“May I add to your palaver?” the attacker-cum-client asked.
“Why not? I got little girls telling me how to do my job, why not a goddamn hillbilly, too?”
He laughed again. “The train’s settin’ a spell. Ya’ll got nothing but time.”
“He’s right. You said yourself that you’re low on greenbacks.”
I glared at her. “Stick to shooting coons, girl. You’ve got no head for business.”
“I can—”
“I know, I know—you can take care of yourself. Well, take care of yourself and leave my business to me. You just told our enemy and/or client how desperate I am.”
She found something interesting to study on the floor. Her brown locks fell across her face and masked her eyes. For a moment, I was alone with my thoughts.
“Is it dangerous?” I raised my voice at the door. “I don’t do infiltration anymore. I mostly just find people.”
“That’s dandy. We need you to—hey, open up and we’ll talk.”
I picked up a handful of bullets off the bed and dropped them on the floor. “All right, my gun’s not loaded.”
Phoebe gasped at my duplicity. I kept her silent with an angry glare.
“We’re coming in then.”
“Leave your friend with the shotgun out there and I’ll let you—just you—in.”
“We have an understanding.”
People shifted in the hallway, getting to their feet. There was no way to tell where the shotgun was, though.
While the crowd of clods made their racket, I tiptoed behind the door, raised the pistol to head level and motioned for Phoebe to unlatch it. I could tell from her eyes that she didn’t approve of my tactics. What did she know? She’d never lost a goddamn war or had to break some poor bastard’s kneecaps for a meal.
She unlocked the door and stepped away. The door handle turned and a lanky fellow in a tattered brown greatcoat stepped into the room. Soon as he was clear of the door I kicked it shut and pushed the barrel of my revolver behind his ear.
“Have a seat, friend.”
He was too savvy to strike me. But I could see from the way he worked his jaw that there were hornets with more patience than this man. He was a dangerous one, all right—a throwback from the old mountain clans. I’d met his sort before. Backcountry Virginia was full of ‘em. They were as savage now as they were a thousand years ago. Celts like him fought to keep the Roman Eagles out of Britain. They bled every English king starting with William and ending with Henry IV. Back in Scotland and Wales, his sort spent all their time stealing cattle and killing each other. Appalachia was too poor for cattle, though, so they mostly just killed each other.
He’d probably be killing other mountainfolk right now, except that the CSA and the Magnocracy were contesting West Virginia. A lot of the coal mines were closed as a result, driving those primitives into other states.
He sat in our only chair, hands up, eyes brimming with hate. “Ya got me, Yankee. Now what’re ya gonna do?”
“Get some answers.” Once he was facing me, I kept my distance. It’s easy to grab a man’s piece if it’s waving in your face. I settled against the wall about ten feet from him. “Who sent you?”
“I told you already—Big MacCallard.”
“Is that name supposed to mean something? Who the hell is MacCallard? What makes him so big?”
He swallowed hard. “He’s an important man.” He exhaled slowly to calm himself and added, in clipped, deliberate tones, “You would do well to respect him.”
“And what does Big MacCallard want with me?”
“We heard tell you’re a detective.” He spat. “We need some detecting done.” His eyes never left me. It was as if Phoebe wasn’t even in the room. I was afraid to break the stare, so I ignored her as well, until she spoke.
“Can you elaborate on that?” she asked.
“Not much. All’s I can say is, we need you to find someone.”
I didn’t like it, but I didn’t see a choice. I could kill the redneck, sure, but probably not the three toughs in the hallway. Even now a shotgun was probably aimed at my head through the wall.
“I don’t take assassin jobs,” I said with resignation. “I don’t ice people unless I have to. And I’ll need an advance for expenses.” I lowered the gun.
Before either Phoebe or I could react, the hillbilly was on me. One of his long thin hands caught my wrist firmly. While my gun was pointed uselessly at the floor, he delivered a vicious open-palmed slap with his free hand, as if he were punishing a child or a woman.
“Next time you play dirty like that, you better pull the fucking trigger!”
My cheek stung, but it was the abject humiliation which made me respond. The .22 clattered to the floor as I twisted my wrist free.
I would’ve clocked the freckly bastard right in his gap-toothed gob. I wasn’t able to, though, because the sharp crack of a gunshot brought us out of our scuffle.
Phoebe was standing between us—all five feet of her—with my revolver in hand. “Stop it!”
Before either of us could respond to the militant pixie, the door smashed open and a new figure entered the fray. The man with the shotgun gave the room a confused look. His eyes lingered on the woman with the gun. Clearly, he was a chivalric moron, because he pointed his shotgun at me, though I was unarmed.
This was exactly why the Pinkertons hired women. Any hesitation—even a second—made all the difference in the world when guns were drawn.
Phoebe backpedaled to a corner and suddenly the shotgun-man was in her arc of fire as well.
The thug realized his mistake but was powerless to correct it. “Don’t move,” he ordered weakly.
The lank hillbilly who slapped me relaxed. “Put the gun down, Tom.”
“You sure, Roy?”
He nodded.
“Maybe she should first.”
“Not if you’re going to punch Mr. Schist again.” Phoebe was steady as a statue. If there was fear in her, she was hiding it well.
“That little scuffle was personal-like. A disagreement between men. I’ve said my piece.”
I touched the still-tingling flesh of my cheek and bit back an oath. “Yeah, it’s done.”
Weapons lowered, but the tension remained high. Roy reached into his waistcoat and drew a small wad of bills. Even in the bad light, I could see they weren’t dollars.
“What’s that?”
“Your advance.” He handed them to me.
I thumbed through them in disgust. I couldn’t tell if they were pink or if it was just the red light. Either way, they weren’t treasury notes. Some fool had stamped them with what appeared to be a steam carriage.
“Greenbacks only,” I said, trying to hand them back.
“Them’s company script. They’re good in any shop from here to Cincinnati.”
“I don’t live between here and Cincinnati. I live in New York.” I pushed them into his chest. “Greenbacks only.”
Roy shook his head. “That’s for your expenses. We’ll scare up the genuine article for your fee.”
“You fucking better,” I growled, putting a hand out to Phoebe.
She gave me a scandalized look and passed me the revolver.
Roy smirked and left us with Shotgun Tom. The barrel wasn’t pointed at our heads, but we knew we were prisoners. I took a handful of cartridges from the bed and put them in my pocket. We reluctantly followed them into the hall.
&
nbsp; “MacCallard is waiting across town,” Tom explained. “It’d be best if we kept off the street.”
I didn’t need to be told twice. I remembered the dry ironclad rumbling up the boulevard.
“Is this common in your job?” the girl asked me as we went down a back stair.
“Too common. You still wanna partner?”
It was impossible to read her face in the thick shadows. There was enough light, however, to see that the man with the shotgun hid his weapon in his greatcoat. Following his lead, I made sure the hammer was secure and tucked the pistol discreetly in my jacket.
Two alleys over, we paused long enough for Roy to scout and leave three of his goons—including Shotgun Tom—to watch us. When he came back, he whispered to his men for a moment.
“That’s odd,” Phoebe told me. “They’re worried about dogs.”
I shook my head in disgust. “Not dogs. Hounds. As in, Harriman’s Hounds.”
“What’s that?”
“Bad news.” I rubbed my temples.
Roy overheard us. “You know about the Harrimen?” It was a common way to refer to them. Mr. Harriman himself hated it, which was probably why so many folks used it.
“I was a Pinkerton. They’re competition. They’ve got all the cruelty of the Eyes but none of the discipline. They’re less detective, more mercenary.” Maybe working for the Pinkertons had made me snooty, but I’d never much cared for the Harrimen. From what I’d seen, the only difference between them and roving gutter-toughs was that Hounds were better equipped.
The atmosphere had grown charged. It wasn’t the Hounds they were thinking of, though. I could feel their glares through the darkness. I had just admitted to them that I had worked for the Pinkertons.
I grunted with realization. “You guys are unionists.”
They didn’t answer.
Phoebe gasped. She probably expected unionizers to have great black beards and bombs with burning fuses. The Ohio rags probably filled her head with all kinds of nonsense. The papers, after all, were owned by the Magnates.
I had a somewhat more enlightened view of unions. I knew they weren’t insane anarchists but fairly normal citizens of the Magnocracy. As fairly normal citizens of the Magnocracy, they were greedy bastards who only looked out for themselves. I avoided them, not out of ideology, but because associating with a union lowered one’s life expectancy. I had also, in the not-too-distant-past, been a union-breaker. Unionists weren’t exactly lining up to shake my hand.
I wanted to run, of course. But there was Phoebe to think about, not to mention the shotgun beneath my new friend’s coat. For the moment, I was trapped. I’d been here before and probably would be again. I decided to keep my head down and see what developed. The paper bills in my pocket counted for less than nothing—the pope himself couldn’t buy my loyalty with company script.
Whatever danger Roy saw, it passed. We continued to wind our way between decaying brick buildings until we reached the northern edge of town. A ramshackle rowhouse sat forlornly beneath a rough stone ridge forming a natural boundary on the town’s north side.
Roy banged three times on a coal chute and led us to a basement door. It was pretty standard for a rowhouse basement. The walls were brick and the floor was dirt. My eyes were well-trained, though, so I immediately noticed that something was wrong by the boiler. Despite the winter’s chill, its big black guts were cold and empty. There weren’t even ashes.
When the door was closed, Roy extinguished the lamp and pulled open a panel in the boiler’s side. He reached a hand in and tugged hard. The entire wall—boiler, hillbilly, and all—slid to one side with a groan. Light flooded the room and we saw that a tunnel led off from the main basement into a secret room.
At first, I thought this was some kind of headquarters which had been built surreptitiously by the union. Once we were through the passage, though, I could see that the room ahead was quite old. It was an ancient cellar bearded with niter.
A single oil lamp hung from a ceiling beam which looked like it had been cut when the Declaration of Independence was being written. Several large tables had been brought down and covered in maps and charts and ledgers.
“This looks old,” I said.
“They used to hide niggers down here,” my captor told me conversationally.
“Roy.” The voice had a deep, rich timbre.
Roy stood straighter and cleared his throat. “Darkies. They used to hide darkies down here.”
I wasn’t surprised at his casual racism—his ancestors might’ve been too poor to own anyone, but many poor whites made their living as overseers or slave-catchers. Even those who had nothing to do with the trade harbored a certain disdain for the blacks, since for years the negro represented a fundamental divide between whites. There were those who could own slaves—and those who couldn’t.
What was surprising was that someone had enough pull with Roy to get him to hide it.
The man who could do that had to be Big MacCallard. Several men stood in the root cellar, but MacCallard was instantly recognizable. He was tall—six foot four if he was an inch—made even taller by an unruly mop of curly red hair. He had a large, square jaw and a face more impressive than handsome. The face of a leader.
“It used to be part of the Underground Railroad,” MacCallard explained. “A valuable lesson for us.” His collar was undone and his shirt was stained. Instead of detracting from his aura, though, the disheveled appearance increased it, the way the worn face of a tall ship seemed all the more impressive for its weathering.
“And how is that?” I asked. Despite myself, his latent charm worked on me.
“There are times when justice must skulk in the shadows like a thief.”
Roy took up a position in the corner. He snorted. Roy didn’t seem to think much of skulking.
The big man ignored him, which made me think their disagreement was an old one. “Aidan MacCallard.” He offered me one of his large hands.
“Donovan Schist.”
He had a firm grip and a steady gaze. Since I was technically a hostage, I didn’t think etiquette demanded me offer my business card. I also didn’t want the Harrimen to find my card on a unionist.
There was an awkward pause as I wrestled with the business card question until Phoebe delivered a jab to my ribs and I remembered myself.
“Ah, right. This is Phoebe Mosey, my...ward.”
She gave me a quick side glance of disapproval but I wasn’t about to introduce her as my business partner to a roomful of grown men. I suspected that Roy would like any excuse to laugh at me.
“Pleased to meet you.” The unionist gave her a slight bow.
“A pleasure.” Her brown eyes darted squirrellike over the scene. Her hands fidgeted with the ruffles on her skirt. At first I took this for fear but I soon realized it was excitement. Gunplay, secret meetings at midnight...she was having the great adventure she’d expected in New York.
I found myself hoping that the adventure didn’t kill her. Or me.
“I’m told they call you Big MacCallard,” I said, watching his expression.
He didn’t blink. “Some do. You may call me Mr. MacCallard, if it pleases you, Mr. Schist.”
I nodded. “So you need me to find someone?”
“Yes.” He considered me for a moment. “Some men heard you’re a detective.”
“I don’t have my references on me. But I used to work for the Pinkertons.”
MacCa
llard’s lieutenants shifted uneasily, exchanging glances. One of them leaned forward and whispered in the big man’s ear. MacCallard’s eyes never left me.
“Used to?” Roy asked.
I didn’t look at the hillbilly because it wasn’t the hillbilly talking, not really. It was MacCallard speaking through his hatchet-man, a common enough tactic. It was cowardly in a way, but it bespoke his subtlety. Stanny Slash could’ve learned some things from this guy.
“We parted ways,” I told them.
All eyes were on me now, including Phoebe’s.
MacCallard gave me an amused smirk. “Would you mind giving us more detail?”
“Yeah, I would. What do you expect from me? These penny-ante scrags dragged me and my girl out of our room in the middle of the night. Life stories are better exchanged over a mug of stout, not the barrel of a gun.”
Roy flared his nostrils like a bull about to charge. MacCallard kept him still with the merest flick of an eye.
He had to be one helluva leader to keep that savage in check.
The big man turned back to me. “Apologies, Mr. Schist. These are...trying times. My men should have acted with more discretion. Would you please elaborate on why you left the Pinkertons?”
“Maybe I got sick of the pay.”
“I doubt very much that a freelancer could make as much as a Pinkerton.”
I laughed. “You’re assuming I got sick of the amount. No—I got sick of where my pay came from. I got sick of who I was working for. I got sick of—” I stopped. “Does that make you feel better about hiring me? Do you think that makes me give a damn about your cause? It doesn’t.”
The tall man considered me. His courtesans simpered behind him but he kept his stare. “We need you to find someone.”
“Your treasurer go missing with the monthly dues?”
“Nothing like that.” He looked down at one of the maps on the table. I craned my neck for a moment. He politely slid it over so I could look. It was a map of Liutt’s complex. At the bottom was Juniper Junction. A railway spur swept up to Liuttsburg and then turned hard to Liuttsville. The genius of the setup was obvious—Liutt ripped coal right out of the hills and brought it to the factory. Steel was floated downriver from the big mills on Lake Erie. It was a cunning blend of the Efficiency Principle and ruthlessness. From pig iron to finished product, Liutt controlled almost every step of production. This was what every robber baron longed to achieve—vertical integration. No unexpected hiccups, no independent supply chain. If there was a problem, you had only yourself to blame.
Vacant Graves Page 7