to his parents, telling them it would likely be a week or more before he could set off for Sharpsburg with the mules.
Jake wasn’t sure if Doc Cushing was really a doctor or if that was just what people called him. The store manager said people from twenty miles around would send for him if one of their horses got sick or hurt. Jake had been relieved that the name seemed unfamiliar and happy that his own name had set off no alarm bells. He’d expressed his gratitude when the doctor agreed to come out to Edwards Ferry to see Gladys on a Sunday.
Doc Cushing said he bred, bought, sold, and wintered horses and mules on his farm. He looked to be in his late forties or early fifties, and seemed content to apply his skills in a small family operation, working with his wife and grown daughter. Based on the doctor’s soft-spoken demeanor, Jake guessed he might not be comfortable pursuing opportunities to expand his business by taking on employees or partners, even if the opportunities were obvious and he had the means. For Jake, Doc Cushing was the kind of prospect he’d pursued avidly while working for Franklin Blyth. The twinge of guilt this recognition triggered made him want to tell Doc Cushing the truth.
“It’s not her real name,” he said. “I’m just calling her April.”
Doc Cushing’s laugh sounded like a reflex, as if he’d been struck on the funnybone below his kneecap. “Does she have a foreign name? Some kind of tongue-twister like Aphrodite or Appolonia?”
Jake shook his head with a resigned expression on his face. “She doesn’t know her real name, first or last. Doesn’t know her family or where she’s from. Says she can’t remember anything that happened before last weekend.”
Doc Cushing issued a low whistle. “I’ve heard that can happen, usually after some kind of assault or accident. I think they call it amnesia. But I’ve never seen it myself.”
“Neither have I,” Jake said. “It’s a funny thing. She used my father’s kit to fix a worn-out leather trace yesterday, so she remembers how to sew. We took a rowboat out on the river at sunset, and she knows how to catch a fish. She cleaned and fileted a three-pound walleye, then fried him up on the stove. She says it’s like the world started over after the flood, and she doesn’t know where she learned to do those things.”
“Have you tried taking her into town? Someone might recognize her, or maybe she’d see a familiar face and that would trigger something.”
“I’m going into Poolesville tomorrow and I was thinking of bringing her along,” Jake said, noticing that April had emerged from the lockhouse carrying a tin pail, glass jar, and towel. He changed to an offhand tone of voice that would sound indifferent to her approach. “I don’t have a car here, but we’re fixing up my father’s old two-wheel cart. I need to go get feed for the mules.”
Doc Cushing took the supplies from April. While telling Jake where to buy hay and oats in Poolesville, he pulled a long pair of forceps from his bag and cleaned them with soap and hot water in the jar. Then he had Jake hug Gladys around the neck again and showed April how to use her hands to spread the skin around the puncture. After probing delicately with his forceps, he spread them inside the wound, twisted, clamped, and slowly withdrew a blood-blackened shard of fence rail the size of Jake’s thumb. Gladys stiffened and shuddered during the extraction, but never tried to shake free from her tether. She seemed to melt a bit when the splinter came loose. Doc Cushing dipped the towel in the hot water and talked soothingly to the mule as he used it to rinse her wound.
When he was finished he dabbed the wound with petroleum jelly, taped a cotton bandage over it, and secured it with a canvas wrap around her neck. He left Jake with dressing materials and instructions to keep Gladys quiet for at least a week. He hadn’t been able to find any kind of leg injury, so he thought her lameness would clear up as her n
eck healed. When it did, she could handle easy walks but no riding or pulling. Jake could pay Doc Cushing’s account at the feed store in Poolesville.
April took Gladys to the main corral behind the lockhouse to rejoin Bertie while Jake walked Doc Cushing back across the lock to his car.
“You think she’s playing it straight with you?”
“Gladys?” Jake said, not wanting to answer.
“April.”
“I don’t know.”
“You should consider contacting the sheriff’s office,” the doctor said. “Whoever is looking for her would probably have reported her missing.”
Jake nodded but said nothing as they reached the car. He shook hands and told Doc Cushing he’d be in touch if Gladys wasn’t healing right. As the car receded up Edwards Ferry Road, he turned back toward the lockhouse, remembering what April had said yesterday at breakfast. What if my past is worse than yours?
Chapter 7
Dinner
Sunday, April 6, 1924
Halfway across the river, Zimmerman got out of his car to take the evening air. The sun had fallen below the treetops on the approaching shore and the sky was fading to indigo. As the ferry tracked its cable to Virginia, the water ahead looked placid and dark. He had pulled up to the Maryland-side landing twenty minutes ago but just missed the previous boat, so he’d had to watch it steam over and back before driving his mud-spattered roadster on board. He checked his pocket watch: quarter to seven. It didn’t matter if he was behind schedule. The man he planned to visit wasn’t expecting him anyway.
When the ferry docked and the operator dropped the exit ramp, Zimmerman started his engine and led the other cars off the barge and up the hillside on Whites Ferry Road. It was only a ten-minute drive through fields and pastures to the center of Leesburg. He parked on the street, not far from the brick storefront and darkened windows of Underwood’s Apothecary. No one seemed to notice when he banged the knocker on a heavy black door beside the shop window. He waited a minute, then banged harder. This time Joseph Underwood opened the door.
“Evening, friend,” Zimmerman said. “I was on my way home from a day in the hills and thought I might stop by, talk a little business.”
Underwood glanced nervously at the quiet street and sidewalk before inviting his visitor in with a jerk of his chin and closing the door behind him. They stood in an entryway at the base of a narrow stairwell, and Underwood flipped a light-switch to illuminate the stairs.
“You can’t come here now!” he said quickly. “It’s better during the day. Wait! I will send my wife upstairs. Come with me!”
Zimmerman followed Underwood up the stairs to a landing outside the door to the second floor, where he was told to wait as the pharmacist ventured back inside. Underwood reappeared within a minute, opening the door and beckoning Zimmerman into a dimly-lit hallway with a cushioned bench and rows of coat-hooks on the green-painted walls. By now the pharmacist seemed less anxious. Zimmerman noticed he still had a white cloth napkin tucked into his shirt collar, and it hung over his buttoned shirt and vest like a bib.
“We were eating,” he explained. “My wife is Italian. She cooks food from the old country on Sunday. My daughter loves it all. I sent them up to my mother’s rooms.” He turned down the hallway and gestured with his hand. “Come in. Are you hungry? We’re having meatballs and spaghetti.”
Zimmerman hung his coat on an empty hook and followed Underwood down the hall. From the floor above he heard a phonograph playing – violins and a woman singing words he couldn’t make out. Underwood led him through a wide square arch into a dining room. The table was set for three and covered with large serving bowls, a half-empty basket of Italian bread, and plates smeared with the remains of a meal. Underwood started assembling a clean place setting from a china cabinet but Zimmerman took the nearest chair and waved him off.
“I ain’t particular about dishes,” he said. “Spent the best part of a year on the Yukon Trail eating every meal off the same tin plate.” He used a set of tongs in the spaghetti bowl to load noodles onto the food-stained plate in front of him, then spooned out pairs of meatballs swimming in red sauce and transferred them carefully onto the noodles. He smiled at Underwood as he finished. “But I’m always particular about handling the goods. Watch what you’re doing, keep count, and don’t spill none. Same thing if it’s Italian meatballs or China opium or Yukon gold.”
Zimmerman watched Underwood’s lip and nose start twitching as if he might sneeze. The pharmacist’s face was pale and soft, with thin lips and a weak chin flanked by scraggly mutton-chops. His wavy black hair looked like it was pasted onto his scalp, and his full cheeks reminded Zimmerman of the imperious chipmunk he’d seen presiding over a picnic table at Whites Ferry.
“You know I’m careful, Mr. Z!” Underwood replied, placing his puffy white hands together on the edge of the table and holding his voice to something just above a whisper. “Measuring and counting, adding things up, that’s my job!”
“I used to think you was careful,” Zimmerman said. “We never had a problem two years ago. Last year things went smooth until Thanksgiving when you said you was robbed by that customer from Harpers Ferry.”
Underwood nodded vigorously and the soft flesh under his chin wobbled. “I was supposed to meet Folito but some other man showed up, a man I didn’t know. He said Folito sent him. Then he pulled a gun on me and stole four ounces. I never heard from Folito since.”
Zimmerman twisted a lump of spaghetti onto his fork and ate it slowly without changing expression. “Back in ’98, in the Klondike,” he said, “every store had a gold scale on the counter. We bought everything with dust. You handed the clerk your poke and he measured out dust and nuggets, and you could count on him spilling a little onto the trap-mat behind the scale. But four ounces of heroin,” he said, shaking his head and twisting another forkful of spaghetti. “That’s like spilling a hundred and fifty dollars on your trap-mat.”
“No, Mr. Z!” Underwood objected. “No mat, no scale – just a thief with a gun!”
“And this time you lost a lot more. Twelve ounces, twelve and a half.”
Underwood balled his pudgy fingers into fists and pressed them together on the edge of the table. “Not lost the first time – stolen! And not lost now – never received!”
Zimmerman stabbed a meatball, swirled it in sauce, and chewed it deliberately, squinting and wrinkling his nose as he swallowed. “That ain’t like the meatballs I know,” he said.
Underwood smiled. “Good, eh? It’s the oregano. My wife knows everything about meatballs.”
Zimmerman didn’t return the smile. “Well then maybe she knows what happened to your powder. I buried it in the planter out back, same as every other time.”
Underwood raised his palms to Zimmerman. “No, no, no, Milina knows nothing about any of this! I would never tell her. She doesn’t even know who you are!”
“When you find it,” Zimmerman says, “you should be able to get thirty-six an ounce. I only want our usual price. Twelve and a half ounces at twenty-four, that’s three hundred. Pay me now and we can keep doing business, same as before.”
“Mr. Z, I don’t have three hundred dollars! I can’t sell the heroin I never got!”
“So what are you saying – we should forget about it? Just let twelve and a half ounces rot in the dirt?”
No,” Underwood said, chewing his lower lip and looking anxious. “Let me ask the landlord again. I can talk to his gardener. If the package disappeared, someone must know.” His expression brightened. “Until we find out, I can give you my profit on the next package. Whatever you have for me, I will sell and pay you everything. Thirty-six an ounce if I can get it. No less than thirty-three.”
“So I can front you the product and you’ll pay me back a little at a time?”
“Yes. I will do that until we find the missing twelve ounces.”
“Twelve and a half.”
Underwood unballed his fists and smiled.
“Don’t want to overlook half an ounce.”
“Of course.”
“It’s like this meatball,” Zimmerman said, using his fork to bisect one of his meatballs, then spearing a half and holding it aloft. “It’s…” He paused to peer harder at the cross-section of meatball, then screwed up his face. “There’s a vein in this meatball!”
Underwood look amused and shook his head. “No vein. Ground meat. Beef and pork. Onion, garlic, oregano…”
“Bullshit. That’s a vein! These are rooster balls!” Zimmerman held the impaled meatball closer to Underwood, who leaned forward for a look.
“I don’t see a vein.”
“Right there, in the middle. That’s a rooster ball!” Zimmerman got out of his chair and stepped around the table to give his host a closer view, holding the meatball near Underwood’s face.
“It’s not a vein, it’s…” Before he could finish his thought, Zimmerman swung the fork on a tight downward arc and then up hard into the top of Underwood’s throat. He pressed the fork tines deeper and used his free hand to pull Underwood’s napkin loose and stuff it into his mouth, stifling a scream.
Still pulling the throat up and back with his fork, Zimmerman fished his jackknife from his pocket and released the catch. As Underwood’s hands and feet flailed helplessly, Zimmerman drew the blade fast and deep across the base of the pharmacist’s throat. Bright red blood spurted out onto Underwood’s plate and the surrounding tablecloth.
“I told you it was a vein,” Zimmerman said, relaxing his grip on the fork stuck in Underwood’s neck.
The pharmacist collapsed forward against the table, gurgling and twitching as Zimmerman used the tablecloth to wipe blood from his knife and hand. He walked unhurriedly out the archway and down the hall. The music was still playing upstairs. He plucked his coat from the rack on the way out.
“Awful shame,” he mumbled to himself. “Good cooking like that gone to waste.”
If It Is April Page 5