Ragtime Cowboys (17 page)

He hadn't been exactly square with Hammett. He had no intention of bracing Kennedy face-to-face.

He shut a stall door behind him, stripped to his long-handles, and put on the suit of clothes he saved for funerals, with a boiled collar and a necktie. Mothballs overpowered the stench of ammonia and disinfectant. He packed the clothes he'd been wearing in the valise.

When he came out of the stall, Pete, the sidewalk lounger with the dyed handlebars, was urinating noisily in the trough. Siringo opened his toilet kit and used the scissors to trim his moustache into a thin line, squinting at his wavy reflection in the mirror above the sink. This simple adjustment altered his features dramatically. He packed the kit in his valise, took out a bowler hat, polished the hard crown on his sleeve, and set it square on his head. As he was studying the result, Pete came over to wash his hands. He looked up at the man in the bowler.

“You from Paramount?”

*   *   *

The bartender did a vaudeville double take when a man he didn't recognize emerged from the restroom and put his valise and Stetson hat on the bar.

“You get another one of these when I come back for 'em.” Siringo gave him a dollar and left.

*   *   *

“See anything?” Siringo joined the agent they'd partnered him with, a clean-faced youth who looked like the model in a shirt-collar advertisement.

“No. She must've missed the train.” The young man was holding an Agency circular with a fair pen-and-ink representation of Laura Bullion, sometime companion of Wild Bunch desperado Ben Kilpatrick, in a fashionable dress with her hair pulled back into a bun.

They were standing on the train platform in Denver. The eastbound had stopped and passengers and greeters were mingling all around them.

“You can't expect her to look just like that. She knows we're after Kilpatrick and that we figure she'll lead us to him.”

“I know. I've been studying noses and earlobes like I was taught.”

“You'd be surprised what you can do with rubber and wax.”

“I know that too. I—”

“Hold your horses.”

Siringo stepped past him and stumbled, knocking the slouch hat off a slightly built man in a Macintosh coat. A pile of auburn hair spilled to his shoulders.

“Beg pardon, sir; ma'am, that is.”

Laura Bullion flushed, snatched up her hat, and hastened off, her flowered carpetbag swinging behind her.

The young detective came running up. “How did you…?”

He pointed at her bag.

“She's carried that same one for months. It's a wonder how many slick characters think to change everything but their luggage. Let's get a move on before we lose her.
”

*   *   *

He bought a cheap cardboard suitcase in a secondhand shop on La Cienega, socks, shirts, and underwear in a haberdashery in the next block, packed them in the suitcase, and caught a cab. He felt naked and vulnerable leaving his dependable Colt at home with the Winchester, but the Forehand & Wadsworth hid better under the town clothes. He could send for them. He still had friends.

Just to satisfy his bump of caution, he changed cabs twice, drawing a ragged
Z
across that part of Los Angeles before finally giving the order to take him to the train station. He kept an eye out for imitators, but he was fairly certain the eel had taken the bait and was accompanying Hammett to the state line.

He overtipped the driver, getting a knowing leer in return. It was never too soon to get used to the role of a tenderfoot from back East.

He used the water closet twice during the trip north, and surprised himself both times when a city dude looked back at him from the mirror. He looked like a drummer selling ladies' unmentionables; not precisely the effect he'd been going for, but enough to pass for someone other than Charlie Siringo, at least to anyone who might have been furnished with just his description.

At the San Francisco station he spent a nickel. The telephone operator connected him with a reedy tenor voice belonging to the Pickwickian Perkins.

“Is that the Shamrock Club? I'm looking for Tammany.” He used his best Irish brogue.

“This isn't it.”

“I know that. I need the number.”

“Who is speaking?”

“Charlie O'Casey from Chicago.”

“Hold the line, please.”

Siringo heard ambient noises a moment, then the little man came back on and gave him a number.

“Thanks. Say, is Paddy Clanahan there?”

“You just missed him.”

“Can I catch him at Tammany?”

“I doubt that very much. He never goes there.”

Which was better news than he'd hoped for.

*   *   *

Before he left the station he placed another call, collect, to a number he knew by heart.

“Hello, Bill,” he said, when the charges were accepted. “I wasn't sure you'd take the call.”

William Pinkerton, brother of Robert and son of the legendary Allan, exhaled audibly.

“I shouldn't, Charlie. You know how Bob feels.”

“He favors your father. He's got the Pinkerton family tangled with the Pinkerton National Detective Agency. My beef never was with either of you, just with the way the business is run since you gave so much authority to little men.”

“You could have prevented that. I offered you a superintendency.”

“City work don't suit me. A telephone cord is just another kind of leash.”

“Which makes this conversation ironic.”

“Also a personal embarrassment, but I'm fresh out of choices. I need a favor, for old times' sake.”

*   *   *

The West Coast branch of Tammany Hall met to elect candidates to office on the second floor of an enterprise on Kearney Street that Siringo knew for a fish market from across the street. A door propped open with a chunk of concrete probably shaken loose by the Quake belonged to a cramped staircase between beaverboard walls. He climbed it, breathing through his mouth the entire way. Just below the landing he paused to tilt his bowler to one side, like a comic in the burly-Q. That little act transformed his personality.

All the doors were open on the second floor, perhaps to vent the tobacco smoke that drifted in clouds like low-hanging fog. In the first room Siringo came to, a beefy, red-faced party in a straw boater, green suspenders to match his short necktie, and shirtsleeves rolled to his shoulders, sat on a wooden chair at a wooden table tallying figures from a long sheet like a publisher's galley on a scratch pad. The portraits on a wall of the otherwise bare room were of Grover Cleveland, Woodrow Wilson, and John L. Sullivan.

A typewriter clattered somewhere on the floor, and somewhere else a telegraph key was clacking. The place was a factory of sorts, cranking out city aldermen and delegates to Sacramento, without much contribution from the electorate.

At length the man behind the table sat back to consult the galley sheet, chewing on his pencil eraser. He didn't look up at the visitor.

“Pardon the interruption, friend,” Siringo said in his Irish lilt. “The name's Charlie O'Casey. I'm just in from Chicago, looking for a billet.”

“Try the Mariners Hotel at the bottom of Market. Two bits a cot, and the cockroaches stay for free.”

“I don't mean a place to sleep. I'm here for the party.”

“We ain't throwing any just now. Come back New Year's Eve.”

“I'm talking about Tammany, of course.” He jerked a thumb at his chest. “I got out the vote for Bathhouse John Coughlin in the First Ward.”

The man was still looking at the sheet. “Chicago, you said? Jackie Coogan could deliver the ticket in the First Ward. The last Republican there starved to death twenty years ago.”

“There was still plenty of 'em around in '93, which is when I done it the first time, and Bathhouse John's still in.”

“What'd you do, tear down posters?” But this time the man favored him with an appraising look. He had a toothpick stuck in his mouth that if he took it out looked as if it would let all the air out of his fat face.

“I stumped. Loading dock, Rotary Club—hell, the middle of the Loop; give me a box of Pear's to stand on and I can collect a crowd in the desert. I talked for five minutes in the Masonic Lodge before they threw me out on my ear.”

“Why ain't you mayor?”

“That's the thing. They don't appreciate me back home, so I pulled up stakes and come out here, knowing you western types put store in a man's worth.”

“Cut you out, did they?”

“I cut myself out.” He leaned forward and lowered his voice. “Just between you, me, and John L. up there, Coughlin's through. He's got a string of squirts telling him he has to attract the youth vote, so he's replaced all his best men with green lads. He's opened himself wide to the guineas coming in from New York to take over the liquor business. Just last spring they shot one of their own, fellow named Diamond Jim, because he was standing in the way. Think what they'll do to the Irish. If I was Bathhouse John, I wouldn't waste my dough on green bananas.”

“O'Casey, you said?” The man leaned sideways and pulled a gallows telephone attached to an extender out from the wall. “Who's your reference?”

“Pincus. Billy Pincus.” Siringo gave him the number of William Pinkerton's private line in Chicago.

 

21

An Indian-head penny struck the floor on edge, caromed off it against the wall, and came to rest at the base of the wall, tails up. The next landed flat, but with enough momentum to bounce to the wall, ending up two inches away from the other with the Indian showing.

Hammett made a hissing noise between his teeth. He'd thrown the second penny.

“Odds are even, Slim. Call it.” His opponent, a plumbing-fixture salesman from Dubuque—he carried a miniature toilet and sink in his sample case—juggled a third penny from palm to palm. He was short and thick-built, in a soft felt hat with the brim turned down over one eye and a gold toothpick glittering on his watch fob.

Hammett consulted his flask and swept a drop of Siringo's shine from his moustache with a finger. The baggage car swayed, and him with it.

“Heads.”

The toilet salesman pitched.

The penny struck on its edge, spun once, leapt against the wall, and wobbled for a moment on the floor, a reddish blur.

“Tails,” announced the salesman. “That's five you owe me.”

“Just a second.” Hammett seized the wrist belonging to a closed fist. The man struggled, but he applied pressure with his thumb and the hand sprang open as if a catch had been released. Hammett scooped up the coin and turned it over. It had Indian heads on both sides. Hammett brought his face close to the man's, whose wrist he was still holding, and grinned. “Double or nothing the one on the floor has more tails than a Broadway chorus line. You ought to give up tinhorning and put together a magic act.”

The salesman cursed and tugged at his watch fob. Hammett spun him around by his wrist, jerked it up behind his back, and reached across him from behind. He pressed the pulse point on the man's other hand, and when it opened, he snapped the chain with a jerk, pushed the man away, releasing his wrist, and examined the nickel-plated derringer attached to the fob. He pocketed it.

“I'd look under your hat, but if there's no rabbit under it I'd be disappointed.”

“You gonna call the conductor?”

“He'd throw us both off for gambling on his train.” Hammett gripped the handle of the sliding door, heaved it open with a noise like coal tumbling down a chute, seized the salesman by the back of his collar and the seat of his pants, and hurled him through the opening. The man made a kiyoodling sound, arms windmilling.

The train was slowing for a curve, so he almost landed on his feet. His toes touched the grassy grade long enough for Hammett to root for him, but then the forward pitch of his body took him over onto his face and from there into three complete somersaults at least; he disappeared from sight while Hammett was counting.

He shut the door just as the conductor, an old campaigner with white imperials and bad feet, let himself into the car from the passenger coach coupled in front of it. “What you doing here? Passengers ain't allowed in baggage.”

Hammett made a sloppy grin and swayed too much for the movement of the car to be responsible.

“Sorry, friend. I got confused. All this motion makes me dizzy.”

The conductor leaned close and sniffed. “If I was you, I'd put a cork in that motion the rest of the trip. You could confuse yourself clean over the side.”

“Thanks for the advice.” He started toward the door, but the man in uniform took a step in front of him, looking around. “You sure you're alone? I heard someone hollering.”

“That was me. I was trying to remember the words to ‘I Been Working on the Railroad.' No one ever mistook me for Caruso.”

“Sounded more like Nora Bayes.” But the conductor stepped aside.

Hammett had his hand on the doorknob when the conductor cleared his throat.

“Forgot your pennies.”

He thanked him, bent over, scooped up the coins, and left.

*   *   *

He took his old seat in the smoking car where he'd met the salesman, propped his feet up on the sample case, and rolled a cigarette, stealing glances at his fellow passengers as he worked. None of them was Lanyard, disguised or otherwise.

He waited.

After five minutes, a farmer wearing a stiff hat and a rusty black suit coat over bib overalls came in from the next car, his Adam's apple preceding him, walked halfway down the length of the car, passing several empty seats, and took one across the aisle from Hammett. He stuffed a corncob pipe with tobacco from a Prince Albert can and sat smoking, looking out the window. He knocked the pipe out into the stand half-smoked, got up, and went back the way he'd come.