Ellery Queen Mystery Magazine 09/01/12 (30 page)

Ella felt sick. Mario
said this was a fancy party. He didn’t tell her—presumably didn’t know—that top
Democrats would be here.

Why would Nicky come to an affair like this? Surely
not to deliver whiskey. This was a dry state. Of course, people drank anyway, as
they would when Prohibition went national in January. But these particular men
wouldn’t break state law so conspicuously, would they?

These particular men .
. . powerful, rich, leaders of the country’s ruling party. She took a few deep
breaths. This would be a tempting target for a bomber.

She pushed the thought
away. Nicky would never do such a thing, he’d never plot to kill. He was a pacifist,
that’s why he’d gone to Mexico.

At some distance from the breakfast-laden
tables, Ella spotted a rolling cart that was bare. She set the tray down on it and
turned to walk out onto the lawn. She’d make a circuit of the house, peer through
windows looking for Nicky. Then she’d go back to Mario’s car. Explain about her
neighbors being here. Maybe she and Mario could keep watch, spot Nicky arriving or
leaving?

Then she heard Palmer say, “Ah, Killy, there you are.”

She
stopped moving. She hadn’t believed the marshal, not really, when he claimed to be
Palmer’s campaign manager. She’d thought it a ploy to make her talk politics. On the
train west, he kept pressing her to run afoul of the Sedition Act. And in Seattle,
from some obscure motive, he insisted they shared some goals. But she’d assumed he
was manipulating her.

Now here he was at Palmer’s side. Here he was, in the
same place as Ella for a third time. How was it possible? Had he followed her? Had
someone, knowing her history with him, purposely put her in his line of sight
again?

Only Mario knew about Killy.

Mario, who’d asked her to come
across country—lured her, really—to this party. Who’d dressed her up as a maid and
sent her in with a tray of sweets.

Did he want Killy to spot her? Why should
he? As a distraction? So something else would go unnoticed?

She felt as if
she’d gone mad. Mario would never purposely send her into a den of men who might
recognize her, arrest her. Why should he? He’d been friends with her mamma, he’d
known Ella most of her life. So what if he thought her naive? He thought that about
Nicky too.

Last night Mario said Nicky was a fool to stay so long in Mexico.
What he get for his sweat and fleas? Utopia? Macchè—he get nothing.
Sacco agreed.
You enemies, they no hear you, they no fear you.
But it
didn’t change their fondness for Nicky. Or for her. Did it?

Hadn’t Sacco and
Rosina baked her these sweets? They’d gorged on them last night, leaving just enough
for her to carry here today. To be another prop for her, along with Assunta
Valdinoci’s maid’s uniform.

Ella turned back to the tray. In that moment,
Killy wasn’t forgotten, exactly. But another thought overwhelmed her.

This
morning, the covered platter was waiting on the backseat of Mario’s Oakland. On the
drive, Mario told her more than once to wait until she was inside to expose the
dolci.
If they drew gnats and flies, he said, it would make her
conspicuous. So she hadn’t actually seen these cannoli and cantucci, these
millefoglie and slices of baba. Now, her hand shook as she took the handle and
prepared to lift off the dome.

Her world contracted, she saw nothing but the
sheen of silver, heard nothing but the roaring in her ears. Had Mario and the others
sent her here with a bomb?

She didn’t notice the footsteps behind her. Nor the
shocked exhalation that put a scent of coffee into the air beside her.

Then
someone grabbed her arm and spun her. And there he was. Marshal Killy. Again. She
wanted to scream from panic.
Again.
Marshal Killy
again.

He
said, “You had someone with you there, in Seattle?”

“No.” She could barely
shake a word out.

“There to break my head.”

“No, I . . . ran away when
he . . . when he came.”

“Ran away and left me to him? That’s your story?”
Killy pulled her farther from the cart, farther from the group enjoying
breakfast.

Pressed against the house, she stared up at the marshal. He was a
handsome man—this time it came as no surprise. She watched emotions flicker over his
broad face, and wondered what he saw as he looked at her. Did her confusion show?
Her suspicion?

“You ran away,” he prompted.

“Yes.” She tried not to see
it again in her mind. The marshal’s head on the cobblestones, his blood filling
spaces between the pavers. She’d shrieked at Mario, then knelt to put herself
between him and Killy so he wouldn’t bring the metal pipe down again. She’d feigned
sickness that night. She’d found Mario another place to stay. For the rest of the
strike, she’d avoided him.

But Mario knew she’d go anywhere, on anybody’s
say-so, to see Nicky.

“I ran,” she said, “but then I went back.” She had
indeed ventured there later, keeping out of sight. “To be sure you weren’t dying.
But you were gone.”

“And I suppose you looked all over for me, eh? And yet
strangely, the next day, when I stopped throwing up and seeing double, I found no
one who’d spotted you. They expected you at a union-hall kitchen, but you didn’t
show up. It took a few days to find your apartment—wise of you to change names. But
you’d cleared out of it. Well done, my girl. For I’d have arrested you
then.”

“You’d have arrested me that night, I think.”

“As big a fool as I
am? I don’t know that I would have. But never mind that now. What are you doing
here?”

She made a sweeping motion to indicate her uniform.

“Ah. Shall I
ask the Westfields if you’re truly their servant?” He grabbed her arm as if to pull
her inside.

“No. Please. I’m filling in for someone, that’s all. They can’t
generally tell us girls apart, unless one’s a Negro. They’ll fire my friend. And I .
. . honestly, I mean no harm to anyone.”

“And yet I’ve a new scar behind my
ear from our last encounter.”

“I saw all the blood on the street where you
were. I would never have wished that on you.”

“Miss Gualtieri—or whatever you
call yourself now—I’ve yet to find it in my best interests to believe you.”

“I
know. But . . . ” She forced herself to stand as tall as she could pull herself.
“But you’re always on the verge of arresting me. It colors everything I say to
you—how could it not?”

“Well, perhaps you’ve a point.” His words were mild,
but he looked furious, his face reddening, a vein throbbing in his temple. He took a
deep breath. “My my. What a dance it’s been. How smooth your every
step.”

“It’s not what I wanted.”

“Nor I.” He pulled her farther still
from the groups on the veranda. “Shall we put our cards on the table, then, at last?
You know why I came after you, don’t you?”

Immediately she saw the jewels in
her mind’s eye. “You think I’ll confess to something now? To save you the trouble of
dancing?”

“Oh, I wouldn’t call it a trouble. At least, not here, where I’m in
no danger of another crack on the head.” His smile was almost sweet. “You’re an
interesting girl, I’ll say that. But you’ll tell me the truth today.”

She
looked past Killy, at the tray glinting on the cart by the porch rail. Beyond it,
the lawn was the color of pippins. A rose-trimmed path ended at a pond as bright as
a mirror. Beside its boathouse, tethered skiffs floated like confetti.

It was
fully hitting her: Whatever else happened with the marshal, she wouldn’t see Nicky
here. Maybe she’d never see him again.

“A boy I grew up with,” she said. “He
was the reason I ran from you, in Chicago. I thought he must have been looking for
me at the Kingstons. That he’d gotten into trouble there, and so you came after me.
To make me say something or do something to make things worse for him.” She heard
herself say it but couldn’t make herself believe it. “Is that true?”

He stood
very still. Then he nodded.

Their eyes held for a moment.

There was
hearty laughter at the other end of the veranda. As if she’d stepped into some
bizarre play.

“Because he was a draft dodger? Was that it? Or did you think
him guilty of worse? And me too?”

“Are
you guilty of worse?” He
squinted down at her. “Are you a Galleanist?”

“No. Or . . . not in the way you
mean it.”

“In what way, then? You know they tried twice to kill my friend,
Mitchell Palmer?”

“I heard that someone bombed his home. I . . . I was sorry.
It must have frightened the girls who work in those houses, up and down R
Street.”

“Carlo Valdinoci,” he said. “That’s the bomber’s name. Do you know
him?”

Carlo? Whose sister Assunta sewed the uniform Ella wore now?

“No,
I—I don’t believe you.”

Carlo had come to the Hall with Mario and Galleani a
few times. He was film-star handsome, a natty dresser with fine wavy hair. He used
to flatter Ella by asking her to dance when old Mr. Shelstein played the piano. As
if she were old enough, pretty enough, to catch Carlo’s sparkling eye.

“We
haven’t made it public,” Killy said. “But it was Valdinoci, all right. He tripped, I
suppose, carrying the bomb up the porch steps. Or it would have killed everyone
inside. Little Mary. Mitchell’s wife, Roberta. We found Valdinoci’s torso, in a
striped shirt and bow tie, on the roof across the street.” His grip on her tightened
as her knees went weak.

“Carlo? No. I never would have thought . . . That’s
not how he was when . . . Things were different when Nicky and I— When we were
growing up, it wasn’t like this. We called ourselves Anarchists, all of us, but it
meant free-thinkers. Utopians.” How could Carlo have done such a thing? How could he
have changed so much? “Even Galleani . . . he was just . . . just another man who
came to lecture. I never thought he wanted—Emma Goldman came too. Eugene Debs.
Bertrand Russell. Intellectuals, syndicalists. Exercising free speech while they
still had it. It wasn’t illegal yet to hear speeches from pacifists, Socialists,
even—”

“And you think it’s a good thing, to protect the speech of men like
Galleani, who advocate violence?”

“But he didn’t. Not out loud to us there,
not that I ever heard. He advocated new ideas, yes. And resistance to bad ones.” She
talked over him when he interrupted. “And don’t you advocate violence? Don’t you
deputize vigilantes when it suits you, knowing that they’ll murder strikers? Don’t
you turn a blind eye and let them lynch Negroes?”

“‘Let them?’ Do you know how
many times I’ve gone to investigate— It’s that no one will speak up, speak to us.
They’re too afraid of—”

“I hate violence.” The words burst from her. “It’s an
infection, like the flu. And you’re the ones who spread it. You Democrats.” She
waved toward the other end of the veranda. There was a commotion as men rose from
Adirondack chairs, as they stubbed out cigarettes and set cups onto saucers, clapped
backs and laughed at one another’s jokes. “With all your money, your influence. What
example do you set? War, Jim Crow, false charges, strike-breaking. And you blame us?
Blame the tail for the actions of the tiger? It’s all the same beast, but you, all
of you in power—”

“I repeat my question,” Killy said. “Are you a
Galleanist?”

“No.” Ella shook her head. “If Galleani preaches violence now,
then no. But you’d make the Attorney General our President? You know what he has in
mind. He’ll raid tens of thousands of people who’ve done no—”

“He will not.
You think you understand what it is to be a pacifist? But a Quaker like Palmer, like
me, does not? Do you know why I’m a marshal? Because the first time I ever met one,
he called himself a peace officer. We’re raised to revere peace. It’s peace we’re
after when we—”

“Maybe it used to be that way. As it used to be something
different, to be an Anarchist.”

The sound of imperious orders and
Yes,
ma’ams
drifted to them from inside the house.

“Tell me why you’re
here,” he said. “What are you doing?”

“Hoping to see Nicky. They told me he’d
come. Do you know what became of him? You must know.”

“Come here?
Who
told you that?” He squinted, leaned closer.

“I’ll answer your question if you
answer mine.”

“Answer your—? Why should I believe you? You’d be a fool to show
up where you don’t belong, where others know your face. Just to meet a
man?”

“But I didn’t know this would be . . . whatever it is. A meeting? I
didn’t know who’d be here. I thought it was just a party. But it doesn’t matter.
Because, yes. I’d risk anything to see Nicky again.”

“Well, that you will not,
my girl. If your Nicky is Nicola Mancusa. We arrested him November last.”

“Oh,
no. No.”

“He did go looking for you.” A wry smile. “In fact, it was through
his efforts that your employer, Mrs. Kingston, survived.”

“What? Mrs. Kingston
lived? I don’t believe it. She looked far beyond help.” She took a ragged breath. “I
left her for dead.”

“It was a near thing, I gather.”

“But Nicky saved
her?”

“With cold baths, yes. Then Kingston came home and found
them.”

“And the great hypocrite would rather have seen his wife a corpse,”
Ella said, “than bathing in front of another man?”

Killy didn’t
reply.

Nicky must have understood the danger in staying to help Mrs. K.—a
ragged man alone with a rich woman? But he’d tended to her anyway, he’d done it to
save a stranger. He was still the boy Ella grew up with, still the man she
loved.

“Kingston claimed he’d taken some jewelry,” Killy said. “It wasn’t
found on him. He might have hidden it, or handed it off to someone.”

Ella
stopped breathing.

“But Mrs. Kingston contradicted her husband. And as the
baubles were hers . . . That aspect came to nothing.”