“In exchange for exclusive insight, you tell me everything you know about Clyde Magruder and anything that makes him vulnerable in the next election.”
“My friend, we have a deal,” Dickie said. “Now lean in close while I tell you about Clyde’s newest addition to the family, an adorable little child named Tommy.”
Luke was pensive as he walked back to the boardinghouse, flipping up the collar of his overcoat to ward off the chill. It was hard to know what to do with the troubling gossip Dickie had passed along.
He already knew about the child Clyde had fathered almost two years ago. The mother had been Sam Magruder’s nanny, and there had been plenty of nasty rumors at the time. Apparently Clyde himself spread the rumor that the nanny had been fired for theft in hope of his wife never discovering the child. It hadn’t worked, and now he was secretly funneling money to support the nanny and her child in their own household.
Luke drew his coat tighter and walked faster, trying to avoid the truth. Marianne adored her father. It was obvious from the way she praised and defended him. It would be difficult to strike at Clyde without hurting her.
There would be time to worry about Clyde and his illegitimate child later. For now, Luke just wanted to get into bed, grab a hot water bottle, and huddle under a mound of warm blankets. It might make his achy body feel better. It was after eleven o’clock by the time he let himself into the boardinghouse.
A pair of oil lamps cast amber illumination in the parlor. Princeton was still awake, lounging on the parlor sofa with his nose in a dime novel. Luke shrugged out of his coat, shook off the snow, and hung it on a hook.
“How are you feeling?” he asked Princeton.
“Lousy. My joints ache.”
“Mine too,” he replied. “Is the book any good?”
Princeton glanced at the cover. “It’s about the adventures of Davy Crockett. I found a whole cache of them in the back room. Want to borrow one? The landlady loans them out for free.”
Luke shook his head. He could squeeze in another hour ofworking on theDon Quixotetranslation. When it was published, maybe he would screw up the courage to send a copy to Marianne. He started trudging up the stairs, his limbs suddenly unbearably heavy.
“Delacroix?” Princeton called out.
He turned around. “Yeah?”
“Hang in there.”
Nine
Marianne brought two entire rolls of film to photograph Luke’s office. She had no idea what she’d find, but she planned to take a few more pictures of him. He photographed well. No matter the angle, the planes of his face seemed to reveal sharp intelligence and engagement with the world around him.
She looked about in curiosity as she stepped off the streetcar at the appointed stop, a neighborhood she’d never been to before. Most journalists worked closer to the Capitol, and this street seemed a lot shabbier. Luke worked in a four-story building of old red brick located between a tanning operation and a cigar factory. A board in the office building’s cramped entryway showed various rooms for a bookkeeper, several insurance companies, and a cabinetmaker. Luke’s nameplate looked brand new, proudly statingModern Century, Washington Bureau.
Well, he should be proud! Maybe it was only a one-man operation now, but she liked that he had the ambition to start something important.
She hurried up the stairs, eager to see him. The building was solidly built, but cracked tiles and faded paint betrayed its age. The rattling of typewriter keys led her to the open doorway of Luke’s office.
He was bent over a typewriter, pecking at the keys withamazing speed. She took a moment simply to admire him. A lock of dark hair spilled across his forehead, and his open collar exposed the strong column of his neck. His face was tight with concentration as his fingers flew over the keys.
“You can type?”
He pulled away from the typewriter and stood, his smile wide. “Welcome toModern Century.” He skirted the typewriter table, banging into a wastebasket in his eagerness to close the space between them. He clasped both her hands in his. The warmth was heaven on her icy fingers, and she let herself savor the fleeting intimacy before pulling away. They shouldn’t be so familiar with each other.
“What a nice office,” she said, admiring the spacious room and the two windows that flooded the area with light.
“I hope to expand soon,” he said. “Government business is too big for one man to cover, so I picked an office with plenty of room to grow. Come, sit.” He tugged a chair out from the conference table for her.
“I shouldn’t. I just came to take a few photographs.” Though she desperately wanted to know if he’d recovered from his queasiness in the jail, it was time to start stepping away from this magnetic attraction that flared to life every time they were within sight of each other. She set the camera case on the table and began unbuckling the straps. “Give me a tour so I can photograph the important things. I’ve already seen that you type your own stories. Very impressive, by the way. What else should I know?”
He nodded to the bookshelves beneath the windows. “These reference manuals cover all the committees in Congress,” he said. “Did you know Congress publishes a list of all the bills moving through the legislative process? It’s a literal blizzard of paperwork, and only a fraction of the proposals survive the winnowing process, but that’s what I’m tracking in each of these binders.”
He opened one so she could see. The form inside was about compensation for the government inspection of railways. She turned the page, and then another. Altogether there were five pages on that single topic. “You actually read all this?”
He sat on the table and propped his feet on a chair, looking ridiculously comfortable in his one-man office. “I have to. It’s the only way to track what’s going on in Congress.”
It was hard to imagine a dynamo like Luke paging through these mind-numbing binders. She wandered the perimeter of the office, noting the schedule of upcoming congressional votes tacked to a bulletin board.
