Chapter Ten

McPherson’s room was on the top floor of the Excelsior at the end of a long corridor and the hike (elevators not having made it out to the sticks quite yet) would have given Liam plenty of time to rehearse his approach to McPherson if it had seemed worth the bother. But he knew that even if he walked Broadway from Union Square to Central Park he still couldn’t come up with a way to dodge the Great Detective’s bullying and bellyaching. As long as McPherson was Pilkington’s proxy here in the coalfields, he could do what he liked, serenely confident that his boss held the whip hand over Liam.

Liam gritted his teeth and knocked.

“Who’s there?” a voice yelled from inside.

Liam grimaced at having to give the ridiculous password:

“Mr. P.’s favorite nephew!”

The knob turned and the door started to open, just far enough for Liam to make out a broad, shiny red face framed by slicked-back sandy hair and a bush of sandy whiskers that didn’t quite cover the clerical collar. But before he could open his mouth to say hello, McPherson’s expression switched from narrow-eyed suspicion to terror and he started to slam the door shut again. Liam barely managed to wedge his foot into it:

“What the blazes are you playing at? Let me in!”

But McPherson, balked from closing the door, stepped back sharply and started to pull a pistol out of his jacket pocket. Not pausing to think about it, Liam threw the door open and lunged forward, clamping a vice-like hold on McPherson’s gun arm and simultaneously pulling him off balance so that he was standing on one foot and bending backwards.

“For the love of Mike,” Liam snapped, “it’s just me with a haircut, get a grip on yourself.”

For a second or two McPherson snarled and strained to stand upright, his eyes wild and blind with fear, but as Liam tightened his grip and pushed him further off balance, the fury slowly drained out of his face and gave way to a sullen glare as he realized who his caller was:

“All right, damn you, let go of me!”

Liam pulled McPherson forward onto both feet and started to relax his grip, but just as he was about to let go he did a double-take on the pistol and grabbed onto McPherson’s arm again, bending it painfully back against the elbow joint and jerking the pistol upwards so that McPherson ended up jamming the muzzle into the soft flesh under his own chin.

“Ah, Jasus!” McPherson shrieked. “Yer breaking my arm!”

“I’ll blow your goddamned head off if you don’t tell me where you got the pistol,” Liam grated.

McPherson’s expression changed abruptly from agony to a kind of shifty panic: “Pistol?”

“Yeah, that’s right,” Liam said between his teeth, “the nice new nickel-plated Webley Bulldog that I gave Maggie to keep her safe. Speak up now or your brains are going to go flying right out the top of your head!”

A kaleidoscope of expressions chased across McPherson’s face and settled quickly on injured rage as he found his voice again:

“I don’t have to explain myself to you, you miserable little shite, you’re the one who’d best explain himself to me or answer for it to Mr. Pilkington!”

That just made Liam bare his teeth crazily as he clicked the hammer back to full cock and and jammed the pistol barrel deep into the tender flesh under McPherson’s chin. McPherson shrieked louder, his eyes rolling with terror:

“I’ll see you rot in the Tombs, you son of a bitch, she was already dead!” Liam’s face was pale as paper and set in a frozen snarl as he pushed the gun harder and deeper into his enemy’s throat, so that McPherson could barely move his tongue as he choked out:

“I went there on Mr. P.’s orders!”

Liam’s anger deflated abruptly; he twisted the pistol out of McPherson’s fingers, let the hammer back down and dropped it into his own pocket.

“The Old Man gave you orders to visit Maggie.” Liam’s voice was as flat as a gravestone.

McPherson had to massage his throat before he could answer. “Not that it’s any of your damn business,” McPherson croaked, “but yeah. She was an Eye, didn’t you know?” He sneered as he said it but thanks to Barlow Liam did know, and McPherson’s gibe fell flat. “She reported to me on a regular schedule. It was her as collected all the doings of the Mollies for me after I left, and once you got here Old Pilkington kept her at it so we’d have a double-check on you.”

“Never mind they’ve already got ten Mollies heading for the gallows next week.” Liam snorted in disgust. “Once you put the collar on the lads in the dynamite tunnel there’s no more harm left in the Mollie Magees than there is in a handful of Shriners.”

“There’s more to national security than stopping dynamiters.” The venom dripped from McPherson’s words: “Mr. P. heard as how your darling Maggie was about to spill her guts to that hoor scribbler Becky Fox and the DPS wanted her put on warning. Not dead,” he added hastily, “warned.”

Liam looked at him for several long seconds, his eyes boring like gimlets. Finally he nodded and shrugged. “I don’t have to paint you a picture of what’ll happen if I learn you’ve more to do with it than that.”

The older man flushed darkly and started to raise a hand as if to punch Liam, but an instant later he overcame the impulse and lowered his hand.

“I ought to loosen a few teeth for you, McCool, but I don’t expect a tarted-up gutter rat like you to fight fair and square so let’s get down to business. The old man sent me a telegram about you wanting to go on leave, so go ahead and speak your piece. Then get out of here so I can open the windows and fumigate the place.”

Liam was only half listening, wondering instead just what Mr. P. had said in his telegram to McPherson that he hadn’t written to Inspector Barlow earlier. Had he mentioned the information Liam had given Barlow about Boylan’s people spotting the Great Detective at large in Pottville? Maybe he’d just hang onto that morsel as a hole card …

“I guess the Old Man must have told you the same thing he told Barlow,” Liam said. “I’m getting ready to head for New York, but I’m supposed to clear it with you first.”

McPherson gave Liam a sour little smile. “Well, that makes it easy then, because I’m not clearing it—you’re needed here.”

“I know you don’t want me around for my company, so where’s the problem?”

“I’ll tell you the problem,” McPherson grated out. “I don’t like to see jail birds walking around free amidst decent people. I promise you, McCool, I mean to see you back in the Tombs if it’s the last thing I ever do.”

Liam forced himself to keep a level tone: “As far as I know, whether or not I end up back in choky depends strictly on the Old Man, so if you won’t tell him it’s all right for me to leave I guess I’ll just have to go talk to him myself. But I’m not going to spend another day in the coalfields if the moving finger of God Himself writes the order on that wall over there.”

The Great Detective’s face had been flushing darker and darker until it looked like he was on the verge of apoplexy.

“Who the Devil do you think you are?” he roared. “You little dog-puke, it’s not up to you to be telling me what you will do and what you won’t do, I’m in charge here and I’m telling you I need you to take over Schuylkill County for the Agency as soon as the hangings are done.”

He moved closer to Liam, getting right up in front of him the way coppers do when they’re about to give someone the collar. He poked Liam in the chest as he continued:

“Mr. P. needs me in Chicago to run the operation there. I’m only here until this Mollies business is cleaned up, and then I’m heading west on the next express.”

Liam smiled. So that was the story. The Chicago office was second only to New York, and Bill Henkel—who’d been sent out there by the Old Man to pull things together after the Great Fire in ’71—had been ailing for the past few months while every senior operative in the Agency waited in the wings for a chance to pounce on this plum assignment.

“So Henkel finally croaked, did he?”

“Mister Henkel to you, trash.”

“Whatever you say, Mister McPherson, but I’m not going to sit here in Pottsville holding your coat while you go do battle with all the other big bugs for a chance to land in Henkel’s chair. Ask the old man to send down some other stooge from the Union Square office, I’ll apologize to him in person when I get to town.”

McPherson closed his eyes for a moment, then blew out a big, pent-up breath and shook his head disgustedly. Turning away from Liam, he walked across the room with a heavy step until he reached the curtained windows, where he parted the drapes just enough to peer down into the street.

“Three months I’ve been sitting in this dump,” he muttered, “just waiting to see if there’s any way I can help strengthen the case against the Mollies. Once they sentenced them to death you’d think they’d let me out of here, but no, suddenly they’re afraid the gang will stage a raid and spring the lot of them. So I ask them for someone on the spot to keep an eye on Boylan, and sure enough, you show up like Young Lochinvar and discover the great tunnel conspiracy. OK, I sez, that’s covered, can I go now? But no again, they want me to supervise you.”

He turned back towards Liam and his voice went up an angry notch:

“Does Mr. P. offer me any extra pay for sitting here like the Man in the Iron Mask? No, of course he doesn’t, he’s so damn tight he’d make an Ulster Scotsman look like a drunken sailor. So I have to sit here counting my pennies while Mr. Gowen pours money into the Agency’s coffers, and every last one of those dollars is on me, McCool. If it wasn’t for the memo I wrote about the Molly Magees, Mr. P.’s outfit would have bust like an empty pot once the banks started going under. The reason there is a Pilkington’s office in Chicago now is because of me, and you can tell the Old Man I said so!”

With that, he dropped into an armchair like a marionette with its strings cut and stared dejectedly at the ceiling. After a moment he added in a sarcastic tone:

“Is there anything else I can do for you, McCool? If not, get out before I decide to shoot you after all.”

Liam hesitated, tempted to let the Great Detective find out the hard way. Then he shrugged the thought aside. All that old bastard Pilkington would need to justify breaking his word was for anything to happen to McPherson that Liam should have warned him about.

“As a matter of fact, there is something else: I had it from Boylan himself that you’ve been spotted in Pottsville and it probably won’t be long till they figure out where you’ve been holed up. Sounds to me like you’ve let your cover slip.”

The big beefy map of Boylan’s face abruptly went from a boiled pink to a fish-belly white. He licked his lips a couple of times as if he couldn’t swallow, then waved his hand sharply at Liam:

“Get out!”

Liam nodded, started to answer and then thought better of it; he didn’t actually wish McPherson any harm, but he for damned sure didn’t wish him well, either.

“Good luck,” he said in an ambiguous tone.

Then he opened the door, checked the hallway in both directions, and left.