“I hear the restaurant downstairs is a good one. Do you mind eating with capitalists?”
“I will take it as an opportunity.”
“For what?”
“To observe the enemy up close,” she replied.
“You’re smiling,” said Bell. “But I can’t tell if you’re joking.”
“Not while miners walk the Monongahela Valley.”
“You were there?”
Mary nodded. “Their spirits are high. But rain is forecast.”
The Cadillac Hotel’s breakfast room was packed with out-of-town buyers. A bribe to the headwaiter got them the last table. Mary noticed the money pass hands and said, after they were seated and she had spread her napkin on her lap, “Do I assume correctly that, in truth, your father did not lose his mansion in the Panic of ’93?”
“He did not. Nor is it in the Back Bay. I was born in Louisburg Square.”
Mary took a folded newspaper page from her purse, laid it beside her.
“That would make you a Bell of the American States Bank.”
“That is my father’s bank. How is it that you know Boston?”
“Why do you work as a detective?”
“Because I want to.”
Mary returned his even gaze with a searching one of her own. Before she could ask a question, they were interrupted by a loud man at the next table, a wholesaler entertaining buyers. “The shirtwaist and skirt will be replaced next year by a full-costume combination — a single piece of garment— How do I know? Paris declares such combinations plebeian, particularly in different texture or color. New York will lead the change, and your ladies in Chicago will take the same view.”
Mary looked down at her gray shirtwaist and blue skirt and smiled. “So I’m to be plebeian?”
“You look lovely,” said Bell. “I mean, stylish and attractive.”
“Do you really believe that Van Dorns are different than Pinkertons?”
“I know they are. How is it that you know Boston?”
“How are Van Dorns different?”
“We believe that the innocent are sacred.”
“Those are pretty words.”
“Words to live by. But before we debate further, our waiter is headed this way, the restaurant is busy, and we should order before they run out. What would you like for breakfast?”
“What are you having?”
“Everything that can’t run away. I’ve been up all night and I am starving.”
“I walked from the ferry. I’m starving, too. I’ll have what you’re having.”
Bell picked up the menu. “Good morning,” he said to the waiter. “We both want coffee, buckwheat pancakes with cranberries, fried bananas, omelets with mushrooms, and calf’s liver.” Mary was nodding approvingly. Bell asked, “With onions?”
“And bacon.”
“You heard the lady. And may we have our coffee as soon as humanly possible?” Of Mary he asked, again, “How is it that you know Boston?”
“I am by occupation a schoolteacher. I graduated from the Girls’ Latin School.”
“So you were born in Boston.”
“No. My parents moved us there so my brother and I could attend the Latin Schools. Father found work as a tugboat captain and we lived on the boat.” She smiled. “Yes, I know what you’re thinking. The saloon was another time in another city. Father was always changing jobs.”
“A jack-of-all-trades?”
“He could master anything. Except people. He was like Jim. It broke his heart when he couldn’t deny that evil people exist. That’s when he gave up on the tugboat.”
“What changed his mind?”
“Too many deckhands shanghaied by knockout drops.”
“But tug captains must be used to freighters kidnapping able seamen. And no experienced deckhand would be surprised to wake up miles from land with a splitting headache. Spiked booze mans ships.”
“Father was surprised.”
The coffee arrived. Bell sought her eyes over their cups and asked, “What’s in that newspaper?”
“The reason I’m here.”
“I thought you came to not apologize.”
Mary Higgins did not smile back but thrust the clipping across the table. “Read this.”
Bell glanced at the headline and handed it back.
“I read it last night,” he said and recited the last paragraph from memory:
“It is understood that a great amount of evidence of the Coal Trust’s existence, and proof that the railroads are large owners in the coal mines, and that they combine to regulate the price of coal to the seaboard and in every important city not only by setting carrying charges but also by naming the price at which retailers shall put the coal on the market, is in possession of Jim Higgins, president of the Strike Committee. Higgins will probably be called upon by the attorney general in the course of the investigations to be commenced.”
Mary was staring at him.
Bell said, “I have a photographic memory.”
“I thought so. I have one, too. I always wondered if my eyes move while I’m remembering. Now I know.”
“How did your brother become president of the Strike Committee?”
“By having the guts to stand up for it.”
“How did he get ahold of the evidence?”
“He carried it out the back door of a Denver union hall while the Pinkertons were breaking in the front door.”
“How did that evidence get all the way to Denver?”
“They moved it from Pittsburgh and Chicago to keep it safe.”
“Well, I guess that didn’t work… Does your brother realize the danger he’s in holding that stuff?”
“He doesn’t think about it.”
“But you do,” said Bell, guessing what was coming next.
Mary said, “It will get him murdered. They will kill him and burn the evidence before the attorney general gets around to calling him. Unless…”
“Unless?”
“Unless he is protected by a detective who claims to believe that the innocent are sacred.”
Bell nodded eagerly. It was as he had supposed and hoped. Safeguarding Jim Higgins would be an opportunity for a closer, inside look at the unions and their top organizers. That might shed light on the identity of the provocateur if he happened to be a former labor organizer. But that meant that Bell would need more men in his squad.
“We better go see the Boss.”
Upstairs in his office, Joseph Van Dorn listened to Mary Higgins’s request. He questioned her closely about the documents and elicited that Jim, too, had been born with a powerful memory and that even if the evidence was locked in a safe the fact that it resided complete in his mind put him at great risk of being murdered to prevent him from testifying. He asked if Mary had read the documents.
“Jim wouldn’t let me.”
“Of course not,” Van Dorn nodded. “Was this your sole reason for coming to New York City?”
She hesitated only a heartbeat. “Yes.”
Joseph Van Dorn nodded. “Of course…” He cast a shrewd eye on his young detective, noted how avidly Isaac Bell was watching Mary, and made up his mind.
“Your request for protection for your brother comes at a propitious moment, Miss Higgins. I have just started a new division of the Van Dorn Detective Agency, which will be named Van Dorn Protective Services.”
“You have?” asked Bell. “I hadn’t heard.”
“Because you were concentrating on your own case. Van Dorn Protective Services will provide valuables escorts, hotel house detectives, night watchmen, and, of course, bodyguards. Protecting Jim Higgins will be right up their alley.”
“Will Mr. Bell be one of them?” asked Mary.
“Mr. Bell is a detective, not a bodyguard. For your brother, we will provide men especially skilled at ensuring the personal safety of our clients.”