Ellery Queen Mystery Magazine 09/01/12 (31 page)

Had Mrs. K. understood
Nicky’s sacrifice, then? Protected Ella for his sake? Nicky must have told her why
he’d come to her house. Was this her way of thanking him for his care, for what it
cost him?

“You know it was Galleani,” Killy said.

Ella was still
reeling. “Galleani?”

“Who ordered his followers to Mexico. To evade the
draft.”

“But Nicky didn’t go there to follow anyone’s orders. He went from
conviction. The other Galleanists, if you call them that, came back after just a few
months.”

“Whatever his motive, draft evasion’s a crime. We’d have brought
charges if his English was better. As it was, we put him aboard a boat. Deported
back to Italy.”

Her sense of unreality grew. “But Nicky’s not
Italian.”

“What?
We could barely understand him. And we found no
citizenship papers for him.”

“He was born in Kentucky, taken to Arizona by
other miners when his parents were killed. Then rescued from the strike at Ludlow.
He came to us when he was eleven. My mother taught him Italian. Because we all spoke
it, at the Hall. She called him Nicola but his name’s Nicholas. And not Mancusa.
That was her pronunciation of a name I don’t remember. Mancowski, something like
that.”

“Well, I’ll be damned,” Killy said. “I suppose he thought he’d fare
better in Italy than in prison.” He scowled for a moment, obviously deep in thought.
Then he shook himself out of it. “Who told you you’d find him here?”

She
couldn’t meet his eye. “Are you on the guest list?”

“Am I—? Of course. Despite
your absurd notions about him, I mean to get Palmer the nomination next year.” His
tone was defensive. “You think you were sent here
because
of who’d
recognize you?”

“Mr. Palmer, Mr. Roosevelt, you . . . I don’t know. I don’t
know what to think.” But she did know Mario used her love for Nicky to get her
here.

“Where’s the logic in it? We pull you in, you might give information
against those who sent you.”

If I lived long enough.
“Yes.”

She
didn’t dare look at the tray she’d brought. Instead she looked at the men still on
the veranda, smokers mostly, leaning along the porch rails. A voice drifted to her:
“That room in Albany was the closest to college I ever came.” His companion laughed
and said, “You might have mentioned that a few dozen times, Al.”

Al Smith, the
governor of New York, wore a white linen suit that on him looked as elegant as a
fishmonger’s apron. He, Roosevelt, Palmer . . . any might be President someday. And
all were just a stone’s throw from Mario’s platter.

“They chose me because I
can pass for a servant,” she said. “Better than any of them.” And how they’d
pampered her last night. The pastries and fresh cream, the kisses on the cheek.
Because they knew they’d never see her again?

“Come with me,” the marshal
said.

He jerked her toward the French doors. If he got her inside, either to
question her or arrest her, someone might lift the tray’s lid while they were gone.
And if that triggered a bomb? Ella might get away then, in the confusion. Mario
wouldn’t be waiting where the driveway met the road. But the dust and carnage would
give her a chance to run.

Spots danced in front of her eyes, sweat dripped
between her shoulder blades and down her back. Saying anything now was the same as
signing her own arrest warrant. So the enormity of her words nearly lodged them in
her throat: “The tray,” she said. “The one I was about to uncover. They gave it to
me, to bring inside.”

Killy reacted as if she’d slapped him. He turned to face
it.

It was too big to pick up with one hand. He let go of her. He grabbed the
tray without a backward glance.

She watched him dash down the veranda stairs
with it, hurrying past the lush arbor and along the path to the pond.

It was
no use leaving. With no car to take her away, she’d be picked up soon enough. And
she had to know for sure. Mario, Sacco . . . would they truly have sacrificed her?
She was afraid the answer was clear in the guest list.

Ella was a few paces
behind Killy when he reached the dock. He set the tray down, then looked to the
boathouse as if searching for something. Not for Ella. He nodded as if certain she’d
be there.

“Ah,” he said. He grabbed a pole hanging from a support.

The
long stick had a crook at the end for pulling skiffs closer. He signaled for her to
back up, then he hooked the handle of the tray’s dome cover. He lifted it and set it
aside.

Ella didn’t know exactly what she was looking at, there on the tray. A
bit of glass glinted on a pyramid of greasy-looking tubes. A second later, she heard
popping, like firecrackers. Again using the stick, Killy pushed the tray into the
pond. Then he backed away to stand in front of Ella. His arm went up as if by
instinct, shielding his face. Then he let it fall. For a moment he didn’t
move.

Ella ventured, “So was it—? Those little bursts. Only
firecrackers?”

“Blasting caps. A vial was rigged to tip when the lid came off.
What you heard were the caps underneath. Set off by acid.”

“Blasting caps? Did
they only mean to . . . to scare people?”

“No. The caps would have ignited the
fuses. Dynamite fuses. Like the package bombs. That’s how I knew we had to get to
the water. . . . But those had one stick. This had nine, stacked four, three, two,
the vial on top. Who gave it to you?”

The world seemed to dim. “Mario
Buda.”

“The man who wrote the bomb-making pamphlet?” He wheeled to face her.
“Salute è in Voi?
The one they sold in Galleani’s
newspaper?”

“No! That can’t be Mario.”

“He and some others. But Buda was
the main— How could you know him, but not know this?”

“I remember the ad. In
the
Cronaca Sovversiva.”
Twenty-five cents for the anonymous booklet. “So
tiny. For that and other pamphlets. All of them full of bravado. Fish stories, I
thought. Because the country was mad for war—the parades, the marches. It was like
that, I supposed. The same lust for battle. But pushing through cracks in a
philosophy where it didn’t belong.”

“So you didn’t know Buda as
a—?”

“No! No, of course not. I know him as . . . as an organizer. I’ve seen
him only twice in these last . . .” She could hardly stand. She was shaking, her
head pounding.

“Was he in Seattle with you?”

“He came for the strike.”
The shame overwhelmed her. What he’d done to the marshal. Because of her.

“The
reason we intercepted thirty of the package bombs last April? It was thanks to Ole
Hanson. His aide opened one upside down. The acid dripped onto the desk instead of
the caps. So we knew what the parcels looked like. And that they came from someone
who disliked Seattle’s mayor.”

Ella gestured toward the veranda, not yet empty
of partiers. “If I’d taken the lid off?”

“Porch and drawing room would be a
smoking hole now. Everyone in them vaporized. Or torn to chunks.”

For an
instant, Ella saw it through Mario’s eyes: the triumph. Bloody death to the leaders
of a party that brought years of war and injustice.

“They’re wrong about us,
you know,” Killy said, as if hearing her thoughts. “We’re fools at times, but we
mean well.”

“I’d have said the same to you about Mario and the others,
yesterday.”

“Where are they now?”

“A farmhouse, ten or fifteen miles
north. Abandoned. It belongs to a dead soldier.”

The marshal would soon find
it, she supposed. But would Mario and the others still be there?

A pair of men
were coming toward them.

“Was that firecrackers?” one called out.

The
other said, “You all right, young lady?”

They were nearly on the dock now. It
took Ella a moment to blink them into focus. She recognized William McAdoo, the
President’s son-in-law, from newspaper photographs.

“Will you stay with her?”
Killy asked. “I have to make an urgent call, but I can’t have her left
alone.”

Ella caught her breath. What? Marshal Killy was walking away from her?
Trusting strangers to keep her here? When she’d escaped from him twice
already?

McAdoo was with Governor Smith, who slipped a hand under her elbow.
“You ought to get out of this hot sun, honey.”

Killy looked as if he meant to
say something to her. But he didn’t. He turned and ran toward the house.

The
men walked her to a boathouse bench. Smith sat beside her. He said to McAdoo, “You
go on back, Bill. Tell Roosevelt and Cox not to steal the nomination before I put in
a good word for myself.”

McAdoo laughed. He was handsome in the way of rich
men, with their unworried smiles and uncrimped brows. “Fine way of saying it won’t
be me, next year in San Francisco. When you know it will.”

Smith patted Ella’s
hand, on the bench between them. He was a sweet-faced man with a soft smile. His
jacket was almost as rumpled as his blond-and-white hair. He said, “I bet the
Westfields will give you the rest of the day off if you’re feeling punk. Even
useless politicians can make do with only a swarm, and not an outright herd, of
servants. Oh, now. Don’t cry.” He fumbled for a handkerchief, setting it on her
knee. She looked down at it. An embroidered A and E flanked a larger S. “Can’t be as
bad as all that.”

What would he think if he knew she’d nearly killed
him?

It was a few minutes before she could speak. She managed to say, “Bless
you for Triangle Shirt.” He’d been on a committee to review the factory fire—146
girls burned alive behind locked doors. Those who appointed him wanted a hasty
whitewash but he gave them a three-year inquisition. “I worked in a place like
that.”

Smith looked sad. “We’re not done yet. Long road ahead. But look there,
old McAdoo’s come back.”

“Say,” McAdoo said. “That campaign manager of
Palmer’s? Sent me down with a message for you, missy.”

She blotted her tears
with Smith’s handkerchief. Killy would return soon with reinforcements. She hoped
their interrogation didn’t leave her scarred. One of her neighbors had lost an eye.
Another, all her teeth on one side.

“Asked if you remember Jim
Corbett?”

“The big-game hunter?” Smith said.

“That’s the one,” McAdoo
said. “Dashing fellow, remember? Killed that man-eater in India.”

“What about
him?” Ella knew this must be important. Killy wouldn’t send a man as august as the
President’s son-in-law, the former Secretary of the Treasury, to relay a mere
afterthought.

“Said Corbett was always sorry the tiger got a last victim. A
few minutes before Corbett shot the cur, it tore apart a girl about your age. That’s
what he told me.” McAdoo laughed again. “I hope the story doesn’t frighten
you?”

“No.”

“You were talking about . . . Champawat, is it? That’s what
he said. That he didn’t know if he’d see you again later. So when I came to fetch
Al—he says they want you at the house, Al—would I please mention this to
you.”

Smith said, “Funny way of flirting with a gal.”

Flirting? Ella
imagined Killy sitting opposite her in a restaurant. Imagined them discussing
politics and history with pleasure and not with dread.

Smith rose. “So they
miss me, do they, Bill?”

“How could they not, Al? It’s been a good half-hour
since we heard how you worked at the Fulton Market, pulling yourself up by your own
bootstraps and vast talents.”

Smith laughed. Ella watched the men as if
through a fog.

Killy didn’t know if he’d see her again? He’d said this to
McAdoo?

Corbett was always sorry the tiger got a last victim.

Ella stood shakily. She extended Smith’s handkerchief. But he closed his hand
around hers. “You keep it, dear.”

For a few minutes, she stood watching Smith
and McAdoo walk away.

On the other side of the pond, farmland rolled through
the back acres of other rich Washingtonians’ summer estates. Eventually the fields
must meet dirt paths and narrow lanes. Not the road that brought her here. That
would be roaring with cars soon—lawmen descending to pull the dynamite from the
pond, to question the guests and servants. None was likely to remember Ella carrying
the tray in.

Other cars would race to check abandoned farmhouses for miles
around. But Mario and the rest would have left by now. Expecting trouble after what
they hoped was a horrific explosion. An inestimable blow to the nation’s ruling
party.

She didn’t know how Killy would explain finding the bomb. She hoped it
brought him satisfaction, but she knew it would fade. His friend the Attorney
General would soon launch his raids. Palmer would bring an iron fist down on a
Bolshevik revolution in America, a Red menace, that was chiefly in his own mind.
Killy would see his Fighting Quaker bring unwarranted misery to tens of thousands.
Then he would feel, perhaps, the way Ella did now.

She started toward the far
side of the pond. Buzzing over the water, minute insects caught the sun like
glitter. Farther on, rectangles of dirt lay fallow and hedges tumbled with yellow
flowers.

Ella didn’t know where she was going. Not home to retrieve the small
comforts bought with Mrs. Kingston’s gems. Killy might come looking for her there.
He was grateful to her now: She could have let him pull her away from the bomb. She
could have let it do its damage.

Later he might repent this favor.

It
was bitterly hard to lose everything again. But she’d never meant to be a thief.
She’d taken the jewelry thinking Mrs. Kingston had no more use for it. It would only
trouble her to keep the proceeds now. She’d have to find another way.

It was
worth it to know what Nicky had done. How like him, how brave, to put a sick woman’s
needs above his own. To risk all to help a stranger.

Mario told Ella she’d
find Nicky again if she came here. And in a sense, she had.