Murder in the City of Liberty

by Rachel McMillan

  “This is a line of police questioning. We have to entertain it. Think like them as we continue to figure out everything that is happening. You already tried to take things into your own hands. Now we’re two steps back because they’re looking for a concrete reason that Bricker would attack Nate and then die.”

  “Because he was prejudiced! Because he had horrible views that would lead many people to violence!” Hamish slammed his hand on the side of the desk. The pencil broke in half with the force.

  Reggie’s breath caught in surprise. “You don’t have to yell at me about it!”

  “No . . . you have enough to worry about. Picking out a wedding dress. Nice veil. Cake testing.”

  “You’re not being fair. Wish you had taken the phone call. You could have gotten angry with Reid and spared me. He’s being helpful. He’s telling us some things about our friend so that we can be aware. We should use this as an opportunity.”

  Hamish nodded under her glare. They stood off a moment silently, Reggie wondering if the city had changed him. She wanted Hamish to crawl out of his turtle shell, to stand up for himself. But she didn’t recognize his tone or the darkness in his light blue eyes.

  “I should go.”

  Reggie held up her wrist. “It’s still lunchtime. What are you doing?”

  His hand was shaking a little and he flexed his fingers. He noticed her watching him and tucked it in his pocket. “I need a w-walk.”

  “You’re all right? Do you want me to come with you?”

  “I’ll be back.”

  He left the door open. She listened to his footfalls fade in the hallway. She retrieved her Journal of Independence from her top drawer.

  She had boiled an egg and changed a lightbulb and stayed out after midnight. She had opened her own bank account and written a check, and she even owned property (well, half owned her property with Hamish in their office and bought with help from her father). But she knew there was a line somewhere. Impressed with pencil from many nights when the summer wind tousled the blinds and the starlight was a mural for the Bunker Hill Monument she could view from her open window.

  Make Hamish happy. She wove her fingernail around it. That shy, stuttering Canadian kid who showed up with suave Luca Valari and was tossed into a life of betrayal and crime.

  Reggie thought she could make him happy. He made her happy. That goodness about him and the innocent way he saw people and not their status or the figures attached to their names.

  Reggie returned the journal to the desk. She worked the ring on her finger midway to the knuckle, then finally off for a moment, holding it to the light through the window. It was beautiful, sure. But her hand felt lighter without it. She studied the groove it had made from its near constant wear. She set it down on the desktop a moment, her hand moving toward the pendant at her neck. Spira, Spera.

  “You need to make a decision, Reggie,” she whispered amidst the familiar sounds funneling through the window, ticking the clock of her routine. Amidst the nagging anger that tied Hamish to his cousin. She picked up the ring and put it back on her finger, then opened the file of their case notes, tucked a curl behind her ear, and got back to the matter at hand.

  * * *

  No wonder Hugo idolized the architecture of Notre-Dame, the breadth and grandeur of Paris’s buildings, the cornerstones of the city. For while the streets he loved ran rampant with the blood of a student revolution he witnessed every day in his pursuit of his favorite scenes, so did the city stand strong. Hamish thought there was no firmer foundation than the brick of the Old North, no sentinel that more anchored the North End—and, indeed, the whole of Boston proper—than its steeple. He couldn’t think of it without thinking of Nate’s ties to revolution.

  Revolution. Familiar to Hugo too.

  It was among the saints and monsters and stones that Quasimodo found the community saving him from the horrors of the outside world. And, for Hamish, the Old North Church signified a place of peace barred from the ugliness of the outside world. His nation’s mounting war, a city that revered Revere while some of its residents targeted men like Errol Parker and Nate. For as long as there was the Old North Church, there was an immediate quiet.

  The church was open to everyone during the day. A reprieve from daily life. He didn’t need Hal, a church caretaker and longtime client of Nate’s, for admittance. It was for everyone at this time of day. He didn’t want to creep up to the top on the circular stairs that wound his heartbeat to a frantic pace and quickened his pulse. Sure, from up in the tower amidst the change-ringing bells (the same bells that had lived in Notre-Dame in Paris, or so Nate told him), he could see the entire city, its people colorful dots. He creaked the small door open and slid over on the slick wood, staring up at the arched windows and dripping chandeliers. His father told him that when he first arrived in Toronto from Italy, St. James Cathedral held the pieces of his heart that the backbreaking, knuckle-splitting work at the roundhouse threatened. The light he thought might be extinguished, the constant anxiety of learning a second language evaporated in the grand sanctuary in a pew over which bellowing organ pipes stood sentry high in their rafters.

  It was Nate who told him that the same change-ringing bells in residence at Notre-Dame and in the Old North Church could also be found in Toronto at St. James. Hamish scrunched his eyes shut and recalled the latter’s clear peal over King Street’s foot and trolley traffic.

  When he opened them, a shaft of sunlight had spread like an outstretched hand over the nave to the transept, setting the windows ablaze with sunlight. Hamish blinked three times, adjusted his shoulders, tucked his slightly trembling fingers into his palm, and thought. Sure, his brain could betray him when the anxiety that crept over its edges filled it with a million worries large and small. Worries uncontained and grand, imagined scenarios that had little root in reality but seemed to Hamish’s vulnerable brain like a wave of a burdened certainty.

  Hamish rubbed his temples.

  Was Nate’s secrecy because he felt guilty and responsible for what was happening in his neighborhood—housing touted to be affordable that was being carelessly constructed? Why would Hyatt and Price allow one of their top architects to align themselves with the project, even if in a roundabout way?

  He wondered if it was sacrilegious to think about these things in God’s house. His dad would tell him anything to do with justice for the least of these was God’s business: in His house and everywhere.

  Nate always said there were secrets that were his to keep. But he was always for the underdog. The North End Robin Hood who bartered services under the noses of the wealthy.

  He had put off peeking behind the curtain of Nate’s office since his hospitalization, even though he showed up at Nate’s room every night and pulled a chair across the linoleum. Hamish kept his friend appraised of everything happening in the North End: from the grocer's almanac to the rise in cannoli prices. The nurse often told Hamish that Nate was unconscious on account of his head injury and probably couldn't hear, but Hamish ignored her. The night of Nate’s attack, Reid had done them the favor of taking their word that there was nothing of interest left at Nate’s office. He wondered why Reid was so accommodating: first letting them into the office, then giving Reggie updates on the investigation. He scanned his brain and decided the officer fancied her. There was no other reason he would let them carry on the investigation.

  Hamish looked down at the right hand resting on his knee. It was stable for the moment. He remembered how Nate withstood Bricker’s words, calm and even. Not letting anyone see him rattled.

  He left the church, standing to the side of the front door as a couple, smiling, strolled in.

  Hamish assumed they were pursuing the history and not the silence.

  Maybe both.

  He ran into Rosa Leoni steps from the office.

  “My friend took your advice and isn’t moving to the new place.” They had run into him in passing the week before, and Hamish worried he had been too has
ty in his response, but apparently it had set in.

  Hamish smiled. It was something he hoped to hear after telling her in no uncertain terms that she should stay clear away. “Good. Thanks for trusting me.” He would make it his mission to ensure everyone knew what he did about Hyatt and Price’s intended property.

  “She’s moving away, Hamish. Out of the North End. To Jamaica Plain.”

  “I’m sorry.”

  “There’s nothing here. Nowhere for her to live.” Rosa’s eyes were wide and dewy looking up at him. “I told her that would change. That you and Nate would make it change.”

  “I don’t know if I can make it change. Or Nate.”

  “Mother went to see him this morning. He just lies there. Doesn’t say anything. She said the worst part is his eyes aren’t scintillante. You know the way you look at Nate and he is always, always full of light?”

  Scintillante. Sparkling.

  “I will be by later. To check on him. He’ll be all right, you know.”

  “Anyway, I wanted you to know that I appreciate your trying.” She reached out and stole Hamish’s hand. He startled at the sudden gesture. “You do so much for us. Mama is so fond of you. I am so fond of you.”

  Hamish squeezed Rosa’s hand and offered her a half-moon smile. “Thanks, Rosa. That means a lot. Your mother really welcomed me to the city when I first moved here.” Moved here. To the North End. To Nate. He was always at the office. Gave everything to the neighborhood. It was his livelihood, sure, but it was also his heartbeat.

  “I was thinking maybe some night you might want to go dancing.”

  He thought about Nate and Mrs. Leoni: his teasing her that her kitchen wasn’t kosher. Informing her that it was more than ingredients. She would need to have a rabbi bless the stove and the counters and the dishes and the flour and the sink.

  “I . . . Look, Rosa. I have to get back to the office.” He looked down at his wrist in a show of checking the time.

  “You’re not wearing a watch.” Rosa laughed, but her black eyes shaded with disappointment.

  “Ha! You’re quick. I . . . I’ve got to go.” He gently let go of her hand and jogged the rest of the way, past the Pierce-Hichborn House and the Revere House on his rambling old square. Taking the flight of stairs two steps at a time and landing in sight line of Reggie.

  “Do you want to hear something stupid?”

  “Always,” Reggie said.

  “The night we first went to Fiske’s Wharf.”

  “The night I almost drowned?” Reggie raised an eyebrow, a signal they were on temporarily sure footing.

  “I didn’t want to bring up an unpleasant—”

  “Where I was bobbing up and down like a fish?”

  “Well, yes, but—”

  Reggie’s smile was tentative. “Where my foot was caught and I struggled like an agitated eel?”

  Hamish grinned. “Yes. That. An eel. Something or someone got us out of the office.”

  “A distraction?”

  Hamish nodded. “And Nate would have gone home by then. That was before he was living and breathing his files and folders.”

  “So someone knew that with all of us cleared out they might have free rein in his office space?”

  Hamish shrugged. “A long shot, but a thought.”

  Reggie was up from behind the desk and dashing past him in the direction of the open office door. “What?” she said without looking back at him. “You were the one to teach me how to pick a lock. I picked Dirk Foster’s. Darling Nate won’t mind.”

  * * *

  A hairpin click later, they were inside Nate’s office. Reggie looked around the medium-sized space. There was so much of their friend in the neat surfaces of his desk and blotter. Reggie decided whether they found anything or not she would break in again and again to ensure that every surface was wiped spotless for his eventual return. Because he would return. She knew he would.

  There was a Red Sox pennant on the wall and a picture of Nate and his bubbe on his desk, Nate squinting into the sun. Framed on the opposite side of his typewriter and telephone was a sketch of a man on a horse: tri-corner hat and queue, horse bounding into the night, muscles rippling with careful deft precision in plaster. Paul Revere. The statue that Nate believed would someday honor the Prado, that large space behind the Old North Church, cloistered by redbrick walls, once home to tenement buildings torn down to allow for public space.

  Hamish leafed through files, his long fingers working paper like the grooves of an accordion. “There’s so much here and yet nothing. Something’s been bothering Nate. His aversion to talking about Pete Kelly’s development cannot be his involvement in it. But he had to know something we don’t.”

  Hamish paused a moment as Reggie ran her finger reverently over the framed print of Revere.

  “I’ve lived with the man for a long time,” Hamish continued. “He anticipates everything. Down to an empty milk jug. I’ve noticed him shaking a canister of Ovaltine to ensure that it doesn’t reach below the half point before he replenishes it. And he never forgets a birthday. Even his third cousin. He is so precise in everything.”

  Reggie followed Hamish’s line of sight around the office. “Not like Luca with his long memory.”

  Hamish shook his head, looked at her straight on. “Nate leaves notes. He has two calendars: one in the kitchen, one in the sitting room. I am sure he has one in his bedroom too. And if someone found . . .” Hamish paused, eyes turning intently to a file in his hand. Reggie grimaced. He was trying to hide it, but Reggie had known him long enough to anticipate an episode. He continued to navigate paper trails with his left hand while his right hand trembled softly at his side. He was blinking several times a minute and breathing in a calculated meter. Every moment or so, he would leave the file on the edge of the desk, affix two fingers under his suspender and count.

  “But he wouldn’t want anyone to find anything,” Reggie said. “He needs to be the middleman. People trust him. If anyone was ever in need of the secretary Vaughan wants me to hire for our office, it’s Nate.”

  Hamish looked up, his glasses over the bridge of his nose. “What?”

  “Oh. Yes. Vaughan thinks we should get a secretary. To make everything look proper. Don’t worry. I’ll talk him out of it.”

  Hamish blew a long string of breath. “They must have told Nate what was happening and he refused to listen because he didn’t want to be a part of it. Because Nate would never be involved in this. There are so many files at home, Reg. He has been bringing his work home. Maybe he thought . . . You’ve heard his rants about the Prado and how they destroyed housing. He’s really sensitive about bad housing for the residents here. Pete Kelly’s property is a nightmare.”

  “So Pete Kelly was the lesser of two evils. Sure, he moved things in and out of the black market, but at least the families in the North End wouldn’t be subjected to unsafe conditions?”

  Hamish was leafing through a book. “His appointments book. Look.” He slid it across the desk. “Look. Nothing! There is absolutely nothing here!” Hamish’s kneecap hit the desk.

  “So you’re going to break his furniture?”

  “Shhh! Reggie! Listen!” Hamish jostled his knee again.

  “I don’t hear anything.”

  But Hamish clearly did. He leaned down and opened a drawer he hadn’t seen before. Reggie squinted: it looked very much like it was decorative, but it wasn’t. “This has to be it. His system for keeping track of all of the services people do for each other in the North End!” Hamish was gleeful.

  He untied a string from the packet of papers and smoothed them across on the desk between them. It wasn’t what Hamish thought.

  “P.K.” Reggie frowned. “He has P.K. listed in here several times. I had never seen that man in my life before he hired us to look into his business. And yet it looks like Nate saw him regularly.” She shook her head. “But Pete Kelly said he would never consult Nate. Unless Nate was consulted by someone else. One of the man
y property development people against Pete Kelly.”

  “Nate was never here. Did you notice that? He went from occupying his office before we arrived to well after we left each day.” Reggie straightened, brushing her skirt. “Even when he was here, he was so distracted he may as well not have been here at all.”

  Hamish cricked his neck. “Yes, changed,” he repeated. This time his voice was intense. Purposeful. “Look at this.” Hamish held up a slip of paper. He was reading intently when she joined him—shoulder to shoulder—their gazes running over the print in unison.

  Insurance papers. A quote for the property Kelly owned. Nate knew about it—somehow. And either he filed it away like the rest of his work or he was hospitalized before he could do anything about it.

  Hamish’s look reminded her of the way he looked the first time she danced with him. Vulnerable. Hand outstretched. As if he were a partner less than what she would have settled for had she been Irene Dunne. His not understanding Nate’s motives shoved him into a corner and drained him of his confidence. Hamish needed a sure thing.

  He looked up at her all puppy-dog eyes and almost-smile. He was trying, but she wasn’t going to play ball. This was who they were . . . at least for now. He rang his cousin to solve problems, and she would have shuffled the cards a different way.

  “So what’s our next step?” she said after a silence she convinced herself was comfortable but judging by his face was anything but.

  “Ball game tonight?” he asked, long fingers exploring the blotter on Nate’s desk. “I mean, if you can stand my company for three hours.”

  If he went low, she would go high. She pinched color into her cheeks and smoothed her skirt, the artful cluster of diamonds in her ring spinning sunlight into prisms. With the ball players and interviews, she was sure to be momentarily spared the silence hanging heavy and low between her and Hamish.

  At home, much later, she affixed a straw hat at a jaunty angle and swished her skirt out the door and onto Pleasant Street. In the fifteen minutes at a brisk pace it took her to reach the diamond, she imagined cornering the men who harassed Parker. Pointing a finger with the aplomb of Rosalind Russell, her eyes as vague as Garbo’s.