Ill-Fame (A Detective Harm Queen Novel Book 2) (14 page)

While the noise of this explosion didn’t quite match that sound, it came close. She and Henri looked at each other, stunned for a second, and they ran out of the washroom.

Everyone’s attention was turned to a cloud of dust near the saloon’s entrance, and a figure, wobbling on a chair, waving something in the air.

“He’s got an explosive,” gasped the man who just moments ago had been bragging about how he was going to crack her open on the washroom floor.

She squinted her eyes to make sense of the outline. After a moment, a jolt of recognition put everything into place. It was Uncle Martin Baum. He had somehow followed her here, and was trying to make his amends. His fleshy body had undergone a transformation, she realized. He was stronger now, bolder, as he brandished what appeared to be a stick of dynamite in his hand. She saw fearlessness in his eyes. This would be the last time she would see him, she knew.

As she thought those thoughts, she saw his head turn in her direction, and the barest of smiles flashed on his face.
He sees me. He wants me to remember him, like this. Ready to die for her.

A mixture of admiration and disgust shivered through her bones.

“We’ve got to get Dick,” she suddenly said to Henri.

“There is a second way out,” he said, under his breath. “There.”

He guided her gaze with his cocked head to a jagged opening in the wall she hadn’t seen before.

“That leads to a staircase, which will take you to the top of the bluff.”

“And you’ll bring Dick? And you’ll kill Jiggs?” The words drifted from her mouth like music, she felt. That horrible man needed to die, and it didn’t matter to her how.

“Not me,” Henri said. Uncle Martin was shouting something now, and they looked at him. “Him. The one you had set to attack me in Clifford’s basement.”

“He was there because I’d summoned him to shoot Jiggs, not you.”

“Well, he’s here now.”

Henri bulldozed his way through the crowd and up to Kilbane, who had moved himself behind the bar. The gangster looked shaken at Baum’s spectacle, and a stab of satisfaction filled her heart. Henri whispered something into Kilbane’s ear, and the gangster’s face turned white.

Strip away the guns and the bodyguards and he’s nothing but a gutless poltroon.

After a few seconds of struggling, she slipped out of the cuffs, and they dropped to the floor. The knife was out of her sleeve and in her hand in a second, and she dropped into the shadows of the unlit crevice Henri had pointed out. She could see that it opened into a large room, and saw the start of a crude stone staircase that wound up through the rock.

She knew, logically, that her best chance to escape was now, but she glanced again at Jiggs, and made up her mind in that instant.

God willing, if an explosion didn’t kill them all first, she would end this day standing over the monster’s corpse, and give her grandfather his proper revenge.

Baum had taken out an insurance policy against his life years ago, but had stopped paying the premium after his wife Joanne had made him leave. Even though she’d emptied their accounts and left him with nothing, he still loved her. He hoped she’d feel some remorse once he was gone. Or even pity. He wasn’t choosy, as long as she felt enough to show up at his funeral with a kind word or two.

The real person to blame for all of his woes, he knew, was sitting in a comfortable chair in Minneapolis City Hall, counting his stacks of ill-gotten money. Detective Harm Queen was a fraud. He sat on his mighty throne, directing corruption like a conductor in an orchestra for the worthless mayor and his brother, but was jealous of anyone with any aspirations of their own.

Over the years, Queen had harangued and belittled him. He’d accused Baum of being a bad officer dozens of times in a dozen different ways. When Baum had tried to make a little money on the side, like every other cop on the force, Queen had quashed his business. He’d accused Baum of being a degenerate, just because he didn’t approve of Baum’s methods. And how did Queen have the right to decide what was moral and what wasn’t?

Everything that strutting ass dipped his fingers in was corrupt. He fleeced men out of their hard-earned money and had them booted out of town. He shook down madams for green. So what if Baum had introduced a few young women who needed money to gentlemen of means? It wasn’t any different than what the brothel madams did, except that the poor young girls
he’d
found kept far more of the money they earned.

Baum suspected sour grapes had led to his dismissal. Queen must have been insanely jealous of his ventures, and wanted Baum out of the picture so he could step in. Queen had told Baum that what he did was despicable, but how was that so? These young women were destitute, and fortunate that the men they met took such interest in their plights. Baum’s work had bordered on charitable, but Queen had claimed he was taking advantage of them instead. What absolute poppycock and hypocrisy! Queen was a vainglorious tyrant who destroyed those who were smarter than him, and who figured out better angles. Baum had gotten too big for his britches, and so Queen made sure he was thrown out with the morning chamber pot piss.

Once he’d been booted from the police force, he’d quickly started circling the drain. His connections gone. His money gone. His wife gone. Oh, how he’d suffered!

But now, as he stood atop a chair, demanding obedience from the most powerful man in Saint Paul, his vigor had returned. And he’d caught the eye of Maisy, in the far back. She was safe, and that was all that mattered to him.

“Kilbane!” he shouted from above the din of the panicked cavern.

The gangster turned to a couple of men near him, goading them, he thought, to pull out their pistols and shoot him.

Baum would not let things go down that way. Placing the fuse of the dynamite to the end of the cigar, he lit it, and the room erupted in shouts. He tossed his second stick towards the bowling alley again, but this time it landed much closer to the heart of the festivities, and it was hell and Tommy. The blast ripped through the cavern with ferocious, brutal force.

The shock knocked some men down, while others grabbed their ears in agony, and rock rained down from the ceiling. The force of the explosion flung Baum from his chair and into the side of the bar. More dust rose, and he tried to shake the terrible ringing from his ears and the pain from his forehead where it had bounced against the foot rail. He crawled back up on the chair as fast as he could, fighting every urge to just lie on the floor and give up.

But he needed to keep the upper hand.

If these were to be his final moments on earth, then they would be on his terms.

As he fought for his balance he noticed that Kilbane too, along with his bodyguard, had fallen. Baum shakily pulled out another stick of dynamite and pointed it at his adversaries, who were getting back to their feet. Jiggs took in the chaos with goggle-eyed awe as he clawed himself up to the bar.

“All of you, leave!” Baum cried, as he circled the stick over his throbbing, buzzing head. “Except Kilbane. And you.” He pointed the dynamite at Henri, who nodded back in understanding.

The cave emptied in haste, men just minutes before drunk out of their minds now sober and sure-footed, and they parted like a wave around him. Baum caught a whiff of fresh air and turned his head back for a split second, just long enough to see that the door had blown open. Bodies were crumpled on either side of the entrance, twisted and moaning, and he suddenly felt a wave of guilt ripple over him.

Remember why you’re here,
he told himself.
Your sole reason for this folly is to avenge Maisy
. And the police would arrive in minutes, police he knew were in cahoots with the bastard he was about to blow into pieces.

He scanned the back of the room. Maisy was no longer there, thank God. She’d found a safe place to hide, and it would allow him to end it all, here and now.

He lit the third stick, and hurled it at Jiggs Kilbane as hard as his out-of-shape arm could throw It landed at the gangster’s feet.

Baum toppled off his chair and scrambled for cover.

After the second explosion, the saloon rocked with pandemonium, and the diversion allowed her to move closer without notice. She watched her old Uncle Martin, in command of the room, and despite her hatred toward him, she felt a twinge of respect. It was his moment, she understood. In his mind, he was her knight, and she was willing to let the game play out in that fashion.

As she got to the edge of the bar, she dodged into the kitchen door. Between the cook stove and the icebox lay Dick. The bruise on his face had swollen purple, but he was breathing normally, and she gave silent thanks.

“Dick.” She patted his face, trying to revive him. He was out cold, still. Her worry increased. A well-aimed throw by Uncle Martin might land one of those dynamite sticks here, and she wouldn’t ever forgive herself if that happened.

The fact that he was Jiggs Kilbane’s son still hadn’t fully delivered its impact to her brain. She didn’t want to comprehend it now, either. She just wanted him out of here. But her strength wasn’t enough to drag him away. His body was a mass of solid muscle, and he outweighed her almost two to one. She had to wake him up.

She hit him harder this time, but still couldn’t rouse him. Frustration mounting, she scoured her surroundings for something that might do the trick. The kitchen hadn’t been used for a while, it seemed, judging from the dirt that layered the counters and stove top. She could see no water supply, either. Her eyes finally settled on a beer keg sitting on the floor, and she crawled over to it and screwed the spigot open.

Beer poured onto the floor, stale from the pungent smell of it. She cupped her hands until it overflowed through her fingers, and moved back to Dick on shuffled knees. His mouth was open slightly, and she let it trickle in. He sputtered and choked and then came to.

“My sweet,” she cried. He grinned when he saw her, sudsy foam running down his chin.

“You look well,” he replied.

She laughed and they embraced. Everything had changed, now, and she didn’t want to be apart from him, she realized with every atom of her body. But they couldn’t sit like this forever, as much as she’d like to, when something horrible was about to happen in the next room.

“We must get out,” she said, her face turning somber. “Your
father
.”

In his sleep, he thought, she must have forgotten why he was here, because his expression instantly darkened.

“He took you, didn’t he? He was the one that you were to become partners with.”

“Dick, I had no idea you were related to him. I never...”

“I don’t blame you,” he interrupted, caressing her cheek. “He’s a bad egg, Nellie. I’ve put up with his capers for long enough. But involving you in his deceits is where I end it. Where is he?”

Her eyes darted to the door, and she didn’t have to say anything. Like an acrobat, he jumped forward from his back to a full stand.

But the crack of a gunshot stopped him in his tracks.

CHAPTER 18

Baum waited for the dynamite blast, but it didn’t come. When he uncovered his eyes a boot landed square in his nose, making bones split and crack. More terrible pain screamed through his head, and he put up his hands as a makeshift shield.

“My man was too fucking fast for you, codger,” a voice sneered. “He stepped on the fuse.” As the world slowly focused, Baum could see Jiggs Kilbane standing over him, hands on his hips. “You came to kill me, is that it?” Another kick slammed into his ear, turning the ringing into a full-blown church-bell clang. He rolled, feeling his body rise and fall over his stomach. Sand kicked up into his eyes and mouth. Finally, he bumped into an upturned table, and he heard the gangster snicker.

“Who sent you?”

He tried to talk, but could only groan instead, as the pain stung in his ears and eyes and even throat.

“Get up.” Baum felt Kilbane’s hands on the back of his coat, tugging at him to stand. And he attempted to comply, finally staggering to his feet. Kilbane pulled the remaining sticks of dynamite out of his shirt and handed them back to Henri, who hovered silently behind.

“WHO SENT YOU?” he howled through rattling teeth. Kilbane looked like a teapot ready to burst. He bounced on his heels, and his hands jiggled along his sides like limp eels. Baum had lived a long life, but never in all of his experiences had he met a man who appeared to be as unhinged as this one.

Then the guard whispered something in Kilbane’s ear. The gangster spread a greasy smile and let the man step forward.

“My name is Henri,
mon ami
. I’ve been hired by Mr. Kilbane to do his difficult work.” He took out a handkerchief and handed it to Baum. “You poor shack of a fellow. Your nose is bleeding. Please use this.”

Baum blinked his eyes. He could suddenly taste the blood as it dribbled into his mouth, and he wiped himself dry.

“Mr. Kilbane is not afraid of giving you pain. Not only does he not mind, but he enjoys watching it done by professionals. And I am experienced in the skills of giving it. You’ve had the sting of it just now, but believe me,
mon ami
, that is only the beginning of what you could suffer.”

Baum heard Kilbane snicker again, and watched the gangster sit down in a chair, a bottle of whiskey in one hand and a glass in the other. This would be a show, Baum realized, and Kilbane was making himself comfortable in the front row.

“Now I have not always done this,” the man continued. “My family was in the fur trade once. My father worked for the Columbia Fur Company, many years ago. While he did not procure the furs personally—there were Indians for that—he had developed the skills of the trade from a lifetime of work. He taught me, long after the muskrat was hunted out and the trade was in its decline, how to use the tools to catch food to provide for myself. For instance...” He took a small object from his pocket and held it into the light. “This is an awl. It was given to the Indians in exchange for furs. It can be used for stitching leather.”