The Empire of Shadows Page 15

  “He was a widower, if I recall. Heard somebody say that once, I believe.”

  Chowder thanked the man, saying, “That’s a blessing in a way.” He started to leave, when he turned back to the clerk and asked, “One last thing. If I was going to the north woods, what kind of connections would I have to make in Albany?”

  “Chief, I’ve got a body with a hole in his head, an’ the coroner says it was the same weapon, a bayonet bought from Fat Bess, most likely,” Chowder said as he tried to read Byrnes’s reactions. “Fat Bess told me how she sold it to that Indian, and how he changed his appearance. You remember Bess, the one running the operation on Desbrosses Street?”

  “Uh-hum,” Byrnes answered, nodding. “Prostitution mostly, petty theft, a little bunco here and there, though she was never very good at it, assault, and now receiving stolen goods, though she’s never had a conviction on that as I recall.”

  “That’s her,” Chowder said. Byrnes had a near photographic memory for the criminals of the city. It didn’t surprise Chowder that he could practically recite her sheet. “Tupper paid her a visit. Did a bit o’ cleanin’ up. Changed clothes, cut his hair to alter his looks. Pile o’ black hair in her bedroom was his.”

  Though there was no way for Chowder to prove that last bit, the color and length were a good enough match.

  “Got a steward from the Albany night boat, the one fished out o’ North River two days gone? Identified by his boss. Well, he’s got damn near the same kind o’ hole in his head a bayonet would make. And last, our escapee, this Tupper fella, was from up north, somewhere near Saranac Lake, or maybe Tupper Lake, by some accounts, wherever the hell that is. A little strange, him bein’ named like a lake somewhere.”

  “Adirondacks,” Byrnes mumbled half to himself as if he was thinking of something else. “Big tuberculosis sanitarium up there in Saranac. Famous for its cures. A doctor named Trudeau runs the place. He went up there near dead from it, but was cured by the mountain air, or so he said. Read about it in the Trib. Anyway, you think he’s gone back?” Byrnes said with a puff of cigar smoke. He almost managed to make it sound as if this was his conclusion, not Chowder’s.

  “Tell you the truth,” Chowder said with a shrug, “wouldn’t have a clue without him puttin’ holes in people’s heads on his way.”

  Byrnes nodded. He took another puff on his cigar, letting the smoke dribble and drift out of his mouth. “The most vicious criminals are often the least intelligent,” he said as he looked out the window on Montague Street. “Of course there are exceptions.” He took a deep breath and pointed the smoking cigar at Chowder. “Time to send some telegrams.”

  “Send one to Tommy while I’m at it? He’s near there if I recall, ain’t he?”

  Byrnes just grunted and appeared to think about it, but finally shrugged and said, “Man’s on vacation, Chowder. Find out who the local law is up there and put them on alert, send a description.” Byrnes paused for a second, then waved his hand at Chowder, saying, “Hell, you know what to do.”

  “Guess I do at that, sir,” Chowder answered. He’d already sent telegrams to Albany, Saratoga, and Glens Falls.

  “But don’t bother Tommy with this. Not yet, anyway,” Byrnes added while cigar smoke went up in little billows. Smoke signals, Chowder thought as he headed for the door.

  Tom, Mary, and Rebecca spent the day with the Duryeas. Mike hadn’t wanted to come. Tom figured it could be because he didn’t want to shoot against the Duryea boys again. He guessed that instead Mike would be stealing off with Lettie. He gave it no serious consideration. The fact was that Tom didn’t care. If the boy was going to have a summer romance, more power to him. Mary seemed to feel the same way and had not questioned Mike too closely when he wanted to stay behind at the hotel. She didn’t say anything about it to Tom. They understood that he needed time to himself.

  The day had disappeared in a slow and easy way, in good company, good food, and good conversation. They’d taken a row around the lake in the Duryea guide boat and Tom took a turn at the oars. Rebecca caught her first fish from their dock, dipping a dough-covered hook to the little fish below. It had been a relaxing day, but at its end they were all more tired than they thought they’d be. They all went to bed early, Mike, too, though he claimed he hadn’t done much all day.

  Tom wasn’t sure what woke him. It seemed as though he’d just closed his eyes. In fact, he’d been in the kind of deep sleep he had to practically swim out of. Mary shook him just as he was opening his eyes.

  “Tommy! Tommy wake up!”

  It was the urgency in Mary’s voice that did it more than the shaking.

  “Fire!” they heard from somewhere down the hall. “Everybody up. Fire!” There was banging on the doors and pounding feet and shouts starting to come from all over the hotel. Tom and Mary rolled out of bed as someone banged on their door.

  “We’re up,” Tom called as he searched for his pants in the dark. “Mike, ’Becca,” he bellowed so loud the pictures on the walls seemed to shake. “Get up and get dressed. Now!”

  Mike opened the door between their rooms almost before the last words had left Tom’s mouth. Rebecca followed, shuffling and rubbing her eyes.

  “Get dressed. Get dressed,” Mary shouted over the growing din in the hallway. “Hurry!”

  Rebecca started to tremble. She stood frozen in the doorway with her hands over her ears.

  “You’re scaring me,” she cried. “You’re scaring me. Stop scaring me!” Her foot stomped and she began to sob. Mary rushed to her and in an instant whisked her into the other room.

  They were all out of the room and into the hall in a matter of minutes, though it seemed much longer. The wide hallway was crowded with sleepy, confused people. Each and every one of them seemed to have something to say, or shout, or cry, or argue about. The area around the elevator was packed ten deep, the press getting deeper by the second.

  “The stairs!” Tom shouted to Mike and Mary over the noise. He plowed through the press holding Rebecca high in his arms while Mike and Mary followed. The stairs were crowded, too, but moving. For the first time Tom heard from a hotel employee where exactly the fire was.

  “Barn’s burning. We’ll need help to form a bucket brigade if you’re able.”

  Tom handed Rebecca to Mary once they were out on the wide lawn at the side of the hotel. It was raining hard, but the barn seemed determined to burn. A huge crowd of guests in their nightclothes stood watching. From there the flames could be plainly seen licking at the inside of the barn. Horses screamed and kicked their stalls. Men were racing in and out trying to save them. One horse, a big, black stallion bolted and galloped past them, its eyes wide and white, sparks flying from its singed tail.

  A long line of men was forming, stretching down to the lake. Frederick Durant was shouting directions to his staff and all was in confusion. There was no fire department here, no steam engines, no hoses, and little hope. If the fire got hold in earnest all they could do would be to watch the barn burn and maybe keep it from spreading. Maybe. The building was close to the hotel, only thirty feet away. It wouldn’t take much to burn the whole place down.

  Buckets appeared. Slowly at first, then quicker as the men got the hang of passing them down the line, the water made its way to the fire. Much was spilled. Tom and Mike beside him were soon soaked from spilled water and rain both. They labored and sweated and swore, a long line of men in the dark, lit by the growing orange glow from the barn. They seemed to make progress at first. But perhaps the fire got into the hay, or the men at the head of the line got tired.

  Soon it was plain that they were loosing. First the men at the head of the line were driven from the barn by the heat and flames. They were reduced to running up and throwing water through the doors and windows then dashing back, smoldering. The men on the line worked hard. Pails passed full and empty, full and empty.

  The line glowed on one side as the fire grew. Features, carved with effort, were outlined in flickering red and
orange. Like stokers on a steam engine they burned before the furnace of the barn, shining in fire and sweat. The Prospect House glowed, too, and some of the men started throwing water on it to keep it from catching.

  After a time, long after it was obvious that there was nothing to save, the men slowed their buckets, then stopped. They all stood, guests and workers, some still holding buckets, ladies with their hair in disarray, and frightened children in nightclothes, watching the barn go up.

  The flames burst from around the sides of the roof, shooting out almost sideways at first. The crowd oohed and murmured. The whole roof went up, seeming to almost explode into flame, and the crowd took uncertain steps back. The heat could be felt a hundred yards away. Everything, even the trees across the lake and Blue Mountain, seemed to catch fire in the reflected glow as they shot into the chimney of the night.

  The fire roared like a beast. It was an oddly silent crowd that watched. They were helpless, all of them.

  In small groups, or one by one, the milling crowd started drifting back to their beds. Eventually the sturdy beams gave way and crashed down. Sparks whirled and spun, flying high into the night.

  “They look like little stars,” Rebecca said, pointing. Tom noticed that there were men with buckets on the roof, ready to douse any sparks that might take hold. Mary and Rebecca turned away. Tom and Mike followed. There were few left behind except hotel employees and Frederick Durant. Tom noticed him standing alone, his eyes fixed on the flames. Tom thought to go to him, to say something by way of comfort or consolation. He realized, after a brief pause, that he had none of either to offer.

  Fourteen

  The wilderness guide deserves special note. He is a specimen of the genus Homo that I have nowhere else seen; and, whatever he may think, destined soon to pass away forever.

  —GEORGE WASHINGTON SEARS

  Van Duzer had always been an early riser. Despite his age and weight, both of which were higher than he liked to admit, he was still a vigorous man. He bustled out his front door that opened on Gramercy Park and turned right toward Park Avenue. He cast an appreciative eye at the elegant private park. Its high iron fence preserved the verdant little spot, keeping out the drunks and riffraff.

  Van Duzer appreciated a good fence, especially the iron kind with the little spears on top. He glanced across the park at the new Players Club.

  Van Duzer huffed to himself as he thought about it. He always figured that Edwin Booth had overextended himself when he built the tall brownstone mansion years before. He’d been flush then, high on his Shakespearean successes. But Booth’s success, at least the financial kind, had been fleeting. His theatre failed, and he’d been forced to go to friends a couple of years before.

  He and William Tecumseh Sherman, Samuel Clemens, and many other men of high standing in the city’s social and artistic circles, had formed the Players, a club for actors and others involved in the theater and arts. They hired the great Stanford White to alter Booth’s mansion, making it more suitable for the club.

  Edwin Booth still lived in the place, but now he occupied a single, small apartment on the third floor overlooking the park, where he’d retire after the evening’s revels. There were always men ready to toast the great actor.

  “Actors,” Van Duzer mumbled with a shake of his head.

  A while later van Duzer got out of a cab in front of his office building. He could well afford a carriage and driver to take him wherever he needed to go, but he was a frugal old Dutchman, and paying a driver full time when he only needed a ride two or three times a day was an extravagance he could not justify.

  Van Duzer was in early, but his law clerks were already there. None of them dared be in later than the old man. They greeted him in polite but muted tones as they scurried about the hallways. They all had plenty to do or made it their business to appear to. Most of the partners weren’t in yet he noticed as he walked past their dark, paneled doors. There weren’t but a handful of them that seemed to know the value of a full day’s work. Still, they billed enough hours. He knew how many. He kept a report on each of them, a list of golden hours. Time was money in the law business. No partner wanted to be on the bottom of that list.

  Van Duzer hadn’t settled in to his office for more than twenty minutes before a telegram came, much as the last one had, on tentative clerk’s feet with hushed announcement.

  “Tomorrow’s paper,” was all it said.

  “Humph,” Van Duzer grunted as he read it a second time. “Man of few words.”

  He rather liked that. He burned the telegram like he had the last one, tossing the ash into his wastebasket on top of the latest letter from Ella. She was getting cold feet already, just as he’d thought. He watched as the last of the embers died. Ella was out of her depth, had been all along. Her brother had stolen from her and her lawyer was using her. Van Duzer shook his head. “She’ll never see a dime,” he muttered.

  Everyone slept late the next day. The Prospect House was quiet even at 10 A.M. By the time Tom, Mary, Mike, and Rebecca got down to breakfast the big dining room was only part full. Tom picked up a newspaper in the reading room on the way to breakfast and leafed through it before realizing that it was yesterday’s edition. He was used to reading his paper in the morning at home. He put it down with a disappointed shrug, but once they’d ordered breakfast he picked it up again.

  There wasn’t one article about anything outside of the Adirondacks, as far as he could see. Shoehorned between a column about proposed train service to Warrensburg and a story about a wedding in Glens Falls was an article titled, INDIAN LAKE MAN BURNED IN TERRIBLE ACCIDENT, OVERCOME BY SMOKE HE FALLS INTO FIRE.

  “Hmph. This is odd,” Tom said over the top of the paper. “Says here, ah…” He paused as he skimmed through the first paragraphs, “Says here some fella in Indian Lake, a charcoal burner, fell headfirst into his own fire.”

  “How horrible!” Mary said.

  Tom grunted as he read on. “Found him with his feet sticking out. Damn!”

  “Just his feet?” Mike asked, a piece of pancake poised midway between plate and mouth. “I don’t even want to think about that.” What he did think about was Lettie. Mike hadn’t seen her last night. In all the confusion he hadn’t given her more than a passing thought, and by the time the fire was out and they were back to their rooms he’d been too exhausted to sneak out and look for her. He thought about her now, though, and there was worry in it.

  The empty breakfast dishes were taken away as the family talked about what to do that day. They had planned to climb Blue and, even though they were getting a late start they decided to go ahead with it if they could locate Busher. They found him sitting, back against the wall of the boathouse, talking with another guide. He perked up when he saw them coming.

  He got to his feet and brushed the grass from his pants while he exchanged a word with the other guide, a handsome fellow with deep-set eyes. The man was dressed in a well-cut vest with a gold watch chain dangling across his middle and a white shirt with a floppy bow tie. His pants were tucked into high boots that were supple and polished.

  Busher greeted the family and asked, “What’s your pleasure this fine morning?” looking from one to the other.

  “Decided not to go fishing today, Chauncey. Thought we’d climb the mountain instead,” Tom said, looking up at Blue. They got into a discussion of how long it would take and the kind of footwear and clothes they’d need.

  “Can be chilly on top, so you’d be smart to bring something extra,” Chauncey said, adding that he’d arrange a carriage to take them up to the trailhead.

  “Save a couple miles,” he explained. “Might be easier on the little missy here,” he said with a pat on Rebecca’s head.

  “Oh, darn my manners! This here’s Mister Exeter Owens,” Chauncey said, turning to the man still leaning against the wall. “He’s not so good a guide as me, but that still makes him pretty darn good,” he said with a straight face, but with a twinkle in his eye.


  “Mornin’, sir,” Owens said to Tom.

  Turning to Mary he tipped the brim of his hat, saying, “A pleasure, ma’am,” with a rakish grin. “Climbing Blue, eh?” Owens went on with a nod to Mike and Rebecca. “Pretty day for it,” he said, looking up at the puffy clouds.

  “Got a feeling we might get some weather. Won’t be till this evening, though. Still, I wouldn’t tarry on the mountain too long.” He elbowed Busher. “And don’t let Busher get you lost. I’d hate having to go save him.”

  They had a good laugh at that before the talk turned to the fire. Both of the guides had aided in the effort to put out the blaze. Busher had run through the barn, opening stalls as he went. Owens had been near the head of the bucket line.

  “Damn shame,” Owens said. “Don’t know how it got started. Nobody seems to know.”

  “Yeah,” Busher said. “Got a fishy smell to it. Hell, I’m thinkin’ somebody set ’er. Fixed it so’s there’d be no puttin’ it out.”

  Tom raised an eyebrow. He’d had some experience with arson investigations, but he was no expert.

  “Fire spread quicker than I’d have thought,” he agreed.

  “Nobody’s said so,” Owens said with a nod toward the Prospect House, “but something was wrong about that fire.”

  Tom didn’t comment. He stayed silent waiting for more. Silence was a void that talkers liked to fill.

  These two seemed like talkers.

  “But what the hell do I know?” Owens added.

  “Not too damn much, Ex, you ask me,” Chauncey replied.

  The climb up Blue was harder than they’d imagined. Though Busher hauled a large packbasket slung from his shoulders with leather straps, he surged ahead. He had to stop and wait often while Rebecca caught up. Mary walked with her, happy for the excuse to go slow. Her ankle-length cotton dress, wide-brimmed hat, and too-tight leather boots made for a hot, painful hike. Her feet were aching long before they reached the top. Busher had warned her about the boots before they started, saying, “Them boots’re more for the bowlin’ alley than the mountain.”