“We do the job someone must, Chief Kurtz,” Detective Henshaw noted, “when nobody else will act.”

Mayor Lincoln exhaled, and his whole face deflated. Although the mayor didn’t exactly resemble his second cousin the late President Lincoln, he carried the same skeletal look of indefatigable frailness. “I want to retire after another term, John,” the mayor said softly. “And I want to know that my city will look back at me with honor. We need to string up this killer now or all hell will break loose, can’t you see that? Between the war and the assassination, goodness knows the papers have lived off the taste of blood for four years, and I swear they’re thirstier than ever. Healey was in my college class, Chief. I do believe I am half expected to go into the streets and find this madman myself or, if not, to be hanged in the Boston Common! I beg you, let the detectives solve this and leave the Negro out of this business. We can’t suffer another embarrassment.”

“I beg your pardon, Mayor.” Kurtz sat up straighter in his chair. “What does Patrolman Rey have to do with all this?”

“The near riot at your show-up for Justice Healey.” Alderman Fitch was pleased to elaborate. “That beggar who threw himself out your precinct window. Stop me when this sounds familiar, Chief.”

“Rey had nothing to do with that,” Kurtz said, balking.

Lincoln shook his head sympathetically. “The aldermen have commissioned an investigation to look into his role. We have received complaints from several police officers that it was your driver’s presence that provoked the commotion to begin with. We have been told the mulatto had custody of the beggar when it happened, Chief, and some think, well, speculate, he might have forced him out the window. Probably accidentally…”

“Blasted lies!” Kurtz reddened. “He was trying to calm things down, as we all were! That leaper was just some maniac! The detectives are trying to stop our investigation so they can get to your rewards! Henshaw, what do you know of this?”

“I know that Negro can’t save Boston from what’s at hand, Chief.”

“Perhaps when the governor hears that his prize appointment has disrupted the entire police department, he shall do what’s right and reconsider its wisdom,” the alderman said.

“Patrolman Rey is one of the finest policemen I have ever known.”

“Which brings up another matter while we’re here. We have also been made to understand that you are seen all over the city with him, Chief.” The mayor extended his frown. “Including the site of Talbot’s death. Not just as your driver but as an equal partner in your activities.”

“It’s a certified miracle that darky doesn’t have a lynch mob follow him with paving stones every time he walks out on the street!” Alderman Fitch laughed.

“We put in place every restriction on Nick Rey that the aldermanic council suggested and… I can’t see how his position has anything to do with this!”

“We have a crime of terror upon us,” Mayor Lincoln said, aiming a stern finger at Kurtz. “And the police department is falling apart—that’s why it has to do with it. I shan’t allow Nicholas Rey to remain involved in this matter in any capacity. One more mistake and he shall face his discharge. Some state senators came to me today, John. They’re appointing another committee to propose abolishing all city police departments statewide and replacing them with a state-run metropolitan police force if we can’t finish this. They’re dead set. I shan’t see that happen under my watch—understand that! I won’t see my city’s police department pulled apart.”

Alderman Jonas Fitch could see that Kurtz was too stunned to speak. The alderman leaned in and leveled his stare. “If you had enforced our temperance and anti-vice laws, Chief Kurtz, perhaps the thieves and scoundrels would have all fled to New York City by now!”

In the early morning, the offices of Ticknor & Fields pulsed with anonymous shop boys—some just barely boys and others with gray heads—as well as with junior clerks. Dr. Holmes was the first member of the Dante Club to arrive. Pacing the hall to whittle away his earliness, Holmes decided to sit in J. T. Fields’s private office.

“Oh sorry, my good sir,” he said as he detected someone in there, and began to close the door.

An angular, shadowed face was turned toward the window. It took Holmes a second to make him out.

“Why, my dear Emerson!” Holmes smiled widely.

Ralph Waldo Emerson, his profile aquiline and his body long in blue cloak and black shawls, broke from his reverie and greeted Holmes. It was a rarity to find Emerson, poet and lecturer, away from Concord, a small village that had for a time rivaled Boston in its collection of literary talents, especially after Harvard had banned him from speaking on campus for declaring the Unitarian Church dead during a divinity-school address. Emerson was the only writer in America who approached the renown of Longfellow, and even Holmes, a man at the center of all literary doings, was tickled when he was in the author’s company. “I’ve just returned from my annual Lyceum Express, arranged by our Maecenas of modern poets.” Emerson raised a hand over Fields’s desk as though giving a blessing, a vestigial gesture from his days as a reverend. “The guardian and protector of us all. I’ve just some papers to leave for him.”

“Well, it is about time you should come back to Boston. We have missed you at the Saturday Club. An indignation meeting was nearly convened to call for your company!” Holmes said.

“Thankfully, I shall never be so well liked.” Emerson smiled. “You know, we never make time to write to gods or friends, only to attorneys, who wish to collect debt, and the man who will slate our house.” Emerson then asked after Holmes.

He answered with long, winding anecdotes. “And I have been thinking of writing another novel.” He made his task prospective, because he was intimidated by the force and swiftness of Emerson’s opinions, which often made everyone else’s seem all wrong.

“Oh I wish you would, dear Holmes,” Emerson said sincerely. “Your voice cannot fail to please. And tell me about the dashing captain. Still a lawyer-to-be?”

Holmes laughed nervously at the mention of Junior, as if the subject of his son were inherently comical; this was not quite true, as Junior lacked any sense of humor altogether. “I tried my hand at the law once but found it was much like eating sawdust without butter. Junior wrote good verses, too—not as good as mine, but good verses. Now that he lives at home again, he is like a white Othello, sitting in our library rocker impressing the young lady Desdemonas about him with stories of his wounds. Sometimes, though, I believe he despises me. Do you ever feel this from your boy, Emerson?”

Emerson paused for a solid few seconds. “There is no peace for the sons of men, Holmes.”

Watching Emerson’s facial gestures while he spoke was like watching a grown man cross a brook on stepping-stones, and the cautious selfishness in this image distracted Holmes from his anxieties. He wanted the conversation to keep going but knew that meetings with Emerson could end without much warning.

“My dear Waldo, might I ask you a question?” Holmes really wanted to ask advice, but Emerson never gave any. “What did you think of us, Fields and Lowell and I, I mean, assisting Longfellow with his translation of Dante?”

Emerson raised a frosted eyebrow. “If Socrates were here, Holmes, we could go talk with him out in the streets. But our dear Longfellow, we cannot go and talk with. There is a palace and servants and a row of bottles of different-colored wines and wineglasses and fine coats.” Emerson bent his head in thought. “I think sometimes of the days I read Dante under Professor Ticknor’s direction, as you did, yet I cannot help but feel Dante is a curiosity, like a mastodon—a relic to put in a museum, not in one’s house.”