THE GHOST DETECTIVE: Boston

by Thomas Kennedy Lowenstein

  Mrs. Atlee was looking out the window. She cleared her throat.

  “We should get you a TV,” Sam said, looking around for a place to put one.

  “I can’t decide about that,” Mrs. Atlee said. “It would kill the boredom, I suppose. But it might kill me, too.”

  “You’ll need more books, then,” Sam said. “I can go to the bookstore for you.”

  “Library,” Mrs. Atlee said. “That way you can return them when I croak.”

  Sam played with the hem of his jacket.

  “Books are fine,” Mrs. Atlee said, turning her eyes to Sam. “But what I really need is a cigarette. A cigarette and some gossip.”

  “I don’t have either of those,” Sam said.

  “Really? Cigarettes you can buy, and everyone has gossip. Tell me about your girlfriend.”

  “Don’t have one,” he said quietly.

  “Ahh, so you are lonely. I thought so. Well, you’ll have to work on that. I need my gossip.” Mrs. Atlee coughed.

  Sam laughed. “Ok,” he said. “I’ll add that to my list of reasons to get one.”

  “Yes, you do that, Sam. Make an old woman happy. But come come, there must be something in there. When was your last date?”

  Sam blushed. “Umm, last week, I guess.”

  “Yes? Ok, tell me about it. Stop making me pry.”

  “Right. I apologize.” Sam leaned back in his chair and smiled at her. “Well, let’s see. I went out with the daughter of a friend of my father’s.”

  “Was she pretty?”

  “Yeah, she was. She was.”

  “Well?”

  “Well what?”

  “I’m prying again, Sam. This won’t do. Did you get her into bed?”

  “No,” Sam said, blushing again.

  Mrs. Atlee laughed. “Well, come on. Was she fascinating? Did you fall madly in love?”

  “No,” Sam said. “She was very nice. I was nice. We had a fine time.”

  “Oh, that’s too bad. You make it sound so boring.”

  “Boring? Not really. I mean, she was nice, we had a good time. And I went home hoping—I don’t know. Hoping that I would like her more the more I thought about her, you know? Trying to like her more so I wouldn’t feel lonely, and that only made it worse.”

  “Ahh. So I gather it wasn’t earth-shaking.”

  “No, I guess not.”

  “What does she do with herself?”

  “She’s a lawyer. Like me.”

  “Oh. Not spicy enough for you.”

  “Spicy? I’m not sure I’m spicy.”

  “Hmm. Really? Well, that might be the problem. You are, in there, I can tell. Maybe you need an earth-shaker to bring it out. So, did you ask her out again?”

  “No. She was fine, I just—it just seems too much, to get entangled with someone, you know? Unless you just—unless you have no choice, you know?”

  Mrs. Atlee sighed and shifted under her blankets. “I suppose,” she said. “Though I always liked to be entangled. As much as possible.”

  “Yeah,” Sam said. He felt stupid that he was complaining to a sick old woman about being lonely.

  Mrs. Atlee smiled at him. “Well, you will have to do better on the gossip front,” she said.

  Sam smiled, too. “I’ll try,” he said. “I can tell you some office gossip if you’d like.”

  “Ahh, the love lives of lawyers. Yes, do tell.”

  “Well, it hasn’t been confirmed, but rumor has it one of the associates, this very smooth guy named Taylor, slept with one of the paralegals. One of the young paralegals.”

  “Scandal,” Mrs. Atlee said. “Go on.”

  They heard someone coming up the stairs. The door opened without a knock and Robin leaned in.

  “Just checking in, Mother,” she said. “Oh, Sam, it is you. I wondered whose car was in my driveway.”

  “Hello,” Mrs. Atlee said.

  “Hi, Robin,” Sam said. “I was on my way home and thought I’d look in.”

  “Isn’t that nice,” Robin said. “Is everything ok?”

  “Just fine, Dear,” Mrs. Atlee said.

  “Good. Well, just checking in. I’ll be working in the study all afternoon, so if you need me, that’s where I’ll be.”

  “Very well, Dear.”

  “Mrs. Driscoll will be up in a little while with your lunch.”

  “Thank you, Dear.”

  Robin stood with her hand on the doorknob, considering. “Sam,” she said, too loud for the small room. “Day off today?”

  “No,” he answered. “Not really. I just had some errands out this way.”

  “Ahh, I see,” Robin said. “Well, don’t tire Mother out, she needs her rest.” She closed the door.

  Sam and Mrs. Atlee listened to her descend the stairs.

  “She even had to flirt with her father for attention,” Mrs. Atlee said. “That’s why she’s so charming.”

  They laughed.

  “I suppose I should put in an appearance at the office today,” Sam said. Realizing as he spoke that he would just go home and read. Or watch TV. “I’ll come by again and read to you, if you want.”

  “Yes, I’d like that,” Mrs. Atlee said, craning her neck to look at him. “After work some evening? I’ll look forward to it.”

  “Yeah,” Sam said. “Can I get you anything else before I go, other than water?” he asked.

  “No, thank you,” Mrs. Atlee said.

  Sam filled the glass again and stood by the bed.

  Mrs. Atlee smiled at him, her skin tight, her eyes large above swollen purple exhaustion bags. “Good boy,” she said. “And bring me a cigarette when you come, won’t you?”

  Chapter Five

  McParland, 1889

  James McParland felt old. He was sitting in a high-backed chair in the lobby of the Wormley Hotel in Washington, D.C., a folder of letters and newspaper articles in his lap and a glass two-fingers full of whiskey on a table next to him. He was there to set something right which meant he had played a part in making it wrong and had therefore made mistakes, which usually arose out of too much excitement or hope or losing your priorities to urges for sex or vengeance or fame or money and losing your priorities felt young and stupid at twenty or forty or sixty. Now McParland was going to fix some youthful mistakes that he had made when we wasn’t that young, and that made him think how many, many years had passed since he was young. So he felt old.

  He sipped from the glass of whiskey and told himself that this particular mistake had been unwitting or at least complicated, that he’d had noble intentions. Such things as money and fame, McParland accused himself, his eyes narrowed in a way he’d taught himself so he’d look, at worst, thoughtful when an unchecked emotion threatened to reach his face. Even if it were true that Frances Gowen, who he was in that hotel to see, had lied, had manipulated him and many others, what did that tell him about himself? Stupid people and the over-excited, the rushing, were easily manipulated, and McParland knew he’d never been stupid. So there it was.

  He closed his eyes. So what? He had been in battle, he had done his work, and Gowen had lied and needed to pay for it.

  He thought of the hard miners and their dried-up wives; of the horrific trips deep into the earth; of men who had quaked with fear upon meeting him. He looked at the complacent men around him in the hotel and thought of soft, plump skin, and felt old. Truth was, what he was going to do wouldn’t really fix anything, and he knew that, too.

  He sat and sipped, ruffling the pages in the folder he held, thinking, in a few seconds, of his years in America: years of crowded tenements and pointless jobs—circus barker, stock clerk, deckhand on a Lake Michigan freighter, coachman, night watchman (that job had cost him a piece of frostbitten foot), liquor store owner; years that culminated in the moment his suspicion, held tightly for years even through vile, cold nights when, hungry and broke, he’d tried to dislodge it, that he was destined for better things than the other Irish immigrants he’d come over with or had lived an
d worked with in New York or Chicago, had been confirmed. It had happened on his first day working for the Pinkerton Detective Agency in Chicago as a spotter on trolleys, watching a heavy and sweaty conductor palm fares. I have you now, you poor Mick bastard, McParland had thought, struck by how easy it was to blend into a crowd and watch a man, even a man who was trying not to be watched. And then, with a start, he’d realized what he’d come to America for: to be the greatest detective of his time. Each job he’d had, he could see now, had served an important purpose: from deck hands he’d learned the lake, from drivers he knew the roads, and among the ladies or anyone who needed a cheap sell he had the persistence of the circus barker. If you could listen to people and find the points in your life that corresponded, however slightly, with theirs, you could be anything to anyone. Soldier, banker, snob, thief, murderer. Anything.

  He’d gone eagerly to the Pinkerton office to file his report on the fare-stealing conductor, aware that the report would cost the man, who in all likelihood had a family to feed, his job. But this wasn’t informing, he told himself; he was a scrub brush for his own people, he would cleanse the dishonest, the bacteria, from amongst them. Wasn’t that better than selling them liquor? Or just scraping out his own living from some meaningless trade.

  He was twenty-seven years old, handsome, smarter than anyone he’d met, and now had his calling.

  At night, sitting in his small apartment smoking by candle light, he would sometimes think of his childhood: the friends of his father put off their land, the hateful faces of the informants, the spies. But this was America, he’d tell himself; he wasn’t battling his father’s friends on behalf of English landlords, he was spotting corrupt trolley drivers who deserved to be prosecuted and whose families had only them to blame for whatever happened next. That was all. If his people were to make their way in the new world they would need to learn the new rules, to make honest gains.

  He worked diligently for the Pinkerton Agency, spotting on the trolleys, and was not surprised when, not even eighteen months later, he was called in to meet with Mr. Pinkerton himself.

  “Your evaluation reports are quite strong,” Pinkerton said, soft in his wool suit and crisp shirt, with his gold cufflinks, polished desk, and silver cigar box almost glowing in the late afternoon sun.

  “Thank you, sir,” McParland said.

  Pinkerton clipped a couple of cigars and asked questions as they smoked: Was he a drinking man? From time to time. But he could hold his liquor? Yes, sir. Was he Catholic? Indeed, sir. Married? No, he hadn’t met the fortunate young lady yet. Pinkerton laughed at that, puffed for a while, and asked:

  “Tell me, McParland. Are you familiar with the Molly Maguires?”

  “Yes, sir,” McParland said.

  Pinkerton nodded and puffed, considering one of his cufflinks. “Go home and write down everything you know about them,” he said. “And be quick about it.”

  “Yes, sir,” McParland said, squinting through smoke, thinking: write? It was one thing he was not so good at.

  On his way back to his room he stopped to buy a pen, ink, and paper; in his room he brewed coffee, lit a cigarette, and assembled the writing instruments on his shaky table, staring at them as the cigarette smoke drifted into his eyes. Don’t hesitate, he told himself. Attack. So he started, wielding the pen awkwardly, wiping ink from his fingertips with a handkerchief:

  The Mollies were named after a murdered peasant. They started in Ireland years ago. They were a Catholic society made to protect peasants from Protestant landlords. Few or none of the educiated or Repectable Catholics ever belonged. Constant broils and evils and even high handed murder was going on between the Mollies and their antagonists. Houses sacked and churches burned. The Mollies resolved to take from those who had abundance and give to the poor who were then dying by Hundreth with hunger. The leader or Molly went to the storekeeper provided he knew he was pretty well off and demanded of him the amount levyed on him in the shape of meal flour and General groceries.

  In the United States the Mollies organized in the Mining Districts in a more formidable force than ever but instead of performing the simple Acts of taking from the rich and giving to the poor they commenced hostilities something after the fashion of the Ku Klux Klann of the Southern states of this country but as they had no Negroes to kill they commenced by shooting down Landlords Agents Bailiffs or any offending neighbor. High-handed murder prevailed everywhere through the country where this Society existed.

  For a night, a day, and another night he wrote and re-wrote, pulling his hair, blotting ink. He couldn’t be sure what Pinkerton wanted him for specifically but certainly for an ally, even a zealot, so he wrote that way. He’d never written so much in his life; he’d have wagered he couldn’t. But he put in everything he knew about Irish immigrant society, about unions, railroads, coal miners. When he finished the sun was coming up. He scratched his bristly face. He read the report over again, a cigarette pinched between his inky fingers, and added:

  I presume by the time you have got this read you will get tired as most of it or infact all of it may not be very Interesting to you. Nevertheless it is a brief sketch of Irish Societyism.

  He shaved, changed collars, and went downstairs to the rooming house dining room in an expansive mood. He drank strong coffee and ate a roll, glancing at the tired men at the table around him. I have arrived, gentlemen, he wanted to say. God bless you all.

  In Pinkerton’s office he handed over the painstakingly clean final copy of his report and sat with his back straight as Pinkerton read it. Look clear-eyed, he told himself, as if you see hell itself coming along the road and don’t care a damn.

  When Pinkerton finished reading he looked up, studying McParland for a long minute.

  “Fine work,” he said. “It even shows a talent for rhetoric.”

  “Yes, sir,” McParland said, as if he had no opinion about his own talents.

  Pinkerton put the report on his desk. “Yes,” he said. “I have a job for you, McParland, outside Philadelphia. It may be the most important case this agency has ever had. You will need to leave Chicago indefinitely. You will leave your identity here and if discovered you will certainly be killed. You will be dealing with as vicious a bunch of cutthroats as exists. You will have to degrade yourself that your race might be saved. And, if you survive, you will be the greatest detective in America. Are you interested in such an assignment?”

  “Born for it, sir,” McParland said.

  Pinkerton smiled and took a sheet of paper and wrote a brief letter to Franklin Gowen, President of the Philadelphia and Reading Railroad and the Coal and Iron Company.

  “Very good,” he said, sealing the letter and handing it to McParland. “Go home now. Rest. Put your affairs in order. You will leave for Philadelphia in three days’ time.”

  With that, Pinkerton offered his hand.

  “Thank you, sir,” McParland said.

  “May God bless you,” Pinkerton said.

  Three days later McParland had boarded the train for Philadelphia, Pinkerton’s letter in his breast pocket:

  He’s our man. Strong enough to bear the heavy labor of the mines, gregarious, a man who can handle his drink. Unmarried, no children. Enough of an Irishman to pass as a Mollie and enough of an “American” to keep faith with Pinkerton and civilization.

  When he arrived in Philadelphia he went directly to Gowen’s office. Even in the excitement of fulfilling his destiny he formed an instinctive distaste for Gowen—there was too much of the landlord in him, of the soft man accumulating property from other peoples’ labor—but chose to think that the law must be upheld, whoever wrote it.

  “So, Pinkerton has found me my superagent,” said Gowen, a clean-shaven, fleshy man with a broad, shiny forehead. The letter from Pinkerton lay on his gleaming desk. “A trustworthy Irishman.”

  “Imagine that,” McParland answered, smiling.

  They shook hands. Gowen gave him a file of newspaper clippings, maps, and biograp
hical sketches. For two days McParland sat again at a small table, reading, memorizing, and then was traveling again, looking out at gray, craggy country and twisted patches of forest, at the red glow of the coal furnaces and the hunched, blackened figures occasionally visible. He considered his final instructions from Pinkerton, handed to him by Gowen: You are to remain in the field until every cutthroat has paid with his life for the lives so cruelly taken. Gowen as landlord. The word “traitor” came to him again. But no, he told himself, the Mollies are savages and anything is justified in getting rid of them.

  He disembarked in coal country in shabby clothes and a slouch hat with a pipe tucked in the band and set off to study Schuylkill County, sleeping in sagging rooms on thin beds, eating cheap suppers with quiet, coal-blackened men—machines, he’d thought, with light visible only in their eyes and only sometimes. Introducing himself as McKenna, he’d tell the men stories, make them laugh, and they’d talk to him, often coming to his room after supper for a drink. He wrote down everything they said about the Mollies and sent reports to Gowen. One name came up often: Pat Dormer, who owned a tavern in Pottsville. McParland went there. On a crisp night with a bright moon he walked with another boarder to Dormer’s place and suggested they go in for a drink.

  His companion scoffed. “Nah,” he said. “As you value your life, don’t go in there. It’s Pat Dormer’s place.”

  “Dormer?” McParland asked. “Who’s that?”

  “Big body-man of the Mollies,” his companion said, wiping his nose, his thin face red. “A giant. And a bad man, Mr. McKenna. Stay clear of that place.”

  “Indeed,” McParland said, nodding, thinking: almost there.

  Later in the evening, alone, he’d returned to Dormer’s place and gone in: wood floor, tables crowded with drinking men. In the far corner a man played the fiddle, fast. Some men were dancing, their steps shaking the floor.

  Here we are, McParland thought, sitting at the bar, a friendly smile on his face as he took in the room. One quick drink to ease in; another to settle.

  “A drink for the fiddler,” he called out. “And for the dancers as well!”