The First Assassin (32 page)

“He’s definitely out. She saw him leave this morning.”

“Does she know where he went?”

“No. As I said, his movements are a mystery to her.”

“The more we learn about this man, the more he intrigues me. It’s too bad we can’t take a look at his room.”

“Colonel, you’re much too pessimistic.”

“What do you mean?”

Springfield grinned. “Well, I got her to start talking about her son, who is in the navy.”

A puzzled expression crossed Rook’s face. The sergeant continued. “She wanted to show me a picture of him. So she retrieved it from another room.” Springfield paused and smiled even wider.

“Yes?” asked Rook.

“She was gone for a minute or two. I know it doesn’t sound like a long time, but when you think about it, a minute or two can seem like quite a while.”

Rook only let a few seconds go by before he prompted Springfield. “Please go on.”

“You can get a lot done in a minute or two.”

“That’s certainly the implication. So what did you get done?”

Springfield reached into his pocket. He jingled its contents. When he took his hand out, it held a key. His smile grew wider.

Portia woke to the sound of Nat snoring in a rocking chair. She sat up, stretched her arms, and yawned. Lying in bed all day had seemed to rejuvenate her.

The room was full of shadows, cast by the dim light coming from a window. She saw Nat stir, in the last stages of sleep. He had told her that he worked nights. When he left, she would be alone again, in the dark.

Perhaps this would be a good time to make her getaway. By giving her protection and food, Nat had done plenty for her. He did it at some risk to himself, too. Portia had not told him in so many words that she was a runaway, but what else could she be? Nat had to know. Leaving now would remove a danger from his midst. The problem was that she still had to find the White House. She had no idea where to go or even what it looked like.

Nat shifted around in his chair again. Maybe he could tell her. Then Portia could leave.

She yawned again and slipped her hand into her shirt to check on the photo. She had become so accustomed to its presence that she was only half aware that she was doing it. This time, however, her hand felt nothing. The failure to touch it startled her. In an instant, she was fully awake, patting down her clothes and searching through her blankets in a panic. She looked all over the bed, under it, and on the floor nearby. The picture was missing. Her mad scramble to find it had turned up nothing.

But it did wake Nat.

“Lookin’ for somethin’?” he asked. She did not care for his tone of voice. It sounded as if he already knew the answer to his question.

“I had somethin’ here, but it ain’t here now,” she said.

Without a word, Nat reached to a table beside him and lifted the photo for Portia to see.

“Gimme that!” shouted Portia, leaping to her feet. She tried to grab the picture, but Nat pulled it away. He held it with both hands from the top, ready to rip it in half if she took a step toward him. Portia froze in place.

“Just tell me what this is,” he said.

“I can’t believe you took that from me.”

“I didn’t take nothin’ from you. All I did was pick it up from where it fell.”

“Well, it’s mine, and I want it back.” Portia held out her hand.

“Put your hand down,” snapped Nat. He spoke with an authority that reminded her of an overseer. She obeyed. “Now sit back down,” said Nat in a lower voice. She obeyed that order too.

“I brought you here knowin’ the risks,” he said. “That was my choice. I’ll also help you get on your way to wherever it is you need to go. The worst thing for me would be for you to get caught two minutes after leavin’ because you didn’t know what you were doin’. I’ll give you help, but there can’t be no secrets. You’ve been hidin’ this photograph ever since you come here. Maybe you think it ain’t my business, but when I brought you here, fed you, and let you sleep, you made it my business.”

Portia’s voice held a note of desperation. “That picture’s the whole reason I’m here. You’ve helped me this much, Nat. You gotta give it back.”

“Tell me about it.”

“Let me ask you somethin’ first.”

“Okay.”

“What do you think of the president?”

“Abe Lincoln? He’s causin’ a lot of fuss around here. Right now, nobody seems to know if there’s a war comin’ or not. I sort of wish things were back to normal.”

“Are you for him or against him?”

“I’ve never thought of it that way. Nobody has asked me. I don’t get to vote, you know.”

“Where I’m from, everybody’s against him. All the white people are, anyway. They say he’s gonna free the slaves. That makes me for him.”

“I ain’t no slave, Portia. I don’t wanna see nothing happen that’s gonna make me one. Abe Lincoln’s givin’ people worries, and I’m not sure I’ll be better off when it’s over.”

“Does that mean you’re against him?”

“No, it don’t mean that. It would be good if Lincoln freed the slaves. But it’s not somethin’ he can just do. It’s more complicated than that. He’d have to fight a war, and that ain’t in my interests. If an army from Virginia were to come marchin’ into Washington, things wouldn’t look so good for me or my kind.”

“Don’t you want to see him succeed?”

“I don’t want him to mess up.”

Portia didn’t reply immediately. Could she trust him with the information he wanted?

“What does any of this gotta do with the picture?” asked Nat, looking again at the photo.

Portia decided she had no choice but to trust him. “Nobody’s supposed to see it except the person I’m bringin’ it to.”

“And who’s that?”

“Abe Lincoln.”

“You’re tryin’ to get this picture to Abe Lincoln?” Nat was incredulous. He looked at the photo again. “Why?”

“It’s just somethin’ I gotta do. I made a promise.”

“Why would Abe Lincoln want to see this?”

“I can’t say. I just gotta find him. Can you tell me where he’s at?”

“There ain’t no way you’re gonna get near him. He’s the president of the United States, and you’re just a runaway.”

“The whole purpose of my bein’ here is to find Abe Lincoln and give him the picture. If you just tell me where he is, I’ll go. You won’t have to worry about me no more.”

“All right, I’ll walk you there tonight before I gotta start work. But once I point to his house, I’m gone and you’re on your own.”

Ten minutes. That was how long Springfield said he could detain Tabard. From across the street, Rook watched the sergeant enter the boardinghouse. He could hear him greet her. The plan was to tell Tabard that he wanted to look over the unwanted room a second time. On the third floor, he would run through a series of questions about everything from the price to the condition of the floorboards. Meanwhile, Rook would enter the building and quietly examine the second-story room belonging to Mays.

Rook’s gaze locked on the upper-story window. Soon, he saw Springfield standing just inside of it. That was his signal to move. He crossed the street, opened the door, and walked in. Then he passed through the foyer and carefully climbed the steps. At the top was a door. He pushed the key into its lock and turned. It opened easily. Rook slipped into the room and closed the door.

The curtains were only partly drawn. An envelope rested at his feet. He noted its position on the floor and picked it up. It was addressed to “Mr. Mays, 604 H St.” Rook tried to lift the flap, but it was sealed shut. A corner was loose, however, and Rook slid a finger into the gap and gently ran it along the edge of the flap. The seal began to give. Rook thought he could open the envelope without damaging it. Suddenly the flap ripped in half. Rook cursed under his breath. It would be obvious that someone had tampered with the envelope.

The damage having been done, he figured there was no harm in ripping open the envelope all the way. He pulled out a piece of stationery, made from the same creamy stock that Grenier had used in her note to Scott. Rook read the note: “I have reason to believe Rook is watching me. You may be in danger as well. Proceed with extreme caution.”

Rook folded the note and stuck it in his pocket. Given its condition, he figured that it was best for the note to vanish entirely.

Much of the rest of the room was plain, with a bed positioned lengthwise along a wall and a trunk beneath the window. A pile of thick books attracted Rook’s attention. They were stacked on the floor and in various states of disrepair. Bindings were slit and pages were removed. Paper shavings sprinkled the floor. Rook noticed the titles: these were the books purchased from French & Richstein’s. Behind them, Rook found scissors, knives, a ruler, glue, and a few spools of colored ribbon. These would have come from the bookbinder. He had no idea what it all meant.

The bed was bare, except for a blanket and pillow. Nothing was hidden beneath it. The only thing left to investigate was the trunk. Rook raised its lid and peered inside. He saw shirts, pants, and socks, all neatly folded. Kneeling down, he pulled out a few items and sorted through the rest to see what they covered. At the bottom of the trunk, he found a rifle—a Sharps New Model 1859 breechloader. This was a preferred weapon for marksmen. A proficient shooter could hit a target at fifteen hundred feet. Rook pulled it out. The gun was clean and well maintained. It was also loaded.

The fact that a man would keep a gun in a trunk did not startle Rook in the least. Yet he was still concerned that Mays owned a sniper’s weapon. Mays was connected to Grenier, who was connected to those canal conspirators. Perhaps Scott could dismiss this mass of circumstantial evidence. Rook remained convinced that something lay beneath it all.

His ten minutes had just about expired. Rook put the gun back in the trunk and then returned the clothes, arranging them as he had found them. He took one more look around the room. Nothing else jumped out at him. Upstairs, he imagined Springfield quizzing his hostess about what kind of ceiling paint she preferred. He knew it was time to go.

A moment later, the lid to the trunk was shut, the door to the room was locked, the key to the room was dangling from the hook in the kitchen, from where Springfield had plucked it—and Rook was walking down H Street, away from the boardinghouse. Scott had told him to take the rest of the day off. Rook would put the time to good use, going over his options and thinking about going over the general’s head.

The sun was sinking below a stand of trees when Mazorca finally turned his horse onto a short lane that led to a small cabin. He had observed the house for two hours when the light was still good and decided that its single occupant, an elderly man, lived alone. Perhaps he had once shared his home with a wife and children, but there was no evidence of them now. In all likelihood, the wife had passed on and the children had grown up. Several acres of farmland sat behind the house, but the man probably rented them to a younger neighbor. It looked like he scratched out a modest existence from combining this income with whatever he raised in a nearby pigpen.

Yet this was all guesswork. What mattered to Mazorca was the apparent fact that the man was in the house by himself and that nobody else lived nearby. Riding up and down the dirt road, Mazorca had discovered that the nearest house was about a mile away. Further on there was a crossroads tavern that catered to travelers moving between Washington and southern Maryland. But the cabin in front of him was about as isolated as anything he had seen in the region that day. Mazorca dismounted. He would perform the test here.

The smell of a warm dinner drifted through an open window. The old man must have heard Mazorca because he appeared at the door. Until now Mazorca had seen him only from a distance. This was his first close look. He was of average height, on the skinny side, and stooped at the shoulder. Much of his hair was gone, and what remained of it had turned gray. He had not shaved for several days. Mazorca figured him for at least sixty years old, maybe seventy.

“Hello,” said the man in a tone more suspicious than welcoming.

“Good evening,” said Mazorca, removing his hat and trying to reassure the man with a smile. “I’m sorry to arrive unannounced, so late in the day. It wasn’t my intention to interrupt your dinner. May I trouble you for a minute?”

“If you’re looking for the inn, there’s one just up the way,” he said, pointing in the general direction of the crossroads tavern.

“Thank you, but that’s not why I’m here,” said Mazorca, resting his hat on the horn of his saddle. “I have a simple question for you.” He opened his saddlebag and pulled out a book. Its exterior was black, with gold letters on its front and spine. A pair of yellow and red ribbons dangled from the bottom. Mazorca approached the doorway and raised the book, displaying its cover. “Do you know what this is?”

The old man squinted for a moment, and then recognition filled his eyes. “Look, mister,” he said. “I don’t have time for your preaching. If you’ll please excuse me…”

Mazorca laughed. “I’m not a preacher, and I’m not going to preach. It’s the furthest thing from my mind, really. I was just hoping you could identify this book.” He continued to hold it up, a few feet away from the old man.

“Well, it sure looks like the Holy Bible.”

“Yes, it does look like a Bible,” said Mazorca in a patronizing voice that a teacher might use to encourage a slow student. He now began rotating the book in his hands, so that the old man could view it from several angles. “But are you certain it’s a Holy Bible?”

“Is this some kind of trick?”

“I prefer to think of it as a challenge.”

“Mister, I don’t know what you’re trying to do here, but I’m in no mood for this.”

“Very sorry!” said Mazorca, laughing again. “I see that I’m trying your patience. Let me make this simple. Please permit me to ask a direct question: you think this looks like a Holy Bible, such as a preacher might carry around?”

“Yes,” said the old man, warily.

“Excellent. That’s all I wanted to know. Thank you very much.”

Rather than turning to leave, Mazorca now just stood in front of the doorway and stared at the old man. He held the book by the spine, in his left hand. No part of him moved, except for the thumb and index finger of his right hand, which gently massaged the red ribbon hanging from the book. His friendly look had vanished from his face.