“All right, gentlemen, now that we’ve had our little laugh, let’s get back to business, shall we?” Thaddeus said. We’ve only got three days.”
Sullivan was happy to take the spotlight off Jacobs and Lebeau. Those two never did get on real well, so it was best to keep them occupied with other matters. “We’ve got to be clear on our positions, timing, signals, everything.”
Braddock’s investigation had cut their practice time to the bone. They had planned on having more time to prepare. Everyone was under pressure and it was beginning to show, as Bart’s little flare-up proved.
“Signals will be critical,” the captain said, trying to keep them focused. “There will hopefully be thousands on the bridge. It’s essential that the men on the span will be in proper position to see the signal. I don’t want to blow you boys along with the bridge,” he said with a grim smile. Sullivan knew the captain wouldn’t hesitate if he had to. He’d blow the whole lot of them without a second thought. “Once you see the signal, you’ll have exactly five minutes, no more.” They all knew the captain meant it. “For you men on the span, that should be enough to make it beyond the towers at either side. Which way you go is up to you, depending on the number of people in your way. Once you’re beyond the towers you’ll be safe. The land spans may sag, but they will not collapse.”
“That’s a real comfort, Cap’n,” Earl said, smiling. “We’ll meet up later then, after … or what?”
The captain dropped his pencil with an exasperated sigh. “No, Earl! We went over this yesterday. We go our separate ways. We meet again only when the circumstances are right. If things are clear, the shade will be drawn in the room on the northwest corner, third floor, of the Powhattan Hotel. If you see that sign, check at the front desk for a message. Instructions will be waiting for you. Is everyone clear on that?” The captain cast a challenging eye around the room. “Good. Let’s go over those positions and signals again then. We only get to do this once.”
Headquarters was more of a beehive than usual, with detectives scurrying in and out at all hours of the day and night. Coffin’s sudden resignation had left a void in the power structure, and perhaps more critical, it left others feeling vulnerable. Rumors had been running around the Marble Palace like a plague, leaving festering sores of doubt and suspicion. Tom felt an almost macabre sense of fascination at the workings of the rumor mill. He had no way of knowing how many were involved with Coffin’s “corps,” but if all the activity was an indicator, it was plenty. Some no doubt had plenty to worry about too. Byrnes wasn’t a murderer, nor was he one to let Coffin get off with a resignation without some quid pro quo. Coffin had spilled everything. He’d had to. Tom knew how Byrnes could be when he got his temper on the boil. There would be more “resignations” to come, of that he was certain. Meanwhile, he noticed a steady stream of men filing in and out of Byrnes’s office. Braddock found it fascinating to watch the faces “before” and “after” a meeting with the chief. It was most revealing. For the majority, though, the increased activity was simply a nervous reaction to the shakeup. It wasn’t a good time to be seen doing nothing.
The other factor was opportunity. Any time a captaincy opened up, which wasn’t all that often, dozens of men tripped over themselves to be noticed. The sudden increase in official preening was like watching some bizarre mating ritual. Blue-bellied, bowler-headed cop birds were strutting all over the building, brass polished to a blinding sheen, pants pressed to a knife edge. It was a fascinating, Darwinian display. Tom took it all in as he went about his job. He could afford to do the job as he’d always done it. It was the one thing he really cared about, the one constant in this frothy blue sea. He let the waves break around him, the foam and spray fall where they would. It couldn’t touch him.
It was midmorning when he got a summons from Byrnes. They’d already had a couple of conversations over the last few days about Coffin, the corps, and Braddock’s involvement in it all. Tom had come about as clean as he could without revealing things that Byrnes didn’t need to know. The chief was understanding enough to keep Tom’s revelations focused just on Coffin’s operations, leaving the rest to Tom’s better judgment. It wasn’t Tom he was after. Byrnes couldn’t help being annoyed at the whole episode, though. He’d literally beat everything he could out of Coffin, taking out his fury on the captain for putting him in this situation. Shakeups like this could be messy, brutal affairs. It was a job Byrnes was well suited for, but still he hated doing it.
“The papers are starting to get real curious about his finances,” Byrnes said without preamble as Tom closed the door behind him. “Things are going to come out.” Byrnes’s tone was ominous, as was the look he gave Tom. “I hope you can spare Pat and Charlie for a while longer.” Byrnes had “borrowed” them back from Tom to help with the Coffin affair.
“Of course, sir,” Tom said, knowing Byrnes would keep them anyway. He couldn’t be seen as standing in the way of investigating Coffin, regardless of what he thought was going on with his own case. Still, he found himself saying, “But, sir, I have to tell you, I still have a bad feeling about the Bucklin case.” He fingered the tattered clipping in his pocket as he said this as if by rubbing it he could conjure a solution. “They’re still out there. They’ve just gone underground. Scares me … to be honest.”
Byrnes didn’t say anything—not exactly an endorsement of Tom’s position.
“It’s not that I don’t appreciate your need of the manpower, sir,” Tom went on. “It’s just that …” Byrnes was frowning now. “Well … just wanted you to know how I felt, that’s all,” Tom ended, seeing he wasn’t going to get anywhere with this line of attack.
“Thanks,” Byrnes muttered. He didn’t see the urgency. If this was connected to the trains, as the evidence seemed to point, then they still had time. It would be months before they’d be running. The latest reports predicted it would be sometime in September. There’d be time to sweep the Coffin mess under the carpet and deal with the conspiracy too, he thought.
“I’ve got them checking into Coffin’s finances. Don’t like some of the things they’ve found,” he continued.
Tom understood the chief’s position. “I know, sir. Coffin’s … finances were only part of it. It was his business practices, so to speak, that convinced me to come to you,” he said, getting as close as he wanted to the truth of it.
“Mm … yet you didn’t report anything for some time. Didn’t occur to you to come to me sooner?” Byrnes asked. They’d gone over this before, but it was Byrnes’s way of testing him.
Tom knew this and accepted it. “First off, sir, I figured you were aware of at least some of what Coffin was up to. I had no hard evidence.” A lie, it was true, but one he figured he could get away with. “And … I’m not sure I would have told you if I had. Don’t think it would have been my place. It was only when I saw that Coffin was getting out of control that …” Tom trailed off, wondering if Byrnes had caught the dual meaning of what he was saying.
Byrnes puffed out a small cumulous cloud of cigar smoke and seemed to examine the ceiling. “Suppose I agree, Tom. I’m a great respecter of the chain of command. No way to advance your career generally … going around a superior’s back. But I understand about Coffin. He was out of control, beyond the pale so to speak. I understand about the incident with Mary too.” Byrnes gave Tom a significant look through the cigar smoke.
Tom nodded with the ghost of a grin. “I’m relieved you understand, sir.”
“You’re not telling me everything.” Byrnes blew smoke for effect. “I know that.”
Fresh sweat blossomed on Tom’s back, an icy trickle running down his spine.
“But that’s all right. It’s not you I’m looking at here. I know how things work. Came up through the ranks too, you know.” Byrnes gave him a conspiratorial grin. “But Coffin has gone and got himself in the soup, and I have to separate the broth from the noodles. Now the superintendents and the commissioner, they don’t need to know all we
do, right?” Byrnes asked rhetorically.
Tom grinned his understanding. “Of course not, sir.”
“They want this thing put to rest one way or another. The less waving of dirty laundry, the better.”
“Probably wise,” Tom agreed.
“Uh-huh. I’m going to give this thing just a little more time … but the papers start getting too close to what really went on, and I’ll shut it down in a hurry.”
Tom nodded. He was curious about one more thing, and he had to ask. “So … what’s going to happen to Coffin?”
Byrnes looked at him with an appraising frown. “He leaves with nothing. If he hadn’t spilled his guts, he’d have been prosecuted. Probably would have done a long stint in Sing Sing. At least he saved himself that.” Byrnes waved his cigar. “Pretty good deal all the way around, actually. He doesn’t do jail time, the department doesn’t get dragged through another scandal, and you get out from under his thumb. We then have an opportunity to replace him with someone more”—he seemed to search for the right word—“cooperative, so to speak.”
Tom grunted. “Suppose it worked out pretty well at that.”
Tom ran into Chowder on his way out. Kelly was heading toward Byrnes’s office.
“Hey, Tommy! How goes the war?”
“Okay, I guess.”
Chowder lowered his voice a few octaves. “He give you a hard time?”
“’Bout what I expected,” Tom said with a shrug.
“Anything new on Coffin?” Chowder asked seriously.
“Nothing you don’t already know, partner.” Tom looked him in the eye. “Byrnes has found some skeletons in his closet, the sorts of things you’d expect. No surprises. He’ll put a lid on if too much starts to get out.”
“A wise move for the good of the department, laddie.” Chowder chuckled. “Byrnes was always a practical man. Might be best for all concerned if Coffin just fades away,” he said with a wink. “Well … it’s my appointed hour for grilling, Tommy. Don’t want to keep the chef waiting.”
“Right,” Tom said with a smile. “Let’s get a beer sometime soon. I hear McSorley’s calling.”
“Damned if I don’t too. ‘Tis a siren’s song, Tommy! the call o’ the ale,” Chowder said over his shoulder, grinning as he sauntered toward Byrnes’s office.
Tom went back to his desk, throwing himself down onto his hard oak chair. His in box was full again but he had no interest in plowing through it. His talk with Byrnes had taken the wind out of his sails. He picked up some papers from his desk and shuffled them idly, not even seeing what was written on them. It was an old habit, formed of the fear of appearing to do nothing if his boss came by. He thought about losing Pat and Charlie and how that would slow the investigation. Between the opening of the bridge, which had cost them a day, and the Coffin debacle, which had thrown the department into chaos, they hadn’t had time to do much. He and Jaffey had checked out Emmons’s and Lebeau’s rooms, of course, which were as empty as the offices of Sangree & Co had been. They’d staked the places out with help from the precinct. Sam had helped with that. Tom had sent out a telegram to the other precincts to be on the lookout for Lebeau, Emmons, and Sangree as well, and there were posters up in railway stations and post offices. Big block letters read WANTED FOR CONSPIRACY, and the names and descriptions of the three were included. It had turned out that Emmons and Lebeau had never been on any train to Texas, at least they hadn’t been found.
Pat and Charlie had started to canvass explosives suppliers in and around the city just yesterday but hadn’t turned up anything by the time Byrnes pulled them off. It was a long shot, Tom figured, but the violent reception he and Jaffey had gotten in Richmond got him thinking along more sinister lines. Besides, they’d checked nearly everything they could about the trains, with nothing to show for it. He pulled the clipping from his pocket once more, reading the lines he’d come to memorize. In awkward hyperbole it gushed about the wonderful convenience of being whisked across the river in only five minutes. The comfort of the cars was outlined in glowing terms. The brilliant technology of the cable system was described in detail and compared to the new cable cars in San Francisco. Tom knew it all by heart. He focused on the papers on his desk, putting the clipping aside.
Charlie had given him a list of the places they were checking—if he could find it. After going through the piles on his desktop, he’d finally looked in his top drawer, and there it was. Efficient as ever, Dolan and Heidelberg had checked off the ones they’d already stopped at. Little notes filled the margins concerning whom they’d talked to and what they’d found out, which apparently wasn’t much. Braddock looked at it with glum resignation.
“What the hell,” he mumbled. “Beats waiting for the next rumor on Coffin.” He heaved himself to his feet and went to find Jaffey.
It was a long day of running about the city, checking on explosives distributors. Each stop meant slow hours of clerks going through order books and invoices. They searched for sales to any of the names known to Tom. He and Jaffey ate up the day scouring books for Sangree, Emmons, Lebeau, and Watkins, coming up with only one delivery to a Samuel Watkins in White Plains. It didn’t look like a fit, but Tom made a note to telegram the local cops there to check the man out.
By the time they got back to 300 Mulberry, the afternoon editions were getting bolder about the reasons for Coffin’s resignation, hinting at corruption in high places. Byrnes would have to put an end to it soon, or all hell would break loose. Tom had anticipated this sort of reaction from both the press and the department. He tried to put it to the back of his mind. With everything else that was going on, it worked for short intervals. But like a ghost rising from his haunted brain, Coffin came back to him many times during the day. Sometimes it was only as a feeling, a prickling of the hair on the back of his neck. Other times he could see Coffin’s face, twisted with hate but frightened and hopeless too. Those eyes would look into his for the rest of his days. As hard as that was, he knew too that it would have been just a matter of time before Coffin did the same or worse to him—probably with less conscience.
Byrnes called Tom in to confirm that Pat and Charlie had officially been taken off the case and reassigned to Coffin’s investigation for the next few days, or until they shut it down.
“Tom, that’s got to come first for now. We’ll talk later,” Byrnes said dismissively, cutting Tom off before he could mount more objections.
Tom told Jaffey a few minutes later.
“Not surprising.” Jaffey shrugged, though it would mean extra days of legwork for him and Tom. “Not every day something like that happens. Obviously there was something going on. The whole thing stinks, and the fact that Coffin isn’t saying anything makes it smell even worse. I’ve heard he was into all kinds of things—extortion, prostitution, policy rackets, you name it.”
“Yeah … I don’t doubt it,” Tom said softly. He started to count the lies, big and small. It would be a tower before it was over, heavy and unstable. He prayed it wouldn’t topple.
Mike thought he’d seen the bow-tie clerk twice during the day. The first time he’d looked again and it clearly wasn’t the same man. The second time he wasn’t so sure. The man had dropped from sight an instant later, lost in the hurly-burly of the street. It had given him a chill. Still, he had hung out with his friends all afternoon after getting out of class. They’d made no effort to hide or keep special watch. This was their neighborhood, after all, their streets. They’d notice anything out of the ordinary.
Dusk had fallen, and the streetlamps were being lit by shuffling civil servants when Mike saw Bow-tie for real. He was just heading home for dinner. He’d told Smokes that maybe he’d be out after, and he’d started up Norfolk when the scary little clerk seemed to materialize out of the gloom in front of him. He’d never seen anyone look at him the way that man did. The eyes were black holes in his face, scary black wells, with a glint that chilled him like a winter gale. Mike stood frozen for an instant, like a jacked
deer staring into the light, then he turned and bolted, yelling for his mates. He felt the air stir behind his neck as he took off. He didn’t even see the blade. He didn’t have to.
He ran fast, maybe faster than he ever had, hoping his gang had heard him but not turning to look. He knew instinctively that one hesitation, one wrong move, and he’d be dead. Like a rabbit, his one chance was to run from the fox. He prayed he was fast enough. Pounding footsteps followed so close he could almost mistake them for his own. He could hear the man’s breath gusting behind. It sounded loud, but to his ears it didn’t sound labored. The bow-tie clerk could run! Mike was fast for a boy of ten. Bow-tie was just as fast. Mike’s lungs were beginning to burn when he darted sideways across the cobbles in front of a wagon, whose horse snorted and reared, kicking out at the air. It threw his pursuer off a bit, as he’d hoped, but it didn’t stop him. Up Norfolk they ran, past Rivington and on toward Stanton. No one seemed to pay them any regard whatever. Adults chasing kids weren’t all that uncommon here. There weren’t that many people on the streets at this time anyway. The smells of dinner wafted around them as they ran.
With a sudden impulse, Mike ducked down an alley. It was actually a lot, but at twenty feet wide wasn’t much different from an alley. There was a wall at the end that Mike hoped he could scale before Bow-tie got to him. Maybe then he’d be able to lose him in the lots between the buildings, as he had before. He vaulted over some bricks as he heard Bow-tie round the corner. He used a box near the wall to boost himself, shinnying up a drainpipe at the corner of the rough brick wall. He wasn’t going fast enough! His hand slipped! He was only five feet off the ground as he heard Bow-tie vault the pile of bricks. Desperately he climbed as fast as he could, realizing it wasn’t fast enough. He began to panic.
Jacobs was exultant! The little bastard was cornered. He saw it as soon as he rounded the corner. Trapped! Though the kid tried to shinny up a drainpipe, Jacobs saw right away it wasn’t going to be enough. He had just jumped over some bricks when something hit him in the shoulder, and he went down hard. He wasn’t sure what had happened at first. The impact and the fall were almost one. He rolled with the fall, bouncing up as best he could, looking behind him for what had caused it. As he did, a bottle flew by just inches from his head. He hadn’t even seen it coming. He raised an arm to shield himself too late, and he saw five silhouettes at the end of the alley outlined by the streetlamps. Another bottle sailed out of the darkness, glancing off his forearm as a kid’s voice said, “Leave our friend alone, mister!”
Suspension Page 51
