Seven for a Secret (23 page)

Learning people’s secrets, God help me, is what I do.

thirteen

No grand inquest has for years had the courage or virtue to find a bill of indictment against a kidnapper, however plain and undeniable the proof of his guilt.

—JAMES G. BIRNEY, 1842

G
eorge,
if you don’t sit down and take a breath, you’re going to do yourself an injury,” Julius announced from where he sat propped against his desk.

Julius and Higgins had absorbed my tale—that their friends had lodged at Val’s for two nights; that Lucy had been found strangled in an alleyway; that the others were missing; and that Charles Adams seemed to be a fictional character—with the quick-smothered grief mastered by people who constantly absorb tragic information. Yes, tears sprang to Higgins’s eyes, to be swiftly blinked away again. And yes, Julius’s jaw clenched so tight I’d feared for his teeth. But neither was a stranger to barbarism. I could practically see the groove that trickling cruelty had eroded in Higgins’s skull. He paced the room as if enough circles could erase Lucy’s death and erase me from Julius’s ladder-back chair. My delivery of the news hadn’t exactly endeared me to him. And the Reverend Brown was attending a deathbed and thus unable to sprinkle water over the hot coals of Higgins’s temper.

To stop myself staring, I studied Julius’s home. He lives in Ward One on Washington Street, in a boarding house catering to unmarried black men. Boarding-house living is practical and collegial, and pleasant smells of stewed mutton and hair oil and ninepin cigars filled the halls. We were on the third floor, the window overlooking dozens of masts in the quays, though not so many as at the eastern docks and not so many as in fairer weather. They still looked like so many spearheads, somber and warlike.

I think if George Higgins could have torn one off and charged into battle with it, he’d have done so in a heartbeat.

“This is a
message
, Julius,” he bit out. “To us, from Varker and Coles. That supposing we interfere further, we’ll find our friends lynched and not just sold down the Mississippi.”

“You could be right,” I reflected. “That never occurred to me.”

“
Nothing
occurs to you.” Higgins made an abortive gesture that clearly wished to be a fist flying at my eye. “It never occurred to you that we’d have started searching for Delia and Jonas an entire
day
sooner if you’d done us the courtesy of telling us our friend Lucy is dead, for instance. It never occurred to you that we might in fact
care
she’s no longer for this world.”

“That occurred to him,” Julius put in evenly.

“Did it occur to him that Delia and Jonas might be in a slave market in the Capital by this time?”

His voice broke, the faintest hint of a hairline fracture. So now I knew. There are particular ways a man has of saying names. His
Delia
sure enough resembled my
Mercy Underhill.

Higgins wasn’t near through with me, though. “We are speaking of a child of six, and a woman who was already nearly violated by the likes of Varker. So this
copper star
is your friend, you tell me, Julius. And he probably saved your life yesterday. Fine. What possible excuse can he give for—”

“Lucy Adams wasn’t strangled to death in an alley.” I shivered as I said it. But there was only one thing to be done. “She was killed in my brother Valentine’s bedroom. Val never did it. Even apart from the fact he was with a friend, my brother would never harm a woman. Someone is trying to ruin us all. I can’t make you trust me, but I can give you the square truth.”

I remember the explosion that disfigured me last July as being silent—a tremor so deeply felt that hearing the blast was superfluous. My statement sent a similar shock through the room.

Julius uncrossed his arms and gripped the edge of his desk. He wore only trousers, braces, and white shirtsleeves. Though he seemed much recovered, I can’t imagine jackets are comfortable when your back resembles a shallow-ploughed field. “And you moved her,” he said to me.

“I hid her in a shelter the newsboys had made. Covered in a blanket. I’m so sorry.”

George Higgins took two quick steps in my direction and then stopped. Plainly wondering whether killing a New York City policeman would be his style or not.

“I never did it lightly. I don’t know how many people you have, but I have one,” I told him.

Confession of a sort had almost been a foregone conclusion when I’d arrived at Julius’s digs to talk murder. But that second admission had been wholly personal and rawer than the fact of the terrible thing I’d done. My tone shifted the disgusted look in Higgins’s eyes to blank surprise.

“And we’re simply . . . we’re meant to
take your word for it
?” Higgins spluttered in disbelief. “That your brother is innocent? That dandified morphine freak who smashed Varker’s wrist and
liked it
?”

“Remember when you called me dense? And it was true?”

“Yes, perfectly.”

“Calling my brother names that accurately describe him are every bit as flash of an idea. I want this crime solved, but Val wasn’t responsible.”

Higgins turned to look at Julius, still visibly battling
smash-the-copper-star’s-eye-against-his-brain
urges
.
“So I’m meant to simply take as given the lofty grandeur of this fellow’s white abolitionist morals—”

“My morals stem from poverty, not from affluence.”

“How very biblical of you. In that case, you’ll inherit the earth one day, no doubt. Oh, just a moment, your kind already—”

“Stop,” Julius ordered sharply. “This isn’t about either of you.”

That landed with a resounding clang. Higgins and I looked at each other, then looked away, then felt angry at ourselves for looking away and glared at Julius. It was a pretty little morris dance, all told.

“Valentine Wilde doesn’t enjoy fighting people who don’t fight back,” Julius added, rubbing at a linen compress tied over the cigar burn on his forearm. He wasn’t calling attention to it—Julius can shell oysters like the devil himself for a reason. His hands take pleasure in movement, are fond of being busy. “Man to man? Certainly. As for women and children—it’s beneath him, George, even if the fellow does own a taste for blood and narcotics.”

I sighed. “Yes, that’s— Thank you.”

The room fell silent. A gently ticking mantel clock counted out tensely drawn breaths.

“Timothy, are you suggesting that someone, rather than sending us a message, sent your brother one?” Julius pondered.

“I don’t know. No one knew Mrs. Adams was there. Though Varker and Coles knew just who was involved in rescuing her kin,” I realized. “So it’s not impossible that they guessed at her hiding place. It was the
reason
for her being dead baffled me. Until Rutherford Gates came into it. Please, tell me anything you can.”

“So you can make new discoveries and fail to apprise us?” Higgins demanded. “So you can treat us like partial men? Do you know what I do for a living?”

I shook my head. Not having been able to work that question out for the life of me. And desperately curious over it, to boot.

“I’m one of the first graduates from the Institute for Colored Youth in Philadelphia, but I trained as a shoemaker because work for educated Negroes does not exist. When I’d saved enough money to leave for Canada, I went to Julius here to say my farewells. He mentioned that most of the drunks you two used to serve were stockbrokers, and I’ve always had a head for finance. Julius found one who’d speculate my money exactly as I like provided he kept a third of my profits. Fellow called Inman. Even minus thirty-three percent, I’ve ample money to live like a king. I can’t testify in court, I can’t eat a meal at the Astor, I make two-thirds of what I ought to earn on Wall Street. And you, Mr. Wilde,
will not
keep delivering me half the information and then a day late. Not where Delia is concerned.”

Dazzled, my eyes flew to Julius. Last I saw Inman, I was passing him a plate of oysters with sugared vinegar and his fourth champagne bottle, and he was shrieking at me that Sam Morse’s telegram could make me rich in the amount of time required to take a morning piss.

“It’s true,” Julius chuckled. “I’d thought best not to mention it at the time.”

“In fact, I don’t know quite why I just told you all that,” Higgins admitted.

“My fault, not yours.” I waved my hand dismissively.

“Never mind, everyone tells him things,” Julius agreed.

Memories flooded back to me unbidden, of Nick’s Oyster Cellar and what our lives had looked like.
Julius, laughing fit to burst because I’d opened a champagne bottle with a saber and drenched three stockbrokers. Julius, beating Val at poker when my brother had stumbled into our establishment so drenched with opiates he could barely see me. Julius, bored and tapping a rhythm on the bar with his palms I couldn’t parse to save my life.

“You don’t know Timothy, George,” Julius said. “He’s not an angel. But I know him, and I’ll spill if you won’t.”

“And I’ll tell you everything,” I vowed. “As soon as I learn it, from this point on.”

We were quiet for a while.

“If you ask me, Lucy was married for a fact,” Higgins announced, seating himself.

He did it for Delia. Not because he trusted me and never because he liked me. He did it because suffering my company might—just might—make a difference for her. I often don’t care for people at large, but the sublimely individual things they do will never cease to quicken my heart rate.

“Are Rutherford Gates and Charles Adams the same person?” I asked. Grateful for a place at the table, however despised my chair.

“Must be.” Julius ran his fingers across his mouth in thought. “We’ve known Lucy two years, and only ever met her husband at their ken.”

“Two inches taller than me, brown hair, greying goatee, half-spectacles?”

“That bastard,” Higgins growled. “That filthy bastard.”

“Could his wife and her sister have been aware of his second identity?”

“That’s a sizable lie for an entire family to keep.”

“Maybe easier for three than for one?”

Higgins shook his head, wincing a little. “They never spoke of politics, never blinked an eye at his tales of the open road. It doesn’t match. And when Jonas went to school of a morning, his aunt walked with him. Delia sometimes sent the lad home in the company of the reverend or another friend, but I could count the times I’ve seen the boy with his stepfather on one hand.”

“I need facts, dates, but better yet, a story,” I pleaded. “I’m much handier with those.”

Julius glanced at his ceiling, considering. “Round two years ago, I was contacted by a woman who’d just married in Massachusetts and now lived on West Broadway. Asked me to tea. Her family, not to mention George here, was part of the Reverend Brown’s Abyssinian Church.”

“But Lucy attended services without Gates?”

“Why, Mr. Wilde,” Higgins drawled, “you’d never suggest a white man and a colored
one share the same
church pew
, would you?”

“Heaven forbid,” I agreed. “Tell me about the meeting.”

“Friendly enough,” Julius replied. “Lucy was . . . skittish. Very recently, she’d lived through an abduction. So she wanted to contribute to our Vigilance cause.”

“For safety’s sake?” I questioned.

“Could be. I think . . . like-mindedness would be closer. She wanted to talk with people who understood. Knew the way her outlook had changed.”

My thoughts flashed to letters carved in a woman’s chest and a wide-eyed panic that in retrospect made all the sense in the world.

“She introduced herself as Lucy Adams, and that mongrel introduced himself as Charles Adams.” Higgins abandoned the chair to resume prowling. “He seemed as passionate about our cause as she was.”

Several items of note emerged from the ensuing conversation. Lucy, after having been kidnapped outside of Albany with Delia and Jonas for sale at the Capital, had been altogether crippled so far as venturing outdoors was concerned once the family was transplanted to New York. Barely keeked her head past a drapery for fear of being spied by wholesale villains. But the marriage itself never suffered a wrinkle over her reclusiveness, so far as the Committee men could tell. Adams—Gates, as we began to call him—had seemed besotted with his supposed wife. At least, insofar as Julius and Higgins could report from their own interactions with the couple inside the walls of 84 West Broadway.