The First Assassin (38 page)

The problem for Mazorca was that the soldiers traveled in packs. He suspected that their officers had warned them to stick together, like herds of animals that sought safety in numbers. It was good advice: Murder Bay was full of predators in search of prey. Most of them merely intended to separate the soldiers from their money. Occasionally, however, a denizen of this squalid district wanted something far worse. Murder Bay had not earned its nickname for nothing, and its victims were not always babes.

Outside the Winder Building, ten-year-old Zachariah Hoadly stood beside his father. He brushed aside his red hair, which kept falling in his face. He needed to visit a barbershop.

“You’re sure it’s him?” asked Isaac Hoadly, repeating a question he had posed perhaps a dozen times already.

“I’m pretty sure,” said the boy, sounding less than fully confident.

Isaac looked at the photograph. “And it’s because of the ear?”

“Yes, Dad,” said Zack, annoyed at his father’s doubts.

“And this is where they told you to come?”

“Uh-huh.”

Isaac was building up the nerve to go inside when a man in a blue uniform walked out the front door. “Excuse me,” said Isaac. “Can you help me?”

Colonel Rook halted in front of the Hoadlys. He looked tired and none too interested in helping anybody.

“My son came home with this picture,” said Isaac. He held up the photograph of Mazorca.

Rook’s eyes lit up. “Please tell me you’ve seen him.”

From a block away, Mazorca saw the sergeant walking along Tenth Street. Springfield was alone, which is what initially attracted Mazorca’s interest—he was searching for a bluecoat who was not part of a crowd. He figured that as the night grew older, soldiers would stumble away from their card games, bottles, and prostitutes. Most would have entered Murder Bay with companions, but many would exit on their own.

Springfield was far from ideal. For starters, he was a burly man who looked like he could put up a fight. He was also sober. Mazorca’s goal was to identify someone who was closer to his own size, and preferably drunk. Yet he decided to keep an eye on Springfield for at least a few minutes.

The sergeant’s behavior quickly puzzled him. Springfield walked methodically from brothel to brothel. He would enter one, remain inside for several minutes, and come back out. Then he would go to the next one on the street. At first, Mazorca suspected that the ladies of the house Springfield had chosen were preoccupied. After he came out of the third house, however, Mazorca wondered if Springfield was picky about whom he would pay for companionship. Mazorca soon decided that something else was going on.

When Springfield turned onto C Street, Mazorca was only a dozen feet behind him. As the sergeant approached yet another bordello—it went by the name of Madam Russell’s Bake Oven—another man approached him.

“Sir! Do not enter that house of sin!” he shouted.

Springfield stopped in his tracks and smiled. Mazorca halted as well, pretending to look through the window of a watering hole, as if he were searching for a friend. From the corner of his eye, he could see that the man who assailed Springfield was a bespectacled chaplain. He wore a broad-brimmed hat and a frock coat that extended almost to his knees. In one hand he held a cross and in the other a Bible.

“Walk through that doorway and abandon all hope of salvation,” pleaded the chaplain.

“Don’t worry,” laughed Springfield. “I will commit no sin by entering the Bake Oven.”

Springfield placed his arm on the chaplain’s shoulder. Their voices dropped, and Mazorca could not make out what they were saying. The sergeant seemed greatly amused. The chaplain maintained an earnest look on his face, but soon he began to nod, as if Springfield had persuaded him of something. Then Springfield handed the chaplain a slip of paper, headed for the door of Madam Russell’s Bake Oven, and went inside.

The chaplain began to look up and down C Street, apparently hoping to find more soldiers he might approach. His job must be a lonely one, thought Mazorca, and especially on a night like this and in a place like Murder Bay. Armies functioned because they built a sense of camaraderie among the young men who joined their ranks. The intensity of a battle might frighten them, but they would refuse to retreat because they did not want to let their buddies down. They preferred to take their chances against bullets and bayonets rather than risk the disappointment of the men who marched and fought beside them. Yet here was the chaplain, haranguing soldiers for doing what soldiers always have done. Mazorca realized that this chaplain might become attached to a regiment, but he never would be just one of the guys.

Mazorca made a snap decision: he whistled. The chaplain looked his way, and Mazorca gestured for him to approach.

In the dim light, Mazorca had not seen that the chaplain’s coat was black, not blue. He noticed the difference in color as the man came forward but decided to speak to the chaplain anyway.

“I’m so glad to have found you,” said Mazorca, pretending to be short on breath, as if he had been sprinting. “I just pulled a baby out of the canal.”

“We must rescue the child!” said the chaplain.

With that, Mazorca made for Tenth Street and turned south. The chaplain kept pace with him, holding his hat to keep it from falling off.

“I didn’t expect to find a man of God in these parts,” said Mazorca as they ran.

“The Lord came into the world to save sinners,” said the chaplain. “He is most needed in places like this.”

They smelled the canal before they saw it—its powerful reek reached into Murder Bay even without the help of the wind. A moment later, they stood at its edge.

“You took the baby from the canal?” asked the chaplain.

“Yes, I removed it right away and carried it over to this alleyway,” said Mazorca. He pointed to a dark passage between a pair of abandoned buildings.

A look of doubt spread across on the chaplain’s face. “Why did you put the child there? Why didn’t you bring it away from this dreadful place?”

It was a sensible question, asked with a tone of mounting skepticism. Mazorca had relied on the man’s good heart and gullibility to get him to the canal. He figured he had no time to lose. In a fast and fluid motion, Mazorca whipped out his knife and sprang at the chaplain, who took an instinctive step backward but lost his balance when he tried to avoid plunging into the canal. He tumbled to the ground. Mazorca fell upon him, pressing his knee against the chaplain’s chest and his blade against his neck.

The chaplain closed his eyes and started mumbling, “Our Father…” He continued to clutch his cross and Bible.

“Shut your mouth—if you want to live,” said Mazorca.

In the silence, Mazorca looked up and made sure nobody had seen them. The track along the edge of the canal was desolate.

Rising to his feet but keeping his knife on the chaplain’s neck, Mazorca pointed to the alley once more. “You will get up, you will walk over there, and you will do it quietly,” he said.

The chaplain did as he was told. The alley was dingy and strewn with rotting garbage. A stray cat scampered away as they entered.

Several feet in, the chaplain stopped and faced Mazorca. “I forgive you,” he said.

Mazorca scoffed. “Are you sure about that?”

“I’m absolutely sure of it.”

“Your faith is pathetic. Do you think it will save you?”

“I’m not the one in need of saving.”

“Whatever,” said Mazorca. “Take off your coat.”

The chaplain did not hesitate. He quickly set down the cross and Bible, unbuttoned, and removed the coat. As he handed it to Mazorca, the clouds overhead suddenly parted, exposing the moon. One night before, it had been full. Its bright beams lit Mazorca and the chaplain.

“Wait,” said the chaplain, squinting at Mazorca. “You look like…”

He paused.

“What?” said Mazorca, with anger in his voice. “What do I look like?”

The chaplain sighed. He knew he should not have spoken.

“Tell me,” insisted Mazorca. The knife was no longer pressed against the chaplain’s neck, but Mazorca continued to point it at him. One wrong move and the chaplain would be dead. “Tell me now.”

“There is only one way to confirm it,” said the chaplain.

“It’s in the pocket.”

He reached for the coat, but Mazorca pulled it away.

“What’s in the pocket?”

“A picture.”

“A picture of what?”

“Please just let me retrieve it,” said the chaplain. “I don’t care about the coat. You can keep the coat.”

Mazorca wiggled the knife to remind the chaplain of its presence. “If this is a trick, you’ll be dead before your corpse hits the ground,” he said.

The chaplain nodded, reached a hand into his pocket, and pulled out a stiff piece of paper. He looked at it in the moonlight and then studied Mazorca’s face. When Mazorca realized what he was doing, he dropped the coat and grabbed the photograph.

The image astonished him: the picture was a little fuzzy, but there was no mistaking it. Mazorca had never allowed a photograph of himself to be taken before. Where could this one possibly have come from? He had absolutely no idea.

“Where did you get this?” he asked. There was urgency in his voice.

“A sergeant handed it to me, just a few minutes ago.”

Mazorca remembered Springfield’s encounter with the chaplain, outside Madam Russell’s Bake Oven.

“He had a handful of them,” said the chaplain. “He was distributing copies to the women of this quarter, hoping that one of them might recognize the person in it. I didn’t really want one. He practically forced me to take it.”

“How many did he have?”

“I don’t know—quite a few.”

Mazorca looked at the picture again but remained mystified as to its origins. He appeared to be standing outside. But where? And when?

“Could be anybody, I suppose,” said the chaplain.

Mazorca glared at him. Up above, the clouds moved in front of the moon. Darkness descended on the alley again.

“Just keep the coat,” said the chaplain. “You can have the picture as well. I have a little money too.”

He thrust a hand into his pants pocket. As he did, Mazorca struck, slashing the knife across the chaplain’s throat. Blood spewed out, and Mazorca hopped out of the way as the chaplain collapsed.

He put on the chaplain’s coat and hat and stuffed the picture into the pocket from which it had come. He thought about removing the chaplain’s pants, but he decided not to bother. They were close enough in appearance to the ones he was wearing. He did, however, pick up the cross and the Bible. The dead man’s neck was still seeping blood as Mazorca left the alley.

At the edge of the canal, Mazorca hurled the cross into the water. It splashed and sank. Then he tossed the Bible. It splashed and dipped below the surface before coming back up. Its dark cover was difficult to spot, but Mazorca thought he saw it begin to float away with the current.

Mazorca walked in the opposite direction. He needed to go into hiding, away from the eyes of people who had seen his photograph. He could not possibly check into a hotel—that would be the first place Rook and his men would have distributed pictures. Murder Bay was covered too. He could not even safely occupy a room in a whorehouse. There was always the safe house. Was it too risky? Or was it the best option among a set of worse alternatives?

There would be no escape this time. Rook would see to that. He was not interested in observing Mazorca from afar or trying to tail him anywhere. He wanted him killed or captured as quickly as possible. And if Mazorca was in the row house at 1745 N Street, one of those two things would happen in just a few minutes.

The house belonged to Robert Fowler. After Zack Hoadly had identified it, a lieutenant had looked up the address in the city’s ownership records. Rook remembered Fowler as the man who had crossed the Long Bridge into Virginia with an overstuffed wagon on the day the news of Fort Sumter’s fall had reached Washington. He knew that Fowler was a Southerner and a secessionist, but he was not sure that meant anything. To Mazorca, the Fowler residence might have represented nothing more than an abandoned building.

Everything rode on the accuracy of Zack’s report. Could the account of a ten-year-old boy be trusted? Boys could have powerful imaginations. Yet Rook was convinced that Zack had bumped into somebody outside the front door of 1745 N Street—and the possibility that it was a chance encounter with Mazorca was his only genuine lead. Rook was determined to pursue it.

The brown-brick row house was three stories tall. It was not a mansion, but it was large—Fowler was clearly a man of some means. Several large windows lined its front. It did not appear as though anybody was inside. Mazorca, of course, would have wanted it that way.

The colonel had assembled two dozen men. They quickly took position around the building. A handful went around to the rear. Several others positioned themselves on N Street, where they would make sure Mazorca could not leave through one of the windows. The rest marched with Rook to the front door.

Rook gave the knob a cursory twist, but it held tight. He gestured to a burly private. The man raised an ax and slammed it into the lock. Two more hits and the door cracked open. Anybody inside the house would now be on alert. Rook rushed in with his troops. They fanned through the building, charging up the stairs and racing in and out of rooms. They swiftly reached the conclusion Rook had feared: the house was empty.

Had Zack led them to the wrong house? Rook did not think so. The boy had been certain about the location.

Starting on the ground floor, Rook walked through the entire house, searching for clues. He did not find anything of special interest until he entered a bedroom on the third floor. Clothes littered the bed. Several drawers rested near the headboard, turned upside down. They had been removed from a dresser along the wall.

A closet door was shut. Rook approached and pulled it open. On the floor he saw it: the dress and the ball of bloody clothes. The boy had in fact seen Mazorca and had led Rook to the right house. Once again, however, he was too late. Mazorca was gone.