“You recognized Charlie, though.”
“By his voice more than anything. He was much younger than I had ever seen him in life. In my childhood, you know, he was always an old man.”
“Did you get any kind of look at him in that awful fog?”
“Just for a few seconds…less than that. But enough to know him, I guess.”
“What did he do?”
“He smiled at me and nodded.”
“You must’ve seen him very clearly, then, at least in that split instant.”
“No, I
“Isn’t that the same thing?”
“Yes,” said Josephine, obviously pleased. “He was
“I can imagine. Then what?”
“He said something to Burton.”
“Ah. So one of the others was—”
“Richard. Charlie only called him Richard, but of course it was Burton. In a while I could see him, too. A fierce- looking man with mustaches and those awful scars.”
“What did they say to each other?”
“I don’t know. I couldn’t hear.”
But almost at once she said, “They were discussing what to do about the third man. It was fairly severe. Then they all moved back in the fog and that’s all I saw.”
“And you never did see the third man?”
“No.”
“You know nothing about him?”
“I didn’t say that. I know his name.”
“How did you learn that?”
“Richard pushed him away and called him by name.”
Again the tape seemed to finish there. It must have been two minutes later when Koko said, “What was his name, Jo? What did Richard call him?”
“Archer,” Josephine said at once.
I heard her take a deep, shivery breath. “His name was Archer.”
CHAPTER 22
I slept nine hours and change, till Koko came pounding on the door at a quarter to ten. I rolled out of bed, sore all over, but I felt rested. My double vision had cleared, I was still alive. I took half a dozen Advils and a shower, and emerged for inspection at ten-thirty.
“You need some dark glasses,” Koko said at breakfast. “That shiner you’re growing matches my own. Together we look like Bonnie and Clyde.”
Her first order of business was to find a department store and get some clothes. “Kerrison’s looks like a good bet. This afternoon I’ll get started in the library.”
“Do you have any idea what you’re looking for?”
“Any document that shows Charlie was here and they did what he said. This is a very old library: it was old even then. They have newspapers from the seventeen hundreds. It’s a private library but I can use it for a small fee.”
“I can’t imagine what you think you’ll find there. The press didn’t exactly cover their arrival or departure.”
“You never know. Sometimes the press then did take note when someone visited from abroad. Maybe just a paragraph, or a line somewhere.”
“I wouldn’t count on it.”
“I’ll try to pin down other things. Whether there was a photographer named Barney Stuyvessant on East Bay in May of 1860. That picture he took of Burton and Charlie is lost now, but just getting a definite yes or no on the photographer would be helpful.”
My own day had begun organizing itself late last night as I lis-tened to the Josephine tape. Like a bad penny, Archer just kept turning up.
“I wondered who he was when we made that tape,” Koko said. “Jo had no idea.”
“So she said. No offense, Koko, but you swallowed that story of hers pretty easily.”
She did take offense. “Why shouldn’t I believe her? I had never heard of Archer then.”
