by Burt Solomon
“Did you give him something?”
“I…” Hull paused. “Give him what?”
“You tell me.”
“I don’t know what you mean.”
“It was folded over.”
Hull stared at his file-strewn desk.
“And a map was drawn on it,” I pressed. “Does that help?”
He glanced up with a look of relief.
“When did you draw the map?” I said.
“While we were waiting at the top of the hill.”
“But why? The man knew the route.”
“Not well enough. A new man. Just to show him where the carriage would cross, to get past it, to avoid it.”
“Not to hit it.”
“Oh my, no. Why would I want to do that?”
My question exactly. “Tell me, was there … anything else included with the map? An incentive of some sort?”
“I don’t know what you mean.”
“You know damn well what I mean.” Best to avoid the word bribe.
He understood. “No!” he shouted.
“But he kept the map,” I said.
“I don’t know what he did with it.”
“He stuffed it into his seat. I found it there. And the money? Did he keep that, too?”
Gold strike.
“No, he didn’t.” He sounded resentful.
“He gave it back?”
The barest of nods, then an explosion: “A twenty-dollar bill. Can you imagine? Fair recompense, I should say, for getting us to the club in time. I would have given him more. Everyone wanted to see the president. There was nothing wrong with that. But when I handed him the bill—”
“Inside the map.”
“No, folded up in my hand. I gave it to him and he handed it back. Wouldn’t take it. ‘No need,’ he had the gall to tell me.”
“‘No need’? That’s an odd thing to say.”
“Well, that’s what he said.”
* * *
Big Bill Craig’s big casket was still at the undertaker’s, about to leave for the Pittsfield railroad depot and thence to Chicago, where his mother lived. Chief Nicholson was right to think I would want to tag along. Governor Crane was there, too.
In the carriage, I asked—no, suggested—that Chief Nicholson delve into Euclid Madden’s finances, such as they were. After much throat clearing, he agreed, mumbling about ’phoning the banks in the unlikely event that the motorman had an account.
The stumpy brick building at 186 North street housed the George N. Hopkins Funeral Home and Professional Embalmer. Around the corner stood four carriages, one of them a hearse with matching white horses, resembling the four-in-hand that had delivered Mr. Craig to his death.
I climbed down from the carriage and followed Chief Nicholson inside. The casket, in the main chapel, was covered by a wreath of asters. Two overgrown young men hovered shoulder to shoulder along the far side. Craig’s brothers, no doubt. An ascetic man was brushing dust from the casket, adjusting the flowers, checking his pocket watch. I had seen him before and had met him more than once—and nearly served with him in the president’s cabinet. It was Winthrop Murray Crane, the governor of the Commonwealth of Massachusetts.
He was pushing fifty years old but looked sour enough for seventy. Maybe that was what the voters liked about him; they took his sobriety for substance. Really, how hard is it to succeed in this world when your family has wealth and connections? He was an odd-looking man, with huge flappy ears, a mustache that overwhelmed his thin face, and a bony skull with a hairline like an island besieged by the bay. A veritable Ichabod Crane, gangly neck included. We had last exchanged pleasantries, as spare as a New England Yankee could manage, nine or ten months before. Theodore was pressing him to serve as his Treasury secretary, who was next in line for the presidency after yours truly. (Anything to be rid of that bewhiskered boob Lyman Gage.) Perfect complements, the president and the governor—impulsiveness versus caution, loquaciousness instead of brevity. Each man possessed what the other one lacked.
Chief Nicholson stayed in the shadows as I introduced myself to Craig’s brothers and described, with all sincerity, my admiration and sorrow. Governor Crane and I exchanged pleasantries, this time with a side order of condolences, and arrived at the familiar awkward pause. I’ve always been a pretty good talker, but I do need some cooperation.
“Can we talk?” I whispered.
The briefest of nods.
I glanced down at Craig’s casket and said, “Someplace else?”
Chief Nicholson stayed behind as Ichabod led me through a side door into a chapel. Low benches faced a pulpit and a machine-made piece of stained glass. He took a seat in the front pew and looked like he belonged. My choices were to stand behind the lectern or to sit beside him in the pew. I sat, staring at the side of his head. I supposed that was the point—so he could avoid looking at me.
“What are you doing here?” he said. He spoke as if someone was charging him per word. Per syllable, perhaps. He prided himself on never having delivered a political speech, which he had turned into a political plus.
“The president sent me.”
“Thoughtful.”
“In a way,” I said. “Were you hurt—in the collision, I mean?”
“Not to speak of.”
I waited for the governor to elaborate but realized he had meant his words literally.
I dragged him through a recounting of the collision, of how Big Bill Craig had leapt to his feet, prompting the governor to swivel toward the onrushing trolley, a hundred feet away or more; of how he had heard the ringing of the gong but assumed the trolley would yield the right-of-way; of how he had flung his arm across the president’s breast (rather a heroic pose, I thought); of how he had no memory of being thrown from the carriage, beyond what he had been told; of how his right shoulder still felt stiff but no worse. No, he could not say how fast the trolley was traveling. Fast.
The poor man was gasping for breath, exhausted by verbiage.
And yet he summoned the strength to describe the arcs of electric sparks that had welcomed the president to Dalton the night before. And the serenading outside the governor’s house. And the president’s exultation at the Berkshire sunrise.
By the time I could get a word in, he looked drained. The word I got in—the three words—were “Who sat where?”
His head jerked sideways as if I had slapped him. I suppose I had, in a way, jolting him from his reverie. “I was here,” he said, his left hand pressing down, “facing the front. Cortelyou sat across from me, facing the rear. Behind him, high on the driver’s box, was Mr. Craig. The president sat to my right, looking at the driver’s back.”
“Who decided that arrangement, do you know?”
“I do not, sir. I imagine it was Mr. Cortelyou. It is my impression that he had his hand in every such thing. He agreed to my choice of horses and of Mr. Pratt. That’s the liveryman, a friend of mine from Dalton—he has driven for me for years. Such a courteous man.”
“I saw the carriage,” I said quietly.
All the while, Governor Crane had kept his eyes on the stained glass. Now he turned slowly toward me, as if a holy relic had been invoked. His dark gray eyes held mine.
“Do you realize how close you came to…” I said.
No reply.
“Two inches,” I said.
Was it cruel to tell a man he had cheated death? Or would he find it exhilarating? Governor Crane’s expression did not waver. I would just as soon not live that way.
“One last question, Governor, if I could. Is there anyone who might want to do you harm?”
I expected a glare, but his lips curled into what I took to be a smile. “In the last election,” he said, “one hundred twenty-one thousand, one hundred fifty-eight men of Massachusetts voted for my Democratic opponent, not counting the socialists and the prohibitionists.”
I waited for him to continue, but he had nothing more to say.
* * *
&
nbsp; The new House of Mercy stood high on a hill, out along North street, as imposing and soulless as an axle factory. I was relieved to see it, exhausted as I was in trying to converse with Governor Crane. Every conversational foray, even about the beauty of Berkshire County, elicited a yes or no or a grunt or nothing at all. But his offer had been such a surprise that I leapt at the chance to talk with Mr. Pratt, the carriage driver. Surely he would be more forthcoming in the presence of a friend.
All the governor had told me about David Pratt was that he used him whenever he was home, and that his mother did, too. The liveryman arrived when he said he would; his word was his bond. What else was there for a New England Yankee to know?
“A broken shoulder, is that what he is … suffering from?” I said.
“Dislocated. Sprained ankle. Scrapes. Under the dead horse.” For Ichabod, another torrent of words.
Our carriage halted under the hospital’s pillared portico. As we passed through the lobby, Governor Crane muttered, “Higginson room.”
“What is the Higginson room?”
“You’ll see.”
I certainly did. David Pratt’s hospital room was bigger than my boyhood home—and prettier. The floors were maple, the furnishings mahogany, and the blue in the rug matched the draperies and the embroidered covers on the oak bureau and nightstand. Lying in bed was a bullet-headed man with a flamboyant white mustache and a prizefighter’s flattened nose. A muscular young man sat by the carved headboard. His wild red beard and long, tangled hair made me think of Samson.
The patient was awake—and livid: “I don’t give a damn what Davy wants. I don’t even care who knows anymore. You can tell whoever you damn well want. It’s up to Arthur. Francis is his boy, even if—” He noticed us. He looked startled and not a little embarrassed, and abruptly changed his tone. “Twice in a day, Governor!” the liveryman exclaimed. “You are too good to me.”
“Mr. Pratt, you look well,” Governor Crane said. Untrue but understandable. “This gentleman here, Mr. Hay, would like a word with you. Let me introduce you to the secretary of state.”
“Of which state?” Samson snarled.
“All of them,” the governor replied.
“Actually, none of them,” I said. “It means that I can take a fast note.”
“Mr. Hay, this is Frank Forney,” Pratt said, pronouncing it in the French way. “He lives in my household. A servant.” Iron in his voice.
I extended my hand across the bed, but Samson—Forney—glared at Pratt and neither stood nor looked my way.
“Seems like you’re lucky to be alive, Mr. Pratt. If you’re up to it, I would like to hear what happened last Wednesday morning, from your point of view.”
Forney snapped, “What about it?”
Pratt sat up in bed. “Frank, he was talking to me. But the question is a fair one, Mr. Hay. What about it, indeed?”
I wished I knew, so I sidestepped the question. “The president wants to know what happened. A man who was dear to him was killed.”
“That’s what the inquest is for.”
“Even so. Tell me, please, if you would, when did you first see the trolley?”
“I heard it first,” Pratt growled. Either his voice was sonorous or he was coughing up some phlegm; in either case, he overtalked Samson. “I was most of the way down the hill when I saw it—heard it, I mean—coming from behind me. I was getting ready to cross the tracks at the customary spot; that’s when I turned and saw it.”
“You didn’t hear the gong?”
“I guess I didn’t. There was noise everywhere, and the wind was in my ears.”
“Did you hear Mr. Craig and Governor Crane shouting?”
“Oh yes, that I heard. How could I not hear? That’s when I turned to look, but it was…” His head sagged onto his chest; Forney grasped his shoulder. “Too late. I pulled back on the reins—I couldn’t have pulled harder—but it wasn’t…” Pratt put his pudgy fingered hands to his face and cried, “Was it my fault?”
Forney was glaring at me. I couldn’t blame him.
“No, of course not,” I rushed to assure him. “I don’t know what the law says ordinarily, but with the president in your carriage and all streetcar traffic supposedly stopped while he was here, I would think you had the right-of-way. Isn’t that correct, Governor?”
“I am no expert in traffic laws,” Governor Crane replied.
“After the collision,” I said, “what can you recall? Anything?”
Pratt shook his head, and his shoulders rose from the bed. The right one was bandaged. “Not until I was in that house,” he said.
“Not even being dragged from under the horse?” I said.
“Holding tight to the reins saved his life,” Governor Crane said. “You saw the carriage.”
“Could the streetcar have stopped in time, do you think?” I asked.
“I don’t know,” Pratt replied. “It was coming so fast, I don’t see how. The man was trying to run me over.”
“Why do you think that?”
“I don’t know. He was coming so damn fast, and he knew I was there. Why else would he be ringing the gong?”
“How fast was he going, would you say?”
“As fast as a train, I’d reckon. How fast is that, I don’t know. Faster than a horse, is all I can say. What else mattered?”
* * *
“So, lilies?” I shouted into the telephone. From my hotel room in Pittsfield, Washington felt very far away.
“No, dandelions,” Clara replied.
“Can we afford them?”
“You’ll just have to write a little faster, my dear.”
Our standing joke. Most of our income came from Clara’s father’s estate, which I had managed in Cleveland for too many years. An easy chore, which gave me time to write, in league with Nicolay, our ten-volume opus on Lincoln, admired by everyone and read by no one other than Theodore. Also my only novel, about Labor versus Capital (naturally, I took Capital’s side). It sold well to the wealthy. Who else bought books?
“Everything else ready to wed?” I said.
Her throaty laugh made me laugh. She could still do that.
“A few details here and there,” she said. “The color of the napkins. Do you have an opinion on that?”
“If I weren’t color-blind, I might. Let me do the placement. Knowing who hates whom—that is what I’m good at.”
“Everyone loves everyone, is that not the case?”
“Not even in Pittsfield, my dearest.”
* * *
I asked at the hotel desk about restaurants that stayed open late. The carrot-haired clerk giggled and directed me to a tavern instead. I ambled out of the Wendell and along West street, toward Park Square.
The moon was slender in the starry sky. A crispness in the air told of the winter to come. The bulky buildings seemed sad—abandoned, really—in the absence of pedestrians or rigs. The electric streetlamps did little to relieve the gloom. The park beckoned like a haven, protected by the branches overhead.
I was lost in thought, not about lilies—dandelions suited me fine—but about David Pratt. I tried to imagine sitting up on the driver’s box, crossing the tracks. One moment, the world is attar of roses; the next moment, chaos and death.
These grand thoughts must have concealed the footsteps behind me, until a hand clamped on my right shoulder. I spun around, fists cocked. Then I saw the gun.
I could not see who held it. His face was concealed by a hood and a scarf, and a long coat hid everything else. He was a half-foot or more taller than I, and broader, even with shoulders slumped.
Using Marquess of Queensberry Rules, I might have prevailed. By street rules, probably not. Certainly not against a gun. This fight wasn’t fair. But I felt curiously calm. My wallet held enough cash to keep a small-city thief in Pikesville rye for a year. I hoped he would not notice my grandfather’s pocket watch.
“You stay away from this, Hay,” he hissed, “or you’re a dead man.”
Without a warning, he swung his left arm and whacked the barrel of the gun across my cheek. Pain streaked my face. As I felt myself falling, I thrust out my left leg—boxing had taught me about balance—and stayed on my feet. I swiveled my hip and, with all of my might, punched the man in the jaw. I heard the crack of bone, and he toppled backward onto the gravel path.
Only then did I remember his gun. Before I could curse my own foolishness, he jumped up and fled into the darkness.
I was too dazed (and not stupid enough) to give chase. But my mood soared. For one thing, I was alive. For another, somebody must think I was closer to the truth than I had figured I was. And I realized something else: that this truth mattered enough to threaten me with death.
CHAPTER SIX
MONDAY, SEPTEMBER 8, 1902
“Right about here.” I had summoned Chief Nicholson to Park Square. “He came at me from … about where you’re standing. With a gun.”
“What kind of gun?” he said.
“I don’t know guns. It looked big.”
“They always do.”
I recounted the rest and finished, “And he knew who I was. That’s what worries me.”
“He never asked for your wallet.”
“I didn’t give him a chance. But no, he didn’t.”
“What did he say, exactly?”
“I’ll tell you exactly: You stay away from this, Hay, or you’re a dead man. That’s it. Words I shall never forget. It wasn’t my valuables he wanted.”
“Had you ever seen this man before?”
“Not that I know of. I hardly saw him this time.” I offered the best description I could, which was pitiful. Height, shape, voice, eyes—taller, wider, gruff, dark. Describing thousands of men in Pittsfield alone.
“Age?” Chief Nicholson said.
“Can’t say. Not too old to run away.”
“You punched a man who held a gun on you.”