Ellery Queen Mystery Magazine 09/01/12 (26 page)

She wanted to laugh in the marshal’s face. What was it he saw
when he looked at her? She’d grown up with harmless dreamers, not bombers. Orphaned
at fifteen, she’d gone to work in the shirt factories. For the last two years she’d
been a servant, wiping little fingers and changing diapers. The most seditious thing
she’d ever done was pine in loneliness for a pacifist. And Nicky didn’t go to Mexico
to plot violence, he went there to reject it.

The marshal murmured something
about not getting separated in the busy station. He put his hand firmly over hers
where it lay on his arm. She felt herself go hot with anxiety. She looked away as if
blushing at his touch.

It was crowded in the chill, high-ceilinged terminal.
People worried about catching the flu, but not everyone could avoid traveling.
Instead, nearly all wore white cotton masks. Ella saw the marshal check over his
shoulder, scanning the crowd. He shook his head almost imperceptibly. Telling his
men,
Not yet?

Weariness threatened to cut the legs out from under
her. What was it about tigers that made them keep stalking? How did they decide one
moment was better than another to pounce? Why should the beasts, looking out from
seamless jungle, choose one spot on the villagers’ path over another?

The
marshal clung tightly to her hand on his arm as they passed paperboys waving extras,
kiosks stacked with baseball souvenirs and postal cards, fiddlers playing “After
You’ve Gone.” Breaks in the crowd showed a luncheonette to their left. When its
doors opened, Ella smelled the lemon and grease of fried fish. Occasional words rose
above the patrons’ din—“armistice” and “surrender” were like frequent toots of a
horn.

The luncheonette was too close. She couldn’t get away between here and
there, not with two other marshals behind her. And inside it, the line moved quickly
as people chose their courses and slid their trays along a rail. A meal there would
delay things only briefly.

She stopped walking, forcing the marshal to stop
too. Around them, harried travelers parted and passed like river water around a
rock.

“May I ask you something?” Her voice was teary—she couldn’t help it. But
though she spoke at a near whisper, she saw he listened for every word. “You’ve been
inquiring about Georgetown? Is it because you can tell I’m not . . . ? That I don’t
go to college?” She felt herself blush deeply. She hoped he’d believe it was because
she regretted the deception.

“Is that so?” he said.

She angled to face
him, though he still kept her fingers clamped to his arm. She put her free hand on
his lapel and fancied she could feel the indentations where his badge had pierced
the fabric. “I could see you knew it. The way you asked about my professors’
views.”

“No, I was just . . . interested to hear them.” He looked
confused.

“I shouldn’t have lied.” She meant it: A marshal would see lying as
running. It would trigger the same impulse in him as in a tiger. She’d been wrong to
think a friendly manner was enough. She understood now that only the truth would do.
Only the truth would fool this man into thinking she was coming toward him. Or she
wouldn’t have one hand pinioned to his arm now. “It’s just that . . . I
wish
I were a student,” she said. That was the truth, all right. “I
wish it, but it’s far above my means. I was a servant to a rich woman. She gave me
these clothes before the flu took her. Because she’d burned mine. I was the first in
the house to get sick, you see. And in case the disease was on my clothes . . . None
of us wanted the children to catch it.”

“Ah,” he said. “That’s who you lost,
then?”

“Yes. Three children. Children I loved dearly—more than I knew.” That
was a fact too. “And others in the household. Servants who were my friends. And so
now I’m forced to go home. I had a job in a shirt factory there, and I suppose
they’ll take me back.” She detested the false sympathy in his eyes. He knew all of
this already, she was sure of it. “And so if you’d rather not join me . . . You were
thinking I’m of a higher social class than I truly am.”

Suspicion crackled
across his face. But when he glanced again at the other marshals, it was to shake
his head slightly.

“It’s my pleasure to dine with you,” he said, “whether or
not you’re a schoolgirl.”

She brushed away a few tears of stress. “Thank you,”
she said. “If you’re sure. But . . . I don’t suppose you know of someplace else we
could eat? Just a week ago I was in bed with fever. And the stink of fish from the
luncheonette doesn’t agree with me. If there’s anyplace nearby?”

“Why yes, I
know a spot, Miss—” He leaned so close they were nearly forehead to forehead. She
could smell cinnamon gum on his breath. “What’s your name, then?”

She tilted
her face so her lips were close to his, closer than was decent. The hairs stood up
on her neck, but she smiled. “Antonella Gualtieri.”

She could see on his face
that he knew it. That was good; he’d expect to get more honesty from her in the
course of a long meal.

“Well, Miss Gualtieri, I’m Matthias Killy. There’s a
good little place just a block from here. Let me offer you dinner there,” he said.
“I hope you’ll be warm enough walking to it? I don’t know if you care for spirits,
but you look as if you could do with a hot toddy.”

She nodded. Let him hope
he’d loosen her tongue with alcohol.

The marshal’s face, still close to hers,
seemed particularly sharp against the blur of movement behind him. He looked well
pleased. He was clever and handsome, and it seemed to be bringing dividends. And if
it didn’t, he had two armed men to back him up.
That’s how marshals
are.

Ella spotted a group of soldiers in tattered uniforms. Some were
limping, others were bandaged or scarred. As they pushed close, she pretended to be
jostled. The marshal let go of her hand on his arm and put it on her waist to steady
her. She felt her loathing for him like insects crawling up her back.

As if
she didn’t see the soldiers edging by, she stepped into their path. A boy around her
age had been moving awkwardly, leaning on a stick. Ella made sure to hook his foot
with hers so that he fell, crying out from the pain to his leg wound. Gushing
sincere apologies for hurting him, she turned as if to help. The marshal shunted her
aside to get a grip on the soldier and bring him to his feet. Ella took a step back,
letting others bend to assist.

She turned to a white-masked couple. “It’s
armistice!” She spoke in a husky whisper, as if overcome. She didn’t want the
marshal to hear. “The soldiers say so. The war’s ended!”

Their eyes went
round. The man pulled down his mask as if one salvation meant every
salvation.

Ella could feel the marshal searching for her, and she turned to
catch his eye and smile at him.

“Armistice?” a man near her repeated. His
voice had the deep blare of a tuba.

Others crowded closer, and Ella heard the
word posed again as a question and then as an answer. The marshal finished helping
the lame soldier to one foot. He saw that Ella was a few people away from him now,
but he didn’t seem anxious. The mask on the back of her head was fooling him, it
seemed. And he was distracted: Around them, the word “armistice” flew from lip to
lip, changing in tone from doubtful to certain. A man shouted it. Another
whistled.

Ella joined in when some began to cheer. “Armistice!” ricocheted
back from other parts of the terminal. People were screaming it, laughing it. They’d
been praying to hear it, expecting the news at any moment. Strangers embraced. A
cotton mask fell to Ella’s feet as couples shed them to kiss.

She was farther
from the marshal now, but waved to show she was keeping track of him, staying close
while he found the soldier’s walking stick. He looked hopeful, wanting as much as
anyone to believe the war was over. She grinned as merrily as a person would if it
were real news. She put out her hand as if to reach for his, but as she did, she
opened a path for people to step in between them.

When they cut off the
marshal’s view of her, she bent to pick up the white mask. Near it was a man’s tweed
cap, flung into the air but not caught. She jerked it on and held the mask up over
her mouth. She took another step backward, shedding her coat and letting it fall to
be trampled. She couldn’t use the ticket in the pocket, anyway. The marshals would
look for her on that train.

From a distance of fifteen or twenty feet, she saw
the marshal’s panicked face. His head turned from side to side as he searched for
her in a crowd gone delirious. His eyes slid over her, in her hat and mask. She
hurried toward the exits, hoping he’d keep looking for the wrapover she no longer
wore. He raised his hand and pointed to the row of doors. Not, Ella thought, because
he saw her near them. It was because his men would get there sooner than he
did.

But not before Ella slipped through.

2.

 
The man
onstage finally quelled the shouts of
Strike! Strike! Strike!
Ella,
standing on a bench against the back wall, watched him wave today’s
Seattle
Star.
She’d seen the headline, UNDER WHICH FLAG? The general strike was,
the paper warned, “a test of YOUR Americanism.”

The speaker slapped the front
page. “Oh, he’s a fine one, our Mayor Ole Hanson. Says any man uses the word
‘workers’ is quoting Lenin. But Ole didn’t mind the word so much when he courted the
working man’s vote, did he?
Then,
he was a friend of the workers. Grand
things he said about us
then.
Is there a union hall he didn’t come to, a
pancake breakfast that he missed? But votes are votes, and money’s money. And what
they saved by cutting our pay all through the war? By breaking their promises to us
after? It gave ’em plenty extra to stuff into politicians’ pockets. Case you wonder
what’s that bulge in Ole’s pants. No, it ain’t that!” There was a roar of laughter.
“It’s the raise they swore to give you.”

Ella looked over the sea of caps and
rough jackets. A hundred and ten unions had voted aye to strike. Over a hundred
thousand workers went out tomorrow.

“We’d get ours, they said, when the war
ends. But Armistice was in November, and by my calendar now it’s February. And that
money they promised? They’re giving it to the Minute Men of Seattle and the American
Protective League. Thugs to round up union men. Jails from Ellensburg to Walla Walla
filled with our boys—three months inside now, some of them, and no charges. And the
Star
asks
us,
which flag?
Us?”
He tossed the paper
down, made a face like it had filth on it. “And see what else it says, there over
the headline? MAYOR HANSON TO DEPUTIZE 10,000. Pictures every day of marshals
boarding trains to come here. Because our strike, they tell us, was organized by
Leon Trotsky himself.” He waved his arm. “Well, I don’t see Leon in here anyplace,
do you, boys?”

The room roared with laughter. Someone shouted, “Where are you,
Leon?”

“Maybe he’s in one of our kitchens? Twenty-one labor halls ready to
serve thirty thousand meals a day. Or maybe Leon’s out collecting donations from
bakers and grocers and butchers and dairymen? Maybe he’s loading trucks with
chickens and vegetables, or getting ready to deliver milk and diapers, or shining up
his car to use as a free taxi tomorrow.”

Ella’s cheer was lost in the din.
She’d worn out the soles of her boots going to shops and farms and warehouses and
garages to get those commitments. And as long as the general strike lasted, she’d be
on her feet, cooking and serving at the union halls. She’d had few moments of
perfect happiness in her life. But she knew, as she walked out into a soft wall of
drizzle, that this was one of them.

The streets of Pioneer Square were a
carnival of covered carts selling hot dogs and roasted chestnuts. Two fiddlers,
keeping dry under an awning, played a lively version of “Oh, How I Hate to Get Up in
the Morning.” As she neared the King Street Station, the fiddles warred with a
frenetic banjo and a woman’s brassy rendition of “How You Gonna Keep ’em Down on the
Farm?” The streetlights were just coming on when Ella wiped the wet glass of a shop
window to see a fringed sheath, barely below the knee. Imagining herself in it, she
didn’t notice her friend Mario behind her.

“Mannaggia!
Antoné!” When
she turned, he kissed both her cheeks.

“Am I late?” she asked him. “I’m sorry.
I didn’t know which train to meet. I thought probably the next
one—”

“Macchè
late, no no. I walk around little bit, I come back.
No trouble. You good girl, let me stay with you.” More kisses on the cheek, then he
held her at arm’s length, grinning.

He wasn’t much taller than Ella, a wiry,
bandy-legged man whose hairline had receded farther since she’d last seen him, a few
years ago. As a child, she’d adored Mario because he was one of the men who brought
Nicky, then eleven, to town. She knew Nicky and Mario parted ways in Mexico. Nicky
wrote to her awhile after he got there, to say Mario and others were already going
home. A worldwide revolution was starting—they wouldn’t sit on its sidelines. But
Nicky said the point and burden of pacifism was to defend peace, not to find a
better war.

Well, Mario would sing a different song now. Seattle’s general
strike would be the first of dozens, maybe hundreds, across America. It would change
everything, and do it without violence. Unions would be too strong to break and too
beloved to lie about.

In the glitter of shop lights, she saw nostalgic tears
in Mario’s eyes.
“Sei fatta più bella,
Antoné,
sai?
You more
beautiful.” He was as swarthy and beetle-browed as ever, and the origin of his
nickname,
Nasone,
or Big Nose, was just as clear.