Mazorca made a snap decision: he whistled. The chaplain looked his way, and Mazorca gestured for him to approach.
In the dim light, Mazorca had not seen that the chaplain’s coat was black, not blue. He noticed the difference in color as the man came forward but decided to speak to the chaplain anyway.
“I’m so glad to have found you,” said Mazorca, pretending to be short on breath, as if he had been sprinting. “I just pulled a baby out of the canal.”
“We must rescue the child!” said the chaplain.
With that, Mazorca made for Tenth Street and turned south. The chaplain kept pace with him, holding his hat to keep it from falling off.
“I didn’t expect to find a man of God in these parts,” said Mazorca as they ran.
“The Lord came into the world to save sinners,” said the chaplain. “He is most needed in places like this.”
They smelled the canal before they saw it-its powerful reek reached into Murder Bay even without the help of the wind. A moment later, they stood at its edge.
“You took the baby from the canal?” asked the chaplain.
“Yes, I removed it right away and carried it over to this alleyway,” said Mazorca. He pointed to a dark passage between a pair of abandoned buildings.
A look of doubt spread across on the chaplain’s face. “Why did you put the child there? Why didn’t you bring it away from this dreadful place?”
It was a sensible question, asked with a tone of mounting skepticism. Mazorca had relied on the man’s good heart and gullibility to get him to the canal. He figured he had no time to lose. In a fast and fluid motion, Mazorca whipped out his knife and sprang at the chaplain, who took an instinctive step backward but lost his balance when he tried to avoid plunging into the canal. He tumbled to the ground. Mazorca fell upon him, pressing his knee against the chaplain’s chest and his blade against his neck.
The chaplain closed his eyes and started mumbling, “Our Father…” He continued to clutch his cross and Bible.
“Shut your mouth-if you want to live,” said Mazorca.
In the silence, Mazorca looked up and made sure nobody had seen them. The track along the edge of the canal was desolate.
Rising to his feet but keeping his knife on the chaplain’s neck, Mazorca pointed to the alley once more. “You will get up, you will walk over there, and you will do it quietly,” he said.
The chaplain did as he was told. The alley was dingy and strewn with rotting garbage. A stray cat scampered away as they entered.
Several feet in, the chaplain stopped and faced Mazorca. “I forgive you,” he said.
Mazorca scoffed. “Are you sure about that?”
“I’m absolutely sure of it.”
“Your faith is pathetic. Do you think it will save you?”
“I’m not the one in need of saving.”
“Whatever,” said Mazorca. “Take off your coat.”
The chaplain did not hesitate. He quickly set down the cross and Bible, unbuttoned, and removed the coat. As he handed it to Mazorca, the clouds overhead suddenly parted, exposing the moon. One night before, it had been full. Its bright beams lit Mazorca and the chaplain.
“Wait,” said the chaplain, squinting at Mazorca. “You look like…”
He paused.
“What?” said Mazorca, with anger in his voice. “What do I look like?”
The chaplain sighed. He knew he should not have spoken.
“Tell me,” insisted Mazorca. The knife was no longer pressed against the chaplain’s neck, but Mazorca continued to point it at him. One wrong move and the chaplain would be dead. “Tell me now.”
“There is only one way to confirm it,” said the chaplain.
“It’s in the pocket.”
He reached for the coat, but Mazorca pulled it away.
“What’s in the pocket?”
“A picture.”
“A picture of what?”
“Please just let me retrieve it,” said the chaplain. “I don’t care about the coat. You can keep the coat.”
Mazorca wiggled the knife to remind the chaplain of its presence. “If this is a trick, you’ll be dead before your corpse hits the ground,” he said.
The chaplain nodded, reached a hand into his pocket, and pulled out a stiff piece of paper. He looked at it in the moonlight and then studied Mazorca’s face. When Mazorca realized what he was doing, he dropped the coat and grabbed the photograph.
The image astonished him: the picture was a little fuzzy, but there was no mistaking it. Mazorca had never allowed a photograph of himself to be taken before. Where could this one possibly have come from? He had absolutely no idea.
“Where did you get this?” he asked. There was urgency in his voice.
“A sergeant handed it to me, just a few minutes ago.”
Mazorca remembered Springfield’s encounter with the chaplain, outside Madam Russell’s Bake Oven.
“He had a handful of them,” said the chaplain. “He was distributing copies to the women of this quarter, hoping that one of them might recognize the person in it. I didn’t really want one. He practically forced me to take it.”
“How many did he have?”
“I don’t know-quite a few.”
Mazorca looked at the picture again but remained mystified as to its origins. He appeared to be standing outside. But where? And when?
“Could be anybody, I suppose,” said the chaplain.
Mazorca glared at him. Up above, the clouds moved in front of the moon. Darkness descended on the alley again.
“Just keep the coat,” said the chaplain. “You can have the picture as well. I have a little money too.”
He thrust a hand into his pants pocket. As he did, Mazorca struck, slashing the knife across the chaplain’s throat. Blood spewed out, and Mazorca hopped out of the way as the chaplain collapsed.
He put on the chaplain’s coat and hat and stuffed the picture into the pocket from which it had come. He thought about removing the chaplain’s pants, but he decided not to bother. They were close enough in appearance to the ones he was wearing. He did, however, pick up the cross and the Bible. The dead man’s neck was still seeping blood as Mazorca left the alley.
At the edge of the canal, Mazorca hurled the cross into the water. It splashed and sank. Then he tossed the Bible. It splashed and dipped below the surface before coming back up. Its dark cover was difficult to spot, but Mazorca thought he saw it begin to float away with the current.
Mazorca walked in the opposite direction. He needed to go into hiding, away from the eyes of people who had seen his photograph. He could not possibly check into a hotel-that would be the first place Rook and his men would have distributed pictures. Murder Bay was covered too. He could not even safely occupy a room in a whorehouse. There was always the safe house. Was it too risky? Or was it the best option among a set of worse alternatives?
There would be no escape this time. Rook would see to that. He was not interested in observing Mazorca from afar or trying to tail him anywhere. He wanted him killed or captured as quickly as possible. And if Mazorca was in the row house at 1745 N Street, one of those two things would happen in just a few minutes.
The house belonged to Robert Fowler. After Zack Hoadly had identified it, a lieutenant had looked up the address in the city’s ownership records. Rook remembered Fowler as the man who had crossed the Long Bridge into Virginia with an overstuffed wagon on the day the news of Fort Sumter’s fall had reached Washington. He knew that Fowler was a Southerner and a secessionist, but he was not sure that meant anything. To Mazorca, the Fowler residence might have represented nothing more than an abandoned building.
Everything rode on the accuracy of Zack’s report. Could the account of a ten-year-old boy be trusted? Boys could have powerful imaginations. Yet Rook was convinced that Zack had bumped into somebody outside the front door of 1745 N Street-and the possibility that it was a chance encounter with Mazorca was his only genuine lead. Rook was determined to pursue it.