The Anarchist (33 page)

“Get the oxygen ready, Mrs. Chase,” he said, nodding toward the tank that stood on a dolly in the corner.

Mrs. McKinley’s face was still now and he removed the handkerchief. Her eyes were closed and her mouth was set in a frown, which created deep wrinkles in her chin. She might have been asleep.

“Take some water, Ida,” he said.

He held the glass up to her mouth but she didn’t drink. Slowly she opened her eyes, and it took a moment for her to focus on him. Her left eyelid remained partially closed, and her breathing was shallow.

“You’ve never called me Ida before,” she whispered.

“My apologies,” he said.

She took the glass of water in both hands and drank. “No need,” she said. “It was just the sight of his shirts,” she said. “It’s all we have really. Clothes. And that little house in Canton.” Looking back at Rixey, she attempted to smile. “Can you imagine how many trunks the Roosevelts will need to move into the Executive Mansion?”

Rixey shook his head. He glanced up at Miss Iggers and saw that she was uncertain how to react to Mrs. McKinley’s attempt at humor.

“And Teddy’s horses.” Mrs. McKinley laughed. “Do you suppose he’ll bring them right into the house? Perhaps they could be exercised in the East Wing.”

Mrs. Chase, a stout woman who stood by the oxygen tank, also seemed alarmed by this conversation. Rixey nodded and she wheeled the tank toward them.

“No,” Mrs. McKinley said, her voice weak but stern. “Not yet.” She took another sip of water, and then handed the glass to Rixey. “The doctors who performed the operation on the Major,”
she said. “I understand they are now the subject of much criticism. The press, other doctors—they’re saying they didn’t do all they could.”

“There is much speculation,” he said. “I guess there was bound to be.” He put the glass on the table. “Some of them—Mann and Park and the others—are considering filing a lawsuit.”

Her eyes were clear now. “I believe they did everything they could. It was very difficult for you, consulting with all of them. Sometimes I think doctors have bigger egos than politicians.”

“Surgeons, perhaps,” Rixey said.

“Do you know that years ago, when the Major was governor, our apartment was directly across the street from his office in Columbus, and every day precisely at three o’clock in the afternoon I would go to the front window and he would appear in his window and wave to me. Then he’d return to business.” For a moment, her face seemed to collapse with remorse. “I was such a burden to him.”

Rixey leaned toward her. “I’ve never seen a man so devoted to his wife.”

She closed her eyes and nodded. Her breathing was still very shallow. Rixey stood up and nodded to Mrs. Chase, who rolled the oxygen tank closer to the first lady’s chair.

A little after eleven that night Hyde followed Savin through Big Maud’s front door. The madam shuttled across the vestibule, her palms pressed together in front of her powdered bosom, as though in thankful prayer. She embraced the captain, kissing him on both cheeks, a gesture that Savin seemed compelled to endure out of some sense of decorum.

“Darling,” Maud said, taking his arm. “Come in, and let me
fix you a drink and introduce you to my wonderful girls—though perhaps I might be so fortunate as to … reminisce … with you awhile?”

“Maud”—Savin hesitated, politely—“we’ve come for Motka.”

“Oh.” Her surprise was as delicate as it was false. “You’re not here for my little Russian redhead again?”

“No, she’s leaving. For good.”

For the first time Maud took note of Hyde’s presence, and she was suddenly confused. “What is it? Moses Hyde here, he’s in no trouble, is he?”

Savin smiled at her attempt to deflect. “No, Maud, it’s about—do you suppose we could talk privately while we conduct this transaction?”

“Of course.” Maud seemed distant and formal, now that a business deal was about to be negotiated. She walked Savin down the front hall, past the entry to the parlor, and through the door to her office.

Hyde took the stairs two at a time. When he reached the second floor, he heard opera coming from Bella Donna’s room, and bedsprings were thwanging in time to the music. Then, slowly, he climbed to the third floor, and waited outside Motka’s door, listening. There was a cacophony of music—ragtime piano and opera—echoing up the staircase, but he couldn’t hear any sound from Motka’s room. Finally he knocked. No response. He opened the door and found Motka lying on the bed, in the light from one candle on the nightstand. Her hair was piled loosely on her head and she only wore a velvet band that encircled her slender neck. She was holding still, her arms behind her head, one hip arched, as though modeling for a painter. Next to the bed a fat man was hunched over in the straight-back chair, facing her; he was fully clothed in a suit with a starched cravat, and he appeared to be merely staring at her. But there was movement, his fist bobbing up and down above his open trousers.

Seeing Hyde, Motka raised herself up on one elbow, alarmed.

The man glanced at Hyde—his ruddy face was desperate, and somehow familiar—and then he looked at Motka again, his hand moving with greater urgency, his breathing now turning to a wheeze.

Hyde realized he had seen the man’s face in the newspapers. He was often included in photographs taken at balls and dinners, social occasions where women wore gowns and men wore boiled shirts over their bellies as though they were shields. “Get out, now,” Hyde said.

“I
can’t.”
His hand moved faster and, looking again at Hyde, he said, “I don’t touch her. I never touch her.”

Suddenly he was thrown back in his chair as his legs went rigid, while Motka collapsed on the bed in exasperation. Hyde turned away in embarrassment and occupied himself by removing a paint chip from the doorjamb with his thumbnail.

The man in the chair shuddered and whimpered in disgust, and then he became silent and still. Hyde looked now, as the man was slumped over, exhausted. “See what you’ve made me do?” He removed a handkerchief from inside his coat and began daubing at his trousers.

“The police are downstairs,” Hyde said.

“What?”

“Captain Savin—you know him?—he’s in Big Maud’s office at the moment—”

“Savin?” He shoved the handkerchief into his pocket. “Better hurry.”

He got to his feet, hoisting his pants about his girth, trying to fasten things as he veered across the room. Hyde stepped out of his way, and slammed the door behind him.

Motka sat up, pulling the sheet over her as she muttered angrily in Russian. He took the chair and set it aside, and then sat down on the bed, causing it to groan—a familiar sound—and quickly her slender arm came out from beneath the sheet and she slapped him on the left cheek. The force turned his head away.
After a moment, he looked back at her, and she slapped him again, harder.

This time he kept his head turned away. “Get dressed and pack everything.”

“What can you be saying?”

“You’re leaving here. For good.”

She leaned toward him, took hold of his head, and kissed him hard on the mouth. “It is true?”

“You didn’t used to do this, kissing,” he said.

“You don’t like me kissing?”

“I do. I like it better than slapping. If I leave Buffalo, will you go with me?”

“Go where?”

“Does it matter?”

“No. But
how?
Where would we go?”

“I don’t know that yet,” he said.

“North? They say Canada’s winters are worse than here. But I like the winter. When I was a girl, the winters in Smolensk were beautiful, until spring when everything becomes the mud. But I cannot just
leave
. A girl named Sarah, she run away and Big Maud sent Mr. Varney to find her. He brought her back from Toledo—this is west, no?—and she had a broken arm, bruises, missing the teeth. Terrible pain. It take me and Bella Donna many days to make her better.”

“Big Maud, she sell her girls?”

“Sometimes. But usually when they are no use no more. Drunk, or worse. Me, she would not let go. Unless for a lot of money. You could not get this much money, I’m afraid. She once sold a girl for two hundred and eighty dollars, plus a horse.”

There was something tender and broken in her voice, and pulling her hair back off her face, he saw that she was crying. She pressed her face into his shoulder, and her tears were warm on his neck.

“I have the money,” he said. “It’s being arranged now.”

She raised her head, her eyes luminous, reflecting candlelight. “Now? You have this kind of money?”

“I won’t need horses.”

Everything had fit into one small valise. He helped her with her coat, and then she leaned over the nightstand and blew out the candle. When Hyde opened the door, shifting light came up the stairway, and he realized that the music had stopped downstairs. Instead there was the swift padding of bare feet, as though children were sneaking out of bed, and the shadows that danced on the walls were from the other girls who had gathered down on the second floor. At the bottom of the stairs, they were met by expectant, joyful faces. Bella Donna, sobbing, took Motka in her arms and kissed her on both cheeks.
“Buona fortuna,”
she cried.

Motka moved toward the staircase, the girls touching her, whispering goodbye, and then she led Hyde down to the vestibule. Big Maud stood in the parlor entryway, her eyes averted. Motka paused in front of the madam, who appeared to be devastated by sudden bad news. In the parlor, everyone, men and women, looked on in silence. And then, without really looking at Motka, Maud said, “Well, you brought me a decent price.” She turned away and drifted into the parlor, where she said, clapping her hands, “What’s happened to our music?”

As Hyde followed Motka to the front door, the piano keys began to dance and voices swelled so that he felt they were being pushed out of the house. Motka hesitated on the stoop. She looked as though she’d forgotten something and began to turn around, but he took hold of her elbow and guided her down to the street. There was reluctance in her step. As they walked toward the waiting carriage, she tried to stop again but he held her arm tighter.

“I can’t.” She paused and pulled her arm free of his grip, and then looked over her shoulder. Some of the girls were peering
out from behind the parlor drapes, and on the second floor, Bella Donna stood in her bedroom window, a handkerchief to her face. “I cannot leave them.”

“You don’t have any choice,” Savin said from the carriage. “You belong to me now.”

She looked at Hyde in the dim light cast from the windows of Big Maud’s. He realized he’d never seen her outside of the house—she’d only once stepped out on the stoop, the night her brother came out of the dark, fighting.

“We’re going to find Anton,” he said. “We have to. You have to, Motka.”

The light fell across her face, illuminating one eye, large, frightened. “Anton?”

“He needs you now. We’re going to go find him.”

She took one look back at the house, then turned and walked toward the waiting carriage. Hyde followed behind her. When she reached the carriage step, Savin offered his hand, but she refused it and climbed inside without assistance.

The streets of Buffalo were empty, fogbound. They were followed by two other carriages, and once Motka glanced out the small rear window and asked, “Who are they?”

“My men,” Savin said.

“What for so many?”

“With anarchists, you never have enough.”

“Anton is not the anarchist,” she said.

Savin wouldn’t look at her.

They didn’t speak again until they reached the canal, north of where it fed into Black Rock Harbor. Savin flicked his cigarette out the window and said to Hyde, “Well?”

“Stop along here, and then we should walk down toward a warehouse owned by the Shanley brothers.”

“They’re inside?”

“No. The barge will meet me there.”

“The
Glockenspiel,”
Savin said. “Bruener’s boat.”

“Yes.”

“I had a notion. I’ve had my men looking for her, but no luck. She keeps moving. It’s perfect. Hundreds of boats on the canal.” He rapped his knuckles on the carriage ceiling and the horses began to slow. “You,” he said to Motka. “I want you to stay here with one of my men.”

“You are going to find Anton?” she asked.

“Yes. It will be all right,” Savin said.

She looked at Hyde. “You will bring my brother back? Safe.”

“For a prostitute, you have high expectations,” Savin said.

Angry and frightened, she turned to Hyde, who said, “I’ll find Anton. I promise.”

The carriage came to a halt. Savin and Hyde climbed down, and there were eight uniformed policemen emerging from the other carriages, each armed with a pistol or a rifle. They gathered around Savin while he gave them instructions. Hyde looked down on the canal—it was quiet and still, and the fog made it difficult to see the buildings on the far side.

The policemen broke into two groups. Five of them walked past the Shanleys’ warehouse and took a footbridge to the other side, disappearing into the fog. Savin led Hyde and the others along the front of the warehouse, indicating places—dark doorways—where each man should be posted. At the corner of the building they came to an alley, and Savin, Hyde, and one policeman waited in a shadow.