The Anarchist (2 page)

“Right—another spy, who can infiltrate and inform on the anarchists in Buffalo.” Savin’s face grew tighter, like a fist. “To ensure our president’s safety while he visits Buffalo.”

“Find me one.”

“Sure I couldn’t just get you another whore?”

“No,” Norris said patiently. “I said I want a canawler, one who goes to places like Big Maud’s.”

“There must be a few of
those
in Buffalo,” Savin said. “The anarchists, the bastards, they’ll probably kill him, too.”

“I need one that can stay alive long enough to be useful.”

Before Savin could answer, the doctor called up from the barge. “Well, that’s done.”

They looked down at Rivard—to stay dry he had stepped under the pilothouse roof next to Bruener and his son. Clementine’s body lay facing them in the rain, legs parted, knees at odd angles. The rain had matted the pubic hair against her skin.

“This woman has entertained recently.” Rivard had to raise his voice now because the rain was beating loudly on the deck of the barge. “There’s plenty of you know what, you know where.”

“Some spy.” Savin exhaled smoke. “Just down here on the canal, doing her job.”

“If so, why kill a whore?” Norris said.

“Ethical or moral reason?” Savin said. “Or maybe she just wasn’t very accommodating.”

“No, she found something out.”

Norris looked at the group of men who were now leaning against the brick wall of the warehouse, trying to keep from getting soaked. They gazed sullenly down at the barge, as though the police were the guilty ones, responsible for everything from the rain to the death of a prostitute. One of the men was holding a mule by the reins, and when the animal brayed, the sound echoed out over the canal, plaintive and sorrowful.

HYDE was early.

If you wanted something in St. John’s Protectory, if you needed something, you learned to get there first. The nuns always ladled out full bowls of soup to the boys at the head of the line, but with time their arms tired and the portions grew smaller.

So he arrived early and waited a good ten minutes in the doorway of Fallon’s Apothecary across from the Three Brothers Café. Though he’d never met Jake Norris—and Captain Savin had offered no description—the Pinkerton detective was easy to recognize when he walked down Market Street: a large, well-fed man in a black suit and hard collar stood out in the Polonia section of Buffalo. As Norris approached a vendor’s cart that sold noisy chickens, several old women in babushkas instinctively
scattered out of his way. Norris entered the café and sat at a table by the front window. Hyde wished he’d found a place that wasn’t visible from the street. Norris removed his bowler, which left a neat indentation in his short blond hair. His skin was the color of a peeled potato. He opened the morning edition of the
Buffalo Courier
, and for several minutes did not look up from reading. His actions were calculated and deliberate, and suggested that he knew he was being observed—and that he welcomed the fact.

Hyde glanced at his own reflection in the window of the apothecary. His thick dark mustache concealed his mouth, and the hollowness of his cheeks suggested that he could use a good meal. Though it was August, his jacket was buttoned, with the collar turned up. When he faced the café again Norris had put down his paper and was staring out the window directly at him.

Hyde crossed the street, almost as if drawn. When he opened the door and entered the café, Norris said, “I’ve ordered you coffee. Come, sit.”

Hyde approached the table. “Detective Norris?”

“Jake Norris, but just Norris is fine.”

“People usually call me Hyde.”

“No first name? Your folks gave you one, didn’t they?” Norris touched his own cheekbones. “They’re prominent—Eastern European, perhaps, but I can’t quite place—”

“I don’t know where my family’s from. I’m certain I was born in the United States, here in Buffalo, or nearby.” Hyde sat at the table as the waiter, an old man in a soiled apron, brought the coffee.

“Something to eat?” Norris asked.

“Maybe later,” Hyde said, and the waiter retreated.

“But your mother and father …” Norris began.

“I never knew my mother,” Hyde said, “and I suspect she never really knew my father.” He waited for the detective to figure it out.

“Orphaned,” Norris said.

“I’m told that when the nuns found me on the steps of St. John’s Protectory it couldn’t have been more than a few hours after birth. There were hundreds of boys—Italian, Polish, German, Russian, you name it—and they stuck with their own kind, a lot like the neighborhoods in this city. I don’t know who my parents were, let alone where they were from.”

“An outcast among outcasts,” Norris said with satisfaction. “So you learned to fend for yourself. Well, the thing is you know how to survive.” He nodded toward the window. “I saw something out there when you crossed the street, something invisible about you. You can disappear into a crowd, go unnoticed—that’s an excellent trait. It’s useful.”

“You spotted me.”

“It’s my job.” Norris took out a cigar case, a penknife, and matches, and laid them on the table. He opened the silver case, removed one cigar, and then with the penknife began cutting the tip. “I like to make a little bird’s mouth, see?” he said. “Garcias. You read the newspapers?”

Hyde nodded.

“Then you know who smokes these—William McKinley. You can say what you want about the president, but the man knows cigars.” Norris studied his workmanship for a moment, and then picked up the box of matches. He might have been performing a magic trick, the way he struck a matchstick and puffed slowly as he lit the cigar, sending blue smoke across the table. Suddenly, he said, “I’m sorry—would you like one?”

“No, thank you.” Hyde sipped from his cup, and then sucked the beads of coffee from the bottom of his mustache.

“According to the papers, the president smokes twenty of these a day,” Norris said as he studied Hyde. “You seem unimpressed. Let me guess. You’re in your late twenties. But there is nothing youthful about your face—the cheeks, already sunken and deeply creased. At the rate you’re going, most men wouldn’t make it to thirty-five.” He exhaled smoke, which hung in the air,
coiling, slow and languid. “I like to think of myself reaching sixty, when I will retire to a wide front porch and smoke twenty cigars a day.”

He took a cigar from his case and placed it on the table next to Hyde’s coffee cup. “For later on, then. You strike me as a patient man. You can wait to eat, you can wait for a Garcia—or perhaps you don’t smoke?”

“No, I like a cigar,” Hyde said. “But usually at night.”

“Yes, with a glass of beer. What else, Hyde? Whiskey?”

“Not to excess.”

“Not usually, you mean.” Norris smiled around his cigar. “Women? You like the women? Or maybe you’re married? Captain Savin didn’t say.”

“I’m not married.”

Norris moved his shoulders slightly. “You like the saloon dancers? The upstairs girls in the houses of assignation? You frequent places like Big Maud’s, a real palace of carnal pleasure, I understand, except one of the girls was found in the canal a couple of days ago.”

“Clementine,” Hyde said. “I heard.”

“Yes, it’s been in all the papers. She one of your girls?”

“No.”

“Never?” “Never.”

“Any idea why someone would beat her to death and throw her in the Erie Canal?”

“No idea.”

Norris placed both elbows on the table. “I can tell you why. It had nothing to do with sex. She found something out about someone down there on the canal, and they killed her before she could tell me.” Norris leaned even farther over the table, speaking in a whisper. “It was anarchists. That’s why I’m here.”

“She was working for you?”

“Very
good, Hyde.” Norris sat back now. “So Savin sends his
men around to Big Maud’s and other places like that, and they question men who work on the canal. I know how that goes. When a man is afraid you can tell inside two minutes if he really knows anything.” Norris rolled the ash of his cigar on the edge of his saucer. “But you—Savin says you were different.”

“I don’t know anything about Clementine.”

“Tell you the truth, I’m not interested in a dead prostitute,” Norris said. “I’m interested in what she found out.” He paused a moment. “Savin sent you to me—he said you knew something, and you seemed willing to help. So tell me, Hyde, why is that?”

Hyde glanced around the café, which was full, with most of the customers speaking Polish, and then he leaned forward and spoke quietly. “I was picked up when the police raided a workers’ meeting at a hall here in Polonia and they questioned me for a long time. At first Savin was—he was like all the police, but then he seemed to change his mind and had a meal brought in. He even offered me a cigar afterward.”

“But it wasn’t a Garcia.”

“He smokes a lot of cigarettes.”

“You must have impressed him. You must have said something interesting.”

“Savin was skeptical, like you.”

Norris glanced down at the table a moment. “Your hands,” he said. “They’re unusually large, and calloused—powerful hands for such a lean man. You get hands like that from working on the barges. I’ll tell you, with the proper diet, I’m convinced America could be a country of strong men. This could be a great nation.” He regarded the smoke that hung in the air, and then asked, “You live on a barge?”

“Depends. I have a room in a boardinghouse, when I’m in Buffalo.”

“Certainly. Come and go. And you’ve been working on the canal for years?”

“Since I was twelve.”

“You ran away from this St. John’s Protectory.” Norris smiled. “And hid on the Erie Canal. It’s not much of a life.”

“Being a canawler’s better than working in the slaughterhouses—I’ve done that, too.”

“Granted.”

There was a moment of silence. Norris seemed to be waiting, and Hyde finally said, “Savin said he knew someone who could help me.”

“That’s right. You sure you wouldn’t like a cigar?”

Hyde picked the cigar up off the table. “All right.”

“I find they steady the nerves.” Norris slid the penknife and matches across the table. “Now let’s talk about what you told Savin. If he was
too
skeptical, he wouldn’t have recommended you to me.”

As he lit his cigar, Hyde surveyed the café once again. “You Pinkertons—you’re always looking for someone on the inside.”

“Inside the workers’ movement, yes. You are one of them and they trust you.” Norris hesitated. “And you told Savin, who smokes a lot of cigarettes, that you met a man who talks about assassinating the president.”

“I did.”

Norris waited, and finally said, “He has a name.”

Hyde looked out the window a moment, and then back at Norris. “Leon Czolgosz. Very quiet usually, but then sometimes he starts to boast about changing history. He talks about how it should be our duty to kill the president. That’s his word, duty.”

“And you believe him.”

“I rarely believe what people say, but I believe their eyes. And he has these pale blue eyes. They are—they tell you he’s very quiet, but inside there’s a great deal, you know, going on in his head.” Hyde leaned over the table slightly and whispered, “Savin said I should tell you this because you’re here to help protect the president.”

“That’s why I was sent out from Washington. McKinley will visit Buffalo next month.” “What will you do?”

“It depends,” Norris said, “on whether I believe you.”

Hyde leaned back, insulted.

Norris took his cigar from his mouth and smiled. “At heart, you’re honest, and you’re a realist, Hyde. I don’t think you’d make this up. The number of death threats against the president has increased considerably since he began his second term last March. Anarchists are trying to kill leaders here and in Europe. Last year they shot the Italian king, and that has only made them more determined.”

“So if Czolgosz is a threat, you can arrest him?”

“You’re talking about a potential threat. If that’s the case we should arrest half of Buffalo—and Cleveland, and Paterson, and entire neighborhoods in Chicago, too. But where do we start? With the Italians, the Russians, the Hungarians, the Jews? No, we should watch this Leon Czolgosz—see what he does, who he associates with. If he is a threat, he can’t be doing this alone. That will be your job.” Norris worked on his cigar for a moment. “The fact is, Hyde, I don’t want you to do anything different from what you’re doing now. Keep your ears open down on the canal and at Big Maud’s. Continue to go to workers’ meetings. Read
Free Society
, and listen to impassioned speeches about the virtues of socialism and communism. Keep close to these people. And if you can get Emma Goldman in the sack, which I understand isn’t too difficult, give her a good poke for me.”

Hyde removed the cigar from his mouth. “You want to know what they talk about? But you already know this. They talk about improved working conditions, better wages—they talk about freedom.”

“Fine, let them talk all they want—it’s a free country and people can be as stupidly idealistic as they want,” Norris said. “But people like Czolgosz talk about presidents and kings. The reason you’re here is because you have come to the realization that you’re not dealing with idealists. What would you call them, these people who plot to kill their leaders?”