Ragtime Cowboys (12 page)

“Tell me more about this Teapot Dome business.”

“Wyoming's just part of it. The Elk Hills oil fields here in California are just as productive. The word is Albert Fall, that old cowboy I told you about, is behind the move to turn government control into private profit. He's the president's secretary of the Interior.”

“I don't know what that is, but it sounds like some varmint's been burrowing where he oughtn't.”

“He pushed Harding into signing an executive order transferring responsibility for the reserves from the navy to the Interior. He didn't pop much sweat pushing; that dope's the worst thing to happen to the Union since Bull Run. Everybody in Washington knows he's got a piece on the side, including Mrs. Harding.”

“How do you know so much about Washington?”

“The superintendent of the Pinkerton branch there is an old partner. We keep in touch. Where the president dips his wick won't affect the price of beans, but too many people know what Fall's about. When it breaks—”

“Does this story have Clanahan in it?”

“Sorry. I told you politics is a hobby. But if there's a dirty dollar floating around this state, you can lay odds Paddy's not far behind it. A thing like this can sweep the Republicans clean out of office. I think our native son's got a bad case of claustrophobia.”

“He wouldn't be the first cow got too big for its pasture,” Siringo said. “I still got a flea on my tail?”

“Can't you tell?”

“I got a sting in the middle of my back, but you're the one with the eye.”

“Not this time, which means either Clanahan lost interest after the horse turned up or it's the eel. He's as good a shadow as I know, and I was the best in the Agency. One time, I circled all the way around the bird I was following just because I got bored. He never tipped to it.”

“I used to play dumb jokes like that. It got me a bullet in the knee.”

“You didn't give Charmian London an answer. You staying or going?”

“I like to size up the other side before I commit. What's this muckety-muck look like?”

“John!”

The proprietor came rolling over and stood over the table swaying against his moorings.

“You still carry around that clipping?”

“
Jawohl.
A man must remind himself he is not invincible.” He took a wallet the size of a branding book out of his suit coat, licked a thumb, and started paging through the notes and other papers inside.

“Clanahan didn't used to be bashful around the press,” Hammett told Siringo. “You just didn't go back far enough. John was the Bay Area arm-wrestling champion nine years' running before he tangled with the mick.” He accepted a square fold of yellowed newsprint from the German and held it out. Siringo pushed aside his plate to take it.

He handled it carefully; it was tattered at the folds and flakes fell to the table as he opened it. It was dated 13/10/18 in faded pencil on a margin. In the grainy picture, two men sat facing each other across a table, elbows braced on the top and hands clasped, surrounded by a crowd of spectators. John's whiskers were darker and he had a little less belly. Siringo looked at his opponent.

“That ain't a man. It's a whale with feet.”

“He hasn't gotten any smaller. His breakfast is a side of pork and two loaves of toast slathered with lard.”

“Why ain't he dead?”

“They don't make coffins his size.”

“Who's the shy jasper?”

One of the onlookers, a medium-built man in a dark suit, stood holding a straw hat in front of his face.

“That'd be the eel. He's superstitious around cameras. Wears a Sunday boater every day of the year, they say, just so you know who's responsible for your sudden loss of life.”

Siringo returned the clipping to John, who looked at it briefly, then refolded it with a sigh. “Friday the thirteenth. A man should know.”

“It was Friday the thirteenth for him, too,” Hammett said.

When they were alone, Siringo ate potatoes and fries and washed them down with beer. “Worse comes to worse, he's a hard target to miss.”

“Does that mean you're taking the job?”

“If you come with it. You're faster on the draw.”

“It would've been awkward if you'd said no.” Hammett picked his hat off the table, removed a telegraph flimsy from the sweatband, and gave it to him. It was from Charmian London, instructing the Bank of San Francisco to pay the bearer a thousand dollars from her account.

“You went behind my back?”

“She did. I think she didn't want to give us time to decide to turn her down.”

“Thought she was strapped.”

“So she sold some hogs and fired a hand.”

“Hope it was the son of a bitch ruined my hat.” He gave him back the telegram and picked up his Stetson. “Let's get on to the bank before it closes.”

 

14

The building appeared to have been carved out of a single chunk of marble, with twice as many fluted pillars necessary to hold up its porch roof and a two-mile hike to a paneled yellow-oak counter holding up more marble yet. It put one in mind of what a Catholic cathedral would look like if the Church of Rome had as much money as the Bank of San Francisco. Once inside, Siringo's voice fell to an involuntary whisper.

“If you told me about the place, I'd of rented a set of tails.”

“Frisco's all show,” Hammett said. “That's new money for you. Rockefeller was already in long pants when the first sourdough saw color.”

“Can you lay off that Red talk just for today?”

The teller, morning-coated with a pair of egg-shaped lenses clipped to his nose, looked dubiously at first at the tall pale tubercular and the short man with holes in his hat, but brightened a bit when he saw the Western Union draft. “Will you be opening an account?”

“Two,” Hammett said.

“The vice president will make the arrangements.” The teller handed back the flimsy and pointed out a pebbled-glass door to their right.

Behind it sat a well-upholstered man in his fifties, also in a morning coat and striped pants, working the black handle of an adding machine the size of an anvil on his desk. He got up to shake their hands, peered through a pair of half-glasses at the draft. “One moment, please.” He got up and went out carrying the sheet, leaving his door open. They watched him cross to the opposite wall and enter another pebbled-glass door marked
PRESIDENT.

“Next they'll yell for the guard,” Siringo muttered.

“Maybe if you left the artillery behind. Your coat sticks out on that side like a bad liver.”

“I didn't know I was going to the bank when I strapped it on.”

“This place has come up in the world. First time I was here, you only had to go through two people to do business.”

When the vice president returned, all smiles, they each opened an account and made arrangements to deposit four hundred in each, asking for the remaining two hundred in cash. The man went out again, to return carrying a bank envelope with an engraving of the building in a corner. He counted the money into two neat stacks and pushed them across the desk, then rose to grasp their hands again. “Welcome, Mr. Hammett; Mr. Siringo. I hope this is the beginning of a lengthy and prosperous relationship.”

On the way out of the building, they passed three portraits hung in gilt frames: George Washington, Abraham Lincoln, and Warren Gamaliel Harding.

“Wonder which denomination they'll stick his picture on,” Siringo said.

“Probably a three-dollar bill.”

*   *   *

They held their first war council in a speakeasy on Mission Street, where the owner of a face that was too big for the narrow window behind the iron-grille gate recognized Hammett and let them in. At that early hour the place was only half-full and the little bandstand was deserted. They hung their heels on the brass rail at the base of a mahogany bar. The back bar, carved intricately from the same wood, glittered with bottles, siphons, and glasses of every description.

“I know this place,” Siringo said, looking around. “The bat-wing doors throwed me for a minute.”

“There aren't any bat-wing doors.”

“There used to be. That's what throwed me.”

“It was a saloon during the Alaska Gold Rush. It's just about the only one left from the old days. It was called the Golden Slipper then.”

“It was a shithole. I saw Crooked Mouth Hank shoot Jed Corcoran over there by the cigar corner in ought-one. It was over a woman named—let's see—Buffalo Mattie.”

“It's usually over a woman, though they're not always named Buffalo. Big girl, was she?”

“No bigger'n your thumb; but she once swapped her favors for a buffalo coat because the fellow was tapped out. Poor Jed Corcoran was only nineteen. He didn't last long enough to acquire a colorful name.”

“Why'd they call a place like that the Golden Slipper?”

“The Bucket of Blood ain't as good for business.”

The bartender asked what they'd have. His hair was slicked back from a center part and he wore waxed handlebars and garters on his sleeves. The place prided itself on its Gay Nineties origins.

“Scotch,” said Hammett.

“Rye,” said Siringo. “Mind you don't pour 'em from the same bottle.”

“We do all our business from Canada, mister.”

Hammett smiled. “You know Big John over at the States Hof Brau?”

“Can't say I do.”

“You should make his acquaintance. You're both honorary citizens of the Dominion.”

Their drinks came. Hammett paid for both and the bartender slid his rag down the bar toward a party near the end.

“What brought you to town in ought-one?” Hammett asked. “Catch the gold bug?”

“I got my fill of all that digging in Gem. Someone said Ben Kilpatrick was here waiting to catch a boat to Central America and hook back up with the Wild Bunch; but either I missed him or it was a story. I never cared for the place. The Agency superintendent here had the notion he was a detective, went on every stakeout and jawed the whole time about his new baby boy. If Kilpatrick was in earshot it's no wonder I missed him.”

“He was gone before I joined up. Mine kept goldfish.”

“We here to palaver or drink a hole in another day?”

“Where better, if we're still being watched? If we shut ourselves up in my apartment or your hotel room, they'll know we're plotting. Here we're just two birds dipping their beaks.”

“Where's Clanahan hang out?”

“You want to brace him?”

“I want to know him. All I got now is he had his pitcher took once and he can eat and Indian wrestle.”

“You expect him to tell you his life story?”

Siringo smiled grimly. “His woman might.”

“How do you know there's a woman?”

“There's always a woman.”

“Not
always
.”

They shared a look.

“Any reason to think it's like that?”

Hammett shook his head. “A man of politics? It would've come out.”

“You said he don't care about money, just power, but they're just the same. When you got the one you got the other. You need to spend the money on somebody besides yourself, and power's not worth a thing without somebody to brag on it to. I got into one robbery outfit through a woman, and if it wasn't for my luck in that line I'd still be in Colorado, growing mushrooms at the bottom of some shaft.”

“I don't mean to insult you, but that was a long time ago.”

“Meaning I lost my good looks?” He stepped back from the bar and stood in front of him. “I ain't put on more'n six pounds since I joined the Agency. I didn't have as much snow on top, but I still got most of my hair, and I weren't Doug Fairbanks even back then. I've had these death-dimples since New Mexico in '90, where I near died; it didn't slow me down none with the ladies. All's you need is sound teeth and a smooth line of talk.”

“Well, you've still got the teeth.”

“You think I talk to a gal the way I talk to you? Do
you
?”

“Hell, no. I learned how to lie before I got my first paper route. Unfortunately, the likeliest place to find Clanahan without him tossing us both down his front steps is the Shamrock Club on Pacific.”

“Irish joint?”

“If it were any greener you could shoot golf there. That's where he beat Big John back in 1918.”

“His own patch? That was bright of John.”

“He knows how to run a restaurant and cook sauerbraten. I never said he was Tom Edison. Clanahan cheated, by the way, but you couldn't expect that crowd to notice he braced one heel against the wainscoting.”

“Who told you?”

“I saw it.”

“You was there?”

“Tailing an Irish gunrunner. I won twenty bucks on the match. I didn't see the eel, if that was him in the picture.”

“You bet against Big John?”

“We were at war with Germany. I should get myself lynched over a double sawbuck?”

“I reckon not. I reckon also John don't know.”

Hammett smirked.

“You know what the Agency pays. Who do you think put up half?”

“He throwed the fight?”

“I wouldn't go that far. I think he gave it his best shot; but dough has always been as important to him as his reputation. Let's say he hedged his bet.” Hammett put away the rest of his Scotch. “Welcome to Frisco, Charlie.”

“Siringo. I ain't on a first-name basis with radicals and card cheats.”

“It wasn't cards.”

“That makes all the difference, don't it?” He rolled a slug of rye around his mouth, frowned. “This ain't half bad. They put a little brown sugar in the formaldehyde.”

“They start with the best: Braun and Sons Mortuary is where all the local gangsters go to see off their friends, and Dolf Braun has an understanding with the joint.” Hammett got the bartender's attention and twirled a finger. The man nodded and turned to the shelves in back. “The Shamrock's strictly men. Not likely you'll meet Clanahan's dame there, if there's one.”