Chapter 8 #2
Chary didn’t notice. “Espionage? I haven’t been going to union meetings!” he cried. “I’m not standing in the way of unionizing, for the love of Pete! Your story would be completely off base.”
“Oh, really, now?”
“Really! There are other barriers to unionizing. If it were as easy as salting the journeymen, it’d have already been done.
Say we do unionize: then no non-unioners will be allowed.
That would mean we exclude everyone the Local Sixty-Eight doesn’t allow; do you know who, precisely, that would be?
How many men and women will have to find work elsewhere?
Off the island? Before we can unionize, they need to allow persons of color and allow foreign-language and immigrant Locals to be formed.
They need to represent boys. Women. Brooklyn Glass isn’t integrated at all—”
Laurie could honestly say he’d never been lectured at gunpoint before. Not his own arguments.
“All right,” he said, “All right. Yes, I do know what you mean. I just want to know why you’re in the meetings.
Do you want to tell me? I really want to know.
I want the truth. And I wanted to see you again.
” Laurie managed a real smile. Despite everything, it was true.
“That requires not killing me, though. Please don’t. ”
Chary was wavering. He might not shoot after all.
“Help me, Chary. Four blowers dead, men you knew personally. You said there’s nothing worth killing for at the glassworks, but clearly, somebody thinks there is. Maybe they even want to point fingers at you. Help me find who did this. You’re the only one who can.”
“Help you?” Chary deflated. He lowered the gun and sighed. “Really, I only want you to leave. I’m tired, and I’d like to be left alone. Would you please leave?”
“Yeah. Yeah, of course.” Laurie would’ve agreed to just about anything at that point. “Can I ask you something first, though? One last thing?”
Chary stared. “What a death wish you have,” he muttered.
“Reporter,” Laurie said, and shrugged.
“Quite. Well, I suppose. Go ahead.”
Laurie swallowed. If Chary Wright was truly willing to kill to save his secrets, he’d find out very soon. “Did you know your brother was in love with the heir to Brooklyn Glass—and planning a merger with him? Did you kill him for it?”
Chary dropped the gun.
“Jesus!” Laurie flinched back, threw up his arms up, little though they would do—he maybe deserved it if he got shot, revealing something like that to a man holding a gun on him, but that didn’t mean he wanted it—
The pistol skittered across the floor, un-discharged, landing just before Laurie’s feet. He breathed for a moment, then stepped on it, pushed it behind him with the toe of his oxford.
“Fucking hell, man. You’ve got to be more careful!”
They were both breathing hard.
“You are Scots,” Chary whispered. “That was the truth?”
“When? I’m American. Damn me for it.” He shook his fingers; they tingled.
“The wagon. The barrens…”
“Yes! I remember sayin’ so. Scotch-Irish, out of the Catskills. I was tellin’ you true.” Laurie crouched, not taking his eyes off the maniac before him, and groped behind him for the gun.
Chary had gone white. “Don’t,” he breathed.
“Criminy! Calm down.” Laurie unloaded fast, smelling metal, gun grease, copper, but the bullets that fell into his palm were suspiciously light, small, crimped on the end. No lead.
“Holy Jesus,” he cursed. “Blanks? An’ you said I have a death wish?”
He went to the solitary window—thank god for tenement regulations. He threw the blanks in opposite directions into the courtyard, as hard as he could. “Although at point-blank range, I guess it’s moot. Shit, I hate guns. For God’s sake.”
Chary stared, which told Laurie his vowels had probably gone long. He laughed weakly. “You sound like my great-grand-mam.”
Laurie grunted. Adrenaline was draining from him slowly, leaving his knees to ache where they’d trembled. At least he hadn’t pissed himself.
He paused. “Wright’s a Scotch name, isn’t it.”
Chary nodded. “Third generation.”
There was an awkward silence.
“I wouldn’t have sh-shot you,” Chary whispered. “And I didn’t kill my brother.”
“Jesus. Then don’t be so convincing about it; you almost did. You almost shot yourself,” Laurie added, thinking about it.
“You—you said— A man will say anything under a gun, or so I’ve heard.” Chary took a deep breath. “But yes, I knew he was with Mr. Raberding. I didn’t kill him for it. For god’s sake. What a hypocrite I’d be.”
“But not the merger? You sure about that? What else did you know? Did you know he was a thief?”
Chary made a noise, hastily swallowed.
“Did he steal from you, Chary? Take something of yours or from Wright Glass?”
Chary turned even paler. Closer, closer. Laurie pressed on. “Did you know he took it straight to Tjofabier Raberding? Or let’s see. Did you know that he was conspiring with your direct competitor to innovate the business without you? Are you sure about all of that?”
Chary stepped forward, fists clenched, shoulders tight, extending every inch of his wax-bean height. What, Laurie thought, was the likelihood of the man concealing another pistol? Small? Middling?
“About which bit am I sure, exactly? Are you saying I have reason to have— You cannot honestly be accusing me of anyone’s murder. Are you a reporter or the police? August’s dead, but I didn’t kill him or anybody else. His death was accidental. You know all of this. I have said it thrice.”
“Oh, that makes it true,” Laurie mocked.
“The whole of Manhattan knows it. His death ran in every paper! It was well publicized!” Chary backed to sit on the bed, his long legs falling to either side as the mattress sank.
“I think you are being needlessly mean. No, in fact, I didn’t know any of that.
I didn’t know men had died. I did not know August was planning to merge with Raberding.
That they had plans of that kind. But if that would’ve saved him, I’d have welcomed it.
He could’ve had the whole thing if it could’ve prevented what happened. ” He put his head in his hands.
This was heartfelt, and Laurie, for some reason, believed it. For his part, he felt something almost like regret.
“I’m sorry for your brother. I am.”
“Are you? My lord.” Chary gave a teary, rueful laugh. “I don’t know how you’re still alive. Honestly. Is this how you interview? Manhandling and threats? Bravado under gunpoint? Shocking revelation?”
Laurie sat himself back on the vanity chair. It was not built for comfort. “No. I’m an investigative reporter—undercover most of the time. Usually, I get cozy, one way or another, and folks just talk.”
Chary had blinked at cozy. “Undercover? Are you one of those hired detectives—for the committees against vice?”
“Again,” Laurie said, offended, “none of that. Suspicious deaths aren’t my usual. I’m not a detective.” Evil, blackmailing bastards. “Just a reporter. Anyway, nobody’s gonna come swinging at you for vices.”
“I keep telling you.”
They watched each other warily.
“So, you must be from the rags,” Chary said. “The World? Or the Police Gazette?”
“God, imagine writing for Pulitzer. No. Not for the rags, the Gazette, the government, or any societies of fourteen.” Chary demanded the truth, and so he’d get it. “I’m a down-and-outer. A muckraker. I write for the Appeal.”
“The appeal… The Rational Appeal?” Chary paused. “You’re a socialist?”
Fascinating. Folks usually said that word with varying degrees of doubt or contempt. Chary’s question had nothing like that, only curiosity.
“Yessir. One can’t very well be an anarchist, can they?”
Chary laughed. “No. Goodness. And I was lecturing you on union exclusionism.”
“I mean, socialists ain’t a perfect monolith. Plenty of racialists among the ranks. Particularly the cartoonists.” Also bastards.
“Hang on. The Appeal!”
Laurie smiled. If a man could say socialist so neutrally and also name the Appeal off the bat…
“Lawrence Tulley,” Chary said, and that was certainly not doubt or contempt in his voice, no, sir. It was pretty darn near awe. “You’re him?”
“Got ’er,” Laurie said, pleased. “Not the worst reporter in New York, I hope?”
“No. Your writing is quite—” Chary swayed where he sat and propped himself on a crutch of an arm. “You said… a hell of a story.” He gulped. “Your editor—Sam Sullivan would cry. You haven’t given it to him?”
“I haven’t. You think he’d wait on this?”
“No. Well.” Chary paused. “He doesn’t seem particularly patient.”
Laurie chuckled. “You do get to feeling like you know a man, reading his words.”
“I daresay. But it’s not a breaking-news sort of paper, is it? So you’ll make my life into a serial drama? Those murders included? Or August’s life—and his death? Oh. And in March…”
“Yes. You were interesting then, too.” According to Sam.
“But not interesting enough? You changed your mind about me?”
“I did. At the time.”
“I didn’t suit the criteria?”
Laurie held out his hands. “I don’t do hit pieces. Much less on queers.”
“What on earth would Sam Sullivan want with me? I swear I’m not going to union meetings. You have the wrong man.”
“That, I haven’t figured out yet. Doubt he knew about the blowers. You aren’t running a front op with the blueberry farm, are you?”
“A what?” Chary laughed. “A front operation? For what business? No. Well, not that I’m aware of. Unless you have more revelations for me.”
Laurie bit his lip. Chary didn’t seem to see it; he looked glazed and thoughtful.
“Lawrence Tulley. You said you were an itinerant worker. I suppose that was somewhat true, then.”
Laurie nodded.
“And I asked if you wanted to… Ooh. You get cozy. You would have gone with me then, in the barrens. If you hadn’t changed your mind midway.”
“Yeah.”
“You were convincing. I’d have given you everything you needed.”
“Sometimes, all it takes is a way in. A connection. Trust. A kind of faith.”
“Misplaced!” Chary proclaimed. “Is that your usual modus operandi?”