She forced herself to rest her head against the seat back, to try to overcome her panic. As long as this marshal was still stalking her, not yet detaining her, she had a chance. She turned toward him and mustered a smile. She didn’t know yet how to get away, but she could show a false face in the meantime. Fool him into thinking she wouldn’t run.
“I’m told there’s a luncheonette inside the terminal. Do you know it?” She managed a slight laugh. “I don’t believe I can face the dining car again. Every meal is smothered in gravy and stinks of canned peas.”
“Why yes, I know the luncheonette.” She could see his puzzlement. See him making new calculations.
“I don’t want you to feel obliged,” she said. “But . . . if you mean to take your supper too? I’d enjoy . . .” She couldn’t quite make herself say she’d enjoy his company.
“Certainly.” His face relaxed. “Yes, I’d be glad to join you.”
He stood and extended a hand to help her up. He looked smug, flattered. The mask on the back of her head seemed to be fooling him.
Putting herself on the arm of a marshal was one of the hardest things Ella had ever done. As he walked her through the train’s mustard and burgundy cars, she saw two men outside following along. She recognized them as the other marshals. They were looking through the windows to see where their boss led.
How could she have thought this was about Mrs. Kingston’s jewelry? She was barely five feet tall—it wouldn’t take three armed men to arrest a small and ailing thief. But a “radical”? Someone who’d seen Galleani speak, who knew a draft dodger in Mexico? These days, a connection to any Anarchist was seen as “intended to provoke, incite, or encourage resistance to the United States.” Did they think Ella was traveling with dynamite? (Hadn’t the marshal asked if she had baggage? Hadn’t he sent someone to the luggage car?) Conversation with a thief would yield less than a search would. But an “innocent” chat with an Anarchist could lead to information about accomplices.
She wanted to laugh in the marshal’s face. What was it he saw when he looked at her? She’d grown up with harmless dreamers, not bombers. Orphaned at fifteen, she’d gone to work in the shirt factories. For the last two years she’d been a servant, wiping little fingers and changing diapers. The most seditious thing she’d ever done was pine in loneliness for a pacifist. And Nicky didn’t go to Mexico to plot violence, he went there to reject it.
The marshal murmured something about not getting separated in the busy station. He put his hand firmly over hers where it lay on his arm. She felt herself go hot with anxiety. She looked away as if blushing at his touch.
It was crowded in the chill, high-ceilinged terminal. People worried about catching the flu, but not everyone could avoid traveling. Instead, nearly all wore white cotton masks. Ella saw the marshal check over his shoulder, scanning the crowd. He shook his head almost imperceptibly. Telling his men, Not yet?
Weariness threatened to cut the legs out from under her. What was it about tigers that made them keep stalking? How did they decide one moment was better than another to pounce? Why should the beasts, looking out from seamless jungle, choose one spot on the villagers’ path over another?
The marshal clung tightly to her hand on his arm as they passed paperboys waving extras, kiosks stacked with baseball souvenirs and postal cards, fiddlers playing “After You’ve Gone.” Breaks in the crowd showed a luncheonette to their left. When its doors opened, Ella smelled the lemon and grease of fried fish. Occasional words rose above the patrons’ din—“armistice” and “surrender” were like frequent toots of a horn.
The luncheonette was too close. She couldn’t get away between here and there, not with two other marshals behind her. And inside it, the line moved quickly as people chose their courses and slid their trays along a rail. A meal there would delay things only briefly.
She stopped walking, forcing the marshal to stop too. Around them, harried travelers parted and passed like river water around a rock.
“May I ask you something?” Her voice was teary—she couldn’t help it. But though she spoke at a near whisper, she saw he listened for every word. “You’ve been inquiring about Georgetown? Is it because you can tell I’m not . . . ? That I don’t go to college?” She felt herself blush deeply. She hoped he’d believe it was because she regretted the deception.
“Is that so?” he said.
She angled to face him, though he still kept her fingers clamped to his arm. She put her free hand on his lapel and fancied she could feel the indentations where his badge had pierced the fabric. “I could see you knew it. The way you asked about my professors’ views.”
“No, I was just . . . interested to hear them.” He looked confused.
“I shouldn’t have lied.” She meant it: A marshal would see lying as running. It would trigger the same impulse in him as in a tiger. She’d been wrong to think a friendly manner was enough. She understood now that only the truth would do. Only the truth would fool this man into thinking she was coming toward him. Or she wouldn’t have one hand pinioned to his arm now. “It’s just that . . . I wish I were a student,” she said. That was the truth, all right. “I wish it, but it’s far above my means. I was a servant to a rich woman. She gave me these clothes before the flu took her. Because she’d burned mine. I was the first in the house to get sick, you see. And in case the disease was on my clothes . . . None of us wanted the children to catch it.”
“Ah,” he said. “That’s who you lost, then?”
“Yes. Three children. Children I loved dearly—more than I knew.” That was a fact too. “And others in the household. Servants who were my friends. And so now I’m forced to go home. I had a job in a shirt factory there, and I suppose they’ll take me back.” She detested the false sympathy in his eyes. He knew all of this already, she was sure of it. “And so if you’d rather not join me . . . You were thinking I’m of a higher social class than I truly am.”
Suspicion crackled across his face. But when he glanced again at the other marshals, it was to shake his head slightly.
“It’s my pleasure to dine with you,” he said, “whether or not you’re a schoolgirl.”
She brushed away a few tears of stress. “Thank you,” she said. “If you’re sure. But . . . I don’t suppose you know of someplace else we could eat? Just a week ago I was in bed with fever. And the stink of fish from the luncheonette doesn’t agree with me. If there’s anyplace nearby?”
“Why yes, I know a spot, Miss—” He leaned so close they were nearly forehead to forehead. She could smell cinnamon gum on his breath. “What’s your name, then?”
She tilted her face so her lips were close to his, closer than was decent. The hairs stood up on her neck, but she smiled. “Antonella Gualtieri.”
She could see on his face that he knew it. That was good; he’d expect to get more honesty from her in the course of a long meal.
“Well, Miss Gualtieri, I’m Matthias Killy. There’s a good little place just a block from here. Let me offer you dinner there,” he said. “I hope you’ll be warm enough walking to it? I don’t know if you care for spirits, but you look as if you could do with a hot toddy.”
She nodded. Let him hope he’d loosen her tongue with alcohol.
The marshal’s face, still close to hers, seemed particularly sharp against the blur of movement behind him. He looked well pleased. He was clever and handsome, and it seemed to be bringing dividends. And if it didn’t, he had two armed men to back him up. That’s how marshals are.
Ella spotted a group of soldiers in tattered uniforms. Some were limping, others were bandaged or scarred. As they pushed close, she pretended to be jostled. The marshal let go of her hand on his arm and put it on her waist to steady her. She felt her loathing for him like insects crawling up her back.
As if she didn’t see the soldiers edging by, she stepped into their path. A boy around her age had been moving awkwardly, leaning on a stick. Ella made sure to hook his foot with hers so that he fell, c
rying out from the pain to his leg wound. Gushing sincere apologies for hurting him, she turned as if to help. The marshal shunted her aside to get a grip on the soldier and bring him to his feet. Ella took a step back, letting others bend to assist.
She turned to a white-masked couple. “It’s armistice!” She spoke in a husky whisper, as if overcome. She didn’t want the marshal to hear. “The soldiers say so. The war’s ended!”
Their eyes went round. The man pulled down his mask as if one salvation meant every salvation.
Ella could feel the marshal searching for her, and she turned to catch his eye and smile at him.
“Armistice?” a man near her repeated. His voice had the deep blare of a tuba.
Others crowded closer, and Ella heard the word posed again as a question and then as an answer. The marshal finished helping the lame soldier to one foot. He saw that Ella was a few people away from him now, but he didn’t seem anxious. The mask on the back of her head was fooling him, it seemed. And he was distracted: Around them, the word “armistice” flew from lip to lip, changing in tone from doubtful to certain. A man shouted it. Another whistled.
Ella joined in when some began to cheer. “Armistice!” ricocheted back from other parts of the terminal. People were screaming it, laughing it. They’d been praying to hear it, expecting the news at any moment. Strangers embraced. A cotton mask fell to Ella’s feet as couples shed them to kiss.
She was farther from the marshal now, but waved to show she was keeping track of him, staying close while he found the soldier’s walking stick. He looked hopeful, wanting as much as anyone to believe the war was over. She grinned as merrily as a person would if it were real news. She put out her hand as if to reach for his, but as she did, she opened a path for people to step in between them.
When they cut off the marshal’s view of her, she bent to pick up the white mask. Near it was a man’s tweed cap, flung into the air but not caught. She jerked it on and held the mask up over her mouth. She took another step backward, shedding her coat and letting it fall to be trampled. She couldn’t use the ticket in the pocket, anyway. The marshals would look for her on that train.
From a distance of fifteen or twenty feet, she saw the marshal’s panicked face. His head turned from side to side as he searched for her in a crowd gone delirious. His eyes slid over her, in her hat and mask. She hurried toward the exits, hoping he’d keep looking for the wrapover she no longer wore. He raised his hand and pointed to the row of doors. Not, Ella thought, because he saw her near them. It was because his men would get there sooner than he did.
But not before Ella slipped through.
2.
The man onstage finally quelled the shouts of Strike! Strike! Strike! Ella, standing on a bench against the back wall, watched him wave today’s Seattle Star. She’d seen the headline, UNDER WHICH FLAG? The general strike was, the paper warned, “a test of YOUR Americanism.”
The speaker slapped the front page. “Oh, he’s a fine one, our Mayor Ole Hanson. Says any man uses the word ‘workers’ is quoting Lenin. But Ole didn’t mind the word so much when he courted the working man’s vote, did he? Then, he was a friend of the workers. Grand things he said about us then. Is there a union hall he didn’t come to, a pancake breakfast that he missed? But votes are votes, and money’s money. And what they saved by cutting our pay all through the war? By breaking their promises to us after? It gave ’em plenty extra to stuff into politicians’ pockets. Case you wonder what’s that bulge in Ole’s pants. No, it ain’t that!” There was a roar of laughter. “It’s the raise they swore to give you.”
Ella looked over the sea of caps and rough jackets. A hundred and ten unions had voted aye to strike. Over a hundred thousand workers went out tomorrow.
“We’d get ours, they said, when the war ends. But Armistice was in November, and by my calendar now it’s February. And that money they promised? They’re giving it to the Minute Men of Seattle and the American Protective League. Thugs to round up union men. Jails from Ellensburg to Walla Walla filled with our boys—three months inside now, some of them, and no charges. And the Star asks us, which flag? Us?” He tossed the paper down, made a face like it had filth on it. “And see what else it says, there over the headline? MAYOR HANSON TO DEPUTIZE 10,000. Pictures every day of marshals boarding trains to come here. Because our strike, they tell us, was organized by Leon Trotsky himself.” He waved his arm. “Well, I don’t see Leon in here anyplace, do you, boys?”
The room roared with laughter. Someone shouted, “Where are you, Leon?”
“Maybe he’s in one of our kitchens? Twenty-one labor halls ready to serve thirty thousand meals a day. Or maybe Leon’s out collecting donations from bakers and grocers and butchers and dairymen? Maybe he’s loading trucks with chickens and vegetables, or getting ready to deliver milk and diapers, or shining up his car to use as a free taxi tomorrow.”
Ella’s cheer was lost in the din. She’d worn out the soles of her boots going to shops and farms and warehouses and garages to get those commitments. And as long as the general strike lasted, she’d be on her feet, cooking and serving at the union halls. She’d had few moments of perfect happiness in her life. But she knew, as she walked out into a soft wall of drizzle, that this was one of them.
The streets of Pioneer Square were a carnival of covered carts selling hot dogs and roasted chestnuts. Two fiddlers, keeping dry under an awning, played a lively version of “Oh, How I Hate to Get Up in the Morning.” As she neared the King Street Station, the fiddles warred with a frenetic banjo and a woman’s brassy rendition of “How You Gonna Keep ’em Down on the Farm?” The streetlights were just coming on when Ella wiped the wet glass of a shop window to see a fringed sheath, barely below the knee. Imagining herself in it, she didn’t notice her friend Mario behind her.
“Mannaggia! Antoné!” When she turned, he kissed both her cheeks.
“Am I late?” she asked him. “I’m sorry. I didn’t know which train to meet. I thought probably the next one—”
“Macchè late, no no. I walk around little bit, I come back. No trouble. You good girl, let me stay with you.” More kisses on the cheek, then he held her at arm’s length, grinning.
He wasn’t much taller than Ella, a wiry, bandy-legged man whose hairline had receded farther since she’d last seen him, a few years ago. As a child, she’d adored Mario because he was one of the men who brought Nicky, then eleven, to town. She knew Nicky and Mario parted ways in Mexico. Nicky wrote to her awhile after he got there, to say Mario and others were already going home. A worldwide revolution was starting—they wouldn’t sit on its sidelines. But Nicky said the point and burden of pacifism was to defend peace, not to find a better war.
Well, Mario would sing a different song now. Seattle’s general strike would be the first of dozens, maybe hundreds, across America. It would change everything, and do it without violence. Unions would be too strong to break and too beloved to lie about.
In the glitter of shop lights, she saw nostalgic tears in Mario’s eyes. “Sei fatta più bella, Antoné, sai? You more beautiful.” He was as swarthy and beetle-browed as ever, and the origin of his nickname, Nasone, or Big Nose, was just as clear.
“No one came with you?” She’d been nursing a small hope that Nicky would be on the train.
“Nessuno.” No one. “Troppo da temere. Sai com’ è.”
Other Anarchists were too afraid to come? The government had stepped up deportations and arrests, she knew that. The entire leadership of the I.W.W. was in prison, five to twenty-five years at hard labor. Eugene Debs got ten years, Emma Goldman two.
“But you mayor, he calls in goons to bust open the heads, and I do nothing? No no. Me and Sacco, we been go all over, back East. Organize the strikes, or give a little bit more muscles, eh? You see the magazine say three thousand strike last year? This year, more.” He stopped to look her up and down again. “Ma, Antonella, maybe you marry somebody rich? You looking like a girl on top a wedding cake. Look wh
at a dress.”
“I made it,” she said. “Cheaper than you think.” She knew better than to tell him about the jewels she’d taken. He’d want money for the cause, and she wasn’t sure what he’d do with it. People were so desperate lately, so furious. They needed Seattle to remind them to hope. “Have you seen Nicky? Any of you? Talked to him?”
“Nicolino mio, no. I know somebody sees him, maybe October, maybe
November. In Mexico. Nicky says he’s going right away, Washington, D.C. Looking for you, Antoné.”
“Not October. He wouldn’t have come before Armistice.”
Mario shrugged. “Why not? People, they know is close. Week, two weeks before? What’s a difference?”
A week before Armistice, the marshals had stopped her in Chicago. Ella felt a little sick. Worried again that they’d arrested Nicky at the Kingstons’. That they’d come after her as, to their minds, a fellow Red. “You haven’t heard from him since? Would you know it if he . . . if he got picked up?”
“You no worry.” Mario patted her cheek. “Nicky, he’s a smart boy. Eleven years old, already he’s work two years in the coal mine. Me and that crazy Wobblie—you remember him, no front teeth and the red hair?—we grab him, dirty like a dog, no parents, gonna get himself shot in the strike. We put him on the soapbox, this town, that town. He tells everybody. Breaker boys, they don’t never see the day, they sitting twelve, fourteen hours pick the rocks from the coal. The chutes, they overflowing, the boys they bury alive. People they no believe me, I tell them. But Nicky, he makes them cry. What a boy, eh? Already then, he’s a man. Don’t forget—Nicky, he good to take care himself. You no worry ’bout Nicky, Antoné.”
Ellery Queen Mystery Magazine 09/01/12 Page 23