Grandpa Henry had gone to the Kirkwood House, where Vice President Johnson and Atzerodt were both staying. His grandfather knew “Port Tobacco” well enough to promise he could get him talking, get him drinking…and that then it would be a simple matter of dissuading him from his role.
That left Walker with the biggest task of them all. Hez should have done it. He knew that as he hurried down the street with all the rich white folk and felt their stares upon him. Hez could have gone into the theater and made sure the president stayed safe. Walker, on the other hand…
But they had decided to obey their own rules and stay undetected. So Hez went to the family who wouldn’t ask questions he couldn’t answer. And Walker went to find one of Pinkerton’s men.
Herschel wasn’t back. The other doors he had knocked on had either slammed in his face when he mentioned Osborne or waved him away as a fool. So much time wasted. What choice did he have now but to try to get into the theater himself?
Ford’s was just ahead. Cabbies waited outside, drivers hunching into their blankets and horses’ ears twitching. He hurried along, trying his best to look like just another servant out on a mission from his master, no one to pay any heed to.
He nearly collided with a sot staggering out of a tavern. Yellow light and tinny music spilled out with him, and Walker hissed out a breath when he saw his face. “Mr. Kaplan?”
The detective leaned against the tavern’s filthy brick wall. “Shine my shoes, boy?”
He shook that away. “Mr. Kaplan, thank the Lord. There’s a man planning on shooting the president in just a few minutes. You can stop him.”
Kaplan straightened and spat. “Not much to be thankin’ God for these days, is there, boy? War might be over, but it killed all the good ones. Nothin’ left but the sick and the weak and cowards. God musta turned His face away from us long ago.”
Sometimes it sure seemed that way. But then, you couldn’t see if God had turned His head when you’d already turned yours. “He’s still there. Still waiting for us to do the right thing. Will you help me, Mr. Kaplan?”
“Help you?” Kaplan hiccupped and waved a hand toward the theater. “Do I look ready to work to you? Someone else is on guard duty tonight. Let him stop him if there’s even a him to stop. It’s…it’s…” He squinted and then loosed a low, ugly laugh. “It’s Parker, that’s who. He’s watching Lincoln. Assuming he isn’t drunk or asleep on the job like he was last week. And last month. And—”
“Thunder and turf!” Walker sidestepped the drunk and darted across the street to the theater.
A black man stepped forward in the uniform of a doorman, his hand up. “Whoa, there. Where do you think you’re going, son?”
Walker knew he would stop him, but maybe, just maybe he could get around him. “Please, you have to let me in. I got an important message.”
The older man shook his head, though sympathy lit his eyes. “You know I can’t let you in this door, not the one the white folks use. You gotta go round the back.”
“You don’t understand.” He stepped closer, praying the man would relent. Would look the other way. “It’s urgent. Life-and-death kind of urgent.”
“I’m sorry.” The doorman shook his head again. “If I let you in, it’s real trouble for me. You gotta go round. Right on round there and then through the back entrance. My boy can help get your message to your master.”
Briefly, Walker considered force. But if he tried it, he would get shot or beaten within steps of the door. Folks wouldn’t take too kindly to a black man bursting into a place like that. He nodded and followed the doorman’s outstretched arm.
The theater shared walls with the other buildings on the street, and he had to jog all the way to the corner and around, and then down an alleyway. The moon still shone hazy and dim through the clouds, but it felt darker, as though something had swooped down over the street.
Walker slowed only when he spotted the theater doors, open to the night. Folks loitered around it in the circle of light, smoking and laughing. He pushed through them with an abstract nod of greeting and stepped into an unfamiliar world. Props, curtains, discarded costumes, and rows of what he assumed were backdrops. People were darting this way and that, some with extravagant costumes on, some obviously never to see the stage.
Seeing a boy who had the look of the doorman about him, he stopped him with what he hoped was a casual grin. “Hey there. You know where the president’s box is?”
The boy, probably twelve or so, grinned back. “You want a glimpse of him too? Come on. I’ll show ya the best view.”
He didn’t need the best view; he needed the closest one. But at least it would give him an idea of the layout.
The boy waved him down a dark corridor. “You gotta be real quiet,” he whispered. He paused at a break in the wall and nodded toward the brightly lit stage. “That there’s Miss Keene. Listen—this is the best line of the play.”