“What the hell are you doing here, anyway?” He looked at Phoebe with concern.
I realized then why they were in my room. The hotel clerk had in fact called the bulls. The Hounds were stretched too thin to respond immediately, but they still had to check it out. When word came in that people were using my room as a shooting gallery, they mustered a squad of heavy-hitters and sent them over to see what the problem was. By then, Roy had dragged us to the union headquarters and offered me a job, a job I had technically accepted. My pocket was full of company script that said so.
Kober and his guys were still investigating the room when I showed up and mistook them for time-traveling British heavy troopers.
“We’re not here by choice,” I explained. “Some goddamn horny thugs tried to filch my girl here. It would have gotten ugly if I hadn’t run them off with my sixer.”
“You’re not allowed to have those guns.” One of the hardheads pointed a thick gloved finger at me. “We gotta seize ‘em.”
“Nobody’s seizing anything,” Kober said. “This man’s a fellow detective. He might not be with an agency, but he’s a brother-in-arms.” He gave me a reassuring nod.
I briefly wondered what he’d call me if he saw the wad in my pocket. Phoebe clearly thought the same thing—she gave me a nervous stare.
“So what’s with the girl?” My colleague turned to her and offered a hand. “I’m Robert Kober. Everyone calls me Bob.”
“This is Phoebe Mosey,” I told him.
“Pleased to meet you, Mr. Kober,” Phoebe said.
The other men shifted impatiently. Kober didn’t introduce them and I didn’t ask.
“Phoebe was offered employment in New York,” I explained. “The employer even bought a train ticket for her.”
Koberman grimaced and shook his head.
Phoebe had the good sense to blush.
“So her ma sent me a cable asking me to pick her up at the station. Stanny’s guys never touched her.”
One of the detectives made a choking sound and shook his head. “Do you mean Stanny Slash?”
Kober gave Phoebe a hard stare. “That’s bad, young lady.”
The hardheads exchanged glances. Clearly, some knew Stanny. Or of him, anyway, since few people knew Stanislaus personally. He wasn’t the kind of guy you quaffed pints with on a Saturday night.
“I’ll say.” I felt a sudden surge of relief. I had an ally in this town. An armed ally. “Stanny sent three of his thugs to teach us a lesson. They’re probably still at Juniper Junction.” I gave Kober their descriptions, with a little help from Phoebe.
“And one of them is missing his ear lobes?” He laughed. “I knew you were a good shot, Donovan, but not that good.”
Phoebe didn’t correct him. She gave me a significant glance but said nothing.
It wasn’t the first time I’d taken credit for something a woman did. Since I married Moira, it was fast becoming a habit. In this case, it gave me an ace up my sleeve. No one could guess that my petite little baggage was a dead hand with a gun.
The hardheads eyed me with fresh disquiet, like I was a panther on a rusty chain.
“We’ll send them scrags packing.” Kober gave me a knowing grin. For once the brutality of the Hounds might work to my advantage. Koberman’s nickname was well-earned. I wouldn’t want to be there when he caught them.
“I appreciate that.” I paused. I thought of MacCallard and the union lair. With a word, I could end the labor strife and bring peace to this community. Kober was a bit of a quick-fist but I’d never known him to cheat anybody. We could split the reward. I’d need a reward, of course, since betraying the union would put yet another price on my head. “Say, Koberman...”
“Yeah, Donovan?”
I looked at Phoebe. Her eyes pleaded with me. Could she tell what I was thinking? “Any word on the rails?”
The detective shrugged. “Not yet. Some Pennsy guys came to inspect things but the union sent ’em packing.”
“Did he say Pennsy...or pansy?” someone asked.
The other Harrimen chuckled. Somehow, I doubt the PRR workers were as well-armed as the Hounds. In all likelihood, the railway workers hadn’t even had a detective with them. They were probably just technicians. Pennsylvania Rail had detectives on the payroll, though. It was only a matter of time before they sent them.
I hoped they were lying about the technicians being chased away. MacCallard was a fool if he crossed Pennsy.
“There’s union barricades—but we’ll handle it,” Kober said. “We don’t need any outside help.”
Most of the private security firms were like that—proud to the point of obstinacy. It was all about reputation, just like Stanny Slash.
“What about steamcoaches?” I asked hopefully.
“I’ll tell ya, Donovan, this is the worst town to get stuck in. There’s only one steamcoach for hire in Juniper and none in Liutt’s towns. Most folks take the Akronite. With the rail closed, our town is cut off. You want my advice?”
I nodded.
“Just hunker down and sit it out. We’ll let you hold on to your piece.”
His comrades shook their heads but said nothing.
“Thanks.” It was a relief. The last thing I wanted was to give up my .22 in this wilderness. I looked at the gaps in the walls. “I hope they don’t put this on my tab.”
“I’ll talk to the clerk,” he said. “This is a company town. I tell ’em it was Harriman business.”
“I’m in your debt twice over.”
“You’d do the same for me.”
I nodded and tried not to think about MacCallard. Either way I played it, this felt like a betrayal.
Koberman stood up. “You should think about working for Mr. Harriman. No more wringing your hands and asking for per diems. Just simple expense sheets and a steady paycheck.”
I tapped my pistol and pretended to think about it.
“See you around, Donovan.”
I stared at the floor while they filed out. Phoebe opened her mouth but I silenced her with a shake of my head. We waited.
After ten minutes, I went to the window and watched. The detectives filed out into the streets, lenses flashing in the strange light.
“They’re gone,” I announced. “But mind what you say.” I nodded at the wooden doily where our wall used to be.
A puzzled businessman with a floppy nightcap was staring through a hole at us.
The clerk was more than understanding. He was obsequious. The damage to the room was forgotten and we were moved to another room, a better room.
“That was passing strange,” Phoebe said when we were ensconced in our new chambers. “He was awfully nice, considering the damage we did.”
“People will surprise you,” I lied.
People were actually quite predictable. Clearly she hadn’t noticed that his left wrist was bruised as if someone had twisted it. Or if she had, she didn’t realize the significance.
This bed had a canopy. A comfortable fainting couch sat beneath the window, which meant I wouldn’t have to sleep in a chair or on the floor. I was especially glad for that, as it meant I could keep my carpetbag packed and ready for flight.
“I thought you were going to tell those soldiers about MacCallard and the union.”
“They’re not soldiers,” I said absently as I checked for peepholes or the telltale ears of a listening-tube. There weren’t any, but that didn’t relax me. This was a company town. Nothing’s
secret in a company town.
“Mr. Schist?” I hadn’t known her long, but she’d already developed a habit of saying my name like an accusation. It felt like we were brother and sister—or married.
“I didn’t though, did I?”
She watched me thoughtfully and said nothing.
I pulled the curtains over the window—they were thicker here—and latched the door. “I won’t have to worry about you running.” It wasn’t a question.
“Maybe you should. I know the woods pretty well, Mr. Schist. I might even be safer there. Woods don’t frighten me. Not like these men with guns. Can you track people in the forest as well as you track them in the city?”
I couldn’t, but I wasn’t about to tell her that. I was as city boy as they come. The only time I’d spent in the country was during the war and a little bit of work with the Pinkertons, and that was only because they made me. It’s too bad generals like maneuvering so much. It’d be easier if we could all fight battles on paved roads and bivvy down in hotels instead of muddy tents at night.
War would be a lot nicer if you could die with a full belly and a clean pair of underwear.
“You frightened them scrags in Juniper.” I took a deep breath. “I owe you. If the client pays me proper, I’ll split it with you.”
“Are you going to make me go back to Darke County if I help you?”
“We’ll see. But let’s be honest here—if you can take care of yourself, why not go home and face your ma? If you’re tough enough to make it in the big city, you’re tough enough to stand up to the hillbillies back home, right?”
That shut her up. She sat on the edge of the bed and looked thoughtful.
Chapter Seven
Sleep wouldn’t come. Despite the winter chill outside, the heavy curtains made our room stuffy. Phoebe crept behind the canopy and, for all intents and purposes, vanished like a rodent down her hole, making me feel oddly alone.
It was better I didn’t sleep. If I had, I would’ve had nightmares. Whenever I closed my eyes, I saw the soulless lens of the limey gasmasks reflecting the hellfires of battle and the twisted faces of the men they killed.
I would have woken up screaming and maybe choked Phoebe when she tried to calm me. The reaction to Harriman’s detectives was a shock. I knew the scars would never heal, but I’d forgotten that angry part of me, that berserker that lay just below the surface, waiting to bleed some poor son of a bitch. I prided myself on my brains, on my grace under fire. My reaction today had been graceless, brutal. It was a hacksaw. I wanted to be a scalpel.
Maybe I should work for the Hounds. Maybe Kober and I weren’t so different.
Of course, there was another possibility, an equally disturbing possibility. What if the blue anthracite did it to me? Lichfield’s creepy tonic had been shooting through my veins when I went crazy. Was that the cause?
The memories of battle had been so clear, so powerful, when I saw those uniforms. It was as if the two times of my life had collapsed into a single brutal scene.
Maybe I was just blaming the chemical, same as no-account weaklings blaming booze or laudanum when they beat their wives into pulp. “It wasn’t me,” they’d cry like babes afterward. “It was the whiskey.”
A thick layer of self-loathing settled frostlike on my skin.
At some point, the drear of night was replaced by the haze of day. There was no sun to speak of, but behind the curtains, things went from red-black to red-gray. Despite my long, thoughtful vigil, when I stood up and took a breath, it felt as if I’d had eight good hours of sleep under my belt.
Lichfield’s formula was definitely still with me. I wondered how long it was good for.
After a breakfast of greasy eggs and charred toast, I took my hot mug and stood with Phoebe on the front porch of the hotel. The coffee that morning was bad—all watery, like an old lady made it. But it didn’t bother me. The blue anthracite was better than any coffee.
I sipped the brown water and looked west. The horizon burned bright as a lamp. If the river never stopped burning, I wondered if the cartographers would use different colors for different heat levels, like they did for elevation. Red for the hottest sections of the river, those that were doom just to go near. Maybe a pleasant light-orange for the cooler sections that made you sweaty instead of killing you. I wondered if it would be possible to build a bridge to withstand a burning river. If anyone could do it, Yankees would.
People were coming and going around us. A few paused to stare westward like us. It was, after all, quite a sight.
“What do we do now?”
Several rough-looking men stomped past. She moved closer.
I smiled. “Locate the scabs. Get paid. Then head to Pittsburgh and find another way to Ohio.”
“Like an airship?” she asked hopefully.
I laughed. “I don’t think the union’s going to pay us that well.”
“My ma won’t cover it, neither. She’d sooner grow wings herself.”
There wasn’t anything to say to that. All girls her age want to ride an airship. We turned to go inside. I should’ve been angry or depressed, but I wasn’t. The blue anthracite was burning through my veins. I didn’t want an easy case anymore.
“What makes you think the union is going to pay you at all?” a voice demanded.
Roy was in the doorway, flanked by a pair of toughs. He’d been listening to our conversation. We were surrounded by potential witnesses, so they weren’t brandishing. The threat was obvious, though.
I glanced up the street and saw a trio of Harriman’s thugs on patrol. They were wearing their long dark coats with the collars tucked into their masks. People gave them a wide berth.
Roy followed my gaze. “Gonna change sides?”
“I don’t have a side.”
“The hell you don’t.” He nodded at one of the goons behind him.
It was a large fellow in factory coveralls. He showed me the handle of a long steel spanner.
“What’s he gonna do with that?” I asked. “Tighten my bolts?”
Roy squinted angrily. “You could say that.”
I rolled my eyes and drew the .22.
The toughs wilted.
Roy stood his ground though. He glanced at the Hounds coming up the street. “Careful, or they’ll take it away.”
“I’ve got guest privileges.”
Suddenly he didn’t look so sure. “What you playing at, Schist?”
“That’s just it, I ain’t playin’. I’m tired of games. You got something to say?”
His eyes glinted. Was it respect I saw? “Someone’s made an accusation against you. I came for answers...before I go to Big MacCallard.”
“I didn’t ask you for a job, remember? You came to me.” I slid the gun into my coat.
The hardheads marched by. They didn’t spare us a glance. I suspected that the filterhelms limited their vision. They probably wouldn’t have noticed a Gatling at this point. I couldn’t be sure though, having never worn the limey invention. I’m always the one choking on gas, never the one using it.
“Let’s go inside.”
We filed into our room—all five of us. Roy whistled as he gave it a once-over.
“Moving up in the world, eh?” His eyes were hard. “This is the buyer’s suite.”
He didn’t have to explain what that meant. Anyone coming to town to purchase a big order would be treated differently than other vi
sitors.
I shrugged, keeping the bed between us at all times. “What can I say? I know a guy.”
Phoebe moved into a corner and watched the three men. They didn’t have any artillery this time, since they’d come in broad daylight. The advantage was mine.
“We heard the Hounds helped ya’ll relocate. Now why would they do that?”
“Someone shot up our last room,” Phoebe said, looking at me.
Things were too tense for me to feel sheepish or I might have. The embarrassment was pretty fresh. This wasn’t like knocking over a cheap vase from Macy’s. It was more like drunkenly mistaking a friend’s linen closet for a crapper. It was one of those ever-burning embarrassments that never really dies. It just smolders.
“You a Papist, Detective? They like to confess, don’t they? Why don’t you confess to us now.”
It was probably a joke. The bastard didn’t know I had an Irish ma, but I took it personal. I can be a patient man sometimes, but Roy could hit my sore spots with more precision than Phoebe’s bullets. “You’ve been waiting for an excuse to gremlin my gears since I got here. Tell me what you want or get the hell out.”
He reached into his sooty greatcoat. My muscles tensed for action but it was only a slip of paper. “Just got this message. We’ve got friends, too. In New York City.” He said it like New York was a reeking suburb of Tartarus. It was, but I wasn’t gonna have some bumpkin disrespect my town.
“Neat trick, having a pen pal when you can’t read,” I said. “Guy must be one helluva artist.”
He tossed the paper on the bed and ignored my sally. His thin face went all smug, as if he’d just checkmated me. “You’re still a fucking Pinkerton.”
It wasn’t the accusation I expected. I expected him to bring up Kober, to accuse me of feeding information to the Hounds. I expected it because that was precisely what I was considering. “What?”
Vacant Graves Page 9