The Fatal Flame (28 page)

“Well, I’ve brung him at last,” Ninepin reported sulkily. “He tumbled to a dusty mob of tobby coves working James Slip—wanted a story out of them, went underground so’s he could get one, and then peached to the hamlet of the Fourth. Mr. Wilde, meet the Wolf.”

Rising, I extended my hand, and the news reporter shook it firmly. I knew that Ninepin had just said William Wolf had disappeared in order to procure a story about a gang who by night bludgeoned pedestrians and then tipped them into the river, and that afterward the journalist had duly notified the captain of Ward Four. But I wondered if Mr. Wolf knew it. That had been an impressive run of flash patter, even for Ninepin.

“Timothy Wilde, star one-oh-seven. Thank you for coming.”

“Not at all.”

William Wolf’s voice was deep, his eyes widely set and nearly black. Ninepin and the boys were right, I thought in some surprise. If Mr. Wolf wasn’t Indian, one or both of his parents surely claimed Mexican descent. I wondered whether he’d come from the alarmingly large region poised to become an American slave state rather than a Tejano wilderness. His lips were angular, broad, and turned down at the corners, and his glossy close-cropped hair, far shorter than the usual fashion, was dark enough to reflect glints of blue. How in hell he’d managed to become a newsman of note I couldn’t fathom, for—legally speaking—Indians hold about as many rights as blacks, which is to say few in letter and none in practice. Most of them, or at least the ones who haven’t faded westward into the distant forests or settled in the gaps between cities, sell food or trinkets or do manual labor for a living.

“Have a seat, Mr. Wolf. Thank you, Ninepin.” I passed him his money. “You can leave us to it.”

“Bloody self-important, noddle-pated . . .” he muttered sadly.

“Ninepin, I’m sorry,” I added to his skinny back. “Write to Bird all you want, and best of luck. You’re a fly bloke, and I was being a right prick.”

Ninepin turned. He pulled his glasses off, predictably, and tapped them with great gravitas upon his chin. “Truly?” he questioned.

“Truly.”

“I savvy she’s your friend. And a fellow has to look after his doxies and all.”

“Well . . .”

“So that’s pretty white of you, Mr. Wilde.”

“Cheers. Off you go.”

“In a second. Share a nip of your sky-blue with a cove and we’ll call it square.”

Sighing, I poured Ninepin a tiny measure of gin. He drained it, smacking his lips together theatrically.

“Nothing like a quick stop to sluice your gob afore the afternoon stiffs come off the press. Fare thee well, Mr. Wilde. Mr. Wolf, write faster if you please, your work is golden, and I need the extra chink to court a ladybird.”

Grinning, Ninepin departed. I quashed warring urges to thank the scamp for appreciating Bird’s finer qualities and offering to strangle him if he ever so much as breathed on her person. But since Bird needed just such a harmless distraction these days due to my own stupidity, I held my tongue.

William Wolf had seated himself opposite my desk. His gaze was thoughtful and patient—the perfect expression for a reporter to adopt when questioning a subject—but laced with tart amusement. No,
irony
, I thought. His interest in humans hadn’t led to his wholehearted admiration of the species.

“Would you care for a splash yourself?” I asked, going for another glass.

“Why not, as it’s nearly lunchtime.”

“And already feels like midnight.” I poured a pair of drinks and sat down again. “I’ve been . . . active. You’re right, of course, and you needn’t accept.”

“I always accept,” he answered, swirling the tumbler philosophically. “One can never know what would have been the usual order of business in a new environment unless one says yes. You’re an intriguing man, a notable man, and your office is new to me. So I say yes.”

“To everything?”

“Nearly,” he returned. “Not to quack nostrums purportedly made from snake venom being sold out the back of a corner grocer in Ward Seven. It was only colored laudanum, of course, or so it proved, but the prospect was dangerously unpalatable.”

I felt my mouth curving upward. “You have a wide range of interests.”

“So do my readers. What are the particular interests of the man who solves riddles for Tammany Hall?”

“I’m surprised you’ve heard of me.”

“I’m surprised you’re surprised.”

Pondering, I linked my fingers together. “I’m working on a problem, and you wrote an article about the key players.”

“Was it riveting?” He failed to smile, which somehow lent the question all the more air of droll humor.

I nodded. I’d dug up the edition at the Mercantile Library Association in Nassau Street, where periodicals are archived, digging through rack after rack of print as the city clerks bustled through the quiet reading room, their hair neatly slicked and their collars turned up against their chins. Then I’d found it staring me in the face—
RIGHTS FOR FEMALES, SEWING GIRLS A BUSTED FLUSH
. It was a colorfully written account of the molls who’d defied New American Textiles. The much-maligned “Frailty, thy name is MAN” sentiment, for instance, was juxtaposed with a blistering portrait of Dunla Duffy, whose grasp of the strike’s purpose had been tenuous and was rendered in broad strokes. Miss Woods and Miss Abell had fared much better, but praise for their backbones and the lovely, clever heads those stalwart spines supported hadn’t prevented Wolf concluding:

We await Alderman Symmes’s decision with interest—but not, let us add, with much uncertainty as to its nature. And thus, like so many other Movements of these cataclysmic times, despite its passionate origins the strike against New American Textiles seems poised to prove so much banging of spoons against copper pots—all sound and feeling, and incapable of any success other than to create its own cacophony. Within that very hullabaloo, however, lies the kernel that so dismays the Conservative—Power has had its nose well and truly tweaked by the Fliers of Petticoat Flags, and though they accomplish ever so little, the din of their voices will not now be easily quelled.

“I want to know your impressions of Miss Woods and Miss Abell.”

He nodded. “I want an estate on Long Island with a kennel of racing dogs.”

“Do you want anything simpler?”

“The story of your investigation. And how
you
investigate it.”

Rubbing my fingers over the upside-down semicircle in my chin, I reflected upon the profound dangers of this proposal.

“I don’t know that the details can be made public.”

“Shouldn’t they be?”

“I try to follow my conscience, but the Party—”

“Oh, I see. You’ve a fondness for your own good health, as do I. Nothing Tammany fails to approve—just everything else. I’m fascinated by you, you understand. To our health.”

William Wolf finished the gin decisively and tilted his head back, awaiting my answer.

I didn’t like it. Not being the subject of an exposé and not sharing my all-too-scandalous information. But I needed the fires to stop. Thus I suspected what I really needed was a portrait of the hours between when the “Busted Flush” article appeared and the vicious quelling of the strike the next day. I had to know why two passionate friends were no longer speaking. And why Ellie Abell had once seemed to Miss Duffy to have stars in her eyes when now only the icy glimmer of tragedy lingered there.

“It’s a deal,” I told him.

William Wolf pulled a notebook from his brown swallowtail coat as I reached for the pad on which I pen police reports and sketch suspects. Oddly mirroring each other.

“How did you come to cover the manufactory girls?” I asked.

“I was already interested in female rights—they accidentally timed the strike to suit me. What do you think of the movement?”

“I think some of the women I know are sharper than I am. Doesn’t mean I like to see them jeopardized, but their work should be fairly compensated.”

“Ah, a social radical. I take it you’re an abolitionist, then, as they go perennially hand in glove?”

“I was antislavery long before the Bowery girls started antagonizing the tailors, yes.”

“Your brother, Captain Valentine Wilde of firefighting infamy, is suddenly running on a Barnburner ticket. Do you support his campaign?”

I blinked, not having lent any special thought to this thorny question. “I’m not a bit political, but Val’s a hard worker and a Free Soil hero. How came you to write about female autonomy?”

“It’s a hot enough subject that anything you say will at least be read if not appreciated. I don’t care if people appreciate me, only if they buy a copy of the
New Republican
.”

“Ninepin heartily agrees with you. Tell me about meeting the seamstresses.”

“Of course. Tell me why you’re intrigued by them.”

I was beginning to enjoy the rapport of this tit-for-tat questioning. Mr. Wolf placidly jotted notes in jerky shorthand, knee cocked akimbo with his shin resting against his leg. We somehow felt like collaborators after a five-minute acquaintance. I suspected that to be a talent of his.

“Alderman Robert Symmes owns a great many properties, and two of them have been burned by an incendiary using white phosphorus,” I replied cautiously. “Threatening letters were sent to him previous. Say nothing of the firestarter in the press, or we’ll be sharing the Hudson as a final resting place. But the motive is almost certainly vengeance originating from the strike.”

Mr. Wolf looked up from his scribbling in some excitement. “A sewing girl turned anarchist?”

“Do you think it’s possible?”

“Possible and then some. Not so far as Miss Woods goes, mind. But Miss Abell? In a heartbeat.”

My pate had begun to tilt in agreement before the words registered. When his meaning did land, my pen froze
.

“Miss
Abell
?” I couldn’t help but exclaim.

Frown deepening, Mr. Wolf repeated, “Miss Abell, yes. I spent three of the strike’s six days sporadically interviewing them both, so it felt as if I came to know them rather well. The data is limited to my own impressions, however.”

“Will you give them to me?” I badly wanted to know.

He coughed pleasantly, adjusting his waistcoat. “Interesting. My impressions tend to be valued in printed form only, though I am the first to admit that my appearance carries distinct advantages to the undercover investigator—before you sits a man who, when dressed in rags or in feathers, is universally ignored if not kicked down the street. It’s terribly useful. I follow the natural flow of the river, you understand, only steering when absolutely necessary.”

“If you’d describe the terrain in this case, I’d be indebted.”

He smiled, an uptick that drew the corners of his mouth parallel rather than curved skyward. “Mr. Wilde, a single word has taken me further than I had dared hope in this world, and that is the word
yes
.”

Settling more comfortably into his chair, Mr. Wolf delivered his account. Following the strike had been uneventful for him on the first day. Two days later, when he returned to collect more quotes and soak up the scene, the tailors had arrived and begun to make their displeasure known by lobbing obscenities and putrid vegetables. Mr. Wolf, whether from sympathy or suspicion they were ripe for a chat (I suspected the latter), asked Sally Woods and Ellie Abell to tea after the day’s protests. He’d done so again when he returned for the last time—that was Saturday, the day after the article appeared in the late Friday papers.

“It had already rained all over them on their way to the manufactory,” he said, remembering. “Then a pack of hired bullies descended, and it was over in five minutes. Symmes ended the strike . . . definitively, though I can think of other words. There they stood, bedraggled as wet cats, exhausted and bruised to boot, their circle all but disbanded, though Miss Abell and Miss Woods lingered. Miss Woods was scarlet with fury, pacing interminably, while Miss Abell dispensed advice as to injuries among the outworkers. I bought them another pot of tea, as they were short, and wished them well.”

“What gives you reason to think Miss Abell could possibly set fire to a slum?” I prodded.

He spread his hands. “Here’s my recollection of the pair. First of all, they were thick as any set of thieves. Inseparable. The instant violence threatened on that picket line, their eyes were on each other—reassuring, defending, planning. And the brains behind the planning was without doubt Miss Woods. Her mind, Mr. Wilde . . . I marveled at it. Your women have been talking about equality for decades, but outside of my own people I’d never
seen
it, so I wasn’t sure it was possible for whites. She grasped questions of politics, business, housing. Miss Abell worshipped her.”

“You don’t imagine extraordinary abilities can be used destructively?”

“I meant nothing of the sort. You said you know women who are sharper than you? Well, Miss Woods is sharper than me, Mr. Wilde, and I know better than to burn down a building belonging to Robert Symmes. Another will pop up overnight. When half his businesses disintegrated in eighteen forty-five, did he bat an eyelash? Miss Woods is too keen to make such a dull play.”

Baffled, I passed my fingers through my high hairline. “But Miss Woods frightens him. I saw it. Hell, I wasn’t exactly easy around her myself.”

“The first time we met, she asked if it had been losing my family that led me to abandon tradition for enterprise and congratulated me for defying convention. No one is easy around Miss Woods.”

“How did you answer?”

“Since she was right, I told her my parents are Swedes, and very proud of me,” he joked.

Half smiling, I topped up our gin. “And Miss Abell?”

Mr. Wolf paused his note-taking, black eyes shining. “Miss Abell is affectionate, trusting, and well intentioned. I can’t possibly think of a person who would be more easy to manipulate. That’s why she was chosen for the final meeting between parties after the strike ended, I imagine.”

I’d been riveted enough at the character study, but this was new information. My pulse sped instantly. “There was a meeting scheduled?”

“Oh, yes. The article had been printed Friday and I brought them copies on Saturday. Brickbats and hired thugs dampened spirits worse than the rain, but the girls seemed hopeful even then, for they said Symmes had arranged a tête-à-tête to settle the aftermath amicably
.
Not with Miss Woods, mind, who could probably talk circles around the likes of him before calling for fresh rebellion, but with Miss Abell. She’d have made a far more impressionable emissary, or so the alderman must have surmised.”