The First Assassin (28 page)

“I didn’t take you for a reader,” said Rook before Springfield could respond. “I took you for a vile and calumnious man.”

Springfield leaped to his feet, startled by the colonel’s comment. “Excuse me, sir?”

“I meant that in a Pickwickian sense.”

“A what?”

“Well, that proves it.”

“Proves what?”

“That you aren’t a reader.”

“I’m confused, sir.”

“Me too. You’re sitting here in the park with five copies of
The Pickwick Papers
beside you, and you don’t understand an elementary reference to them—a humorous one, I might add. If I say you’re vile and calumnious
in a Pickwickian sense
, then I mean the exact opposite. I’ve actually paid you a compliment.”

Springfield furrowed his brow. “Thank you, I guess. I haven’t read these books, sir.”

“Obviously not. What are they doing here?”

“I bought them this morning.”

“A good selection. But I hope you realize each copy is the same on the inside—you might have saved yourself some money buying only a single copy. An experienced reader would know that.”

“Right. Except saving money wasn’t the issue. Spending it was. I’ve been gathering information all morning on one of our secessionist friends. The price for some of it was five copies of this book.”

“Perhaps you had better start from the beginning,” said Rook, taking a seat on the bench. He gestured for Springfield to sit down as well, and the sergeant complied.

“You wanted me to learn more about the fellow seen leaving from Violet Grenier’s on Sunday, so this morning I did,” said Springfield. He described waiting for his man outside the boardinghouse on H Street, following him to the bookstore and the bookbinder, and finally trailing him back to the boardinghouse.

“After he returned, I went back and interviewed the storekeepers. He bought five books at French & Richstein and some supplies from Calthrop the bookbinder.”

“Did you get the titles of the books he bought?”

“French didn’t want to tell me. He mumbled something about proprietary information, but it turned out not to be so proprietary that he couldn’t be persuaded to share it.”

“You bribed him?”

“It depends on how you define ‘bribe.’” Springfield tapped the stack of Dickens books. “These were displayed prominently near the front of the store, and I’ve heard that Dickens is a fine writer.”

“Very clever. So what did French tell you?”

“He gave me the names of the books our man purchased.” Springfield removed a slip of paper from inside the front cover of the top Dickens book and handed it to Rook.

“Ann Radcliffe is an intriguing selection.”

“I didn’t know of your interest in Gothic novels.”

“That’s not what interests me—what interests me is the range. Our man is an eclectic reader: German plays, American birds, an English novel, and two Bibles.”

“French said the same thing.”

“What about the bookbinder?”

“That’s where our man went next. The owner is an older gentleman named Charles Calthrop. He doesn’t seem to get many visitors—I was apparently the very next person to stop by, even though it had been at least an hour since our man had been there.”

“What did Calthrop say?”

“He didn’t want to say much, and he grew agitated at my questioning. It seems our fellow took a short lesson on how to repair a damaged book—one of the books he had bought from French was in rough shape. Calthrop gave him a few tips on restoring it and sold him some supplies.”

“Sounds reasonable.”

“Then something weird happened. Calthrop said he thought he detected a slight accent in the man’s speech—a Spanish inflection, and in particular a Cuban dialect of Spanish. So he asked his customer where he was from. The guy clammed up, said he wasn’t from Cuba, and that Calthrop should mind his own business.”

“He likes privacy, though I suppose the behavior is a little odd.”

“More than a little, figures Calthrop. He thinks the man gave him a threatening look on the way out, after what Calthrop describes as an otherwise pleasant encounter.”

“Perhaps. But perhaps innocent. What we seem to have learned is that our man likes to read, wants to fix a damaged book he bought, and doesn’t like people asking about his background.”

“I suppose that sums it up.”

“Have you interviewed the person who runs his boardinghouse? We don’t even know this man’s name.”

“I’m worried that talking to her might strike a bit close to home.”

“Maybe that’s for the best. If he’s stayed with her for a long time, she could be loyal to him, which means she’d tell him we’re watching. Winning her over might cost a lot more than five books.”

Rook wished he knew more about the man, but the resources for surveillance were limited essentially to the time of Springfield and Clark, plus whatever Rook could devote to it. There was also the question of their prisoners.

“For now,” said Rook, “turn your attention back to Grenier. We’ll watch her for at least a few more days, and then we’ll reassess what we’re doing.”

“I think that’s a terrible idea, you ugly lout.”

“Excuse me?”

“I mean that only in a Pickwickian sense, sir.”

There was no year. That was the first thing Violet Grenier noticed about the letter.

Sitting behind the desk in her second-story study, Grenier held a single piece of paper dated April 19, with no year attached to the date. It could have been written just four days earlier, a year and four days earlier, or a decade and four days earlier. She might not have spotted the incomplete date on another missive—lots of people left the year off their correspondence—but on this one she had looked for it right away. That was what she did whenever she received a note from Langston Bennett. It was a signal.

The script was familiar and the letter brief. Langston said he was very busy and commented on the passing of a favorite servant. None of it interested Grenier. Everybody was busy nowadays, and she could hardly care less about some slave in South Carolina. If anybody else had written to her this way, she would have wondered why its author was wasting her time with such nonsense. With Bennett, however, nonsense was the furthest thing from her mind.

Grenier set the letter on her desk and walked to a table by the wall, picked up a candleholder, and returned to her seat. Light poured through the big window next to her desk. She had read Bennett’s letter by it and did not need the candle to aid her eyes. Yet she removed the glass cylinder enclosing it and lit the wick. A small yellow flame began to burn.

Taking the letter in both hands, she held it just above the candle. At first, it looked like she wanted to burn the paper. Then it became clear that she meant to expose it to as much heat as possible without singeing it.

Tan splotches began to appear between the lines of Bennett’s letter. Soon they darkened and assumed distinct forms. More shapes became visible as Grenier rotated the letter above the candle. The faint smell of something burning began to rise up, but Grenier barely noticed. After several minutes of this, she pulled the letter away and blew out the candle. Then she placed it squarely in front of her and read its hidden message between the lines of the original script.

Grenier read the letter several times. Then she set it down and leaned back in her chair. Who had discovered Mazorca? How would Bennett have learned about it? The whole matter was puzzling. Mazorca had revealed himself to her just two days ago. And now Bennett was announcing everything a failure. His letter had been composed before she had even met Mazorca. How could the plan have failed so utterly?

She looked at the clock. It was later than she had thought. She would have to reflect on this message and decide how to proceed. But reflecting and proceeding would have to wait. In the meantime, she had to prepare for an important guest.

After returning to his room at the boardinghouse, Mazorca seethed at Calthrop. He knew he risked something every time he interacted with another person. The old man had gone a step too far with that comment about Cuba.

Mazorca put the encounter out of his mind. The books he had purchased at French & Richstein’s were stacked on the floor next to his bed. He removed the beat-up Schiller volume from the pile. The others he lined beside each other, a few inches apart on the floor. They were all a bit larger than the average book. One by one, Mazorca repeated the inspections he had given them at the bookstore, now going over them with greater care. He ran his hands over the covers, checked the quality of the binding, and tested the strength of the pages—everything a person might do to a book short of reading it.

When Mazorca was done examining the five tomes on the floor, he went to his trunk and removed a small revolver plus half a dozen bullets. He dropped the bullets into a pocket and checked the gun’s chamber. It was empty.

He returned to the books on the floor and knelt in front of them. He flipped back the top cover of the first one and placed the gun in the center of its title page. Then he leaned over the book and stared down at it, judging the gun’s distance from the margins of the page. After studying this scene, he took the gun back in his hand, closed the book, and rested the gun on the floor beside it. He lowered his head to the floor and closed one eye, comparing the width of the gun to the thickness of the book. He repeated this process with the other three books. When he had finished examining all four, he removed two from the lineup and put them off to the side, by the discarded Schiller volume.

Mazorca began his inspection all over again with the two books still on the floor, reviewing their covers, binding, and pages, and then placing his revolver on and around them. After several minutes of this, he finally paused. For a little while longer he did not move. He simply gazed at the two books before him. At last he took one and placed it on the pile of other books nearby.

He stared at the one still on the floor, studying the stylized lettering on the black cover: The Holy Bible, written in shiny gold. He remembered his conversation with the bookseller that morning. The last word. It made him smirk.

Mazorca set it back on the floor. He collected the items he had purchased that morning from Calthrop and laid them beside the book. Then he lifted the cover and turned in about hundred pages, partway through Exodus. He positioned the revolver on the open page, with the barrel running parallel to the spine and aiming upward, toward the top of the page. He looked at the gun for a moment, adjusted it slightly, and then looked at it some more. When he was satisfied, he marked the page in several places, removed the gun, and picked up one of the miniature bookbinder knives.

Just as his blade began to touch the page, a few words from the book caught his eye: “Let my people go.” They stung him, but he was not sure why. He removed the gun, flipped a few more pages, and set it down again. This time he read a different line: “There was a great cry in Egypt; for there was not a house where there was not one dead.” It struck him as possibly appropriate, but he really did not know what to make of it. The Bible was not something he had ever studied. He did not know its stories or its characters. He certainly did not believe they were anything more than fables. At least, he did not want to believe that they were. Whenever the topic of religion entered his mind, he tried to change the subject—and he always succeeded.

He read nothing more from that page or any other page that afternoon. Instead, he cut.

Working at his books under a gas lamp all day made Calthrop unaware of the night falling outside. Twilight had faded to black before he realized the lateness of the hour.

It was not unusual for the bookbinder to lose track of time, and so he was hardly surprised that he had missed the sun’s disappearance a few minutes before seven p.m. The incident reminded him, once more, of how much he enjoyed his trade. He might have been old and he might have slowed down, but he would not give up what he did until he could do it no more.

Calthrop looked over what he had to do in the morning. He arranged a few items on his desk and rose to leave. He closed the door to his shop, locked it, and descended the staircase. He stepped onto the sidewalk and bolted another door. Light still glowed from the establishment on his immediate left, the one that sat directly below his own little shop. Calthrop knew it would shine for several more hours. The business of Madame Costello, a professional astrologist, began late in the afternoon and ran into the evening. “Reader of the Stars,” said the words painted on her window. “Consultations of Past, Present, and Future Events.”

Calthrop looked to the sky. There were no stars to read. Clouds obscured his view of the heavens.

He walked a block to a small pub and ate a light dinner. By the time he was heading home, the streets were desolate. Parts of the city remained alive well into the night, but he did not pass through them. Once he was away from the pub, he did not see anybody else except for a couple of soldiers who passed him and a man walking in the same direction he was going, but about a block behind him. It was a lonely scene. Only a few of the homes in his neighborhood had their lights on. In the others, people already had gone to bed or nobody was home because the occupants had fled the city.

On the doorstep of his home, on B Street just south of the Capitol, Calthrop struggled with his key. He had to wiggle it around before it finally released the lock. It had been causing too much trouble lately. He would have to get it fixed.

Calthrop opened the door to his home and stepped inside. Before he could close the door, he was pushed into the unlit hallway. He fell down and heard the door shut. Someone was in the house with him, but he could not see anything in the blackness.