Assassin of Shadows

by Lawrence Goldstone

  “Probably so,” Walter said. “But we were talking about Czolgosz.”

  “Yes. I know. I asked you why he would come here. A killer.”

  “He liked to read. And a library is a good place to pass time when you’ve got no place else to go.”

  Mrs. Haverstraw tilted her head to the side. Traces of a smile flickered in the corners of her mouth. “You know this for a fact, Mr. . . . ?”

  “George. Walter George, ma’am.”

  “Walter George what?” the librarian asked and Walter started. The tables were turning fast and Walter didn’t like it one bit. His own past had nothing to do with any of this.

  “Never mind,” the librarian said quickly. “Why don’t you tell me what this man looked li—” She emitted a small gasp and looked down at the book. “That was his copy, wasn’t it? Not yours.”

  Walter nodded.

  “Yes. He was in here. Every day for almost a week. Until two days ago. The first day he brought the book. I thought it odd that someone should bring a book into a library. I thought the same thing when you did it, but I didn’t make the connection. I suppose I wasn’t thinking.”

  “You say he only brought it on the first day?”

  “Yes.”

  “What did he do while he was here? Both the first day and the others.”

  “He read mostly. Sat at a table over there. She pointed to the far corner of the room, under a big window. Kept to himself. Only seemed to talk to Esther.”

  “Esther?”

  “Esther Kolodkin. One of our librarians. She’s not here today.”

  “Day off?”

  The librarian shook her head. “No. Her sister is coming from Chicago to see the Exposition. Esther took a couple of days off to show her around.”

  “So she wasn’t here yesterday either.”

  “No, but I see nothing nefarious in that.” She paused and eyed him. “But you do, Mr. George. Indeed you do. So, before you ask, I will tell you that I have never seen any evidence that Miss Kolodkin held views contrary to American values. She seems a perfectly respectable young woman. She has been with us almost six months, ever since she came here . . .”

  “From Chicago?”

  “Yes. But I should tell you that I came here from Chicago as well.”

  “But you were not seen speaking repeatedly with a man who attempted to assassinate the president.”

  “As I was saying, Mr. George, in my experience Miss Kolodkin has always comported herself with decency and good values. The fact that she may have been kind to a young man who was a stranger in town paints her neither as an anarchist nor a conspirator.”

  “Thank you, Mrs. Haverstraw. I’m certain you are correct. I have no doubt that after I speak with her for five minutes, the truth of what you say will be apparent.”

  “Are you mocking me, young man?”

  “Not at all. By the way, did Miss Kolodkin happen to mention what part of Chicago she came from?”

  “Oh yes. Evergreen Park on the near South Side. I’m from Hyde Park. We spoke often.”

  “She missed Chicago, did she?”

  “You obviously know nothing of Chicago, young man. Once one has lived there, one always misses it. I would not have left except for Mr. Haverstraw. He’s an engineer. When he got an offer to work at the pumping station from the Falls, we packed up and left. A woman must follow her husband, after all.”

  “But Miss Kolodkin had no husband.”

  “I do not pry into people’s private lives.”

  “No. Of course not.”

  Mrs. Haverstraw’s mouth tightened. If she was ever of a mind to make Mr. Haverstraw pay for forcing her to leave Chicago, Walter had no doubt whatsoever that she could exact a steep price indeed.

  “But I’ve taken far too much of your time,” he said quickly, suddenly desperate to be free of this woman’s company. “As I said, I’m certain that I can put to rest any thought that she and Czolgosz had spoken in any way but coincidental to tragic events of yesterday. But in order for me to speak with her, I’ll need to know where she lives . . .”

  9

  I’m looking for Esther Kolodkin.”

  The landlord looked Walter up and down, letting a sneer play on his lips. He was of indeterminate age, short, bald, and unshaven, with stubby gnarled fingers and a torso once thick and muscular, now gone to fat. A laborer who had saved enough money, Lord knew how, to buy this fleabag of a rooming house.

  The building, two stories of peeling wood and cracked windows, was in the southeast part of the city, a tumble-down neighborhood of immigrants and laborers; of families squeezed into tiny apartments; of the mixed smells of cooking fat, spices, and unwashed humanity; where English was rarely spoken and commerce was conducted by raised fingers in barter; where no matter how hard one worked, or for how long, or how many members of the family participated, the best they could hope for was not to grow poorer. Similar neighborhoods in cities all across America grew potential radicals like so many stalks of wheat, just waiting for the Emma Goldmans to happen along with a scythe.

  The landlord sniffed in deeply. Walter thought he might spit, but whatever he had loosened, he swallowed. “Copper?” The man’s political views were apparent in the one word.

  “Don’t matter what I am,” Walter replied. “Is Esther Kolodkin here or isn’t she?”

  “Ain’t.”

  “Since when?”

  “I don’t own no watch.” The accent was vestigially Eastern European. Walter surmised the landlord had been in America for some time. Gave him a leg up on more recent arrivals.

  “Do you know where she went?”

  The old man tilted his head sideways. “Thought you was a copper. Why don’t you tell me?”

  Walter smiled and nodded. “You’re a very funny fellow.” Then he took a step forward and grabbed the old man by either panel of his vest. Grime was sufficiently prominent that the serge felt slimy to the touch. Walter tightened his grip on the fabric and pulled up until the old landlord was barely on tiptoe.

  “Listen, my humorous friend,” Walter said, so softly that the landlord turned his head slightly to better hear. Walter figured he was deaf in one ear. “I’m going to be asking the questions and you’re going to be giving the answers. And if I think your answers aren’t up to snuff, I’m going to haul you up to the second floor of this rat trap and toss you through one of your own windows. You understand me, don’t you?”

  The man glared. He’d experienced the ministrations of police before. But Walter had learned to combine size with manner to achieve what more bullying coppers couldn’t. He held the man, not moving, keeping his gaze fixed on the landlord’s rheumy eyes. Finally, the man nodded, grudging, filled with loathing.

  “Good,” Walter said soothingly. But he did not release the man. “Now where is Esther Kolodkin?”

  “Left yesterday morning,” the landlord snarled. “Ain’t been back.”

  “Left for where?”

  “Dunno. Work I figured.”

  “Was she meeting anyone?”

  A shake of the head. “Not that she said.”

  “Did she ever talk about any relatives? A brother maybe? Or an aunt? Or a sister?”

  Another shake of the head. “Nobody.”

  “Think she left town?”

  “How would I know?”

  “She paid up on her rent?”

  The old man shook his head. “Owes a week. Six bits.”

  “Don’t you get paid in advance?”

  “Usually. But she was a librarian an’ all. Quiet. Kept to herself. I figured she was good for it.”

  “She have any politics?”

  The old man shook his head again, but they both knew he was lying.

  “Do you have politics?” Before the landlord could deny it, Walter said, “Better tell me the truth, old man, or you’ll be talking to a cell full of angry coppers downtown.”

  “Socialist.” The word came out in prideful hiss.

  “Was she a sociali
st?”

  “Anarchist.”

  “Is that why she stayed in this dump? Because she knew you wouldn’t give her trouble?”

  The old man nodded.

  “She ever have any visitors? Men?”

  The old man shook his head.

  “Friends who dropped by?”

  “Nobody.”

  He was lying but there was no way for Walter get the truth. The old man might be willing to talk about the dead, but he wasn’t going to give up the living. He let the man down. “See how easy it was to have a polite conversation. Now show me her room.”

  The landlord stood in the doorway for a moment, reluctant to allow a copper defile his sanctum. But, after a moment, he turned and headed for the staircase. Walter hoped the rotting wood would support his weight.

  When the door to Esther Kolodkin’s second floor room opened, Walter thought he was looking through a portal to another world. The walls had been recently washed, flowered chintz curtains hung on the windows, a patchwork counterpane adorned the single bed, and a rope rug lay on the floor. The room was furnished sparsely but was scrupulously tidy.

  Near the bed was a bookcase, just knocked together pine boards. Back issues of Freiheit, “Forward,” Johann Most’s rag, and other subversive periodicals, occupied one shelf. A variety of anarchist books filled the other. Walter was amused to see the Proudhon, in translation, of course. Not surprising. What is Property? was as common to anarchist bookshelves as the Bible was to preachers’. Walter leafed through the books and magazines, looking for papers or letters from the fabled sister from Chicago or anything else to provide a clue to Esther Kolodkin’s life outside of work or home. There was nothing.

  An ancient armoire stood opposite the bed. The doors hung at haphazard angles and had ceased to have clasps, so were tied shut with lengths of ribbon. Walter undid the bow and checked the contents. Three dresses, all cleaned and pressed, hung inside, as well as a gray wool coat and hat, each at least six or seven years old. Walter held up one of the dresses, a dark green frock. Esther Kolodkin seemed to be of medium height and weight. The garment would be appropriate for a woman of Mrs. Haverstraw’s age, although Esther Kolodkin was much younger.

  He opened the top drawer, needing to jiggle it to overcome the warping. The drawer was filled with slips, stockings, and personal undergarments. Esther Kolodkin seemed, as Mrs. Haverstraw had described, to be a solid working woman with good values and both feet firmly on the floor. And an anarchist. But, despite what the scandal sheets would have one believe, neither personality nor personal hygiene was defined by politics.

  Other than the clothing and the reading material, no hint of the woman’s character could be found. But the very absence of such a hint was revealing in itself. No one lives that anonymously except by choice and effort. She had either maintained the room in such a fashion on an ongoing basis, or cleared it of material before she left. In either case, Walter was convinced that Esther Kolodkin had left this room for good.

  She had, in all likelihood, run. The question was, had she done so for fear of persecution or because she had reason? The answer was critical, and Walter would need to find it out without the help of the Buffalo coppers. That cord had been permanently cut.

  10

  Walter and Harry had worked together for so long that they didn’t need speech to communicate. They’d left their valises at the Iroquois, so Walter headed back there. When he arrived, Harry was waiting for him in the lobby. Walter motioned with a quick jerk of his thumb toward a far corner.

  “There may be something to this after all,” he said softly, but still at conversational levels. Nothing attracts eavesdropping like whispering. Walter told Harry briefly about Esther Kolodkin speaking with Czolgosz in the library and the subsequent visit to her room. “It might be nothing, but I don’t think so. Even if she’s not directly involved, I’m sure he talked to her, or at least hinted at what he was planning to do. She’ll make this go a lot faster. She’s either somewhere in Buffalo or she skipped town, probably to Chicago. Back to Evergreen Park. We need to find her.”

  “I found her,” Harry said. “And she’s not in Chicago.”

  “You found her? Where is she? And why were you even looking for her?”

  “I wasn’t looking for her. I was trawling. Trying to get the dope on the resident anarchists here. The coppers were actually quite helpful. Especially when I told them how pushy you were, bossing everyone around, and how I hated working for you. They got real sympathetic after that.”

  “So where is she?”

  “That’s the problem. She’s in the morgue.”

  “She’s dead?”

  “Well, she doesn’t work there, Walter. Of course she’s dead. Seems to have been a robbery. She was stabbed. Three times. No purse on the body.”

  “Three times? When?”

  “Last night. Probably a couple of hours after McKinley. Ordinarily would have been big news . . . young, pretty girl knifed on the street. Not yesterday though.”

  “Where was she found?”

  “The waterfront. Up near the narrows. No one knows what she was doing there, since she lived on the other side of town. But there’s lots of anarchists on the boats. All a bunch of foreigners anyway. Maybe she went down there to meet some friends.”

  “Maybe. You said ‘seems.’ Why ‘seems’?”

  “What are you talking about?”

  “You said, ‘It seems to have been a robbery.’”

  “Ah. Well, I wasn’t there, was I?”

  “No other reason?”

  “No, Walter. What are you driving at?”

  “She left her rooming house two days ago. Wasn’t at work. That leaves a day and a half unaccounted for. I don’t think she was just walking along the lakefront all that time.”

  “You think she was with Czolgosz?” Harry had gotten a little closer to the correct pronunciation. “You think she was that involved?”

  “I don’t know, Harry. But she was somewhere. Nobody knows where Czolgosz was the day before, do they?”

  “He wouldn’t talk about it.”

  “So maybe they were together. She came here six months ago. Unless he just happened to run into a fellow anarchist at the library, that would go a long way to proving Wilkie’s theory.”

  “Walter, no one would have been planning to kill McKinley in Buffalo six months ago. No one even knew he would be here.”

  Walter waved his hand impatiently. Sometimes Harry couldn’t follow a trail unless it had flags in it. “No, no, Harry, that’s not . . .” He thought for a moment. “Did Czolgosz say he had the gun when he came here?”

  “He didn’t say. Everyone just assumed he did.”

  “What if he didn’t? Safer to travel unarmed. In case he was stopped.”

  “You think he got the gun from this librarian?”

  “Maybe. Or maybe she just did some scouting for him. Or maybe they just sat and read Bakunin together.”

  “Who?”

  “Doesn’t matter. But she took off from work, lied about the reason, left her rooming house without saying why, and turned up dead right after Czolgosz botched killing McKinley. I’d say that’s a kind of odd string of coincidences.”

  “Okay. So it’s odd. Your favorite word. So what now?”

  “I want to talk to Czolgosz again. Give him his book. Then let’s take a look at the body.”

  The watch had changed from Walter’s last visit. Inside the cell block sat an ordinary young copper, pale, pimpled, and eager. Czolgosz was in precisely the same position as he had been when Walter had arrived earlier, knees up, one hand clasping his other wrist. The copper left without a fuss. Walter handed the book to Czolgosz without making him get up to get it, then pulled up the same rickety chair to sit opposite.

  Czolgosz played with the book, running his fingertips over the cover like he was caressing a woman. He was going to need Bellamy’s syrupy vision of the future where he was going.

  “Thanks for this. You’re not
bad . . . for the law.”

  Czolgosz for the first time seemed genuinely human. Just a dumb kid who truly believed he was striking a blow for humanity. Let’s see, Walter thought, if that sentiment could be carried through.

  “Esther Kolodkin is dead,” he said curtly.

  Czolgosz continued to fondle the book, except for the briefest hesitation, which he attempted to hide by going back to the same spot on the cover a few seconds later. “Who’s that?” he asked finally. Walter wondered if Czolgosz knew how bad a liar he was.

  “A librarian. I thought you knew her.”

  Czolgosz lifted his hand. “Yeah. I did know a librarian. Esther? Was that her name? I never found out. She was just someone to talk to.”

  “Ah. So I guess it doesn’t matter then.”

  “Well, sure it matters. Young girl gets killed.”

  “I didn’t say she got killed. I just said she was dead.”

  “Well, how else? Young, healthy woman. I just figured she musta got killed. ’Specially with you bringing it up. How was it? Traffic accident or something?”

  “She was stabbed. A robbery.”

  Czolgosz placed the book next to him on the cot, as if to protect his precious object from the news.

  “A robbery, huh? Poor people is driven to crime by the oppression of the capitalist class.”

  “Very lofty sentiments, Leon. Get that from Emma Goldman, did you?”

  “Hey! Emma Goldman is a great woman. If your friends cared more about the working man like she does . . .”