by Ed Gorman
There. He’d said it. It was over. There would be anger and complaining but it was over. You could read all this on Big Mike’s face.
“Take my place? You mean assassinating Kimble?”
“Yes, I’m afraid so.”
“But why? I’ve been shooting every day. I’ve looked over the site several times. I know just how I’ll get in and just how I’ll get out.”
McReedy said, “Your wife knows.”
“She doesn’t know anything,” Sam snapped.
Cawthorne said, quietly, “She may not know anything, Sam. But she suspects something and that’s enough.”
“No, it’s not enough!” Sam said. “And what’s more, it’s not fair. Not after all the work I’ve done.”
The only way I’ll ever be able to pay my brother back for deserting him the way I did. The only way I’ll ever be able to do my duty the way he did his. And now they’re trying to take it away from me. Dammit, Aggie, why did you have to follow me yesterday?
Cawthorne was his usual slick self again. His nerves were under control. The subject had been broached. “She’s a Yankee, Sam.”
“You think I don’t know that?”
“One of her uncles back in New Hampshire is a colonel in the Union army.”
“And,” McReedy added, “her brother was killed by some of our people.”
“No telling what she might do,” Cawthorne said, “her loyalties being what they are. Mr. Dodd here—well, there won’t be that trouble.”
Sam was sure his name wasn’t Lawrence Dodd. He’d been borrowed from some other cell. Probably from out of town, though not far away. He’d been summoned overnight. From here on out, Sam would be told as little as possible about things. His longtime fear that Aggie’s Yankee loyalties would hurt him, had come true. Big Mike saying he was no longer quite trustworthy. Sam had seen this happen before, cell members who were suddenly seen as suspicious in some way being subtly pushed out of the cell. Big Mike knew they’d never go over to the other side. Everybody in this cell had a personal reason for being part of it. They’d never betray the South. But that didn’t mean Big Mike and the others would trust them with the inner workings of the cell.
But that isn’t the worst of it. The worst of it is that I put everything into this. Killing Lincoln’s man is the only way I’ll ever be able to make things up to my brother. Why can’t you people see that? To you, it’s just one more killing. To me, it’s my honor.
“I’m sorry, Sam,” Big Mike said, “I really am.”
“She’s a fine-looking woman,” McReedy said, who must have known he was irritating Sam.
“I’ll try to do as good a job as you would have, Mr. Monroe,” the man whose name wasn’t really Lawrence Dodd said. “I really will.”
* * *
Aggie didn’t have much trouble finding what she needed. She almost smiled when she found it because it was so sloppy of Sam to keep it in the bottom drawer of his desk. Where anybody, including the police, could easily find it.
Several clipped newspaper stories about a Mr. Harper Kimble, Esquire. Arriving by train in Chicago the day before the election to give a rousing public speech about why it was so important to vote—and to vote for those politicians who supported President Lincoln’s handling of the war. Several references to the large ballroom in the Courier-Arms Hotel—one of the city’s finest—were underlined. Then there was a hand-drawn map showing the front steps of the hotel—and a hotel room directly across the street. And a circle on the steps inside of which appeared the word Kimble.
The secretiveness. The target practice. The newspaper stories. Aggie might not be a genius but she was smart enough to figure out what Sam was up to. She cursed the Union soldier who had killed Sam’s older brother. Because in a very real sense he’d taken Sam’s life, too. He no longer cared about his wife and children. His only reality was avenging his brother’s death. And now she knew how he planned to do it.
* * *
Sam came home drunk. Not falling-down drunk but in-control, angry drunk. He stormed into the living room where she was sitting by the fireplace with their two daughters and said, “It’s way past their bedtime—put them to bed! I want to talk to you!”
She had never seen him so angry. The girls, four and five, were terrified of the man who had once been their loving, congenial father. He stank of the streets. His eyes rolled wildly. His clothes were soiled. His right hand was clenched in a constant fist. “And I mean now!”
“What’s wrong with Daddy?” said the youngest, Courtney, as their mother hauled them up to bed, one under each arm.
“He’s pickled,” said Jenny, the eldest. She loved words and picked up new ones constantly.
“Is he pickled, Mommy?” Courtney said, without having the slightest idea what the word meant.
Sam leaned against the fireplace, a cigar in one hand, a brandy glass in the other. He didn’t look up when Aggie came back in. He said, “Sit down.”
She knew better than to argue with hint.
She sat in a Hepplewhite chair she’d had as a girl, entwined hearts carved on the chair back. All the rime she was growing up she had wondered whose heart would be entwined with hers. Sam’s, of course. She’d fallen in love with him the very first night she’d met him, even though she didn’t realize it until a month or so later. Entwined hearts … and they had been entwined, until he’d lost his brother in the war.…
After a time, he spoke. He said: “They don’t want me. They say they can’t trust me anymore.”
She wasn’t sure exactly who “they” were. But she sensed that all this had to do with the newspaper stories she’d found in his drawer.
“So they’re not going to let me do it. They got somebody else.” For the first time, he looked at her: “And do you know why, dear wife? Because of you! Because you just had to follow me around! And because you’re a filthy Yankee!”
He had never called her a “filthy” anything before and the word stunned her—shocked her, hurt her as he’d never hurt her before. A bond of faith was broken in that moment and they both knew it.
But she fought against her pain and anger and rose solemnly from the chair as she heard him begin to cry. Not even in all the early months of following his brother’s death had he ever wept. But he wept now.
She went to him and tried to take him in her arms. He wouldn’t let her. He jerked away like an angry child. But finally, finally, he needed her strength and solace and so he came within her arms and she comforted him.
“I know what you were planning to do,” she said after a time, “but you would’ve destroyed our whole family, Sam. Think of what the girls would have to go through all their lives. Now you don’t have to do it. Now we can be a family again and you can forget all this. The girls need you, Sam, need you the way you used to be. And so do I.”
An hour later, in the gentle darkness of their bed, they made love with fresh ardor and succoring passion.
* * *
Sam slept in. He ate a late, good breakfast and then got up. It was a Sunday and he spent the entire afternoon playing with the girls in the living room, reading them stories, playing their favorite games, telling them about all the wonderful things winter would soon bring, including snowmen and ice-skating. It was as if he had survived a terrible fever that had not—thank God—killed him but had somehow burned itself out. He was the Sam of old.
He was that evening, too. He took Aggie out to dine. They took the fancy carriage with the liveried driver, and took in a show following dinner. Nothing about his friends at “the gun club” was mentioned. Nor was the war referred to in any way. When they went to bed, they made long and leisurely love.
On Monday, the day upon which Mr. Kimble, Esquire, was to arrive from Washington, D.C., Sam went to the bank and spent a busy morning catching up on the work he’d been neglecting.
At home, Aggie got the girls off to school and then went out in her buggy for some things she’d been needing at the store. She was only a block away
from home when she realized she was being followed.
She went to the store, tied the reins of her buggy to a hitching-post and hurried inside. She wanted to make sure she was indeed being followed. Maybe her suspicions had gotten away from her.
But no. There he was. He’d pulled up to a hitching-post a quarter block away. He jumped down from his buggy and was now standing there and rolling himself a cigarette. Waiting for her to return.
Her boldness surprised her. She bolted the store and hurried back outside into the winds that lacerated everything on this drab, overcast day. There wasn’t even any snow to make it pretty.
She walked right up to him. “I want to know why you’re following me, sir.”
He smiled. “It’s people like you who make my work hard for me, Mrs. Monroe.”
“Why are you following me?”
Her voice was sharp enough to attract the attention of people walking along the plank sidewalk. This was a block of shops and offices of various kinds, from a saddlery to a doctor and a dentist.
“Just had to make sure you didn’t go see the police,” he said in a quiet voice. “I’ve been watching you for three days now. You haven’t left the house without Sam. We just wanted to make sure you didn’t talk to anybody about what was going to happen.”
She hated them all. And for one of the first times, they formed a monolith in her mind: Southerners. Devious, violent.
“Well, you can take this message back to your friends,” she said. “He doesn’t want any part of you anymore.”
This time the smile was a smirk. “He’s gonna be a good little boy, huh?”
She turned and stalked away.
* * *
She told Sam about all this before dinner but he only cupped her face in his hands and kissed her and said, “Let’s just have a nice family dinner.”
And so they did. Wind lashed the windows and made her thankful for the warmth and beauty of her home. How tall and proud it stood against the most furious of nights. The girls, too, seemed affected by this same sense of melancholy. Not only did they manage to look prettier than ever in the flickering lamplight, they also sat very close to each other and even gave each other hugs from rime to time. Sometimes they fought angrily. But not tonight.
She watched Sam watching this. He seemed moved by everything. She even thought for a moment that she saw his eyes dampen with tears. It was one of those moments—so sweet, so peaceful, so tranquil. It seemed that nothing could possibly be wrong anywhere in God’s world.
And then he was helping her up to bed. It was so odd. She’d been sitting at the table talking to the girls about snow—it had become their obsession—and then … And then Sam had to help her up the stairs. So queer. As if the wine for dinner had suddenly made her very, very drunk … sleepy. But she’d had less than half a glass.
And then she was in bed … sleeping …
Wind.
Panic: disorientation. Where am I? What happened?
Headache.
Dry mouth.
Drugs … yes.
Her inclination had been to think of the dinner wine. There was the culprit. She wasn’t much of a drinker.
But no … this was more like the aftereffects of the sleeping-potion the doctors had given her after Courtney’s birth. The grogginess … the slight feeling of nausea …
Wind again.
All she wanted to do was relieve her bladder and sink deep into sleep again.
He drugged me. Sam drugged me. But why?
Even through the blind, numbed, disoriented feeling of the moment the realization of it made her fight her way to wakefulness.
Have to wake up. Find Sam.
Walking was almost impossible. She kept slumping against chairs and bureaus and walls as she took one small step at a time. She found the pull cord for Irene the maid. Then she staggered on into her private toilet and began soaking her face in water standing in the basin.
Irene came quickly. And departed quickly, headed downstairs to make coffee, and a lot of it.…
Aggie found the letter in the study. Her name was on the front of it. She was just awake enough for it to make terrifying sense.…
* * *
Lawrence Dodd got to the hotel room a little early. He was always early. It was part of his professionalism. He’d assassinated seven men since the start of the war and he hadn’t yet come even close to getting caught.
He kept the lamp off. He knelt by the window. It was cold enough for frost to rime the glass along the window casing.
He kept studying the place where Kimble would come out around nine, following his speech, on his way to the mayor’s house where a reception was to be held. A carriage would pull up. Kimble would start down the front steps. And then Dodd would kill him.… that simple.
An hour after he’d gone to the window, there was a knock on the door, startling him. Who the hell would be knocking? Who knew he was in here? He had a bad stomach. Acid immediately began scouring it.
The knock again. A soft knock. As if the caller didn’t want to be heard beyond this one door.
Maybe something has happened. Maybe the police have learned about tonight. Maybe I’m not supposed to go through with it.
So many thoughts, doubts, suppositions prompted by the knocking.
Shit. He had to go to the door. Find out what was going on. For now, he had to hide the Sharps.
He looked around in the dim light from the street.
Another soft knock.
The closet. He’d put the Sharps in the closet.
He brought his Colt with him to the door but even with that, the other man didn’t have any trouble slashing the barrel of his own handgun down across Dodds’s face and knocking him back into the room. Nor any trouble knocking him out.
Nor any trouble tying him up and gagging him.
* * *
The buggy ride helped considerably. The harsh, cold weather completed the job of waking her up. The coffee had helped. The cold air was even better.
Downtown was crowded with vehicles of every kind, Police were everywhere. Bands could be heard in a variety of hotels. Both political parties were anticipating victory—or pretending to, anyway. She hitched her buggy, took her bag, and walked the remaining two blocks to the hotel. This was as close as she could get. Gunshots could be heard as she walked. The frontier mentality was still with them: when you were happy, you shot off guns. The police could arrest you but they had to catch you first.
The lobby was packed. Men in muttonchops and vast bellies stood about with huge glasses of whiskey in their fat pampered hands. Their women were almost elegant in gowns that displayed their bosoms to best advantage. The six-piece orchestra played one raucous tune after another.
Nobody noticed her. Just one more person. Pretty as she was, she was still unremarkable in this crowd.
Sam had been helpful enough to put the room number on the map he’d drawn. She had little trouble convincing the desk clerk that she was to meet her husband here. He gave her the spare key.
The hotel had emptied downward. All the rooms seemed to be empty. As she walked along the sconce-decorated halls, she heard nothing but the pounding music from the lobby. Not even New Year’s Eve could be noisier than this.
When she reached the room, she paused. Took a deep breath. Said a hasty prayer.
For the first time, she was thankful for all the noise. It allowed her to slip the key in the lock and turn it without being heard.
The gun was in her hand as she walked inside.
A man was on the bed. Bound and gagged. Sam was just turning to her now. He sat in a chair at the window. A Sharps leaned against the wall. He’d have a good, clean shot from here. And in the clamor downstairs, he’d have an easy time getting away out one of the rear exits.
He’d planned well.
She shut the door. “I’m taking you home, Sam.”
As she spoke, she thought of the words in the letter he’d left.
Dear darling Aggie:
I wanted to give you and the girls a good memory of me. The last few days have been wonderful. But now I have to be a man of honor and avenge my brother. Avenge my country which is, and will always be, the South. I don’t expect you to understand—even though you, too, have lost a brother, you have not lost honor. I should’ve worn the gray just as he did. This is my only chance to make up for what I failed to do. All my love to you and the girls
—Sam, forever.
“Go home, Aggie,” Sam said gently. “Take care of the girls.”
“I’d rather kill you myself than have you disgrace your daughters this way. They’ll pay for this the rest of their lives, Sam. You don’t seem to care how it’ll be for them to have a traitor as a father.”
“Traitor!” he said. “I’m not a traitor. I’m a patriot.”
“You live in the North, Sam. Your girls are Yankees. And they always will be.”
He stood up. “I have to do this, Aggie. I have to.”
But she stood unwavering. The gun pointed right at him. “Don’t fool yourself, Sam. I came here prepared to kill you if I had to.”
“You kill me here, the police’ll know what happened anyway.”
“Not if I take the Sharps and let that man on the bed go. I take it he’s your replacement.”
Sam started walking toward her. “You won’t be able to kill me, Aggie. I know you. You’re not violent. And besides, you love me.”
“Just stay there, Sam.”
But he kept coming, obviously sure of what he was saying. “You won’t be able to do it. So why not just hand me the gun and leave? I’m going to do this no matter what.”
She raised the gun so that it pointed directly at his chest “Stay back, Sam. Stay back.”
And then he lunged for her.
Overpowering her was easy. Getting the gun away was another matter. As they wrestled for it on the floor, she kept it tucked under herself so that his fingers couldn’t quite reach it. He offered her no mercy. He hit her as hard as he would a man he disliked.
Then the gun sounded, muffled by the fact that he was lying on top of her when the weapon discharged. He knew almost at once that she was dead. The death spasm had been unmistakable. And now she moved not at all.
