Assassin of Shadows

by Lawrence Goldstone

  “Pretty lucky. The Negro, I mean. Also pretty lucky to have a doctor just happening by.”

  “Luckier than you think. He wasn’t there as a doctor. The guy raises flowers, if you can believe it. He was exhibiting at the horticultural pavilion. What man would do that? Delphiniums . . . whatever they are.”

  “Larkspur,” Walter said. “Long stems of flowers. Blue or purple usually. They’re very pretty, actually.”

  Harry drew back. “Now how would you know that?”

  “Read about ’em.”

  “Of course. Anything you ain’t read about? Anyway this doctor . . . Mann was his name . . . went with McKinley to the emergency hospital and fixed him up.”

  “He was a surgeon?”

  Harry shook his head, a grin playing in the corners of his mouth. “Nope. Gynecologist, if you can believe it.”

  “I believe it, Harry.”

  Harry scowled. He hated when Walter mocked him, but had never been able to figure a way to stop it without looking dumb. “Seemed to do a good enough job though. We’re lucky he didn’t get confused and deliver McKinley’s stomach.”

  “My stomach’s not too happy either, Harry. We going to have time to get something to eat in Cleveland?”

  “Forty-five minutes.”

  “Undercooked steak and runny eggs, but it’ll have to do. Maybe we should try and get some sleep now.”

  “I suppose.”

  Walter leaned down in his seat, letting the bucking of the train take him. Just like a horse, really, except side to side instead of up and down. Was that all modernity was? A change in axis?

  “Speaking of food, why don’t you come for dinner?” Harry asked, just as he saw Walter’s eyes close. “We’ll be back in Chicago in a couple of days.”

  Walter refused to reply, hopeless as the gesture was.

  “It’s only dinner,” Harry went on, with the studied innocence of a bad liar.

  “And Lucinda is a fine cook,” Walter added before Harry could.

  Harry shrugged. “Wasted on me, I’m afraid. But I don’t have your sensibilities.”

  From here, unless Walter acceded, Harry would repeat the litany of how he preferred living alone but he owed it his widowed sister—a war widow, after all—but what she really needed was a place of her own, well, not exactly of her own. He would recite all of this precisely as he had the last time, as if it had just occurred to him. Harry was indefatigable. He could go two days in the saddle and not doze off even once; a train ride to Cleveland was child’s play. He wouldn’t shut up until they were in the station.

  “I’ll come for dinner.”

  “Wonderful. Knew you would.”

  “It’s not really fair, you know. To Lucinda, I mean.”

  “Oh yes it is.”

  Walter grunted and turned to watch the Indiana night hurtle past the speeding train. Lucinda’s face appeared in the window. She was a beautiful woman, there was no doubting it. Chestnut hair. Big eyes. Full lips with a cupid’s bow in the center. Harry managed to appear coarse with almost precisely the same features. But where Harry gave off an air of insouciant ease even with bullets shaving his sideburns, Lucinda evidenced that look of controlled desperation that widows wore. As if they would leap at you and hold on, white-knuckled, if you tried to leave the room. Couldn’t blame her, of course. Even beautiful, she was still twenty-seven, and sand was flowing faster and faster through her hourglass.

  But why him? Why did Harry insist on thrusting Lucinda on him? Hadn’t he made it more than clear? Was it for her? For him? Or maybe Harry was doing it for himself. Probably a bit of all three. Lucinda had grit and was loyal. And nobody’s fool. She would, in truth, make someone a fine wife. She had made someone a fine wife. A husband now dead. A hero of the Philippines. Or perhaps it was important to call everyone who died in a questionable war a hero. It had certainly been that way in his war. A war against an out-gunned, out-manned opponent wearing feathers and animal skins, who was all the braver and more honorable for his hopelessness. All the soldiers who died in that war had been heroes too.

  “Walter?”

  From the tone, Walter knew Lucinda had been filed away. He turned back to Harry without answering.

  “There’s no middle ground here, Walter. If we figure out who put this Czolgosz fellow up to shooting the president, we can write our own tickets. If we don’t, everyone will be happy to blame us.”

  “Us or me?”

  “Both.”

  “You don’t like McKinley, do you?” Walter said suddenly.

  Harry shrugged, exaggerated, which was answer enough. Then he glanced about, although they were alone in the car. “I don’t like what he did to the division.”

  Walter didn’t reply. He didn’t need to. Most of the operatives felt the same way, he supposed, although nobody talked about it. It was never a good idea to complain about your boss, especially when your boss was a chum of the president. If the bullets had done McKinley in, Roosevelt would have taken over the White House and Wilkie would have been shipped back to typesetting. McKinley and TR hated each other. TR had once said that McKinley had less backbone than a chocolate éclair. Amazing that McKinley took him on the ticket, no matter what the New York pols promised him. How could you make someone your vice president after that? Likely, it meant that TR had been right.

  Walter emitted a soft sigh. Not a man in the division who wouldn’t rather work for TR.

  3

  Saturday, September 7, 1901

  The Limited pulled into the New York Central Exchange Street Station in Buffalo at eight the next morning. The New York Central had invested a good deal of money in the exposition, but the station was a peeling, dilapidated disgrace. To cover the blight, either the city fathers or the railroad had hung bunting from the walls and ensured that the common areas were heavily patrolled by Buffalo coppers.

  Walter wondered what the mood would be, whether a pall had descended in the wake of an assassination attempt on the president. Instead, the station throbbed with energy. Perhaps it was because McKinley had only been wounded and was expected to be fine, but there was an almost celebratory feel, as if Buffalo had bested other cities in a competition. Across the floor, hawkers with official exposition badges accosted the new arrivals, selling tickets that may or may not have been genuine, giving directions that may or may not have been accurate, and serving as a whispered conduit to whatever sub rosa services an uninitiated visitor to the city might require. Advertising places of lodging was, for some reason, strictly forbidden, so the hawkers, having accepted gratuities from inn keepers and rooming house owners, were pleased, for an additional gratuity from an arrivee, to provide an enthusiastic but oblique testimonial for a local hostel.

  As Walter and Harry stepped out on to the platform, Walter large and unmistakable, a ruddy, corpulent man in a flat cap pulled down to his right ear sidled up to them. He moved with the stiff-legged, belly-first walk of a lifetime copper.

  “One of you Swayne?” he asked, as if the answer could be incriminating.

  “Me,” grunted Harry in return. No local dick was going to back him down.

  “And you’re George,” the copper noted, as if he had just deduced a vital piece of evidence. “I’m O’Hara. Assistant chief. Come with me.”

  O’Hara made no effort to hide that he had been asked to go on an errand he thought beneath him, and neither Harry nor Walter intended to give him the satisfaction of asking any questions. Conversation would allow him to establish sway he didn’t deserve.

  Outside the station was a police wagon, with a uniform at the wheel. O’Hara opened the door, hesitated for a second, then, hating himself for it, got in before Harry could go past him. Harry and Walter followed, Walter’s bulk absorbing whatever small space would have been left sitting three across.

  No one spoke during the ride. O’Hara sat tight-lipped, seemingly content to bounce along the cobblestones. At one point Harry and Walter glanced at one another. Their looks said the same thing: the l
ocal police were stuck with the blame for what happened. A million-dollar celebration of their city would only be remembered for one Polack lunatic shooting the president. The federal detectives would be gone in a few days, but the Buffalo coppers would wear the tar until the day they died.

  The automobile headed for downtown, the driver blowing his air horn regularly, as much to announce their presence as to clear traffic. About ten minutes later, he pulled to the curb on Eagle Street in front of the portico of an immense, eight-story, French Renaissance building, with “Iroquois” written in gold across a deep green awning. Two dicks muscled the porter out of the way to open the automobile door.

  “Best hotel in town,” muttered O’Hara, before they got out, unable to help himself. “A thousand rooms. All electric. New Otis elevators. Telegraph and telephone. Whole place is fireproof. Four bucks a night for a room during the fair.” Then, realizing he sounded a fool, he added snidely, “Nothing’s too good for our friends from Washington.”

  O’Hara left them at the entrance. An operative neither Harry nor Walter knew directed them across the carpeted floor to a wood paneled, gilt trimmed elevator set apart from the others. The white-haired Negro at the switch pulled the outside door closed, then the inside grate, mumbled something about standing back, and headed to the top floor.

  Only three doors faced out on the corridor when Harry and Walter left the elevator. Each was high lacquered mahogany adorned with a brass plate at eye level, buffed and scalloped, with black script. Harry walked to the farthest one. He grabbed the doorknob, an ornate brass affair, but didn’t turn it. “Wait a minute,” he said, after seeming to give the matter thought. “I’ll let Wilkie know we’re here.”

  Walter took Harry by the wrist. “You have to let him know we’re here with me outside?”

  Harry shook off the hand with one sharp flick of his wrist. “Don’t worry, Walter. No one is plotting against you.” Harry was toughest man pound-for-pound Walter had ever met and one of the few he could not physically intimidate.

  Harry opened the door only halfway and slipped inside so that Walter could not look in the room. About three minutes later, the door opened. Harry had his official face on. He stuck out an arm and waved for Walter to come inside. Harry, it seemed, had set one foot firmly on either side of the crevice. To be fair, Walter couldn’t blame him. McKinley might have lived through this, but there were a number of careers that wouldn’t.

  Walter blew out a breath and entered, girding himself for a heart-to-heart with Chief Wilkie. Instead, seated behind the large rosewood desk in the center of the room, backlit by the morning sun pouring through the half-opened Venetian blinds, was Mark Hanna.

  Unlike the caricatures that portrayed an immense, overshadowing figure dressed in suits festooned with dollar signs—power, after all, must be large—Marcus Alonzo Hanna was, in fact, a small, balding, rather formless man. His head was dominated by ears that seemed to stretch from crown to jaw and a bulbous nose that, while not quite Morgan-esque, was nonetheless formidable. He was dressed in a gray suit and vest, and under his ample chin was an incongruous green and red plaid bow tie. He wore position with sufficient ease that he could slouch in his chair and turn slightly sideways, seemingly on the verge of throwing his feet to desk top, and still look commanding. The senator, Walter realized, had booked himself the Presidential Suite.

  John Elbert Wilkie, chief of the Secret Service Division, stood with military bearing at the side of the desk to Hanna’s right, staring out through his pince-nez, trying not to blink. He was a dapper man, hair parted down the center, the tips of his mustache twirled, oiled, and turned upward in perfect symmetry. He wore an ochre linen suit, perfect for early September in Washington, or even Ohio, but a bit flimsy for Buffalo. He stood facing the door, his ostentatious efforts to project authority succeeding only in making him appear more of a retainer. The fingertips of his left hand rested possessively on the polished desk top, as if contact with the rosewood made him an extension of the man in the chair.

  “We’ve got an important job for you,” Hanna said without preliminaries. His voice was deep and his enunciation casual. He gave off a faint odor of lilac. Or maybe that was Wilkie. Hanna didn’t elaborate, but instead sat regarding Walter, waiting. He didn’t move, not even to drum his fingers on the desk.

  What does he want? Walter wondered. Fealty? An eager reply stating he was honored to be offered such an important job by the president’s Svengali? Fuck him, Walter thought, and declined to offer a response.

  The standoff lasted about five seconds. Then Hanna gave a short, single nod, as if Walter had passed a test. “You up for it?” he asked.

  Walter merely continued to look Hanna in the eye and Hanna knew that was a yes. He was more than a bit surprised to realize that, albeit grudgingly, he liked Mark Hanna. Or at least respected him. Walter respected men you could communicate with without a lot of talk. Men who knew where they stood. Or sat.

  Wilkie spoke for the first time. “I have personally recommended you to Senator Hanna.” His fingertips remained on the desk top.

  Walter glanced to his putative boss and offered a nod of thanks. He had never been in the least surprised that he did not like Wilkie.

  “We’re going to send you back to Chicago,” Hanna said without looking at Wilkie. “That’s where this conspiracy was hatched.”

  “We are certain there was a conspiracy then?” Walter spoke softly.

  Hanna considered the question. “It’s a fair assumption. Unless you think that this Czolgosz fellow . . .” He pronounced the name correctly. “This Czolgosz fellow just suddenly out of nowhere got it into his head to shoot the president.”

  “I won’t know what’s in his head until I speak to him.”

  “You’ll speak to him.” Hanna injected just the slightest note of irritation into his voice. It said, “You don’t mouth off to me, boy.” After he was comfortable that the message had been received, he pushed himself to his feet.

  “But first, Mr. McKinley would like to meet you.”

  4

  President McKinley had been brought for his convalescence to the Milburn mansion, the home of the president of the fair. Walter, Wilkie, and Hanna rode in a shiny black brougham with brilliant gold trim pulled by a glistening black horse in gleaming golden harness. The driver wore a top hat that Walter couldn’t afford and sat with posture that would have pleased a master sergeant. Harry had been left behind at the hotel, supposedly to get reports from Chicago. Walter sat facing the rear. As the carriage pulled away, he could see Harry through the oval window, standing at the curb. Harry had his hat in his hand and was rubbing his other hand across the top of his glistening head. Walter stifled a grin. Who was left in the hallway now?

  The drive took about ten minutes and no one spoke. The streets around Delaware Avenue had been cleared for a block in all directions, a combination of coppers and army men standing silent vigil to the wounded president. The brougham was waved through a crowd of well-wishers and the morbidly curious who stood respectfully outside the line of uniforms. The onlookers were unable even to see the house. Maybe it was enough for some people just to say they were there, although Walter could not imagine why. The allure of passive participation had always eluded him.

  When they pulled up at Milburn House, a man in a Stetson who looked no more than twenty was waiting to open the door. He wore a gold star Secret Service badge pinned to his vest, although Walter was mystified at how he could have gotten into the division so young. Hanna alit first, ignoring the boy’s proffered hand, followed by Wilkie. Wilkie stopped and whispered something in the boy’s ear. The boy nodded, quite serious, and then said, “Don’t worry, dad. I’ll see to it.” Young Wilkie then marched off toward the side of the house, swinging his arms tightly at his sides.

  The walkway to the front door was a good forty feet in length, protected by a line of low trimmed boxwoods running along the sidewalk. Dense vines of English ivy covered the front of the house, cut only to prev
ent them from encroaching on the surface of the eight-foot windows on the first floor and the six-footers on the second. The main entrance was at the center and three other doors were spaced along the width of the house. Walter felt more as if he was entering a university or government administration building than a private home. If this was an example of the housing, even for a Brahmin, Niagara Falls powered electricity had rendered Buffalo a good more deal prosperous than Walter had realized.

  Wilkie waited for him at the front door. “You address him as ‘Mr. President,’” he stage-whispered. Walter walked past him, pretending not to hear.

  In the front hall of the mansion was enough manpower to mount a decent assault on a medieval fortress. Some were in uniform, most in plain clothes. When Hanna entered, a path was cleared to allow him a straight line across to a door at the far side. Hanna was remarkably bow-legged—Walter wondered if he had contracted rickets as a child—but everyone assiduously avoided giving notice to his rolling gait. Wilkie had easily regained his position close at Hanna’s heels. Walter didn’t rush, but was large enough to clear his own path.

  He looked around as he walked through. Wilkie must have expanded the division because Walter didn’t know a soul in the place. Foster and Ireland were nowhere to be seen. Presence at the Temple of Music was apparently a disqualifying factor.

  With little to do but stare at each other and try to establish territory, the lawmen were milling about or had broken off into small groups, muttering, swaggering, and fingering their weapons. Walter had always been amused at the impressive after-the-fact display of force that could be counted on in the wake of a screw-up. The bigger the screw-up, the more impressive the display. Can’t get much bigger than letting a president take two bullets at close range with almost as many Buffalo dicks, division operatives, and uniformed coppers standing around as were in this room now.