Taylor briefly wondered whether to offer the Pinkertons brandy, but thought better of the idea. Still, he felt awkward sipping his own, so he let the snifter sit untouched on the desk. “Keep your voice down, please,” he said.

“Beg pardon, boss.”

“So tell me a story.”

Albert looked at the quiet one, who nodded and fingered his hat, turning it endlessly across his knee.

“It’s a bad story, boss. Raining sticks and stones out there tonight.”

“Go on.”

“There’s a high-yellow rabble-rouser behind it all,” he said.

Taylor nodded. “Manly.”

He shook his head. “Not Manly, boss. Another man. Stranger in town. Preacher fellow, goes by the name of Grant. Ivanhoe Grant.”

“Never heard of him.”

“You will.”

“What about him?”

“Stirring ’em up plenty.”

“They got guns?”

“More than you’d care to know.”

Taylor wondered what could persuade a man to inform on his own people. Surely, there was more to it than money. “Hasn’t your friend got anything to say for himself?”

The Negro in the blue suit stopped twirling his hat and smiled. “I be the quiet type, boss,” he said with a certain pride. He narrowed his eyes. “I walk through walls. I slide down chimbleys. Invisible man, that’s me.” He touched his vest with a delicate finger. “Slip into bed between man and wife and listen to sweet nothings all night long.” He didn’t smile.

“Lester here is a ghost,” Albert Tully explained.

Taylor looked unnerved.

Albert Tully chuckled. “That’s a word we use in the trade for a pure spy. Man can find out things without getting found out. Get inside all the right places—and get out again.”

“Get inside your head,” Lester said.

“Do they have a plan?”

“Wouldn’t call it no plan, perzactly,” Lester said.

“Going to be a surprise,” Albert Tully said. “On Election Day, they’re going to mob the precincts, vote their own men in by hook or crook.”

“We’ve got that covered,” Taylor said, thinking of all the armies at their disposal—the Red Shirts, the Light Infantry, the Naval Reserves, the State Guards. All the good men he could count on to lead them—Donald MacRae, Bill Kenan, Roger Moore, Tom James. “What else?”

“Servants,” Albert Tully went on. “On election night, they will rise up against their masters. Burn their houses to the ground.”

“What? Burn their houses?”

Albert Tully leaned so far forward he was practically sitting on thin air. “They’ve been bragging, boss—every child in Brooklyn has a can of kerosene and knows how to strike a match.”

“My God, I hadn’t realized—”

“It’s the truth, boss,” Albert Tully said, and Lester nodded. “That’s how they’re talking. Burn the sin out of this town. Like some Bible story. Tom Miller, the loan man, he says he’s going to wash his hands in white man’s blood.”

“Tom Miller?” Taylor dipped his pen in the inkwell and started taking notes. “Tell me everything,” he said. “Give me names and places. Especially names.” MacRae would want chapter and verse. Now, there could be no doubt—they must act. With this new intelligence, they would have to strike even harder. Shoot to kill. The lesson would have to be even more thorough.