Chapter Four

That one trip down Henderson’s mine had been enough to last him a lifetime. He hadn’t had to, it wasn’t any part of the job Pilkington had set him, but he’d been drinking with the lads after one of the Mollies’ Lodge meetings, arm-wrestling and showing off and playing the fool one way and another, until finally someone challenged him to work a shift down there like the rest of them.

His heart had clutched right up like a fist and the sweat had started running down his armpits; he’d been deep underground once before, in 1872 when they were digging the caissons for the Brooklyn Bridge, and it had nearly done for him. A sandhog who was a cousin to one of his pals in the Butcher Boys had needed help talking to a foreman about some back wages and three or four of the boys had gone down together to make sure the man saw reason, Liam not knowing then how bad he’d be hit by his fear of being closed in. He had learned fast enough and he’d only gotten out with Mike Vysotsky carrying him on his back.

But, like a fool, there he’d been five years later in Pennsylvania on a job he hated going down a hole again like it was a stroll in Washington Square. And no, he hadn’t healed miraculously in the years between and he’d only ended his suffocating panic by pretending to trip on a rock and knock himself cold against an ore car so they’d have to send him back up. You’d think he’d learn, but Micks have hard heads.

Now, that little experiment had made two times down a hole and he was pretty sure he wouldn’t survive a third, so just what in blue blazes was he doing in a mine a third time, way to hell and gone away from anywhere at all, not a soul to be seen, not a spark of light, and nothing but a THUMP! THUMP! THUMP! and a giant throbbing in his skull like he’d been dropped all the way down the shaft and landed on his conk? If he didn’t get out of here soon, if that damned thumping didn’t stop, if he could only … open … his … eyes…

“WHAT?” Liam bellowed, stumbling out of bed and nearly going head-first into the wall as he scrabbled at the latch-key with sausage fingers. What miserable, pea-brained lowlife had such important business they couldn’t wait till he woke up and washed his face?

Finally he managed to tear the door open, throwing it wide and cocking his fist to pound whoever it was to a jelly. But instead of the expected drunken miner or lodge brother from the Mollies, someone he could cheerfully pop in the beezer, his tormentor was a sort of plump, smiling Mr. Pickwick—the most innocent-looking of callers, a cheerful, clean-shaven middle-aged man with red cheeks, a fringe of graying sandy hair, a big nose and very sharp brown eyes behind wire-rimmed spectacles, his brown checked suit and waistcoat adorned with a pewter watch chain and a gold badge that said he was a Chief Inspector in the Coal & Iron Police.

“Mighty sorry to raise such a ruckus,” the newcomer said with a foxy-grandpa smile. “I knocked just as nice as could be for a bit there, but I guess you must have made quite a night of it.” He pulled a big turnip watch out of his waistcoat pocket and looked at it with feigned astonishment: “Land o’ Goshen, it’s a quarter past noon already!”

“Mmf,” Liam grunted. He was as naked as a jaybird and he felt like his head had been filled with boiling oatmeal. Grabbing the sheet off the mattress to make himself a toga, he saw that the bottle of rye he’d bought to hold his private wake with had just about a finger left. He picked it up by the neck and held it out to his caller.

Pickwick smiled apologetically: “Not before lunch.”

Not bad, Liam thought. The old boy could manage a tone of mild reproof as nicely as a parson, not something you’d expect from your run-of-the-mill flat foot. He definitely remembered this Pickwick bird from somewhere, and if the fog in his brain would just clear for a moment … ah, there it was! He nodded and smiled a little, which made his visitor narrow his eyes suspiciously.

It had been back in Five Points, Liam recalled: the new Police Headquarters building at 300 Mulberry Street, not long before the Draft Riots. Liam’s Pa had dragged him there by the ear to complain he’d stolen his watchchain, only the drunken shite-pot had been so far gone that Liam had already palmed the chain back into his waistcoat pocket before they went inside.

Then, as soon as Liam had seen he had the coppers’ attention, he out-hammed John Wilkes Booth playing the heartbroken little tyke and making a fool of his blowhard Pa. And Pickwick? He’d been one of the coppers looking on and tsktsking over the sorry spectacle. Liam stifled the beginning of a grin, keeping the memory to himself for a tactical advantage.

“What can I do for you, Inspector …?”

“Barlow,” the man said with an avuncular chuckle, “Amos Barlow, and pleased to make your acquaintance, Mr. McCool.”

This one could be dangerous, Liam thought, returning the Inspector’s smile with one of equally false bonhomie and raising him a jolly wink and a handshake.

“If you don’t mind …?” he said, gesturing to his toga.

“Of course, of course,” Barlow said good-humoredly, “in fact, I was about to suggest we take a little walk so I expect you’ll be wanting your shoes and pants.”

He turned politely and made a point of examining the few small shelves of Liam’s library while Liam scrubbed his face at the washstand and put on some fresh clothes. He had bought three cheap dark suits before he left New York, but the open window was telling him it was already hot out and he decided on a pair of corduroys and a cambric shirt. Let Barlow sweat in his nice thick brown suit and waistcoat!

“My, my!” the Inspector was saying with a look of amiable astonishment, “seems you do have the gift of tongues, eh Mr. McCool? Here’s Goethe and Les Misérables alongside Mr. Twain and Mr. Dickens, and … Heavens above, what’s this?”

Liam had a talent for languages, all right, and an even better one for reading tones of voice: what was that odd little shading at the bottom of Barlow’s wouldn’t-hurt-a-fly geniality? Something sharp and avid, like the yip of a hound tracking an escaped convict …

Sending the sweetness and light right back at him, Liam raised his eyebrows innocently and said: “Why, that’s Russian, Inspector Barlow, Mr. Tolstoy’s last book ‘War and Peace.’”

And my pal Mike Vysotsky stole it for me from some dimwit Grand Duke in the Fifth Avenue Hotel who never even cut the pages, he added mentally, unable to keep a satirical smile from popping to the surface.

Either the tone or the smile piqued Barlow’s attention and he threw Liam a sharp look:

“Rooskie, eh, fancy that! I expect you can speak the lingo with our Little Russia neighbors on the other side of the Mississippi, then. The ones that keep sending us their crazy anarchist bomb-throwers …” Then, a nicely-timed moment later, with an air of sudden inspiration: “Say, I don’t suppose you’d be related to Francis McCool, now, would you, Mr. McCool? The famous Fenian agitator?”

That was more like it, thought Liam, the copper’s needle-jab. “I would,” he said cheerfully, “and I hope the Devil has set a whole army of bluecoat imps to thumping him sober with their billies. But if you’re aiming to put me in the frame as a spy for New Petersburg you can think again—I’ve no more use for their brand of baloney than I do for the Fenians.”

“Ah,” said Barlow with a frankly appraising look, “your old man put you off politics, did he?”

“You could say so,” Liam said. “Of course, thirteen years of drunken beatings and blather about Free Ireland may have helped with that, not to mention him putting my Ma in Bellevue with two black eyes and a handful of broken ribs just before she died. Whoever it was that put a bullet in him saved me being a murderer someday.”

“I didn’t much care for him myself,” Barlow said, “though I wouldn’t have shot him over it.” He put on a look of doleful sympathy: “There were a lot of bullets flying in the Draft Riots, I don’t expect I have to tell you, it could have been anybody pulled that trigger.”

Liam shrugged. “If you meet the fella that did, tell him I’ll buy him a drink. Otherwise, let’s stop fooling around—are you here about Henderson’s house or Maggie’s murder?”

Barlow nodded and chuckled: “I like a man that isn’t afraid to take the bull by the horns.”

Liam shrugged. “If there’s any bull around here it isn’t me throwing it.”

Inspector Barlow smiled a little, nodding absently as he weighed that.

“What do you say we have our little stroll now, Mr. McCool? I took a quick look at Miss O’Shea’s place before I sent for the Coroner, but I need to give it a good going-over before too many people tromp across it. If you’d really like to help catch the fellow who did it you might as well come along and keep me company.”

Liam opened the door to the hallway and gestured: “After you, Inspector.” And to himself: Mind how you go, Liam-me-lad, this dog bites!

Outside Mrs. Finnegan’s Boarding House, a beautiful Spring morning was giving the lie to gloomy visions of dynamite and murder. To Liam’s tenderized senses the explosion of birdsong, glaring sunshine and shouting kids was just about the limit, and Barlow smiled as he watched him out of the corner of his eye.

“They tell me you and Miss O’Shea were sweethearts.”

Liam grunted, trying to squint his eyes enough to shut out most of the sun without letting himself trip over something.

“Don’t use the hard stuff much, do you?” Barlow sounded amused.

Liam looked like he was fighting the urge to throw up. “My idea of drinking is a stein or two of Ruppert’s while I’m watching the Punch and Judy at Harry Hill’s.”

“Can’t say as I blame you pining for the big city, not after six months in this one-horse burg.”

Liam threw him a sharp glance, then nodded to himself; whatever was going through his mind, it gave him a sardonic little half-smile.

They walked in silence for a bit, each of them throwing an occasional covert glance at the other. After a few blocks Barlow started showing a slight limp and Liam couldn’t resist a jab:

“Sprain your ankle chasing the Molly Magees, Inspector?”

Barlow frowned. “That’s a poor sort of joke, young McCool. Fact is, I was chasing rebs at Gettysburg and caught a Minié ball instead.”

Liam heard the tone of mild reproof again and he grinned: “You do that Parson Brown turn just about perfect, Inspector. Yessir, you could have been a daisy of a confidence man—I’d say you missed your calling.”

Barlow smiled sourly. “I wouldn’t be making jokes about the Mollies if I were you. Maybe they didn’t do all the murders and destruction the prosecution said at the trials, but somebody must have done something or they wouldn’t be hanging ten of them in Pottsville next week.”

Liam looked solemn. “Words of wisdom, Brother Barlow. Shall I lead the hymn now?”

That one finally got through the grizzled copper’s guard and a choleric flush ran up his plump neck and into his jowls; Liam moved to cut off an angry retort:

“I tell you what, Inspector—you quit trying to catch me off balance and treat me like somebody that’s been around the block a few times, I’ll return the favor, OK? And be a sport, don’t wave the bloody shirt at me over Gettysburg, I had my fourteenth birthday on Little Round Top, chasing Rebs with the 20^th Maine.”

This time it was Barlow that gave Liam a sharp look. “You were at Gettysburg?”

Liam laughed. “How about that? Imagine not knowing a simple thing like that, and you one of Stanton’s Eyes.”

That one jarred the Inspector to a standstill. He turned and stared at Liam as if he didn’t believe his ears. “Just what are you trying to …?”

“Come on, Barlow,” Liam said impatiently, “Like you said, I’ve been down here in the coalfields for six months, and I never saw a C & I that came within a mile of you for brainpower. Those boys are all local hayseeds happy to take Mr. Gowen’s two bits for thumping miners with their billies and cadging free drinks from Boyo Boylan. Anyway, I happen to know that once upon a time you were a New York harness bull and never mind how.”

“You do, do you?” Barlow bit off the words with a snap, glowering.

“Uh huh. Didn’t I say I’d been around the block once or twice? It was never me that told you I’d been down here six months, and none of these C & I dimwits knows if I’ve been here a day or a year. Nope, you were reading my file somewhere in a Secret Service office before you came down here to play the homespun old bluecoat. And anyway, ‘Inspector,’ I’m sorry to have to reveal this deep trade secret to an opponent, but you’ve got the Stanton smell on you—there isn’t the lowliest dollar-a-day dip back in the big city that couldn’t spot you coming a mile away.”

Exasperated by Liam’s facetious wink, the Inspector turned his attention to their surroundings, sweeping them slowly with the policeman’s habitual scan for suspicious movement. As he turned, curtains fell closed at his look and the scattered strollers along Main Street’s board sidewalks dropped their eyes or pretended they’d been looking somewhere else.

“They shut the diggings down this morning,” Barlow said in a conversational tone, “and it looks like they’ll stay that way till we collar the boys that dynamited Henderson’s house.”

“Going to starve them into submission, are you?” Liam shook his head in mock admiration. “I guess old Stanton could teach a thing or two to those serf owners over in Little Russia. Say, have you ever heard of a nagaika? That’s a whip the Cossacks use on Sioux Indians and bullheaded Russian peasants, strip a man’s skin right off his bones. You tell Secretary Stanton about that trick, I expect he’ll give you a shiny new silver dollar.”

“That smart mouth is going to get you in big trouble one day, sonny. The orders to close down the diggings came from Mr. Gowen, and I’d say him owning the Reading Railroad and the Philadelphia and Reading Coal & Iron Company gives him about all the pull he needs to make Henderson or anybody else close their diggings, wouldn’t you?”

He leaned forward and stabbed Liam’s chest with his forefinger: “As for Secretary Stanton, he likes smartmouths like you. He’ll take all of you he can get, there’s such a heap of rocks need breaking up down at Andersonville Prison.”

Satisfied with his riposte, Barlow started down the street again. Liam followed along at his side, looking amused.

“No need to get your dander up, old man, I like Secretary Stanton right back. As my dear old dad used to say about Boss Tweed—‘sure and he’s a darlin’ man.’ Of course, there’s those that think Stanton’s a little too much of a good thing, you know? Secretary of War was one thing, but the war’s been over a dozen years, and here’s Stanton still at the helm, running some new-fangled Department of Public Safety and Lincoln still President under the Emergency Act, and nobody’s seen hide nor hair of a voting box since ’61.”

He grinned satirically at Barlow, whose head had sunk down between his shoulders so far that he looked like a sort of angry turtle.

“Not that I’m complaining, mind you,” Liam added in an innocent tone, “I wouldn’t dream of it! Every night when I go to sleep I kneel by my bed and and thank the Lord for Mom and Dad and my little dog Spot and Secretary Stanton, who protects us from the evil Russians across the Mississippi and the wicked Brits across the ocean and the dastardly French Communists in Mexico and … and …” Liam pretended to reel and clutch his forehead in desperation: “Why it fair boggles the mind how many terrible evils that kind old man Stanton is defending us from!”

“All right, McCool,” growled the Inspector, “either shut up or I’ll break your head with my stick.”

They were just approaching the corner of Maggie’s street and Liam could hear a hubbub of strange voices coming from the direction of her house. His face darkened as he registered the sounds and he felt his cheerful mood melting away.

“Ah, to hell with Stanton and with you and your phony playacting too—in fact, all you Department of Public Safety shysters can go piss up a rope as far as I’m concerned. You’re just down here sucking up to Mister Franklin B. Gowen for his great patriotic feat railroading ten Mollies into rope neckties—you don’t care a plugged nickel for my girl Maggie or justice for whoever killed her either, she wasn’t rich enough for that.”

Barlow gave Liam a long, searching look; then he nodded slowly as he reached some private conclusion. A few hundred yards ahead of them Maggie’s house sat just at the end of the dirt road where the street petered out into the woods. The house itself was painted a sparkling white with light blue trim, the picket fence an equally pristine white barrier between the dirt of the road and a thick green lawn. It was easy to see that Maggie had put a lot of love and elbow grease into making it pretty, and somehow that made it twice as sad to see the herd of policemen tramping it into a sea of mud.

“You’re dead wrong, boy,” the Inspector said, “about why I’m here, anyway. Secretary Stanton takes it mighty seriously when something happens to any of his people, and though I’m pretty sure now that you didn’t know it, Maggie O’Shea was one of ours.”

For once, Liam was totally speechless. He shook his head, stunned.

“That’s right,” Barlow continued. “She wasn’t a sworn agent, but she was working as an auxiliary. Your Maggie was one of Secretary Stanton’s Eyes.”