The Assassin

“What time does he get in?”

“We dine late.”

“You drive a hard bargain,” said Isaac Bell, “but how can I resist?” It occurred to him that if Edna Matters wasn’t whirling in his brain, and Nellie Matters not pirouetting on the edges, he might half hope that the Army would post Helen’s father to Indian Territory for the weekend.

Helen’s alto voice made her sound older than Archie had reported she was. Much older. She turned out to be a girl starting her second year at Bryn Mawr College. She admitted over lunch to being at loose ends about her future. But one thing for sure, she told Bell. She was determined to do more than marry and raise children.

Bell discovered that newspaperwoman E. M. Hock and suffragist Nellie Matters were heroes to Helen and her classmates; that he knew both women made him almost as heroic in her eyes. He offered advice, and before her father got home, he had convinced her to aim her studies toward a career even bolder than Edna’s and Nellie’s.

Brigadier General G. Ta

Bell found it tough going trying to convince the old mossback that hanging a murderer was more important than shielding the Army from the embarrassment of a years-ago desertion. Mills repeated his argument in a voice trained to be heard over the thunder of a cavalry charge. “The Army is a more fragile institution than civilians suppose. Reputation is all. To suffer a black eye and deliver that black eye to the president is—”

“Lieutenant K.K.V. Casey,” Isaac Bell interrupted.

“What?”

“Private Howard H. Gensch . . . Sergeant Clarence Orr.”

“Why are you—?”

“They are marksmen.”

“I know that!”

“Lieutenant Casey won the President’s Medal in 1903. Private Gensch won the President’s Medal last year. Sergeant Orr won this year.”

“Why are you bandying their names?”

“Surely the United States Army isn’t ashamed of such marksmen.”

“What do they have to do with Private Jones?”

“That’s what I’m asking you, sir. Neither Lieutenant Casey, Private Gensch, nor Sergeant Orr are Private Billy Jones. Give your soldiers their due and help me hang a killer.”

“How?” Mills growled.

“Have you ever heard of a Standard Oil executive named Bill Matters?”

Mills put down his glass. “I wondered if you would ask.”

“You know of him?”

“Oh, yes.”

Isaac Bell leaned closer, which put the veteran officer in mind of a cougar about to land on him with all four feet. “Tell me how.”

“When we investigated Billy Jones’ desertion,” Mills said, “we discovered certain items the boy had left behind that we were able to trace—or so we thought. I went, personally, to the man that our investigation revealed was very likely Billy Jones’ father. That his son had disappeared around the time that Private Jones joined the Army seemed to cinch it.”

“What ‘item’ did he leave behind?”

“Ticket stubs from an opera house. Shakespeare shows. We traced them to Oil City, Pe

“Bill Matters lived in Oil City. He raised his daughters there before he moved to New York.”

“He still maintained a home in ’02. For all I know, still does. Anyway, I found him in Oil City.”

“Why did you go personally?”

“I would not put the officers under me in the position of offending a powerful man who might well have had no co

“Was the marksman Bill Matters’ son?”

Brigadier Mills looked Isaac Bell in the eye and Bell found it easy to imagine him as a young officer leading his men into a storm of lead. “I’m not proud of this,” he said, “but it was my job to cover things up. I went to Matters’ house. I spoke with him in private. He was alone there. I found him sitting in the dark. Mourning the boy.”

“In ’02? But that was years after he disappeared.”

“He still mourned him. I promised that nothing we discussed would leave the room. I made my case. The cross-grained SOB refused to believe me. He was certain—dead certain—that the marksman was not his missing son.”

Bell said, “Detectives run into similar denials by the parents of criminals.”

The general’s answer was uncharacteristically roundabout. “I’ve led men my whole life, Bell. Gettysburg. The west. Cuba. The Philippines. I can read men. I know what they’re thinking before they do. Bill Matters was telling the truth! The marksman Billy Jones was not his boy.”

“And yet?” Bell asked.

“And yet what?” Mills fired back.

“And yet I sense your, shall we say, disquiet? If not doubt?”

Angered, Mills looked away. He stared at his collection of weapons. He hesitated, face working, as if he was debating the merits of shooting Bell versus ru

“Maybe you read men, too. You’re right. Something was off there. I don’t know what, but something was way off, out-of-kilter.”

“What?”

“Bill Matters knew that his boy was not the marksman. But he was not surprised that I had come calling.”

“What do you mean?”

“He was not surprised that I had co

“Maybe they weren’t.”

“I found him in a back parlor. He refused to leave the room or turn on the lights. So we talked in the dark. My eyes adjusted until I saw that the room was filled with toy theaters. You know what I mean?”

“Paper stage sets. You can buy them in New York theaters.”

“His parlor was full of them. But he sat there steadfastly denying that the theater stubs were his.”

Bell said, “You seemed to be suggesting that Matters knows who the deserter is.”

“I am not ‘suggesting,’ I am telling you that Matters knew beyond doubt that the marksman who deserted was not his missing boy.”

“Why?” asked Bell. “How could he know?”

“Either he knew exactly where his missing boy was in 1902 the day Billy Jones won the President’s Medal or—”

“Or he knows the marksman,” said Isaac Bell.

The brigadier said, “In my firm opinion, the deserter was not his boy. He is someone else.”

Isaac Bell was tumbling possibilities in his mind when he heard the old general say, “And now, sir, what are your designs on my daughter?”

“Helen? I’ve already proposed an offer.”

“Proposed? The girl is barely eighteen. She’s got college ahead of her.”

“I made every effort to convince her and she agreed to apply for an apprenticeship at the Van Dorn Detective Agency as soon as she graduates.”

“What the devil makes you think my daughter could be a detective?”

“Helen’s got a mean left hook . . . Could we go back to reading men, sir? . . . I believe something is still on your mind. Something you’ve left unsaid about the marksman.”

Mills nodded. “It’s only speculation. I can’t offer proof.”

“I’d still like to hear it.”

“I’d bet money that Matters was shielding him.”

35

Are you sure you want to blow this all to smithereens?” asked the assassin.

“Sure as I know my name,” said Bill Matters.

They were standing out of sight of the street in a glassed widow’s walk on the roof of The Hook saloon five stories above the Standard Oil Constable Hook refinery’s front gate. Originally erected by a sea captain who made his fortune in whale oil, the widow’s walk was festooned with wooden spires and elaborate bronze lightning rods fashioned like harpoons. Matters was safe here for a while, even with Isaac Bell closing in, for he owned the saloon lock, stock, and barrel.