Alphabet City (Ch32)
Leaving town would be the smart thing, but in the heart of town Theda finds the only way out.
This birdbrained scheme is going to get us all killed. Conlin maneuvered the Martin Wasp into an empty space across from the main drag in Army City where he could watch the front door of the Arcade. Jackson and Theda strolled down the sidewalk as if they were on a simple errand, and not two people who, in the case of Miss Evora, were on the run from law enforcement, and a man believed to be dead that was very much alive and by now wanted by the entire U.S. military. Jackson offered Theda his arm but she archly glanced at it and kept walking. A moment later they disappeared through the double doors.
Conlin threw the lever into park and waited. They were idiotic for thinking they could pull this off. He had just made a big show of stopping the car and opening the door for his sharp-dressed “boss” and his companion, who looked ridiculous in pants and those military boots. Playing the Negro chauffeur made him cringe inside. Not from a sense of shame. That would be the same as shaming his own father who put food on their table by being a driver for a wealthy man, but by having to put on the ‘act’ as a means of survival. Today it was necessary. The yellow Wasp drew eyes wherever they went and with a little theater it just looked as if a rich man had rolled into town and needed to shop for trinkets to remember his visit to one of the most famous military bases in America.
Conlin tapped his fingers nervously on the steering wheel. Fifteen minutes ago, Miss Evora blurted that she wanted to send a telegram to a Police Captain Josephs in Philadelphia who supposedly was her father’s friend. How a man thousands of miles away was going to help a missing doctor was anyone’s guess, but she insisted they go there before anything else and Conlin reluctantly acquiesced. Unless this Captain Josephs had his own means of time travel, he wasn’t going to show up at Fort Riley in time to do anything.
Whatever. It didn’t matter now anyway. He should have been jetting back east to New York City, but he foolishly agreed to perform this one last task with these two before he left them and, hopefully, never saw them again. As soon as that telegram was tapped into the wires, he would be heading in the same direction.
The hands on the dashboard clock moved to just about ten a.m., well past the time when the doctors arrived for work at the General Building. What had they found? A tied-up Cyril, the tattooed man, in the closet, and a cellar empty of fresh victims. Jackson had balls to even consider coming to town, considering it was quite possible that the entire base would be on the lookout for him. Unless they put the word out that he was already dead, like Dr. Evora told his daughter. The Ghost strikes again. In a time before he was even born.
At this early hour few soldiers dotted the streets, ducking into stores or stopping to talk to one another. From behind the windshield glass they appeared as extras in one of those silent movies they ran at the back alley picture shows in Harlem. On Saturday afternoons all the old people ducked in and dropped their few pennies into a tin can for a taste of their formative years. The actors with obvious pancake make-up and exaggerated expressions that seemed very old fashioned to a young Conlin were considered fresh and modern in this place of 1918 where he sat now.
The men on the sidewalk shook hands, smiled and pointed up. Conlin slowly raised his eyes but he had already smelled it: snow. Steel clouds ribboned across the great sky and joined hands until the tiniest streak of blue was forgotten in the promise of what gathered in the heavens and threatened to launch a cloaking attack for the second time in days. Snow, he gripped the wheel as if pulling invisible controls to make Jackson and Miss Evora hurry. Fist dust, now this. Just what we damn well need. Snow.
Jackson walked casually through the open space in the Arcade where multiple store fronts catered to anything a solider would need: toiletries, clothing, candy and cigarettes, jewelry for the dames back home and stamps and letter writing items. Luckily, that stand was also a telegram station and Theda was speaking to the clerk while handing over a few coins. It didn’t take long to send a telegram but he had to agree with Conlin: it was a waste of time. He certainly wasn’t going to hang around waiting for an answer, and she was smart enough to realize that wasn’t an option, anyway. Regardless, she had insisted and, for her sake, anyway, when he and Conlin left for New York, it couldn’t hurt her to have a friend to help in the aftermath. That thought bothered him and he tried to shove it into the back of his mind but it was gathering strength, even though he didn’t like it. He didn’t want to leave her. There it was. So he went along with this telegram scheme despite the danger of walking right back into the lion’s den. He leaned against a poll and lit a cigarette.
A few stalls down another clerk, this one a young kid probably watching the store for his father, waited on five soldiers who were chattering over the display of knives and daggers under the glass case. From the looks of it, the soldiers didn’t have two nickels to rub together but that didn’t stop them from asking the clerk to take out the daggers so they could hold them. The clerk took one knife after another from the glass case and the men passed them around. Jackson eyed the daggers; his own had been lost when he was ambushed by Billy and the rest of those clowns. He dropped the cigarette into one of the stand ashtrays and changed his expression into one of friendly curiosity.
“Gentlemen,” he said in a crisp British accent. “There seems to be a stalled vehicle on the street. A carful of lovely ladies whose wheels may have struck a bit of soft mud.”
All heads turned toward the street windows and Jackson laid his fedora over a small dagger with four fingerholes known as a Mark I Trench Knife. He slid the hat toward himself, his hand deftly reaching under and catching the knife, sliding it into his coat pocket and hoping it didn’t stick him in the thigh.
The heads all swiveled back, eyebrows knitted in puzzlement.
“Oh, my sincere apologies. Those ladies were able to hot-foot the gas and scoot on out. Just when you were turning your heads! Good day, lads.” The men smiled politely and returned to examining an antique dagger. Jackson walked slowly away.
“Thank you,” Theda said to the wire operator. “How long do you think before we have confirmation the message was delivered?”
“I couldn’t begin to tell you, miss. If you wait about ten minutes, I’ll check back with the station.”
“That sounds fine, thank you again.” But it wasn’t fine. Ten minutes was forever.
Across the room, Jackson was talking with a bunch of soldiers. He’s not even watching the outside for trouble. Fantastic. She began to walk over to him when a soldier at the next stand called to her. “Miss? Could you possibly come here for one minute?”
She hesitated, then approached the booth where, on the glass display case, the jewelry clerk had laid out two lines of circular gold charms. The top line had a single letter in fancy script etched into the gold circle and there were one for each letter in alphabetical order. The bottom line’s charms were also in alphabetical order, but these contained block letters etched in the gold.
The young soldier smiled at her. “Miss, I’m going to buy one of these for my fiancée, but I’m not sure which one she’ll like. Could you tell me which you prefer?”
She couldn’t help but smile. He was so young and hopeful that a little wave of sadness settled in her heart. She hoped that when his girl received that little charm, she opened the package and loved it. “What’s your girl’s name? That way we can look at the letter and see which one is the better choice.”
“Her name is Alice,” he said.
“Private!” A voice called from the opposite side of the room and the young man looked toward it. “Excuse me, please, Miss. I’ll be right back.” He hurried away.
“And I have to duck into the back for a moment,” the clerk said. “Could you please watch these while I’m gone?”
“Of course.” She tapped her foot nervously and looked toward the wire clerk, but he was hunched over the machine, tapping out a message.
She stared down at the letters, the Caesar Codex coming back to her mind. What am I missing? She had shifted the letters thirteen places, but that wasn’t right. She thought of the letter again, and the strange sign-off her father used of indecipherable letters.
…The 13th of July…
She moved the bottom row of letter charms like this:
ABCDEFGHIJKLMNOPQRSTUVWXYZ
MNOPQRSTUVWXYZABCDEFGHIJKL
The letters should code to this: count to thirteen, which was the m, but she had already done it like this and it was wrong.
Then, she thought of something.
July was the seventh month. What if it were thirteen places forward, then seven places back?
She left the top row of charms alone but moved the bottom row. She counted thirteen places forward, but then counted backwards seven spaces. She rearranged the bottom row.
ABCDEFGHIJKLMNOPQRSTUVWXYZ
FGHIJKLMNOPQRSTUVWXYZABCDE
She pulled her father’s letter from her coat pocket and found the letters he signed off with.
YMJ LTI TK MTLX
She picked up a pencil the clerk had left on a yellow pad. She wrote:
THE GOD OF HOGS
She slowly stepped back, her breath quickening. The words from a book whispered through the light din of male voices and ringing cash registers. The book was The Jungle by Upton Sinclair, the book that had started her on the road to the anarchists, the road that almost ended in her complete ruin. There was a passage she had thought long about regarding the massive stockyard operations in Chicago and the brutal treatment of the pigs slaughtered by the thousands daily. She and Harold Evora had discussed this part during one of their long talks on the meaning of life in the world they occupied:
“And now was one to believe that there was nowhere a god of hogs, to whom this hog personality was precious, to whom these hog squeals and agonies had a meaning? Who would take this hog into his arms and comfort him, reward him for his work well done, and show him the meaning of his sacrifice?”
“What’s wrong?”
She jumped and Jackson steadied her with a hand on her shoulder that lingered a little bit longer than what was proper. “What is it, Theda?”
Sacrifice. That’s what he was trying to tell her. What was the reward for her father’s sacrifice? His message was the hideous truth: nothing. Just like the pigs in Sinclair’s novel. But it wasn’t the philosophical message the code relayed. She knew where Harold was.
“Is there a slaughterhouse here?” she whispered.
He cocked his head in confusion. “Yes. Out beyond the stockyard. Why?”
This was the only chance to save him, and perhaps do what Jackson had said as well: stop whatever it was that he and his scientist friends had started. The initial conversation with Conlin by the aeroplanes came back to her, as did the date on the Infirmary register: March 7th. That was tomorrow. There was still time to stop whoever was Patient Zero.
“Because that’s where my father is. We have to go there. Now.”
“Are you sure?”
She nodded.
“Then let’s go.” He offered her his arm and this time she took it, grateful to lean on him when her knees were shaking. They turned together and headed toward the entrance. Then Theda stopped short.
The double doors opened and Violet entered, arm in arm with Private Billy Rankin.
Tension!
Oh! Please can I have the next chapter RIGHT NOW, Alison?!!!