trust him—and these are some fairly suspicious and skeptical children, mind you.”
I thought quickly of Joseph. “On the outside, maybe,” I said. “Inside they’re praying for a real friend.”
“All right,” Sara answered, conceding the point. “And Beecham goes through just the motions required to establish that friendship. As if he knows what they need. These charity people have none of that quality. I tell you, we’re on the wrong track.”
“Sara, be realistic,” I said, getting up and joining her. “What kind of door-to-door organization that deals with large numbers of people takes the time to find out that kind of personal informa—”
And then I froze. Really froze. The simple fact of the matter, I remembered in a numbing rush, was that there was one organization that did take the time to find out just the kind of personal information that Sara was describing. An organization whose headquarters I’d passed every day for the past week without ever making a connection—and an organization whose hundreds of employees were well known for traveling neighborhood rooftops.
“Hell’s bloody bells,” I mumbled.
“What?” Sara asked urgently, seeing that I was onto something. “John, what’ve you got?”
My eyes darted to the right side of the chalkboard, specifically to the names BENJAMIN AND SOFIA ZWEIG. “Of course…,” I whispered. “Eighteen ninety-two might be a little late—but he might have met them in ’90. Or he could’ve gone back during the revisions, the whole thing was so royally botched—”
“John, damn it,
I grabbed Sara’s hand. “What time is it?”
“Nearly six. Why?”
“Someone may still be there—come on!”
I pulled Sara toward the door without further explanation. She continued to bellow questions and protests, but I refuse to answer any of them as we descended to the street in the elevator and then dashed down Broadway to Eighth Street. Wheeling left, I led Sara to Number 135. Pulling at the door to a staircase that led up to the building’s second and third floors, I breathed a sigh of relief on finding that it was still open. I turned back to Sara to find her staring with a smile at a small brass plaque that was screwed to the facade of the building, just next to the doorway:
UNITED STATES BUREAU OF CENSUS
CHARLES H. MURRAY, SUPERINTENDENT
CHAPTER 39
We entered a world of files.
Both of the floors occupied by the Census Bureau were lined with wooden filing cabinets that ran right up to the ceiling and blocked every window. Mobile ladders ran on tracks around the walls of each floor’s four rooms, and a desk sat in the center of every chamber. Harsh electrical lights with metal shades were suspended from the ceilings, throwing their glare onto floors composed of bare wood. It was a place without feeling or personality of any kind—a worthy home, in short, for bare, inhuman statistics.
The first occupied desk that Sara and I found was on the third floor. At it sat a fairly young man who wore a banker’s visor and an inexpensive but particularly well-pressed suit, the jacket of which was slung over his plain, straight-backed chair. Cuff protectors covered the lower portions of the man’s white, starched shirtsleeves, protecting those portions of the garment as the thin, sallow hands protruding from them attacked a folder full of forms.
“Excuse me?” I said, approaching the desk slowly.
The man looked up sourly. “Official hours are over.”
“Of course,” I answered quickly, recognizing an incorrigible bureaucrat when I saw one. “Had this been official business, I would have come at a more appropriate hour.”
The man eyed me up and down, then glanced at Sara. “Well?”
“We’re with the press,” I answered. “The
“Mr. Murray never leaves the office before six-thirty.”
“Ah. Then he’s still here.”
“He may not want to see you,” the young man said. “The members of the press weren’t exactly helpful last time around.”
I considered the statement, then asked, “You mean in 1890?”
“Of course,” the man answered, as if every organization in the world operated on a ten-year schedule. “Even the
“Naturally not,” I said. “Mr. Murray would be—”
“Superintendent Porter, the national chief, actually had to resign in ’93,” the man went on, still glowering at me with an injured, accusing look. “Did you know that?”
“Actually,” I answered, “I’m a police reporter.”
The man removed his cuff protectors. “I only mention it,” he continued, eyes burning at the center of the shadow thrown on his face by the banker’s visor, “to show that the main problems were in Washington, not here. No one in this office had to resign, Mr. Moore.”
“I’m sorry,” I said, forbearance becoming an ever more difficult task, “but we’re in a bit of a hurry, so if you could just point me toward Mr. Murray…”
“I’m Charles Murray,” the man answered flatly.
Sara and I glanced at each other quickly, and then I let out a perhaps impolitic sigh, realizing what we were up against with this fellow. “I see. Well, Mr. Murray, I wonder if you might be able to check your employment records for the name of a man we’ve been trying to find.”
Murray eyed me from under his visor. “Identification?” I handed him some and he leveled it just a few inches from his face, as if he were checking a piece of counterfeit currency. “Hmm,” he noised. “I suppose it’s all right. Can’t be too careful, though. Anyone might come in here and claim to be a newspaperman.” He handed it back to me, and then turned to Sara. “Miss Howard?”
Sara’s face went blank as she scrambled for an answer. “I’m afraid I have no credentials, Mr. Murray. I serve in a secretarial capacity.”
Murray didn’t look entirely satisfied with that, but he nodded once and turned back to me. “Well?”
“The man we’re looking for,” I said, “is called John Beecham.” The name brought no change at all in Murray’s impassive expression. “He’s just over six feet tall, with thinning hair and a bit of a facial tic.”
“A bit of one?” Murray said evenly. “If he’s got a bit of a facial tic, Mr. Moore, I wouldn’t like to see an
Again I had that feeling that had swept into me in Adam Dury’s barn: the coursing, exultant burn that accompanied the twin realizations that we were on the trail and the trail was still warm. I gave Sara a quick glance, noting that her first experience of that feeling was proving as difficult to control as mine had been.
“Then you know Beecham?” I asked, my voice quavering a bit.
Murray nodded once. “Or rather I
Cold disappointment poured over my hot sensation of triumph for an instant. “He doesn’t work for you?”
“He did,” Murray answered. “I dismissed him. Last December.”
Hope surged again. “Ah. And how long had he been here?”
“Is he in some sort of trouble?” Murray asked.
“No, no,” I said quickly, realizing that I hadn’t bothered, in my enthusiasm, to work out a plausible cover story
