Mrs. B startled and Mr. B, roused from a postprandial nap, shook his head and looked crossly at Francis. The clapping seemed to break whatever spell had possessed Anisette, and with a winsome smile and a blush she was the Anisette of earlier: uncertain, eager to please—almost as if she too had been roused from sleep, mid-dream. Francis made a show of folding his hands in his lap and the elder Binghams resumed their poses—benevolence for her, somnolence for him. Anisette again raised the violin to the crook of her neck. She took a deep breath and the change came over her eyes once more.
Her encore worked the slow, sad, rough-throated end of the instrument. The bright sparks of the first song had faded, but they had lit something hard and slow to burn, like a coal fire that could glow all night. Anisette swayed, as if the violin were tethered to distant bells that tolled with each subtle pull. Like this, Francis said to himself. I could spend the rest of my days like this.
He was certain that he’d heard this piece of music before, but he could not remember where and neither could he put a name to it. He had gone rusty after his time in Mountjoy, which was a shame because one of the great benefits of life in Dublin in the years before his arrest had been re-immersing himself in music. He had met or maintained close relations with many of his best customers at the Opera House. It gave the whole operation a touch of class, he believed, that he could take orders between acts of Rigoletto—and it gave his clients the comfort of working with someone of obvious taste and refinement. Francis, have you any more of that cognac? Francis, can you get me that novel by Huxley? Mr. Dempsey, has your man any more of those photographs—for a friend, of course? His business concluded, he would settle into his seat. There were even times when an aria brought him close to tears, when an ingenue soprano sprung the lid on a boxed-up memory of—that was it.
This tune that Anisette was playing, with its achy questions, its plaintive appeal; he remembered now that he had heard it as a boy, in the house in Cork, when his mother was still alive. There had been a crush of people in the parlor—the big bodies of adults, a thicket of legs and skirts. A man was readying himself to play the piano. A young woman, a student of his mother’s, stood beside him with a violin and with a nod the two began the same piece of music that Anisette now drew from the strings of her instrument. Francis’s mother stood behind him, her hands on his shoulders. The perfume she always wore smelled tangy and floral. From the pressure of her fingertips—right, then left, right, then left—he could tell that she was swaying to the music, counting time as her pupil worked through the soaring trills and sudden choking stunts. There was the taste of plum pudding in his mouth, Martin stood next to him, his father was somewhere in the room, there was a fire in the grate, and then his mother’s voice was in his ear, framing the words Kreutzer Sonata. Her lips were so close that he felt the shape of these strange sounds as much as he heard them, as if she had spoken to him in a made-up language. He licked the last sticky crumbs of the pudding from his fingers and leaned back into the taut orb of his mother’s belly. This was in December 1921, St. Stephen’s Day. Michael would be born in March. She would be gone in August.
Francis was only nine when Mam died and Da whisked them out of Cork and off to Ballyrath. He knew things about his mother, factual things—she had red hair like his, she had a beautiful voice, she had gone to Boston to study music before she met Da—but he had trouble remembering her face. He had few clear memories of her that he could call up and peruse at will. Those days, and his mother, came only unbidden and in flashes.
Anisette stopped mid-measure, the bow shrieking against the strings. Her hair had come loose from its combs and the color burned in her cheeks. “Angus.” Her voice cracked, a broken whisper. “Is something wrong?”
Before he could answer, Francis realized he was crying. The tears had been pouring out of him and now he snapped the square from his pocket and mopped his face. When he rose it was on unsteady legs. The night had started as a lark but here, in its closing hours, it had taken on a profound weight. His eyes met Anisette’s and for a moment it was as if they were alone, exposed to each other. He feared that anything he said would banjax all his efforts to pass himself off as not-Francis. In that moment he did not have the strength to pretend. He had not come to the Binghams’ seeking anything more than a night out and a chance to climb a rung or two on the social ladder, but here was Anisette, with depths to her that he had never guessed, and all around her shimmered a memory of long-ago days.
His throat parched, he quickly thanked the Binghams for their hospitality, for the use of their doctor, for making a stranger feel so welcome in this great city. The darkness pressing against the windows reminded him that it had been hours since he had abandoned Michael with no one to mind him but a beefsteak and a bowl of ice cream. Michael with his queer expressions, alternately dazed and rifle-sharp, as if there were something in the room that demanded his full attention: the chair with the fleur-de-lis fabric, the drapes that framed the view of the park, the painting of a bowl of pears. Michael needed tending.
He had planned to walk the twenty blocks back to the hotel in order to unwind the restlessness in his legs and sort through the welter uncorked by Anisette’s performance. A Highland tradition, he was going to say, to get a good leg-stretching after a hearty meal, but the truth was that he was destroyed. When the Binghams insisted on having their driver bring round the car, he graciously accepted, and in minutes he was rolling down Fifth Avenue.
If only he could talk to Michael. They’d had only one day together before the accident, but it was time enough to see that his little brother, who’d been a child, really, when Francis had made his way to Dublin, had grown into someone who could ease Francis’s loneliness and make him feel a part of something. Michael would love to hear about the Binghams, richer than Midas and madder than hatters, falling all over themselves to make sure that Sir Angus would escort them to the royal ball. The Michael he had gotten to know in the Morris Minor would have had a good laugh at that.
ANISETTE SAT AT her dressing table, thinking about the wedding. Oh, it would be lovely! She already had the dress, and they had decided ages ago which flowers she would carry in her bouquet. Not that she wanted everything to be exactly as they had planned it last year. Hadn’t Maman said that they would find someone better for her in Europe? An Italian count or a Polish prince, that’s what Maman had said, though Father hadn’t liked the idea of another Catholic in the family—a palace coup, that’s what he called it. Still, anyone in Europe would have been better than the best New York had to offer. Look at what a mess that had been. If she had gone through with it, she would still be in her newlywed year.
She thought it was all going to be so nice but then her intended went and tried that horrible business. She could still smell the drink on his breath, the reek of gin. He had started kissing her, late on the night of the Christmas party at his parents’ home, but the kisses became cruel. He bit her lip, hard enough to draw blood, and when she shrieked he put one hand over her mouth and the other under her dress. He said filthy things to her, with his hand going up her thigh and his mouth hot against her unwilling ear. She struggled, she kicked at him, but he persisted, and only when she managed to pull her face away and scream long and loud did he finally stop.
“You’re right,” he’d said, wiping his mouth on the back of his hand, “let’s wait. That way the wedding night will be full of surprises.”
She couldn’t get those words or his leering smile out of her head. Both had followed her out the door and all the way home, ten blocks in the bitter chill. It was that night, crying in the tub, that she told her mother she never wanted to see him again. Not ever. Anisette knew that the trip abroad had been planned to escape the chatter that echoed from Park Avenue to Scarsdale to Greenwich. She didn’t know about the sizable payment and the use of the villa in Cuba that kept her intended from contributing to the chatter.
Angus, though. Angus was kind, genteel, sensitive—nothing like that other one. Of
course she had known him only a few days, but what she felt for him ran deeper than anything she had felt before. He was polite and clever and he looked after his brother and he had been so careful not to tell tales about the queen. Hadn’t he said it himself? That he had once been bad, but he had changed his ways, and become good?
There was something familiar about Angus, but until tonight she hadn’t been able to put her finger on it. It was during dinner, as he sparred with Daddy about sharp knives and Scottish hills, that it came to her: Robert. Her brother had been her protector, her pal. He was eight years older and had been like a favorite uncle. Or what she imagined it would be like to have an uncle. (They never spoke of Maman’s family, and Daddy’s other children—her half brothers and half sisters—were old people themselves; older even than Maman. They lived out west, in places Anisette had never visited, and there was never any talk of them coming to New York.) When Anisette was a little girl, her nurses had been a succession of pinch-faced matrons—pretty nurses made for bad marriages, her mother said—and whenever they grew cross with her, Robert was the one who could charm them out of their foul humors. He had also been her champion and chief advocate in the long-running wars with Félicité. How many times in her childhood did he rescue her from a bout of hair-pulling or free a doll held hostage by her older sister?
She had often thought of Robert after that awful Christmas party. He would have taken care of everything. Robert would have heard her scream and stormed in, and with one punch sent her Intended to his knees. Then with a few razor-sharp words, Robert would have shamed him in front of all the guests. In another age, it might even have come to a duel—with Robert victorious, of course—and Anisette wouldn’t have minded that one bit.
But Robert had been gone for so long. He had been sent off to Yale—for polishing, her mother had said—and for the first two years he sent funny letters and packages full of her favorite lavender candies, and he visited on holidays and played college songs on the piano. Anisette would take the harmony while Félicité sulked and made faces in the corner. But over time the letters dwindled and the visits grew less frequent. Robert and Daddy began to argue terribly, and shortly after his graduation, the visits stopped. There was still the occasional letter, but where he had once sent jokes and silly doodles, his notes now asked only for her to argue on his behalf to Father: to beg him to support Robert’s scheme for diamond mines in Rhodesia, or bananas in Nicaragua, or rubber plantations in Java. Whenever she tried to raise his name in the house, Father grew vexed and Maman’s eyes filled with tears. She had once heard Félicité say, with a note of envy, that Robert had gotten so polished at Yale that he slipped away entirely.
She didn’t want to let Angus slip away. Saturday seemed an awfully long time to wait to see him again, so she would have to find another day—and soon. Hadn’t she been bold enough to knock on the door of his stateroom so late at night that he had already dressed for bed? Her mother would fret and Félicité would sneer and Father would scoff, but Anisette would be bold again.
THE PLAZA HOTEL
CRONIN HAD FOLLOWED FRANCIS Dempsey and the blonde back from Harlem on Sunday night. The Plaza had been a surprise, but then Dempsey was full of surprises: the fancy clothes, the giant bottle of wine, already a girl on his arm, and now a night at one of the poshest spots in the city. Cronin had seen petty criminals like this before—yokes who would clean out the till of a speakeasy and go on a spree. Fresh pair of shoes. New hat. Drinks all around and always the best woman they could afford. Yokes who believed that a pile of stolen cash conferred protection not just from life’s hard knocks but from the dollar-a-day avenging angels on the payroll of the local bosses. It always ended the same way: their battered bodies would turn up behind a row of trash cans, stripped of life and those flashy shoes.
But this Dempsey was up to something bigger. Early in the morning Cronin had seen the blonde leave the Plaza in a rush, and at the very same time, the littlest Dempsey, the one who’d been only a baby back when Cronin knew the family, swept into the hotel. So this was their hidey-hole? And then that same night Dempsey was off for hours at some Fifth Avenue mansion, only to return in a Rolls-Royce polished to such a shine that it seemed to move invisibly, reflecting the night and the street lamps. The eagerness, the hot certainty that Cronin had felt outside the Savoy to swoop down on Dempsey and dump him with Gavigan, had mellowed into caution. Gavigan wanted Dempsey found, but that wasn’t quite the same as saying he wanted Dempsey brought to his doorstep. Plus, as the days ticked by, Cronin was starting to think that Dempsey wasn’t acting alone. He had someone looking out for him, guiding him, and that must be what was giving him such blithe confidence. Cronin knew the feeling, had once basked in its warm glow himself. For many years he knew what it was to live under Gavigan’s umbrella, back when that meant something. There were many who knew Cronin to be untouchable, for fear of what Gavigan could take from them, and many more who kept their distance from Gavigan for fear of what Cronin could do to them. But this Dempsey? He had the IRA after him, and the Irish police—whatever they were worth—had to be aware that they had let one get away, and yet here he was, swanning around the city like a gentleman on holiday. He was either a worldly fellow, clever and confident, or the biggest dullard to have set foot in the city in years.
Tuesday morning came and Cronin sat on a bench, his back to Central Park and his eyes on the Plaza, waiting for Dempsey’s next move. This was what Frank Dempsey had taught him. To be patient. To know a man’s route footfall by footfall. You didn’t ambush a man by following him; you had to be in front, awaiting his arrival. How many times had they lain in wait, ready to ambush a British patrol, only to abandon the attack when the conditions weren’t in their favor: the Brits were meant to be on bicycles, not in lorries; the patrol was scheduled to cross the bridge at half twelve but arrived early, before the rifles were in place. Seize the day, Frank had taught them, but don’t force the moment. Better to wait than to stumble. The men in West Cork had said it best: The purpose of the flying column was to exist. There was nothing to be gained by a glorious defeat. So he had waited patiently for Francis Dempsey, but his patience hadn’t yet paid off. During the war they would observe a target for weeks before carrying out a strike. It was important to know routines, numbers, armaments. A man’s habits were his undoing. There had been an officer in the Auxiliaries who kept himself under lock and key in the barracks—never went out on patrol, never took part in operations, never walked alone through the city. Even on Sundays, he had an armed escort to church. Except—except his escort left him at the church gate and it was twenty steps from the gate to the stone porch that fronted the church doors. And one day on those steps, as the bells rang overhead to announce the Mass, Cronin and a fellow called Devlin approached the officer on the steps and fired two shots from their revolvers, Devlin into his gut and Cronin into the side of his head. He was dead before he hit the stones and Cronin and Devlin were gone before the bell had stopped tolling.
But this business with Dempsey was different. Partly because it wasn’t an out-and-out hit but a kidnap, which was loads more difficult. In a hit, you only had to pull the trigger and be on your way, but to grab a man and deliver him without too much commotion was a job of work. A man who thought he was fighting for his life could be a whirligig of kicks and punches, eye gouges and foot stomps and knees to the groin. And who knew what surprises Dempsey carried in his pocket? Cronin had seen men gutted with a sharpened screwdriver, blinded by a ha’penny nail.
Aside from the difficulty of the task itself, there just wasn’t time to plan it out properly. The Bronx one day, then Harlem, then the Plaza, then the Upper East Side? Cronin couldn’t yet find a pattern, and every day left Alice and the boy and the baby exposed, unguarded. It hadn’t been like this in the old days, when no one waited for him at home. There had been only the operation, the orders, the cause. Other men had families and he saw the strain it placed on them: the worry of being away from wife and babies,
the fear of what would happen if the Black and Tans, knowing that you were planning ten ways to put them in their graves, went calling on your wife. Cronin never had to worry about any of that, but now everything was different. He had been five days away from Alice and each day hung on him like a length of chains. She was a capable woman, but this business with Dempsey and Gavigan—this was a different order of trouble. This was a world she did not know, a world that Cronin had hoped she would never see.
CRONIN CROSSED THE street, leaving the park for a walk-by of the hotel. Just as he reached the middle of the road, with cabs on each side honking at him, the two brothers sauntered down the front steps and ducked into a waiting taxicab. He cursed his luck. His car was all the way on the west side of the park and a man dressed like Cronin could not expect the bell captain to hail a cab for him. He took a deep breath. They would return, but for now he had the hotel to himself. As the Dempseys’ cab lurched into the morning traffic, Cronin reached into his pocket for one of Gavigan’s crisp ten-dollar notes. He approached the bell captain and held up the bill.
“The man who’s after getting in that cab,” he said. “He dropped this when he reached in his pocket for your tip.”
Hesitation—no, calculation—was visible on the bell captain’s face. Shock that a man in a farmer’s going-to-town suit wouldn’t just pocket such a windfall, mixed with larceny as he wondered how to keep the tenner for himself.
“Will I drop it at the front desk for him?” Cronin said, thickening up his brogue. If Alice heard him and his after getting in that cab and his will I, she’d say he sounded like he’d just gotten off the boat.
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