Hell Gate

by Jeff Dawson

  ‘Wait, wait, wait…’

  Finch paused in his pacing.

  ‘MacLeish sought out Chang because he thought he knew who might have made the bomb, not that he made it himself. He’s in prison, remember? No, there’s more to this. It all suggests that Chang knows things. About Muller, about Delgado, maybe about the NBI…’

  Lady Brunswick gave a schoolmistress’s smile of satisfaction – at the B pupil demonstrating progress.

  ‘Indeed,’ she said, ‘and we’d like to find out what. Unfortunately, we’ll not get much out of Chang now. He’s been drugged to oblivion and thrown in a psychiatric ward. But here’s the thing, Finch. We know, back in New York, he did some work, before his incarceration, for an anarchist group called the Black Flag.’

  ‘Black Flag?’

  ‘A nasty little nest of vipers. No one knows quite who they are but they pop up here and there – the odd act of political violence… a stabbing, a shooting; the random act of destruction… a building torched, a police station attacked… If we can find out what they’ve been up to, it might yet give us a lead; something else to pin on Muller… and, by association…’

  She stopped herself.

  ‘I’m sorry, I shouldn’t be too ungracious about our host.’

  Our host?

  It was only then that Finch got it – this was his house, Senator Schultz.

  ‘Oh, don’t worry,’ dismissed Lady Brunswick. ‘A case of keep your friends close, keep your enemies closer. Though he really is becoming such a frightful bore.’

  She handed him a newspaper, the Chicago Tribune. He sat again. She pointed to a front-page story – a piece about Senator Schultz and his latest bit of Entente-bashing.

  ‘His intention at running for the Presidency? I can confirm that from the horse’s mouth. He’s making an announcement in three days. It’s why he’s away now… Currently in Washington, preparing his nomination.’

  ‘Assassination seems so simple.’

  ‘As I told you before, we can’t afford for him to be martyred. No, he needs public shaming… discrediting… exposing… We just need those final pieces of the puzzle to be put in place.’

  Finch set the paper aside. He saw that Jules Verne had just died. He pulled his blanket round.

  ‘So what happens now?’

  Lady Brunswick explained that Foche – Katia – bravely, had decided to return to Muller.

  ‘I don’t know what was said between you, but she evidently changed her mind about fleeing Muller. At great risk to herself, she is now playing the abduction story and how she escaped from your evil clutches. She is a very resourceful young woman – she even robbed a gas station at gunpoint and stole a car. She drove to Cincinnati and telephoned Muller to bring her home. We and the French tried to dissuade her but she was most insistent. We are now obliged to go along with her yarn, doing all we can to “massage” facts and facilitate this version of events to maintain her cover. And that, by the way, has involved agents scouring the swamps of New Jersey in order to dispose of the body – and head – of a certain Native American.’

  He felt himself blush.

  ‘And me?’

  ‘Well, you’re a marked man now across a handful of states. The police… the NBI… Muller – daresay a number of other parties, too – all expressing a deep interest in your whereabouts. Quite impressive, Captain Finch.’

  He wasn’t sure if this was sarcasm.

  ‘We send you back to New York, they’ll have staked out all the obvious places. That locker in Grand Central Station, by the way. Clever move.’

  ‘Thank you.’

  ‘That said… you, on the run… It does come with certain advantages… It’s actually very useful to us – like a piece of bait thrown to lure some big fat fishes. More importantly, you being on the loose helps preserve Miss Foche’s cover story. Which is why we need you, Captain Finch, to continue to play the part of the fugitive.’

  He hadn’t heard the henchman come in behind him.

  By the time he did, the leather cosh was swinging down.

  Everything went black.

  PART TWO

  Chapter 21

  Hell’s Kitchen

  The cramped cellar bar was airless, stifling hot, with a thick fug of smoke that clung to the low ceiling. Finch sat at the back and supped the beer he’d bought with the few pennies he’d managed to scrape together. He wiped occasionally at the sweat – his and others’ – the sort that condensed on the ceiling, trickled down the walls and dripped from the beams.

  Up front, the chairman was attempting to bring the meeting to order. With a whitening goatee and modish fiddler cap, he sighed, removed his round spectacles and rubbed at tired eyes.

  ‘Comrades,’ he announced. ‘Finally… a resolution.’

  The party secretary read it out loud: ‘Motion 12c… “We, the chapter of the 20th Ward, Manhattan, of the Socialist Party of America, recommend to Conference that we commence with urgent food and clothing collections, to assist the oppressed people of Russia.”’

  To a general hum of approval, the chairman blocked his papers on the trestle table, hung with the party banner – an image of hands clasped across the globe.

  ‘I take it we’ve no need for a vote?’

  There were nods all round, a tantalizing moment of unanimity. Until, to a collective groan, that accursed hand shot up again…

  ‘Comrade?’

  It was the same young man Finch had noticed at the previous mind-numbing meetings he’d sought out. He was up on his feet, thin, gaunt, blonde hair unkempt, his face a contorted rictus of hate, jabbing his bony finger of accusation.

  ‘A clear distinction must be made between “historical materialism” and “dialectic materialism”,’ he was raging. ‘Your action, by its very nature, is inaction.’

  The chairman sighed and appealed for calm.

  ‘Please, brother. We’re just trying to find practical solutions…’

  ‘Sit the fuck down!’ shouted someone less charitable.

  ‘True socialism comes not from food parcels but from arms!’ the young man continued. ‘Das Kapital: “It is only achievable by the forcible overthrow of all existing social conditions.”’

  ‘You mean the Communist Manifesto…’ someone corrected.

  There was a smattering of laughter.

  ‘Son, if you’re gonna quote Marx…’

  ‘Fuck you.’

  A big man got to his feet, beer-drinker’s belly accentuating his size. He towered over the young radical.

  ‘No, fuck you, you little shit.’

  Finch nudged the man next to him.

  ‘Is it always like this?’

  ‘Mostly.’

  The party had come about through a recent merger, it was explained – between the Social Democratic Party and the Socialist Labor Party; theorists versus activists. They had more mistrust of each other than of capitalism.

  ‘But if you want to see something that truly unites them,’ he added, ‘it’s their contempt for this moron.’

  He pointed at the young man, ranting away, spittle flying in the big man’s face.

  ‘Who is he?’

  ‘Name’s Max Sheldrake. Fronts for a group called Black Flag…’

  At last.

  ‘They show up at meetings all over the city, he and his cronies, trying to use the Party as cover, eat us away from within. Sometimes they just sit and watch, biding their time, looking for opportunities to exploit. But here, situations like this, the minute they sniff weakness…? Basically, they’re just anarchists. Wanna piss all over everything.’

  There was a gang of them, taunting the big man now, egging Sheldrake on.

  ‘Emma Goldman and Alexander Berkman!’ Sheldrake was shrieking. ‘They took the initiative – like they did with Henry Clay Frick. The only way to deal with fat-cat industrialists like that is to liquidate them.’

  ‘Last I heard, Frick survived. And Berkman’s in prison for attempted murder.’

  ‘Brot
her Berkman was betrayed… by reactionary scum…’

  He poked his finger right in the big man’s face.

  ‘Scum like you, motherfucker!’

  That was it – the big man swung a sizeable fist, but he was slow. Sheldrake ducked. Meanwhile, his acolytes had sprung into action, gathered around him, snarling like rabid dogs.

  ‘Please! Order!’ urged the chairman. ‘Division is the proletariat’s true enemy.’

  A beer bottle flew through the air and burst on the wall. The chairman ducked behind the table.

  ‘Here we go,’ said the man next to Finch.

  There were fists, scuffles, more bottles – all the while Sheldrake goading his detractors from behind his protective cordon.

  A young woman stood on a chair – a shrill, skinny, wild-eyed girl dressed in black. She clutched a copy of a revolutionary magazine, Mother Earth, whose cover bore a crude cartoon – a vicious Uncle Sam planting the Stars and Stripes in the open mouth of a prone Filipino native.

  ‘Imperialists!’ she screamed. ‘The lot of you. Imperialists!’

  Squeezed out from the ensuing mêlée, a body blundered into Finch and his neighbour. They shoved him off.

  ‘And with that, mack,’ said the man. ‘I’m outta here.’

  * * *

  Half an hour later, after the Party diehards had crunched away over the broken glass, Sheldrake was left sitting in the middle of a circle, his ragtag of devotees pulling their chairs in close to hang on his every word.

  It was obvious to Finch why such meetings were staged in places like Hell’s Kitchen – the police were never going to trouble themselves here with something so mundane as breaking up a fight. In some ways an anarchic state had already been achieved.

  He lit up a Lucky Strike he’d been forced to scrounge once Lady Brunswick’s men had stripped him of his wallet – supposedly to ensure his ‘authenticity’ – before dumping him back into the city so unceremoniously.

  He was still struggling to reconcile the connection between his own appalling treatment and yet his apparent vital importance to fulfilling MO3’s overall mission – if indeed bringing down Schultz was the real endgame. Nevertheless, his own redemption… salvation – probably his life – still hung on the outcome. As, he knew, did Katia’s. He had little choice but to swallow his pride and stick to the job in hand.

  Choice has nothing to do with this, Captain. You were not selected without good reason.

  He exhaled into the stale air, wedged himself in the corner and turned again to Sheldrake, unsure as to whether he was appalled or impressed at the sheer depth of love one man could have for the sound of his own voice.

  ‘He’s m-m-magnificent, isn’t he?’

  ‘What?’

  It came from a small, fey youth, who had noticed Finch sitting alone. He seemed ridiculously fragile, oddly feminine and with a noticeable stammer.

  ‘He’s quite something,’ Finch replied.

  He studied Sheldrake once more – the hollow, intense eyes, the wisp of fluff on the chin; the sallow skin that hadn’t seen the sun in some weeks.

  ‘While the decadent Tsar sends his fleet to Japan,’ he was raving, ‘our brave comrades have been at the forefront of the struggle – the “permanent revolution” as comrade Trotsky puts it – doing as comrade Lenin bids…’

  Finch wondered when Sheldrake found time to breathe. He was obsessing now about the Bolshevik–Menshevik split – hardly of deep concern to your average Manhattanite, Finch mused, nor to the downtrodden masses of St Petersburg with the Imperial Cavalry bearing down on them.

  Said a red-haired kid, a youth who spoke in a voice that mimicked his master: ‘We have friends elsewhere – Karl Liebknecht… Rosa Luxemburg… Taking the war to the enemy…’

  Friends?

  ‘Just like we did in London,’ nodded Sheldrake. ‘Our attempt on the Russian ambassador.’

  Finch tried to stifle his snort of derision but failed.

  If only they knew.

  Heads turned.

  ‘You think this is funny, old man?’

  He was tired, aching, his clothes were filthy and, no doubt, he smelled. ‘Old’ was not unreasonable.

  ‘It’s your misrepresentations I find amusing.’

  The lady friend was snarling now.

  ‘He’s a cop.’

  ‘Do I look like a cop?’

  ‘Then who are you?’

  They were on their feet surrounding him, one of them a smashed bottle in hand, another armed with a chair leg. But Finch was not cowed.

  ‘Someone,’ he said, ‘who wants to make a difference.’

  And, for the next ten minutes, he told them… about the war in South Africa, the ‘Great Imperial Struggle’ and how, on his return, he had chosen to devote his life to the liberation of the oppressed.

  ‘We don’t need the likes of you,’ someone snapped.

  ‘But you do,’ said Finch, addressing them all. ‘You talk of war, but do you know war? Because I’ve seen war, seen it up close. And war is hell. It’s not pretty. It’s dead bodies. It’s hacked limbs and spilled guts and plenty of blood. It’s boys your age screaming in agony for their mothers and women raped and homes burnt to the ground and disease and starvation – a land of confusion and shit-yourself fear and people with dark skin treated as if they were animals. And all of it, every last drop of it – this, you can always be assured – will come dressed up in glory and flags and monuments and pomp and circumstance, be it Manchuria or Cuba or the Philippines or Transvaal or St Petersburg or, yes, New York City… And you can bet your bottom dollar every time on one other sure thing – of some fat capitalist getting rich off it.’

  They were quiet now, some nods. Even Sheldrake was silent.

  ‘So let me tell you, all of you, from someone who’s been there. If you are serious about a war – a class war, against the people responsible for all this, right here in Uncle Sam’s backyard…’

  He nodded at the cover of the young woman’s magazine.

  ‘…you’re going to need someone who’s been in the heat of combat.’

  They looked at each other, waiting for a cue from their leader.

  ‘Can you get us guns? Weapons?’

  ‘Yes,’ Finch lied.

  ‘What’s your name?’ Sheldrake asked.

  He was in.

  ‘My name…? What the hell is a name? Nothing but a label – a prison sentence, comrade – the words that dictate the life you’re meant to lead… but don’t have to if you don’t choose it.’

  They seemed to like that last bit.

  His cigarette had gone out. He got out his lighter. They’d left him that at least.

  The red-haired kid saw the initials – I.F.

  ‘Whoa… Mr “If”…’

  * * *

  In Gramercy Park they stood outside a tall brownstone which, even in the dark, Finch could see, was an impressive property. There were eleven Black Flag members plus himself. Most of them were drunk, a couple of them barely able to stand.

  ‘Sammy’s place,’ said someone. ‘It’s where we live.’

  ‘Sammy?’

  ‘That’s m-m-me,’ stammered the fey youth, the one who’d approached him earlier. ‘Sammy Proctor.’

  ‘This is yours?’ asked Finch.

  The young man with the red hair whispered in Finch’s ear.

  ‘His parents disowned him, man. Loaded. Moved out to East Hampton. Left him the run of it.’

  A bottle rolled across the cobbles. There were flashes of light in neighbouring windows, twitches at curtains.

  And now Sheldrake was on the steps, yelling.

  ‘Sammy, get your ass up here and open the fucking door.’

  Said the red-haired one: ‘Watch this.’

  In what seemed an effortless leap, Sammy was onto the drainpipe and shinning up it.

  ‘He does this all the time, man.’

  Then he edged along the first-floor windowsill, slid in a flat-blade knife, and popped the catch on the
sash window.

  Whooped Sheldrake: ‘G-g-go-go-go, you stuttering little prick!’

  A moment later Sammy was opening the front door from within. Sheldrake turned to the others.

  ‘Now everybody, get your asses inside.’

  Sammy’s parents were of serious means, no doubt about it, observed Finch – with the trappings of the bourgeois life Black Flag so detested, though not so much that it prohibited their indulgence of it. They had expressed their theoretical disdain in other ways, the expensive wallpaper and paintwork daubed with crude words in red paint – ‘HATE’…‘GREED’…‘ENVY’…

  In the parlour was a beautiful Steinway grand piano. Someone had carved into its side, ‘CHAOS’.

  The kitchen was a mess, with its filthy piles of used dishes and saucepans – ‘dialectic materialism’ clearly not extending to the necessity of doing the washing-up. The rooms were strewn with greying mattresses, dirty blankets and stained bedding. There were burns everywhere, cigarettes being stubbed out on any available surface.

  Finch held Sammy back.

  ‘How long have you been letting them stay here, Sammy?’

  ‘A while.’

  ‘And until when?’

  ‘Until the revolution.’

  ‘You give them money too?’

  ‘My t-t-trust fund…’

  He was nervous. He gulped for air.

  ‘I s-s-signed it over.’

  Sheldrake leaned out from the master bedroom.

  ‘Don’t you talk your shit now, Sammy. You shut the fuck up.’ Then to Finch: ‘Help yourself to whatever you want, man.’

  As Finch walked past, the girl was already snapping a rubber strap round Sheldrake’s forearm. Finch saw the glint of a needle.

  Sammy led Finch to an upstairs lounge.

  ‘Look, it’s okay, see,’ soothed Sammy. ‘Here, you have the couch. M-m-m-me, I’ll sleep on the floor.’

  Sammy offered a swig of cheap vodka, then got out a small tin, shoe-polish size, and tipped the browny-white powder into it. With a casual skill he added some kind of clear solution.

  He lit the tin over a lighter until the smoke started to rise, swirling it to keep the liquid in motion, then began inhaling the fumes through the snapped-off stem of a clay pipe.