“I told you I would find you.” Jonathan said easily.
Merinda had several choice things to say. Had practiced them.* But as Benny made the introduction, Merinda merely looked around and tapped her foot and rapped her stick and kept from meeting the man’s eyes.
“Well,” Jonathan said with a smile, turning into a stranger the moment they entered the warehouse and treating Benny as he would a stranger, “I’m here to show you the ropes. Ross said you were invaluable in unloading our equipment last night, and now we can show you what to do with it.”
Ross appeared then. Fashioning a broad smile for Merinda.
A curtain of rotting garbage mixed with the syrupy slats of crates forced Merinda’s handkerchief to her nostrils.
Benny sniffed a few times and was clearly as uncomfortable as Merinda, but he didn’t sway.
“Down to the wire!” Ross bellowed. “We’re near our day, and Jonathan is the most adept at explosives.”
Jonathan instructed them on tying knots and flicking a match to kiss the end of a string. Every explosive was carefully and gingerly constructed with the best powder and dynamite.
“But how will we get the explosives on the streetcars without detection?” Merinda asked.
“Streetcars?” Jonathan raised an eyebrow at Ross.
“Never you worry.” Ross covered quickly. “Everything will become crystal clear on the second day of the convention.”
“Why now?” Merinda asked as Benny and Jonathan worked carefully with a mess of wires. “Why Roosevelt? This fellow and President Taft just held conventions not two months ago. Of course, Roosevelt lost, but you had twice as many people at your disposal. Why this convention?”
“There’s nothing more dangerous than a new idea.” David smiled. “It gets people to hope. It makes them complacent. This Roosevelt calls his party progressive. He is trying again. He was knocked down. His support dwindled, but he picked himself up. People love a story like that. But we know the truth. There is nothing progressive in leadership. There is only disdain in leadership. The rich will get fatter. Roosevelt promises equality, but he can never truly know what it means because he has everything at his disposal—money, power.”
“So all of those streetcar explosions? Was it just to lead to more trolley explosions?”
“It was to lead to this moment. I don’t want to be remembered as the man who set off a few trolley explosives. But I needed the backup and support to rally people to this great cause. Building blocks. They were building blocks. We are almost there! All of America will be watching!”
Ross reached into his pocket and extracted a small volume. The book jacket had almost all fallen away and the broken spine had been glued together. “This is my bible.” He held it out to her. “This. Marx. Engels. Men who couldn’t make change happen in my own country.”
Merinda fingered the red leather of the battered tome. “You mean to make what they stand for ripple through America?”
“I saw poverty and injustice enough to last a lifetime. Then I found this land of promise. But it was all a fairy tale. There is no promise. There is no hope.”
Merinda said. “It won’t change as you want it to.”
“Your city has the right to arrest you for walking. You have the opportunity to do something larger than yourself. You do it daily by standing up to that Morality Squad. By proving you have so much to offer. I have read this paper. This Hogtown Herald. You are a symbol of hope.”
Merinda’s tolerance for hyperbole was dwindling. “Then let’s stop with the platitudes and get to the plan.”
Ross unfolded a large map of the Coliseum’s interior. He had memorized its circumference during the June convention, or so he explained. “I’ve bribed two security guards here and here… ” He stabbed the map with his finger.
“Why would you bribe guards at the Coliseum if you mean to blow up a trolley car outside?”
“Trolley car?” he asked.
“Certainly. In Toronto you set a series of trolley cars ablaze, ushering in Goldman’s appearance. I assumed.”
Ross laughed. “Oh, Miss Herringford. You are so naive. We are not blowing up a trolley car. We are blowing up the Coliseum and killing the leader.”
* * *
*Many of these choice things had less to do with the man’s explosive talents and more to do with the worry so telling on his cousin’s face at distracted moments.
CHAPTER SEVENTEEN
As it comes to one’s paycheck, our grandfather always said, “Give some to Regina, give some to yourself, give some to the Lord, give the rest to your mother.”
Benfield Citrone and Jonathan Arnasson, Guide to the Canadian Wilderness