“I tried to get closer,” said Archie. “A watchman spotted me halfway across, and I thought I better run for it.”
“I’ll take a shot at it,” Bell said. “Give me a whistle if you see the watchman.”
He crossed the barges several rows down from the route Mary had taken, loping gunnel to gunnel as his eyes adjusted to the failing light. At the outside row, he drew close to the workboat, keeping an eye peeled for Mary and its crew. Its decks were empty. A thin wisp of smoke curled from its stack, indicating that steam was being kept up, but the boat wasn’t going anywhere immediately. He smelled coffee.
Bell stayed on the barge and worked his way alongside the boat. A round port was open, spilling light from the cabin, and he could hear voices. He eased closer silently until he was perched beside the cabin. Mary was talking. She sounded angry.
“How much longer are we going to just sit here?”
“Until he gets back.”
“We should at least move the barges upstream. They’re too far downriver to sink here. There’s only one bridge below us.”
“Like I said, miss,” a man answered, “we’re not going anywhere without the boss’s say-so.”
“Where is Mr. Claggart?”
“Didn’t say.”
“Did he say when he would return?”
“Nope.”
“Then I think we should begin on our own.”
“Sister,” another man interrupted with a smirk in his voice, “we ain’t beginning nothing without the boss.”
“But there’s more rain forecast. The water’s rising. Soon it will be too deep. We can’t just sit here doing nothing.”
“Nothing?” said the smirker. “I’m not doing nothing. I might have a drink. In fact, maybe I’ll have one right now.”
Bell heard the pop of a cork pulled from a bottle.
Mary said, “You wouldn’t dare in front of Mr. Claggart.”
“Like you say, Mr. Claggart ain’t here— Hey!”
Bell heard a bottle smash.
“What the hell do you—” the smirker roared angrily.
Bell started to go to Mary’s defense, then ducked as the cabin door flew open and she stalked out and climbed onto the nearest barge. Inside, he heard the first man shouting, “Are you nuts? Let her go! If you touch her, Claggart’ll kill you… Miss! Miss!”
A head popped out the door. Bell glimpsed the slick hair and pinchback vest worn by a cardsharper or a racetrack tout. “He’ll be back in two or three days. I wasn’t supposed to tell you, but come back then. Don’t you worry, we’ll start sinking them the second he’s here.”
Mary threw an icy “After you move them upriver” over her shoulder and kept going.
Bell pressed his face to the porthole. The second man, the smirker, was staring morosely at the broken bottle at his feet. He looked like a saloon bouncer who had seen better days. The gambler stepped back inside and shut the door. “That is one angry woman.”
“I wouldn’t want to be in Claggart’s shoes when he gets back.”
“He can handle her.”
“Not if he changes his mind about sinking them barges.”
“You can bet your bottom dollar he won’t change his mind.”
“What makes you so sure?”
“He’s got a big plan. The barges are just a small piece of it.”
“Does she know that?”
“No.”
* * *
Mack and Wally set up shop in separate waterfront saloons near the Smithfield Bridge. Nowhere near as drunk as they looked, the detectives quickly made names for themselves as exceedingly generous, treating Monongahela towboat pilots and captains to round after round. Archie Abbott acted as runner, shuttling between them to exchange information and passing it on to Isaac Bell, who was glued to the front door of Mary Higgins’s rooming house.
Bell weighed the value of confronting her to find out what exactly the talk of sinking barges meant. What did “too far downriver” mean? And “only one bridge”? Or would he learn more by waiting until “Mr. Claggart” returned? Waiting meant he would have to move in a flash to stop whatever they were up to. In the meantime, as he watched and waited, he tried to imagine what they thought they would accomplish by sinking barges.
Mack Fulton spelled him so he could catch some sleep.
Back in four hours, he found Wally Kisley there, too. Wally had just come from the Allegheny County sheriff’s office. He had bad news about Jim Higgins.
Isaac Bell went looking for the union man.
The Van Dorn Protective Services agents reported that Higgins had gone missing.
34
We’re real sorry, Mr. Bell. We turned our backs for one second, and he lit out like a rocket.”
Mike Flannery and Terry Fein had promoted him to “Mr. Bell,” he noted wryly, now that they had bungled the job of protecting a client being stalked by the Pinkertons, the Coal and Iron Police, and possibly an assassin hired by the Coal Trust to keep Higgins from testifying for the attorney general. Flattery would come next.
“Where did you see him last?”
“Amalgamated Coal Terminal.”
“What the heck was he doing up there?”
The Amalgamated transfer operation was three miles upriver from the Golden Triangle, Pittsburgh’s business district, where Higgins and the Strike Committee had rented their union hall in a storefront under an old warehouse. It was fully seven miles downriver from the tent city where the Monongahela march had ground to a halt in a trolley park, shuttered since summer ended, on the outskirts of McKeesport.
“We don’t know, Mr. Bell. We went with him twice yesterday. He just stands and stares at it.”
“Why don’t you look for him there?”
“He’ll dodge us if he sees us coming,” said Mike.
Terry explained, “When the march ran into trouble, he blamed us for getting in his way.”
“When all we’re trying do is make sure no one shoots the poor devil or shoves a knife in his ribs.”
“But he’s always rattling on about what a fine fellow you are, Mr. Bell, and we thought maybe if he saw you coming, he wouldn’t run.”
Well-rehearsed flattery. “O.K., Mike, you watch his room. Terry, you watch the union hall. I’ll go out and look for him.”
“Try the toast rack.”
The toast-rack trolley — an open-sided electric streetcar that Bell rode out from the Golden Triangle — ran on tracks that paralleled those of the Amalgamated Coal trains. Passing Amalgamated from the inland side, the trolley offered views of locomotives pushing empties under the tipple and snaking them out full, and occasional distant glimpses of the barge wharves that ringed the Point. The operation seemed to Bell to be mechanically perfect, as if each barge and railroad was a minute cog in an immense and smooth-running wheel. He jumped down when he saw Jim Higgins standing at a trolley stop with his hands in his pockets.
“How you getting on, pardner?”
“Not good, Isaac. Not good at all.”
“What’s wrong?”
“The mineowners armed every bum with a gun. Then they let the jailbirds out and gave them ax handles. They’re blocking the march, and the hotheads are yelling, ‘Let the working people take guns and shoot down the dogs who shoot them!’”
Bell said, “If they do, the governor will call up militia with rifles and Gatling guns.”
“I know that. In fact, he’s already put them on alert. But the hotheads are talking each other out of the good sense to be afraid.”
“Mike and Terry told me you gave ’em the slip.”
“I need solitude to think.”
“They also told me you find something attractive about this Amalgamated operation.”
“It’s about as up-to-date as can be,” Higgins answered vaguely. He glanced away from the tall detective’s probing gaze and changed the subject. “Somehow, I’ve got to convince the Strike Committee to stand up to the hotheads.”
“I’m afraid I’ve
got bad news on that score,” said Bell.
“Now what?”
“The Strike Committee was just rousted onto a special train headed for Morgantown, West Virginia.”
“What?”
“The Allegheny County sheriff extradited them to stand trial for the murder of Black Jack Gleason.”
Jim Higgins’s shoulders sagged. “They didn’t blow up Gleason’s yacht.”
“I’m sure they didn’t,” said Bell, “since they were in Chicago at the time. But proving that will take months.”
Higgins looked around for a place to sit, saw none, and stared helplessly at Isaac Bell. “Now it’s all on me,” he said. “But they’ve got me blocked at every turn.”
“Maybe Mary can help.”
Higgins shook his head. “I don’t think so.”
“Do you know what she’s up to?” Bell asked bluntly.
“She’s gone her own way.”
Bell asked, “Is she in danger?”
“If I believed in God, I’d say, God knows.” Jim Higgins lifted his eyes to the giant tipple. Suddenly, to Bell’s astonishment, he straightened his shoulders and stood tall. A thin smile crossed his face, expressing, Isaac Bell thought, a sad farewell to hope or a final good-bye to illusions.
“Whoever built this tipple knows his business. He’s got himself the center of coal distribution, east, west, north, and south.”
“It’s efficient,” said Bell. “I hear he’s putting the smaller coal yards out of business.”
“This point of land would have made a beautiful park.”
“I beg pardon, Jim?”
“Water on three sides, the way the river snakes around it. Just a short trolley ride from town. Imagine a great big Ferris wheel where the tipple is. Picnic grounds. Swimming pool. Carousel. Baseball diamonds. A racecourse. You could hold revival meetings. And Chautauqua assemblies.”
Isaac Bell looked up at the coal smoke matting the sky. “You would need a lot of imagination.”
“But imagine our tent city here instead of down in McKeesport. Winter’s coming. If we could occupy this place, we could shut it down. Industry’s furnaces will starve for fuel, and city dwellers freeze in their homes.”
“You sound like your sister,” said Bell.
“Maybe they’ll listen to us then…” He turned eagerly to Bell. “We wouldn’t have to shut it down. Once we were here and could shut it down, they would see our position and have to bargain. If we could threaten that shutdown, we’d settle a fair agreement and all go back to work.”
“That could happen,” Bell said neutrally. An Army general might see a certain raw genius to Higgins’s idea: Surrounded by water on three sides, the Amalgamated Coal Terminal’s point of land would be easier than most encampments to defend. A Navy admiral would see a trap, sitting ducks exposed to gunfire on three sides.
“But how do I move ten thousand miners from McKeesport to here with strikebreakers, company cops, and militia blocking the way?”
Bell was mindful of his orders not to take sides but concerned that Jim Higgins was turning a blind eye to the danger. He asked, “Would the men leave their families behind?”
Jim Higgins shook his head. “No… But, Isaac, this must be done. I have to find a way to move them here.”
“The risks are enormous. Women. Children.”
“It’s more risky leaving them where they are. The camp is a shambles at McKeesport. It’s just a trolley park. A bunch of picnic tables, a swimming hole, and some shuttered-up amusement rides. You know, for working people to ride out on Sunday and have fun in good weather.”
Bell nodded. All around the country, trolley companies were building parks at the ends of their lines to get paying passengers on their day off. “But how did the marchers get in?”
“McKeesport cops looked the other way. They were glad to keep us out of the city. But now the trolley company is threatening to shut off the water and electricity. It’s a mess — too many people, more and more every day, no sanitation and no way to care for the sick. But here, we would be inside Pittsburgh’s city limits. There are hospitals and doctors and food and clean water nearby. Churches and charities to help and newspaper reporters to witness. Wouldn’t they temper the actions of the strikebreakers?”
“But to get here, you have to run the gauntlet of militia and those ‘bums’ and ‘jailbirds.’ You could set off a massacre.”
“That’s a chance we’ll have to take,” Higgins fired back. His jaw set, his spine stiffened, and Isaac Bell saw that the mild-mannered union man had made up his mind to fight a fight he shouldn’t — a pitched battle with strikebreaking thugs and company police backed up by state militia.
Overriding his own better judgment and ignoring Joseph Van Dorn’s direct orders, the young detective said, “I know a better way.”
“What way?”
“Black Jack Gleason’s way.”
35
Me and Mack is too old for the boss to fire,” said Wally Kisley. “Even for backing you in a stunt like you’re proposing. And Joe Van Dorn won’t fire Archie, he’s just a dumb apprentice— No offense, Archie.”
“None taken. My classics professor at Princeton expressed a similar opinion in heroic hexameter.”
“But you, Isaac, you’re just starting out. You can’t afford to be fired— I know you’re rich, and you know I’m not talking about money. If you want to continue working as a private detective, there ain’t a better outfit for a young fellow to learn his business than Van Dorn. But, make no mistake: If he catches you in the middle of this, he’ll fire you.”
Isaac Bell rose to his full height, bumping his hat on the low wooden ceiling of the workboat cabin. The others were hunched over a galley table that was covered with oilcloth. A cookstove smelled of grease and coffee. It was dark outside. The porthole was open to the pungent odors of the river and coal smoke.
“I appreciate the thought, Wally. And you, Mack. But this ‘stunt’ is the right thing to do. I can only hope Mr. Van Dorn will see it’s right, too.”
“I wouldn’t bet on that.”
“I’m not betting on it. I’m taking my chances.”
Archie ventured a sunnier scenario. “Maybe Mr. Van Dorn will regard moving all those families into the safety of the city as a humanitarian act.”
“Maybe President Roosevelt will give the coal mines to the miners,” Mack Fulton said.
“And while he’s at it,” Wally added, “declare the United States Socialist Republic of the Big Rock Candy Mountain.”
“We’re agreed,” said Bell. “Jim, how many towboat pilots did you round up?”
“I’ve got five committed.”
Bell multiplied boats and barges in his head. He had hoped for more boats so the barges would not be too big and unwieldy. Five towboats pushing twenty barges apiece, one hundred people in each barge, crammed in tighter than sardines. Ten thousand people, if they all made it aboard before the Pinkertons noticed. God help them if any sank. “What about engineers?”
“Towboat engineers are like hermit crabs. They never leave the boat.”
“Deckhands?”
“A few, plus as many miners as we slip out of the camp.”
“Pretending to be deckhands,” growled Mack Fulton.
“They’re no strangers to hard work,” said Jim Higgins. “And they’ve spent their lives wrestling things heavier than they are.”
“They’ll do,” said Bell, knowing they would have to.
Wally and Mack exhaled loud stage sighs. “O.K., Isaac,” said Mack. “When do we do it?”
Isaac Bell looked at Jim Higgins.
Jim Higgins said, “The pilots predict another black fog tonight.”
“Tonight,” said Isaac Bell. “We move them tonight.”
“Cheese it!” hissed Wally Kisley. “The cops.”
It was not, of course, the Pittsburgh police, or even the Coal and Iron Police, but Mary Higgins, who the Protective Services boys had warned was heading their way. She
stormed into the workboat’s cabin with color high in her cheeks. She glared at her brother, the others, and Bell.
“Where are the men who were here?”
“They left town for their health,” said Mack Fulton.
“Taking the waters at the Greenbrier,” said Wally.
“What are you doing here?” she shouted, turning all her fury on Bell.
“We are borrowing your barges,” he said. “And you’re lucky we found out instead of the police or the Pinkertons or the militia.”
“Are you asking me to be grateful?”
“You can thank us by staying out of our way.”
She whirled on her brother. “Did you tell him?”
“I only confirmed what they figured out on their own.”
“Why?”
“So you don’t get killed or thrown in prison.”
“Go to hell, brother. You, too, Isaac Bell.”
* * *
Isaac Bell followed Mary out on deck. She was staring at the fogbound river, blinking back tears. “You ruined it.”
“Mary?”
“Leave me be.”
“Good will come of what you did. These barges will save the miners’ march and save lives.”
“How?”
“Your brother has the idea to move their tents to the Amalgamated Coal Terminal. The hope is, we can transport the miners and their families in these barges. Once there, he thinks, they will hold a safer and stronger position.”
“Do you believe that?” she asked.
“I believe that at this moment their position could not be worse.”
Mary nodded and said quietly, “I saw the trolley park this afternoon. They can’t stay there… Was it true what my brother said?”
“Jim did not betray you. He only confirmed what I guessed.”
“You’re quite the clever guesser, Isaac Bell.”
“It was quite guessable,” Bell replied. “There’s no reason to sink a hundred barges in the channel other than to block the shipment of coal.”
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