“I'm getting very tired of staring into that thing, Goodwin. Next time I'll make you eat it.”
“Drop the club, Billy. Please.”
O'Gorman lowered it but kept his grip. ”I don't think so. I also don't think you'll go to Sing Sing for shootin' a man who only has a stick.”
“Try to remember, Billy, that I don't like you very much.”
“You'll put that away if I drop this? No matter how rough it gets?”
“If I see no guns or knives.”
“Your word?”
“We've been through that.”
“Then done” O'Gorman shouted. He whipped the baseball bat at Tilden's feet and charged as Tilden leaped aside. A running kick glanced off Tilden's hip inches from his crotch, and a backhand fist caught him high on the temple. Tilden spun away, both hands up, and shot three quick jabs at O'Gorman's mouth, snapping his front teeth and sending him reeling against the bar.
O'Gorman shook his head. He brought a hand to his mouth and spat into it. Blood and bits of teeth. Next he stared hard at Tilden’s hands.
“What have you got there?” he demanded.
Tilden advanced on him, saying nothing.
“Those are weighted gloves.” He pointed, looking accusingly at Nat Goodwin. He backed along the bar away from Tilden. “You said a fair fight.”
Tilden cut him off. He faked another jab and dug a snarling right hand into O'Gorman's ribs. The bigger man gagged and buckled. Tilden straightened him and threw two hard rights at his eye, slicing open the brow. O'Gorman crashed to his knees. His hand found the rim of a heavy brass cuspidor, but Tilden kicked it away before he could grip it. Tilden seized O'Gorman's hair as his own had been seized and aimed a tattoo of chopping lefts at O'Gorman's other eye.
“Help me,” O'Gorman screamed, sinking to the floor. “Fifty dollars a man. Get him.”
Three men exchanged glances, shot a measuring look at John Flood, and reached for pool cues. At another table four men rose, one slipping on a pair of studded knucks. The two who had been playing nine-ball smiled.
“So everybody understands”—Nat Goodwin projected his best stage voice—“those two gentleman by the pool table are Paddy Ryan and Alf Greenfield. With John Flood there, you're looking at three of the best bare-knuckle heavyweights in the world. On the other hand, fifty dollars is fifty dollars. So don't back off on my account.”
Goodwin watched with satisfaction, and the three fighters with disappointment, as one pair of hands after another disappeared deep into trouser pockets. Tilden took Billy O'Gorman's hair once more and rolled him onto his back. He sat across the bar owner's chest, pinning his arms at his sides.
“I'm done,” O'Gorman pleaded. “No more, for God's sake.”
Tilden stripped off his wool knit gloves and laid them aside. He placed his thumbnails against the edges of O'Gorman's eyes and leaned forward, pressing.
“Oh, Jesus. No. No, Mr. Beckwith,” he bawled.
“Nothing personal,'' Tilden whispered. “Your employer wants a pair of eyes and I'm going to bring them to him.”
“Oh, please. My mother. My babies.”
“And you were hired to hurt a woman as well. What were you going to do to her, Mr. O'Gorman? Were you going to take one of her sweet eyes, sir? Or the tip of her nose?”
“Oh, I'd never. Oh, please God, believe me.” He was blubbering. “Jacko will tell you. Jacko was the one whose ear you done last night. Jacko will tell you I said no, not for all his millions would I put my hand to a lady.”
“Millions?” Tilden glanced up at Nat Goodwin, then back to O'Gorman. “Whose millions?”
“Mr. Gould's. Not for every dime of his would I have done that.”
“Who hired you? Was it Gould himself?”
“It was his man. Carling his name was. But he said he spoke for Gould and for the Clubber.”
Tilden pressed harder.
“Jesus. Jesus.”
“Would you like to keep your eyes, Mr. O'Gorman?”
liOh, yes. Yes.”
“Then pass a message for me to all your kind. From this moment on, you are to be that lady's protector. Should any harm come to her, even any fright, through whatever agency and even if you be innocent, I will come for you. I will claim your eyes and your hands as well. Do you doubt that, Mr. O'Gorman?”
“No,” he croaked. “It will be like you say. I swear it.”
Tilden felt John Flood's hand upon his shoulder. “It's enough, lad,” he said softly. “Let's take a walk.”
He lifted Tilden onto legs now drained of strength and, signaling for Nat Goodwin to watch their backs, led him toward the door. Behind him, he could hear Joe McArdle climbing over the bar and helping Billy O'Gorman to his feet. The smaller bartender rinsed a bar towel in clear water and handed it across. McArdle held the towel to O'Gorman's face.
“Beckwith,” the beaten man called.
Tilden looked over his shoulder. The saloonkeeper was blinking through his own blood at Tilden and at some of the barroom idlers who had witnessed his defeat.
“I'll want to try you again. Without them damned gloves.”
“You know where I live,” Tilden answered wearily.
“I'd have took your eye well enough, but I'd have left you the other. And I told you true about the woman.”
Tilden took another step toward the door but John Flood stopped him. “Don't do that, lad,” he whispered. “Hear the man out.”
“Beckwith?” O'Gorman assumed a fighting stance though he could barely make out which form was Tilden’ s. “I'll have you again right now.”
“Say you've had enough,” John Flood said softly. “Say he's the toughest man you ever faced. Say that out loud, lad.”
Tilden sighed. “Twice is enough, Mr. O'Gorman. I might not be so lucky a third time.”
“If it was only one eye you had your thumb against, I'd have spit in your face and said pluck and be damned’.”
”I know that, Billy.” Tilden nodded. “Two eyes made it different. A man who'd lose both his eyes for want of asking to keep them is a fool.”
“Damned true,” came Paddy Ryan's voice in agreement. O'Gorman could see others nodding.
“You caught me off balance.”
”I said I was lucky.”
”I ain't an altar boy. But I ain't the worst, either.”
“Worst or not, I'd hate to see anyone tougher. Good day, sir.”
Corbin had his eyes on the sidewalk as he climbed with Gwen up the narrow shoveled path on Maple Avenue. It was strange. He'd always understood that. That you should never take it all. Leave the other person some room. It was not a thing he remembered learning in his life so much as a thing he'd always known. But now he remembered. He could almost hear John Flood's voice, which would have been a whiskey tenor but for one punch too many at his throat. “Three hundred men. I've licked three hundred men in my time,’' he said,' ‘from mining camps, to farm and cow town saloons, to the prize rings of London. I've clubbed men to the dirt who became fast friends, men like Paddy and Alf, and Joe Goss and Tommy Chandler. Some were bummers, sure enough, who it gave me pleasure to cosh. But I never took all a man had, Tilden. I never shamed him. I never put a man where he had to piss on my grave before he could lift his own eyes. That O'Gorman's a bad one, but you left him proud. Ansel Carling's a bad one but you left him nothin', lad. Nothin’ but gettin' even.”
”I know.”
“It's goin' to be him or you. Or Margaret in the bargain.”
“You're certain that she's safe?”
“Goss and Chandler have been sittin' outside her house in a meat wagon all day. They seen her at the window a few times. Nat's arranged for two Pinkertons to take over the watch till the danger's past.”
“It won't be past. Not while Carling's alive.”
“Don't do it yourself, Tilden. Leave it to me. This city's full o' men who'll do the job for just what they find in Carling's pockets. You don't have the stuff for it.”
“You can s
ay that?” Tilden arched. “You just saw me about to tear out a man's eyes.”
“You wouldn't have done that either.”
“You cannot know that.”
The big man put an arm around Tilden's shoulder. “You're handy enough with your fists. And you're a hard man to keep down. But this just ain't your game. And as for O'Gorman, don't go tellin' yourself you were a match for him just because you put him down. Without Nat Goodwin at your back and me and my mates ready to tear the place apart, you would have been in a sack by now.”
“Thank you for such confidence.” Tilden tried to pull away.
“Right now, lad, you got hate in you sure enough,” John Flood told him. “But you got no schemin'. You got no sneak. Everything in your life you do head-on and face to face. That's well and good in the prize ring, but even there you got a referee and cornermen. Outside the prize ring, it's goin' to get you hurt one day, Tilden. Truly it will.”
Up ahead, past a snowcapped juniper hedge, Corbin caught his first glimpse of the house on Maple Avenue since last Friday morning. Just a moment before, he almost thought that the sidewalk he was on was outside a row of Sixth Avenue
dives, but now all that was washing away in the clean whiteness of the Greenwich landscape. Faces and names
were fading as well, some quicker than others. Nat Goodwin. Corbin knew that Goodwin was an actor, that he had
reddish hair, and that his friendship once meant a great deal to Tilden Beckwith, but he could remember little else. The
lumpy Irish face of big John Flood was more clear in his mind, and the face of Ansel Carling the most vivid of all.
He saw Carling's face as he left it that night at the Hoffman House bar. Badly battered. Even more so than…than
whom? There was another man in another bar. Another fight. It was leaving him. .
He tried to think what happened with Carling later on. Carling had tried to get even, tried to hurt Tilden and Margaret. Corbin was sure of that much. So Tilden almost surely would have gone looking for Carling again. But when Corbin tried to envision that second encounter he saw nothing at all. Maybe, Corbin thought, he never found him.
Try that. Try just looking. He'd go over to the Navarro and hammer at the door of Carling's apartment. Or he'd wait for him in the shadows outside. At that thought, Corbin could feel a small surge of annoyance coming from deep within himself, an emotion he knew was not entirely his own. No. Right. That wouldn't have been Tilden's style. What, then, would Tilden have done? Try to look at it sort of sideways, sort of from the corner of your eye the way you have to look at certain dim stars in order to see them at all. Corbin tried it. It did not do to look to his left because Gwen was there, walking at his side and slightly ahead. Try the right. Yes. There. It looks like a man over there. Corbin had to blink several times and settle his focus to keep the image from washing away like a piece of corneal lint.
It was a man in a black suit, a fat man, not Carling, and he was in an office someplace very high up above the street. See? Let it happen and it seems to come. The trick, like Gwen has been saying for two days, is not to deny it. Maybe Sturdevant is right, too. Maybe there isn't all that much difference between daydreaming and ancestral memory. Now, fill in the background. It is an office. There are old-fashioned oak desks all around, two of which are in glass enclosures. There are paintings on the wall. They all have telegraph poles in them. Western Union. This is the old Western Union Building down on Madison Square. That's more than a guess, isn't.it, Tilden? Especially considering that I've never been to Madison Square and the only thing I know about it is that's where the Flatiron Building is, except the Flatiron wasn't even built at the time this fat guy in the black suit is pointing toward the door behind you and saying get out before he has you thrown out.
Hacker.
Albert Hacker.
The one in the Hoffman House bar that night. He hit Tilden from behind with his cane.
And there's Tilden stepping over this low oak railing and walking toward Hacker, whose expression is changing very quickly, and now Tilden has him by his shirt and is forcing him back toward an open window. The fat man has his hands up in a pathetic attempt at defense, but Tilden easily spins him around and bends him so that his head and shoulders are sticking out the window five or six floors above the street and Hacker is screaming something about New Jersey. ·
‘That will do, Mr. Beckwith.”
A small, sad-faced man is in the room. A black beard, long and narrow.
”I want Ansel Carling.” Tilden turned his head while holding the terrified fat man in place. “Where is he?”
“Out of harm's way, Mr. Beckwith. As you and a score of pedestrians have just heard, he is in New Jersey.”
“At Taylor's Hotel, I suppose.”
Taylor's Hotel. Corbin knew of it. In Jersey City, right on the river. Less a hotel than a fortress these past twenty years. Guarded by twelve armed men and two six-pounders against occasional mobs of vengeance-minded investors who'd been skinned by this little man with the face of a disappointed poet.
“That would seem a prudent address,” Jay Gould answered, “all things considered.”
Two more men, both in derby hats, had appeared, each carrying a repeating rifle across his chest. They stood on either side of the man who owned the Western Union Company and several railroads, including most of the New York elevateds, and who had ruined Cyrus Field with the help of Ella Beckwith. Tilden released his hold on Albert Hacker.
“You cannot protect him forever, Mr. Gould,” Tilden said quietly. “Short of having your bravos there put a bullet in my head or try for both my eyes this time, I will get my hands around Carling's neck sooner or later.”
The bearded man blinked. “Am I to understand the reference to your eyes?’'
”I think you do.” Tilden took a step forward. “And I'll tell you what I told your man O'Gorman. If any harm comes to a certain woman merely to get at me ...”
Jay Gould held up a delicate hand. He touched the other to his brow as if to relieve the confusion that was evident
on his face. “Mr. Hacker,” he called softly, ”a word with you, please.”
The perspiring Hacker was already edging in Jay Gould's direction. He now broke into what would have been a run but for the furniture in his path. Tilden could do little else but watch, arms folded, as the two men conferred in whispers. Although nothing at all, as usual, could be read upon the melancholy countenance of Jay Gould, Albert Hacker was at once clearly explaining himself, denying an active role in these events, and proclaiming himself innocent of their consequence. Tilden saw one of the guards roll his eyes at the other. “Please wait in my office,” he heard Jay Gould say. And when Hacker hesitated, still furiously shaking his head with his fingers pointed to his breast, Gould glanced at the nearest guard, who then put a firm hand upon the fat man's shoulder. Albert Hacker left at once by the door Gould had entered.
“Will you accept my oath, sir”—Jay Gould looked across at Tilden—-“that I had no knowledge whatsoever of intended violence?”
“Of course.” Tilden nodded. “Why would you break a man's body when you can break his heart as you did with Cyrus Field.”
”A simple reply in the affirmative would have been sufficient, sir.”
“If it's true, then give me Carling.”
Gould waved off the suggestion. ”I will give him cause to redirect his energies. You will not be troubled further.”
“And you think that ends it.”
“Mr. Hacker informs me that you have a friend who has also been in peril of Mr. Carling's vengeance. Surely you would like to see that peril ended. Surely you would also wish our relationship to be restored to one in which there is some profit.”
Tilden was stunned. Here was a man so singularly directed toward the getting of money that he could not imagine why the threat of plucking out Margaret Barrie's eye should be unduly brooded upon. Here was a man who at worst authored and at least condoned the seduction of
Ella for the purpose of getting the records of Cyrus Field's stock transactions, and he seems to be saying what's past is past and let us not let it stand in our way if there is another dollar to be turned. Tilden could only shake his head in wonder.
“The policeman,” he said finally, “Inspector Williams. You did send him to me, did you not?”
”I suggested certain avenues of investigation to him.”
“To what end, sir?” Tilden's jaw tightened.
“To determine, sir, whether a man in my employ might possibly be caught up in a public scandal. That is the long and the short of it.”
“And to convey your feelings of friendship toward me.”
Gould almost smiled. ”I did ask him, if the occasion arose, to communicate my sympathy. And to make it clear, as I hope he did, that no other suspicions concerning your wife's unhappy end would be pursued unless—”
“Unless what, sir?”
“Let us regard that matter, too, as closed.”
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