Port Hazard (10 page)

“All the more reason to remain in the dark.”

I sat back. “I don't suppose you could tell me who delivers the rent on the theater.”

“You'll have to ask Quinn about that. He handles and records all the transactions.”

“Can you call him in?”

He drew a thin platinum watch out of a pocket of his dressing gown. It was attached by four inches of plaited hair to a Chinese coin with a square hole in the center. “I would, but as you know, I am running late. You'll have to interview him outside.”

“In front of half the Hoodlums in Frisco?”

“San Francisco,” he corrected. “The native Spaniards insist upon it.”

I rose. I'd broken myself against his wall. There wasn't a crack in it that I could see. Beecher got up, too, and we started out. Wheelock called my name. When I turned, he put a forefinger on the double eagle and scraped it my way.

“Just so there are no misunderstandings,” he said. “A man in my position—”

“I heard.” I went back and picked up the coin, tossed it back and forth between my hands. “Who set the torch to Nan Feeny's place?”

His smooth brow creased. “That incident is still under investigation. The police suspect a man who calls himself Sid the Spunk. He was a frequent customer at the Red Rooster, but no one has seen him in almost two years.”

“Did they drag the harbor?” Beecher asked.

“It's a big harbor, in a bigger bay. Every few years some civic genius proposes bridging it, which would claim the life of every Chinese laborer south of Sacramento Street. Perhaps that explains why the proposal keeps coming up.”

We left. The reception room was as crowded as a theater lobby, with the impatient congressman fighting to maintain his position within view of the secretary. Under Nero's close scrutiny, we collected our hats and weapons and went out into the hall. The air was cooler there, away from all those anxious bodies.

Beecher said. “That man sure does use a lot of words just to tell you to go to hell.”

“He told us more than that,” I said. “He told us who runs the Sons of the Confederacy.”

Axel Hodge elbowed
Billy aside, poured Beecher and me a beer each, and set them down in front of us. This was remarkable enough in view of the fact that twelve hours earlier he'd begged Nan to let him kill us both, and more so when you considered the amount of engineering involved. He had to reach above his head to work the taps, then carry both glasses by their handles in his only hand to the top of his custom-built ladder without gripping the side rails, and he did it all without spilling a drop. He must have been a sight to see clambering up the rigging of a windjammer when he still had ten fingers.

“This one's on Pilgarlic, mates; that's 'Odge and no other, if you ain't fly. You're the first in here what's ogled the cove in his own crib to me knowledge. Was it all sparks and glisten? I've a finiff with Billy says he lives out-and-outer.”

“I don't know about that,” I said. “He's got the place done up like a Chinese whorehouse.”

“Ha!” Billy stood in front of the back bar with his arms folded across his chest. The tattoo on his flabby right forearm was either an anchor or a mermaid.

Hodge turned hopeful eyes on Beecher, who confirmed the information with a nod. The little man's face fell. Then he hoisted it back up through sheer might.

“Well, there's 'orehouses and 'orehouses, even in chinks' alley, some as what the emperor himself wouldn't be peery to drop his galigaskin in. What's got over the devil's back goes under the devil's belly, I say. Cap'n Dan's flush of the balsam. Old Grim take me if he lives like a spung.”

There was no reason I should have done Hodge a good turn, but I was too tired for the game. “He makes six hundred a year from the city and he was wearing more than that. Do what you like with it.”

He hung half off his ladder and twirled his ball and chain at Billy. “Pony up, you mab's son of a lugger. You said he put on a parson's show.”

“I never did. I said he always goes about in them fireman's britches like he hadn't a deuce.” But he excavated a crumpled banknote from a pocket and tossed it onto the cracked marble bartop. Hodge swept it up and stuffed it down inside the neck of his jersey.

I asked where Nan was.

“In her doss. The old ewe don't stand the hours she used to. She said to knock her up when you fell in. She wants the hank on you and Cap'n Dan.”

Pinholster had come in from wherever he lunched and taken up his post.

“It's not worth waking her up for,” I said. “Just tell her the bill's paid through to October.” I finished my beer and turned from the bar.

Beecher asked where we were going.

“
I'm
going to study the history of the four kings. Meet me back at the room in an hour.”

“Yes, boss.”

As I was drawing a chair out from under the gambler's table, Beecher banged down his glass, reclaimed his Le Mat from Billy, and left the saloon.

Pinholster belched into his fist and broke open a fresh deck. “Your pardon. I got hold of a bad oyster, which in its turn has got hold of me. What's the matter with your friend?”

“Long hours, short pay. We can't all be tinhorns.”

“
Artist
is the preferred term.” He shuffled. The cards were a white blur. “How much would you like to lose today, and how fast?”

I said, “That depends on whether you can tell me where Wheelock's personal secretary spends his time when he isn't working.”

He shook his head. “That's too close to the dragon's mouth. I own this concession by the honorable gentleman's sufferance. I own my life by it as well. Peaching on Tom Tulip's one thing; this place is rotten with Tulips. Quinn is Captain Dan's Beelzebub. Harm Buckingham, harm King Richard. Pluck as much as a hair off that fair head and Wheelock would burn down the Coast to find the men responsible. Then he'd pour coal oil on the wretches and make them burn longer. If you lived here as long as I have, you'd be afraid of fire too.”

“You're talking as if you had a choice in the matter.”

He belched again. He looked a little green, at that. “You're a good gambler,” he said. “You should know the odds are always with the house.”

“You spread them around when you told me where I could find Tulip. He's common coin like you said, not worth taking the trouble to find out who set me on him. It doesn't mean Wheelock won't send over a squad of Hoodlums if I save him that trouble.”

“Is there no Hoyle in your profession?” He dealt himself a hand of whist, a game I hadn't seen since before the war. It wasn't a good hand, but you wouldn't know it by looking at his face.

“Hoyle's dead. So is Sid the Spunk, probably. He fell in the harbor after he set fire to the Slop Chest for Wheelock.”

“It's a dangerous waterfront. Men have been known to slip on the wharves and stab themselves in the back.”

I waited.

“A last request from the condemned.” He gathered in his cards and shuffled again. “Will you play me in earnest, just this once? No stakes. I'd like to see if you can be beaten without any help from you.”

 

I found Beecher stretched out fully clothed on the top berth, smoking a cigarette and blowing clouds at the ceiling six inches in front of his face. The smoke flattened against it, turned down in opposition to all the laws of nature, and tangled with the fog coiling in through the gaps in the siding. “How'd you do?” he asked.

“Lost three hands to two. I couldn't figure out how he was cheating.”

“Maybe he wasn't.”

“I wouldn't bet on it here.”

“You did, though.”

“We weren't playing for money.” I took off my coat. “Rest is a good idea. We're working late again tonight.”

“Doing what?”

I told him. He didn't say anything as I sat down on the bottom berth and pulled off my boots. Then:

“You need another man. I'm shipping east on the last train.”

I studied the sole of my left boot. It needed a new heel. Cobblestones and hardpack were tough on shoe leather. I missed riding; and I hate horses.

“Doesn't the railroad take off brownie points or something for leaving a job unfinished?”

“It puts them on. Brownie points is bad. Pile up enough of 'em and they pull your tunic. No separation pay, no pension, just the door. Mr. J. J. Hill's a hard man, but he don't ask you to do work you didn't sign on for. If I wanted to be a highwayman, I'd of looked up Jesse James's brother Frank and asked if he was hiring. He pays better and you don't gots to sit around listening to a politician gas about operating budgets and such.”

“Tonight isn't strictly a highway operation. Quinn's poke is safe.”

“That ain't what I'm talking about.”

“Then talk. You've got three hours before your train pulls out.”

“That's the point. I gots to do all the explaining. You just bark orders and I'm supposed to say, ‘Yas, suh,' and fall in behind. Seems to me a parcel of Yanks give up the ghost just to put a stop to that.”

“They fought to pay for the privilege. Before that it came free. I thought you liked following orders. That's what parade is all about.”

“I never took an order I didn't know the reason for.”

That seemed fair enough. “We're after information. It happens you and I are in a line of work where the people who have it don't want to give it up. I can buy it from Pinholster, but I've got to answer to Judge Blackthorne for expenses. He's the man who barks orders at me.”

He blew out a lungful of smoke. “Maybe so. I feel less like a nigger stowing white folks's possibles and changing their sheets.”

I dropped the boot and stood up, folded my arms on the edge of his berth. In the gloom of the windowless room the scar on his cheek flared white when he drew on his cigarette.

I said. “I don't partner up often. Part of the reason is I move faster alone, and moving fast is why I'm still here to listen to you bellyache. The rest has to do with how many partners I've buried. Don't expect us to go home friends, if we ever see home. When I mustered out of the army, I brought my brother back to Montana in an ammunition crate. His grave was the last thing I ever shed tears over.”

“Lots of folks lost folks in the war.”

“I seem to keep losing them.”

He finished his stub, crushed it out against the ceiling, peeled it, and let the shreds of paper and tobacco flutter over the edge of the berth to the floor. Old cavalry habits die harder than old cavalrymen.

“We've all of us buried our share. I dug a hole for my baby girl and cut her name into a hunk of granite. I wanted it to last longer than she done. Pine would of served.”

“Is that why your wife's in Spokane and you're not?”

I wanted to take back the question right away. Violating your own rules leads to other bad habits, and it's the bad habits that kill you.

“That was her notion, not that I didn't see sense in it. Little Lucy had my mouth, and after she left us, her ma couldn't stand watching me pour whiskey into it.” He touched his scar. They can start hurting again without warning. “Ask you something?”

“Why stop now?”

“Why'd you pick me?”

“I made a good pick. You saved my hide in Gold Creek.”

“I was saving mine, too, don't forget. Them two Copperheads wasn't going to leave me standing to tell that pettifogging town marshal what I seen, even if they could figure out which of us was which in that caboose. And you didn't know I was any good at throwing chairs when you decided on me. Ain't you got no friends in Helena?”

“I just got through telling you I don't make friends.”

He aimed his melancholy smile at the ceiling. “Now you sound just like Cap'n Dan. I keep asking why and you keep telling stories.”

“Blackthorne asked me who I wanted to stand behind my back and your name came out. I think it's because of the way you handled yourself in that parlor car. I told you to go through a dead man's pockets and you set right to it. Some of those pockets were soaked through with blood.”

“That just makes me a good nigger.”

“That makes you one man in a hundred. In Murfreesboro I knew a sniper who shot twenty-nine rebels out from under their hats at three hundred yards with a Springfield rifle. He had a shooting stand set up just like a buffalo hunter, with an extra rifle and a man to keep him loaded. A thirteen-year-old Tennessee volunteer broke cover and bayoneted him through the liver before he could switch rifles. He had his own bayonet fixed and time to use it and he didn't lift his arms. He froze because he couldn't kill a man except in cold blood.”

“You should of picked the thirteen-year-old.”

“I bashed in his skull with the butt of my carbine. Wheelock would say I lacked vision.”

“Well, I ain't proved myself yet. For all you know, I'm only good aboard trains.”

Not having anything to say to that, I climbed into my berth. Three hours later, the whistle belonging to the last train east drifted in, sounding as lost as the foghorns in the bay. Beecher was snoring smoothly. I doubt I got fifteen minutes' sleep all told. I couldn't get rid of the feeling I'd opened my mouth and lost my luck: which was the only commodity worth hanging on to in Port Hazard.