by Lia Matera
“Certo,” Mario murmured. “Posso pur’ amazzarlo.”
“No!” She’d have no man’s death on her hands. And wouldn’t Ole Hanson love to see a marshal murdered here? The mayor probably hoped the week would start with blood and riot. He certainly didn’t want the strike viewed as a benevolence, rippling across America to change it for the better. “I just need enough time to get far enough away. That’s all.”
Mario grinned to show (she hoped) that he was joking.
At the next stop, she got off, then threaded through the crowd waiting to board. She didn’t look over her shoulder to check for Mario. She knew he’d be there someplace.
She began walking toward the previous stop. At first only strangers came toward her. They were hunched into thick work jackets as the drizzle intensified. Then she saw a man running.
She stopped, leaving it to the marshal to close the distance. If he was winded, maybe he’d be less careful. Less likely to notice Mario melting into a shadow or a group. And anyway, she couldn’t persuade her legs to take her closer to the tiger.
Killy was upon her before she finished the thought. Without a word, he grabbed both her arms, pinning them to her sides.
“Have I committed a crime?” She tried to pull free. “Did I read the wrong newspaper or criticize that politician you work for?”
It was disconcerting to stare up him, to compare his face to the image her mind summoned sometimes, late at night when fears came over her. She’d forgotten details after three months. She remembered the pale brows and broad forehead, the slight flattening of his nose, the hint of a dimple on one side. But she’d recalled only the pale blue of his eyes, not the near-black outer rings, as daunting as bull’s-eyes. She’d wrongly thought his lips were thin and unpleasant when actually they were rather full. And though he was a head taller than she, and broad-shouldered, he didn’t actually tower like a menacing beast.
“It is a crime, you know, to lie to a U.S. Marshal.” He was bumped against her as people hurried past on both sides, rushing for the departing trolley.
“And is it a crime to lie to someone who doesn’t tell you he’s a marshal? Besides, I admitted I was no schoolgirl.”
“Yes, and then pulled a grand stunt to escape.”
“I slipped away from a stranger who showed too much interest.”
“Feared I was a masher, did you?” He showed his dimple, but it was no warm smile. “Is it not more traditional to refuse dinner with a man you find annoying? Or do you generally accept invitations, and then create an uproar and disappear?” He gave her a little shake.
“I didn’t create the uproar,” she lied. “I just … took advantage of it.”
“But you’re done pretending you don’t know I’m a marshal?”
“Are you done pretending you just like to chat about politics?”
“Oh that’s no pretense, more’s the pity. As to the rest, my girl … I supposed it would be simpler to talk to you without the star on my lapel.”
“What did you want?”
“I wanted you, Miss Gualtieri. But you guessed as much.”
Only knowing Mario was close gave her the courage to ask, “Why?”
“I thought we were done pretending.” But it seemed a question.
She looked down. Whichever way she went in answering—keeping in mind either the jewels or Nicky—she might guess wrong and offer him a new suspicion.
“You’re asking do I know the reason? I don’t,” she said. “But you’re not in Seattle to find me? You’re a strike-breaker for Mayor Hanson, I suppose.”
“Lord, no. I told you in Chicago, my candidate, Mitchell Palmer, is a good progressive. Worked hard for the ten-hour workday when he was in the House, and I’m sorry we didn’t win the fight. Blame the Senate, but never mind that. I work for no mayor.” A short laugh. “And whatever you may think, it would be no favor to Hanson to turn strikers into martyrs. On the contrary. If we can prevent vigilantes from—”
“Then why were you following that Teamster?”
“Beck, you mean? Help keep the hotheads off him. He believes your strike will backfire. A view he’ll be defending with his fists, I think.”
“If he voted nay, he deserves the trouble.”
“That may be—what’s idealism without the occasional pyrrhic victory? But it doesn’t make him wrong. You’ll have a hundred and ten thousand striking, two-thirds in solidarity and not for their own sakes. With no quarrel of their own, they’ll soon go back to work. And to the world it will look—”
“We’ve heard it all before. It’ll look weak, and that only hurts the movement, and so there’ll never be another general strike. And so forth. And you may wish it, but it’s not so. This is just the beginning. Do you think idealists are babes in the woods? I’ll wager we’ve led harder lives than the likes of you.”
“The likes of me, eh?”
“What do you want?” Ella tried to calm down, to remember that her object was simple: to end up on a quieter street so Mario could distract Killy. (But he’d offered to kill the marshal. Did she truly trust him not to?)
“All right then, I’ll put my cards on the table.” The marshal glanced over her shoulder. Had he spotted Mario? “I was sent to fetch you from that train. Got a personal call from Mitchell Palmer because it involved a neighbor of his, John Kingston. Yes, your employer. Kingston arrived at a mass grave in Virginia—shrouded, as if the flu killed him. But he wasn’t gone, he was just— Well, there the details grow fuzzy. In need, let’s say, of clarifying.”
“Mr. Kingston?” She couldn’t hide her shock. “I thought he must have died.”
“But not at home? You never saw him sick?”
“No.” There was danger here in the particulars. But it was accurate to say, “He never telephoned. Didn’t check if the children were— I thought certainly he was dead.”
“As I said, some points needed clarifying. We contacted Union Station. Found you’d bought a ticket using your own name.”
“You went looking for his servants? What ‘points’ could we—I—clarify? Mr. Kingston can’t think I had anything to do with … well, whatever happened to keep him away.”
“What he thinks, is someone else’s concern.” His tone worried Ella. “I was there to learn what you had to say.”
“Why didn’t you just ask me? Immediately ask me?”
“By the time I knew you were the one to question, you’d lied to me. That concoction about Georgetown. I found it interesting. And,” he showed the dimple, “I had no objection to dinner.”
She recalled her terror, her confusion, all alone that night in Chicago. How close she’d come to being robbed, perhaps worse, before finding a pawn shop and getting money for a room. Because this marshal had no objection to dinner?
“You think I’m stupid because I’m young and female,” she said. “But I saw the two men outside with you. Three marshals to question one girl?” She could see she’d surprised him. “Why should it take—?”
“You ask this, after having eluded us?” Was that a hint of admiration on his face? “But reassure me, then. You don’t know how it came to be, your employer carried away for dead?”
“The last time I saw Mr. Kingston’s face,” she said, “he was ordering me put out for the death wagon.”
“Put out still living?”
“He thought I’d die before it came.” She was gratified by the flash of dismay on his face. “But I didn’t. Cook found me in the morning. She said Mrs. K banished her husband to his club. In case the sickness got on him, from helping carry me down. She didn’t want the flu spreading to the children.”
“She sent her husband away at the height of a pandemic? You didn’t find that … cold?”
“Everything about the Kingstons was ‘cold.’“ She would leave it at that. “But when the baby got sick, the maid phoned Mr. K’s clu
b. He hadn’t shown up. The next day, when the older children … I’d been told Mr. K kept a girl. In an apartment close by.” She shifted as more people walked past, their gesticulations too close to her face. “I called the front desk there but it was too late at night. I got no answer.”
“Kingston kept a girl? Young, like yourself?”
“You’re asking was I—?” She tried to pull away. “So what if Mr. K came back? Why should I know anything about it? I was a servant, not a … a … Why question me?”
Kingston must have noticed the missing jewelry. His entire family dead, and still he’d noticed. His wife had boxes full, and Ella left most of it untouched. But the rich were like dragons, fierce in their instinct to protect treasure.
“Is he angry I didn’t leave a note? To say when the children died? The wagon men keep lists, don’t they? Which bodies are taken from which houses?”
Killy said nothing.
“Why did he set the police after me? Just please say it and stop stalking me.” Her voice cracked with frustration.
“Stalking?”
“Yes! Yes. It’s like Champawat. Where a tiger followed villagers for miles to—”
“I remember. Accounts of it filled the papers. A dozen years ago, was it?” He glanced over her shoulder again, his eyes narrowing. “She was a tigress, though, I think. Not a male.”
Ella tried again to squirm out of his grip.
“There was another story like it, turn of the century. It caught my fancy when I was a schoolboy. Did you ever hear of Tsavo?”
He kept looking beyond her. Had he spotted Mario?
“No. What does it have to do with—?”
“If you like stories of hunter and hunted. It’s about two man-eaters.”
He was playing with her. Dragging this out. Did he know what she and Mario had planned?
“Maneless lions, this pair. Males who hunted together, even drove prey toward each other. Males of the species don’t do that, you know. They’re solitary, uncooperative. But these even shared a lair full of human bones.”
“And did they pinion their prey, too? To exasperate and demoralize it?”
“In a way.” He smiled as he loosened his grip on her shoulders. “The British were certainly demoralized. Trying to build a railroad bridge over the Tsavo river, in Africa. They laid hundreds of miles of line—useless to them if they couldn’t get the bridge done. But the beasts kept pulling workers from their tents, dragging them off. Raiding the camp hospital as if it were a pantry. The railway tried everything. Deep thorn fences. But these lions, unlike others, were willing to crawl through. They tried enormous bonfires, but they were a unique pair, no fear of fire. The railroad even brought in a tribe of fierce hunters. But they soon ran away, convinced the lions were devils.”
“Please,” Ella begged. “Whatever you need from me—”
“The workers abandoned the camp—what else could they do? They went on strike, you might say.” He showed his dimple again. “Finally the British sent in a crack shot, a young lieutenant colonel. He hired the best game hunter on the continent to help him. And they set off—”
“Are you arresting me? Or just toying with me before you devour me?”
His laugh was low and chilly. “The game hunter, for all his prowess, was eaten alive. But the colonel soldiered on. Every night he positioned himself in a tree to wait. It was weeks before he got off a clean shot at the first lion. Hit it, all right, but it didn’t fall. It vanished.”
The first lion vanished. In this twisted allegory, was Ella the first lion? And Mario the second? Or was the marshal talking about Nicky?
She felt as if she’d scream from the stress. Surely the marshal hadn’t boarded her train in Chicago just to ask what she knew about Kingston. Whatever her employer told Palmer, it couldn’t possibly involve her. She’d been delirious with flu when Mr. K left R Street. No, if Palmer phoned a marshal, it was either about the stolen jewels or about Nicky. But which?
Killy leaned closer to Ella, his eyes just inches from hers. “The wounded lion didn’t die. He waited till the dead of night, then came back. The colonel shot it again. And again, it retreated. Then came back. Shot again. And a third time. And again. And again. Varying intervals between attacks so they’d come as a surprise.”
Was he warning her not to run? Telling her he’d never stop finding her?
“In the end,” he said, “it took five enormous bullets—firepower made to bring down charging elephants.”
“Let me go,” she said. “I’ve told you what I know about Mr. Kingston, which is nothing. He wasn’t there when I was brought back in. I never saw him again.”
“But the second lion,” Killy continued, “was even worse. For weeks, the colonel tracked him. And all the while, the rail line sat useless without a bridge over the river. Do you understand what I’m saying?”
She held her breath. She didn’t understand. He seemed to think he was telling her something, but what?
“The colonel put five bullets into that beast, too, one after another. But like the first man-eater, it didn’t fall. It kept charging him, up there in his tree, as if he were throwing pebbles. He pumped in another three, reloading at a speed he prayed would save his life. Even so the lion died ravaging the tree limb just beneath his feet.”
“Is there a moral?” She could barely get the words out.
“I don’t know if I’d call it that. But it’s hard to know exactly who’s stalking whom.” He glanced past her again. “It’s a matter of your perspective. Don’t you think so? We talked last time about the Sedition Act. It’s a common belief here, with the unions, that the government uses the law to hunt their members. Along with aliens, Anarchists—”
“Of course it does! The entire leadership of the I.W.W. is in prison. I can’t count how many people I know myself, put in jail or onto boats. Or beaten with impunity by vigilantes. You don’t deny there are lynchings almost every day. Yet Congress won’t outlaw them. The President praises the Ku Klux Klan. So whatever you’re driving at, with this story of yours? If it’s meant as a parable, you’re the lions.”
He shook his head. “Have you a notion how many bombs we’ve intercepted? And worse, not intercepted? Packages mailed to judges and senators and bureaucrats … as if these men open their own mail. You were a servant once. Would you fancy living without your two hands, your face a mass of scars? Does anyone but a beast place a bomb in an armory or a church, where it might kill anybody unlucky enough to pass by? Where you have a law, yes, the enforcement may be flawed. Its provisions may be too broad. But at least its intent is to offer security. To keep people safe. A bomb, though? It may as well be a man-eater. It comes at person in that way. Suddenly. Without measure or remorse.”
“You think that’s not true of law men? My mother was killed when a sheriff named McRae deputized anyone he could find, anyone with malice and a gun, to meet a ferry boat of union women and men. Going to parade and sing for the shingle-weavers. Eleven solid minutes they fired into a docked boat. And the strikers at Ludlow? The National Guard shot them while they slept. Torched their tents—wives and children burned alive. Those aren’t the actions of beasts? Why not? Because they had uniforms and not tiger’s stripes? Because they had badges?”
Around them, the drizzle made passersby seem indistinct. As if they mattered not at all. As if only this mattered, only deciding who was the hunter and who the man-eater.
The marshal drew a long breath. “You worked at a shirt factory before you went to the Kingstons,” he said. “You had no other references? Why should they choose a factory girl to care for their children?”
“I— I’d taken care of children before.” This turn of conversation startled her. She tried to gather her wits. Was there a trick inside the question? Certainly Mr. K hadn’t taken Palmer into his confidence on this. “Children in our tenement.”
“You
should tell me the truth.” Killy’s hands slid down her arms. He took both her hands in his. It shocked her. She had the strange fancy he wasn’t baiting a trap but rather offering a lifeline. When she didn’t reply, he said, “All right, then, how about this. At the Kingstons’, why did you call for the wagon? It was an expense for you, wasn’t it? And you were going anyway. Why not simply walk away?”
“I couldn’t do that. Abandon little Muriel and John to the mice? And Cook and Maid, who were so kind to me? To think of them with flies— No. I had Cook’s coins. It wouldn’t have been right to leave her there and use them for … for myself.”
Her confusion twisted deeper. One minute, the marshal seemed to be talking about Nicky. About enforcing the law, as if there were no difference between draft dodgers and bombers. The next, he was asking again about the Kingstons. About money. As if he had Mrs. K’s jewels in mind.
If only she knew which crime he suspected. Which pitfalls she should avoid.
Somewhere close by, she knew, Mario was watching them. What would he make of this? She and a marshal quibbling back and forth like drunks at a speakeasy. And the marshal holding her hands? (What did she herself make of it?) Would Mario suppose she was offering Killy information?
Her stomach knotted.
Killy stared down at her as if reading a book in her eyes.
“You should let me go,” she said. “I’ve hurt no one. I cared for all of them, all who got sick after me. I tried my best to keep them alive. Cook and Maid were my friends. And I loved the children. It’s true I didn’t stop to think how it would be for Mr. K. To come home and find no trace of them, no note. But I … I just couldn’t stay longer.”
“After two years there, you leave without a reference? And no means of support?”
