FOURTEEN

Hanley spent the first hour of Thursday morning writing up preliminary notes on the Lawrence O’Shea murder case. Setting it down on paper helped distance him from it, though not enough to keep from thinking of Lawrence’s widow. She’d managed not to break down when he brought her the news yesterday, but her empty stare and white-knuckled handclasp told him what it cost her to keep her anguish inside. Pity for her made him grip his pen tighter, concentrate harder on each word as he wrote. Grace O’Shea might have been his own mother, staving off collapse when his father died. Hanley’d been too young to remember much, but the frightening blankness of Mam’s unspoken pain stayed with him still.

He shook off the old hurt and glanced up, in time to spot his old friend Seamus Reilly entering the stationhouse lobby. Hanley had sent him a note asking him to drop by. He closed the logbook and tucked it in a drawer, then stood and headed out of the squad room. “Seamus. Thanks for coming. How’ve you been keeping?”

Behind Seamus’s jaunty grin, Hanley read exhaustion. “Tolerable. Yourself?”

“Same.” He suppressed the impulse to ask how his friend was sleeping these days, knowing Seamus would hate it. Like many fellow Irish Brigade veterans, Seamus could be touchy about other people’s concern. “Let’s walk by the river. At least there’ll be a breeze, even if it smells.”

“All right.” They left the station together, and Hanley turned their steps toward South Water Street. There was plenty of open space amid the docks and warehouses along that stretch of river, so he and Seamus could hear themselves talk over the noises of the busy waterfront and the rail yard not far away.

“I’ve questions about New Orleans, for a case I’m working,” Hanley said as they turned onto South Water. “When you were with the Freedmen’s Bureau there, did you run across a Michael O’Shea? Young fellow, mid-twenties, came from Chicago. Likes to draw, so I’m told.”

“O’Shea…” Seamus gnawed his lip, then nodded. “I remember him. Didn’t know him well, but we crossed paths not too long before I quit the bureau and came home. He always had a sketchbook by him, everywhere he went. Why?”

Hanley filled him in about Lawrence O’Shea’s murder and Michael’s allegations of slave labor at Sweetbay Sugar Company. “Did you hear the same stories? Were they ever proven?”

A puff of breeze ruffled Seamus’s scraggy hair and beard, bringing the stink of fish and mud and rancid distillery swill along with the cries of wheeling gulls. “We heard things, sure. In whispers, everywhere the Negroes gathered. Saloons, eateries, the general store. In New Orleans, in little towns outside it. But when we’d ask questions, looking for names or places—anything we could act on—folk’d clam up. Even when the ones asking were colored troops working for the bureau, instead of white ones. People were scared, plain and simple. They figured the bureau couldn’t take on the big boyos, the ones that still had money and pull even after the war. ’Specially after ’68, when Congress and bloody Andrew Johnson shut us down on pretty much everything that wasn’t to do with schools and teachers. Hard enough before then to stand up for the freedmen when local whites caused ’em trouble. I can’t blame ’em for not talking. Why should they risk what little they had…for nothing?”

“What kind of trouble did the bureau deal with?”

“Labor contracts, mostly.” Seamus glanced sideways at him, bitter amusement on his face. “Once the war ended, all those plantation owners…cotton, sugarcane, rice…still needed workers to till the fields and plant and harvest the crops. Only now they had to pay them, in wages or food or both. Some took their medicine and paid up, though you’d have thought it half killed ’em. Others refused. When Negroes came to us after being cheated, or run off, or beaten and threatened with murder for seeking what was due them, we’d send field agents back with them, usually with a few soldiers as well to make the point. Mostly, it worked. Sometimes there’d be a standoff, until cooler heads prevailed and the guns went down. And there were always outrages against the freedpeople. Beatings, rapes, even killings. It never stopped.”

Hanley felt sick. He forced his mind back to his own murder case. “Was Sweetbay Sugar one of the ‘big boyos’ around New Orleans?”

Seamus sighed, his gaze on a gull circling in the cloudless sky. “They were, still are. The bureau sent agents to the company office a couple of times. Early last month, not long before I came home, a few of us even took a trip downriver to the Sweetbay plantation where the cane’s grown. I was one. O’Shea was another. We never got a chance to talk to a single Negro, what few we got close to. The overseers didn’t exactly give us the run of the place. We lodged a formal complaint with the city government afterward, but nothing happened. Sweetbay Sugar greased palms when they had to, broke heads when they wanted. What they told us when we went there, you could stuff up my nose and I’d have room to breathe.”

He sounded like Patrick Coughlin all over again, no proof of slave labor and none likely forthcoming. More disturbed about it than Coughlin was, though. Coughlin had been…philosophical was the kind word. Lackadaisical struck closer to the mark. “There’s a lot of money in sugarcane, I take it?”

Seamus watched the gull as it banked, dove, and snatched a fish from a riverboat’s churned-up wake. “Enough to buy damned near anything…politicians, coppers, silence. Sugar and molasses, they’re part of what’s keeping Louisiana afloat these days. Chicago gets a fair portion of what’s produced. The rates the railroads charge to ship it would make your eyes pop, but the cane growers can afford it.” He gave Hanley a mirthless smile. “Isn’t that something to think on…you might be helping slavery come back every time you sweeten your coffee. Even if they don’t call it slavery anymore.”

They fell silent briefly, looking out over the water. Thoughts swirled in Hanley’s head, of boxcars loaded with hogsheads of sugar speeding north toward Chicago, courtesy of the Illinois, St. Louis and Grand Southern. He might never look at sugar or molasses the same way again. “So you’re saying we can’t know if the stories are true.”

Seamus’s shrug belied his grim look. “That’s the way of it, worse luck. I couldn’t prove it before I came home and I can’t now, any more than anyone else. So, if you’re thinking slave labor at Sweetbay has to do with your murder case, I have to tell you, I don’t see how.”

§

After parting from Seamus, Hanley turned his steps toward the rail yard for another talk with the junior office clerk. On his last visit there, Coughlin had interrupted things before young Jamieson could say much and sidestepped the question of whether something was bothering O’Shea the day he died. Maybe Jamieson could shed light on the matter.

He crossed the Wells Street Bridge and headed north toward Kinzie. The river breeze felt refreshing in spite of the sun beating down. The smell had long since ceased to bother him, and the rhythm of his steps blended pleasantly with boatmen’s shouts, crying gulls, and the rattle of surrounding street traffic. Too soon, he reached the yard, crowded with trains and wagons and hurrying men. A whistle shrieked, sharp and high over the normal commotion. Hanley glanced toward the sound. Far down a clear stretch of track, some distance west of the yard, an oncoming train was approaching.

The engine looked toy sized at first but rapidly grew larger as it neared. Hanley could see men on it now, running atop the boxcars it pulled. The nearest man reached the far end of a car, knelt, and spun a smallish wheel jutting out from the top. He straightened and backed up a few paces, then sprinted toward the following car. Heart in his throat, Hanley watched him hurtle the gap between them. The runner landed hard on his feet and dashed toward the next wheel. Brakemen, Hanley realized, slowing the train car by car. He’d seen advertisements for them in the papers. A job for a daredevil gambler, willing to bet his life he wouldn’t fall and get crushed between the freights. How many lose that bet in a given month, or a year?

The incoming train was whuffing to a halt, workers gathering close to start unloading as quickly as they could. Hanley turned away from the spectacle and headed toward the yard office, keeping an eye on his surroundings. He dodged a mule cart, pulled up short by inches a few seconds later before a second one hit him. The driver swore, at either Hanley or the mule, slapped the beast’s rump, and kept going.

Hanley reached the office and went inside. A harassed looking Jamieson glanced up from his work. “Mr. Coughlin’s not here now, Detective, if you’re—”

“Actually, I’ve come to talk to you.” Hanley made his tone friendly, confiding. “You look like you could use a break, if you don’t mind my saying so.”

“I could, that.” The youngster ran a hand through his hair in a failed attempt to smooth the cowlick. “I’m still getting used to doing the whole job on my own, all the things Mr. O’Shea kept track of. Pay’s higher as senior clerk, though. Me mam and sisters are happy about that.”

Hanley leaned against the counter. “You were here this past Saturday, July thirteenth, weren’t you?” Jamieson nodded. “Did you talk with Mr. O’Shea? Do you remember anything he said, how he seemed…his usual self, or anxious, upset?”

“We didn’t talk much. A quiet fella, O’Shea was.” Sadness crossed Jamieson’s face. “He always had a good word when he came in and when he left. Took care with his work, too, especially the numbers he gave Mr. Coughlin for the monthly account books. Cargo in and back out, what each company owed and paid. He was that proud of it. Sometimes he’d say a bit about his son or daughters, or his grandchildren. Or ask about me mam and sisters. Maire, the oldest, she’s getting married in September. We talked about family a time or two, how they can drive you mad. Well, I talked. He listened, mostly.”

“And last Saturday? Was anything worrying him?”

“Hard to tell. Like I said, he was a quiet fella. He was here eating a sandwich, working on the ledgers, when I left around seven. Didn’t seem too bothered.”

“Did anyone else talk to him, more than a hello? Mr. Coughlin, say?”

Jamieson’s expression brightened. “Mr. Coughlin’s a fine man. Gives me a nod when he sees me, asks after me mam and sisters and all. I don’t remember him speaking to Mr. O’Shea…not more than the usual good morning and how’s the wife. But O’Shea said something later about ‘meeting with the boss.’”

Coughlin hadn’t mentioned that. “Did he say why?”

The youngster looked regretful. “Sorry, not a word. Just that they’d be having one.”

“When did O’Shea bring it up…morning, afternoon?”

“Afternoon, late. Just before quitting time, it was.”

§

Back outside the yard office, Hanley stopped a moment to watch a group of laborers unload cotton bales from a boxcar. Four men swung each huge bale out, two men to a side, then hefted it onto the flat base of the a scale. A fifth man reached toward the long iron bar at the scale's top. Noting his red hair and stocky build, Hanley recognized Liam Mahoney. On the far side of the scale, a uniformed conductor stood with a sheaf of papers, pen at the ready.

Mahoney’s hand closed over a dangling chain with a large weight on the end. He moved the weight across the bar until the giant cotton bale hovered a foot or so off the ground, then made an adjustment and eyed the bale. He called out something to the conductor, though Hanley couldn’t hear what over the noise of the yard. Some number of pounds or feet, he guessed, as the conductor scrawled on the paper.

The unloaders grabbed the bale and swung it onto a nearby pile, clearing the scale for the next one. The scale’s iron bar looked longer than Hanley was tall, with a spiked curve at one end like an eagle’s talon, and the cotton bales towered over the workers hefting them. As Hanley edged closer for a better look, Mahoney let go of the chain with its moveable weight. Something about the weight nagged at Hanley as it swung gently in the air. He clenched both hands and brought his fists together, conjuring the cracked-egg hollow in O’Shea’s skull. Size and shape are right. And those black flecks embedded in his brain—iron, Will said. That weight looks like a solid chunk of it.

A thrill passed through him, like a dip in cold water. He headed toward Mahoney and the others just as Mahoney glanced up. A wary expression crossed the man’s face. He beckoned to a passing worker, then strode off as the fellow came over and took his place. Hanley started after, but Mahoney moved too fast and soon vanished amid the snaking lines of freight cars. Not worth pursuing him, surly cop-dodger that he was. Hanley approached the other men, careful to keep clear of the cotton bales. One of the workers was Sully, and Hanley hailed him. “D’you have a minute?”

Sully tilted his head. “A minute, yeah. No more, with cargo waiting.”

Hanley nodded toward the cotton scale, the iron weight on its chain. The chain was shorter than his forearm, though not by much. “Does that weight come off, or is it fixed in place?”

“’Course it comes off. How else would we move it up and down?” Sully’s face showed puzzlement that Hanley would ask such a thing. Then he turned somber. “We heard about O’Shea. I’m sorry he’s dead. Was it some bullyboy got him? They’re in the streets near the yard sometimes of a Saturday night, knowing payday means money in a man’s pocket.”

Word had gotten around quickly since yesterday afternoon. Hanley wasn’t surprised. “We’re looking into it. I don’t suppose you know any more than you’ve already told me?”

“No. Though I guess O’Shea didn’t make it to Cleary’s.” Sully cleared his throat and spat sideways into the dirt. “Whoever killed him, hanging’s too good for the bastard.”

Hanley agreed, then nodded toward the dangling scale weight. “Can I borrow that? I’d like to show it to the police surgeon.”

Sully bit his lip. “I don’t think…I mean, that’s railway property.”

“It could help solve O’Shea’s murder.”

“I don’t know…I’m not the man to ask. Maybe Mr. Coughlin—”

“What’s the trouble here?”

Hanley turned. The new speaker wore a blue uniform, emblazoned with a stitched gold copper’s star. Around it, matching thread traced the words Illinois, St. Louis & Grand Southern Railway. A rail cop. He’d have to tread carefully. “Detective Frank Hanley, Chicago Police,” he said, fishing his badge from his pocket. “I’m looking into Lawrence O’Shea’s murder.”

“Officer Thomas Walker.” The rail cop’s wary expression eased a trifle. “Shame the man’s dead. But it didn’t happen here, I’m sure, so it’s nothing to do with us.”

“That’s to be seen. He worked here, after all.” Hanley nodded toward the cotton scale. “The injury that killed O’Shea—”

“Didn’t happen here.” Walker kept it polite, but Hanley heard the underlying chill in his voice. “And these men have work. Best get to it, boys.”

A train whistle split the air as Sully and the others moved back to the boxcar they’d been emptying. Four tracks beyond, toward the western edge of the yard, an engine belching steam and smoke pulled slowly southward past its motionless brethren. Walker nodded in the direction of Kinzie Street. “I’m sure you’ve work to do as well, Detective Hanley. Don’t let me keep you from it.”

Hanley held the rail cop’s gaze for a couple of seconds, but he knew when he was beaten. “Of course,” he said. Safeguard the railway at all costs, whether there’s need or not. He knew the behavior. He’d seen it before. He nodded to Walker, then turned and walked away. He felt the rail cop’s eyes on him all the way to Kinzie Street, but deliberately didn’t look back.