Pilkington looked genuinely taken aback. “I didn’t send anybody after you, why should I? I expected you to come here under your own steam.”
Liam cocked the hammer with an ominous click-clack! For the first time, Pilkington’s eyes flickered with a hint of fear. “You would, wouldn’t you?” he said.
Liam didn’t bother answering. After a moment Pilkington let out a ragged breath.
“All right, Mr. McCool. You have the upper hand. But I have your grandmother, so you’d best sit down and listen to what I have to say.”
For a moment, Liam seemed to be weighing the pros and cons of blowing off the old man’s head just for the hell of it, and Pilkington’s face turned a dirty pinkish-gray. Then Liam grunted, let the hammer back down and took the muzzle away from Pilkington’s forehead. He stood in front of the desk with his arms folded, the pistol still firmly gripped in his fist.
“Speak,” he said.
Pilkington took the handkerchief from his breast pocket and wiped his face a little tremulously.
“Your grandmother is quite safe,” he said with a touch of acid. “For the moment.”
“What the Devil do you mean by that?”
“I mean,” Pilkington continued with a touch of asperity, “that Agent McPherson’s reports from Pottsville had already made it clear to me that you are what nautical men call a ‘loose cannon’ and that I must exercise the most finical care in dealing with you. When I heard from Agent McPherson that you had gone so far as to threaten his life during your final meeting with him, I thought I had better take some precautions.”
Liam shook his head incredulously. “I may be a thief, but my word is as good as gold. What is your word worth, you scabrous old dog-puke?”
Pilkington’s expression hardened: “I haven’t time for such fripperies. The security of the United States of America is in my hands and the hands of a few other knowledgeable and dedicated men, and promises have no meaning whatever as long as we are facing the threat of an internecine war with Little Russia. As to your grandmother, suffice it to say she is in a safe place and in the most perfect health—though I am told she is no more amenable to the dictates of prudence and common decency than is her grandson.”
“When do you mean to set her free?” Liam’s voice was menacing, and Pilkington’s eyes narrowed warily.
“I have a mission for you that is of absolutely crucial importance. Believe me when I say I wouldn’t dream of sending you forth on it without some guarantee of your good behavior, and your grandmother’s remaining in our care for the time being should do very nicely for that purpose. If you fulfill your assigned duties as well as you did at Little Round Top you may have your private life back again when it’s all over.”
Liam was having a hard time resisting the urge to kill Pilkington and have done with it. He spoke in an unsteady, harsh tone that made Pilkington look longingly towards the buttons under his desk:
“Tell me about this mission of yours and don’t waste words. And stay away from your alarm switches.”
Pilkington licked his lips and dabbed his forehead with his handkerchief. “We need a seasoned undercover who speaks Russian to go to Little Petersburg and find out what happened to one of our agents in the Little Russian Ministry of War, it’s as simple as that.”
“I’m sure it isn’t. What are you leaving out?”
“His name was Lt. Col. Vasilii Chuikov—he had prepared a report on Little Russia’s war plans and he was supposed to use the excuse of a fishing trip on Lake Superior—what they call Lake Petersburg now—to escape and take the report to our HQ in Chicago. We’ve heard rumors of improvements in the Little Russian Aerial Navy that could be disastrous for us if they’re true …” he hesitated and his eyes shifted away towards one side. “In any event, we’ve had no word from Chuikov and we must have the information.”
“Spit it out, Pilkington,” Liam said furiously, “what don’t you want to tell me about?”
Pilkington glared at Liam. “Very well. But you reveal this to another soul at the peril of your grandmother’s life. We’ve also heard rumors of the discovery of vast pitchblende deposits in the southwestern territories of Little Russia, in the mountains where the Apache Indian people live. Chuikov was supposed to find out if the rumors were true and confirm the location. I doubt you know it, but pitchblende is the ore from which …”
But Liam was already making connections: “… calorium is extracted. I’m willing to bet you’ve got your hands on someone who knows the secret of refining calorium and that this whole dirty scheme is about seizing Little Russia’s pitchblende and using it to beat out the British industrialists.”
Pilkington’s lips quirked as if he had just bitten into a very sour lemon. He stared at Liam for several long, sullen moments. Finally, he shrugged.
“I insist that you sit down while I give you your instructions, I’m tired of straining my neck. And listen to me very carefully. Just remember …” he leaned forward and gave Liam a nasty smile … “if you don’t get hold of this information and bring it back to me in this office no later than July 3rd, you will never see your dear old grandmother again.”
Chapter Fifteen
This town is going crazy, Lyovushka, and I’m not just talking about giant rats and cockroaches, I’m talking about everything everywhere is nuts and nobody knows what’s next. This morning, it’s your Gran gone. A couple of hours ago, it was all of the boys—and I mean all of them, even Harry the Jap couldn’t manage to pull a fade in time. And all kinds of other people I’m hearing about, too, people like us and uptown nobs both, from all over the city—there’s a knock on the door and the next thing you know you got Eyes coming out of the cracks in the wall. The only reason they didn’t get me was that Harry called on the voicewire while they were busting his door down, and I went and dragged Abe Hummel down here with a mountain of legal papers before the Eyes even started up my staircase.”
It was late in the afternoon and the shadows were already lengthening along MacDougal Street as Liam and Mike Vysotsky strolled and confabbed. Vysotsky, a sturdy, bouncy young man whose normal style was a bottomless mix of nervous energy and laughter, was a study in gloom and uneasiness, looking around as if he expected more Eyes to pop out of the nearest coal chute. He ran his palm over his pale, cropped hair and tugged on his broken nose as if he was trying to straighten it.
“Did Pilkington say anything about them sweeping people up?”
Liam shook his head. “He said we were going to be at war with Little Russia pretty soon and the way I got it was that was going to be an excuse for just about anything Stanton & Co. feel like pulling from here on in. I’m surprised they even paid any attention to Hummel’s writs.”
“Howe and Hummel are just as crooked as those bums, and they know it. Why do you think Mother Mandelbaum has them on a five grand annual retainer? Those two shysters know all the dirt on all the big cheeses in this city—and Washington, too. As long as the politicos want to pretend they’re playing by the book—all fair, square and above board—we’re going to need Abe and Billy holding our hands.”
“Where are they taking the people they’re putting the collar on? Is there any word on the grapevine?”
Vysotsky made a face. “Rumors. Rumors about rumors. I give them that much—they got things sewn up tight, nobody’s daring to open their yap. The one whisper I’m hearing the most is they’re going to be used for something. Put to work, maybe.”
He looked around urgently and then leaned closer to Liam, speaking right into his ear: “I tell you this for free, bratushka, if we’re going to be taking on the DPS we’re going to need a real war chest—we need to crack a bank, and we need to do it fast.”
Liam nodded. “Fast is right. Pilkington expects me to get to New Petersburg, do his dirty work and bring home the bacon by a week from Wednesday. That means you’ll have to find out where he’s taken Gran and the boys while I’m gone and have a plan ready for how we can go spring them before that old rat pu
lls any more tricks.”
“First things first. What do you say we make a withdrawal from the Gotham Savings Institution? Tomorrow night when it’s nice and quiet?”
“Suits me,” Liam said. “I cased the one on the corner of Bleecker and Broadway a few months ago, before Henderson’s Patch.”
Vysotsky grinned. “Who ever said great minds don’t think alike?”
Just ahead of them a cheerful light spilled into the deepening shadows from a plate glass window with ornate gold lettering: The Kettle of Fish—Saloon—Free Lunch. Vysotsky gestured towards it:
“Come on, let’s see if Jimmy can give us a table in the back.”
Meanwhile, in the drawing room of a fine old brownstone on Gramercy Park West, Becky Fox was biting her tongue as she submitted to an unctuous exhortation by Horatio Willard (“Willie”) Pilkington, Chief of the Department of Public Safety’s Secret Service. and (no less important to him) uneasy victor in the long struggle to escape his father’s tutelage.
“Nobody in America knows better than you do, Becky dear, what perilous times we’re living through.” He smiled anxiously, the movement making his smooth, plump pink cheeks look even more like a baby’s bottom. “Dynamiters and trade unionists are doing their utmost to tear the social fabric to shreds. Jealous foreign rivals eye our markets like hungry jackals, waiting to pounce on our customers and carry them away to their lairs. Anarchists and communists and free-love harpies fill the pages of our newspapers and journals with their poisons …” His voice quavered a little, the touch of revivalist anguish made popular by Moody and Sankey.
“I was only asking,” Becky said with deceptive mildness, “why your office refused to acknowledge a writ of Habeas Corpus for the release of my father and his colleagues.”
A fleeting look of exasperation flickered behind Willie’s watery blue eyes before he got a fresh grip on his unctuous mood.
“There are times when even the Great Writ must give ground to the needs of a threatened public, Becky dear. Vox populi vox dei, as the proverb has it, and nowhere more so than in the preservation of our precious democracy. Of course the Department of Public Safety would never dream of denying the right of prisoners to challenge the legality of their arrest, but under our Emergency Regulations the use of Habeas Corpus must be temporarily suspended, for the general good.”
“Very well, then,” she said in her flattest no-nonsense tone. “I was warned to expect this by David Dudley Field, who I’m sure you know has undertaken to represent my father’s interests. And I’m sure you also know that Mr. Field has the ear of many powerful men in Congress, all the more so since his recent service in the House of Representatives. Since you refuse to acknowledge the writ, I must warn you that I have asked Mr. Field to pursue every possible legal remedy against your Secret Service and the DPS and Secretary Stanton into the bargain.”
Pilkington’s expression hardened and the bogus air of stump-preacher entreaty dropped away as the muscles at the corners of his jaws worked angrily.
“I had heard you were keeping company with a dangerous criminal and Fenian agitator,” he said coldly, “and I can see that he has had a less than beneficent effect on your views.”
In spite of herself, Becky broke into a peal of laughter. “Honestly, Willie Pilkington, you are as big a humbug as you were when you were a little boy in short pants. If after all these years you could believe for an instant that I need anybody’s help to form my opinions then you’re a lamentable advertisement for the skills of Pilkington’s International Detective Agency.”
Not trusting himself to answer, Pilkington abruptly got to his feet and strode to the windows, where he stood for a moment staring out at the pleasant green vista of Gramercy Park while he struggled to master his irritation.
Becky studied Willie’s stout form, expensively clad in bespoke tailoring that couldn’t quite hide the results of his love of good port and extra desserts, and reproached herself for forgetting the adage about never poking a bear with a stick. Willie had a very tender amour propre, as any alert woman could easily read in the care with which he slicked his thinning brown hair over a palm-sized bald spot.
Tch! she said to herself. Be nice! Out loud, and in her most contrite tone, she said: “I am sorry, Willie, I didn’t mean to upset you.”
Accepting the olive branch, Pilkington returned to his seat and dropped into it with a put-upon sigh.
“Becky, dear, you know how deeply I care for you and how much you worry me with your Quixotic sallies against the powers that be. And I know you’re all too aware of the dangers that face America today, your travels and your contacts with the public make you uniquely well-informed. So I hope you’ll excuse my importunity in returning once more to my plea that you give serious thought to my proposal of marriage. If only we were man and wife it would be so much easier for me to protect you …” he paused briefly but significantly “… and your family.”
Becky could feel the angry flush spreading up her neck and into her cheeks: “The impudence of him,” she thought furiously, “to drag Papa’s fate into this!”
As used as she was to keeping a neutral tone with the people she interviewed, she couldn’t keep a quaver of emotion out of her voice as she answered him: “I suppose, as before, you would insist that I must give up my writing career.”
“Well of course …” he spread his hands in a gesture of appeal, “you would have new responsibilities, new duties …”
Becky bit her tongue again, but she didn’t need to speak in order for Pilkington to read the mixture of affront and iron resolve in her expression. He shook his head disgustedly and stood up again.
“I might have guessed you’d be pig-headed as ever. But out of consideration for our years as neighbors and schoolmates I must give you fair warning: I’m very well aware of your travels and your interviews in regards to a projected series on the trade unions and their threat of a general strike.”
Becky felt a chill run along her spine. “Indeed?” she said carefully.
“Yes,” he said, “Indeed. And we have informed George Curtis at Harper’s Weekly that even if he calls in all the IOU’s he holds from members of Congress and of the City and State Governments, they will not be enough to protect him and Harper’s from the most draconian response if he dares to publish your articles.”
Becky got to her feet, clearly signaling the end of their tête à tête. Pilkington nodded and moved towards the front door, but before he opened it he added:
“Please think before you make any final decision, Becky. I don’t want you to make yourself our enemy.”
She moved around him and held the front door open: “I’m not your enemy, Willie. But until you can respect my rights as a citizen and a woman I can’t be your friend either.”
Pilkington stared at her for a moment, his jaws working; then he gave her a curt nod and headed down the front steps, tight-lipped and furious.
Chapter Sixteen
Liam said, “I hear they’re having a hard time raising the money to put up the whole statue.”
He and Becky had been ambling along the Fifth Avenue side of Madison Square Park on their way to the Delmonico’s at 26th, enjoying the mild June evening and each other’s company, when they were stopped short by the sight of a gargantuan bronze arm gripping a flaming bronze torch in its fist. A platform big enough for the entire New York Philharmonic had been erected for it in the middle of the Park, and curious strollers were walking around peering at the disembodied limb with awed and slightly mistrustful expressions, like Lilliputians stumbling across a chunk of Gulliver while out for a promenade.
“I’m afraid Secretary Stanton’s security measures have put something of a damper on the fund drive,” Becky said with a hint of irony, “especially since the finished statue is meant to show ‘Liberty Enlightening the World.’”
“Hmmm,” said Liam, transferring his gaze from the slightly creepy bit of statuary to the much more rewarding vision of Becky Fox dressed for the evening
in a forest-green silk gown accented by a simple necklace of emeralds and opals. Madison Square had been one of Secretary Tesla’s most recent experiments with electricity broadcast wirelessly from a colossal tower in the wilds of the Bronx and though Liam missed the soft glow of the old gaslights, the new incandescents gave the evening a holiday sparkle that matched his mood: no question about it, Becky made him want to smile even when he had little reason to.
“As usual,” he quipped, “you have the mot juste. Plus a few extra for good measure.”
She shrugged modestly and returned the smile: “Words are my trade, after all.”
They resumed their stroll, in no particular hurry to go indoors out of the rare perfection of the spring evening. A faint mist had risen from the East River with the cooling of the day and mixed with the smoke of the city’s countless steam engines to give the air a tang that made Liam think of the Long Island shore in October.
They had plenty of company tonight, too—as if the city had turned out for a breather after a week of unseasonable heat. Usually Madison Square was frequented by the well-to-do of the city, drawn by expensive shops and fine restaurants, but tonight there was a good-natured hubbub of swells and working folk alike, not to mention dips and boosters of every description. As one of these jostled Liam casually, Liam grabbed his hand with a grip like a bear trap, halting it on its journey out of his pocket.
“Lose something, did you?” Liam asked the dip in a mild tone. The man turned pale, let go of Liam’s wallet and shook his head frenziedly, taking off like a scalded cat the moment Liam freed his wrist.
“Might be wise to keep a firm grip on your reticule,” Liam said to Becky with a grin, “the Brotherhood’s out in force tonight.”
“Speaking of crime,” she said, “have you learned anything new about Lukas?”
“My pal Mike has been keeping an eye on him. Not just for my benefit—it seems Lukas has been raiding Butcher Boy territory.”
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