by John Smolens
CZOLGOSZ was under constant surveillance by at least two guards who remained outside his cell door. It was clear that this was privileged duty, something to tell grandchildren about, and the men were changed frequently, every few hours. But when he was moved from his cell, he was usually accompanied by Geary and Solomon, and they became quite friendly.
By midweek he was allowed to read newspapers. The president was alive and recovering from his wounds. The stories about Czolgosz often included the proper pronunciation of his name: Shol-gosh. Some papers claimed to have discovered evidence of elaborate plots developed by the anarchist group known as Free Society. These conspiracies involved secret meetings and coded communications between anarchist leaders throughout America. Emma Goldman and Abraham Isaak, the publisher of Free Society, were always at the center of these groups.
The press took great interest in Nowak’s Hotel, where Czolgosz had rented a room. A man named Sturtz, who lived down the hall, had been arrested. Czolgosz had met him, but it was soon determined that he had nothing to do with shooting the president. Every day the papers reported that new informants had come forward and claimed that they had seen Czolgosz with various people. In one such instance, he had been seen walking through the exposition with two other men the night before the shooting. There were front-page articles about a Buffalo elementary-school teacher, a Mrs. Helen Petrowski, who had been arrested when it was learned that she had distributed anarchist literature to her students. It was a game. The police, the district attorney, the Pinkertons, the Secret Service, the newspaper reporters: they all wanted to “unravel” the plot behind the assassination attempt.
Some articles said that the Cleveland police were trying to link members of the Czolgosz family, particularly Leon’s brother Waldeck, to the shooting. Across the country anarchists were being jailed or driven out of their homes and communities. There were several attempted lynchings. An effigy of Czolgosz was paraded through the streets of downtown Chicago and burned.
Most disturbing was the way he was portrayed in the newspapers. By some accounts he was “arrogant,” “defiant,” “cocky,” and, the worst, “dainty.” According to the guards, he made outrageous demands concerning food and cigars. One headline read: CZOLGOSZ EATS MUCH AND SMOKES STOGIES. The article said that he complained that the ice cream did not come in a variety of flavors, and that he insisted on cantaloupe, which he didn’t even like. But other reports described him as “cooperative,” “polite,” and “courteous.” He was a “cleanly young man.” He asked the guards about these reports, and they all said they had been ordered not to divulge any information to reporters whatsoever. They believed that the reporters just made such stories up.
The newspapers were obsessed with Emma Goldman as much as they were with the shooting of President McKinley. Apparently she had gone into hiding, and despite a nationwide search she could not be found, until Tuesday, when the Chicago police had raided an apartment, where they found a woman taking a bath. According to the papers, she wrapped herself in a kimono and at first claimed that she was a Swedish servant and spoke little English. The police believed her and even showed her a photograph of Emma Goldman. As they were about to leave, they found a pen with the name “Emma Goldman” on it, but still they failed to recognize the woman in the kimono. At that point she told them that she was in fact Emma Goldman, and had planned on giving herself up anyway because many of her friends and colleagues were already being detained for no legitimate reason.
Some newspaper artists portrayed Goldman as a whip-wielding seductress, while others gave her the horns of Satan. Much was made of the fact that she admitted to being in Buffalo in the middle of August, at the same time that Czolgosz had been there—but there was no evidence that they had met. District Attorney Penney’s attempts to get her extradited to Buffalo had been inexplicably thwarted by the Chicago police. Czolgosz was most distressed by the thought of Emma Goldman alone in a Chicago prison. She was being held in an unusual cell, a large, open space, surrounded by iron bars, almost as though she were a circus animal on display. She was quoted as saying that she was an experienced nurse and would like to care for both the president and “the boy.” Despite the fact that she was only a few years his senior, Czolgosz liked the fact that she thought of him as “the boy.”
HYDE went to Big Maud’s in the afternoon. He’d never been there in the daytime. The house wasn’t yet open for business. Motka was in the front hall, with a basket of laundry, her hair pinned up on the back of her head. She explained that many of the girls were sleeping, and Big Maud was out taking her daily ride in an open carriage. When Motka saw the bloody handkerchief wrapped about Hyde’s wrist, she took him upstairs to Bella Donna’s room, where a recording of Verdi’s Otello played on the Victrola.
“Il fazzoletto—the handkerchief,” Bella Donna said, as they inspected his wrist. “It is always the sign of danger, no? For Desdemona! For you, Hyde!”
Carefully, Motka cleaned the cut with soap and water, and then wrapped it in a fresh cloth bandage.
“Tell me,” Hyde said. “Norris came here?”
Motka did not look up from her work. “He is a—what do you call it, Bella?”
“Scocciatore,” Bella Donna said, gesturing with her hand toward her rump.
“A pain in the ass,” Motka said.
“Worse,” Bella said. “Lui è un rompipalle!” She turned the music up even louder and came and sat with them at the small table by the window. “I must to tell you both something,” she whispered. “You not need just to worry about Signor Norris. Big Maud, too.”
“Why?” Hyde said. When she only shrugged, he asked, “How do you know?”
“In questa casa there are few secrets kept from Bella Donna.” She picked up a small hand mirror and studied her eyes and mouth.
“No one can be trusted,” Motka said. “All over Buffalo the police hunt down anyone in the workers’ cause. They have been looking for my brother, Anton, and his wife says he has gone to hiding.”
“Maybe I shouldn’t come here anymore,” he said. She raised her eyes to him and, to his surprise, she appeared alarmed, even hurt. “Maybe you should leave Buffalo?” he offered.
“And go to where?” she asked.
“Motka, are you afraid to leave here?”
She blushed. “I told you, my father was a doctor. I helped him with some surgeries. He taught me not to be afraid. Nothing is gained with fear.”
“Le mie ragazze,” Bella Donna said vehemently. “My girls. Safe in la casa.”
“Of course.” He looked out the window into the street. “See that man in the gray suit, down at the end of the block—there, in the window of the barbershop? He has been following me since this morning. I need to lose him.”
“You could leave through back door,” Bella said, “but Big Maud would find out from one of the girls hanging out the laundry and it would not go well for me.” She smiled at Motka. “I could make a little distraction?” She placed her hands under her breasts, as though offering them.
“That would certainly be distracting,” Hyde said, and both women laughed.
“All right,” Motka said, looking at Hyde. “But you must help me.” She took a slip of paper from the pocket of her skirt and placed it on the table. “This morning I get this, delivered from my brother’s son, Pavel. Anton is in the need of money. He is afraid to go to his factory job or to his family. The police look everywhere for him.” She reached into her pocket again and took out a small wad of money. “I do not know where Anton is, but I think his wife, Katrina, does. You take this to her?” She handed him three twenty-dollar bills.
“All right.”
“You need go to Tasczek’s Tavern—you know it?”
“Yes, in St. Stanislaus parish.”
“Katrina, she work there. She is one of Tasczek’s nieces. But she will not believe that I send you unless you give this to her.” She removed an earring, which was a small blue stone set in gold. “It was our mother’s. Anton ga
ve Katrina the brooch like it.”
Hyde tucked the money and the earring inside his coat pocket.
“Adesso,” Bella Donna said, as she opened the door to the hall. “You must give me just a little minuti and in this moment you will have so much distractions you can walk away from this man in the barbershop.”
She went out, pulling the door closed behind her, and her shoes were loud on the creaking stairs. They watched from the window as Bella Donna emerged from the front door of the house and walked down the street, twirling a parasol. It was as though she created a wake in water, the way people—men and women—paused to watch her pass. At the end of the block, she hesitated in front of the barbershop, glanced back toward Big Maud’s house, and smiled. Then she pulled from her sleeve a handkerchief and dropped it on the ground.
Within moments several men rushed out of the barbershop and competed with one another to pick up the handkerchief. The man in the gray suit was not among them; he was still standing in the window. Bella Donna spoke with the men on the sidewalk and then led them into the barbershop. She stood inside the window, her back to the street. There was much gesturing, and after a few moments she began to unbutton the front of her dress. Other men who had gathered outside crowded in the doorway, and the man in the gray suit was pushed to the back of the barbershop, out of sight.
“You better go now,” Motka said.
Hyde went to the door.
Motka came over to him and did something she’d never done before. She put her arms around his neck and kissed him on the mouth.
He held her tightly and said, “I mean it, you should leave Buffalo.”
“And go to where?”
“Everyone goes west. Maybe you should go east.”
She pushed him away and her eyes were filled with fear. “I would only end up in another house, maybe not too good as this.”
“Not if I took you with me.”
It was as though she could not bear to hear him, and looking away, she said, “You must go now. Hurry.”
Hyde went downstairs and out the front door. A crowd had gathered outside the barbershop, and two policemen had arrived. From inside the shop there came the sound of men cheering and applauding. Hyde walked quickly in the other direction, and only slowed down when he turned the corner of the block.
AT noon on Thursday the president complained of pain and fatigue, and through the afternoon his condition declined rapidly. Though Cortelyou issued a series of vague press releases, the reporters encamped in the street clearly sensed that there had been a turn for the worse. Doctors who had left the previous day returned as quickly as possible. Rixey was in constant meetings with the other physicians; they all agreed that McKinley was suffering from acute intestinal toxemia. Enemas containing calomel, a strong laxative, brought limited results. His pulse was weakening and digitalis was administered, along with regular injections of strychnine, which were intended to prevent heart failure. He was given no more food. Through the night his heart continued to weaken. Members of the cabinet were contacted, and a message was sent to the Tahawus Club in the Adirondacks, where the vice president was vacationing with his family.
WORD of the president’s failing condition swept through Buffalo Thursday evening. Norris sat at his desk in the empty Pinkerton office, reading the Courier and the Evening News. All of Buffalo’s Pinkertons were out working leads concerning anarchist activity throughout the city, plus there were rumors of another mob attack at police headquarters.
Norris listened to the footsteps in the hall and knew it was Jack Feeney, who tended to drag one heel. When the door opened, Feeney came in and walked down the aisle between the desks, never once looking directly at Norris.
“You lost Hyde,” Norris said.
Feeney took off his bowler. “It was this goddamn whore, I tell you.” He was not yet thirty, and he had a harelip, which made his mouth slant oddly when he spoke.
“What whore? Motka? You been upstairs with that slut?”
“No, no. I wasn’t poking nobody. But this big Italian one, Bella Donna she calls herself. Hyde was in Big Maud’s house and I was staked out across the street in a barbershop, and this Bella Donna comes over and puts on a show.” His smile revealed uneven teeth already going brown with chaw tobacco. “You should’ve seen ’em.”
“Who?”
“Well, yeah, the shop filled up with so many men I couldn’t get out the door, and then the police showed up and they wanted to take her away but I think there would have been a riot right there.” He was still looking to work through this with humor, and he smiled again. “I’m tellin’ you, Norris, you never seen nothin’ like ’em.”
“Who?”
“They were …” He held his hands out in from of him, cupping an imaginary set of enormous breasts, but then he just gave up. “Anyway, Hyde took off somewheres.”
Norris leaned back and stared hard at Feeney, who lowered his head and glanced toward the windows. “What’s the matter with your foot?” Norris waited, and when Feeney looked at him, he said, “The one you drag.”
“A horse stepped on it when I was a kid.”
“A horse stepped on it. He kick you in the lip, too?”
Feeney’s face reddened.
“How the hell you got into the Pinkertons is beyond me. You’d never make it in the Washington office.” Norris got up from the desk and went over to the nearest window. Groups of people stood in the street, talking and reading newspapers, and their faces, even their postures were tight, gripped with a sorrow that seemed overwhelming. The president wasn’t dead yet, but the country was already beginning to mourn. Behind him, he heard Feeney turn and walk back toward the door.
TASCZEK’S Tavern was a two-story clapboard house with awnings jutting out above a pair of large front windows. Inside, dim gaslight reflected off the molded-tin ceiling, and the walls were covered with handbills in English and Polish, which advertised rooms for rent, houses for sale, workers’ meetings. Signs above the bar indicated Tasczek’s services as a post office, a bank, and a ticket agent for the steamship lines on Lake Erie. The shelves displayed bottles of liquor, brandied fruits, hard-boiled eggs, pickled vegetables, pig’s feet, wheels of cheese, loaves of bread. Several young men and women, each wearing a white apron, worked behind the long bar. They all appeared to be related—brothers, sisters, cousins—and they waited on customers with a resignation that suggested that they would spend their lives in this establishment.
“I’m looking for Katrina,” Hyde said.
They all stopped working and stared at Hyde, and then the man at the cash register turned toward the woman who had been slicing meat. She was thin, pale, and in late pregnancy. “What do you want?” she said, wiping her forehead with the back of her hand.
Hyde went down the bar and said quietly, “Motka sent me.” He laid his bandaged hand on the counter, and opening it he let her see the earring pinned to the cloth. “I must speak with you.”
She put down her knife, glanced at her relatives, and then led Hyde to a door at the back of the bar. They entered a storeroom with shelves stacked with boxes, jars, and cans.
Hyde closed the door behind them and took the three twenty-dollar bills from his pocket. “This is for Anton.”
Katrina sat gently on a crate and rubbed her back. Her eyes were a very pale blue, and now they seemed relieved; she took the bills from him and said, “All right. I can tell you they are on a barge in the river—it’s tied up at a wharf north of the coke plant. I don’t know how you tell it from the others. I don’t know the name. You must find it, go there tonight, and show this earring to Anton.” She handed two of the bills back to him. “He says they need this.”
She started to get up, but had difficulty. He took her by the arm—as thin as a child’s—and helped her to her feet. “You should be home resting,” he said.
He turned to open the door, but Katrina took hold of his shirt and turned him back to her—her fingers were surprisingly strong and her eyes now bright wit
h fear. “You find Anton and you get him away from them.”
“Who?”
“There is Bruener, who owns the barge, and his son Josef.”
“I know Bruener.”
“Anton believes in the workers’ cause, but he’s having doubts since this outside man came to Buffalo.”
“What outside man?”
“I don’t know. He is planning something—”
“What?”
“I don’t know, but it’s going too far. I can tell Anton is afraid—and he’s afraid to leave them.” Her eyes began to brim over with tears. “Please. I have one son, and this one on the way. Please send my husband back.”
“I’ll try,” Hyde said. He put his hand over hers, and slowly she released his shirt.
NINE thirty Friday night Cortelyou’s bulletin read: “The president is dying.”
Rixey remained with the president while Cortelyou went downstairs to deliver the bulletin to the reporters stationed in front of the Milburn house. Outside there was a high wind, as well as frequent thunder and lightning.
For the next few hours government officials came to McKinley’s bedside. Toward midnight there were visits from his brother, sisters, nephews, and nieces. The president, who went in and out of a stupor, requested to see his wife twice. During her last visit she held his hand while he sang a few lines from his favorite hymn, “Nearer, My God, to Thee.” When she was led out of the room, she made no display of grief or tears.
Word arrived at the Milburn house that an enormous mob was gathering in the streets around the Buffalo police headquarters, and that Chief Bull had requested that national guardsmen and army regulars encircle the building.