“And you sent him to his death.”
He was patient in the face of my abuse, especially considering how far he had come. “I sent him where he was most needed, for the sake of the country. I sent Hattie too, you remember? Was that because of you as well?”
My head ached, and I wanted to do something violent. Push him out a window or leap my own self. All this pent-up anger needed somewhere to go, now that it was flowing.
But something in me knew he was right. Tim had been his best agent. Pinkerton was nothing if not a logical, measured, deliberate man. If he had sent Tim to Richmond, he needed someone in Richmond.
He said, “I used to ask you to lie to me, to help you learn. I have never lied to you.”
I leaned my head against the wallpaper, closing my eyes, wishing he hadn’t come, wishing I’d never met him, wishing everything had been different all along. I couldn’t bear the way I felt. I had no choice but to bear it. It was torture.
He went on, his voice more hesitant now, “But I came to tell you something else we discovered. That you need to know.”
“Go on.”
His next words were slow in coming. “It wasn’t just Greenhow. If her word alone were enough, a dozen other people would be dead. Tim had someone else betray him.”
I turned to look at him. I needed to see his face. “Not Hattie?”
“No, someone else. Someone we didn’t foresee.”
“Tell me.”
“Mortenson,” he said.
I’d barely though of Jack Mortenson a handful of times since he was dismissed for his poor behavior back during Hattie’s early years. But as soon as Pinkerton mentioned the name, the image sprung instantly to mind, indelible: pale and awkward, always the odd man out, half ghost. Now, he truly was a sort of ghost, one who haunted us unexpectedly.
I sat on the bed again to steady myself. “But how? How was he there?”
Pinkerton rubbed his hand across his mouth and looked down at the rug. “He’d heard about the intelligence service, what we were doing for the railroads and the country, and he said he wanted to help.”
“Oh no.”
“He said it was all water under the bridge, how things ended. He said he could put aside his anger if I could. And we needed good agents, Warne, needed them badly. So I hired him back. And I sent him to Richmond, told him Tim and Hattie were there. But he was working for the other side.”
I struggled to absorb the new information, to turn everything over in my mind. It made a kind of sense. The pieces of the puzzle snapped into place. Mortenson was the third agent who Van Lew’s butler had mentioned, then. There had been three after all, one spelling doom for the other two.
Pinkerton sat quietly, his graying head lowered, clearly suffering under the weight of what he’d done. I wanted to touch him, comfort him. But the truth was too new.
I’d been wrong about his motives. I’d been wrong about Mrs. Greenhow’s role too, or at least not completely right. We all had some part of the guilt, every one of us.
Only one thing didn’t add up. “But they didn’t hang Hattie.”
“No. When it came to the final trial, Mortenson gave the damning evidence against Tim, but he wouldn’t do the same against Hattie. On the stand, he said he didn’t know anything about her being an agent of any sort. Whatever he felt for her before, it seems he feels it still.”
“At least…” I couldn’t complete the thought. It was horrible that he’d done what he’d done but not surprising he’d had a change of heart about Hattie. He hated her enough to put her in prison but loved her too much to sign her death warrant. Tim, though, he had no such feelings for.
“He fooled me,” said Pinkerton, his voice thick with regret. “I shouldn’t have let him. So I came to apologize to you, Warne. Because it seems Tim’s death really was my fault, in a way.”
“You couldn’t have known,” I said. “But you were so angry. In the hotel, when Tim told you about us. Why?”
“It wasn’t because of your relationship. I was angry about that, yes, but not why you think.” He looked down at his hands, knotted together. “If you’d gotten married, if you’d started a family, it would have been a disaster.”
I made a strangled noise in my throat.
“No, no. Let me explain. I didn’t want to lose you as an operative. The agency couldn’t afford to. Your mind, your intelligence—it would have been such a waste, Warne. And I couldn’t bear that thought. You took me by surprise. It’s no excuse, but it’s a reason.”
I remembered DeForest saying something similar long ago. To the world, being a wife meant being a mother, which meant leaving the work. They didn’t understand me, my circumstances. Pinkerton thought I was making a choice I wouldn’t have made. We hadn’t had time to explain ourselves, me to him or him to me. I put my head in my hands.
He went on, “And that upset me. Deeply, I admit. I didn’t want to sacrifice someone as extraordinary as you for something as commonplace as love.”
I had to smile, a little bit, through my tears. “Is it so commonplace?”
“Happens every day.”
“So you separated us because—”
“Because you could do more good apart than together. You’d ingratiated yourself with Mrs. Greenhow; you didn’t need him there anymore. You both begged me to send you where you were needed. You remember?”
“I remember.”
“I took you both at your word.”
I nodded once, soberly. Tim had ridden off with no objections. Sad to leave me but dedicated to his duty. He had died in service of the country we both loved. A long and happy life would have been a better fate, but there were a score of worse ones.
Meeting his gaze at last, the few feet of stale air between us already feeling like untold miles, I said, “Boss, I’m sorry.”
“So am I, Kate.”
“When you know where Mortenson is, you know where to find me.”
“I’d hoped to convince you to come back to Chicago.”
“I’m not ready,” I said.
“I can stay a few days—”
“No, you can’t. You’re needed. You’ve already been away too long, traveling all this way, just to tell me. Don’t misunderstand. I’m glad you did, but you need to go. What I need from you is time.”
“How much?”
“That depends. The only case I’ll work is Mortenson’s case. You let me know when it’s time for me to start the operation.”
He opened his mouth to say something else but then closed it and looked at me, really looked. I had forgotten the strength of that powerful gaze, of having his full attention focused on me. I wondered what he saw there. Whatever it was made him shake his head once, like a horse shaking off a fly, and relax into his chair.
We didn’t sit and converse as comfortably as we had before, but it was at least something. We talked late into the night, about Mortenson and his whereabouts and what was known and unknown so far. By the time the sun touched the morning sky, I was determined that victory was within our grasp. One more clue would be enough, if it was the right one. It was just a question of when.
When he rose to leave, he said, “And Kate? If you want revenge…”
I braced myself for a moral lesson, but I was surprised at what came instead.
“I don’t blame you one whit.”
Then he was gone, leaving me spent and amazed and burning with new purpose.
Chapter Twenty-Eight
The Case Begins
Two weeks later, I had another visitor, and I didn’t realize how desperately I missed her until she appeared.
Hattie stepped down from the rattletrap coach like a butterfly alighting, the scarlet lining of her traveling cloak winking bright as flame against the town’s muddy backdrop. Smeared with dirt and plainly exhausted, she was still the most beautiful woman on earth, as always.
I flung my arms wide, and she stepped into them. We both cried tears of joy and hung on for dear life.
We caught up quickly. She had been released from Castle Thunder at last in a prisoner exchange, forbidden from reentering the Confederate States, as if she would ever want to. She was thinner than she’d been, but she wore it well. It gave her a new air of seriousness, of substance, with little resemblance to the brash would-be actress who had first set foot in the Pinkerton Agency office.
I told her why I’d come to Bright Hope, of all places, and gave her a quick tour of the town, such as it was. We relished the illusion of normalcy for a while, chatting merrily like other women must, with little urgency. It was a luxury I wasn’t sure we had ever enjoyed before.
We sat at the table in the town’s only restaurant for hours, downing more steins of ale than ladies strictly should, making it clear to all around us that we were not ladies. The German brewer a few blocks down who supplied the Golden Goose did excellent work: his ale was strong, with a pleasant, bitter tang. There was intense interest in us—I credited Hattie, as I was a fixture already—but we made it clear we did not want further company, huddling our heads together, walling ourselves off.
As we pushed away our empty plates, Hattie sighed with contentment. At last, I spoke up on the topic I had avoided. “I know you didn’t find me yourself.”
She caught my meaning immediately and took it in stride. “No, I did not.”
“His idea?”
“No, my idea, but he made it possible. I only had to ask him three times a day for eight days before he said yes.”
I couldn’t blame Pinkerton for giving in to her; though I had told him my conditions, he would know I would enjoy seeing Hattie again, seeing for myself that she was all right. “And what was your idea?”
“I needed to see you. To talk about what happened. Because I don’t think either of us knows how to get past it otherwise.”
I thought of her with Tim, just the two of them against the world in Richmond. They had played husband and wife, just as he and I had. I hadn’t thought about how she had lost him too, and I wondered if we missed him in the same way. I said, “Did you… Did the two of you…”
“No,” she said, but there was no surprise or shock that I would ask her. We were professionals; wild conjecture was merely our business. She smiled fondly, remembering. “He talked about you all the time. My Lord. He kept saying, When this is over, when this is over. He couldn’t wait to hop the twig. You must have been so in love.”
“For all the good it does me now,” I said and raised the glass to my lips again, only to find it empty. I signaled for the next round.
She sat in silence, and I felt the need to reach out and pat her hand. It had been a lifetime since Chicago, since we’d rescued Carlotta Caruso, since we’d begun to understand each other. Before the war, a war that still raged but seemed so far away from this place.
“Hattie, we knew what we were getting into, didn’t we? Being spies? Maybe I never should have hired you. Maybe you’d be better off if I hadn’t. Probably married with a bevy of babies by now.”
“I wouldn’t want that. This is better. I only regret…”
“Regret what?”
She began crying then, in earnest, and the men around us began to stare—some openly, some with more tact. I shot a withering glare at the worst offenders, but there was little else I could do. I wouldn’t tell Hattie to be quiet; I wanted her to be as loud as she could be, for both of us.
“I blame myself,” said Hattie.
“For what?”
“If I’d talked to Mortenson, maybe he would have withdrawn his testimony about Tim, found a way to help get him free. Taken it back.”
It broke my heart that Hattie thought she could have done something to change that monster’s actions. He was the one who’d been responsible for Tim’s death. Him and only him. I was done blaming anyone else. I knew Pinkerton felt himself partly responsible, but even his part, I had forgiven.
“Hattie, you couldn’t. There was no way. You didn’t even know he was in Richmond.”
“Still,” she said, her voice thin and weak, “if I’d asked the right questions, if I’d been face-to-face with him… I could have offered him something he wanted.” She smoothed her plaid skirt over and over again. “I would have done anything.”
“I know the feeling.”
We rose from the table and embraced, holding on for a long time, sharing our lasting pain. I didn’t feel better afterward, exactly, but at least I didn’t feel worse.
• • •
Two weeks after Hattie left, I received my first and last telegram in Bright Hope.
THE CASE BEGINS
Frugal as ever, he had not signed his name, knowing I would intuit all that was necessary.
It was a matter of minutes to pack my suitcase and settle my bill with the hotel and not much more than that to bid farewell to Mrs. Borowski. It was a short walk to the station. I wasted no time. The train to Chicago only came past Bright Hope once a day, and I was on it.
Upon arrival in Chicago, I went to the office, letting myself feel like a stranger. It was too hard to think of myself when I was last there, so innocent despite all the deception that had been my life for years. I did not look at the faces of the operatives to see whether they were the same men or new ones. I drew no comparisons. The costume closet, no longer Tim’s, I could not even acknowledge.
Seated across from Pinkerton at his big, oaken desk, as I’d been so many times, I prepared myself for a wholly new undertaking.
He began, “A bank teller’s been murdered in Cincinnati.”
“Poor man.” But there was a tension under my sympathy; he knew the life I cared most about, and if the two didn’t intersect, our conversation would be short indeed. I had come too great a distance, in all ways, for just another bank job.
“In the commission of a robbery. Successful.”
“How much was taken?”
“One hundred thirty thousand.”
I let out a low whistle. It was the largest sum I’d ever heard gone in a single stroke.
“So he had the vault open, and someone murdered him, then just emptied it all out?”
“Precisely. Struck with a hammer, back of the head.”
“Poor man,” I said again.
“Any suspects?”
“One. And I’d like you to go after him.”
“You know I’m only willing to—”
“It’s him, Warne.”
With no hesitation, I said, “I’m on the job.”
“He’ll be hard to find,” said Pinkerton. “He knows our ways. He knows how not to leave evidence. And now he has money.”
“Most criminals slip up eventually. Weren’t you the one who taught me that?”
“He’s not most criminals.”
“I know.” I looked down at the scar on the edge of the desk, the deep cut in the wood I’d first noticed on the day Jack Mortenson was shot by counterfeiters so long ago. I had seen his blood. I knew he was human. “I’m not most operatives either, am I?”
“If anyone can do it, Warne, you can.”
He reached into a drawer and laid my pistol on the desk matter-of-factly, with no fanfare. I retrieved it the same way. We did not say good-bye.
After only hours in Chicago, with the same suitcase never unpacked, I was gone again. I rode the night train to Cincinnati and committed myself to the investigation with a grim enthusiasm.
In the course of a few days, I visited the bank, talked to the manager, discussed the matter with the police, even viewed the body of the poor slain teller, who’d had no family to claim him. In a way, it was like any other case: I could only approach it methodically, one step at a time, and chip away at the lies and confusion and secrets until I reached the core truth.
It was a sim
ple bank job in most ways, similar to countless other crimes of its type. The main differences were the fatality—most robberies of this type were perpetrated by masked men who left the bank employees alive—and the fact that a single man appeared to have taken on the entire job himself. No accomplices had been spotted, let alone named. He just seemed to walk into the bank one day, kill a teller, and make off with over a hundred thousand dollars. But of course, it couldn’t be that simple. The things that looked the simplest were often the most complex. I knew enough to dig deep.
But it was hard. The first week passed, then the second. I returned to my hotel every night dizzy with impatience. There were days when I lay down sobbing with frustration when promising information lost its promise. There were more bad days than good. I only kept on because I knew what this man had taken from me and what I owed him in return.
I began to canvass the neighborhood around the bank in ever-widening circles, not skipping a single door. I spoke with clerks and lawyers, grocers and musicians, bartenders and security guards. At last, my questioning bore fruit: the watchmaker who had recently opened a shop in the storefront neighboring the bank had disappeared the day after the robbery. The timing was suspicious, and I began to search for the watchmaker, looking for signs that he’d been the accomplice no one had suspected.
For a second and third time, I returned to the Cincinnati morgue, hardly as large or as clean as the Cook County one I knew better, and I was again rewarded with more information. There were two unidentified bodies, bearing some resemblance to each other, with sparse brown hair, broad shoulders, and thick waists. It was hard to compare their faces, as both had been dispatched with a single shot to the back of the skull, but the similarity of the wounds was another clue I sorely needed. One was the dead watchmaker, William Hudson. Further inquiries revealed that the other was his brother, Carl Hudson, who had not been reported either dead or missing and whose last known place of residence was a row house near the harbor in Baltimore. It seemed likely that the watchmaker had been in on the robbery, slain so he could tell no tales, and his brother an unlucky casualty.
It was the slimmest of leads, but it was the only one I had, and I would not fail to follow it. I did not tell the authorities. I went in person, and I went armed.
Girl in Disguise Page 26
