Lawless (88 page)

Then she kissed his mouth with the ardor she’d denied far too long.

After the kiss, he was the soul of courtesy. He continued to hold her, but he sensed the lingering tension in her and went no further. He put his old overcoat around her. Miraculously, both her chilliness and her tiredness vanished in an instant.

They stood talking in that shy, excited way lovers have, speaking of where they were going—far out beyond the Mississippi—to places they had only read about. She was unexpectedly, unbelievably happy. She could look forward to working. To perfecting her craft. And to being with Leo.

Perhaps Prince’s prediction would come true, and Leo’s as well.

Finally they fell silent, and she nestled against Leo’s chest. He stood behind her, his arms around her and very lightly touching the undersides of her breasts through her robe. With his lips close to her ear, kissing gently every moment or so, they watched the immense banners of stars the night had unfurled.

The sky made her think of the flag. How many states had she seen in her lifetime? Only Virginia, New York, and those between. But the flag had thirty-eight stars now—Colorado had come in during the centennial year—and a population of nearly fifty million people.

Fifty million! So many—and so much country, westward beneath the arch of stars.

How wonderful to see it with someone like Leo. The prospect thrilled her. She’d write Papa and tell him everything she was doing—

Well, almost everything.

“Leo?” She covered her mouth to hide a yawn she couldn’t hold back.

“Yes.”

“I have to go to bed.”

He cleared his throat in an exaggerated way. “At your service, madam.”

To her astonishment, she found she could make light of something terrifying. Perhaps it would always be terrifying; perhaps the shame and the pain could never be expunged. Yet she took it as a hopeful sign that she was able to tease him.

“By myself, Leo Goldman. We aren’t married yet.”

“We will be.”

She laughed. “You’re impossible.”

“And patient. Very, very patient.”

On tiptoe, she kissed him, then took his hand and led him into the darkness, her fingers twined with his in perfect trust.

O
RDERLIES IN BLOOD-SPECKLED
white aprons moved up and down the hallway where Carter and Will waited. The boys sat on a bench whose old wood was nearly as bleached and pale as their faces. It was three in the morning, Tuesday. From time to time Will reached out to pat Carter’s hand.

The second floor of the New York Hospital at Duane and Broadway reeked of strong soap and other, less appetizing substances. Julia had been rushed to the hospital by ambulance, while Mills had taken the calash to upper Fifth Avenue to summon Gideon.

Carter and Will had said they wanted to accompany Gideon to the hospital. The boys had been waiting on the bench for nearly five hours. Carter sat motionless, staring at the old, worn flooring. The gas jet above the bench cast a sickly, wavering light on his face, and on Will’s sagging head and drooping eyelids. Will jerked upright when a woman screamed in the distant reaches of the hospital.

He shuddered. Carter put his arm around the smaller boy and held him.

Some five minutes later, Gideon emerged from the nearby ward. His step was unsteady, his face pale and perspiring from the fever that still plagued him. Both boys watched Gideon. His expression quickly dulled the hopeful light in their eyes.

Carter’s voice was barely audible as he asked, “Any change, sir?”

Gideon shook his head. He sank down on the bench next to Julia’s son. “It may be hours, or days, before there’s a change one way or another. You’re too old for me to lie to you, Carter. Her condition is extremely serious. In the war, the surgeons always despaired when an ambulance brought in a man who had a stomach wound. The consultant I called in, Dr. Bradwell, is one of the best in the city. But even he’s almost helpless. There just are no techniques for treating a wound like your mother’s.”

“Then will she—will she die?”

Gideon seemed stricken hoarse. “As I told you, we may not know until tomorrow, or for several days.”

“What are her chances?”

Will couldn’t tell whether his father was overcome with sorrow, or with anger. A little of both, he thought as Gideon said, “Very slim.”

At sunrise, Gideon persuaded the boys to go home with Mills while he kept the vigil. Shortly after eight, he was called from Julia’s bedside to speak with a police inspector in the hallway.

The inspector reluctantly informed him that a sweep of Tenth Avenue had turned up no reliable witnesses to the stabbing. Several people had seen it, but most recalled the attacker only as a poorly dressed tramp. No one could remember a face, or a voice. The witnesses even disagreed on what the attacker was wearing. The inspector had three descriptions, no two of which matched.

Gideon had suspected it would come out that way. He simply stared at the inspector until the man doffed his derby and mumbled that he’d keep Mr. Kent apprised of any new developments. Then he put on his hat and shuffled toward the stairs.

Gideon went back into the ward and presently fell asleep in the chair beside Julia’s bed. When Dr. Bradwell woke him, afternoon sunlight was streaming in. In the bed beyond, a young man who’d lost a leg in a street railway accident moaned in pained slumber.

Bradwell surveyed Julia’s still hands resting on the sheet. The backs of her hands were so white, her veins were clearly visible.

“You’d better go home and rest a while,” the doctor advised him.

The pain beat like red waves in Gideon’s mind. “I have to wait until I know whether she’ll make it.” He had never experienced such pain before—not with Margaret, not with his own father—never.

“Mr. Kent, I’ve told you before”—Bradwell sounded a trifle impatient—“it may be days. There is nothing you can do.”

He saw Thomas Courtleigh’s face.
Yes, there is.

“All right. I’ll go home.”

Two days later, Julia rallied for a few hours, then began sinking again. Gideon sat with her all Thursday night and into Friday morning, listening to her shallow breathing and saying to himself that he had to go on alone even if she died. The trouble was, he knew he couldn’t.

Perhaps because he was exhausted and still sick, sometime during that long night something seemed to click over in his mind, just as it had the night he walked out on Margaret. Around seven, he kissed Julia’s chilly forehead. Her lids barely stirred. An hour later, up on Fifth Avenue, Carter discovered him packing a valise.

The boy thought Gideon looked strange and wild. He spoke almost incoherently, as if he’d lost his mind. In a way, he had.

“Out of town?” Theo Payne exclaimed later that morning. “At a time like this?”

Gideon stood beside Payne’s desk at the
Union.
“I’ll keep in touch by telegraph. Bradwell said there is absolutely nothing I can do here.”

The editor’s eyes narrowed. “You’re going to Chicago, aren’t you?”

Gideon didn’t answer.

“There’s nothing you can do out there, either. I’ve followed the dispatches Sal Brown sent back. I know you think that bastard on the W and P was responsible for wrecking your house—”

“And for Margaret. And now Julia. And for the death of a boy named Torvald Ericsson. And for God knows how many more that he’s starved or cheated into ruin. Competitors, employees—”

“You thought you could get at him through that name your daughter heard. What was it? Huxtable?”

“Hubble. One of his attorneys.”

“It hasn’t proved out, has it?”

Gideon shook his head.

“You’ve got to be realistic, Gideon. In this country—in every country and every era—certain men are virtually untouchable. Their power, or their money and those they can hire with it, put them above the law. It shouldn’t be so, but it is. It’s the way of the world. In the United States we seem to be going through a long period of just that sort of thing. We’ll either rise up against it, and curb it as best we can, or the rot that it’s generating will spread and destroy everything that’s admirable about this country. In any case, it isn’t just your crusade.”

Gideon didn’t say anything.

“Look,” Payne exclaimed, “you’ve run into a man who’s above the law! Why waste your time with him? You’ll only make yourself feel worse. You’ll find the lawyers are no better in Chicago, and can do no more than lawyers right here. Courtleigh probably owns or can buy most of the Chicago police department, too. What can you possibly do?”

“I don’t know,” Gideon lied. “Search for new evidence, maybe—”

Payne shivered. “That isn’t what you plan at all.”

Gideon looked away. The little man began to plead.

“For God’s sake listen to me, Gideon. Don’t let one rash act eradicate everything you’ve become. Don’t reduce yourself to his level. Remember who you are. Remember the family you represent. Don’t let the Kents be accused of conducting their affairs the way Courtleigh conducts his.”

Gideon seemed oblivious. “Take care of the paper, Theo. You don’t need me to run it. You never did. But I do thank you for all you taught me. Maybe I’ve done a little good in the last few years.”

“And you can do a great deal more if you don’t allow yourself to be driven into—”

Gideon had already turned and walked out.

Payne shivered a second time, upset by the rage he’d sensed in the younger man, and by the finality of his remarks. It all implied something he didn’t want to think about, but found he couldn’t avoid.

At least not until he yanked the drawer of his desk open and reached inside.

In a dingy little gun shop on the Bowery, Gideon stood for a long time studying the contents of the fly-specked display case. Finally he pointed.

“I’d like to see that one.”

The shopkeeper opened the back of the case. “Are you sure? This is a LeMat. It’s twelve to fifteen years old, manufactured in France, and imported mostly by the Rebs during—”

“I know what it is and who used it.”

“Yes, sir, all right—anything you say.”

Gideon examined the mechanism. Despite the revolver’s age, it was in excellent working order. He laid it on the glass. “I want two dozen rounds of ammunition to go with it.”

“Right away.”

The revolver seemed the natural choice since the last handgun he’d owned had been the LeMat he lost the night of the Chicago fire. A LeMat went all the way back to the very beginning of his trouble with Tom Courtleigh.

Gideon put the box of ammunition in his valise, laid the wrapped revolver on top and secured the clasps. He had a sad, sinking feeling as he paid for his purchases. He was sorry it had come to this. But Sime Strelnik had been more realistic than he. Strelnik had predicted long ago that he would deal with the bosses this way, out of frustration and despair—even though Strelnik had never guessed Gideon’s motive would be so personal.

He ordered the driver of his waiting hack to stop by the hospital. The hack stayed at the curb while he went inside. There was no change in Julia’s condition. He knew from the eyes of the orderly to whom he spoke that those working on the ward expected her to die.

So nothing mattered any longer. Nothing but settling accounts the only way left to him—the way Courtleigh had always settled his. What happened afterward—arrest, trial, imprisonment, execution—was of no importance.

He climbed back into the hack and two hours later was aboard a westbound train.

A
T A STATION
midway across Indiana, Gideon left the train and sent a telegraph message to the
Union.
He asked that someone learn Julia’s condition and wire the information to him in care of the central Western Union office in Chicago.

The train pulled into the city an hour and a half later. Gideon checked into the new Palmer House, flung his valise on the bed and washed his haggard face. He was exhausted. He’d spent the entire journey wide awake. He just couldn’t sleep when he was traveling. Someday he should try to teach himself to—

Someday? A humorless smile wrenched his mouth. There weren’t any more
somedays.

He unpacked and loaded the LeMat. He studied the revolver for several minutes, turning it one way and then another in his hand so as to see it from different perspectives. What he planned to do was wrong. Absolutely wrong. It made him no better than Courtleigh. But he had no intention of canceling his plans.

He shoved the LeMat into the waistband of his trousers, between his shirt and waistcoat, and buttoned the latter.

With his frock coat on, there was a detectable bulge, but only a very slight one.

It was a mild August morning. With an unsmiling face, he moved through the pleasant bustle of the rebuilt downtown to the telegraph office. He stopped outside. He almost didn’t want to receive a message. He knew what it would say.

Finally he went in. The clerk at the counter said, “No, Mr. Kent, nothing for you. But we’ve received no messages from the East for the last three or four hours. Sometimes storms knock down the wires and cause delays in transmission.”

For an instant Gideon was both disappointed and relieved. The clerk went on, “The trouble’s usually located and repaired fairly quickly. Perhaps if you drop back in an hour or so—”

“No,” Gideon said with a slight shake of his head, “that will be too late.”

Thomas Courtleigh’s office was located on the top floor of the new Wisconsin and Prairie Building two blocks below the river on Michigan Avenue. Gideon rode up in an ornate elevator cage and stepped off in a gloomy corridor.

To his left, at the corridor’s end, he saw heavy doors with elaborately etched inserts of frosted glass. One door carried the word
GENERAL
in gold leaf. The other said
OFFICES
.

He walked slowly, passing the closed door of what appeared to be a service closet or work room. On the other side of the door, a man was coughing. It had a consumptive sound.