More appeals and rejections followed, but a worried-looking man with a message proved the harbinger of renewed solidarity. The chair’s announcement of “a couple of dozen deputies outside” had most of the men on their feet, several loudly proclaiming that if the bastards wanted a fight, then they could have one. Others countered by pointing out how many women were present, and a decision was taken to inquire what exactly the deputies had in mind. A volunteer was dispatched and arrived back a few minutes later with the answer: The deputies had come to keep the peace. The gale of hysterical laughter this provoked felt more like relief than humor.
After a short impromptu conference on the stage, several of the men involved walked back up the aisle, inviting others to join them. “The young men will hold the door, so to speak,” the chair announced. “But stick together as much as you can. And don’t do anything foolish.”
McColl and Caitlin joined the exodus, straining their ears for any clue as to what was transpiring outside. Nothing was the answer, if two lines of silent, grim-faced men on either side of a barely lit street could be so described. The deputies were armed with nightsticks, the silk workers and IWW men with the baseball bats from the wall inside. As far as McColl could see, the only man smiling was Aidan Brady.
Colm and Tiernan were there, too, Colm looking young and nervous, but most of those attending the meeting were hurrying away, and the deputies seemed ready to call it a night. “Your brother will be okay,” McColl assured Caitlin. “The deputies have made their point, and they’re outnumbered two to one.”
She hesitated, as if to check his arithmetic, then allowed him to lead her away. As neither of them had eaten, they stopped at a restaurant close to the hotel, but Caitlin just picked at her food and seemed more depressed than McColl had ever seen her. “What a terrible day,” she said once they were in their room. “All those desperate women I talked to, and then that meeting.”
McColl sat down beside her, wondering what he could say.
“What sort of world is it,” she asked, “when a worker can feel that a foreman not shouting at him is some sort of progress?” She was crying now, and he put his arm around her. “You know what one woman said to me today?” she almost sobbed. “That you can’t afford to cry in this world.”
“My mother once told me that tears were the only sure sign that someone still had a heart.”
She laughed through hers. “I think I’d like your mother.”
The sky was clear on Sunday morning, but by the time they reached the riverside park, the clouds were swiftly gathering, the sun an intermittent presence. McColl reckoned there were more than two thousand people there, men outnumbering women by something like three to one. There was a scattering of youngsters, but most parents had opted for prudence and left their children at home.
The various organizations involved—unions, union branches, political parties—all had their beautifully embroidered banners on display, and there was no shortage of rough-and-ready placards demanding a nine-hour day. The overall mood seemed strangely muted to McColl, apprehensive rather than frightened, quietly defiant rather than angry.
Colm, Seán Tiernan, and their new friend Aidan Brady were there, awaiting a decision of the rally’s organizing committee. “The socialists are insisting that we leave these behind,” Colm explained, brandishing his baseball bat.
“I think they’re right,” Caitlin said bluntly. “The owners aren’t going to attack an unarmed march with so many women. They’d never live it down.”
“My sister the optimist.”
“Well, if there’s trouble and our people are carrying weapons, they’ll be able to blame us for starting it.”
“They’ll do that anyway,” Brady said with a smile.
He had a point, McColl thought. But so did Caitlin, and it was hers that eventually carried the day. The baseball bats were gathered up, loaded into a convenient cart, and driven back to where they were usually stored.
The unarmed march set off, snaking out of the park along Front Street and heading for the bridge across the river. Her brother and his friends were up near the head of the parade, along with most of the IWW contingent, but Caitlin hung back, hoping to find Ruthie. It was McColl who spotted her, carrying one of her children. The other two were also there, striding forward with resolute faces on either side of their mother.
Her husband, Manny, Ruthie told them, was somewhere up ahead. He had wanted her and the children to keep well back, just in case.
There was no sign of the enemy so far. The faces watching from the sidewalks as the march advanced along Front Street were full of curiosity and pity but lacking in hostility.
They crossed the wide bridge over the Passaic River. The famous falls were just out of sight downstream but well within earshot, and the clamor of the water seemed, paradoxically, to shroud the march in silence and lend it the air of an unaccompanied moving picture.
A sheet of gray cloud now covered the sun, and the street ahead was shadowed by the tall stone buildings of the downtown area. There was no traffic in evidence, as if the city were already under curfew.
Looking back as they turned in to Market Street, McColl noticed the line of uniformed policemen that had swung in behind the rear of the march. The faces on the sidewalk looked grimmer now, and small groups of deputies were keeping pace with the marchers on both sides of the street. He pointed them out to Caitlin and Ruthie, both of whom looked alarmed. “We should tell the people at the front,” Caitlin decided.
“I know who to speak to,” Ruthie said. “But can you …?”
“We’ll look after the children,” Caitlin assured her.
Ruthie hurried forward with the baby, leaving Caitlin and McColl each to grab a worried child by the hand. “This is David,” she said of the boy she had hold off. “And that’s Carmen.”
The little girl began to cry but managed to stop when her brother insisted she should.
They had almost reached the small open space in front of City Hall, where the march was due to climax in song, speech, and a general show of strength. But looking over the shoulders of the crowd ahead, McColl had the impression that the space was already occupied by men in uniform. And just as he reached this conclusion, the clatter of iron horseshoes became distressingly audible. A line of mounted police bearing nightsticks was emerging from a side street like bunting from a conjuror’s sleeve.
A collective gasp went up from the crowd. Hundreds turned to retrace their steps, only to find Market Street blocked by the line of following police. Panic set in, and people were already running in all directions before the voice on the loudspeaker demanded, almost sadistically, that they disperse at once or face arrest.
And now the mounted police were charging down the center of the street with no regard for anyone in their path. Screeches of alarm rose above the rhythmic pounding of hooves; curses of fear and frustration followed as people crashed into one another in their haste to escape. As the horses approached, nostrils billowing breath in the cold air, McColl scooped Carmen up in his arms and barged his way toward the sidewalk, looking back only once he’d reached the relative safety of a store doorway. The last of the horsemen were cantering by, leaving fallen victims scattered behind them. He couldn’t see Caitlin, and it took him several terrible seconds to verify that none of the prone bodies was hers. Where had she gone?
There was fighting up ahead now—he could see the nightsticks rising and falling, hear the cries of anger and pain. Carmen was repeating “I want my mama” like a Hindu mantra.
Two horse-drawn police wagons had pulled up at the rear of the march, and a man was being frog-marched toward one of them, a woman beating ineffectually on one of his tormentors’ backs. If Caitlin had gone that way, McColl should be able to see her, but there was no sign of the familiar rose-colored hat.
He took a firm hold of Carmen and started working his way forward through the milling crowd, weaving around several clusters of flailing arms and legs, stepping over one fallen ban
ner announcing the brotherhood of man. The hard-eyed men in plainclothes seemed intent on dragging certain men away—McColl even saw two on the sidewalk consulting a sheaf of photographs—but no one seemed interested in him. They were probably deterred by the child in his arms, but how long would that last? There was still no sign of Caitlin, and the fighting up ahead seemed even more intense. He couldn’t risk carrying Carmen into that.
So where should he take her? Her home, if he remembered correctly, was on the far side of City Hall and the battle now raging in front of it. His hotel was a couple of blocks to the left and seemed a much better bet. He sidestepped a woman who lay moaning on the ground, blood pouring out of her forehead, and made for what looked like an alley. There were two policemen in the entrance, but he just ran between them, ignoring a shout to stop, not glancing back until he’d covered at least twenty yards. Seeing no one in pursuit, he slowed his pace to a walk and tried to reassure the whimpering child in his arms.
There was a maze of alleys and passageways between the street they’d left and the one in the distance, and they were close to its center when McColl heard the cantering horse and swiftly sought the shelter of some fire stairs. But the horse wasn’t first into view—a man came racing around a corner from the City Hall direction, coat flapping at his knees.
It was Aidan Brady.
The mounted rider appeared a split second later, nightstick raised and ready to strike. Seeing that Brady had taken the wrong turn and was now standing still, the policeman slowed his horse, calmly dismounted, and walked toward his prey, rehearsing blows from the nightstick on the palm of his other glove.
McColl couldn’t hear what was said and couldn’t see Brady’s face, but he did catch the sudden movement, the faint shimmer of the knife, and the way the policeman’s mouth gaped open.
The man sank to his knees. Brady wiped his blade on his victim’s back, toppled the body with the sole of his boot, and calmly looked around. Seeing no one, he strode swiftly away.
McColl put Carmen down. “Stay here,” he told her. “I’ll be back in a moment.”
“Okay,” she said, her voice quavering slightly.
He walked up to the body, half hoping that the man was beyond help, because providing it would complicate matters no end. His wish was granted—Brady had effectively gutted the policeman, emptying his life out onto the cobbles with a butcher’s economy.
He went back to Carmen, who asked him if “the stick man” was dead.
“Yes,” McColl said, picking the child up again. “But don’t look,” he insisted, as he carried her past the corpse. “You might get bad dreams.”
When they entered his hotel a few blocks away, they could no longer hear the fighting, and as they sat waiting in the hotel lounge—he with a whiskey, Carmen a soda—it felt as though they’d been transported to another world. Until, that is, a horse-drawn wagon went by on the street outside, full of prisoners. The scene was archaic—if it hadn’t been for the glint of steel handcuffs, the cart might have been heading for the Place de la Révolution and an appointment with Madame Guillotine.
They had been there about twenty minutes when Caitlin walked in with a short, dark-haired man who turned out to be Carmen’s father. She was relieved, he overjoyed, to find the girl safe and sound. Ruthie and the other children were already at home, and Manny insisted on taking her back to join them, despite the situation outside. “I know the back streets,” he said. “We’ll be fine.”
“They’re arresting anyone they know was there,” Caitlin explained. “The rumor is a cop’s been killed, but that’s probably just an excuse—”
“One was,” McColl said. “I saw it happen. And so did Carmen,” he warned her father. “It wasn’t pretty.”
Manny was horrified. “Oh, God,” he said, going down on one knee and looking his daughter straight in the eyes. “Are you all right?”
The girl burst into tears, which seemed a sane reaction.
Once father and daughter had left, Caitlin wanted details.
“It was Aidan Brady,” he said.
Her eyes widened. “Why? What happened?”
He told her what he’d seen.
“So it was self-defense.”
“I doubt a judge would think so.”
“No, but …”
“The cop was certainly intent on hurting him.” McColl didn’t want to argue the point, not with her.
“Brady was alone?” she asked, a hope as much as a question.
“He was.”
She sighed her relief. “Well, thank God for that.”
“Have you seen Colm?”
“No, but someone saw him and Tiernan back at the local. He’s all right. And anyway, I have to stop worrying about him—he’s a grown man.”
“Easier said than done,” he told her, taking her in his arms.
“And I thought yesterday was a bad day,” she said after a while. “But I’m glad we’re staying here tonight—they’ll be all over the railroad station, hoping to catch the IWW organizers who came out from New York. In fact, we’d better not go out at all. We can eat downstairs.”
“All right …”
“And then I need to get the whole thing written down, for posting off first thing tomorrow. You can help.”
It wasn’t how he’d imagined their evening, but he had no complaints. If he closed his eyes, he could still hear the sound of splintering bones, still see the sudden jerk of Brady’s shoulder as he thrust the blade home.
Staten Island Ferry
Kensley was reading the New York Times in the Aberdeen lobby when McColl arrived back from Paterson. After dropping his bag off in his room, he reluctantly went back down to meet the Canadian—after the events of the weekend, he felt that Cumming and the British Empire could allow him a few days off.
There wasn’t even a coffee to be had—the normally phlegmatic Kensley hustled him out the door and onto Thirty-Second Street as if their professional lives depended on it. “I was afraid you’d ended up in the Paterson city jail,” he said as they began walking.
“I nearly did.”
“And Seán Tiernan?”
“He wasn’t arrested, as far as I know.”
“So he’s back here?”
“Probably. Why the panic?”
“Kell’s people came through with information on him. He’s only twenty-seven, but up until a year ago Tiernan was on the ruling council of the Irish Republican Brotherhood.”
“But no longer?” Tiernan was obviously a bigger wheel than McColl had thought.
“We don’t know. Have you heard of the ICA—the Irish Citizen Army?”
“Nope.”
“It was set up last summer by Jim Larkin. A workers’ militia to defend the strikers against the police during the lockout. The only weapons they had were hurling sticks and cricket bats, but they can be pretty effective in narrow streets.”
“I know,” McColl said wryly.
Kensley looked at him. “Was it that bad?”
“I can’t say I expected American cops to treat women and children quite that viciously. Stupid of me really, especially after the way the British police have treated the suffragettes.”
“They don’t take many prisoners,” Kensley agreed, with only the faintest hint of disapproval. “But getting back to Tiernan … He was an ICA commander. Second-in-command of the whole shooting match, according to one source, but he was never arrested. When the strike was defeated and the men went back to work, he and others kept the ICA going, and it’s still very much in existence. But it seems there’s been a split at the top, between those who see it the way Larkin originally did, as a workers’ defense force in time of dispute, and those, like Tiernan, who see it as an embryonic revolutionary organization. Tiernan and his friends want to drive out the English, abolish capitalism, and set up an Irish socialist republic.”
“Don’t the IRB?”
“Not all of them. The IRB is a broad church—all kinds of socialists, old-fashioned liberals, Gael
ic mystics, even traditional Catholics who think socialism is a Protestant trick. And most of them will dismiss the ICA as being far too radical. Some because they loathe the idea of socialism, others because they don’t think such an extreme program has any chance of success.”
“But Kell’s people think they’re dangerous?” McColl asked once they’d crossed Ninth Avenue.
“The jury’s out on how effective they might prove, but they’re considered reckless enough to make a splash. No one seems to think the people in this group would have any compunction about committing treason if the reward looked promising enough.”
“Is there any indication that they’ve approached the Germans?”
“None. But that could be why Tiernan is here in New York.”
“It could be. He met someone in Paterson, by the way. An IWW man named Aidan Brady. I don’t know if Tiernan had met him before, or if Colm Hanley had, but they seemed pretty close. With a name like Brady, I’m assuming the man has Irish connections, but they might not matter to him. He is a murderous bastard—I watched him kill that policeman in Paterson, the one in the newspapers.”
“Jesus!” Kensley almost shouted. “You witnessed it?!”
“I did. And for obvious reasons, I didn’t go to the police.”
“You did right,” Kensley said after a few moments’ reflection. “We don’t want your name and face all over the papers. What made him do it?”
“The cop came at him with a nightstick.”
“I take it the cop didn’t see the knife.”
Jack of Spies Page 22
