Sundance (29 page)

“You'll have me know.”

“Put a uniform on a soldier. Put the hat on a copper.”

“Put rags on a bourgeois.”

“Exactly.”

If she wore rags, it was to blend in with the neighborhood. “So maybe you did know her.”

“I said so, didn't I?”

“Where did she go next?”

“Don't you know?”

Longbaugh waited.

“To the
rosbif
,” said Prophet.

“The rich one? The Brit? Fidgy?” The moment he spoke the name aloud, he remembered where he had heard it before.

Prophet nodded.

“I hear he's back in England,” said Longbaugh. “She go with him?”

“No.”

He fought to make his voice sound natural. “Then where?”

Prophet was suspicious. This angel had asked one too many questions about her. “Not sure. She hides.”

He made a side step. “Will you see this Fidgy when he's back?”

“I'll see his man.”

“When?”

“Fidgy's a collector. He'll be back in time for the show.”

“What show?”

“Some bourgeois art thing.”

“Fidgy. You don't even know his real name.”

“Sydney. Sydney Fedgit-Spense.”

There it was. Queenie's lover. Queenie had told Etta about her Englishman. But Etta wasn't interested in him because of Queenie, there was some other reason. He put it together as bits came from every direction. SFS, the dangling fragment. Spense Co. stamped on the dynamite crates. Lillian Wald knew an arms dealer, Mr. Spense. He had assumed Etta had gone into hiding with the anarchists because Hightower got too close, but maybe there was something else, maybe she had used Prophet to get to Fidgy. Prophet knew Fidgy, Prophet got his dynamite from Fidgy, or at least Fidgy's man.

Etta, what in the hell have you gotten yourself into?

“What?”

“I didn't say anything.”

“Yes you did, you said, ‘Etta, what the hell you got yourself into?'”

Longbaugh said nothing.

Now Prophet put things together. “You're talking about Ethel. You're the reason she's hiding.”

Longbaugh bit his tongue.

“You're after her, you want to—no, wait, you're not Black Hand, you're another one of her conquests, you're in
love
with her. Christ, they're falling out of the sky. I can't believe she got to you, too, no, don't tell me, you can't be without her, you can't live until you win her back.”

Prophet smiled from a place deep in the bosom of his victory. He had lucked onto Longbaugh's soft spot. Like all unloved, bullied men, he lived for the day when he could uncover someone else's weakness and become the bully himself.

“So you know, then, you know she was an untrustworthy cheat, only out for herself,” said Prophet. “Her plans don't include folks like us. One look and she went to him, the big fish, not a second thought. Oh,
he'll tire of her, all right, mark my words, and then where will she be?
Then
where will she be?” Prophet paused as if he was lucky to be rid of her, as if he had finally gotten even, as if he had put her far behind him, as if he was over her completely, but he couldn't keep it up, he couldn't make it so that he actually believed it, and out of nowhere he burst, he exploded, he shrieked as if every hurt he had ever suffered peaked in this one woman's betrayal:

“She made promises to me!”

His bellow was trapped and deadened between the piles of newspapers. He looked stung as he realized how completely he had exposed himself. He blinked and breathed through his mouth. But even then, to cover, he rushed to play the bully again.

“But it's worse for you. She left you to come to me.”

Longbaugh forced a smile.

“Oh, now you have nothing to say. Now you've lost your voice.” Prophet sneered. “Come on, broken heart, how does it feel, knowing what happened right here? Aren't you jealous of me?”

Longbaugh shook his head. “I can't abide a man without a sense of humor.”

Longbaugh did not believe him, but even so, Prophet's words cut. Longbaugh was thinking, distracted.

Prophet picked up the folded article on Leon Czolgosz, and moved closer to the door. Then Prophet had his hand on the doorknob and was outside and running, and it was too late to stop him.

Longbaugh moved to the door and saw Prophet run out of sight around the corner. He had not learned anything about Prophet's plot. But that did not matter.

He went back in the room and took the olive ribbon from between the newspapers and put it in his pocket.

Sydney Fedgit-Spense.

S
ydney Fedgit-Spense. The dangling initials in the fragment end of her last letter. He unfolded it while on the trolley, reviewing it for clues that might now make better sense, but despite Queenie's having mentioned her connection to the man, Etta had put very little about SFS in her letters. He guessed that, during that time, she had yet to understand his importance. Whatever had turned her energy to him may have occurred in the last three months.

He had slept poorly the previous night in his old room at Levi and Abigail's boardinghouse. The adrenaline from the violence in the subway was wearing off. A dull heat tested his eyes. He let them close for the smallest second, for some hope of relief.

His body was heavy, lulled by the creeping trolley rolling lurching rolling over cobblestones, cobblestones that came up, up to meet his forehead, and his subjacent mind took hold and whispered that something was wrong and he had misunderstood everything that had happened since he arrived. He was too late, to find her, to help her, to save her. She was gone, she had chosen to be gone, the trail of crumbs ran to the edge of the abyss and he was left behind, the trolley rolling, lurching. Images curled around him like curious smoke, images real and
imagined, concrete and unreliable, untrue and completely, utterly believable. He was a Jonah swallowed by the city whale, aswim in gastric juice, wearing boots and Stetson, gasping for air in an empty fish tank five stories below the streets.

He clawed his way back to awake, hating the dream, touching his forehead, warm from the flat of the trolley window. Cobblestones hurried past and his mind was thick, rolling in fur.

The trolley turned at Greenwich Street, and he stepped off onto a sidewalk that rolled beneath his feet as if he was still moving. He smelled something on the wind, a change in the air. Flies were biting, rain coming. He watched the trolley roll and lurch away and something nagged, tugging his sleeve, but when he looked he saw only thread.

The darkness owned him, it spoiled the sun and held him motionless on the sidewalk. He was still there when the floppy literary editor came upon him on his way in to work. One look at Longbaugh's eyes and he took his arm and led him indoors.

The editor guided him to an out-of-the-way office and graced him with silence. Longbaugh combed his mind for small talk, a way in to a conversation he was not ready to have. “Did you find out about that person, that, what was her name, Duncan?”

“Isadora. Truth is, I made all that up about her coming back to America just to spur my lethargic reporters. Turned out to be true.”

Longbaugh looked up. “So who's Isadora Duncan?”

“And that is the thing, who indeed? We go on about the private lives of public people when there is real work to be done.”

Longbaugh had meant it as an actual question, as prison had left gaps in his knowledge, but, being mistaken for a wit, he let it pass.

“We make choices based on the limited knowledge we have. You never know where your choices will lead. Covering Isadora may draw certain readers but chase away others. Or perhaps we'll get lucky and all the old solemn readers will ignore our Duncan blasphemy and the new Isadora readers will stay and be converted.”

“You believe that?”

The editor shrugged. “Precisely never.”

“Would you print the Duncan story if you had it?”

“Probably not. Not important enough. Although I shouldn't judge. Things we believe in today may turn against us tomorrow and prove us completely wrong, all to our spectacular benefit.”

“I imagine that happened to that fellow who shot McKinley. Except for the spectacular benefit.”

“Leon Czolgosz. When our enemies are in their cups, and sometimes when they're not, progressives are tarred with his brush, the man who traded McKinley's tariffs for the Big Stick. How he would have hated TR, the direct result of his action. You're the second person in a week who's mentioned him.”

Longbaugh knew who had been the first. The editor did not remember Longbaugh had been with him when Prophet was pitching his piece. He noticed his friend's shirttail hanging outside his trousers. Different shirt, same runaway tail. “I'm here about Sydney Fedgit-Spense.”

The floppy editor was hilariously upbeat. “You mean that filth-spewing, pus-fingered brigand, that oily, diarrheic garden slug? The man's intestines should be unwound from his abdomen and threaded through his nostrils.”

Longbaugh smiled. “That so?”

“I know, I go too far, after all, he's a thoroughly charming bloke, the old Brit. Why would you want to know the slightest thing about him?”

“To protect someone.”

“Now
that
I buy. Old Fidgy-Spense is an ordnance broker who knows his consumer. He would start a war if he could increase his profit, playing one side against the other, and he sees nothing wrong in that. Lie to the Germans that the British are building up their armaments, and you sell them rifles and grenades. Warn the Brits that the Germans just bought rifles and grenades, and sell them howitzers. The cycle doesn't stop until they're so incensed by the other's stockpile that they have to use them. It's a little bit brilliant, actually.”

“You don't think politics has something to do with it?”

“Politics has everything to do with it, my simplistic argument is an emotional screed, an unfair overreaction to a man I dislike, but then
everyone's reacting emotionally—Austria-Hungary, France, Germany, England, Russia, the Balkans, Jesus, who am I leaving out, Japan, Belgium—anyway, nothing spices up a political disagreement like having a bomb or two in your pocket.”

“So write about him, expose him.”

“You mean if I happened to have access to a publication that would print the actual words I write? Problem is, we're already being sued this month. Can't advocate a new lost cause until September.”

“Then why do what you do?”

“I defy augury.” He watched Longbaugh's expression. “No? Shakespeare? I have to stop trying to impress people.”

“I've been away.”

“No no, it's me, just a tedious habit.”

“As if your future had been foretold and you would prove it not so.”

He smiled ruefully. “Doesn't seem nearly as clever when you put it like that.” He thought for a moment. “I'd like to think we're building toward something. After Triangle, we seem to have the public on our side for the first time, starting to see workers as human beings. Even the politicians see it, with the hearings and new laws. I'd like to think that that tragedy will help make things better. People like Fidgy can never see it that way. He never looks back. I'm not sure he has a conscience.”

“Funny. That's what Prophet said.”

“Prophet is another one. Anarchy, well . . . men like Prophet, they misunderstand change. They want to tear things down and let the chips fall where they may. I'd like to think we all want things to be better. And despite my very real desire for change, it may be best if things move slowly. Go too fast, and you don't see the repercussions coming at you. Don't tell Eastman I said that. Hell, don't tell my readers.”

“Where is Fidgy now?”

“Out on the ocean coming back from Merry Olde.”

“I've heard him called a collector. What does that mean?”

“Art. Money. Homes. Women. It's said he had important paintings on the
Titanic
and they all went down without him.”

“I grieve for his loss. I had heard he survived.”

“What does that tell you?”

“He can swim?”

“You have a festive sense of humor, sir. The order was, women and children first. Yet he survived. What does that tell you?”

Longbaugh realized it had been a rhetorical question.

“One last thing,” said Longbaugh. “I hear he's coming back for a show.”

“The Armory Show. I have people covering it. It's an art exhibition of new European painters. Our readers and contributors are excited to read about it.”

Longbaugh was grateful for the information, and said so. “I may need to meet him there.”

The editor wrote down the address of the 69th Regiment Armory on Lexington, then grew serious. “You seemed quite beside yourself outside.”

“Yes. It was a bad moment.”

“I'm sorry.”

“Don't be. It's better now.”

“What changed?”

“I appreciate the way you look at the world.”

•   •   •

L
ONGBAUGH
thought that the most direct way to Fedgit-Spense was through Moretti. Hightower was a bad bet, he could not anticipate the man's agenda. But Moretti was more transparent, and there was a chance he would give himself away if pressed. And Longbaugh knew a way to get to him. Moretti may have kept himself at arm's length from the dirty work of his gang, but in order to maintain control, he still needed to give orders. He was too smart to write things down, as any written instruction would tend to incriminate. One person always had to have access to him. A trusted messenger to carry verbal instructions. And Longbaugh knew who that messenger had to be. He had seen him any number of times, the slick wearing a good suit.

Longbaugh went back to Little Italy and the Tall Boot Saloon. When he had watched for Hightower from the roof, he hadn't paid attention to the slick's comings and goings. Now he did. He watched from the same rooftop, tracking the slick when he came out of the bar, moving roof to roof until he ran out of roof. He went to street level and waited for him at the place where he had lost him from above. The messenger quit being cautious once he was that far from the bar. Longbaugh followed him out into the open, and the slick never once looked back, leading him directly to the building where he had first met Moretti.

Longbaugh waited in front until the messenger came back out. Then he entered and went upstairs.

He picked the lock and slipped inside Moretti's place. He closed the door behind him. He waited there, listening. A large clock tock-tocked. A door shut somewhere. Music played upstairs. A dog barked on the street. Somewhere else in the building someone blew his nose. The hall was dark, but light from individual rooms came through the open doors and fell geometrically across the floor.

He moved, grateful for the rubber-soled shoes that were quiet on both the wooden floors and on the rug that ran the length of the hall. He opened every closed door and peered into each room in turn and found them empty. He looked in the room where Moretti had come in that first night to meet him. Also empty.

He stopped outside one closed door and stood a moment, having heard a sound within. He leaned in close to listen, then put his hand on the knob and turned it as silently as he could manage. It was unlocked, and as it opened, it seemed to breathe inward.

The lean, pale girl, Moretti's girlfriend/whore, lounged on her bed, wearing the same thin robe she had worn the first night he'd seen her. She leaned on an elbow, narrow hip in the air, open magazine propped on a pillow. She appeared more attractive, but this time she wasn't being interrupted in the midst of fornicating with her boss. She looked up and was not surprised to see a man entering her room.

“And he said I was closed for the day.”

“I'm not here for that.”

“Doesn't matter, if he says so, it's so.” Her low voice, aimed at him, was strangely inviting.

“What room is he in?”

“You just missed him.” She lifted a pinky to the side of her pouty lips. “We have the place to ourselves.”

“Where did he go?”

“He doesn't tell me things like that.”

“Does he bring others here?”

“Only the very special ones. Like you.”

“Uh-huh. Maybe a rich Englishman?”

“You can be anyone you want to be. An Englishman, an Egyptian, rich, poor. I'm awfully gullible.”

“Uh-huh. Ever hear of a man named Fidgy?”

She let that pinky slide across her upper lip and blinked through cow eyes. “I'm not sure. Come over here and we'll discuss it.”

She was so obvious that her act was subversively effective.

Longbaugh was not ready for this. Had he known what he was facing, he would have been better prepared. His wallet was where it could easily be lifted and he was wearing his gun against his back. Did she have information? Possibly. He took a step toward her, thinking anything that could get him closer to his wife was a positive step, but then he looked in her lifeless eyes and knew she was a dead end.

He stepped back closer to the door. “When is Giuseppe back?”

“Not for a while.”

“I'll come back then.”

“No. Stay. Come here to me.”

“I am not ready for you.”

“I'm ready for you.”

The door behind him sighed open and he stepped sideways to look over his shoulder at Hightower coming in. “Now what would your wife say, tourist?”

Longbaugh's hand went for the Peacemaker, but stopped when he saw Hightower's gun already pointed at him.