“And that is why you stick to the plan,” I said.
I was beginning to think I’d made a poor choice in hiring her. Besides, her failure reflected on me and my ability to direct female operatives. I could only imagine what Pinkerton would say. It didn’t take me long to find out.
The next morning, he addressed the matter immediately.
“Warne,” said Pinkerton. “What shall we do about Hattie?”
“We? Hattie is my responsibility. You made that clear.”
“And yet. If you can’t handle her…”
“I can handle her,” I said, unsuccessfully trying to keep my voice from hissing. “Boss, I will handle her.”
“I can step in if you need me to. You two seem to clash.”
“I’ve clashed with plenty of operatives before,” I admitted, “but that’s all turned out all right. This will too.”
“You’re sure?”
“No,” I said.
“Good. I was going to label it a lie if you’d said yes.”
“Just give me some time,” I said, not at all sure that time would be enough. And I knew not only Hattie’s future hung in the balance.
Chapter Sixteen
The Second Chance
An hour and a half past the appointed meeting time, when my hands had gone numb from cold, I finally had to admit something had gone wrong.
The plan had been to meet Hattie and Mortenson on the LaSalle Street Bridge at five o’clock. In case they were being watched, they would stroll across the bridge while I waited at the top of the span, a large open bag hanging over one arm. It was a cold day but neither freezing nor snowing, so a woman lingering in the open air wouldn’t be immediately conspicuous. Mortenson would slip the bills into my bag and continue strolling with Hattie, and all would be well. But by six thirty, with no sign of either operative, I couldn’t deny the leaden weight of dread in my stomach.
This time, I had told Hattie in no uncertain terms what would happen if she deviated from the plan. This was her second and final chance.
The counterfeiters were expecting a woman and a man to appear at a tavern off Haddock Place at three o’clock in the afternoon. The man, Mortenson, was there as a purportedly disgruntled former Mint employee who would fix errors in counterfeited bills for a price. Hattie was to serve as a distraction, so that Mortenson could swap out their prototype counterfeit bills and bring them away as evidence. If all went well, we’d have two witnesses and the bills—and an airtight case.
The sun was down, and the cool afternoon was turning into cold night. Clearly, not all had gone well. I hated to do it, but I abandoned my post and hot-footed it back to the office. Even knowing something had gone wrong, I was completely unprepared for what I found there.
An unmoving Jack Mortenson lay sprawled across the top of Pinkerton’s broad oaken desk, half his right pant leg red with blood. I sucked in my breath. The blood had also spread across the desk blotter and soaked several makeshift bandages, now piled on the floor below him in a small heap. A knot of half a dozen operatives stood near him, gesturing and arguing, in total disarray.
The first to catch my eye was Bellamy. He looked at me grimly and said, “Shot.”
“Shot? Is he—”
“I’m alive,” Mortenson said in a thin, thready voice. If possible, he was even whiter than he’d been before, pale as paper.
Then I noticed Hattie, standing alone, her dress wet with blood all down one side of the skirt. I went to her, relieved. As far as I could tell, none of the blood was hers.
“Hattie! Are you all right?”
“Yes,” Mortenson answered for her through gritted teeth. “I rescued her.”
“Rescued her? From what? From whom?”
“He—he touched her.”
My relief vanished, and anger surged up in its place. I could hear the other agents arguing about what to do: Who had the steadiest hands? Who had a desk flask to sacrifice? No one was asking the right questions.
I shouted at Mortenson. “Who did? What? This whole operation went south on a touch?”
Hattie, her voice unsteady, whispered, “Everything happened so fast.”
“Of course it did! That’s how real things happen!”
She stammered, unable to get the words out. I resisted the urge to shake them free.
Mortenson said, barely loudly enough to hear over the din, “You weren’t there.”
I drew near to him and immediately realized two things: he was on the verge of losing consciousness, and his breath stank of whiskey.
Taylor was the only one directly attending to him, pressing more clean cotton into the wound. Of the people in the room, he seemed the most likely to answer my next question. “Did you give him whiskey for the pain? Or did he smell like this when he came in?”
Taylor looked up at me and shook his head. I knew what he meant by it.
“Mortenson!” I resisted the urge to slap him on the cheek to revive him. “How much?”
Even in his depleted state, he turned a glare on me that could have burned a hole in a brick. “Had to keep up.”
“Not if it meant turning yourself into an idiot. I can’t understand why you’d behave like a—” I stopped short. He was staring past me, toward Hattie, the fingers of one unsteady hand reaching in her direction, though he was too weak to lift it from the desk.
Hattie seemed not to see it, outwardly oblivious to the chaos in the room, to everything. She wrung her bloody hands in the folds of her stained skirt.
Conditions were hardly right for an interrogation, but I had no choice. We were Pinkertons after all. We did not take action without facts.
“Make your case,” I said to Hattie. “I’m not inclined to give a third chance.”
Her voice caught in her throat, but she said, “I did everything you said. I let him take the lead. I didn’t ask him to—”
Mortenson growled, “Leave her alone.”
“You shut up,” I said, my voice rising to break through the noise. “Simpleton. Fool.”