by Jim Musgrave
The distinguishing characteristic of LeMat's revolver is that its nine-shot cylinder revolves around a separate central barrel of larger caliber than the chambers in the cylinder proper. The central barrel is smoothbore and can function as a short-barreled shotgun (hence the nickname "Grape Shot Revolver") with the shooter selecting whether to fire from the cylinder or the smoothbore barrel by flipping a lever on the end of the hammer. Flipping the lever down caused the moveable striker to fall upon the primer set directly under the hammer, discharging the lower barrel, while leaving it in the standard position would fire the chambers in the cylinder, much like any other revolver. I assume he was unable to get his thumb on that lever to shoot at me using his long barrel or his grape shot barrel, and this probably saved my life on that day. Call me a realist, but I much prefer a gun that requires no such doubtful pause. As a result, I have modified this most excellent gun by allowing both types of ammunition to discharge with only one pull of the trigger. It creates many more treacherous and discomfiting holes in your enemy. In fact, I have seen cheeses imported from the Swiss Alps that rather resemble the body of a man hit from the firing of this weapon.
Longfellow greeted me at the door, once again attired in his auspicious hat with the tassel and blue smoking jacket. Does this man ever tire of his pompousness? “O’Malley! Good to see you again! Come back to the study. I’ve got something I want you to see,” said the professor, guiding me back to his library.
“I need a few more questions answered,” I told him, not wanting to get distracted by literary peccadilloes of his.
“Most certainly! I just wanted to show you my latest volume. It is a translation, and I believe you can learn a lot from its inherent wisdom. I have taken the liberty of autographing it for you,” he said, picking up a leather-bound book sitting on the mahogany table near the window that served as his writing desk. He handed it to me, and I turned to the title page.
It read: “The Divine Comedy, by Dante Alighieri, translated by Henry Wadsworth Longfellow.”
“You may not like to hear this, young man, but I am a pacifist and a Unitarian. When my son, Charlie, enlisted in the war, my wife Fanny and I were beside ourselves with grief. We have always believed the Negro to be equal to us, but war became the only answer to resolve the problem of slavery. But when the war took over my own child, it became too much to bear.”
“I am indeed sorry to hear about your son. Did he survive the conflict?” I asked, curious, in spite of my need for answers concerning a different subject.
“Yes, although he was wounded in Virginia, he came back to us and was treated well by surgeons in the Union Army. He is now employed and raising his own family. His mother’s death, however, had as great an effect on him as it did me.”
“Sir, if you don’t mind, I would like to ask a few more questions about your relationship with Edgar Allan Poe,” I said.
“Right. Your investigation. Proceed,” he told me in a clipped voice.
“I now understand about your opinion of Mister Poe and his work, but did you ever accost him physically? Did he ever threaten you or you him?”
“No! Of course not! I told you I am a Unitarian pacifist. I do not believe in violence of any kind. Certainly, I have strong feelings about Poe and his dark night of the soul, and I still want his work censored for the good of the public, but I would never advocate violence to his person.” Longfellow’s voice was adamant and sincere.
“I understand. Thank you, sir, for your candor. I also thank you for this volume. I often believe this case I am now working on to be a strange version of comedy, although not quite of the divine nature. You have been most helpful to me,” I said, and I turned to go.
He touched my arm, and I turned back around to face him. His eyes were full of tears. “I want to thank you for what you did for us in the war. I now realize this conflict was necessary to give hope to an entire nation. Perhaps now we will be able to progress and grow without any more divisions.”
“I hope so, too, professor,” I said, and I shook his hand and left the premises.
As a religious man and a pacifist, Longfellow would not have been maliciously motivated to harm Poe. I realized that his differences were more of the moral type; the old poet simply did not like Poe’s work because it was so gloomy and depressing. Longfellow, because of his personal tragedies, was, in his old age, simply trying to rid the world of its negative influences.
As I walked down the street toward the wharf, in order to take the ferry over to Hoboken, I realized that my prime suspect was fading into the background of my case. I also wondered if my problem might have something to do with my own war history. I saw every person as a potential killer because that’s what happens in a war. Longfellow, a life-long pacifist, became a dangerous murderer in my eyes simply because any outward exhibition of anger or distrust translated into violence in my own mind. I hoped that McKenzie could put me back on a hot trail toward solving this dilemma.
* * *
“Where’d ya hear that name, O’Malley?” screamed McKenzie, so forcefully that I could feel the spray from his words against my face.
I could not move my feet, and my arms were tied behind me on the chair. The giant Walter McKenzie stood above me, glaring down at me like a rogue elephant. I had simply mentioned the name "Reynolds” to him and this was the result of his fury. Four men pounced upon me, before I could reach for any weapon, and they forced me into a chair and wrapped me up with line rope used to dock a ship.
“What ails you, man? Reynolds was the name that Poe shouted in Baltimore before he died. I don’t know who Reynolds is. I simply wanted to know if you did.” I squirmed in my confinement, while one of McKenzie’s men took my guns from my boots.
After hearing this, McKenzie’s rage seemed to dissipate, yet he was still fuming, stalking around in front of me, the boards to the wharf deck creaking loudly under his tremendous weight. “Ya don’t know this man Reynolds? Where’d ya hear his name then?” McKenzie asked.
“I told you. When I questioned Dr. Moran in Baltimore, he told me about hearing Poe shouting this name out several times during his delirious state of mind. This was the last word Poe ever uttered,” I said, “and I just wanted to see if you knew who this Reynolds was.”
The four goons laughed. “Stow it!” McKenzie shouted, and the men stopped. “Release him,” he told them, and my friend, the cargo hook thug, began untying my arms and legs. Soon, I was able to sit up in the chair like a human being instead of a captured ape.
“Why did you react so vehemently? Who is this Reynolds to you?” I asked, taking my two pistols from one of the men and placing them under my pants legs and into their leather calf holsters.
“Back in 1847, when I was in New York, I owned most of the gambling halls and bordellos on the Bowery and in Five Points. I had me a beautiful and educated wife, and I weren’t a fat pig like ya sees now. I was quite a handsome rake. Gloria was the daughter of a Quaker whaling owner from Nantucket, David Barclay. We met when I was a seaman aboard one of his ships. She married me when I was a lad of twenty, and she stayed with me when I moved to New York and got into me life of crime. Never said a word against me, and she loved me dearly,” said McKenzie, tears coming to his eyes. “This Reynolds was a loner who started hanging out in one of me bordellos. He was always lookin’ over the girls like he owned them. And then, girls started turnin’ up dead. All over the city. My business was being ruined! No girl would show up to work for fear she’d have her throat slit by this killer.”
“Was it Reynolds?” I asked.
“Just listen, me boy-o. Sure, I put men on it. We was our own police back then. We had no city police force worth a leprechaun’s fart. That’s when it happened,” McKenzie said, and his appearance became sullen. His face looked like a deflated pink balloon, sagging upon his chest in rolls of fat and tears. “My Gloria was accosted outside the theater on Union Square. I shouldn’t have let her go! She was always lovin’ her dramas, she was. The bastard s
lit her throat in the alley. That’s where we found her. Shoved up inside all the garbage and the fish heads. My beautiful wife!”
“I’m sorry, Walter,” I said, putting my arm around his huge frame. His entire body was shaking from remorse.
“Then, I gets a letter from this Reynolds. He tells me he’s for hire at a high price! Can you believe it? I found out he was sendin’ out these letters to all the gang leaders of New York City! A regular, what ya call, solicitation for services.”
“You mean he was showing you how good he was by killing your own people?” I asked.
“That’s right. I soon found out he’d killed other gang leaders’ whores, their wives, and even their children! Why, it was completely insane, but this Reynolds was makin’ his mark. When he began gettin’ jobs from us, then the murders of our own stopped. This Reynolds had become the most perfect killer for hire this city has ever known. I never used him once, though! Not me! I wouldn’t give the bastard the satisfaction. So, I’ve never remarried, I’ve lost business, and I lose a girl from time to time, but it’s worth it to me not to give this monster any money!”
“You say all this happened in the 1840s? It was never in the newspapers. Why not?” I was incredulous.
“We never wanted it in the papers! If word ever got out somebody could kill our people whenever he wanted, our business would be over in this city. No journalist would dare print a story about this Reynolds and his killing spree, me boy-o.”
“This would explain why Poe would shout out this man’s name. If this Reynolds was such a notorious contract killer, then I am certain Poe would have known about him. Was he known in the taverns and in the street?” I asked, and I held my breath waiting for McKenzie’s response.
“Of course he was! Everybody in the city knew about him. His murders were never connected to him by name in the papers. That was the catch. He was like the boogie man, don’t ya know. Every kid knew about the tall killer, dressed in gray, who could slit yer throat wherever ya was. Standin’ in line at the theater. Buyin’ yer vegetables at the market. Playin’ in the school yard. He was the gray ghost butcher of New York. He even printed cards with an imprint of a cleaver on ‘em! The sick bastard!”
I worked for Poe from 1844 to 1846, but he never once mentioned this man to me. Poe must have heard about him just before he died. The great writer died in Baltimore in 1849, so I would surmise the name “Reynolds” was known to Poe shortly before he succumbed. This killer may have even told Poe who he was so he could be ensured of the notoriety. As the killer of a great author, I would assume this Reynolds believed he would, in a twisted way, become immortal.
I decided to tell McKenzie about my theory. “Walter, I believe this Reynolds is now contracted to kill me. He is the one we have to assume has been hired to stop me from investigating Poe’s death.”
McKenzie slammed his huge right fist into the palm of his left hand. “O’Malley! This is a horse of a different color! Why did ya not tell me about this Reynolds in the first place?”
“I was not aware of this connection to my case,” I said.
“I’m putting a man on yer tail, me boy-o. He’ll be on yer front step like the milk man, and he’ll follow ya like yer guardian angel. Ain’t no charge for this, O’Malley. This is war!” McKenzie said. “I want this bastard more than you do!”
“But I still need him alive until I can ascertain who hired him. Without this knowledge, I won’t be able to discover who killed Poe and how he did it,” I said.
“Ryan! Go with O’Malley. I’ll send a relief man tomorrow mornin’,” said McKenzie, and the cargo hook thug, Ryan, followed me out of the building and into the sunshine. I looked back at him once. He was following me at a leisurely pace, as if he were out for a stroll. I knew he had done this work before, but I still felt uncomfortable. I was like the man Reynolds who was hunting me. I preferred working alone. However, in light of this new information, I supposed it was good insurance. I knew I was getting close to finding out what happened in Baltimore, in 1849, and I also knew the murderers would be closing in on me. I felt like the man in the Poe story tied to the wooden slat of his prison cell down in the pit of hell. This case was becoming my pit, and this Reynolds was the pendulum. I knew the lines by heart: “I shrank back--but the closing walls pressed me resistlessly onward. At length for my seared and writhing body there was no longer an inch of foothold on the firm floor of the prison. I struggled no more, but the agony of my soul found vent in one loud, long, and final scream of despair.”
Chapter 8: Becky’s Plan
When I returned to my cottage out in the Bronx, Ryan camped outside my door, and I then tried to make some meaning out of everything I’d discovered about this case thus far. I sat at the little table in the parlor where Edgar wrote his articles, poetry and fiction. It gave me some amount of inspiration to do so. I could hear the night noises outside. Owls were blending their hoots with the howls of the wind, and the trees were rustling their leaves in a cacophony of restlessness.
I now believed I had the true identity of this infamous “Reynolds,” even though nothing is ever certain in life until it appears before you to be scrutinized with your senses. The certainty of this fact was that McKenzie knew of him, and this Reynolds was a professional killer who plied his trade in New York City. I now had to see if and when this scoundrel was employed by someone, hopefully one of my suspects, to kill Poe in 1849. The idea that Reynolds had informed Poe of his name, just before giving the famous author a poison or other murderous concoction, was a logical one. Reynolds must have known that the drug would put Poe out of his senses, thus causing the author to seem to die of some natural cause. It was Dr. Moran who had correctly diagnosed the fact that Poe was not under the influence of alcohol. However, because of Griswold and the other famous people who wanted to destroy Poe’s character, it was assumed that Poe had died from drunkenness and not from some other cause.
I also believe that this Reynolds was probably not supposed to reveal his identity. I would guarantee that whoever had employed this ruthless killer did not want him to give out any personal information that could be tracked back to its source. This mistake on Reynolds’s part was caused, most likely, because the killer wanted to impress the great writer in some way. Perhaps Reynolds was an admirer of Poe’s work, and he just wanted to let Poe know who he was out of some kind of macabre fascination with the author’s stories. Many people have described the uncanny effect that Poe had on you when you met him. This Reynolds thought he could capture Poe’s mystique by letting Poe know who he was and how much Reynolds admired his work. Or, maybe Reynolds’ partner in crime let slip the name while conversing with each other in front of their kidnapped victim. Whatever the cause, I was now being hunted by this Reynolds, and only my wits and my weapons stood between me and certain death.
The suspects in my case were not involved directly with the tobacco store girl, Mary Rogers, nor were they aware that Poe was involved in some kind of romance with her. The authors, Wallace and Longfellow, are out of the picture for now because each has his own story about why he would not harm a fly on Poe’s head. Rogers’ fiancé, Alfred Crommelin, was not in town to interview, although I doubt he had much to share about the murder of Poe or of his sweetheart. Unless Poe was having a romance with his fiancé, Crommelin would have no reason to want Poe dead. I am fully aware that women are both unpredictable and fascinating, but I really believed there must be some connection between the Rogers murder and Poe’s demise.
If I must be pursued by an experienced killer for the rest of my life because of this case, I am ready to give it up. What’s the chance that I will be able to capture this killer? Even if I do capture him alive, how will I be able to get the information from Reynolds concerning who paid him to kill me? I needed to talk about my clues and about what I should do to set a trap for the killer. As I now knew Reynolds enjoyed the company of ladies of leisure, I wanted Becky Charming to assist me in this endeavor. I picked-up my old Army coat and h
eaded for the door.
Ryan was right outside on the porch swing. He was smoking a cigar. He glanced up at me and smiled, “Goin’ somewheres, O’Malley?”
“Quite right, Ryan, me boy-o,” I said, mimicking McKenzie, “I am headed for the Theater District across town. You are welcome to accompany me, as long as you don’t touch any merchandise. The woman you will meet has a strong proclivity for breaking the skulls of those gentlemen who cannot mind their manners around her.”
“Sure, and I bet I know who she is. Charming’s her name, am I right? Know what we calls ‘er on the wharf?”
“No, but I would be anxious to know,” I said, walking at a faster pace toward the city’s transportation over to Manhattan.
“We calls ‘er Becky Malarkey. She thinks she’s Miss high and mighty, ain’t that right?” said Ryan, moving up to walk alongside me for a moment.
I grabbed him by his coat collar and lifted him up off the pavement. “You best shut your trap about her, Ryan, or I will be forced to throw you high and mightily.”
“Put me down, O’Malley! I won’t be sayin’ nothin’ to yer woman, man. I was just tellin’ yer what they calls ‘er, that’s all,” he said, and I dropped him. He fell back to follow me at about twenty yards behind.
* * *
“Why have you done this, O’Malley?” Becky Charming was not wearing any military garb, as she was not expecting to see me. Instead, she had on a conservative green satin dress with a whalebone corset and a bonnet--of all things--sitting atop those wonderful blonde curls of hers. She looked like one of the Southern Belles that used to take pot-shots at us from their mansions outside Atlanta.