Chapter Fifteen

This town is going crazy, Lyovushka, and I’m not just talking about giant rats and cockroaches, I’m talking about everything everywhere is nuts and nobody knows what’s next. This morning, it’s your Gran gone. A couple of hours ago, it was all of the boys—and I mean all of them, even Harry the Jap couldn’t manage to pull a fade in time. And all kinds of other people I’m hearing about, too, people like us and uptown nobs both, from all over the city—there’s a knock on the door and the next thing you know you got Eyes coming out of the cracks in the wall. The only reason they didn’t get me was that Harry called on the voicewire while they were busting his door down, and I went and dragged Abe Hummel down here with a mountain of legal papers before the Eyes even started up my staircase.”

It was late in the afternoon and the shadows were already lengthening along MacDougal Street as Liam and Mike Vysotsky strolled and confabbed. Vysotsky, a sturdy, bouncy young man whose normal style was a bottomless mix of nervous energy and laughter, was a study in gloom and uneasiness, looking around as if he expected more Eyes to pop out of the nearest coal chute. He ran his palm over his pale, cropped hair and tugged on his broken nose as if he was trying to straighten it.

“Did Pilkington say anything about them sweeping people up?”

Liam shook his head. “He said we were going to be at war with Little Russia pretty soon and the way I got it was that was going to be an excuse for just about anything Stanton & Co. feel like pulling from here on in. I’m surprised they even paid any attention to Hummel’s writs.”

“Howe and Hummel are just as crooked as those bums, and they know it. Why do you think Mother Mandelbaum has them on a five grand annual retainer? Those two shysters know all the dirt on all the big cheeses in this city—and Washington, too. As long as the politicos want to pretend they’re playing by the book—all fair, square and above board—we’re going to need Abe and Billy holding our hands.”

“Where are they taking the people they’re putting the collar on? Is there any word on the grapevine?”

Vysotsky made a face. “Rumors. Rumors about rumors. I give them that much—they got things sewn up tight, nobody’s daring to open their yap. The one whisper I’m hearing the most is they’re going to be used for something. Put to work, maybe.”

He looked around urgently and then leaned closer to Liam, speaking right into his ear: “I tell you this for free, bratushka, if we’re going to be taking on the DPS we’re going to need a real war chest—we need to crack a bank, and we need to do it fast.”

Liam nodded. “Fast is right. Pilkington expects me to get to New Petersburg, do his dirty work and bring home the bacon by a week from Wednesday. That means you’ll have to find out where he’s taken Gran and the boys while I’m gone and have a plan ready for how we can go spring them before that old rat pulls any more tricks.”

“First things first. What do you say we make a withdrawal from the Gotham Savings Institution? Tomorrow night when it’s nice and quiet?”

“Suits me,” Liam said. “I cased the one on the corner of Bleecker and Broadway a few months ago, before Henderson’s Patch.”

Vysotsky grinned. “Who ever said great minds don’t think alike?”

Just ahead of them a cheerful light spilled into the deepening shadows from a plate glass window with ornate gold lettering: The Kettle of Fish—Saloon—Free Lunch. Vysotsky gestured towards it:

“Come on, let’s see if Jimmy can give us a table in the back.”

Meanwhile, in the drawing room of a fine old brownstone on Gramercy Park West, Becky Fox was biting her tongue as she submitted to an unctuous exhortation by Horatio Willard (“Willie”) Pilkington, Chief of the Department of Public Safety’s Secret Service. and (no less important to him) uneasy victor in the long struggle to escape his father’s tutelage.

“Nobody in America knows better than you do, Becky dear, what perilous times we’re living through.” He smiled anxiously, the movement making his smooth, plump pink cheeks look even more like a baby’s bottom. “Dynamiters and trade unionists are doing their utmost to tear the social fabric to shreds. Jealous foreign rivals eye our markets like hungry jackals, waiting to pounce on our customers and carry them away to their lairs. Anarchists and communists and free-love harpies fill the pages of our newspapers and journals with their poisons …” His voice quavered a little, the touch of revivalist anguish made popular by Moody and Sankey.

“I was only asking,” Becky said with deceptive mildness, “why your office refused to acknowledge a writ of Habeas Corpus for the release of my father and his colleagues.”

A fleeting look of exasperation flickered behind Willie’s watery blue eyes before he got a fresh grip on his unctuous mood.

“There are times when even the Great Writ must give ground to the needs of a threatened public, Becky dear. Vox populi vox dei, as the proverb has it, and nowhere more so than in the preservation of our precious democracy. Of course the Department of Public Safety would never dream of denying the right of prisoners to challenge the legality of their arrest, but under our Emergency Regulations the use of Habeas Corpus must be temporarily suspended, for the general good.”

“Very well, then,” she said in her flattest no-nonsense tone. “I was warned to expect this by David Dudley Field, who I’m sure you know has undertaken to represent my father’s interests. And I’m sure you also know that Mr. Field has the ear of many powerful men in Congress, all the more so since his recent service in the House of Representatives. Since you refuse to acknowledge the writ, I must warn you that I have asked Mr. Field to pursue every possible legal remedy against your Secret Service and the DPS and Secretary Stanton into the bargain.”

Pilkington’s expression hardened and the bogus air of stump-preacher entreaty dropped away as the muscles at the corners of his jaws worked angrily.

“I had heard you were keeping company with a dangerous criminal and Fenian agitator,” he said coldly, “and I can see that he has had a less than beneficent effect on your views.”

In spite of herself, Becky broke into a peal of laughter. “Honestly, Willie Pilkington, you are as big a humbug as you were when you were a little boy in short pants. If after all these years you could believe for an instant that I need anybody’s help to form my opinions then you’re a lamentable advertisement for the skills of Pilkington’s International Detective Agency.”

Not trusting himself to answer, Pilkington abruptly got to his feet and strode to the windows, where he stood for a moment staring out at the pleasant green vista of Gramercy Park while he struggled to master his irritation.

Becky studied Willie’s stout form, expensively clad in bespoke tailoring that couldn’t quite hide the results of his love of good port and extra desserts, and reproached herself for forgetting the adage about never poking a bear with a stick. Willie had a very tender amour propre, as any alert woman could easily read in the care with which he slicked his thinning brown hair over a palm-sized bald spot.

Tch! she said to herself. Be nice! Out loud, and in her most contrite tone, she said: “I am sorry, Willie, I didn’t mean to upset you.”

Accepting the olive branch, Pilkington returned to his seat and dropped into it with a put-upon sigh.

“Becky, dear, you know how deeply I care for you and how much you worry me with your Quixotic sallies against the powers that be. And I know you’re all too aware of the dangers that face America today, your travels and your contacts with the public make you uniquely well-informed. So I hope you’ll excuse my importunity in returning once more to my plea that you give serious thought to my proposal of marriage. If only we were man and wife it would be so much easier for me to protect you …” he paused briefly but significantly “… and your family.”

Becky could feel the angry flush spreading up her neck and into her cheeks: “The impudence of him,” she thought furiously, “to drag Papa’s fate into this!”

As used as she was to keeping a neutral tone with the people she interviewed, she couldn’t keep a quaver of emotion out of her voice as she answered him: “I suppose, as before, you would insist that I must give up my writing career.”

“Well of course …” he spread his hands in a gesture of appeal, “you would have new responsibilities, new duties …”

Becky bit her tongue again, but she didn’t need to speak in order for Pilkington to read the mixture of affront and iron resolve in her expression. He shook his head disgustedly and stood up again.

“I might have guessed you’d be pig-headed as ever. But out of consideration for our years as neighbors and schoolmates I must give you fair warning: I’m very well aware of your travels and your interviews in regards to a projected series on the trade unions and their threat of a general strike.”

Becky felt a chill run along her spine. “Indeed?” she said carefully.

“Yes,” he said, “Indeed. And we have informed George Curtis at Harper’s Weekly that even if he calls in all the IOU’s he holds from members of Congress and of the City and State Governments, they will not be enough to protect him and Harper’s from the most draconian response if he dares to publish your articles.”

Becky got to her feet, clearly signaling the end of their tête à tête. Pilkington nodded and moved towards the front door, but before he opened it he added:

“Please think before you make any final decision, Becky. I don’t want you to make yourself our enemy.”

She moved around him and held the front door open: “I’m not your enemy, Willie. But until you can respect my rights as a citizen and a woman I can’t be your friend either.”

Pilkington stared at her for a moment, his jaws working; then he gave her a curt nod and headed down the front steps, tight-lipped and furious.