“Think something will shake loose here?”
“I don’t know.” He took his hat and ran a finger along the brim. Then he said, “Thanks, by the way.”
“For what?”
“For identifying my John Doe. For finding him and his boy. I appreciate that.”
“All part of the fun.”
Garvey stood and made to leave, then he stopped and looked back at Hayes from the edge of the curtain, eyes hooded and wounded all at once.
“What?” said Hayes.
“You know, if you stopped chasing the dragon for a while you’d do a better job,” he said.
“Fuck you,” said Hayes. He turned his face away.
“You would, you know.”
“If I didn’t take my medicine I wouldn’t be able to work. My head would burn up.”
Garvey nodded, thinking. Then said, “No. It’s not that.”
“Fuck you. What do you know?”
“I know that you were going to the dens long before you ever had an attack,” said Garvey. “So it must just mean you don’t care about the work that much.”
Then he walked away and left Hayes to sit in his bed. It may have been his ears but the sound seemed to die away until everything was silent.
CHAPTER NINETEEN
At the end of the afternoon Samantha finished compiling everything she had on Skiller, having turned the man’s story into a hard, stable little pile of sanity in the center of her cluttered office. It had taken less time than she’d originally imagined, yet she’d been somewhat disappointed by how unremarkable his life was. After all this time of Garvey thinking of Skiller as his sad little Grail she had expected his story to be more dramatic, more meaningful. But she found he was just a man after all, his least important moments laid down in the McNaughton records like everyone else’s.
John Neil Skiller, born 1882 in Lincoln, Nebraska. Hired by McNaughton in 1902, one of the very first members of the Air Vessel Foundry, back when the alloys were still experimental and no one was entirely sure how they’d behave when cooled. No supervisor complaints or acclamations for him, nothing more than “adequate.” Sometimes if the supervisor was feeling particularly generous he was also “punctual.” He seemed to be a quiet man, always in the background, yet never catching any attention. Rarely commended, never promoted. Just had his wages cut down year after year, dollars shaved off bit by bit. Suddenly she thought of Garvey, sitting beside him in the dark morgue of the Department, and she could think of no one better to shepherd the man’s memory to justice.
She picked up the file and went down to the front to hail a cab. She was interrupted by one of the company limousine drivers, who waved her down and told her a gentleman was waiting for her. She approached the limousine cautiously. Then her heart sank when she saw Evans seated in the back of the limousine, knees together and hands quaintly in his lap. He smiled wide when he saw her and said, “Miss Fairbanks! Please, come closer and let me get a look at you.”
“Good day, sir,” she said. “Are you doing well?”
“Oh, well enough. It’s very good to see you up and about. Are you hurt? Or ill?”
“No, Mr. Evans, I’m fine.”
“That’s good to hear. Excellent to hear, really, it is. Would you care to take a ride with me today?”
Samantha hesitated, then said, “Certainly, sir.”
Evans leaned to the left to speak to the driver as she climbed in. “Cheery and Fifth, Willie?”
“Yes, sir,” said the driver, and shut the partition. The car spun up and soon they eased off down the street.
“I was aghast to hear what happened to you, Miss Fairbanks,” Evans told her once they began moving. “Just stunned. It’s hard to believe such things happen in this city. It really is, isn’t it?”
She nodded.
“That strange apparition. You saw it?” he asked.
“Yes. I suppose I did. Though I’m not sure what I saw.”
“Certainly, certainly. Have you… adjusted, though?”
She attempted a smile. “I’m alive and working. It’s easier not to think.”
“I suppose I can understand that. And how is Mr. Hayes?”
“I’m not sure. When I left him in the hospital he was alive and well but still asleep. Have you seen him?”
Evans shook his head. “Mr. Hayes’s health is being taken note of. Just not by me, personally. I was somewhat surprised, however, to find your investigation had taken you out into the city,” he said. He frowned a little. “Especially so far as the Porter neighborhoods. Unless I’m mistaken, I believe at the time you were supposed to be speaking to Mr. Ryan? Of the Vulcanization Plant?”
“Yes… yes, well, Mr. Hayes had discovered that there was another link between McNaughton and the Bridgedale. A previous homicide being investigated by one of the detectives working the murders.”
“Detective Garvey, I presume.”
“Yes,” she said, uneasy. “I know you said you wanted to keep this in-house, sir, and away from the police investigation, but-”
“That I did.”
“Yes, but when something that concrete comes along you have to check it. Our orders were to check everything, if I recall. And Detective Garvey is an honorable officer.”
Evans laughed. “My dear, I hadn’t planned on going so far as to suggest Mr. Garvey was a danger to anything.”
“Oh. You hadn’t?”
“No. On the contrary, Mr. Garvey is one of the most trustworthy men I’ve ever met. No, no, what I’m worried about is you.” He took off his glasses and began polishing them on his tie, watching her sadly.
“Me, sir?”
“Yes. Miss Fairbanks, you know we brought you here to, well, to stabilize Mr. Hayes’s investigations. To bring them to heel. What you did the other day damaged your reputation with your superiors. With my superiors. Those above even Brightly. They no longer know if they can trust you, you see. And that worries me. You are a promising young lady. It would be terrible if your career were to become irreparably damaged after coming so far. And we need you.”
He put his glasses back on and stared out the window as the building faces slipped by. “Our company has accomplished very great things in its time,” he said. “Very great. But the greatest things are still to come. They are still being made. I can personally attest to that, and I know only of a handful of them. And all of them, all of them are being made right here, here in this city. And yet here is where we find the most opposition. In our home. Where we have brought wealth and industry. These are grave times for us, my dear. We are building the frame around which the future will be constructed, and yet here at the height of our powers everything threatens to collapse. But I still believe we can do good. I do. Do you believe this?”
Samantha hesitated.
“Go on, my dear,” he said. “You can be frank. I may be a sentimentalist, but I’m no fanatic or idealist, or anything so distasteful.”
“I don’t know,” she said finally. “I don’t know anymore. When I first heard of where I was being sent I was overjoyed. But now that I’m here and I’ve seen these places… I don’t know. It’s not what I thought it would be.”
He nodded, his face tired. “I know. I felt the same way.”
“You did?”
“Why, yes. No reasonable person could feel different. But I find it difficult to think of another way this city could have been built, another way we could have made what we made. It’s said by men far smarter than I that the most efficient way to organize progress is through business, to harness our own desires, and… and, well. I don’t
