But then I got word today of another death, more mundane even than those that preceded it: a man shot to death, in front of witnesses. A priest, standing on the steps of Saint Paul’s. Murdered in cold blood, for reasons yet unclear.
I knew that priest. His name was James Coyle, and we investigated a case together, back around the turn of the century. He was a good, decent man—levelheaded and prone to calm, methodical processes. He was not by any means the sort of fellow you’d expect to find gunned down by an enraged madman with a personal vendetta. I simply can’t fathom it.
Then I got further word from . . . oh, let’s not call Drake a “superior,” for he’s more like a traffic director than a manager.
Suffice it to say that I heard from our resident traffic director that we’d actually received several letters from this same priest over the previous month asking us to investigate the axe murders in his city. I was irate—these letters were addressed to me! And I’d never laid eyes on them! But then I calmed myself, for it was true that I’d been out of the office most of that time, peering into a potential poltergeist pestering people in Providence.
I’m sorry, I don’t mean to be funny. (It wasn’t funny at all.)
What I mean to say is that I was out of the office, and the letters were rerouted through a secretary who handles such things in the absence of operatives like myself. He’s a different sort of traffic director, you might say. It’s his job to open letters and packages to check for anything untoward, and also to prioritize requests and appeals. When I cornered the lad about his handling of the priest’s letters, he trembled and told me precisely what I said above: The only unusual element in the axe murders . . . was the presence of the axe. There was no indication that this was something for the Quiet Society to investigate.
I hated him, because I knew he was right.
If I’d been the fellow processing the copious mound of correspondence we get in a month, and if I’d read about the Birmingham case with half my brain turned on . . . then I probably would have done the very same and disregarded it as a strange case, but not a weird one.
I collected the letters that remained—only two had yet been spared from the fire, and the second of those arrived after the good man’s death. The first was a general recounting of the more recent deaths by hatchet, and the second was more of a personal note. It had not yet been opened, so I sliced it with my desktop blade and read:
I wish you’d send me some reply, but I understand how much you travel, and how much you must have to read in the homebound intervals. I almost fear you’ve not received these missives at all, and perhaps they’ve been dragged into some hole, lost by the postal service, forgotten by your clerks . . . but I have faith that the important parts will find you yet. I must have faith. And I must impress upon you, things here are odder than they seem—far odder than the papers would lead you to believe. I fear for the safety of this city, and for my own safety, too, yes. Bad things are coming together, and it’s sickening my soul to watch them join forces against us.
It isn’t just the Klan, though God knows they’re bad enough; but there are others like them, the “True Americans,” they call themselves, the “Guardians of Liberty.” Also there is a church, if one could be so gauche as to call it that. I’ve known many fine Baptists in my day—men with whom I could chat and cooperate for the greater good—but this is nothing like that. This is something altogether weirder and worse, and it calls itself Chapelwood. Between this unholy triad, they will see Birmingham burned to the ground. Or worse.
I’m afraid, Simon. For everyone. Please come, won’t you? I’m afraid, and I am too alone to save everyone who might need saving.
He signed the letters “JC,” as a gentle, sacrilegious joke between us. Jesus Christ or James Coyle, either way the initials worked and that’s one reason I liked him—one thing we had in common: a propensity in private toward inappropriate humor. (Though I prefer to think of it as a finely honed sense of ironic awareness. Is that different? I don’t know.)
I held the letter in my hands and rubbed those initials with my thumb, marveling that he was dead already before his handwriting ever reached me—this fine man, assassinated on the steps of his own church, by a madman who . . .
. . . who I knew nothing about.
I had only the Huntsville office’s descriptor to go on, and it wasn’t much. Mad, and a man. That was the whole sum of what I knew.
But I would learn more, goddammit.
I packed myself some paperwork of the official variety—the kind that opens doors and loosens tongues—and I went down the hall to Drake’s office. He sat within it, tired and old-looking, with a glass of scotch in one hand and a pen in the other. He took a sip of the former and asked me what I wanted.
“I want Father James Coyle to be alive and well, and tending his flock at Saint Paul’s in Birmingham. In lieu of that, I want to go there myself and find out who murdered him. And why.”
He sighed heavily, and for a moment the whole room reeked of scotch. This was not his first glass of the afternoon, nor surely his last. He folded his arms and leaned forward on them, using his elbows to hold himself up. “It is a shame about the man. I know you liked him.”
“He sent me some letters before his demise, regarding the recent axe murders in that city, among other strange occurrences.”
“Jesus,” he said. I thought he’d take another swig, but he only gazed longingly at the glass. “You didn’t get enough of axes with that Borden woman?”
“Can one ever really get enough of axes?”
“Now you’re being an ass.”
“You began it, sir. I’ll end it by catching the next train to Birmingham, since we’re both agreed that this conversation should take a different course.”
He went ahead and took that swig after all, downing the contents in a hearty gulp. “You think there’s some connection between this case and the Borden case?”
“Not really, but you never know. It’s been thirty years,” I said, almost tripping over the number. Had it really been so long? Yes, good heavens. Thirty years since the Hamilton murders, and the disappearance of the actress Nance O’Neil. Thirty years since the stink of death and fetid tidewater. Was Lizzie Borden still alive? I hadn’t heard anything about her passing, so I assumed she must still be among the living. I cleared my throat and swept away the cobwebs in my brain. “The fact is, I don’t really care if this is something within our purview or not. Coyle was a friend—an able academic and a fierce ally. He reached out to me for help in his last days, and I did not respond. So I will respond now, with or without the authority of this institution.”
“I figured as much.” Drake opened his top desk drawer and pulled out an envelope. He shoved it across the table at me.
“What’s this?”
“A train ticket and a stipend, but don’t get too excited about it. It’ll only last you a week, and then you’re on your own dime. I’ve already drawn up a file for this one—just direct your telegrams and notes to number 88193. That’s also the code to start your phone calls.”
I took the revelation in stride. He’s not the chief traffic director because he’s clueless; he’s chief traffic director because he’s more than a little bit clairvoyant. Sometimes, it’s actually useful. I deflected the fact that I was a tiny bit impressed by saying: “Don’t tell me you’re going to start answering the phone.”
“Me, personally? No. I don’t like those damn things. Creepy, is what it is—talking to someone when you can’t see them face-to-face.”
“Says the man who consorts with mediums.”
He frowned, but without any real vigor. “It’s not the same thing.”
“If you insist.”
“Just call us if you need to, and mail your paperwork when it comes to that. We’ve got Gavin on phone duty, and during business hours, yes, he will damn well answer it.”
&nb
sp; “And after business hours?” I asked, one eyebrow aloft.
“If I hear it, I’ll pick it up. Otherwise, you’re out of luck.” He opened another drawer and pulled out a cigar, and that was my cue to leave.
I thanked him with a short bow, even though bows are difficult for a man of my girth. I hoped he appreciated the gesture, and took it in the spirit I intended—rather than a gesture of mockery. In retrospect, it might’ve looked like I was making fun of him, but I didn’t mean it that way.
I didn’t think about it long.
I stuffed the envelope into my satchel and grabbed my coat from the rack beside the front door. I donned it, and likewise my hat. It’s only fall, but it’s been cold for fall. I try to be prepared.
I could have walked the distance to my flat; it’s less than a mile, but I prefer to take a cab, so I flagged one down with a wave. I don’t mind the expense. My expenses are few and my pay is substantial. I don’t have to walk if I don’t want to.
I wondered after the weather in Alabama. Not every corner of the Deep South is a hellhole of overheated air, after all. How far south was Birmingham, anyway? I’d never been before, but I had maps at home—and when I checked my train ticket, I was happy to note that it didn’t set me on the rails until the next morning.
There was still time for a good night’s rest, a few investigatory phone calls, and a carefully packed suitcase full of cotton rather than wool.
George Ward, Birmingham City Commission President
BIRMINGHAM, ALABAMA SEPTEMBER 23, 1921
I am going to lose.
There’s no sense in pretending otherwise at this point; Barrett has run a rich and disgusting campaign for City Commission president, and Birmingham has eaten it up—gobbled it up, really, and I just don’t understand it. Well, that’s not true. I do understand it, but I hate it—because it makes me bitter. It makes me think that maybe the city deserves whatever it gets with this scoundrel, if it’s going to vote him in and give him rein to do as he pleases.
Ignorance and bigotry and money. This is what it buys you: Nathaniel Barrett.
The True Americans have purchased the office for him, and even if the voters don’t hand it to him on a silver platter, I’m sure they’ll see fit to have him installed. One way or another. Over my dead body, I’m sure—if I were to suggest it. They’d be delighted.
No, tempting as it may seem to surrender, I can’t let it come to that.
I can’t just die, and let them have this place. There are too many others who need an advocate, now more than ever as their voices are stripped and silenced, block by block. Good men remain here still, though our numbers dwindle in the face of constant abuse, threats, and harassment. If we all give up, then what’s to come of the colored men and women? The immigrants? The Catholics and Jews? And for God’s sake, when I lay it out like that, you’d think we’d have greater ranks to call upon. Our troops are not legion, but they are not . . . they’re not nothing, either.
But when all’s said and done, they’re not enough.
The election is tomorrow, and I will lose it, and nothing will stand between that miserable bastard and the decent people I’ve served to the best of my ability. I am outraged, yes. I am sorrowful, yes. I feel betrayed—by those whose support I thought I deserved, and by those who damn well ought to know better.
Also, and here’s the thing I mustn’t say aloud: I’m frankly terrified.
Something is happening here, something worse than mere politics—these filthy tricks are the tip of some iceberg of awfulness, the scope of which is yet unclear. But I do not doubt, not for a single second, that the recent deadly incidents and the impending ballot box disaster are related.
The targets are the same, after all.
The immigrants. The blacks. The poor. Those who would dare to intermingle.
• • •
The first axe murder happened over a year ago, depending on how you figure it—because some say that the true first incident was almost a year before that, and maybe it’s so; there was an Italian woman whose death I suspect that I ought to include in the roster, but so many people die every day . . . more of them by the blade of a hatchet or axe than you’d really expect. But this much is certain: Once Adam Besler was killed, the other assaults came quickly after. So if his death was not the first of all, it was definitely the first of a cluster.
Besler was a clerk at a haberdashery belonging to the Mangione family, down at the juncture where the streetcar lines cross and connect at Five Points South Circle. It looked like a robbery gone bad, and a poor attempt at cover-up, besides. The man was hacked about the head and shoulders, the store’s cash was removed, and the place was set on fire. Fortunately for investigators, the fire was none too expertly set—and it was easily extinguished before all evidence was lost to us, including the axe itself. Whoever attacked him left it on site to burn with everything else.
Therefore, our police chief, Martin Eagan, set off looking for a murderous burglar. The neighborhood went on alert, the streets were given greater patrol, and everyone trusted that this unfortunate (but surely isolated) incident would be brought to a satisfactory solution before long.
Except that it wasn’t.
One week later, Joe and Susie Baldone were killed in a similar manner while closing up their small restaurant, just a few blocks away from where Besler died. There was no fire this time, and no murder weapon obligingly left behind, but the crime bore all the same hallmarks of the Besler killing. Then two days later, at the other end of Five Points, Gaspera Lorino was attacked—though he survived, and still struggles to recover his full capacities, or so his sister relayed when I inquired last month. He was not able to describe his attackers, though witnesses put the blame on a pair of black men who’d leaped out of an alley, and we received a similar report in the wake of what happened to Carlo Canelli and his wife, Anna. (Anna survived, but Carlo did not.)
It sounded suspicious to me, and not purely because Eagan told me in confidence that he thought the witnesses were lying.
There’s rumor of an organization, you see—they call it “the Black Hand,” and it’s known to give grief to immigrant business owners, extorting money and favors by threats (and application) of violence. Up to that point, all the victims had been Italians, or in the employ of an Italian, so that was the focus of the investigation—and the accusations of negro attackers sounded like a quick story, concocted to throw suspicion aside and prevent retaliation by any Black Hand members.
But then the victims changed.
There was Will Conway and his girlfriend, Betsey Frye, walking home from the pictures—both attacked, both killed. No witnesses. Neither one an immigrant, but Betsey was a mulatto, and there’d been some talk about Conway stepping out with her. Next came Mellie Hayes and her beau, Travis Foster. Same as Will and Betsey, though Travis did survive—and remembered nothing about the incident, or so he says. Likewise Jennie Heflin, who made it out of the fray alive, but injured.
None of the later victims had any ties to the immigrant community, and all were what could politely be described as engaged in “mixed” relations. It was an entirely different population under siege, and there were no witnesses to confirm or deny the reports of black men on a rampage—but again, I never really believed that in the first place, and neither did Eagan.
We didn’t believe the whispers that came next, either . . . though I confess that sometimes, at night, lying alone in my bed and praying to God for guidance . . . I wondered. The stories couldn’t possibly be accurate, but there was a certain . . . symmetry to them. A sense that they may not be precisely accurate, but they say something true nonetheless.
I’ll put it this way: This is how I first realized we were up against something worse than a man the papers called “Harry.”
I knew it when Eagan came into my office after a particularly long day. He drew up a chair before my desk a
nd dropped himself heavily into it, sighing as if he were letting all the air out of his body—and with it, the taint of whatever he’d seen or heard over the course of his duties.
I had a bottle of whiskey in my second drawer, and a pair of glasses beside it. I served us both a drink and we sat in companionable silence for a while, listening to the sounds of the city’s evening unfolding outside my window. Horses stomped and clattered on the side streets, and automobiles cranked and puffed up and down the lanes; storefront doors shut with the chime of a bell and the turn of a lock as they closed for the day; people called greetings to one another as the last of the streetlamps came on with a gassy hiss; and somewhere a block or two distant, a telephone rang.
“Must have been a hell of a day,” I finally said, in case he wanted to talk about it.
“Hell of a day, and you don’t know the half of it,” he replied, each letter seasoned with the Irish brogue he never quite lost in the American South. “Good way to put it, though. Hell of a day. These axe crimes, you know . . . I’ve never really seen the like of ’em—not so many like this, all in a bunch. And none of our witnesses ever see anything of any use to us.”
“Rogue negroes. Harry the Hacker.”
“Horseshit, all of it. But I’ve been keeping the latest here,” he said, patting his chest with one hand, and raising the glass to his mouth with the other. He swallowed. “Or in your office, if anyplace else. It can stay between us, can’t it? Because I’ll be damned if I know what to do with it.”
“From your lips to God’s ears, and no place in between,” I assured him. He didn’t really need the reassurance, I didn’t think. I don’t know why he asked for it.