Powder Keg

N
ever bothered me much to pull a gun on a man, but a woman was a different matter. Even if it was 1883, despite a lot of new contraptions like electric lights and telephones, women still needed a whole lot of protection.

The place was Kansas City, the Elite Hotel, room 227, six minutes after midnight. I was sitting in my dark room listening to the giddy Friday night noise from the casino one floor below me and the whorehouse one floor above me.

I had been planning on visiting the latter but I’d had so much bad luck with the former that night that I wasn’t much in the mood, not even for the kind of soft and perfumed young flesh a man could find in a good-sized city like that one.

I was trying to think about my job there so I wouldn’t have to think about how much I’d lost at the casino. Faro had never been kind to me. But then neither had poker or blackjack. Gambling was one of my curses.

The knock came at nine minutes after midnight,
which I knew because the moon was cordial enough to shine on the railroad watch that sat ticking away on the arm of my chair.

Frantic. One knock followed almost instantly by another.

I’d been warned that a man named Fred Cartel was going to try and kill me that night and the way my luck was running, he might just have been able to pull it off.

“Please, please, Mr. Ford. Please open the door.” It was a woman’s voice.

Fred had a lot of imagination, which was how he’d managed to embezzle so much money from the veterans’ hospital there. Because it was a federal institution and because I was a federal agent, I’d been sent there to arrest him, even though it wasn’t my area. I specialized in weapons threats—new technology, better explosives, more modern delivery systems, things like that. I was in the area, though. I’d been working a job in Wichita so Washington had wired me to take a train and make the nab. Fred must have consulted a crystal ball because right after I’d checked in that afternoon, I received a large envelope containing $5,000 in fresh new American currency. The letter that went along with the money said that Mrs. Fred had a cousin who worked for our office in Wichita and he had tipped her that I was coming to arrest Fred. She said that Fred would come to see me that night and that I should treat him politely because he suffered from what some folks considered a pretty bad temper. And, in fact, had said that if I didn’t take his money he might just kill me. I guess that qualified as a bad temper.

But Fred was clever.

He was going to trap me.

What better way to get me to open my door so he could shoot me than to have a woman pretend that she was in some kind of dire emergency? And when I opened the door—

Fred would show me just how bad his temper really was.

I decided to make the surprise on her.

“Just a minute,” I said, sounding calm.

I was almost glad for this. A good shootout is a way to keep a man from thinking about his gambling losses.

The surprise was simple enough.

I crossed to the door on tiptoe and then yanked the door inward without warning, shoving my .44 in her face as I did so. I didn’t give her time to scream. I yanked her inside with my hand and kicked the door shut with my heel.

Before I got the lamp turned up, I shoved her on the bed. Then I got the lamp going.

And then she said: “You’re going to feel very stupid, Noah.”

And she sure wasn’t kidding about that.

“Oh, God, Susan, I didn’t have any idea it was you.”

“I figured as much—unless you’d changed a lot.”

Tom Daly was one of my best friends in the agency. We’d worked a couple dozen assignments together since the war. And once he ran into a burning building on the suicide mission of hauling me out. He saved my life when not even the volunteer firemen would give it a try. Tom was a fine husband, father, friend. I would add worker to that except he had a
bottle problem. He disappeared on benders, and bosses, for some reason, frown on that.

A year earlier, Tom had come under suspicion of stealing and selling the location of a secret government munitions laboratory. He still worked for the agency but he was angry that he’d even been suspected. And he had a fixed idea about who had stolen and sold the information. The boss tired of Tom’s anger so he moved him to a different office.

I’d known they’d settled in Kansas City so I’d wired ahead to let them know that I was coming. But when I got to their house that day, nobody was home.

That night, after midnight, Tom’s wife Susan, an appealingly slight, dark-haired woman, was lying across the bed where I’d just shoved her.

“I’m really sorry, Susan. I thought you were dodging for some embezzler who threatened to kill me.”

She sat up, smiled.

“Same old dull life, huh?”

I laughed.

“Yeah. But why so late, and where’s Tom? I stopped by but nobody was home.”

She shook her head.

“He doesn’t want to see you.”

“Why not?”

“He thinks you’ll talk him out of it. You know the kind of influence you have on him. He always jokes that when he grows up he wants to be just like you. Big, strong, handsome. But he’s only half-joking.”

I had to laugh.

“You don’t think I’m any of those things, do you? And be honest. In fact, you never cared for me much.”

“You’re really putting me on the spot. Thanks.”

“You never looked happy to see me. And the times I kept Tom out drinking—you ragged on me a lot more than you ragged on him.”

She sighed. Looked down at her hands.

“You’re a nice-looking man—but so’s Tom. And you’re clever and decent—and Tom’s those things, too. His older brother died in the war. Tom was always so used to playing second fiddle—having somebody to look up to—that when he met you, you took the place of his brother Bob. So, no, I don’t see you as this kind of dime-novel hero that you are to him. I just wish he had a little more confidence about himself.” With no warning at all, her green eyes glistened with tears. “But now he’s got too much confidence. And that’s what he’s afraid you’ll talk him out of.”

She paused. “But I have to say, for all the times you two went out drinking, you’re the one who got him to stop. He wouldn’t even listen to me when I talked to him about how much he drank. But he listened to you and I’ll always be grateful to you for that.”

I went over to the bureau and picked up my sack of Bull Durham and my cigarette papers. As I rolled my cigarette, she kept on talking.

“He hasn’t changed his mind. He still thinks it was Harry Connelly and Clint Pepper who sold that material.”

I shrugged.

“Well, I think he’s probably right. Those two should have been kicked out of the agency a long time ago. They were good agents once—or so I’ve heard—but now, the things I hear…” I shook my head.
“Problem is that they’ve got two senators in their pocket, both of whom are on the appropriations committee that oversees our budget. The senators make sure Connelly and Pepper stay on the payroll.”

I went over and sat back down in the chair. The cigarette tasted good that time of morning.

“They’re here, Noah. Connelly and Pepper.”

“In town?”

“Yes. And Tom got up and snuck out of bed tonight. He thinks he knows where they’re staying. He told me that earlier tonight. And—”

I finished her sentence for her: “And he’s drinking again.”

“It’s been nearly a year since he’s touched a drop. But two days ago, when he heard that Connelly and Pepper were in town—he hasn’t even gone to work. He just sits in this saloon and drinks. Then he staggers home and tells me what he’s going to do to them. I thought that it might be just talk until tonight. But then somebody told him that Connelly and Pepper were staying at the Gladbrook. That’s where he must have gone tonight.”

Kansas City was filled with various types of gambling establishments, and the Gladbrook was the spot preferred by the high rollers and the rich folks. One night in a Gladbrook room cost you three or four times what it did in a hotel like mine. You paid a lot more for chefs who spoke French and a restaurant that featured a string quartet. I’d take a player piano any day.

I got up, strapped on my gun. I got my coat and pinned my badge to the lapel. I had a feeling I needed to look official that night. People are more coopera
tive when they see a badge, and just about any badge will do.

“I really appreciate this, Noah.”

“I have to help him, Susan. I’m his hero, remember?”

She shot me a troubled smile. I held the door open for her and soon we were in the hall and headed down the stairs.

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