Secret of the White Rose (39 page)

“Not exactly,” I said, sitting on the edge of my seat. “To clarify, you’re saying that Hugo Jackson manufactured Mr. Blotsky’s testimony?”

“No need to put too fine a point on it,” Alistair said, his voice dull. “Hugo and Angus bribed Harry Blotsky to testify as he did.”

“When did you find out?”

“For certain?” He looked at me, one eyebrow raised. “Not for years.”

“But you were suspicious at the time. And did nothing.”

He nodded. “Allan Hartt and I were suspicious. We argued with Hugo about it.”

I sat straight up, for I saw it: the truth was evident in his attitude—his arrogance even. “You didn’t argue with Hugo because you disagreed with him,” I charged. “You were angry that he hadn’t involved you. You were the architect of his case, yet he hadn’t consulted you.”

“Hugo was clumsy. That’s why, after all this time, Marie Sanders was able to figure out what had been done. If he’d talked to me, we might have planned better.” Alistair was angry, even now, at this perceived slight from years past.

I stared at him in disbelief. “You’re not upset that an innocent man went to prison. You’re concerned that your misbegotten efforts to put him there weren’t better orchestrated!”

“He wasn’t innocent.” Alistair slammed his fist on the table.

Then, recovering himself, he tempered his tone. “You’ve got to understand, Ziele. You’d have done the same thing, given the chance. It was a child. A little girl. How could we not take advantage of our chance to remove this worst sort of monster from the streets?”

“Except that he was innocent,” I said.

“Of this particular crime, yes. But only this one.” Alistair ran his tongue over his lips. “I need water.”

Wordlessly, I got up, crossed the room to the carafe that always sat above his bar, and poured him a glass. He drank greedily when I gave it to him.

“How can you possibly know what he’d done?” I asked.

“Because I believed the earlier evidence before my eyes,” he said. “Later on, it became clear that another man had committed the Adams murder. Years after Sanders was sent to Auburn Prison, a similar killing occurred. Followed by another, and then another. I knew then for certain: Hugo and Angus had overreached with the Adams case—and we’d gotten it wrong.”

“But you did nothing to restore Sanders’s good name?” I looked at him quizzically.

“By then, Sanders was dead. And still—I truly believe that while he was guiltless in the Adams girl’s murder, he was not an innocent man. He had blood on his hands. Just not
her
blood.”

My own mood was now black. “I’m as much for protecting our streets as anyone. But not when it means convicting a man of something he didn’t do.”

“Sometimes the law fails us.” Alistair drained his glass. “Our actions with Sanders weren’t the answer, either. My failure led me to think, how could we have done better? So what if Leroy Sanders was predisposed to this sort of criminal behavior? Was there no room for rehabilitating that impulse? I resolved to find out—not with Sanders, for it was too late, but with others in similar circumstances.”

And I realized: that was how Alistair’s research interest into the formation of the criminal mind was born. Out of misplaced guilt and mistaken judgment.

“What did Hugo and the others say when it became clear that you’d made a grave error with Sanders? They obviously demanded that you keep quiet.”

“They believed, like me, that the end justifies the means,” Alistair said, giving me a cool glance. “Sometimes extraordinary situations require extraordinary solutions. Leroy Sanders would have killed again, given the chance. Someone had to intervene.”

I looked at him with great sadness. “The law would never condone your way of thinking.”

“Which is why I conduct my research outside the bounds of the law,” he said. “For my own purposes, I operate just beyond its parameters.”

“The end justifies the means,” I said, echoing his words.

Alistair’s tone was cutting. “We all believe that at one point or another. You, most recently, when you invaded my private quarters.”

I had only to think of Alistair’s handling of the Michael Fromley matter in our first case together …

Or Jonathan, when he had explained to me why he had embraced the violence of the anarchists …

Or the commissioner, whose actions placed the security of his city and its population above all else …

Or myself. Because Alistair was right: when the stakes were high enough, more than once I’d convinced myself to cross an ethical line.

*   *   *

I would have asked more, but there was a knock at the door. It opened, and Mrs. Mellown immediately began to apologize. “I’m terribly sorry, Professor. This man has just barged in. I can’t imagine why the attendants downstairs didn’t stop him,” she complained.

A rail-thin blond man with a black patch over his eye pushed his way past her and crossed the room toward us.

“Who are you and what the hell do you think you’re doing?” Alistair stood.

The man merely smiled. “Mind if I take a seat? Detective Ziele will explain who I am.”

“Paul Hlad,” I said, my tone subdued. “Why are you here?”

He pulled an envelope out of the black satchel slung over his shoulder before taking the hard-backed chair between us. He looked around the library, taking in the foreign artifacts as well as the expansive view. “Nice place. But I suppose there’s no need to waste time on pleasantries. I have something for the professor.”

He gave the brown envelope to Alistair.

“What’s this?” Alistair asked, his voice rough with anger.

“Open it.” Hlad flexed his fingers.

Alistair ripped it open and stared at the single sheet of paper within.

“My creative work,” Hlad said with a half smile. “I hoped you might appreciate it.”

Alistair stared, lines of worry deepening across his brow.

“Marie Sanders was a true comrade,” Hlad said. “Even though her devotion to the cause was compromised by personal motives, she was a dedicated worker.”

“You knew…” I said.

Paul smiled in a way that told me he knew everything, but his answer was disingenuous. “Who’s to say what a man like me really knows?”

“You need to explain yourself.” Alistair sat again, this time at the edge of a chair.

“It’s quite simple. I made a few interesting discoveries.” His one good eye surveyed us. “I want you to appreciate that fact.”

A chill ran down my spine.

“Appreciation can take many forms,” Alistair said. “What do you want?”

I watched as Paul’s lips curved into a smile. “I’ve been granted immunity by the state of New York in exchange for my valuable testimony,” he said. “I’m likely to be deported thereafter. But I’ve no plans to disappear.”

That was the moment I knew that we had not fully realized the role Hlad had been playing throughout.

Al Drayson. Jonathan Strupp. Marie Sanders. His henchman Savvas.

All individual actors, loosely linked by their association with the anarchist movement. But each one had been manipulated by Hlad—a virtual puppetmaster behind it all. His words went on to confirm it.

“I make it my business to know what those in my organization are doing. Marie may have thought she was using me,” Paul Hlad said, “but the best leaders are those who can exploit the goals of their followers to accomplish their own. Marie was a brilliant find in that respect. She confounded the police and helped cover our plan for Drayson. Without ever knowing she was doing it,” he added with a short, brittle laugh.

“Because everyone believed the murders were connected to Drayson,” I said.

He nodded, then turned to Alistair. “When you founded the Bellerophon Club … when you designed strategy for your friends at the district attorney’s office … when you plucked those criminals from jail cells who best served your research goals … You have always been expert at manipulating other people’s desires to accomplish your own ends. No?”

Alistair’s face blanched. “No matter what you think, I’m not—”

Paul interrupted Alistair. “I know all about you. Let’s leave it at that, Professor.”

Alistair slumped back into his chair as though the lifeblood was drained from him.

The sheet of paper he had held fell to the floor—and on it, I recognized a familiar image, albeit now written in an unfamiliar hand.

A musical cipher
.

I picked it up as Paul Hlad slipped through the door.

*   *   *

Isabella was waiting for me in the hallway when I left.

“You spoke with Alistair?” she asked.

I nodded.

“Who was that man who just left? I remember him from the anarchist meeting.”

I only shook my head. “He’s not important.”

She eyed me suspiciously for a moment but then seemed to understand. It wasn’t a conversation I wanted to have tonight.

“Come walk with me.” Her tone brooked no disagreement.

She disappeared into her own apartment for a moment, reappearing wearing her coat and with Oban leashed. His golden tail cut a wide swath, moving the entire back portion of his body to and fro.

This night, we walked the city streets. She seemed to understand that I found comfort in the bright lights and bustling activity of Broadway—the Boulevard. A few grocers and pharmacy shops remained open, even though the evening was growing dark.

“Did Alistair tell you what you needed to know?” A curious expression crossed her face.

“He did.” I didn’t elaborate.

Dry leaves crunched under our feet, and in the moonlit sky, the trees stretched craggy limbs high into the bleak November night.

“I’ve often thought that sometimes those with the greatest gifts are cursed with the most serious flaws.” Her expression was unreadable as she added, “I saw something of that even with Teddy: those qualities that made him an intrepid explorer and archeologist also made him a less than ideal husband. Much as I loved him.”

“I suppose most people disappoint, given half a chance,” I said. Like my own father, who meant well—except when he held a pair of aces in one hand and a roll of coins in the other.

“Even you, Simon?”

I deflected the question. “So do you want to know what Alistair said?”

“I don’t.” A sober look crossed her face, and her eyes filled with an intense sadness. “Sometimes it’s better not knowing.”

We walked in silence until we reached the intersection of Eighty-second and Broadway. Then Isabella stopped. “What do you think, Simon? Should we turn back or keep going?”

Ahead of us, the night stretched long and dark—for this uptown section of the Boulevard lacked the restaurants, shops, and street lamps that illuminated the streets below. Given the city’s insatiable appetite for expansion, that would come. But tonight, all was quiet and the path ahead beckoned.

I took Oban’s leash from Isabella. “Let’s walk a few blocks more.”

She settled her arm comfortably into mine and—if only for the span of that walk—I was content. People would disappoint. The lies and half-truths, the betrayals and double-dealings, that I had witnessed were simply part of life.

But perhaps not always.

Perhaps not tonight.

A
LSO BY
S
TEFANIE
P
INTOFF

A Curtain Falls

In the Shadow of Gotham

This is a work of fiction. All of the characters, organizations, and events portrayed in this novel are either products of the author’s imagination or are used fictitiously.

SECRET OF THE WHITE ROSE.
Copyright © 2011 by Stefanie Pintoff. All rights reserved. For information, address St. Martin’s Press, 175 Fifth Avenue, New York, N.Y. 10010.

www.minotaurbooks.com

Library of Congress Cataloging-in-Publication Data

Pintoff, Stefanie.

    Secret of the white rose / Stefanie Pintoff—1st ed.

        p.   cm.

    ISBN 978-0-312-58397-2

    1.  Police—New York (State)—Fiction.  2.  Judges—Crimes against—Fiction.   3.  Upper West Side (New York, N.Y.)—Fiction.   4.  Terrorists—New York (State)—New York—Fiction.   5.  New York (State)—History—20th century—Fiction.   I.  Title.

    PS3616.I58S43 2011

    813'.6—dc22                                                 2011001291

First Edition: May 2011

eISBN 978-1-4299-6977-2

First Minotaur Books eBook Edition: May 2011