It seemed prudent, as they came inside and closed the door behind them, to keep their weapons visible. But Theo Stromberg offered no resistance. “What were you expecting,” he asked, nodding at Jesse’s pistol, “a fire fight? You won’t need that.”
“I hope not. But I’ll hang on to it for the time being.”
Mercy and Theo stood together by the room’s long window as if framed in a photograph. Theo Stromberg, for all the deviltry he had committed, looked about as menacing as a hummingbird. He was a wiry man, and he gave the impression that there wasn’t quite enough of him to fill his clothes. He was clean-shaven and dark-haired and nervous. Like Mercy, Theo would not have seemed remarkable if you passed him on the street. But put these two together and they looked unmistakably like visitors from the future—unformed, too perfectly made, lacking all the scars and marks that distinguish real people from store-window mannequins.
On top of a bureau was a leather travel bag, open but almost fully packed. Most of what it contained was women’s clothing, presumably Mercy’s wardrobe. “Getting ready to go somewhere?”
“Yeah,” Theo said amicably. “Home.”
It wasn’t clear what he meant by that. Elizabeth said, “We’re here to take you into custody.”
“Fine, good,” Theo said.
Mercy added, “We expected my father to send someone. I’m surprised it took so long. We’re finished here. We’re ready to go with you.”
“Another day and you’d have missed us,” Theo said. “We figured we should head east before the strikes shut down rail service west of the Mississippi.”
Elizabeth said, “You’re telling us you’re willing to go back?”
“We don’t want to be stranded here. That was never part of the plan. So when we heard the news—”
“What news?”
Theo looked at Mercy, Mercy looked at Theo. Theo pointed at a copy of the Chronicle lying on a chair, pages askew. Jesse took his eyes off his nominal captives long enough to spot the pertinent headline at the top of a long column of dense type:
FEDERAL TROOPS BESIEGE CITY OF FUTURITY
Elizabeth didn’t trust the apparent docility of the captives—if Theo had offered even a hint of resistance she would have been happy to put him in wrist restraints—but she left them under Jesse’s surveillance and took the radio into an adjoining room.
She pictured her signal bouncing from Montgomery Street to Oakland, flying across the bay like a weightless bird, outstripping the ferries and freight boats. Radio before Marconi. She guessed Marconi was just an Italian kid in short pants circa 1877, if he had even been born yet. Something else she could Google at her leisure, if she ever got home.
A voice she didn’t recognize answered her call and told her to stay on the air. Then there was an interval of noise, cosmic rays crackling down from distant stars, until Kemp’s voice drowned it out. “Elizabeth? What’s your status?”
“We have her.”
A pause. Then, “Thank God. Oh, Christ. It was a close thing, Elizabeth, I won’t shit you about that.”
“We have Theo, too. They both say they’re willing to come back. No argument.”
“Theo’s a liar. Don’t take him at his word. Especially not as long as my daughter is under his influence.”
“Understood. But I’m assuming you want us to bring them both in.”
“Obviously, but it’s Mercy who matters. Keep that in mind.”
“We will.”
“Okay. Things are a little chaotic here—”
“It was in the papers,” Elizabeth said, “about the siege.”
“We’re dealing with it. It’s not as bad as it sounds. Fucking reporters, half the time they’re just making shit up. It’s true Hayes has an infantry brigade at the gate. Some laid-off local employee told the Chicago papers about the attempt on Grant’s life—Congress and the press are making a big deal of it, on top of everything else. But we still have a few friends in high places. We’ll make it back safely, I promise, but time is tight.”
“So what happens next?”
“We’re dealing with local hostility here on the Oakland side. The City’s docks and property are more or less under police control right now, so we’re working out of private facilities the authorities don’t know about. Getting you out of San Francisco is going to be a little tricky. We should be able to have an unmarked boat for you at the Market Street wharf by nine tonight, but we’re still working out the details. Can you stay where you are for another few hours?”
Elizabeth wasn’t sure how to answer that. Jesse might have stirred up a hornets’ nest by bartering with the tongs. But it was hard to imagine hired killers storming the Royal Hotel. “I guess we can sit tight.”
“Stay by the radio and be ready to move when you get the word. How far are you from the docks?”
“Jesse would know better than I do, all this horse traffic, but maybe half an hour, three-quarters of an hour?”
“Okay, noted. As for Jesse, tell him he’ll be paid when you deliver Mercy to the boat. He doesn’t need to come across the bay with her. Once I have my daughter back, his work is done. And that’s the last you’ll see of him. Understood?”
“Understood,” she said, hating him for making her say it.
* * *
Jesse didn’t like the idea of waiting in the hotel for orders from Kemp. This was a place known to his enemies, and every instinct he had learned as a bouncer’s boy told him to keep moving and stick to the shadows.
But orders were orders. He was only hired help, and he would be hired help for a few hours more, until Kemp, or someone from the City, paid him off with a bag of double eagles and a handshake. Then he would be his own man again. And Elizabeth would go home to her daughter. And the rest of his life, which seemed to Jesse like an ominous void waiting to be filled, could begin.
In the meantime there was nothing to do but sit at the window of the hotel room and watch the sun creep down behind a billboard advertising Kopp’s Pills for Cough and Grippe. It was the time of day when San Francisco’s respectable citizens began heading for their comfortable homes and lockable doors, while everyone else—that is to say, the city’s majority—prepared to conduct the kind of business that thrives after dark. Elizabeth, seated across the room from Theo and Mercy and cradling her pistol in her lap, seemed not to want to talk. But Jesse was bored and saw no reason to suppress his curiosity about the two runners. He’d talked to many runners in the course of his work, and he didn’t despise them as a class. So when Theo ventured to ask a question—“How exactly did you find us?”—Jesse said, “The City tracked you to San Francisco. There must have been postmarks on some of those letters you sent.”
“That’s not surprising. And we weren’t exactly hiding. But how’d you track us to the Royal?”
“Talked to one of the Six Companies. They like to know the whereabouts of the people they do business with.”
“Okay, I get that, but how did you connect us to the Six Companies?”
“The weapons you’ve been giving away tend to end up in the hands of people with grievances. Hereabouts, that’s one of two groups—Chinamen and wage workers. I happen to know some people in Chinatown, so that’s where we started. If that didn’t pan out I would have talked to the Kearneyites.”
“What if I hadn’t given pistols to either group?”
“Then we wouldn’t have found you so quick, and you wouldn’t be going home.”
“Well,” Theo said in his piping voice, “you’re wrong on two counts. One, I would never put a weapon in the hands of the Kearneyites. Denis Kearney talks a lot about the working man, but he’s a fucking racist. The way it worked out where I come from, Kearneyite mobs attacked the Chinese and a lot of innocent people got killed. It seems likely to happen here just the same. Second, I have no desire to stay behind after the Mirror closes. If that’s what August Kemp thinks, he has no idea what I’m all about.”
“He thinks you’ll face legal trouble if you go home.”
“He can bring charges, sure, but on fairly trivial grounds—transporting dangerous goods, trespassing on City property. The weapons I arranged to smuggle through the Mirror were legally purchased, and there’s no law about what I can do with them on this side. I mean, Kemp imported weapons, too, in the hands of his security people. They say a local was killed by City agents at Futurity Station last year. Is Kemp going to answer for that? No—not back home, not in a court of law. Given that, does he really want to initiate a lawsuit that’ll put my testimony into the public record? I hope he does, but I doubt he’s that stupid.”