Ellery Queen’s Mystery Magazine. Vol. 140, Nos. 3 & 4. Whole Nos. 853 & 854, September/October 2012
- Автор: Макдермид Вэл, Манфредо Лу
- Год: 2012
- Язык: английский
- Год: Dell Magazines
- ISBN: 0013-6328
- Жанр: Другие детективы
Электронная книга - «Ellery Queen’s Mystery Magazine. Vol. 140, Nos. 3 & 4. Whole Nos. 853 & 854, September/October 2012». Краткое содержание книги:
“We haven’t made it public,” Killy said. “But it was Valdinoci, all right. He tripped, I suppose, carrying the bomb up the porch steps. Or it would have killed everyone inside. Little Mary. Mitchell’s wife, Roberta. We found Valdinoci’s torso, in a striped shirt and bow tie, on the roof across the street.” His grip on her tightened as her knees went weak.
“Carlo? No. I never would have thought... That’s not how he was when... Things were different when Nicky and I— When we were growing up, it wasn’t like this. We called ourselves Anarchists, all of us, but it meant free-thinkers. Utopians.” How could Carlo have done such a thing? How could he have changed so much? “Even Galleani... he was just... just another man who came to lecture. I never thought he wanted — Emma Goldman came too. Eugene Debs. Bertrand Russell. Intellectuals, syndicalists. Exercising free speech while they still had it. It wasn’t illegal yet to hear speeches from pacifists, Socialists, even—”
“And you think it’s a good thing, to protect the speech of men like Galleani, who advocate violence?”
“But he didn’t. Not out loud to us there, not that I ever heard. He advocated new ideas, yes. And resistance to bad ones.” She talked over him when he interrupted. “And don’t you advocate violence? Don’t you deputize vigilantes when it suits you, knowing that they’ll murder strikers? Don’t you turn a blind eye and let them lynch Negroes?”
“‘Let them?’ Do you know how many times I’ve gone to investigate— It’s that no one will speak up, speak to us. They’re too afraid of—”
“I hate violence.” The words burst from her. “It’s an infection, like the flu. And you’re the ones who spread it. You Democrats.” She waved toward the other end of the veranda. There was a commotion as men rose from Adirondack chairs, as they stubbed out cigarettes and set cups onto saucers, clapped backs and laughed at one another’s jokes. “With all your money, your influence. What example do you set? War, Jim Crow, false charges, strike-breaking. And you blame us? Blame the tail for the actions of the tiger? It’s all the same beast, but you, all of you in power—”
“I repeat my question,” Killy said. “Are you a Galleanist?”
“No.” Ella shook her head. “If Galleani preaches violence now, then no. But you’d make the Attorney General our President? You know what he has in mind. He’ll raid tens of thousands of people who’ve done no—”
“He will not. You think you understand what it is to be a pacifist? But a Quaker like Palmer, like me, does not? Do you know why I’m a marshal? Because the first time I ever met one, he called himself a peace officer. We’re raised to revere peace. It’s peace we’re after when we—”
“Maybe it used to be that way. As it used to be something different, to be an Anarchist.”
The sound of imperious orders and Yes, ma’ams drifted to them from inside the house.
“Tell me why you’re here,” he said. “What are you doing?”
“Hoping to see Nicky. They told me he’d come. Do you know what became of him? You must know.”
“Come here? Who told you that?” He squinted, leaned closer.
“I’ll answer your question if you answer mine.”
“Answer your—? Why should I believe you? You’d be a fool to show up where you don’t belong, where others know your face. Just to meet a man?”
“But I didn’t know this would be... whatever it is. A meeting? I didn’t know who’d be here. I thought it was just a party. But it doesn’t matter. Because, yes. I’d risk anything to see Nicky again.”
“Well, that you will not, my girl. If your Nicky is Nicola Mancusa. We arrested him November last.”
“Oh, no. No.”
“He did go looking for you.” A wry smile. “In fact, it was through his efforts that your employer, Mrs. Kingston, survived.”
“What? Mrs. Kingston lived? I don’t believe it. She looked far beyond help.” She took a ragged breath. “I left her for dead.”
“It was a near thing, I gather.”
“But Nicky saved her?”
“With cold baths, yes. Then Kingston came home and found them.”
“And the great hypocrite would rather have seen his wife a corpse,” Ella said, “than bathing in front of another man?”
Killy didn’t reply.
Nicky must have understood the danger in staying to help Mrs. K. — a ragged man alone with a rich woman? But he’d tended to her anyway, he’d done it to save a stranger. He was still the boy Ella grew up with, still the man she loved.
“Kingston claimed he’d taken some jewelry,” Killy said. “It wasn’t found on him. He might have hidden it, or handed it off to someone.”
Ella stopped breathing.
“But Mrs. Kingston contradicted her husband. And as the baubles were hers... That aspect came to nothing.”
Had Mrs. K. understood Nicky’s sacrifice, then? Protected Ella for his sake? Nicky must have told her why he’d come to her house. Was this her way of thanking him for his care, for what it cost him?
“You know it was Galleani,” Killy said.
Ella was still reeling. “Galleani?”
“Who ordered his followers to Mexico. To evade the draft.”
“But Nicky didn’t go there to follow anyone’s orders. He went from conviction. The other Galleanists, if you call them that, came back after just a few months.”
“Whatever his motive, draft evasion’s a crime. We’d have brought charges if his English was better. As it was, we put him aboard a boat. Deported back to Italy.”
Her sense of unreality grew. “But Nicky’s not Italian.”
“What? We could barely understand him. And we found no citizenship papers for him.”
“He was born in Kentucky, taken to Arizona by other miners when his parents were killed. Then rescued from the strike at Ludlow. He came to us when he was eleven. My mother taught him Italian. Because we all spoke it, at the Hall. She called him Nicola but his name’s Nicholas. And not Mancusa. That was her pronunciation of a name I don’t remember. Mancowski, something like that.”
“Well, I’ll be damned,” Killy said. “I suppose he thought he’d fare better in Italy than in prison.” He scowled for a moment, obviously deep in thought. Then he shook himself out of it. “Who told you you’d find him here?”
She couldn’t meet his eye. “Are you on the guest list?”
“Am I—? Of course. Despite your absurd notions about him, I mean to get Palmer the nomination next year.” His tone was defensive. “You think you were sent here because of who’d recognize you?”
“Mr. Palmer, Mr. Roosevelt, you... I don’t know. I don’t know what to think.” But she did know Mario used her love for Nicky to get her here.
“Where’s the logic in it? We pull you in, you might give information against those who sent you.”
If I lived long enough. “Yes.”
She didn’t dare look at the tray she’d brought. Instead she looked at the men still on the veranda, smokers mostly, leaning along the porch rails. A voice drifted to her: “That room in Albany was the closest to college I ever came.” His companion laughed and said, “You might have mentioned that a few dozen times, Al.”
Al Smith, the governor of New York, wore a white linen suit that on him looked as elegant as a fishmonger’s apron. He, Roosevelt, Palmer... any might be President someday. And all were just a stone’s throw from Mario’s platter.
“They chose me because I can pass for a servant,” she said. “Better than any of them.” And how they’d pampered her last night. The pastries and fresh cream, the kisses on the cheek. Because they knew they’d never see her again?