The Ballad of James McKenna

Day One: Hello, Stranger

Day One
         Hello, Stranger
Word Count: 2495

James McKenna hated newspapers.

Actually, it was newspaper men he hated, who scrambled around like a group of monkeys after every scene, reaching and grasping, scribbling fiercely in their notebooks and asking questions no one wanted answered. They screeched and howled, frenzied little monkeys all fighting for their story, and ruining his crime scene in the process. By the time agents could get there, every newspaper in the area (and, by this point, in the nation) had come sniffing around, taking it in turns to gawk and gag at the latest criminal society had to offer up. So many feet and hands and breaths, all conspiring together to make it impossible to get a reading that was worth a damn. All of them contributing to chaos and to destruction, all for the sake of a good, and usually sensational, story.

Worst of all, he needed the (excuse the ungentlemanly term) damnable bastards to get any sort of news, for what gentleman didn't read a newspaper with his coffee of a morning?

And now, here he was, sitting in the receiving room of New York's newspaper baron, hoping that the cad had a lead on the latest of the Tourist killings; the tenth in a series of horrible murders that so eviscerated the victim, electromagnetic scans had been needed to identify the victim in every instance. It killed him to sit here and wait, struggling to keep his legs properly crossed and his fingers from tapping out his annoyance on the armrest of his wingback, knowing that he needed this man and his information if the investigation were to proceed.

They'd found nothing so far. None of their equipment--and Pinkerton's had the latest in electro-steam and bio-electric technology--had, in any way, helped them to track down the Tourist, so called because he always took a single organ, or souvenir, from the victim's body. Their crime scenes were always disturbed by the time they could get there (usually by newspapermen, but sometimes an unwitting servant girl had touched the body and run screaming) and, worse, no one seemed willing to tell them anything.

It was always like that when Negroes were murdered. As Nate had said, "As long as it's the darkies who keep getting slashed, we're not going to get help from anyone. That's just the way it is, Jimmy." No one called him James, after all, except his old-fashioned mother back in Ohio. To just about everyone, he was Jimmy, though that was as informal as he got. One did have to maintain a proper sense of dignity and decorum, after all, to be a proper gentleman. And none but a proper gentleman could work for Pinkerton.

Next to him, Nate cleared his throat. "Jimmy, you're ruining that brand new hat of yours. Wouldn't want to have to walk back into public with a misshapen hat, would you?" His partner's voice was a drawl, slow and careful, as befitted a true son of Virginia. Nate had come from an old family, the kind of which would have been called aristocratic if they were anywhere but in America, which eschewed such nonsense. If the North had not won the War, he would have inherited a large plantation complete with several hundred Negro slaves. But the North had won and Nate, always a man of sense, if something of a dandy, had joined up with the Republicans and high-tailed it to Chicago, where he'd joined up with Pinkerton's and never looked back. Now, some twelve years later, he provided their partnership with any strong-arming it needed, and often the charm Jimmy so desperately lacked.

Jimmy realized that he had his bowler--purchased at Macy's upon arrival in New York, for a gentleman must always look his best and Jimmy's old artillery hat was looking right pitiful these days--clenched in his fist and sighed. "You are, as always, correct in your assessment. But I do not want to be here, Nate. You know how I feel about these cretins. And he's the worst of them all."

"Yes, well, I don't know about you, dear friend, but I would rather not waste my time canvassing the whole of the Silk Stocking when all of the information to be had will be found right here. None of these wealthy denizens of Manhattan are going to bring down their noses for the likes of a few darkies. And since that seems to be the only thing uniting each of our victims, I'd rather not slog my way through the streets. We can do that after lunch." Nate grinned, his teeth white and perfect, and his golden mustache, so carefully maintained, glimmered in the light of the electric lamps. Horatio Moody had done very well for himself in his chosen career, after all, despite talk that his wealth had dwindled following the advent of the 13th Amendment and the criminalizing of mecha-slave technologies.

Jimmy grimaced, but nodded. He had no facial hair to gleam in the light, finding it too difficult to maintain and far too unruly otherwise. And what hair he did have, which grew in profusion unless checked, was dark and made almost entirely of unruly curls. He'd gotten those from his father, God rest his soul. "I have no doubt it is better to waste our time here than to waste it everywhere else in the Upper East Side, but it still feels...lazy to me. We should be walking until we have callouses on our feet for our victims. They deserve more."

"My friend, they do deserve more, which is why we aren't going to be wasting days interviewing every single white denizen of Manhattan about the deaths of ten Negroes. These are unfair times we live in, and while it has been difficult for even myself to overcome my own bias, I won't allow them to curtail our investigation. I'd rather spend the day in the Tenderloin, or Harlem, interviewing the people who might actually care about these murders, wouldn't you?" Nate's eyes shone sapphire, steady and resolved.

"Yes," Jimmy sighed out, admitting defeat. He toyed with his goggles. They were technically called veracity ascertainment spectacles, but no one in the agency liked that name, so just about everyone called them truth seers. When worn, they allowed the viewer to watch the electromagnetic field of a person. The so-called psychics in London called it an aura, waving their hands about as if it were some sort of mystical force and going on and on about its color as if it meant something. Well, it did, but only in determining the health of an individual; the electromagnetic waves always refracted light at higher frequencies if a person was healthy, and Jimmy had recently read a study by a doctor out of Harvard who was working on a means by which one could diagnose diseases based upon the color of ones electromagnetic field, which was truly fascinating, and...

Oh, yes. Truth Seers. When worn, they allowed the wearer to see if someone they were interviewing was, in fact, telling the truth. As a person spoke, their electromagnetic field wavered. If they were telling the truth, it expanded and, conversely, it contracted if they had engaged in a lie. Every other agent of Pinkerton's carried such goggles, and they were always paired with an agent who wore an audichronicler, which recorded sounds by etching them onto a very small strip of metal. When played back at sufficient speeds, the sounds resolved themselves into whatever had been recorded. Nate wore the device strapped to his right hand, though he used it to put out his cigarettes more often than not. It was a habit that Jimmy disapproved of, but as Nate seemed patently unwilling to change it, he'd long ago learned to deal with it.

There came a laugh from the hall, that sounded as if whoever had emitted it had just heard the funniest thing they'd ever had the privilege to hear. Jimmy closed his eyes--dark as the night sky and just as intriguing--and steeled himself for what was to come, slipping on the goggles as he did so. Next to him, Nate unwound and stood, graceful as always. Jimmy always seemed to come across as an ungainly colt when beside his partner, all legs, arms, and graceless lurching, despite a very concerted effort to carry himself with ease.

Jimmy tried not to let his distaste show as Horatio Moody trundled his way into his own receiving room. The former mayor and mecha-slaver did not appear to have lost any of his fortune since he'd been forced to shut down his operation, especially if girth were any consideration. He had an expansive smile to go with his expansive waistline, and had dressed himself in all the latest fashions from Saville Row. The rich always did want to emulate the fashions from Europe, as if to prove that they were somehow in a different class of people and not to be confused with the average folk. It was only recently--since his defection from the South, apparently--that Nate had stopped being one of those types, and Jimmy was profoundly glad of that. His own jacket was almost threadbare, and most of his salary from Pinkerton's went back to Ohio these days, to care for his mother and sisters.

"Gentlemen, gentlemen, how may I help you? Caesar here," Horatio gestured toward his butler, a Negro whom he clearly kept as an affectation of generosity and philanthropy, "was just telling me that you two fine young men are the Pinkerton boys runnin' the Tourist investigation. Horrible, just horrible all this business of mutilatin' poor Negroes who never done nothin' but try to help themselves. I heard the latest was just a young girl."

Jimmy looked over at Nate, lips pursed. How had he heard that? They'd only just found out themselves, after the lab had scanned her blood. The electromagnetic field around each person was unique, as unique to them as a finger print or as a snowflake was from other snowflakes. No one else had the same field, or returned quite the same results. As such, every one, from the poorest Irish immigrant to the mightiest of the so-called industry men, was scanned at birth and had their electro-field tagged. No one--no one--was left untagged. Not even former slaves, who often had the procedure done well into their adult lives. The blood sample from the latest victim had turned up a young shop girl named Eugenie Baker, a Negress whose white half-brother had employed her and kept her. "Yes," he replied finally. "A young shop girl."

Horatio shook his head as if that were the saddest news he'd heard all day, but his electro-field showed nothing but disinterest. "Well, I suppose you two are here to ask if I have any information. And I'm sorry to say, boys, that you have traveled all the way here for nothing. Aside from pictures of each of the victims and their identities, the boys haven't turned up anything that might be helpful to you. Everything they know, you know, as they've largely been interviewing the same sorts of people. I will instruct them to turn over any such information as they possess, however, should anything of value turn up."

Jimmy struggled not to clench his jaw. Horatio Moody's aura had not tightened much, slick politician that he was, but it had tightened enough for Jimmy to know that every word that had just come out of his mouth was a lie. Typical newspaper man, lying, cheating sumbitches that they were. They made his blood boil. It was moments like this that Jimmy understood why Nate and so many others had turned to boxing as a means of negating stress and anger. If it weren't so damnably improper, he'd consider taking it up himself. Ah, but at least he had his machines, his tinkerings to play with, the precision and the exactitude of their creation serving to calm him in moments of great distress. Would that he had one now...it would make for a handy missile.

Seeing that Jimmy was disinclined to speak, Nate smiled and shook Moody's hand. "Thank you for your time, Mr. Moody, and for your cooperation. We are located at the Occidental in the Bowery, should anything come up. Now, I dare say we shall bid you a good day and leave you to your business."

"Of course, boys, of course. I'm just sorry I couldn't help you more." Lie. "I will be certain to tell you everything the boys find out." Lie. "These murders are horrendous and must be stopped." Lie. Jimmy clenched his fists and stuffed his bowler onto his had perhaps more firmly than he intended to do so, and tightened his jacket about his lean frame. Horatio shook his hand and Jimmy struggled to keep the gesture firm and polite, forcing a small smile to soften his quietly handsome face. Then Caesar was leading them out of the house and Jimmy was removing the goggles.

"Let me guess," Nate said, hailing the cab that was smoking its way up the street. The cabbie stopped and unlocked the cabin door before running to the back of the contraption to shovel more coal into its burner. First Nate and then Jimmy climbed up and shut the door behind them. "He was lying. You looked ready to launch yourself at him, so I was pretty sure."

"Every word was a lie. He doesn't want these murders to stop. He doesn't even care that people are being murdered. It's good press. I wouldn't be surprised if the Tourist murders are keeping him in finery these days, now that the cad can't shove machinery into human beings and sell them for premium prices." Jimmy growled, unable to keep his anger from his face and his twitching muscles. He took a deep breath, trying to gain some sense of control over himself. True gentleman did not act this way, he told himself, chanting that mantra over and over in his head until the anger dissipated and he was once more himself. "But it's no more than what we've gotten from everyone else so far. You were right; we have to go to Harlem. That's the only place we're going to find someone who'll be willing to talk."

Nate nodded. "But first," he said, grin lighting up a face that God had personally put work into, "let's get some lunch while we're somewhere that serves halfway decent food. If I am forced to eat another bowl of our proprietress' fish stew, I think I might turn you in as the Tourist just so I can go back to Chicago for a meal."

Jimmy laughed, his first all day, and shouted for the cabbie to take them someplace with decent food. Nate was right; investigating always went better with food in the stomach. Until, of course, they found another body and it all came spilling out again.