by Ed Gorman
“And if you solve a murder like this one, you’ll look good again.”
“I know I can be a little arrogant sometimes.” He smiled. “That comes from havin’ too much good whiskey and too much good tail in my life. Man like me, he gets to believing he’s maybe a little better than everybody else. And that can turn people against him.”
“I guess you didn’t hear me, Terhurne. All I care about is finding Grieves. I have a feeling that means finding out who killed Uncle Bob tonight. And that’s all I care about. I don’t have to worry about getting votes. Those are all yours.”
Barlow showed me a room where I could sleep for the night, a room without any corpses.
“You ever see the girl before tonight?” I asked him once we were inside.
“No, can’t say that I have.”
“How about her uncle?”
“Nope. Him, neither. But remember I’m the night man. They may have come around during the day.”
The next question had to be stated diplomatically. “The sheriff seems like a decent enough fella.”
This was, of course, a statement, hinting that he might not be a decent fella at all.
He frowned. “I’m taking it that as a federal man, you’re asking me a question in confidence.”
“I am.”
“Because if my opinion ever got out—Well, I have to live here. I like my job, the pay’s good and—”
“I won’t repeat anything you say.”
I went over and sat in the rocking chair, leaving him standing by the door.
“And this is just my opinion, of course.”
“Of course, Mr. Barlow. Just tell me what you want to say.”
He was still nervous. “Well, there are some who think the sheriff is a little too friendly with the rich people in this town.”
“Meaning he does them favors that he wouldn’t do for other people.”
He smiled. “Well, you can’t blame him. I can’t, anyway. I’m the same way. You like it when the important people pay special attention to you. As they do sometimes.”
“You sneak them in the back way late at night?”
He laughed. “I could write a book about how many important men sneak out late at night and meet girls in our rooms on the second floor.”
He was starting to wander. “You think the sheriff has ever covered up a crime for anybody?”
“Not a serious crime. Not a robbery or arson or—”
“—murder?”
He shrugged. “Not that I know of.”
“You ever give the sheriff a room late at night?”
He laughed. “The sheriff’s just like a twenty-year-old buck when it comes to women. He can’t get enough of them. And those are the kind of men he hires, too.”
“You ever run into a man named Grieves?”
This time the smile was broad. “He’d be hard to miss.”
“Oh?”
“I know he’s supposed to be missing—and I assume you’re out here to find him—but I’m sure he’s sleeping off a bad drunk somewhere in one of the nearby towns.”
“He drinks a lot?”
“Drinks and parties. He was like a cowhand at the end of a trail drive. He couldn’t get his hands on enough liquor or enough girls. You should’ve seen him. He sure didn’t worry about money or what people thought of him. You’d think a federal man would be a little more worried about his reputation.”
I had to agree with that last statement. Given the unpopularity of federal men, people enjoy sending angry letters to the agency back in Washington detailing all the many ways that a particular federal man had upset/humiliated/debased the citizens of their town. Sometimes the agency takes it seriously, sometimes not. Depends on what the federal man’s being accused of.
“Well, I appreciate you talking to me about Terhurne. And you don’t have to worry about me keeping it secret.”
He started to turn to the door and open it but then he stopped. He frowned again and said, “You’ll meet a man named Swarthout and a woman named Ella Coltrane. They’re the two richest people in town. Or were, anyway, before the silver in the mine started running out.”
I remembered that the mine had been shut down when I got here. No second or third shift.
“Anything special I should know about them?”
“Well, first of all, they’re the sort of rich people who give rich people a bad name. A lot of wealthy folks treat folks like us with some respect—but not those two. Anyway, they both spent a lot of time with Grieves. I couldn’t tell you why. But either Swarthout was showing him the town or Grieves was out at Ella Coltrane’s. She’s a fine-looking woman. If I wasn’t married—”
I laughed. “A hotel man who doesn’t believe in a little something on the side?”
“Not me. I’ve got a wife and three kids and they’re my life. From the things I’ve seen, you cheat once or twice and then you slowly start cheating a lot. It’s like a contagion or something. It just starts taking over your life.”
He left a minute later. I got out of my clothes and into bed. I rolled myself a cigarette and lay there listening to the night sounds. There was comfort in those sounds. Sometimes I’d be on treks as long as a month when I barely saw two or three people a week. Some fugitives chose to hide out in the mountains or the deep forest and I had to go after them.
But the birds and the raccoons and even the occasional bear had become like kin to me over the years. There was a sweetness and innocence in them that you only seldom found in human beings. I’d said this once to somebody—that I often preferred the company of animals to the company of people—and she gave me a very strange look. I suppose I would’ve given myself a strange look, too.
Right before I slept, I thought of Molly. She knew something, something dangerous to her, dangerous as it had been to her Uncle Bob. But would she be willing to tell Terhurne or me what it was before it was too late?
Chapter 5
In the morning, I ate a big breakfast at a restaurant where at least some of the town’s elite chose to eat. You could tell they were important by the derbies, cravats, walking sticks, and sizable rings they wore. They ate at two long tables near the back. This was to separate them from the trash like me and the modest merchants and shop employees who ate much humbler breakfasts and hurried on their way.
The waitress said, “In case you want to know, that blond one is the mayor, the one with the Vandyke beard is the richest banker in town, and the lady with them is Ella Coltrane, who inherited a short-haul railroad that mostly does business with the mine.”
I flipped her the gold piece I’d promised if she told me about who the highborns were. She caught it and grinned. She had one of those big amiable faces that most successful eateries have at least one of.
“And here’s one for free. The banker, Nels Swarthout, and Her Highness Mrs. Ella Coltrane also own the mine. But they’re going to close it in a few months because the silver’s running out. A lot of the miners want to strike so that Swarthout and Ella can’t get the rest of the silver out—and then leave the miners with no jobs at all. And by the way, Swarthout is the worst tipper in town. Cheap cheap cheap just like a birdie.”
I’d figured that those three had to be special. They didn’t even eat at the long tables.
“Who usually sits in the empty chair?”
“That’d be Sheriff Terhurne, whenever he can make it.”
“He’s probably busy.”
She winked at me. “He’s probably busy all right.” She used her wet rag to clean up some tobacco that had fallen from the smoke I’d rolled earlier. “From the description of that girl he’s got over in his jail, I’d say he found himself a witness and maybe a special friend.”
“Why would you say that?”
She laughed. “Terhurne has a sweet tooth where the ladies are concerned. So do the other men he’s around. May be catchin’ up with him, though. He may not get himself reelected.”
A man at the next table called her over. I piled tob
acco into some cigarette paper and lighted up. Cigars seemed to be the preferred smoke in the back half of the place. Expensive cigars.
Despite all the commotion the previous night, I’d slept well. I felt rested. Washington had supplied me with the name of the boarding house where Grieves had stayed briefly and a visit to his landlady was my next stop. Grieves had been trying to bust up a counterfeiting organization rumored to be working out of town here. He’d kept in close touch with D.C., most of the time by telegraph. And then suddenly—nothing.
His wife, my last wire had told me, was barely holding on. She was six months pregnant.
As I stood up, I got that uncomfortable feeling that I was being watched. Not casually, the way you happen to notice somebody in your peripheral vision. But examined, studied.
When I got my hat on, I turned and saw that it was the blessed trinity—the banker, the railroad owner, and the mayor—who’d been looking me over. They didn’t smile or nod or offer any sort of recognition at all. But they weren’t apologetic about studying me, either. They just kept on looking. The mayor leaned in and said something to the young woman. She and the banker nodded somberly.
They relaxed and went back to their conversation.
I had the feeling they weren’t going to invite me to a party any time soon.
“Looks like you got yourself some new friends,” the waitress said as she passed by my table again.
I walked alongside her to the front of the restaurant. The crowd was thinning some. There was a line at the cash register. The people in it looked like they were in a hurry. “I wouldn’t bet any money on that.”
“You know something? I wouldn’t, either. You be careful. Those three sure don’t look happy to see you.”
The landlady turned out to be a landlord.
“People expect me to be a woman just ’cause I run this place,” the sprightly little gent in the coonskin cap told me. The cap didn’t exactly blend with his work shirt and work trousers but it probably made him happy. “And I’m a real man, too, don’t think I ain’t. Fought in three different Indian wars. Got three wounds and I can show ’em to you if you’d like to see them.”
“Maybe I can come back some other time to see them. Right now I’m here to get any information I can.”
He smiled with a pair of storeboughts that looked to be too big for his small mouth. “I was just givin’ you shit. The missus died five years ago, right after I retired from the railroad. So I took over runnin’ the house here. I just like to rag people a bit because they’s always expectin’ a woman.”
We stood on the sunny wraparound porch of a massive two-story house that was relatively new and extremely well kept.
“I put my heart and soul into this place. I do it just like the missus did it. She worked night and day on this place, believe me.” His voice got raspy. “She’s still here with me, far as I’m concerned. I talk to her all the time, even if people say I’m crazy.” He grinned through the tears in his voice. “Hell, people said I was crazy before she died. So I might as well go on bein’ crazy now.”
And lonely, I thought. But I wasn’t here as a social worker.
“I really need to talk about Grieves, Mr. Chester.”
“Oh, yes, Grieves. He was federal.”
“Like me.”
“Say, that’s right. Just like you.”
“Did you get to know him at all well?”
He thought a moment, his gaze wandering to his front lawn. “He only stayed here a few nights. He took up with Swarthout out to the mansion—the one Swarthout can’t seem to unload on anybody.” He made a face. “Those’re Sidney’s turds.”
I was beginning to wonder if he might be crazy—truly crazy—after all.
“Sidney’s turds. Out on the lawn there. Sidney’s never supposed to come over here on my lawn. We got that agreement. Sidney ate one of our little kittens. I woulda killed him but Old Man Sourbreigh give me his word that Sidney wouldn’t never come on our lawn again. He even built a fence for him in his backyard. But look at those turds. They got yellow streaks in ’em. I can see the yellow streaks from here.” He raised his gaze to meet mine. “That’s the sure sign that they belong to Sidney, the yellow streaks. I’ll have to go over there and climb all over Old Man Sourbreigh, which I kinda hate to do because he’s one hundred and three this spring. But them is definitely Sidney’s turds.”
“Yeah, I know. With the yellow streaks.”
And then, as if a switch had been flipped up, he came back to reality. “Your Mr. Grieves. The federal man?”
“Uh-huh?”
“Was gone most of the time. Didn’t even take his meals here much and didn’t know what he was missin’, either. I got this Mexican cook Carlotta, you ain’t et till you et her food. Then he snapped his fingers. “Say, he took off to that mansion so fast he left some stuff behind. I bet you’d probably like to see it. I put it all in a sack. You know he never did come back to get it.”
We went inside. The vestibule had a stained-glass section above the door, a clawed coatrack, a small table for mail. The house smelled of pipe tobacco, furniture polish, and the various plants held in a variety of vase styles.
We climbed a long staircase with new runners. At the top lay a line of doors for the roomers. A door stood open on a bathroom. A man with shaving cream on his face stuck his head out and waved his straight razor at us. Straight razors I could do without for the time being. “Mornin’,” he said.
“Mornin’, Mr. Phibes. This here’s a federal man. Friend of Grieves.”
“Sure wish they’d find him,” Phibes said. “Played cards with him a couple of times. Pretty sure he cheated me.”
He laughed hoarsely. “The way I figure it, he owes me twenty dollars.”
We went into a room near the bathroom. “Ain’t been able to rent it since Grieves went missing.”
A pleasant little room with a single bed, a three-drawer bureau, an easy chair set next to the lace-curtained window that looked out on a large backyard. There was a crucifix, a small framed painting of President Lincoln, and a calendar all on the west wall. On top of a small table was a stack of magazines. Some of them looked to be several years old. There were three yellowbacks.
“I put it right here in the top drawer,” Chester said. “And there she is.” He said this as he pulled the drawer open and reached inside. A moment later he handed over a cloth sack that couldn’t have weighed more than a pound or two.
I didn’t bother looking inside. That would come later.
“Well, I’m goin’ over to see Old Sourbreigh. I’ll walk you downstairs.”
“I appreciate the help, Mr. Chester.”
“All my pleasure, Mr. Ford.” Then he laughed. “I hope you find Grieves and I hope I find Sidney ’cause that’s one dog who’s gonna get a whuppin’, believe you me. You can’t play croquet when you got dog turds all over the yard now, can you?”
“No,” I said, “especially when they’ve got yellow streaks in them.”
Chapter 6
There was a kind of battered nobility in the face, the busted nose, the scarred right cheek, the missing tooth and the way the shabby work clothes gave the massive body the touch a sculptor would.
He came right up to me on the street and jabbed a finger at me and said, “I want to talk to you.”
I wasn’t afraid of him but I wasn’t eager to piss him off, either. Those hands of his could reduce bricks to dust.
“I get to know your name before you start telling me what an asshole I am?”
He didn’t smile. But then I hadn’t expected him to. “My name’s McGivern. Will McGivern. I do the bargaining for the miners here. Only reason I ain’t in the mines is because I have to go to court and stick up for one of my men Swarthout’s tryin’ to railroad into prison. All Sam done was go back into the main office to get his lunch pail. Swarthout walked in on him and claimed he was trying to steal stuff. Hell, only reason Sam was in there is because earlier in the day he’d asked Swarthout a
bout getting a couple days’ advance on his pay so he could send one of his kids to Denver for this here hospital. Kid’s coughin’ up blood.”
Most people, politicians excepted of course, don’t talk in this kind of bawling, nonstop verbal assault. Either they run out of breath first or they pause out of consideration to polite society. You know, they let you ask a question or two here or there.
All of this was interesting enough as information but I wasn’t sure of what it had to do with me.
“You’re a federal man. You could tell Swarthout to let Sam go and drop the charges.”
Any time you attach the word “federal” to a name, that name, to a lot of people, takes on the aura of power. Then you find yourself in the position of disappointing them. And disappointing yourself. Most of the people who come up to you are asking for well-deserved help. Only rarely can you help them. And when you tell them that local officials have more power than you in most cases, their faces go gray. You know about local officials being corrupt or indifferent.
And that’s how I was going to look to Will McGivern as we stood in the middle of the street, passersby watching us as if a fight was going to break out. I got the sense that McGivern was associated with fights breaking out.
“I’m sorry, Mr. McGivern, I don’t have any jurisdiction in something like this. I’m an investigator.”
“Yeah, some damn investigator.” The smashed-up face scowled. “I tell you about a little kid who’s coughin’ up his guts and all you can say is you don’t have no jurisdiction here. Then who does? Last year, five men died in that mine up on the hill and we still ain’t seen anybody from the mining department.”
“I need to be going now, Mr. McGivern. I’m sorry about the kid and Sam.” There was no more to say, sad as it was.
“You ain’t no better than that last one out here. I seen him all drunked up and carrying on while me’n the men was bustin’ our humps in the mines. Then I run across him way outside of town tearin’ up the land and scarin’ the hell out of all the animals. You federal people stink. He wasn’t worth a damn and neither are you.”