Chapter Nine

One thing Mr. P. harped on when his operatives were working undercover was staying in character. Liam had long ago lost track of the number of times he had sat through tutorials on “personation skills” at the Pilkington Agency headquarters on Union Square, the Old Man expansive in his overstuffed armchair, his stout frame clad in black broadcloth and starched linen, his rosy cheeks framed with fluffy white mutton-chop whiskers, pontificating about detective work while Liam sat like a naughty boy in his straightbacked wooden chair looking out the window towards Tiffany’s jewelry store and thinking what a treat it would be to slip in there some morning around 2:00 a.m. to fill his pockets with sparklers.

Just about then, of course, he’d remember how the warders in the Tombs liked to punctuate their lessons with a billy to the kidneys and his attention would snap back to the Old Man’s disquisition on sleuthing:

“… and just tell me how in Tophet the brainless ninny could have expected to get away with personating a conductor on the Pennsy if he couldn’t name the stops between Philadelphia and Harrisburg? I assure you, my boy, when it comes to entering into a role and living it with every fiber of your being, Edwin Booth himself can’t hold a candle to a seasoned Pilkington operative at the top of his form!”

Over and over, Mr. P. had reminded Liam that once he was in the Mollies’ territory he could no longer think like the free-spending King of the Silk-Stocking Cracksmen; instead, he must remind himself that he was a flat-broke fugitive, pressed for every penny. Which had boiled down in practice to endless irksome details like not spending good money on transportation for his regular excursions from Henderson’s Patch to Pottsville.

Liam had really loathed this ordeal. As far as Boylan and the others were concerned, when he took those weekly trips to town he was going to Pottsville to oversee the progress of their tunnel from the basement of a house near the prison to a spot directly under the spectator’s seats in the prison yard. In reality, though, he was in Pottsville to report to Seamus McPherson, the star of Pilkington’s International Detective Agency, now deeply incognito as a hypochondriac clergyman on the third floor of Pottsville’s Excelsior Hotel and as welcome to Liam as bagful of snakes.

Today, thank God, he had finally been able to shuck off the hitching-a-ride routine and instead of sitting amongst a wagonload of muddy piglets he had dipped into the money belt that had once held his reserve for the journey West with Maggie and used it instead for the first leg of his trip East to find her killer, making the journey on the front seat of Oliver Finnegan’s steam jitney, clean and presentable in one of his cheap dark suits and glorying in the thought that everything he saw out the window he was seeing for the last time.

If there was one pesky fly in Liam’s ointment, it was Ollie’s answer to his quizzing about Morrison’s last trip. It turned out that after his encounter with Liam the mousy accountant had hired Ollie to take him to Pottsville “to send some telegrams and pay a call or two.” Now that he could translate that as “to visit the scum who’d killed Maggie and blackmail him,” Liam had a momentary fantasy of telling Ollie to drive straight to the murderer’s lair and settling his hash then and there. Unfortunately Morrison had been sharp enough to ditch Ollie the minute they got to town, arranging to meet him at the train station a couple of hours later, and there was precious little likelihood of the killer’s having hung around this dump any longer than he had to.

Where had that miserable little pill Morrison gone while he’d been in Pottsville? Chances were that Liam would never know, but that didn’t stop him from racking his brains over the question for the rest of the drive.

Finally, after an hour or so of jouncing over rutted dirt roads, Oliver putt-putted onto the smooth paving stones of Pottsville’s main street and Liam pointed towards a red-white-and blue-striped pole and a sign announcing “Orsini’s Barber Shop.”

“Right over there, Ollie me lad!”

Pressing a shiny new gold eagle on the delighted boy, Liam jumped out and strode off down the pavement, whistling.

Inside Orsini’s, a foppishly dressed young man with luxuriant Dundreary whiskers and a gold watch chain that could have anchored a small yacht was holding forth in an irritable tenor, his voice occasionally breaking with emotion:

“And I’ll tell you that I can think of no more striking illustration of the terrible power for evil of an organization bound by secret oaths and controlled by murderers and assassins than the Molly Magees and all their works!”

“Controlled by poppycock and balderdash!” shouted his opponent, a red-faced middle-aged man with wire-rimmed spectacles and a neat Vandyke beard, whose more modest silver watch chain was ornamented with a Masonic seal. “These ‘bloodthirsty murderers’ of yours are nothing more than simple workingmen who have been railroaded by Mr. Franklin Benjamin Gowen!”

A sunburnt, white-haired oldtimer in faded blue-jean coveralls broke into wheezing cackles at that one, finally managing to say between gasps:

“Railroaded! By jiminy that’s a good one, seeing as how Frank Gowen is President of the Philadelphia and Reading!”

Liam cleared his throat loudly and the barber started as if he’d been stuck with a pin:

“Madonna mia!” A plump, cheerful-looking man with slicked-down black hair and a handlebar moustache turned towards Liam with an embarrassed look and gestured him towards the empty barber’s chair.

“Sorry, sir, I’m afraid us Pottsville folk have got our brains pretty well addled with waiting for Black Thursday. Nobody in these parts ever heard of ten men all getting hanged at once.”

“Can’t say I blame you,” Liam said, “I’m from New York, and I never heard of it either. Matter of fact,” he added with a gentle emphasis on business, “I’m on my way back there and I’d like to get rid of the lip spinach and the Colonel Custer hair.”

“Subito, signore!” the barber said, swirling his striped hair cloth like a bullfighter’s cape and wrapping Liam from neck to knees. As the snipping commenced, the red-faced man went back to his attack:

“I’ll tell you who I’d like to see dancing on air come Thursday …”

“For pity’s sake give it a rest, Maclean!” The foppish young man raised his eyebrows and rolled his eyes in an elaborate show of long-suffering. “The next thing we know you’ll be telling us you’re a secret Molly Magee!”

“You mind your tongue, Freddie Swanson,” the red-faced man said sharply. “You know as well as I do that I’m a true-bred Ulster Scot! I’ve no more patience with Fenian plots than you do, but for my money Seamus McPherson belongs on the gallows with the rest of them. He led them in their villainy and then he turned around and betrayed them to their enemies! And I expect he’s done a lot better out of it than twelve pieces of silver.”

The barber had just finished shaving one half of Liam’s lip but he couldn’t resist turning back to the others and waving his razor for emphasis:

“I tell you how we deal with such a porco as that one in Sicily—”

Turning the razor over he swept the dull side across his throat: “Zzzzt!” he hissed dramatically, “and tutto finito!”

Liam smiled weakly as the barber returned to his shaving. Think pure thoughts, Liam me lad, he admonished himself, or this bandito will have your head in his basin…

The red-faced man resumed his attack: “And I’ll tell you another thing, young Mr. Swanson! All this misery over hanging the Mollies is going to drag the country even deeper into Secretary Stanton’s quagmire!”

Swanson looked around nervously. “For mercy’s sake, Mac, mind what you say in public. We haven’t had the DPS arresting anybody in Pottsville yet, but there’s always a first time!”

Maclean blew out an exasperated sigh. “Listen to yourself. Are we free men in the United States of America, or we some kind of damned serfs in Little Roosia? I’ll tell you here and now, that’s not why your Papa and I fought at Chancellors-ville and Vicksburg. And not so the City Council could vote for a curfew neither, nor spend $3,000 of our hard-earned money on one those evil Acme police things to shoot any poor soul that’s abroad after dark! I’ve never been much of a believer, but if those things aren’t the work of the Antichrist what is? Not to mention all the damned giant bugs and animals?” He lowered his voice nervously: “I heard tell there was a werewolf out the other night, tore one of Olson’s dairy herd into mincemeat and didn’t eat a bite of it! “He wagged his finger at Swanson: “You heed my words, Freddie, this country’s on a downhill run to Hell and hanging ten men at once is just going to give us an extra push!”

As Swanson glowered sulkily the white-haired old-timer nodded his agreement: “You’ve pegged it, Mac. Where’s Lincoln, anyway? Nobody’s seen hide nor hair of him for the last six months, and all we hear from Washington is Mister Secretary Stanton and his damned Latin slogans. “Per Aspera ad Securitas.” What’s that when it’s at home, anyway?”

Liam had just had a final dusting of talcum on his freshly bay-rummed cheeks, and as he got up out of the chair and pressed a gold piece into Orsini’s hand he turned his newly boyish face towards the disputants and grinned: “It means ‘Through Hardships to Security’ and I’ve heard tell they’ll be printing it on all the greenbacks next.”

Suddenly reminded of the stranger in their midst the other men turned stricken faces towards Liam as he nodded cordially and headed out the door.

Coming out of Hartley’s Department Store an hour later, Liam stopped to admire himself in the store window. After all these months disguised under a bushel of surplus hair, he felt light enough to float down the street. Part of that was just the prospect of shucking off his hated spy masquerade and going home, but he reckoned he might be forgiven a moment of vanity at the sight of the old Liam McCool in the window: clean-shaven, with curly auburn hair cut short enough to look like a city swell instead of a Hottentot and topped by a crisp new derby, smoked glasses to screen the candid hazel eyes that always seemed to provoke a song and dance about how young he was, and a lightweight gray suit with all the trimmings, silk shirt and tie and socks and shiny boots, all off the rack but classy enough to set him back four of his carefully hoarded double eagles.

Setting off towards the Excelsior at a jaunty pace, Liam looked around Pottsville with the friendly, charitable eye that went with being simply a tourist on his way home. It was a pretty enough little town, framed by green, rolling hills and just far enough from the mines to keep the neat white shingles and picket fences of its imposing three-story houses from turning gray with soot.

The Schuylkill River sparkled in the mid-day June sunshine, and as a small steam launch chugged past on its way downriver, Liam couldn’t help a twinge of nostalgia for the times he and Maggie had taken the excursion boat to Philly just ninety miles away. The poor kid had dreamt of exciting journeys, and that was the best she could do in this neck of the woods, from here to the Centennial Exhibition and home again. He could never grudge her the times she’d gone with other sweethearts before him, but it broke his heart to think she’d never have the chance now to ride the Trans-Little Russia Railroad to the guberniia of California.

The street was beginning to fill up with prosperous-looking shoppers and folks just out for a stroll in the pleasant spring weather. As a passing gent tipped his hat politely Liam returned the salute with a smile, thinking how little it took to make the difference between a bum and a gentleman in most people’s eyes.

Some, of course, would never see Liam as anything but an outcast and he was on his way to see one of them right now. At least there would be some entertainment in the encounter—Liam grinned at the thought of Seamus McPherson’s face when he saw him in his new turnout. In fact, that would probably be the only good moment in an occasion that promised to rank right down there with some of the real blue-ribbon nadirs. He and McPherson liked each other about as well as your average mongoose and cobra, and that had been the way of it from the first moment they set eyes on each other.

He couldn’t be sure just what it was the Great Detective objected to about him, but he suspected it was a combination of him being ten years younger and the fact that Mr. P. had taken Liam under his wing after he sprang him from the Tombs to be trained for undercover work.

Liam knew perfectly well that the whole ridiculous business had originated with the popularity of that damned Frenchman Gaboriau’s stories about the crook-turned-copper Lecoq. Though the Old Man had grown up rough in the slums of Leeds and should have known better, this Lecoq foolishness seemed to have taken root in some buried romantic streak, resisting even the vitriol of his General Superintendent George Bingham, who had declared furiously that Mr. P. making Liam into a detective was as likely to succeed as training a timber wolf to fetch the morning paper.

Great Detective McPherson’s reaction was even simpler: fuming green jealousy at the thought that anybody dared challenge his position as Teacher’s Pet. He had spent his childhood slaving in an English landlord’s fields in County Kerry and his adolescence knocking about the mines and foundries of Britain’s Tyneside before he took ship for New York, and the thing that impressed him most about his new homeland was the fact that all it took to leap from the gutter to the top rung was plenty of money.

That was all Seamus McPherson needed to know—getting rich became his polestar, and no job was too small to move him closer to his goal. For a few checkered years he worked at everything from slaughtering pigs to driving a hack until finally he landed a job with Pilkington as a “spotter” on the elevated railways, watching for crooked conductors who pocketed the transport company’s money. Here was work to McPherson’s taste! He loved working under cover, and he had an almost feral hunting instinct. His success in sweeping the El’s trains clean was so great that he started moving from one Pilkington client to another, rising steadily in rank until he became the supervisor of spotters for the Philadelphia and Reading. The line was owned by Franklin B. Gowen and the rest became history.

It was the Panic of 1873 that did the trick. When the banks started failing, the big companies stopped spending and they were the ones who had been paying Pilkington’s bills. Racking his brains for a way to stop the hemorrhage of money, Mr. P. came across a report from the Superintendent of his Philadelphia office that quoted McPherson on the Molly Magees’ threat to Gowen’s coal empire. Always secret, always ready to use violence against oppressors, the Mollies had sprung up more than once among Ireland’s peasants and once again among Pennsylvania’s Irish miners. Seamus McPherson had known them in County Kerry and now that he’d seen them here he knew they meant business—so why shouldn’t the Agency go after them and save some money for Mr. Gowen?

Pilkington recognized a winner when he heard it and so did Gowen, who realized that Molly terrorism gave him the perfect stick for beating the struggling miners’ union into submission. All they needed, the two men decided, was a super spy to infiltrate the Mollies: an Irish Catholic, a single man who wouldn’t leave behind troublesome and expensive survivors, a man tough enough, shrewd enough and gregarious enough to mine coal, drink with the “bhoys,” and pass muster as a Molly. Ecce Seamus, mused Liam.

A furious racket of barking broke into Liam’s reverie and he stopped and looked around for the source. Across the street and half a block or so behind him, a matronly looking woman in a plum-colored walking costume with a huge bustle, her head almost lost beneath an outlandishly showy hat topped with what looked like artificial fruits, was walking an oversized French poodle with its coat trimmed into pom-poms and puffballs. The dog had frozen suddenly in its tracks, transfixed with terror and fury as it barked at an approaching Acme, its china doll’s face smiling vapidly under a peaked blue cap and its body costumed in a Pottsville police uniform. Liam noticed with uneasy curiosity that its right arm terminated in some unfamiliar machinery that looked a lot like a small Gatling gun.

“Stop it, Fifi!” the woman shouted, a hysterical note edging her voice. “Stop it at once, you stupid dog!”

By now the poor creature was in an ecstasy of fear, crouched down nearly to the pavement, its mouth drawn back in a ferocious snarl. The Acme, unsurprisingly, paid no attention to the dog and clanked stolidly forward, but before the little drama could come to a climax, the crowd around Liam broke into screams and yells as they pointed up into the sky.

As Liam followed their pointing fingers he instinctively dropped into a crouch and covered his head with his hands as the biggest bird he had ever seen—a bald eagle with a wing span at least thirty feet from tip to tip—dove towards them with a harsh scream that turned Liam’s blood to ice.

The speed of the plummeting bird’s attack was astonishing—it seemed to Liam that he barely had time to blink before the eagle had sunk its extended claws into the hapless dog like grappling hooks and swept back up with its howling prey, climbing so fast it would have been out of sight in seconds if the police Acme hadn’t chosen that moment to raise its right arm and unleash a torrent of bullets at the escaping bird. It sounded to Liam like the cartridges were no bigger than .22 caliber, but they were plenty big enough to shred the poodle. It screamed horribly and then fell silent, which seemed to infuriate the eagle; it dropped the lifeless carcass, executed a kind of aerial loop and dived again, shrieking its unnerving war cry, directly towards the Acme.

The automaton—still wearing its vapid china smile—raised its arm further and continued to fire a deafening stream of bullets at the eagle. To no apparent effect, however, for in a second the bird had taken hold of the Acme by its head, and with a mighty beat of its wings surged upwards again. This time, when it had reached an altitude about equal to twice the height of the surrounding buildings, it abruptly let go of its prey. The Acme, cartwheeling wildly as it tried to right itself, landed in the street with a thunderous crash that tore off the Gatling-gun arm. For a few moments it lay there feebly trying to sit up and leaking steam from every aperture. Then, with an earsplitting roar it blew up, sending its arms and legs and still-smiling head smashing through various store windows. For another moment or two all was silence except for the tinkle and crash of glass.

“Sweet Christ,” Liam murmured. It had been a sendoff he wouldn’t forget in a hurry. Somehow the big bugs and that buffalo-sized wolf had seemed semi-acceptable in a backwater like Henderson’s Patch. Out in the deep sticks you could believe in all kinds of primitive rubbish, ghosts and hoodoos and whatever. But Pottsville was a city, for pity’s sake! If this really did have something to do with Indian “medicine” they were all in for a bad time of it, there probably wasn’t a square inch of land in the U.S. that hadn’t been settled by Indians one time or another.

Crossing himself instinctively, Liam stood up and dusted himself off. Then, as the street slowly came back to life and Pottsville police and spectators started pouring onto the scene, Liam picked up his pace smartly and headed off down the street.