It wasn’t like any party chat she’d ever heard at the Kingstons’. Ella wasn’t sure why that troubled her.
She stepped out onto the ballroom-sized veranda. Another twenty or thirty men sat or stood in clusters in the deep shade. Odd that there were no women here. It looked more like a meeting than a party.
Jasmine and sweet pea flanked wide stairs down to the lawn, adding a floral overlay to the tempting scent of food on silver carts. Ella saw eggs and sausages and grits and gravy in chafing dishes, platters of biscuits and rolls, rows of chilled goblets with a rainbow of juices, samovars of tea and coffee. The dazzle of sunlight made silhouettes of the men filling their plates.
“My money’s on Harding,” someone a few feet from her said. “They’ll choose him for his ability—no, let’s be fair and call it a gift—of doing absolutely nothing. But you know why we might lose to him?”
“Negligent press and dishonest opposition?”
Laughter. “When is that not true?”
Another said, “Don’t take this wrong, Franklin. But we emptied the damn treasury over there in Europe, and what do we have to show for it?”
“We did win, old fellow.”
Ella tensed. It was her former neighbor, Assistant Secretary of the Navy Roosevelt.
She turned her face away, didn’t see who was replying. “—said it would help our industries. Instead it’s nothing but strikes since Armistice.”
“—race riots,” another said. “Charleston, Scranton, Philly, Macon, Baltimore. Washington last week, Chicago next. If they take a torch to New York—”
Ella struggled to keep hold of her heavy tray. Would Roosevelt spot her, recognize her? She and the children had occasionally encountered him strolling. He’d always given them nickels for ice cream.
A high-pitched voice with drawn-out vowels reached her: “—make sure they know we’ll keep the country safe.” Another voice she’d heard on R Street. Attorney General Palmer.
How could this be? It was as if she’d walked into a dark fairy tale. She didn’t dare look around. Would she see John Kingston here too? As she hurried on, face still averted, she heard Palmer add, “But you ought to mend your fences with Hearst, Al. Keep the papers behind us when we go after the Reds.”
Ella felt sick. Mario said this was a fancy party. He didn’t tell her—presumably didn’t know—that top Democrats would be here.
Why would Nicky come to an affair like this? Surely not to deliver whiskey. This was a dry state. Of course, people drank anyway, as they would when Prohibition went national in January. But these particular men wouldn’t break state law so conspicuously, would they?
These particular men . . . powerful, rich, leaders of the country’s ruling party. She took a few deep breaths. This would be a tempting target for a bomber.
She pushed the thought away. Nicky would never do such a thing, he’d never plot to kill. He was a pacifist, that’s why he’d gone to Mexico.
At some distance from the breakfast-laden tables, Ella spotted a rolling cart that was bare. She set the tray down on it and turned to walk out onto the lawn. She’d make a circuit of the house, peer through windows looking for Nicky. Then she’d go back to Mario’s car. Explain about her neighbors being here. Maybe she and Mario could keep watch, spot Nicky arriving or leaving?
Then she heard Palmer say, “Ah, Killy, there you are.”
She stopped moving. She hadn’t believed the marshal, not really, when he claimed to be Palmer’s campaign manager. She’d thought it a ploy to make her talk politics. On the train west, he kept pressing her to run afoul of the Sedition Act. And in Seattle, from some obscure motive, he insisted they shared some goals. But she’d assumed he was manipulating her.
Now here he was at Palmer’s side. Here he was, in the same place as Ella for a third time. How was it possible? Had he followed her? Had someone, knowing her history with him, purposely put her in his line of sight again?
Only Mario knew about Killy.
Mario, who’d asked her to come across country—lured her, really—to this party. Who’d dressed her up as a maid and sent her in with a tray of sweets.
Did he want Killy to spot her? Why should he? As a distraction? So something else would go unnoticed?
She felt as if she’d gone mad. Mario would never purposely send her into a den of men who might recognize her, arrest her. Why should he? He’d been friends with her mamma, he’d known Ella most of her life. So what if he thought her naive? He thought that about Nicky too.
Last night Mario said Nicky was a fool to stay so long in Mexico. What he get for his sweat and fleas? Utopia? Macchè—he get nothing. Sacco agreed. You enemies, they no hear you, they no fear you. But it didn’t change their fondness for Nicky. Or for her. Did it?
Hadn’t Sacco and Rosina baked her these sweets? They’d gorged on them last night, leaving just enough for her to carry here today. To be another prop for her, along with Assunta Valdinoci’s maid’s uniform.
Ella turned back to the tray. In that moment, Killy wasn’t forgotten, exactly. But another thought overwhelmed her.
This morning, the covered platter was waiting on the backseat of Mario’s Oakland. On the drive, Mario told her more than once to wait until she was inside to expose the dolci. If they drew gnats and flies, he said, it would make her conspicuous. So she hadn’t actually seen these cannoli and cantucci, these millefoglie and slices of baba. Now, her hand shook as she took the handle and prepared to lift off the dome.
Her world contracted, she saw nothing but the sheen of silver, heard nothing but the roaring in her ears. Had Mario and the others sent her here with a bomb?
She didn’t notice the footsteps behind her. Nor the shocked exhalation that put a scent of coffee into the air beside her.
Then someone grabbed her arm and spun her. And there he was. Marshal Killy. Again. She wanted to scream from panic. Again. Marshal Killy again.
He said, “You had someone with you there, in Seattle?”
“No.” She could barely shake a word out.
“There to break my head.”
“No, I . . . ran away when he . . . when he came.”
“Ran away and left me to him? That’s your story?” Killy pulled her farther from the cart, farther from the group enjoying breakfast.
Pressed against the house, she stared up at the marshal. He was a handsome man—this time it came as no surprise. She watched emotions flicker over his broad face, and wondered what he saw as he looked at her. Did her confusion show? Her suspicion?
“You ran away,” he prompted.
“Yes.” She tried not to see it again in her mind. The marshal’s head on the cobblestones, his blood filling spaces between the pavers. She’d shrieked at Mario, then knelt to put herself between him and Killy so he wouldn’t bring the metal pipe down again. She’d feigned sickness that night. She’d found Mario another place to stay. For the rest of the strike, she’d avoided him.
But Mario knew she’d go anywhere, on anybody’s say-so, to see Nicky.
“I ran,” she said, “but then I went back.” She had indeed ventured there later, keeping out of sight. “To be sure you weren’t dying. But you were gone.”
“And I suppose you looked all over for me, eh? And yet strangely, the next day, when I stopped throwing up and seeing double, I found no one who’d spotted you. They expected you at a union-hall kitchen, but you didn’t show up. It took a few days to find your apartment—wise of you to change names. But you’d cleared out of it. Well done, my girl. For I’d have arrested you then.”
“You’d have arrested me that night, I think.”
“As big a fool as I am? I don’t know that I would have. But never mind that now. What are you doing here?”
She made a sweeping motion to indicate her uniform.
“Ah. Shall I ask the Westfields if you’re truly their servant?” He grabbed her arm as if to pull her inside.
“No. Please. I’m filling in for someone, that’s all. They ca
n’t generally tell us girls apart, unless one’s a Negro. They’ll fire my friend. And I . . . honestly, I mean no harm to anyone.”
“And yet I’ve a new scar behind my ear from our last encounter.”
“I saw all the blood on the street where you were. I would never have wished that on you.”
“Miss Gualtieri—or whatever you call yourself now—I’ve yet to find it in my best interests to believe you.”
“I know. But . . . ” She forced herself to stand as tall as she could pull herself. “But you’re always on the verge of arresting me. It colors everything I say to you—how could it not?”
“Well, perhaps you’ve a point.” His words were mild, but he looked furious, his face reddening, a vein throbbing in his temple. He took a deep breath. “My my. What a dance it’s been. How smooth your every step.”
“It’s not what I wanted.”
“Nor I.” He pulled her farther still from the groups on the veranda. “Shall we put our cards on the table, then, at last? You know why I came after you, don’t you?”
Immediately she saw the jewels in her mind’s eye. “You think I’ll confess to something now? To save you the trouble of dancing?”
“Oh, I wouldn’t call it a trouble. At least, not here, where I’m in no danger of another crack on the head.” His smile was almost sweet. “You’re an interesting girl, I’ll say that. But you’ll tell me the truth today.”
She looked past Killy, at the tray glinting on the cart by the porch rail. Beyond it, the lawn was the color of pippins. A rose-trimmed path ended at a pond as bright as a mirror. Beside its boathouse, tethered skiffs floated like confetti.
It was fully hitting her: Whatever else happened with the marshal, she wouldn’t see Nicky here. Maybe she’d never see him again.
“A boy I grew up with,” she said. “He was the reason I ran from you, in Chicago. I thought he must have been looking for me at the Kingstons. That he’d gotten into trouble there, and so you came after me. To make me say something or do something to make things worse for him.” She heard herself say it but couldn’t make herself believe it. “Is that true?”
He stood very still. Then he nodded.
Their eyes held for a moment.
There was hearty laughter at the other end of the veranda. As if she’d stepped into some bizarre play.
“Because he was a draft dodger? Was that it? Or did you think him guilty of worse? And me too?”
“Are you guilty of worse?” He squinted down at her. “Are you a Galleanist?”
“No. Or . . . not in the way you mean it.”
“In what way, then? You know they tried twice to kill my friend, Mitchell Palmer?”
“I heard that someone bombed his home. I . . . I was sorry. It must have frightened the girls who work in those houses, up and down R Street.”
“Carlo Valdinoci,” he said. “That’s the bomber’s name. Do you know him?”
Carlo? Whose sister Assunta sewed the uniform Ella wore now?
“No, I—I don’t believe you.”
Carlo had come to the Hall with Mario and Galleani a few times. He was film-star handsome, a natty dresser with fine wavy hair. He used to flatter Ella by asking her to dance when old Mr. Shelstein played the piano. As if she were old enough, pretty enough, to catch Carlo’s sparkling eye.
“We haven’t made it public,” Killy said. “But it was Valdinoci, all right. He tripped, I suppose, carrying the bomb up the porch steps. Or it would have killed everyone inside. Little Mary. Mitchell’s wife, Roberta. We found Valdinoci’s torso, in a striped shirt and bow tie, on the roof across the street.” His grip on her tightened as her knees went weak.
“Carlo? No. I never would have thought . . . That’s not how he was when . . . Things were different when Nicky and I— When we were growing up, it wasn’t like this. We called ourselves Anarchists, all of us, but it meant free-thinkers. Utopians.” How could Carlo have done such a thing? How could he have changed so much? “Even Galleani . . . he was just . . . just another man who came to lecture. I never thought he wanted—Emma Goldman came too. Eugene Debs. Bertrand Russell. Intellectuals, syndicalists. Exercising free speech while they still had it. It wasn’t illegal yet to hear speeches from pacifists, Socialists, even—”
“And you think it’s a good thing, to protect the speech of men like Galleani, who advocate violence?”
“But he didn’t. Not out loud to us there, not that I ever heard. He advocated new ideas, yes. And resistance to bad ones.” She talked over him when he interrupted. “And don’t you advocate violence? Don’t you deputize vigilantes when it suits you, knowing that they’ll murder strikers? Don’t you turn a blind eye and let them lynch Negroes?”
“‘Let them?’ Do you know how many times I’ve gone to investigate— It’s that no one will speak up, speak to us. They’re too afraid of—”
“I hate violence.” The words burst from her. “It’s an infection, like the flu. And you’re the ones who spread it. You Democrats.” She waved toward the other end of the veranda. There was a commotion as men rose from Adirondack chairs, as they stubbed out cigarettes and set cups onto saucers, clapped backs and laughed at one another’s jokes. “With all your money, your influence. What example do you set? War, Jim Crow, false charges, strike-breaking. And you blame us? Blame the tail for the actions of the tiger? It’s all the same beast, but you, all of you in power—”
“I repeat my question,” Killy said. “Are you a Galleanist?”
“No.” Ella shook her head. “If Galleani preaches violence now, then no. But you’d make the Attorney General our President? You know what he has in mind. He’ll raid tens of thousands of people who’ve done no—”
“He will not. You think you understand what it is to be a pacifist? But a Quaker like Palmer, like me, does not? Do you know why I’m a marshal? Because the first time I ever met one, he called himself a peace officer. We’re raised to revere peace. It’s peace we’re after when we—”
“Maybe it used to be that way. As it used to be something different, to be an Anarchist.”
The sound of imperious orders and Yes, ma’ams drifted to them from inside the house.
“Tell me why you’re here,” he said. “What are you doing?”
“Hoping to see Nicky. They told me he’d come. Do you know what became of him? You must know.”
“Come here? Who told you that?” He squinted, leaned closer.
“I’ll answer your question if you answer mine.”
“Answer your—? Why should I believe you? You’d be a fool to show up where you don’t belong, where others know your face. Just to meet a man?”
“But I didn’t know this would be . . . whatever it is. A meeting? I didn’t know who’d be here. I thought it was just a party. But it doesn’t matter. Because, yes. I’d risk anything to see Nicky again.”
“Well, that you will not, my girl. If your Nicky is Nicola Mancusa. We arrested him November last.”
“Oh, no. No.”
“He did go looking for you.” A wry smile. “In fact, it was through his efforts that your employer, Mrs. Kingston, survived.”
“What? Mrs. Kingston lived? I don’t believe it. She looked far beyond help.” She took a ragged breath. “I left her for dead.”
“It was a near thing, I gather.”
“But Nicky saved her?”
“With cold baths, yes. Then Kingston came home and found them.”
“And the great hypocrite would rather have seen his wife a corpse,” Ella said, “than bathing in front of another man?”
Killy didn’t reply.
Nicky must have understood the danger in staying to help Mrs. K.—a ragged man alone with a rich woman? But he’d tended to her anyway, he’d done it to save a stranger. He was still the boy Ella grew up with, still the man she loved.
“Kingston claimed he’d taken some jewelry,” Killy said. “It wasn’t found on him. He might have hidden it, or handed it off to someone.”
&n
bsp; Ella stopped breathing.
“But Mrs. Kingston contradicted her husband. And as the baubles were hers . . . That aspect came to nothing.”
Had Mrs. K. understood Nicky’s sacrifice, then? Protected Ella for his sake? Nicky must have told her why he’d come to her house. Was this her way of thanking him for his care, for what it cost him?
“You know it was Galleani,” Killy said.
Ella was still reeling. “Galleani?”
“Who ordered his followers to Mexico. To evade the draft.”
“But Nicky didn’t go there to follow anyone’s orders. He went from conviction. The other Galleanists, if you call them that, came back after just a few months.”
“Whatever his motive, draft evasion’s a crime. We’d have brought charges if his English was better. As it was, we put him aboard a boat. Deported back to Italy.”
Her sense of unreality grew. “But Nicky’s not Italian.”
“What? We could barely understand him. And we found no citizenship papers for him.”
“He was born in Kentucky, taken to Arizona by other miners when his parents were killed. Then rescued from the strike at Ludlow. He came to us when he was eleven. My mother taught him Italian. Because we all spoke it, at the Hall. She called him Nicola but his name’s Nicholas. And not Mancusa. That was her pronunciation of a name I don’t remember. Mancowski, something like that.”
“Well, I’ll be damned,” Killy said. “I suppose he thought he’d fare better in Italy than in prison.” He scowled for a moment, obviously deep in thought. Then he shook himself out of it. “Who told you you’d find him here?”
She couldn’t meet his eye. “Are you on the guest list?”
“Am I—? Of course. Despite your absurd notions about him, I mean to get Palmer the nomination next year.” His tone was defensive. “You think you were sent here because of who’d recognize you?”
“Mr. Palmer, Mr. Roosevelt, you . . . I don’t know. I don’t know what to think.” But she did know Mario used her love for Nicky to get her here.
Ellery Queen Mystery Magazine 09/01/12 Page 26