by Steven Price
There is a city under the city, Mr. Pinkerton. If you want answers, that is where you must go.
William shifted his weight, stepped closer.
Mr. Pinkerton, the giant said. That’s near enough now.
The small man took no notice. There is a man, he said instead, named Jonathan Cooper. Called himself the Saracen. He was famous in certain circles for removing the heads of his victims and floating them down the Thames. You have heard of him perhaps? He worked with Charlotte and when they parted ways he disappeared. It was said she’d betrayed him, cheated him. The weak gaslight again caught the man Foole’s face and his features were fierce, his violet eyes piercing. The mutilations to her torso, as if to make her suffer? The sawed-off head? This is Cooper’s work, Mr. Pinkerton.
Anyone can cut off a head.
She knew him.
So you say.
Adam Foole smiled a tired smile. The only way to find this man, this Saracen, is to find the woman he was devoted to. A mudlark, goes by the name of Muck Annie. She lives in the sewers south of Blackfriars.
You want me to go into the sewers.
Into the tunnel arches, yes.
You know where to find her. You go.
And what would I do, should this mudlark lead me to the Saracen? Consider me, sir. He held out his arms, the walking stick dangling from a lilac glove. Whereas you, sir, you are the fearsome William Pinkerton. You can subdue a man and make him confess, no matter how fierce. No. If one wishes a task done well, one seeks out the talent.
Your man there looks like he could handle it.
But he is not the law, Mr. Pinkerton. Nor is he the greatest detective of our age.
William spat. I’m not the law either.
Well, the man said, clicking his tongue. Even better, perhaps.
It won’t work, William murmured, drifting nearer. I know your sort. You and I would want different things out of this. His boots crunched in the slow gravel as he stepped off the rails.
All at once the giant slid languid and catlike from his position in the gloom and he loomed up behind Adam Foole and William saw the brass knuckles glinting there. That’s near enough now, the giant growled. Step yourself back.
William looked at him.
Gentlemen, Foole said, half turning. That’s enough. My man means no harm, Mr. Pinkerton. We simply wanted a private moment with you. Now tell me, please. What is it you imagine I want out of this?
Revenge, said William.
Not justice?
Not justice. And don’t tell me they’re the same thing.
O but sometimes they are, Mr. Pinkerton. As you know.
William felt a sudden quick anger. He did not ask which side of the law that placed the man on. It was a blurred line that made little sense in the distinguishing of right from wrong and in the end he believed it no way to measure a man’s worth.
Just consider it. That is all I ask.
I’m not interested.
The man Foole frowned and belled out one whiskered cheek and then he nodded imperceptibly to himself. I made a promise to Miss Reckitt ten years ago, he said, a promise I wish to honour. I know you understand. I’ve been following your career with interest, you are not a man who betrays his word. We are not so different, you and I. He tapped his walking stick against the iron rails underfoot. There is a boy who works the lay in Waterloo Place. A gunsmith’s apprentice, Albert. If you are willing to consider this, you can send to me through him. He will know how to contact me.
William glanced from the small man to his companion lurking in the haze. What makes you think I’d trust you?
Oh, trust, the small man said, scraping a half-circle on the tunnel floor with his walking stick. I wouldn’t ask that of you. He met William’s eye with a sudden hard expression that chilled William. She didn’t deserve to die like that, Mr. Pinkerton. I know that you terrified her. But her death was not your fault.
William was quiet for a long moment. He did not see how the man could know that. He had shadowed Charlotte Reckitt for weeks and never seen this man cross her path.
I am prepared to offer something of value in return, of course, the man said. An account you might find of interest. I understand you’ve been into every flash house in the city asking after a man who doesn’t exist. You’ve made no secret of it.
William could feel the thrum of the river through the iron walls and he ran a hand along the back of his neck. His hand was shaking. Edward Shade, he said.
Yes.
Shade’s dead, he said sharply. He died in the war.
Who told you such a thing?
William paused, regarded the man.
Adam Foole raised his weary face, peered at him from the darkness. It wasn’t the war that killed that boy, Mr. Pinkerton, he murmured. It was your father.
The Ghost Special
*
1868
OHIO
The first time William Pinkerton heard the name Edward Shade he was twenty-two years old and drinking in the gaslit saloon of Cincinnati’s Rand Hotel. He was standing with his father and George Bangs and all three had a boot heel hooked in the brass rail and their wide-brimmed hats set down before them on the bar. In time he would lose his father to that rumour as other boys lost their fathers to clouds of pox or sudden floods or to the flare of a spark in a curtain. His father with his grey beard and his thick ropy forearms and the skin of his hands so thorny and callused as to look diseased. His father with his burning grey eyes like a prophet out of some Old Testament squall. As a boy he had been his father’s shadow and never once seen him proved wrong. He had learned from him in the fields outside Chicago how to tie a blanket to a saddle and in the sawmills how to lean his weight into a cut and in the rivers how to clean a trout with a flick of a blade. All this had been in him during the second year of the war when he had spied for his father in McClellan’s lines and all this was in him still on that day, oiled and readied, like a bullet in the chamber of a rifle. It was the year of the Reno business. The war had been over three winters by then.
You don’t like this, his father was saying to Bangs. His powerful neck turning.
I don’t.
You don’t like me going after John Reno?
I don’t like your interest in a town like Seymour.
His father’s eyes mostly smouldered with a peculiar light but now a darkness passed over them. He was not as big as either of his sons but he was hard as a plank of hickory and his fists were heavy as Scottish Bibles.
Seymour’s a cancer, he said softly. Should have burned it to the ground years ago.
Maybe.
His father took a sip of cloudy water. The shot glass clicked down.
You won’t find him there, Bangs said suddenly. Shade isn’t the type to go west, Allan. If he even still exists. Or ever existed.
William ran a finger over the brass rim of his own shot glass, regarded the older men. I thought we were hunting John Reno, he said.
Bangs nodded at his father, as if weighting some invisible scale and eyeing the balance. Then he said to William, Your father has a notion there might be more in Seymour than just John Reno and his brothers. Edward Shade’s been a puzzle since, what, sixty-six?
His father grunted.
Allan?
We’ll take John Reno by surprise, his father said instead. Warrant or no warrant. Cut off the head of the snake. Then we’ll find out what his brothers can do. Willie, he said.
Yes sir.
Go see to the horses.
William got up from the bar.
What you’re suggesting is kidnapping, Bangs said abruptly. We have no jurisdiction in Indiana.
William met his father’s eye.
That’s right, his father said.
Bangs was shaking his head. The ends don’t justify the means, Allan. They don’t ever. You tell him, William, he won’t listen to me.
William put on his hat.
Sometimes they do, Mr. Bangs, he said.
The Renos were
a tough and brutal family of eight and John the second son. In the last year of the war he had galloped up out of the White River bottomlands with his brothers at his side, two miles northwest of Seymour, Indiana, a Colt strapped to each hip and the fingertips of his rawhide gloves scissored off. He was a powerful man with the straight shoulders and high cheekbones of a Blackfoot brave and the long arms and big hands of his French forebears and he was black-haired and handsome as the devil himself. In the weeks following Appomattox he had bought up much of the nearby town of Rockford after several fires broke out and the rest he would take by fear and bribery until that town too belonged to him. In the fall of 1865 he took his brothers Simeon and William and Frank and stole and murdered his way through the county as if riding in a Confederate raid and in the spring of 1866 he stormed the Clinton County Treasury and blew out its walls with black powder. That was the year the Renos startled the nation by robbing the Adams Express Car of $15,000 while still at speed and this new thing, what could you call it, this train robbery, drew the interest of the Agency.
Then in early 1867 they stole $22,065 from the Davies County Treasury in Gallatin, Missouri, and the Pinkertons rolled up their sleeves and got to work.
Tell me about the man, his father said later that day. Bespectacled, light winking like twin coins in the lenses, his voice tired, his skin drained and grey in the afternoon gloom. Tell me about this Winscott.
William stood at the window watching the rain, his stained oilskin seamed tight at his shoulders, the warped floorboards creaking under his boots. A piano was playing somewhere in the hotel, a woman’s low voice singing. A gust rolled across the glass, the thin walls groaned. He worried the papers in one hand and scanned the notes in the margins then flipped back to the first page. Dick Winscott, he said, thirty-six years old, black hair, a scar over his left eyelid. Runs the saloon in Seymour. He’s been with the Agency since the end of the war, working out of the Denver office. Jim McParland vouches for him.
His father chewed a lip, his wiry grey beard working.
He’s a big man, six foot two. Good with his fists. Complexion is real dark, dark like a Mex it says here. Has a tooth out in front. Carries a lot of hardware and is a good shot. Says he was with the artillery at Second Bull Run. Lucky enough or clever enough not to get himself killed. William glanced up. Either way it’s a good thing for us. Active in Seymour since last spring when we sent him in. McParland did a job on his identity, there’s a copy of a police record here, it says they even made up an old Wanted poster for him.
That’s good.
William had seen the man in Denver two years before. Skulking in a stairwell, soiled outrider’s hat shading his eyes, hot reek of the stables steaming up from his shirt. He could have been anyone in from the borderlands.
Concerns?
William ran a palm along his jaw. He had not shaved in several days nor washed and the dust of the roads itched under his collar. The Renos seem to trust him, he said. The trick will be to take John Reno without betraying Winscott as one of ours.
Why?
Jesus, Pa. I’m not green.
Watch your language. Why?
Because we still got a stable’s worth of other Renos to pull in.
Good. What’s the going concern here?
William glanced at the four pistols where they sat on the bed with the Enfield rifle laid out across them. To do it quick, he said. So as not to have to kill him.
And if he isn’t alone?
William thought about this. He will be. Winscott says if he can just get him to the depot for the mail express we ought to be able to take him. And if we can get to him quick before he can draw we should have him trussed up before any of his brothers can even saddle a horse.
His father unhooked his spectacles, rubbed at his temple with two fingers. With its cropped grey hair and shorn beard his head looked hammered and square like a convict’s. If he’s alone I’ll be damn impressed, he muttered.
Your head bothering you again?
Don’t you start on that, his father said. I get it enough from your mother. William watched him with troubled eyes and his father glared. If he isn’t alone we go ahead with it anyway, he went on. This is the one chance we’ve got to control the thing. What?
It’s nothing.
His father put back on his spectacles, studied his son. Out with it.
You sure this is how you want to do this?
If a fight has to come let it come. And the sooner the better. You know my policy.
Show your fists.
Show your fists. Strike first and so hard they don’t get back up. Fair is a fool’s notion, Willie. His father crossed and uncrossed his legs. He seemed to have finished but then after a moment he muttered, God knows I have enough to do without getting complaints from you.
It wasn’t a complaint.
I’ll tell you another thing. After I am dead and the sod is growing over my grave then you’ll know what it means to take over the management of everything.
All right.
But while I live I mean to be the Principal of this Agency. When I’m right I’m right and nothing will influence me otherwise. You tell that to Mr. Bangs.
What does he have to do with it?
Principal, he repeated. Until Death claims me as its own. Then you can pick over the carcass and much luck to the lot of you.
William blew out his cheeks.
His father took out a silver pocket watch, lifted it to one ear to check its gears. Where is he now, our Mr. Bangs?
William set down the papers in irritation and studied his father and started to say something then thought better of it and said nothing.
Is the special arranged? his father asked.
We’ve got our ops mustered down at the station. Five of them. They’re brutes, he added with a shy grin. There’s a head of steam up on the engine and we’re just waiting on word. I believe Mr. Bangs is at the telegraph office. Just in case.
What have they been told?
Nothing yet.
His father grunted. Good.
William observed the descending darkness. He did not think word would come today. This Shade character, he said instead.
His father leaned forward, fumbled at his boots.
Pa? What happened in sixty-six?
He sat back and was still. What?
Edward Shade. Should I be worried?
No, he said.
All right.
I mean it.
All right.
His father was staring at him with hard bloodshot eyes and William saw in that visage something he did not like but that he knew was in him also. It had to do with fate and betrayal and some crueller thing that was a hole in the heart where remorse should have been.
After a moment his father steepled his scarred hands before him in his lap and scowled. You are twenty-two years old, he murmured. When I was your age I was stowed aboard a ship on the Clyde hiding from the redcoats and your mother was in steerage waiting for me. She would have followed me to hell if I had asked. You think you want to know about the world, boy. You don’t.
William felt himself blush.
When you need to know the story of Edward Shade, his father said quietly, I’ll tell it to you myself.
Many decades later at a police conference in Nebraska William would speak of those years with a kind of sadness for what had been lost. Don’t mistake me, he would say, raising a glass to his lips. The outlaws and holdup men were killers and no good to anyone. Mostly boys too lazy to work and too full of bravado. In the southwest and middle borderlands especially most of them were daredevils home from the Civil War without much future to make up for the past. William would frown and study the cuffs of his dinner jacket as if lost to memory and then his eyes would clear and he would look at the young commissioner seated to his left and say, That war did nothing but corrupt the boys of a generation, sir. You can’t cut a man in half day after day and come out of it normal. I knew men fit for nothing but the slaughte
r yards after it was over. He would cut a small bloody forkful of steak and chew it delicately and wipe at his moustache with a monogrammed napkin and then grimace. Well they were clever for all that, the outlaws in those years. No, dynamite wasn’t in use until the eighteen-nineties. But Number Four black powder Coarse Grain could break up the doors of an express car and blow off your fingers to boot as well as any stick ever made. He would hear a weariness in his voice that he could not place and he would swallow it back down while the electric chandeliers burned on. It wasn’t a federal crime in those years, he would add. Express cars were private property. A gang could cross state and county lines and vanish into amnesty. I guess that’s how we got involved. How my father got involved.
He would listen politely to some query or other then and nod, a huge thick horror of a man with his grey eyes moist and the crow’s feet at their corners betraying long days in a saddle under hard suns. His great hands liverspotted and trembling which once had outdrawn outlaws. Well it wasn’t quite like that, he would reply. He would nod in silence and when the other had finished he would say, But the express safes were supposed to be burglar-proof. There was always a guard in the car with them and even he didn’t have the combination. They were locked in New York or Chicago and not opened again until they got to where they were going. Oh we weren’t often at a loss. You could learn a lot from the cut where a safe was dumped or a train stopped. How many riders. Anything of interest about the horses or the men. The first thing was always to ascertain if any railroad employees had been seen in the area. No we had a network of sheriffs and peace officers and they were enterprising enough. Our Agency never accepted the rewards you see only our usual fee. I said rewards, sir. Don’t get me started on rewards.
He would be thick in the waist by then, a heavy powerful man with broad shoulders and a moustache stained to rust from long tobacco. He would fold his napkin and set it on his plate and blink his tired eyes. Well we were organized by that time, he would go on. Though he was never garrulous and would come to prefer solitude to company he could speak well when he must. He would say, In the early years our contacts would send descriptions of outlaws and their associates to our offices in Denver and Chicago. Sometimes they’d even send a photograph. That was how we recognized John Reno and his brother Frank. Most of those boys loved to have their pictures taken. They wanted to be known, you see. Yes we had all sorts, saloon keepers, ranchers, railroad men, miners. You’d be surprised. Nothing was too trivial. My father used to say a ranch hand’s gossip was worth more to him than a dozen news reports. Well. He was fascinated by rumours, I guess.
