The First Assassin (19 page)

She returned to her seat on the tête-à-tête and handed Mazorca the key. “I’m here for you too,” she said in a low voice. “Let me know if there is anything you need.” She leaned across the couch and kissed Mazorca lightly on the lips. “I mean anything.”

A moment later, she led him upstairs.

Joe and Portia had never felt so tired. Two nights had passed since leaving the Bennett plantation. The physical effort was exhausting, and the nerve-wracking knowledge of what lay in store for them if they were caught only made matters worse.

Portia even found their general direction unsettling: all her life she had understood the promise of freedom lay to the north. In the night sky, she looked for the Big Dipper—or the Drinking Gourd, as she knew it—and spotted the two stars in that constellation that pointed toward the North Star. When she gazed up at the clear sky that first night, though, she realized she was heading the opposite way. This was intentional, of course: their destination was Charleston, which lay to the south. It just seemed unnatural.

She might have banished the thought from her mind if she and Joe had avoided simple blunders and made more progress. On their first night, however, a wrong turn had cost them a substantial amount of travel time. Neither Portia nor Joe was sure how far they had gone in those first hours, but they knew it was not far enough. At daybreak they retreated to the edge of an isolated meadow and ate most of their food. They tried to sleep, but it was a fitful effort for both of them. Their horses had wandered off. They could not take the risk of searching for them, so they would have to finish their journey on foot.

After the second night, the dim light of dawn had found them near a large plantation, where they observed a few field hands beginning their chores. Portia and Joe were not sure whether any of these slaves had spotted them, but they knew for certain that they had to find a new hideout for the day. A stand of trees rose about half a mile from the plantation, and they hustled into it. Leaves and branches concealed them from view.

“Do you think we’re safe here?” asked Portia.

“Safer than if we were still on that road,” replied Joe. “As soon as a white person sees us out there, we’re done.”

They were too anxious from their journey to sleep right away. They fed themselves from the small supplies of food that remained and cleared an area for lying down. This chore was just about finished when a dry branch cracked nearby. They looked toward the noise: a slave boy was coming toward them from the general direction of the plantation. He was perhaps thirteen or fourteen years old.

Joe pulled out his knife and went right for him. The big man was swift for his size. He raced forward, grabbed the boy by his collar, and threw him to the ground.

“Who’re you?” he demanded, holding his knife in front of the boy’s face.

The boy shook with fear. “Jeremiah,” he said in a quivering voice. “My name’s Jeremiah.”

Joe patted Jeremiah’s clothes to see if the boy carried weapons. There were none.

“Where you from, Jeremiah?”

“I live on the Stark plantation.”

“Oh no!” said Portia.

Joe looked at her. “What’s the matter?”

“I’ve heard of it before. We wanted to be at least this far after the first night.”

Joe returned his attention to the slave lying on his back. “How far to Charleston?”

“I don’t know.”

“Don’t mess with me, boy,” said Joe, flashing the blade.

“I don’t know. I ain’t never been there.”

“What should I do with him, Portia?”

“Don’t say our names!” she scolded.

“Sorry.”

“Let him up,” she said.

Joe took a step back and signaled for Jeremiah to sit on a log.

“What’re you doin’ here?” she asked.

“Just lookin’ around.”

“What are you lookin’ for?”

“I saw you comin’ down the road this mornin’.”

“So?”

“You seemed real nervous, the way you kept lookin’ at Mr. Stark’s house.”

Portia forced a laugh. “And what makes you think we been nervous?”

Jeremiah did not answer immediately. Then he asked, “You’re runaways, ain’t you?”

“No, we ain’t!”

“You got passes?”

“Yeah.”

“Lemme see.”

“No.”

“I think you’re runaways, and I wanna help you.”

“You’d get yourself in big trouble for somethin’ like that.”

“Nobody knows I’m here.”

“Were you the only one who saw us?”

“I don’t know. I think so. Lemme show you a better hidin’ spot than this.”

Joe looked at Portia. She shrugged. “I say let’s go,” she said.

“OK,” agreed Joe, who then turned to Jeremiah. “But if you try anything funny, boy, I’m gonna carve you up with this knife.”

“Don’t worry,” said Jeremiah. “Just follow me.”

A smooth-running creek ran about two hundred feet from where they started. It was so quiet Portia and Joe had not even known it was there. They paused for a moment to drink.

“We’re going to walk in the water,” said Jeremiah when they were done. “It will confuse the dogs.”

Portia and Joe had not mentioned dogs to each other since leaving the Bennett plantation, but the topic was not far from their minds. Slave catchers always worked with dogs—fierce beasts the size of wolves. They were trained with meat. They would kill their quarry unless they were called off. Slaves feared the dogs far more than they feared the slave catchers. When a chase was coming to an end, it was common for runaways to consider the slave catchers not as their doom but as their salvation. They would do almost anything to keep from being mauled by the dogs.

As they waded down the knee-deep creek, Portia knew they were covering their scent. She also understood the dogs were smart enough to recognize this trick and patient enough to follow along both sides of a stream for long distances in order to pick up the smell again.

After a while, their creek ran into a slightly bigger one. Jeremiah turned into it and started heading upstream. “If the dogs come this way, they’ll go downstream first,” he said.

“How do you know your way around here?” asked Portia.

“This is where my brothers and I come lyin’ out,” he said.

“We only do it for a couple of days at a time. But we ain’t been caught yet.”

“Ain’t you whipped for that?”

“Not enough to stop us from doin’ it again.”

They walked upstream for a few minutes. Suddenly Jeremiah stopped. There was a high bank on one side of the creek. “There’s a hollow behind there,” he said, pointing.

“Anybody lookin’ for you is gonna be comin’ from the stream or the main road.” He indicated the direction of the road, on the side of the stream opposite the bank. “You’ll see ’em before they see you—and you’ll hear ’em before that.”

“This is kind of you,” said Portia. “Have you helped others like this before?”

“Yes.”

“They been caught?” asked Joe.

“I’m two for five,” said the boy, with a big smile. “Five times I’ve helped, and two times they’ve gotten away from here without being found out.”

“That makes you more of a failure than a success,” said Joe.

“It’s not always my fault,” protested Jeremiah. “One time the people I helped stayed here at night and they were dumb enough to light a fire. They got caught.”

“The runaways that weren’t caught—what made them different?” asked Portia.

“They were smart.”

“How were they smart?”

“They traveled alone.”

Portia looked at Joe.

“That’s one reason I want you to succeed,” said Jeremiah, oblivious to the effect of his words. “I want you to be the first group I’ve helped get through.”

“We’ll try not to let you down,” said Portia.

“You hungry?”

“As a matter of fact, we are.”

“Then I’ll go now and bring some food. I may be an hour or two, but I’ll be back.” Jeremiah splashed into the stream, crossed it, and then ran into the trees.

“You’re right about one thing: if we can’t trust him, we’re done,” said Joe. “It just seems to me there was one way of makin’ sure he doesn’t tell anybody about us.”

“Joe!” said Portia. She wanted to think they had found a friend.

“Our lives are at stake, Portia.”

She frowned. “I think we can trust him—or else why would he have led us here?”

“I hope you’re right.”

Joe picked up a skipping stone and whisked it into the stream. It bounced three times and sank. He tossed a few more without better results. Then he and Portia decided to rest. They would need to save their energy. They would leave again at dark, whether or not Jeremiah returned.

As he approached Lafayette Park, Springfield yawned. He wanted a cup of coffee. Across the park, about a city block away, was Grenier’s home on Sixteenth Street. When it came into view, he did not expect to see anything. To his surprise, the door opened and a man stepped out.

Springfield looked away quickly. He was in uniform for a change and did not want to be seen staring, even from a distance. He slowed his pace and strained to keep the man in his peripheral vision. Was it one of the fellows from yesterday? Springfield hoped so, if for no other reason than it would provide him with new information for Rook.

Grenier’s visitor walked in the same direction as Springfield, but on H Street, which bounded the park on its north side. As the man reached the edge of the park, where it touched Vermont Avenue, Springfield shifted into pursuit. He remained about half a block behind the man, who stayed on H Street as he passed Fifteenth Street, Fourteenth, Thirteenth, and kept going.

Seeing the man only from behind, Springfield could not get a good view of him—except to become certain that he was not one of those who had visited Grenier a day earlier. He was sandy haired and clean shaven. To get a better view, Springfield walked to catch up and soon was about twenty feet behind the man. He crossed Twelfth Street, Eleventh, and Tenth at a steady pace. At Eighth Street, he turned his head, and Springfield saw the man’s face in profile. He did not recognize it, but he knew he would not forget it: the man’s right ear was half missing.

Grenier’s visitor kept moving, now across Seventh Street. Before arriving at Sixth Street, however, he slowed down and entered a building on his right. Springfield had dropped back from his closest approach and could not tell what it was. He lingered at the corner of Seventh and H Street, waiting to see if the man would come out again. After about five minutes, Springfield decided to proceed down H Street. He made certain to note the building in question. It was a boardinghouse, addressed 604 H Street.

At Sixth Street, Springfield turned to the right and took about a dozen steps before stopping. The boardinghouse was around the corner and out of sight. He thought about what to do next. Rook had wanted to meet near Brown’s, but should he stick around, trying to learn more about Grenier’s guest?

It occurred to him that the only reason this new visitor to the Grenier residence intrigued him was the fact that yesterday she had received different visitors whom Rook had regarded as potentially significant. Was there any connection between the two? He had no basis for thinking so.

He walked south on Sixth Street, in the direction of Pennsylvania Avenue. On the way, Springfield thought about coffee.

It was late afternoon when the sound of Jeremiah wading through the stream woke Portia and Joe. He arrived with a pot of stew in a satchel. He sat as they ate, and then he cleaned the pot in the stream.

“I’ve got one more thing for you,” he said. “Grave dust.”

Portia and Joe knew immediately what he was talking about. Some slaves believed that wiping feet with cemetery soil—grave dust—removed all traces of scent and made it impossible for dogs or trackers to continue a search. The runaways watched Jeremiah pull a bag from the satchel. It was full of dry, gray dirt.

Joe looked at Portia. “Do you believe in this?”

“One time I asked my grandfather if ghosts were real.”

“What did he say?”

“He said, ‘Don’t pretend that such things can’t be.’”

Portia took a handful of grave dust and wiped it on her feet and legs. She smiled at Joe, who was not sure whether she was doing this for their benefit or Jeremiah’s. The boy certainly seemed to view the grave dust with great seriousness. He had saved it for last—after leading them to the hideout, after giving them food. It was his parting gift. Joe thought that perhaps he should take some just as a courtesy.

Suddenly in the distance, the three slaves heard a sound that made them shiver: barking.

“Well, I’m ready to become a believer,” said Joe, reaching for the bag of grave dust. “We’re gonna need all the help we can get.”

When Rook wanted to concentrate on a difficult problem, he liked to go for a stroll—not to a quiet place, but a noisy one. For whatever reason, the commotion of a crowd encouraged fresh thinking. And so he found himself at Center Market, the busiest commercial hub in the city. It was a sprawling structure that took up two entire blocks on the south side of Pennsylvania Avenue between Seventh and Ninth streets. Farmers and fishermen from across the region descended on it every morning before sunrise to sell their wares. Rook walked beside dozens of wagon stands outside the building, only half aware of the salesmen shouting their prices and the customers who haggled with them.

It did not hurt that Center Market was near Brown’s Hotel—the site of the puzzle that had vexed him since the previous afternoon, and where Springfield and Clark were monitoring Davis and Stephens.
Not by rail, river, or road.
What could it possibly mean?

Rook wandered down the market’s crowded aisles, trying to ignore the overpowering stench of fish that came from the stalls piled high with bass and shad from the Potomac. Sellers stocked all kinds of food—venison, ducks, turkeys, oysters, and lots of vegetables—but the smell of fish drifted through the whole building.

He wondered whether he was right to defy Scott’s orders. In a strict military sense, of course, he was in the wrong—it was always wrong to disobey a direct order from a superior officer. Yet Rook was convinced that Scott’s judgment was mistaken. It bordered on dereliction of duty. The old general simply did not take the president’s protection as seriously as he should. Rook was certain Davis and Stephens were up to something. He could not prove it in a court of law or to the satisfaction of Scott, but he had no doubt.