Hell Gate

by Jeff Dawson

  This detail was good, thought Finch. They knew the location. If they had searched the premises, they might already have found Delgado. If they hadn’t bothered – or hadn’t tried – then they were possibly in cahoots with Muller. Or just plain slack.

  Finch decided to keep Delgado’s name out of it for the moment.

  ‘I don’t deny it,’ said Finch, ‘although, if I may correct you, at the time of leaving the scene, only one of the two gunshot victims was dead. I killed him, yes. The other man was shot accidentally by the man who got burnt… Goes by the name of Teetonka—’

  ‘Teetonka?’

  ‘First Nation… Red Indian… Very tall… But you already know that.’

  The lawmen exchanged a glance.

  Yes, they knew it.

  ‘Incidentally, I can’t take credit for that either. It was an accident. He was about to stave my brains in when he got his clothing entangled in a flaming torch. Went up like a Roman candle.’

  The specifics of Finch’s answer had clearly thrown them. Too much detail for a fumbling bullshitter, and certainly not a story that was hastily improvised. The detective closed the folder.

  ‘Why did you kill him? The first man?’

  ‘Sorry, you mean the second man. I’m not being funny, just want to be clear. The first man was the one with the wound to the gut. He’d already gone down at the time of me seizing the gun – a German Luger by the way – and shooting dead the second man… a head shot.’

  ‘You’re not answering my question.’

  ‘Why? Because I was effecting my escape from a perilous situation, Detective. I had been drugged, kidnapped, tortured…’

  He nodded to his fingers.

  ‘I never knew anyone die from a broken finger,’ huffed the detective.

  ‘True, but that was just the start… I believed my life was in serious danger… Kill or be killed. Plus I’d just borne witness to the unpleasant aftermath of another murder… the horrendous slaughter of a police officer.’

  ‘A police officer?’

  There was more urgency to the detective now. Finch knew this would change the dynamic.

  ‘Deputy Inspector Angus MacLeish.’

  At the name, the detective froze, the blood drained. He got up abruptly, beckoned his constable, and they headed for the door. Finch was on his own again.

  Five minutes later they re-entered and resumed their positions. Detective Copeland was clearly trying to keep a lid now on simmering feelings.

  ‘How do you know about MacLeish’s death, Mr Collins?’

  ‘Because someone presented me with his severed head.’

  There was another glance.

  ‘MacLeish’s headless corpse was found dumped in City Hall Park just over two hours ago,’ the detective revealed.

  ‘Then surely that proves…’

  ‘Mr Collins,’ he barked, patience now slipped, ‘be under no illusion as to the seriousness of your situation. We have several officers who can place you in MacLeish’s company yesterday afternoon on two separate occasions – one in the Meatpacking District where he was investigating another crime and a second time when he was apparently driven to your hotel, the New Netherland.’

  And then he lost it completely. He leaned across. Spit splashed on Finch’s face.

  ‘Moreover – I want to know what the fuck you are doing in this country?!’

  He got up and began pacing about, the constable scribbling furiously as he did so. He threw a glance to the mirror.

  Coolness was being perceived as nonchalance, Finch knew. His accent wouldn’t have helped. He would sound aloof to them, superior. He tried to affect a more cooperative tone.

  ‘As I told you on my arrest, I am an employee of a company called British Nitrate. I have full credentials – bona fides, as you say. If you need…’

  ‘You can cut out the smarmy Limey bullshit, Collins…’

  He had been right.

  ‘Yeah, we checked it out, British Nitrate. The card in your pocket. The company exists, all right. But it just doesn’t stack up. You swan into town like some big-shot businessman – a swanky hotel, Madison Square Garden, the Bierkeller – yet, somehow, within hours, you’re leaving a trail of bodies.’

  It sounded hollow but he said it anyway.

  ‘I was in the Meatpacking District on official business.’

  The detective came back and slammed his fist down hard. There was a fury, as if he’d known MacLeish personally. He probably did. It suggested he was a good cop.

  ‘That’s a crock of horseshit, Collins. And you know it!’

  Finch mulled over his options. He could only play out the increasingly lame British Nitrate angle for so long, and it would not save Delgado. Conceding anything to do with his true mission, however, would place him as a spy. Lady Brunswick’s voice came again…

  If anything goes wrong, you will be disavowed.

  ‘MacLeish seemed a decent man,’ Finch said, doing his best at empathy. ‘He was bent on clamping down on the gangs… drugs, I understand. Told me how his forebears had immigrated from Scotland. He came to my hotel, came to my personal aid, because I had been the victim of an attack – a bomb. It went off in my hotel suite on the 17th floor.’

  ‘A bomb?’

  ‘A crackerjack bomb. MacLeish said it was of an unusual design, a precision weapon.’

  ‘Hold on, hold on…!’

  He began pacing again, rubbing the back of his neck. This was all new information.

  ‘Why the hell would anyone want to bomb you, Collins?’

  ‘I wish I knew myself.’

  ‘And, more pertinently, why the hell is there no record of this incident? A bomb goes off in my city, I hear about it.’

  ‘Because the NBI asked MacLeish to sit on it… To buy time.’

  ‘What?’

  ‘MacLeish said he thought he knew the bomb-maker – or someone who could shed light on who had made it… He had gone off to investigate.’

  ‘Where? Where’d he go?’

  ‘I don’t know. But there was a name – Chang.’

  ‘Jimmy Chang?’

  Finch shrugged. Detective Copeland nodded to the constable, who hurried out of the room again.

  ‘Listen, do you have a cigarette?’ asked Finch.

  ‘Why the fuck should I give you a cigarette?’

  ‘Because,’ said Finch, ‘I’m telling you the truth. I’m trying to help you. Please, I think you know it.’

  There was something in the detective’s sigh and reach for his pocket that suggested to Finch he had given them pause to believe his version of events… if not the bit about his official cover.

  Detective Copeland sat back down, tapped out two cigarettes from a blue-and-white pack – Chesterfields. He placed one in Finch’s mouth, lit it, then did the same for himself. They sat in silence for a moment. Then the constable returned, came over, and whispered in the detective’s ear. Copeland waved him back to his seat.

  ‘Jimmy Chang is a bomb-maker, Mr Collins, as you say. Was a mine demolition expert. Tooled around out West before he pitched up here. Was convicted as an accessory-after-the-fact in the assassination of Frank Steunenberg.’

  ‘Who?’

  ‘Guess I can’t expect you to know that. Governor of Idaho. A strike-breaker. Blown up outside his house near Boise by a bomb rigged to his garden gate. Perp was a disgruntled mine union member. But it was Chang told him how to do it. He was already in New York by that point – his services were suddenly in demand by the various anarchist groups we got here. Currently serving a twelve-year sentence in the penitentiary on Blackwell’s Island.’

  ‘So you think MacLeish visited him there?’

  ‘It’s a possibility. He’d been doing some liaison work with our new Bomb Squad, after all. Fenians… Clan na Gael… anarchists… revolutionaries… Suddenly everybody’s sweet on explosives. He’d consulted Chang before.’

  ‘Well, if he did, then…’

  ‘We just telephoned. There is no recor
d of MacLeish having visited in the past 24 hours. Maybe he never even got there.’

  Finch slumped back, hoping that they would register his disappointment.

  ‘Okay, I’m going to give you a name,’ Finch said. ‘Freddie Delgado.’

  ‘Freddie Delgado?’

  ‘An NBI agent.’

  ‘I never heard of him.’

  ‘Please don’t ask me to explain,’ said Finch. ‘I was holding back for good reason but he was with me yesterday. I was in his company when members of your police department staged an ambush on a mob truck somewhere west of Central Park… Don’t ask me where precisely, I couldn’t tell you, though I do remember Amsterdam Avenue. About the only street round there that wasn’t a number.’

  ‘You were there?’

  ‘Yes, and it was shortly after that that Delgado introduced me to MacLeish, in the Meatpacking District as you say. Took me down there. MacLeish was examining a body, throat slit, a “Short Tail”. Then there was the business at my hotel as I’ve described – Delgado and MacLeish again. Last night Delgado took me to the Johnson fight on the Bureau’s dollar – and with witnesses to back me up on just about everything I’ve said here. We were then invited on to the Bierkeller Club by Manfred Muller himself, a personal invitation. Muller arranged for our ride there…’

  The two men exchanged yet another look.

  ‘It was his girl, Katia, by the way, who played chopsticks with my fingers. Some weird pagan ritual they’ve got there – a lot of smoke, gowns and some big-voiced fellow bashing a big stick.’

  There was no response.

  ‘Delgado was drugged alongside myself – a sedative in the champagne. I heard him being brutalized somewhere else in the building. I got out, exactly as I said, and I was hoping you’d tell me Delgado did too. But, if he didn’t, he may still be in there somewhere.’

  The response was cold, blunt. Detective Copeland had changed.

  ‘Like I told you, I never heard of Freddie Delgado, Mr Collins, nor any of this fantasy bullcrap for that matter. But what I do want to know now is why a businessman from England is poking around my backyard in the company of the NBI?’

  ‘It’s complicated. If you give me time I can explain. But, please, the address in Tompkins Square, you need to go there and find him.’

  ‘There was no “place” specifically. The bodies were dumped in an alley. The burn victim was taken separately to the hospital by an anonymous Good Samaritan… the same person who gave up your name as the culprit. To which end, Collins, you’ve already sung like a canary.’

  The detective stood up. It was over. The constable gave a supercilious smirk. Broken fingers or not, Finch felt like delivering him a left hook.

  ‘You know what else MacLeish did?’ growled the detective. ‘Investigate anarchist groups. Is that why you bumped him off?’

  Finch was flustering now.

  ‘Kimmel… There was someone in the past named Kimmel!’

  He had hit a raw nerve again.

  ‘Are you an anarchist, Mr Collins?’ raged the detective. ‘Some kind of enemy agent maybe?’

  ‘Please, I can explain.’

  The detective made a signal to the two-way mirror.

  In a flash there were policemen in the room, bundling him off to a cell.

  Chapter 14

  American jail cells were not like British ones, Finch discovered. Back home they had four walls and a solid door. Here they were like cages – bars wall-to-ceiling, no place to hide, the prisoner utterly exposed. He stared out, waiting for something to happen.

  In this part of the basement there were two of them, effectively holding pens. The neighbouring one was occupied by four young men, all steaming drunk, clearly of violent means, their coarse clothing filthy dirty. Their main grievance came not at a lack of food, water or want of a fresh slop bucket, but at the fact that Finch had a whole cell all to himself. Their howls of abuse were met periodically with a constable’s nightstick rapped on the bars, which only seemed to increase their sense of injustice.

  In the end, unable to get a rise out of Finch, they turned on each other, yelling in their native tongue – Russian, Ukrainian, Polish… Finch couldn’t tell. The smallest of them, the runt of the litter, bore the brunt of it in the shape of a few blows to the head. Eventually they all fell asleep on the benches, leaning on each other, snoring loudly.

  Finch had absolutely no idea of the time of day and assumed it must be mid-morning. Way beyond the pull of slumber, he sat and waited and turned over the events of the past few hours in his mind.

  Eventually there was a click of heels down the corridor. Heralded by a rattle of keys on the part of a policeman, Detective Copeland was shown in. He beckoned in a colleague, a small, bald man. He was a police surgeon. Copeland gestured for him to tend to Finch’s broken fingers. As he examined them, he had to keep pushing back thick glasses which were intent on sliding down his nose.

  ‘Whoever set these did a good job,’ he purred, admiring Finch’s handiwork.

  He applied two wooden splints.

  ‘Popsicle sticks,’ he explained. ‘Some wiseguy figured you could freeze flavoured soda water and sell it on a street corner. Little did he know he also revolutionized the medical industry. There…’

  He bound them with a clean white bandage.

  ‘Can take up to five weeks to heal properly. Got to keep them immobilized. You hear?’

  Finch nodded. The man left.

  Copeland thrust at Finch a brown paper bag. It contained his tie, braces, shoelaces, his cigarettes, his lighter and his watch, which he duly strapped on.

  Another man appeared behind them. He had a square, close-shaven face, dark eyes and a turned-up nose. He wore a sharp black suit. Copeland threw a glance towards him.

  ‘Your lucky day, Mr Collins,’ came his parting, sarcastic shot. He turned on his heel and exited. The two men did not speak.

  The new man flashed his badge discreetly – NBI. He jabbed a thumb back towards Copeland, beating his retreat.

  ‘They don’t take too kindly to the Bureau around here.’

  Pointedly, the cell door remained open. He was free.

  ‘Agent North…’ the man added, extending his hand.

  He whispered the next bit: ‘…a colleague of Freddie Delgado’s.’

  Agent North cast his eye at the slumbering drunks next door, one of whom had soiled his trousers, then looked around to check that there wasn’t a guard within earshot. He leaned in and spoke to Finch’s ear.

  ‘You’re not safe here.’

  He added with urgency: ‘Some of the people in this building may even have been complicit in MacLeish’s death.’

  He pointed at the next cell.

  ‘Even these guys may be plants.’

  Finch threaded his laces as quickly as he could with the fingers that still worked. North leaned in again.

  ‘We have to leave casually, like it’s all a matter of routine. Understood?’

  ‘Yes.’

  ‘You got your things?’

  Finch nodded.

  ‘And the codebook?’

  ‘No, it was stolen.’

  The look of desperation flashed across the NBI man’s face.

  ‘Shit!’

  He scooped up Finch’s paper bag for him.

  ‘C’mon, we’ve got no time to lose.’

  Outside, grey clouds were gathering. On the kerb beneath the spanking new Police HQ, which looked like some baroque European palace, a motor cab was waiting. It was the same one which had picked them up at Central Park yesterday. It was driven by the same beefy, toothpick-chewing driver who nodded a sombre hello.

  ‘I’ll get straight to the point,’ said North as they climbed in. ‘We’re just as concerned for Freddie’s safety as you are. I read the police interview notes from your interrogation. Poor MacLeish… Jeez…’

  He shook his head.

  ‘And as for Freddie – we’ve had agents scouring the Lower East Side… Germantown. We’re beginni
ng to fear for the worst.’

  Finch cursed himself.

  ‘The location… I should have paid more attention.’

  ‘No, Mr Collins, you were in our care. We had men shadowing you. It was our responsibility. It was a miracle you managed to get the hell out of there, wherever that hell may be.’

  ‘How did you find me?’

  ‘MO3. When they got wind of what had happened – your arrest – they asked us to pull you out right away.’

  Finch dug out his cigarettes and offered one to North, who declined. He lit one up for himself.

  ‘That said, you need to be fully debriefed, Mr Collins. This pagan ritual, this occult thing you talked about? I mean… Christ. We need to go through every detail of what happened at the Bierkeller and all points beyond. I’m guessing you were prudent enough not to spill all to the NYPD?’

  He nodded.

  ‘I’ve had my fair share of corrupt cops.’

  ‘Then that’s good, at least.’

  They passed the great tiered wedding-cake edifice of the City Hall Post Office, which retreated behind them as the car crossed Canal Street. There were suddenly awnings and signs written in Chinese characters, like they’d crossed a border.

  ‘Where are we going?’

  ‘A safe house. There’s no way you can go back to your hotel. We need somewhere to hide you while we figure this thing out. And the codebook… find out who took it. Then we need to get you out of the city.’

  ‘Is the codebook really of such importance?’

  North exhaled, like the parent of a disappointing child.

  ‘I’m afraid it is. It’s a standard book for British agents in the field – people like yourself. Sure, MO3 swap their codes, but only every week. The code-setters try and shake it up each time, switch things around, but the thing is they’re predictable. A codebook gets in the wrong hands, it’s a big heads-up to our mutual enemies. Shows them our line of thinking. MO3 can mitigate against it – rip it all up and start again – but for the moment, till they do, every agent out there is exposed.’

  ‘Why are the NBI so concerned?’

  ‘Because we all operate out of the same playbook. We share a lot of intelligence. The American Secret Service uses a pretty similar signals arrangement. Same goes too for the Canadians, the South Africans and our friends down in Australia and New Zealand.’