What's So Thrilling About This?
Kid Dropper was snoring on the bed. The room reeked of the alcohol he had exhaled.
The problem was he wasn't alone.
A woman lay beside him on the bed.
Corey, who hadn't anticipated this situation at all, trembled around the eyes in panic. When our gazes met, he bit his lip and lowered his head.
This meant a change of plans.
I quietly backed out of the room.
Room 205—Corey's room.
"What happened?"
"I-I clearly saw Dropper come in alone. I tailed him the whole way from the bar right up to this place. The woman must have been waiting in the room the whole time. She was the one Dropper brought back from the bar two days ago."
Corey had been so focused on watching Dropper that he never paid attention to the woman. The other members working with him had all concentrated solely on Dropper as well.
If I tried to understand it, I could. But it still sat heavy on me.
Had we grown sloppy, drunk on our recent successes? Or had we simply treated what we were doing now as too easy?
Succeed ten times and a single mistake still sends you straight to hell.
That was the greatest risk any criminal faced.
"W-what do we do, Boss?"
Corey clutched his forehead, his face twisted with distress.
"Did you forget what we're doing here? One slip and we're all dead. Plan change, Corey."
It would delay us and complicate things, but the broad outline remained the same.
I was explaining the revised plan when the sound of a door opening somewhere in the hallway suddenly reached us.
We stopped talking and pricked up our ears.
Then someone knocked on our door. A light sound, as if tapping with a finger.
It was three in the morning.
Someone who had just left another room was knocking on ours.
This was no ordinary matter.
Go check, Corey.
I gave the order with a look. Corey pulled his scarf up over his nose and approached the door with catlike steps.
This was an era when peepholes had not yet become common. Corey flipped open the little cover over the hole in the center of the door and peered out. Then he turned his head and mouthed something at me, his face pale with shock.
The shape of his lips said the woman from next door.
What the fuck…
I swallowed the curse that tried to escape and slid under the bed.
I stuck only my hand out and signaled Corey. Let the woman in.
I drew my gun, prepared for anything, and watched from beneath the bed.
The angle was so narrow I could see nothing but Corey's feet.
The door opened as quietly as possible. A pair of smooth, bare legs appeared in the hallway.
Two pairs of feet hesitated, then moved toward the small table. A moment later a woman's voice spoke in a whisper.
"You came to kill Kaplan, didn't you?"
Kid Dropper's real name was Nathan Kaplan. Somehow she did not seem like a woman he had simply picked up at the bar.
"Who are you?"
"Beatrice Castante. Everyone calls me Almar."
"I'm not asking your name. Why did you come here?"
"Because it looked like you were about to leave on my account."
"…"
"I'll get out of the way. Kill him."
Corey seemed just as startled as I was. Silence stretched.
Almar broke it.
"Kaplan is the bastard who raped his friend's girlfriend. Even after Johnny shot him and left him clinging to life, even after his own child was crippled, he never gave a damn."
"You mean… Johnny Spanish?"
"That's right. I was the girlfriend."
I had heard the story from Tanner before.
Johnny had tied his cheating girlfriend to a tree and shot her. She survived, but the child in her belly lost two fingers to the bullet.
In truth she had not been cheating. She had been raped, and the child's father was Kaplan.
Hatred thickened in Almar's next words.
"I went looking for him when he got out of prison, thinking things might be different. He handed me two dollars. Said it was payment for a good time. Treated me like a whore."
Corey seemed to have fallen deep into the story. He gave no answer.
"Well, it was my own fault for loving a piece of shit like Johnny. But that's separate. I don't want to live under the same sky as the bastards who ruined my life."
She wanted them all dead.
"Johnny's gone, so now it's Kaplan's turn. What can I do to help?"
Almar's chilling, resolute voice filled the room with quiet menace.
Without the woman there would have been no reason to change the plan.
The question was whether she could be trusted—and there was a way to handle that.
Corey could not answer Almar's question.
Since he could not decide, I had no choice but to step in myself, undignified as it was.
"Drag her outside right now and hand her to the boys. Hold her until the job's done and put a watch on her. Everything else proceeds as planned."
It was ridiculous, but it could not be helped.
Almar started to bend down toward the bed; Corey stopped her.
"You heard that just now?"
"Yeah. I can tell just from the voice. Looks like he handles things clean."
"Enough talk. Get ready to leave."
Almar set a pair of shoes on the floor. She had been holding them the whole time. From the start she had never intended to return to Dropper's room.
"I didn't hear a thing. Didn't see a thing. Oh—and I left the door unlocked. Hope that helps…"
Almar pressed a key into Corey's hand and slipped out. Only then did I crawl out from under the bed.
I stood for a moment staring at the large bag. Inside were the items meant to frame Dropper as a German spy.
I left them for now and quietly exited the room.
Room 203.
Killing a man who was dead drunk was almost too simple.
I mounted his body and clamped a hand over his mouth and nose in one motion. Dropper's eyes flew open and, by pure reflex, his hand shot not toward mine but toward the pillow.
Animal instinct reacting to crisis.
He was reaching for the gun he had hidden under the pillow.
I pinned his arm with my knee and tore the weapon free with my left hand.
We needed it to look like he had died accidentally outside. That meant no blood, and no marks from strangulation either.
I pressed both knees onto his arms and crushed his mouth and nose with both hands. He thrashed desperately to free himself, making the bed rattle.
At last Dropper's body went limp and stopped responding.
I began dressing him in the clothes hanging on the rack.
By the time I got the trousers on him, Corey—having handed the woman off to another member—opened the door and came in.
"Is it done?"
"Go get the stuff."
Once Corey confirmed Dropper was dead, he returned to his own room and dragged back the large bag.
After we had fully dressed Dropper, Corey and I laid out the homemade bomb, the unfinished dynamite, and the spare parts across the floor.
I slipped the scrap of newspaper into a copy of Karl Marx's The Communist Manifesto and tucked the book under the bed.
On the wall I pinned an enlarged map of New York Harbor with an X marked at one point.
When the work was finished I swept the room with my eyes.
It reeked of a German spy seized by madness and conviction, preparing an act of terror.
Satisfying.
Time to begin.
I opened the window.
"Grab his legs."
Corey and I lifted the corpse and heaved it out the window.
We had already spread thick fabric below; the sound was not loud enough to wake the neighborhood.
Corey locked Dropper's door and returned to the room he had been using.
I went down the iron fire escape at the rear of the building that I had scouted earlier.
The body had been moved from the drop point deeper into the alley. I approached the shadow lingering beside Dropper's corpse.
Marcus, waiting in the cold.
"Bite down hard."
I drove my fist into Marcus's face and stomach.
He swallowed a groan and wiped his mouth with his hand. Blood smeared just enough.
Any gun would have done, but I had Dropper's. I handed it to Marcus.
"Shoot where I told you."
"Y-yeah."
I left the alley with only the corpse and Marcus behind me.
Bang!
Bang!
Four gunshots shattered the dawn on Bowery Street. The members and I watched people gather, then joined them like ordinary gawkers.
NYPD Manhattan Headquarters.
Marcus, arrested at the scene, sat across from a detective and answered questions.
Kid Dropper was the name used among gangs and sluggers; the police called the suspect Nathan Kaplan.
"So you're saying Kaplan suddenly rushed you and tried to grab you?"
"Yes, sir. With a gun in his hand."
Fearing for his life, Marcus had charged so Kaplan could not fire. The split lip and the bruise on his abdomen were the proof.
In the struggle that followed, two bullets had ended up in Kaplan.
The first two shots had gone into the wall and into empty air; the third had struck Kaplan's leg; the fourth had entered diagonally from the neck toward the head.
"Kaplan's a big guy. How'd a kid like you overpower him?"
"If he hadn't been drunk, I'd be dead."
"Fine, we'll go with that for now. What were you doing hanging around that alley at that hour?"
Marcus wet his swollen lip and continued.
"For the past few days I had suspected he might be a German spy."
"Oh, for Christ's sake."
The detective scowled and tossed the papers he was holding onto the table.
"I know Kaplan. Before he went to prison he was a gangster with charges for theft, assault, and murder."
He even knew Kaplan was working as a labor slugger now. But a German spy?
"Marcus Reinhold. Family of Johann Reinhold, German immigrant who came over on the Eider in 1883, correct?"
"…Yes. That's my grandfather."
"And out of nowhere you're tracking German spies? What are you, Sherlock Holmes…?"
The door to the interrogation room opened with a clack and several men appeared. Among them was Michael in a police uniform; he spoke to the detective.
"We checked the motel room where Kaplan was staying. That bastard really was a German spy."
"What?"
"Looks like he was preparing a bomb attack. Evidence is overflowing."
The detective's gaze shifted to the men beside the officer.
"We're from the Bureau of Investigation. This matter…"
"Is Edgar Hoover here as well?"
Marcus, still under questioning, suddenly stood and asked for Hoover. A man who had been standing behind stepped forward.
"I'm right here."
"Kieran told me to find you. You already suspected it, didn't you—that Kaplan was a German spy. That's why you and Duquesne were both watching him."
Find Hoover and elevate him. He's the one who will change your future.
Marcus had followed Kieran's words faithfully.
And he could see Hoover's face twitch strangely.
What the hell is going on here?
Hoover clenched his teeth to hide his confusion.
All he had ever told Kieran was that he would look into whether any subversive elements were involved in the strike protests, and that he would check if any evidence turned up.
Then yesterday he had received a single telegram from Kieran.
A friend has discovered an important lead concerning those who instigated the strike. He is tailing them now to secure solid evidence.
That was everything Hoover knew.
Yet the situation was unfolding in the strangest way.
"Hoover, did you know about this?"
"You were already suspicious of Duquesne and Kaplan's connection?"
Experienced seniors fired questions at the twenty-two-year-old rookie investigator who had just graduated from law school that year.
Why is this so thrilling?
He barely managed to pull the corner of his mouth back down.
Hoover gave only a slight, casual nod.
That was all he could do right now.
Because he knew nothing.
With every eye on him, Hoover stared fixedly at Marcus's lips alone.