by S. L. Stoner
Mackey glanced down and his mouth dropped open. Two-inch headlines blared, “Scores of Roadway Bridges Near Collapse.” When his hand released the door to hold the paper level, Sage pushed it open wider. At the movement, Mackey looked up from reading, “What exactly is it that you want?” he asked, his tone mulish.
“We’re here to talk a deal.”
Mackey hesitated before stepping back into the hallway and motioning them toward an inner door that opened into a drawing room. Inside, satin chairs and brocade settees cluttered the room. Cloths draped every table, their swirling colors fighting for attention among the ornate mirrors, marble floor statuettes and knickknacks covering every flat surface. A bank of floor-to-ceiling, small-paned windows faced the street, heavy velvet drapes pulled partly shut. The pastel washes of a sylvan mural covered the other two walls.
Only one short wall was bare of riotous color and competing patterns. On it hung rows of photographs. Stepping closer, Sage saw that each picture showed Mackey and his wife smiling proudly and standing beside various noteworthy politicians and socialites.
Sage stopped his perusal of the wall when he heard Mackey toss the paper to the floor. “Phish, that article doesn’t mean anything. My name’s not even in it,” Mackey blustered,“You’re wasting your time and mine.” He stepped forward as if to herd them toward the door.
Raising a hand, Sage stood his ground. “Before you dismiss my offer, please know that I’ve obtained an affidavit from Bittler, stating you bribed him to approve the bridge construction work your company performed. In that affidavit, he swears that you paid him to keep his mouth shut about how your ‘special finishing crew’ painted the rotten timbers with creosote. Then, he wrote that you turned around and sold the city’s new bridge lumber a second time to someone else.”
Mackey flushed, his eyes shifting around the room as if seeking for a way out. His face hardened. “Bittler’s just lying. He’s pushing the blame off himself,” he said, even as he halted in his movement toward the door.
Sage smiled. “One thing’s for sure. Those bridges are rotten through. And I wonder what a skilled accountant might find if he compared the volume of lumber you sold compared to the amount of raw logs you actually purchased? I bet your financial records would make some mighty interesting reading for a sharp-eyed accountant.” Sage stepped to the window and
yanked its velvet drapes further apart. “Anyway, once people read those signs out there, who will they blame next time a bridge collapses or when their neighborhood bridge is so unsound they have to get out of their carriages and walk across it? How are you going to explain away so many unsound bridges that your company supposedly repaired just months ago? Some of those inconvenienced will resent having to walk in the rain. Not to mention there’s the fact of the two dead innocents and the city’s destroyed fire wagon. All because of a bridge repair you supposedly oversaw.”
Mackey’s face flushed, his lips clamped and his eyes flicked sideways. When he stepped to look out the window that flush drained away. Outside, the strikers were milling about on the sidewalk. Each striker held a sign reading either “Earl Mackey’s Bridges Falling Down” or “How Many More Deaths on Earl Mackey’s Head?” Even worse was the sight of the town’s new muckraking newspaperman, Ben Johnston, moving among the strikers, his long neck craned forward, his hand scribbling down whatever they said. Mackey gasped and his hand clutched the curtain.
Sage stepped closer to Mackey, speaking directly into the man’s ear.“Do you imagine that once those bridges start collapsing, those folks on that wall of yours,” here Sage gestured toward the photographs, “will want to associate with you? Especially when everywhere they turn, they’ll see those same messages, outside their clubs or those fancy shindigs you all like to attend?” “Wait, you better not be spreading that lie around town like
that. I’ll sue you!”
“Ha! A win in court it yields you nothing. These strikers are penniless, thanks to you. Besides, our lawyer tells us that truth is a defense to any claim of slander. And Mackey, once a jury looks at all the facts, they’ll find our signs more truthful than any excuse you might concoct. Besides, even if you won in court, there is still the court of public opinion. Can you really believe that battle is winnable in that particular court?”
Mackey backed away from the window and carefully lowered himself down onto a brocade settee. “What’s the deal you
are offering me?” he asked, his tone subdued, all resistence drained out of him.
Sage gestured to Chester who stepped forward to hand Sage a piece of paper. “All we want is for you to sign this paper.”
“What is it? What does it say?”
“It states that you agree to a labor contract with the union that includes an eight-hour, six-day workweek at the same rate of daily pay they received before the strike, plus an extra sixteen cents per day. Same thing the men asked for when they laid down their tools.”
“If I sign it, what’s my gain?”
“We burn those signs out there before anyone else sees them and Mr. Johnston loses his notes. You’d better hurry. Your neighbors will be stirring shortly—their servants are already hard at work cooking them breakfast.”
Mackey’s jowls bunched as he snatched the pen and paper from Sage’s hand, slapped the paper down on a side table, scanned the words and scrawled his signature across the bottom of the sheet.
He flung the pen down and tossed the paper toward Sage. “Now get out of my house,” he hissed through clenched teeth. He turned his back to them, facing the wall of photographs.
Sage nodded at Chester, who snatched the signed contract and sped from the room. The sound of the front door opening and closing marked his exit. Seconds later, a faint cheer sounded from outside. Chester probably waved the signed contract in the air to signal victory.
“You too! You get the hell out of here right now!” Mackey snapped over his shoulder at Sage.
“I’m leaving but first, there’s a question I want to ask: What kind of a man orders his own father killed?”
Mackey’s eyes blazed. He whirled and lumbered forward, his fists balled so tightly that his knuckles blanched white. For the first time that morning, Sage tensed in anticipation of a physical attack.
“I asked O’Connell to teach Lockwood and the strikers a lesson, that’s all!” Mackey said, spittle accompanying his words, his face fire wagon red. “You take that allegation back or
I swear I’ll ram your teeth down your throat and I don’t care what happens.”
Sage stepped back. “You’re not what anyone would call an honest man. Why in the hell should I believe you?” he asked.
Mackey’s face lost expression. He stumbled backwards until he again sat down on the settee. His chin crumpled and his eyes filled. From out of his pocket his fumbling fingers pulled a gold pocket watch. He stared at the watch face as he rubbed it with his thumb.“My poor papa,” he whispered, burying his face in his hands, the watch’s chain trailing from between two of his fingers like a golden string.
When he raised his chin to look at Sage, his pebble brown eyes glittered with tears and his tone was unequivocal, “I loved that old man. I disagreed with him sometimes but I loved him. He was a better man than me.” Mackey stared at a point somewhere just past Sage and kept talking, his voice thick with emotion. “I wish I’d died in his place. It’s all my fault. He wanted to end the strike—to reach agreement with the strikers. He said that it was tearing his heart out, especially after than man died. That’s why he was there at the mill that night. We argued for hours. Finally he told me he was still the boss and he was going to work out the numbers on a new offer to strikers. Me, I kept fighting with him to the last. I was determined to win that damn strike at any cost. I stormed out of his house. I told him . . . I told him to go to hell.”
Mackey covered his face and sobbed, his body shaking, his voice muffled as he said, “If I’d done like Papa wanted, he’d be alive today. I would have been down at the shack,
working up the offer with him. And, Lockwood couldn’t have killed him.”
The man’s disintegration was complete. Much as he didn’t want to, Sage finally accepted the fact that Mackey did not order his own father murdered. Fong had been right, once again.
TWENTY NINE
Laughter and hearty backslaps greeted Sage when he rejoined the men outside. Some grinned their relief while others stood off by themselves, tears falling from eyes looking into the distance. Sage and Johnston gleefully shook hands before Johnston resumed collecting the men’s reaction to their win.
The jubilation stilled as one by one, they noticed the man who stood on the mansion’s front porch. Despite the indignity of addressing them while in his bathrobe, Mackey’s bulk and his scowling face remained commanding. He raised a finger, pointed it at the men and shouted, “Don’t think you’re the bosses now! You men report for work at 7:00 a.m. sharp on Monday or you’ll be out of a job!” He reentered the house, slamming the door to the sound of cheers.
s s s
As the cable car followed its lifeline down into the flatlands, its operator, a union man himself, added his baritone to the strikers’ singing. Sage glanced over the edge, about midpoint in the thousand-foot-long trestle, and stopped singing. It was a long way down. Uneasily, he wondered whether punk riddled the timbers beneath the cable car. Nah. No way would Mackey daily jeopardize his own family’s safety. “Not bloody likely,” as his Brit friend, Laidlaw, would say. That’s one thing you could always count on when it came to the rich folks. They’ll always take care of each other and their own family’s interests.
Once off the cable car, the group strode through the bright early morning toward their favorite saloon. Their joyful racket in the crisp morning air stirred loose a few angry shouts from second story windows. Closer to the saloon, where the upscale homes gave way to simple working-class clapboards, their procession brought other working men and women onto their porch stoops to join in the cheering.
s s s
Late morning found a somewhat inebriated Sage yearning for sleep. His ears still rang from the shouts and songs of the victorious men. His throat ached from his own participation in the revelry. He made his way to the alley, down into the tunnel and up the secret stairway to Mozart’s third floor. Once there, he fell onto his bed and flipped the coverlet over his body without bothering to remove clothes nor boots.
Then, his mother was shaking him. “What happened?” she demanded.
“Mackey gave in. The strike is over. The men return to work on Monday,” he mumbled as he struggled to sit up. On the small table, tucked into the bay window area, stood a silver coffee pot and plate of toast, a clear message that she believed it was time he left his bed. As he spread preserves on the toast, he told her about his confrontations with O’Reilly, O’Reilly’s men and finally, with Mackey himself.
“I like imagining Mackey’s face when he looked out that window and saw Johnston amongst the picketers,” she said, chuckling. “I’m holding good news too. Herman’s definitely on the mend. Last I saw him, he was sitting up, sipping Mrs. Fong’s beef tea.”
“I’d better go see him,” Sage said, tossing down his napkin, shoving his chair back.
“Hold on a minute,” Mae Clemens said, laying a restraining hand on his forearm.“Take a look out that window there. You’ve slept through till near eight o’clock at night. It’s too late to go wake the Fongs now. She’s exhausted and so is Herman for that matter. There’ll be time enough in the morning.” Her finger tips flew to her mouth. “My word, I forgot. I came to tell you that Philander is waiting for you downstairs.”
Sage jumped up, stripped off his workingman’s outfit and started throwing on clothes suitable for his role as Mozart’s proprietor. “No need to hurry,” she assured him, “He’s ordered his supper and you know what that means. He’ll be here at least an hour. That man surely loves to eat. Don’t know where he stows it, he’s thin as a rail. Good thing he’s a lawyer and can afford all the provisions he tucks away.”
Philander was, indeed, still forking in his food when Sage took the seat across from him. He listened to Sage recount recent events, pausing in his methodical chewing only to take a sip of wine.
“How about we go see Leo tonight? Give him some good news, at least,” he suggested. “Something to take the sting out of the bad news that the judge only granted a two-day trial set-over.”
s s s
The faint street lamp light filtering through filthy casement windows only enhanced the depressing impact of the jail’s dank stone walls, iron gratings and trickles of water pooling in the corners. Unexpectedly, a dense pack of humanity covered the corridor and open cell floors. An overwhelming stench of wet woolens and unwashed bodies forced Sage to breathe through his mouth. Men lay sprawled upon newspaper mats, heads on their boots, bodies curled beneath wet overcoats. Some tossed fitfully midst others who were awake and muttering to each other or to themselves. Sage and Philander picked their way toward Leo’s cell past the dull-eyed gazes of the sleepless, whose fingers scrabbled beneath layers of filthy clothing on the hunt for biting vermin.
Once they reached the clear space in front of Leo’s cell, Philander offered an explanation. “Winter nights, the city warehouses the homeless here, rather than leaving them on the street. Otherwise, every morning, we’d be stepping over dead bodies. Such an unwelcome sight for our good citizens on their way to church, is it not?” he asked, his cynicism unmistakable.
Not for the first time, Sage wondered at the reason for the lawyer’s abiding dedication to the downtrodden. As good a lawyer as he was, Gray could choose to use his legal education in much more lucrative ways. Yet, he didn’t.
Sage looked back up the corridor with its carpet of bodies and shook his head. He’d known of the practice since many cities were using it. It did save some from the perils, both physical and mental, of sleeping on the streets during wintertime. Still, Philander was right. Warehousing the homeless on the jail’s floor was also a way to hide the community’s moral shortcomings.
There was a rustle from inside the cell as Leo struggled up from his bunk at the sound of Gray’s voice. He approached them with the timidity of a dog that hoped for a handout, while fearing a kick. Sage reached through the bars and Leo responded by clasping Sage’s hand in both of his. For a moment, the two men stood there, Sage’s eyes smarting. He fought for control. Pity, without more, would only add to Leo’s burden. Besides, what was it his mother always quoted? Right.“Friends help; others pity.”
“Is there news?” Leo’s quavering voice held none of the confidence he’d projected all those weeks during the strike when he’d stood on his soapbox successfully exhorting his men to remain steadfast.
Philander’s confident voice cut in before Sage thought of a reply, “Yes, there is some good news. We obtained confessions from the two men who dropped the kerosene can over the fence and into your yard. They also said, their boss, that man O’Reilly. . .”
Sage interrupted, “You remember him, Leo? That Irish fellow always trying to rile the men up? Said he’d traveled down from the Idaho mining fields?”
“O’Reilly,” Leo parroted absentmindedly.
Momentary panic surged through Sage. Was Leo’s mind deranged?
Leo’s flaccid demeanor didn’t give Philander pause because the lawyer quickly seized the thread of conversation. “Yes, as I started telling you, it turns out that this O’Reilly was the one who wrote the message asking you to come to the Mackey construction shack. He was a Dickensen agent provocateur trying to goad the men into violence so the police could beat the dickens out of them and end the strike.
A spark of hope lit Leo’s brown eyes. Sage fought the urge to reach through the bars and grasp the man, to shelter him from the disappointment heading his way.
“Problem is, Leo, you’ve already admitted that you were there, near the head of the cul de sac, around the time the fire broke out. So, the judge won’t drop the charges against you or st
op the trial.” Philander’s voice was gentle as he continued,“But, given that so much of the evidence against you has collapsed, I will try again tomorrow to obtain your bail. If nothing else, the bail hearing will give you a few hours away from this dungeon.” He gestured at their surroundings. “Even wet streets and rainy skies are better than this.”
Leo’s face fell. Seconds later he roused himself, his spine straightening and his head coming up as if he’d tapped into a source of renewed strength. When he spoke his voice was stronger, “I know you’ll help me out of this, Mr. Gray. I’m sure you’ll eventually find a way to return me home.”
Philander leaned closer to the bars. “Truth be told, Leo, John here is the one who found out about O’Reilly and those two men. He delivered the whole kit-and-caboodle to me, all tied up like a Christmas parcel.”
Gratitude glowed in Leo’s eyes. “Thank you, Mr. Adair. And thank you for seeing after my family. My wife’s told me all that you’ve done. The money and food you send her keeps her spirits up and my family afloat.” He looked at Philander. “What about the real murderer? Was it Earl Mackey or that O’Reilly and his men?”