Between the Dark and the Daylight

by Ed Gorman

  Old Red, you’ll recall (assuming you’ve read my book by now and are merely in the process of securing the huge sums of money required to properly publicize its publication), had it in his head that he’d make a top-rail sleuth. He’d picked up this seemingly peculiar notion from the tales of the late, great Sherlock Holmes that have been appearing of late in the pages of one of your competitors. I say seemingly peculiar because, as it turns out, Gustav really does have a natural talent for detectiving … even if his attempts to prove it tend to end in disaster.

  Come to think of it, they can begin disastrously, too — which was almost the case here.

  When not sniffing around after an actual mystery, you see, Old Red likes to practice his craft on strangers, sizing them up for clues he can use to piece together the particulars of their lives. “Just got throwed out by his wife,” he might say to me, nodding at a glum-looking gent with rouge on his cheek and a wrinkled shirttail hanging from his carpetbag. Or “Best lock up the silver when she’s in to clean” as we pass a shifty-eyed woman in a maid’s uniform — just before she veers off into a pawnshop, a muffled, metallic clinking coming from the bundle tucked under one arm.

  It was with this pastime in mind that Gustav and I secured for ourselves a corner table in the barroom of the Cowboy’s Rest the other day. My brother would sharpen his wits with observation and deducification, I would dull mine with steam beer, and thus we might wile away a pleasant afternoon.

  And pleasant it was, too … right up to the moment someone got it in his head to kill us.

  The someone in question was a fellow of the type the Frisco papers have taken to calling a “hoodlum” — a young, oily-haired hooligan wearing an oversized frock coat, a red velvet vest, a rakishly tilted felt hat, and a plain old-fashioned sneer. He’d been seated with a similarly slicked-up and scowly compadre a few tables over, and their hissy whispers and low, dark laughter had about them a most definitive air of skullduggery. This, of course, attracted my brother’s undivided attention … so undivided, in fact, it eventually drew some attention itself.

  “What’s your problem, m__________?” one of the hoodlums snarled, addressing my brother with a term your typesetters would no doubt refuse to put in print.

  “I ain’t got no problem,” Gustav replied.

  “You sure as h-do.”

  The hood rose from his chair. He probably topped out at a mere five foot four … but when he whipped out his six-inch knife he may as well have been Goliath.

  “Why you been staring at us, a____”

  “Look, friend,” I cut in, “I can’t speak for the a____here, but I’m starin’ at one heck of a big pigsticker. And frankly, I’d rather I wasn’t. So why not put it away and let me buy you a beer, huh?”

  “Shut up, c______. I was talking to him. “The young thug took a step toward our table, his glare locked on my brother. “Why the eyeballing? You some kind of g______copper?”

  “Nope,” Old Red said … and said no more. My brother may be a mighty slick thinker, but when it comes to talking there are times he’s about as slick as flypaper. Not that it really mattered just then.

  As the hood took another step toward us, his friend stood to join him. This second fellow was bigger than his buddy, and a gold band gleamed across one of his curled fists — brass knuckles. Maybe not quite so deadly as a knife, yet still a good sight more dangerous than the bare skin-and-bone knuckles we had to defend ourselves with.

  Obviously, slick wasn’t going to get us spit with these hombres. The only thing they’d understand was rough. So that’s what I aimed to give them.

  “All right, you stupid q______-b______z______s,” I growled, coming to my feet. “You asked for it.”

  The hoodlums froze, looking confused. Apparently, they’d never been called q______-b______z______s before.

  I picked up my chair.

  “Y’all might wanna clear out,” I said to the only other patrons in the place — a pair of pea-coated sailors who sat leering at our little standoff as if we were the cancan dancers at one of the melodeons up the street. “There’s gonna be an awful lotta wood and brain and such flyin’ around here in a second.”

  The sailors scooted their seats back a few feet.

  “Thank you.” I pivoted and swung the chair up over my head, facing the hoodlums like a baseball batter awaiting the first pitch. “I do like to have me a little extra elbow room when I’m about to serve up a whuppin’.”

  “Put down the chair, Brother.”

  I peeked back at Old Red. Not only was he still in his chair, he sat so motionless he could have been mistaken for a piece of furniture himself.

  “For a feller who prides himself on his powers of observation, you seem to be missin’ something a tad obvious,” I said. “Like, for instance, that those ain’t fresh-picked posies them b______s got in their hands.”

  “Oh, I ain’t worried about them two,” my brother said.

  The smaller of the two hoodlums spat out a cackle. “You oughta be, f______.”

  “Nope. Y’all ain’t gonna lay a hand on us.” Gustav jerked his head to the left. “It’s that scattergun makes me nervous.”

  “Scattergun?”

  I craned my head around to get a better look over my shoulder.

  There was our landlady, one “Cowboy Mag,” standing behind the bar with a sawed-off shotgun in her hands.

  “It might be pointed at you two, but still …” Old Red went on, talking to the hoods. “Them things got quite a spray to ‘em. Never know who’s gonna pick up a pellet when the buckshot flies.”

  “Ma’am,” I said with a polite nod to Mag, and I set my chair gently on the floor and took a seat.

  “Ha!” the thug with the blade barked without bothering to turn for a look himself. “Like I’m gonna fall for that!”

  “Listen up, you p______v______s!” Mag boomed, and just in case she wasn’t speaking loud enough, she let her shotgun get in a word, too — by thumbing back the hammers. “No h______ f______s gonna l______with my j______-y customers in my w______place. So you’d better t______s______your v______r______s outta here … and you can go l______your u______g______s up your d______m______s while you’re at it!”

  Now, we drovers might not be the worldliest fellows, but when it comes to cursing we’re as learned as any man jack on this earth.

  “Q__-b______z______s” not something you’ll pick up on any old street corner, you know.

  For sheer width and breadth of filth, though, Cowboy Mag had me beat by a country mile. To be truthful, I didn’t understand half of what the woman had just said.

  Her intentions were clear enough, though: If those hoods didn’t skedaddle, they’d soon find their “d m s” filled with lead.

  The hoods skedaddled — pronto.

  “G______,” Mag chuckled as she put her double-barreled bouncer back beneath the bar. “That’ll teach those t______ h______s to p______around in my b______m______.”

  (As I assume you have by now fully absorbed the flavor of conversation in the Coast, I won’t bother with any more______ s. Just insert your own d______or s______or some such between every other word and you’ll be getting the talk pretty much as Gustav and I heard it.)

  “Thanks kindly for the help,” I said.

  Mag leaned forward onto the bar. She was an oversized woman in body as well as spirit, and for a moment there it looked like her bosom was about to spill from her low-cut dress like twin pumpkins from a cornucopia.

  “If I thought you two were coppers, it’s you I would’ve run off,” she said. “Cowboys, ain’t you?”

  “Ma’am,” I said, “you are a regular Sherlock Holmes.”

  Old Red rolled his eyes … beneath his big white Boss of the Plains. We may have been spitting distance from the Pacific, yet he still insisted on dressing like we were moving cattle up the Chisholm Trail. And while I’d tried to citify myself with a cheap suit and a new bowler, I knew I couldn’t pass for a slicker just yet — not with my Plains drawl an
d sun-darkened skin.

  “Got a soft spot for punchers, do you?” I said to Mag.

  “Ol’ Mag’s nothing but soft spots!” she roared back, giving her shoulders a shake that set her bosom to quivering like we were in the midst of a California earthquake. “But yeah … they don’t call me “Cowboy Mag” cuz I’m crazy about tailors. Used to have hands coming through the Coast all the time, bringing cattle in from Monterey and Sonoma. Not so much anymore. Which is why I’m so pleased to have a couple real buckaroos like yourselves around for a while. So … what brings you thisaway, anyhow?”

  “Bad luck, mostly,” I said, and I offered up a heavily expurgated version of our woes (the full tale being offered exclusively to Smythe & Associates … for the moment).

  “So now you’re broke, huh?” Mag said when I was done.

  As “Would we be stayin’ in this dump if we weren’t?” struck me as more than a trifle rude, I offered up a simple “Yup” instead.

  “Well, I can help you with that. Cowboys can always get work on the docks, you know. You’re handy with knots and ain’t afraid to work up a little sweat. Tell you what — ”

  Mag produced a stubby pencil from somewhere in her voluminous gray-black hair and began scribbling across the front page of that day’s Morning Call.

  “Just say Cowboy Mag sent you.”

  She ripped off a strip of paper and held it out to me. On it, I saw once I’d walked up to take it, were scrawled these words:

  NO. 35 PACIFIC STREET — ASK FOR JOHNNY

  “Feel like tryin’ your luck as a deckhand?” I said to Old Red.

  My brother shrugged. “I reckon I don’t feel like starvin’.”

  I finished my beer with a gulp, Gustav took two to polish off his, and off we went.

  Outside, the sky above was clear and blue … and the street below it crowded and befouled. Our little corner of the Coast was so jam-packed with dens of sin, folks had dubbed it the “Devil’s Acre,” and certainly this day it had every appearance of being one of Hell’s more swarming quarters. Great herds of drunken men staggered from saloon to dance hall, dance hall to brothel, and then brothel back to saloon to begin the cycle anew. They paused only to piss, puke, or pass out, and no matter which it was they were likely relieved of their wallets in the process. For once, it was almost an advantage being flat busted, as the pickpockets had little to pick from ours but lint.

  It took us nearly a quarter-hour to slog through this quagmire of corruption to No. 35 Pacific Street, and in that time we laid eyes on more decadence and depravity than most Christians see in a lifetime. I wasn’t sure exactly what to expect at journey’s end — a union hall or shipping office, maybe. So when it turned out to be yet another dive drinkery, I was surprised less by this discovery than by my own naïveté. The natives wouldn’t have stood for an actual place of work in the Barbary Coast. Why, it would be an affront to community standards.

  “After you,” I said to Old Red … which meant I was kept waiting on the sidewalk a spell, for my brother made no move to go inside. He just stood there staring at the entrance to that watering hole.

  “It’s called a ‘door,’” I explained helpfully. “Folks put ‘em in the sides of buildings so you don’t have to climb down the chimney to get inside. Wanna give it a try?”

  Gustav nodded at the saloon. It was a deadfall — an unlicensed groggery of the sort that so skimps on pretense it doesn’t even bother having a name. You know it’s a place for drinking simply because a steady stream of men stumble in drunk and stumble out drunker.

  “Kinda seedy, ain’t it?” Old Red said.

  “As a watermelon. But that’d be about right for fellers workin’ the piers, wouldn’t it?”

  “Them and certain others.”

  “You got a certain ‘certain others’ in mind?”

  My brother shook his head. “Not certain certain, no.”

  “What is it, then? Your Holmesifyin’ givin’ you pause somehow?”

  “Nope. Just my gut.” Old Red turned to spit in the street, then squinted again at the door to the deadfall. “You know how there’s certain roadhouses, certain ranches you hear whispers about. The ones the smart fellers ride around.”

  “Sure.”

  “Well …”

  Gustav spat again — then reached up and tugged my bowler down hard over my ears.

  “Hey!” I protested.

  My brother leaned first to the right, then to the left, examining the back of my head.

  “Naw, that won’t do at all. Them little derbies ain’t got enough brim to ‘em.”

  “What in the world are you babblin’ about?”

  Old Red tilted my hat back so it rode up high on my forehead.

  “Your hair,” he said. “I’d try to hide mine, but that wouldn’t do us no good with my moustache to give us away.”

  He scowled at me a moment, then nodded gruffly.

  “All right. I reckon that just might work. It’s a good thing we don’t look much alike, aside from bein’ redheads.”

  “Yeah, I thank the good Lord for it every day. Now you wanna tell me what you’re playin’ mad hatter for? Why’s it so important to cover up my hair?”

  “Cuz we ain’t goin’ into that there dive together.”

  “We ain’t?”

  “No, we ain’t. I’ll go in first and do me a little scout before askin’ for ‘Johnny,’ whoever he is. Then you mosey in a little later and make like we don’t know each other. If everything looks to be on the up and up, I’ll take off my hat, and you can just come on over and introduce yourself But up till then, I want you hangin’ back … just in case.”

  “Just in case what? Ain’t nothin’ gonna happen to us in a saloon in the middle of the day.”

  Gustav turned toward the deadfall again.

  “We’ll see what kinda day it is,” he said grimly. Then he went inside.

  I passed the next few minutes watching the half-clothed strumpets across the street try to entice passersby into their cathouse “cribs” for a little “fun.” I’m not opposed to fun on general principle — far from it — but personally I don’t consider a raging case of crabs to be a barrel of laughs. I was not tempted.

  In any event, I reckoned Old Red didn’t need much time for his reconnoiter: From the outside, at least, that saloon looked about as roomy as your average outhouse. You could probably scout the place out without so much as turning your head.

  So soon enough, I was striding inside … and quickly realizing I’d been only half right. Sure, the place was small, with only five or six scattered tables, a bar barely the length of a couple coffins, and a ceiling so low it’d put splinters in my lid if I walked with too much spring in my step. But it was dark and noisy in there, too, and I needed a moment to get my bearings before I could even begin to look for my brother.

  If ever there was a tavern intended exclusively for the use of bats and hoot owls, this was it, for it was hard to believe anyone else could be expected to navigate in such a gloom. I stumbled to the bar and ordered a beer from a man I could barely see, and when he plonked it down a moment later I found it more by sound than sight. My eyes adjusted to the murk as I worked on my beer, though, and after a few sips I spied Old Red. He was at the far end of the bar, on the other side of a dark-suited man so broad, squat, and round he could’ve passed for a pickle barrel. I assumed this was “Johnny,” as he and Gustav were hunched over the bar together, sipping drinks and talking in low voices.

  My brother’s Boss of the Plains was still perched atop his head. I nursed my beer and did my darnedest to eavesdrop. Unfortunately, the boisterous har-har-harring of the other patrons — most of them foreign sailors, local drunks, or the hoodlums who made both their prey — drowned out whatever it was Old Red and Johnny were whispering.

  After I’d been there maybe five minutes, tippling with the dainty sips of a society dame at a tea party, the bartender stopped across from me and shook a dirty finger at my glass. “You drinkin’ that or wait
in’ for it to evaporate?” I scooped up my beer, poured it down my throat, and slapped a nickel on the bar. “Another, please.”

  The barkeep filled my glass from a froth-topped pitcher that was almost — almost — as grimy as he was himself.

  “This is a bar,” he snarled, putting the pitcher down hard. “You just want something to lean against, go find yourself a streetlamp.” I nodded and took a healthy gulp of my fresh beer. (Well, freshly poured, anyhow. It tasted so stale I wouldn’t have been surprised to learn it had come to America aboard the Mayflower.) As the bartender stalked away, I sneaked a peek to my right, hoping I hadn’t drawn too much attention to myself by not behaving like a boozy ass. Johnny was turned away from me, toward Gustav, his wide back blocking my view. As for my brother, all I could see of him was his hat. He was still wearing it, that much I could tell, but the angle of it seemed odd. It was tilted forward, the brim almost in a straight line up and down, as though Old Red was hunched over the bar to read something — which I knew couldn’t be the case, since he reads about as well as a catfish plays poker.

  I was just about to lean back and try for a better look when the barkeep barked out, “Keys! Keys!”

  I followed his gaze to a scratched-up old piano at the back of the room. A gangly, unshaven old-timer was drooping on a stool beside it, head on chest, eyes closed.

  “Wake up, Keys!” the bartender roared. “Time to earn your keep!” “Yeah, come on!” someone shouted. “Play us a tune, Keys!” “How about ‘Auld Lang Syne’?” someone else called out. Most of the customers roared with laughter. The rest — like me — watched with wary half-smiles as Keys blinked himself wearily awake and began dragging his stool around to the front of the piano. This was apparently part of some comical custom of the place, but the guffaws had a cruel edge to them, like the cheers at a bullfight.