The World of Tomorrow

by Brendan Mathews

  All around them milled the hubbub of a big night on the town: men in sharp suits and black tie, women in sea-foam satins, their hair netted with jewels or pinned up in waves of soft curls. Francis stood in their midst, harried and stunned, his face like a cracked egg that someone had tried to reassemble. His suit was rumpled like a paper bag and his shirt had been sweat through and pasted back on him to dry. He needed a good night’s sleep, a shave, and a can of pomade. He looked, in a word, un-Franciscan. The man at his side was crammed into a blue serge suit, freshly pressed or newly purchased. He wore it with all the verve of a boy at a distant aunt’s funeral.

  “Where is Michael?” Martin said. “And what the hell happened to you?”

  “He’s upstairs,” Francis said. “Isn’t he?” Francis had been clinging to the hope that Michael had found his way back to the hotel. He had already planned to ask the front desk to send a typewriter to the suite so that Michael could pound out pages of questions and accusations. But if Martin was here and Michael was not, then something must have gone wrong.

  Martin spat out a curse. “If you’re going to lock him up here, you could at least leave word with the staff that I’m coming for him instead of just having one of your pals ring us up and scare the daylights out of Rosemary.”

  All of this was coming too fast for Francis. His pals? And who had called Rosemary? He eyed Cronin, wondering if the man had, in fact, shown an ounce of mercy.

  “And would you look at yourself?” Martin said. “Where the hell have you been?”

  “I ran into some trouble today,” Francis said. “And this man—he was kind enough to help me back to the hotel.”

  “Today?” Martin was incredulous. “I’ve been here since last night and haven’t seen hide nor hair of you. No one has.”

  Two men engaged in a heated exchange on a street corner will be left alone to sort out their differences. Most passersby will cross the street or give them a wide berth if it looks like a fight is looming. But if those same men are standing in the middle of the lobby of the Plaza Hotel, and one of them is a freshly bruised and battered Scottish lord who has lavishly tipped everyone within a handshake’s length, the concierge will intervene—quickly.

  “Gentlemen.” It was Alphonse Collier, the hotel’s concierge. “May I be of some assistance?”

  Francis turned, his expression oozing patience and decorum, his voiced torqued to its most peat-smoked Highlandese. “Collier, you’re just the man for the moment! My older brother Fitzwilliam—you remember him from Saturday, yes?—well, Fitzwilliam is concerned that our youngest brother may not be in our suite. That he may, in fact, be missing.”

  Collier eyed his guest’s brother. He had heard about this one from the elevator operator: a gambler and wastrel. “I was aware that he was making inquiries as to your whereabouts and those of your brother, but you must understand, we hold your privacy in the highest—”

  “Can you just tell us,” Martin interrupted, “if he’s in the room? That’s all I want to know.”

  Collier gave His Lordship a sympathetic look: a difficult older brother indeed. He went on to say that the housekeeping staff had informed him that at midday, the room was undisturbed. There was no sign of anyone having slept in the room on Wednesday night. Collier noted the look of anger from the older brother, and the sickened shock that registered on His Lordship’s face. “You must allow me to notify the police immediately,” he said.

  Martin and Cronin both looked to Francis, who matched Collier tone for tone. “I would so greatly appreciate it if you did not, at the moment, involve the authorities. With the royal visit, tensions are high and I fear police involvement may spark… undue anxiety.”

  Collier placed a hand over his heart, as if to indicate not only comprehension but empathy with his plight. He had seen his share of scandals, and knew how easily one wayward guest could summon a gang of shouting reporters or a troop of photographers from the celebrity magazines. “But as for your…” Collier touched his cheek, mirroring the spot where a fat bruise colored His Lordship’s face.

  “As long as the room has whiskey and ice, I’ll be grand,” Francis said. He exchanged a dry laugh with Collier, and after a curt bow, the concierge returned to his desk. Francis’s performance for Collier had left him spent, and though he’d barely eaten in the past twenty-four hours, he was sure that he was about to vomit whatever was roiling in his guts. He made for the front desk, leaving Martin and Cronin to wait for him by the elevator.

  Through the barrage of questions and the negotiations with the concierge, Cronin had barely budged. Two of the Dempseys had converged on him, and the youngest—despite the risk he’d taken with the phone call—was missing in a city that stripped the very meat from the bones of lambs like him. Still, Cronin knew that little Michael was the only one who was truly safe. He was in the grip of fate, but free of Gavigan’s grasp.

  Now with a twinge he wondered if Martin would remember him. Martin must have been eleven or twelve when Cronin last set foot in the Dempseys’ house in Cork. Would he recognize a man from his youth, cloaked as he was by time and age?

  Standing by the elevator, under the blush of the overhead lights, Martin gave Francis’s companion the once-over. He was older than Martin and hard-weathered. His face was deeply creased and his features settled into a scowl. But the face was not unfamiliar, with its blunt nose and fierce-set eyes, and the man’s voice—the south of Ireland—echoed in some neglected corner of his memory. How was it that he could go years without seeing a blood relative, and then in one week it all threatened to bury him: his brothers, his father’s death, his mother’s stories, and now this voice from the past? “Hold on,” Martin said as Francis rejoined them. “Have we met before?”

  “I don’t think so,” the man said. And then, as if he’d given the question further thought: “We haven’t. I’m sure of it.”

  Now Francis gave Cronin a hard look. He’d had his suspicions, hadn’t he? But unspooling them here, in the lobby, with Michael missing and Martin burning mad was out of the question. There would be no way to keep from Martin the nature of his business with Cronin, and hadn’t Cronin and the old man already threatened violence against Martin’s entire family? His only choice was silence. The secrets of their father’s past seemed to be all around them, ready to be named, but there was no time now, and with Saturday looming, that time would never come.

  “You must be thinking of some other yoke,” Francis said as the doors to the elevator opened. “Because I’d sure not forget a mug like this.”

  ONCE THE THREE of them were in the suite, Martin and Francis ransacked Michael’s room for any clues to his whereabouts. The clothes he’d worn yesterday were gone. Two clean suits hung uselessly in the closet. He had no watch, no wallet, nothing, really, to tie him to this place or to indicate his comings or goings. Through their search of the room, Martin continued to fire questions at his brother: When had Francis last seen Michael? How in hell had he lost him? Where had he been all this time? And why had it taken him so long to realize that Michael was missing? Francis, exhausted and punch-drunk, could manage only half-answers, which led only to more questions.

  “Rosemary wanted to call the police straightaway,” Martin said. “I had to tell her not to bother. I assume your friend is aware of why that is.”

  “Are you boys done?” Cronin had been gazing out the window, imagining the route from the museum to the hotel. How hard could it have been to walk down Fifth Avenue? Now he spoke from the doorway of Michael’s room, his face half turned, as if a glare were coming off the brothers. “You tell the police, the hospitals, anyone who needs to know, that your cousins were visiting New York to see the World’s Fair. They’re staying at the Plaza—they’re your rich relatives—and one of them, a deaf-mute, went for a walk and didn’t come back. Give them the number here and your number in the Bronx if they find him.”

  “Who are you to be giving orders?” Martin said. “And how do you know I live in the Bronx?”
/>
  Sloppy. Cronin was really losing his touch.

  “He’s good at finding people,” Francis interjected.

  “And you’re good at losing them. What a pair.” Martin looked askance at his brother. “And what are you going to do, Your Lordship?”

  Now Cronin answered for him. “He’s going round to the taxicabs and the bus drivers. Museum guards, street sweepers.”

  “Hotel staff, too,” Francis added. “Every porter, maid, and clerk knows him on sight. They should be able to smell the reward that’s coming to the first that finds him.”

  Martin’s mind was racing. What were the odds of finding Michael twenty-four hours after he’d stepped off the edge of the earth? He was once again about to hit the streets in search of him while Francis went his own direction with this rough-cut stranger who was a little too comfortable giving orders and sending Martin on his way.

  “For God’s sake, Francis, would you tell me what the hell is going on? You say that your top job is getting Michael fixed up and then you lose him in the middle of the city? And you’re so distracted by God knows what that you don’t even know he’s missing, and I’m only here looking for him because some mystery man told Rosemary that Michael—excuse me, Mr. MacFarquhar—needs minding. And now here you are with some partner in crime, and you’ve both been tending to some piece of business that’s far more important than the well-being of your own brother. Am I leaving anything out?”

  Francis felt a burning behind his eyes, his throat stripped raw. Yes, Martin, there are things I am not telling you. Like how I’m trapped in some madman’s plot to put a bullet in the king. Like how this man with me is some kind of killer. Like how you and your family and Michael could all be dead in a day or two if I don’t do something terrible that you’ll condemn me for as long as you live—which I hope is a long time. It occurred to Francis that once he killed the king, and was likely killed as a result, this week would begin to make sense to his brother. Martin would see a strange logic at work that could explain all of this week’s oddities: the source of his brother’s bankroll, the aliases and the fancy hiding place, his strange companion, his evident preoccupation even in the face of Michael’s disappearance—all of it would be made to fit a pattern that frankly made more sense than the reality Francis had stumbled into. In the retelling of events, Francis would not be a hapless pornographer but an IRA assassin dispatched to America to kill a king. Michael’s injury was harder to square with this new narrative—maybe it had been an accident, just as Francis described—but the wounded Michael did provide his brother with a useful alibi. Francis was an angel of mercy, an instantly sympathetic figure to all he met. The plot was foremost, though, and when Francis needed to cast off Michael, then cast him off he did.

  “I’m sorry,” Francis said. “I’ve made a mess of everything, and I’ll explain it all when I can, but for now, can we just find Michael?”

  The clock in the suite faintly ticked, marking time. Francis wanted to collapse onto the couch and allow sleep to erase all of this bad business for a few hours, but he held his ground, waiting for Martin to punch him or press for answers that he could not give or simply storm out into the city.

  Martin let out a long sigh. The sound of a man giving in to what life has handed him, for now. “What’s his name?”

  “Whose?” Francis said.

  “Our brother. My cousin. My rich relative in from Scotland to see the royals. What am I to call him, so the police don’t catch on that you came into the country illegally?”

  “Malcolm.”

  “And who are you again?”

  “Angus.”

  “Angus and Malcolm MacFarquhar? Jesus Christ, Franny. Can’t you even choose a proper alias?”

  FRANCIS LET OUT a sigh of his own when the door closed on Martin. The past two days had left him shattered. When he had been on the run in Ireland, he’d felt maniacally alive. The pursuit, the need to find a safe place for Michael, the arrangements for the voyage, and the constant fear that around the next corner the IRA or the police were setting a snare—all of it kept him sharp. He was out on his own, with no one to rely on for aid or advice. But now he felt like a man caught between the gears of a badly built machine. All around him, springs snapped and cogs worked against cogs. The machine ground onward toward some grim conclusion, smoke billowing all the while from its poorly greased tracks. Friction threatened to tear the whole thing apart. He collapsed heavily onto the couch where only days earlier Michael had feasted on steak and baked Alaska.

  Cronin stood impassively by the window again, regarding the expanse of park hemmed in on both sides by the gray faces of apartment buildings, hotels, private clubs, churches. The sky was clear and he could see all the way to the northern end of the park and to the buildings that marked the reemergence of concrete and asphalt. Beyond that was just more of the city, as far as the eye could see. There was no point in trying to look any farther.

  “Where should we start?” Francis said.

  “With what?” Cronin pulled himself away from the window.

  “Looking for Michael.”

  “That’s up to your brother,” Cronin said. “You have a job to do. And if you don’t do it, it’s not going to matter whether or not he ever finds Michael.”

  “How could he just disappear?” Francis said, as much to himself as to the indifferent world. He had given up trying to elicit sympathy from Cronin. To him, Michael was merely the remainder to a problem he had been tasked with solving.

  Cronin looked back and forth across the room. “Where’s the money?”

  Francis, his thoughts still snagged on the barbed matter of his brother’s whereabouts, was baffled by the question.

  “The money from Ireland,” Cronin said. “Where is it?”

  “Your boss agreed I’d need it, for expenses. He didn’t say he wanted it back yet.”

  Cronin didn’t want it, he told Francis. He just wanted to make sure Francis hadn’t put it somewhere stupid, like under his bed. “Word’ll get out that you’ve been found, and men will come looking for it.”

  “Your boss can’t stop them?”

  “He’s not my boss,” Cronin said, “and he’s focused on other matters, isn’t he?” Cronin almost said distracted. He had even thought about gone mad.

  “It’s somewhere safe.”

  Cronin fixed him with a stare. “Safe,” he said. A preposterous word. “You know what? Don’t tell me. I don’t want to know.”

  “Too tempting?” Francis said.

  “You haven’t caught on yet, have you? To how any of this works? If I wanted the money, I’d’ve put a gun to your brother’s head and sent you to fetch it. And if you’d dragged your feet, maybe I’d’ve broken a few of his fingers, or his whole hand, just to quicken your step.”

  Francis ran a hand through his hair. He had fallen into a film—Scarface, The Public Enemy—and they expected him to play along. “Look, Mr. Cronin,” he said. “I know what the old man wants of me, and I know what he said he’ll do if I don’t follow through. But I’m not a killer.”

  “That’s no matter,” Cronin said. “The old man is, and that’s what matters. Now, we came back here so you could get yourself cleaned up. So get yourself cleaned up.”

  IN THE BATHROOM, Francis contemplated his face in the mirror. It was surrounded by lightbulbs, just like the mirrors in actors’ dressing rooms he’d seen in the movies. Maybe that would make this whole business easier: to think of it as a play. That’s all it was. He was playing the part of the assassin; some other fellow was playing the part of the king. Anisette—the shocked witness, the ingenue betrayed—would be played by an actress best known for her star turns last season as Ophelia, as Desdemona: innocents destroyed by deceit. Another actress—a real hoot, once you got to know her—would play Félicité, the sneering Cassandra who knew it all along. The other members of the repertory would divvy up the remaining parts: the widowed queen, the society matron, the dumbstruck guard.

  This was the
lie, Francis decided, that he would tell himself until even he believed it. It is only a play, I am only an actor, the gun is but a prop. And what a laugh the cast would have when the set was struck and the theater went dark and they all met around the corner for a drink.

  CRONIN HAD BRISTLED at being Gavigan’s errand boy, but now, fuming, he realized he was something worse. He had been tasked with finding Francis Dempsey and he had done that. He had been sent to nick him off the street in broad daylight, and he had done that. And now a new assignment—a lead role in this madman’s plan cooked up by Gavigan: to keep watch over Dempsey and prepare him to kill.

  How could he do that when he was crowded on all sides by ghosts? Being around Francis made him edgy enough, and now the older Dempsey brother had appeared. When Martin had called out to them, a shock ran the length of Cronin’s spine, and he had to wonder if Martin felt the same. Was there some nugget buried deep in Martin’s memory, alert to contact with those from his past? A man who knew his parents. Who had been in the family home. Who had blown the family to bits. Cronin had told himself for years that it was Frank who was the betrayer, Frank who had broken with his comrades and supported a bad treaty. Only later did he realize, did he admit, that he didn’t plant the bomb because Frank had chosen the other side. The purpose of the bomb was to undo the man Cronin had become—the man he’d let Frank make him into. One last spilling of blood, and then no more: that was his plan. He was young enough and stupid enough to believe that Frank’s death would bring him some measure of peace. When the bomb went off and it was Bernadette who died, Cronin knew he would never be able to wash off the blood. Bernadette was their saint, anyone would tell you that, and if she was their Joan of Arc, then Cronin was the man who’d lit the match and tossed it on the pyre. He was a pariah. An untouchable. Within days of the blast he was packed off on a merchant ship bound for the States, traveling under papers that blotted out his name but couldn’t hide what he’d done. The only man willing to offer him refuge was Gavigan. Every other door was closed to him.