The Killing Machine

by Ed Gorman

  Or was it? If my brother had been killed for the weapon, then hadn’t his killer taken the weapon with him when he left the barn that night? And if he had the weapon, why had he gone after Fairbain?

  What if David had been killed by one person and Fairbain attacked by another? That would mean that something else was going on here in addition to the hunt for the weapon.

  The place started getting noisy about half an hour later. I still had the remnants of my first coffee. The serving woman had twice asked me if I’d like more. I’d said no. They obviously wanted somebody in my chair who was planning on spending some money. I didn’t blame them.

  I was just getting up, ready to leave, when I saw Deputy Frank Clarion and another man walking toward me.

  Clarion did a lot of waving and nodding and smiling before he got within handshaking distance of me.

  “Evening, Ford. Mind if we take your table?”

  “It’s all yours.”

  “How’s the shoulder?” He nodded at my sling.

  “Feeling a little better, thanks.”

  He introduced his friend and then I left.

  The temperature outdoors was probably near fifty degrees. Bonfires burned in the streets. Jack-o’-lanterns grinned ghoulishly at me in front windows. Dogs and cats made their stealthy way through the night. I must have walked for better than half an hour. A few glimpses of families gathered together in parlors made me feel lonely and sorry for myself. Every once in a while I wondered if this was any sort of life, mine. The hell of it was I hadn’t known any other sort. Nothing to compare it to.

  By the time I got back to the business area, I was hungry.

  I walked into the café where I’d had breakfast. Jane Churchill was sitting at a table by herself. She wore a simple, blue dress that flattered her far more than her nurse’s uniform did. I walked over and said hello.

  Jane said, “You could always sit down, Noah.”

  I looked at the dinners scrawled on the blackboard.

  I ordered Swiss steak and a boiled potato and beets, and then started working on the coffee that had just been set before me.

  Jane said, “Are you getting used to your sling?”

  “Sort of.”

  “Are you in a lot of pain?”

  “I try not to notice it.”

  She smiled. “Brave?”

  “Hardly. Just practical. If you keep thinking about your pain, you have pain. If you keep busy, you don’t notice it much.”

  “I suppose that makes sense.” Then: “Oh, I found an old photograph of David this afternoon.”

  This time the smile was wide and deep. Fondness chased the tired look from her eyes; she looked young and sweet there in the soft lamplight of the café. “He was right out of a storybook. Nobody had ever romanced me the way he had. He was so courtly—and so much fun. That’s what I couldn’t resist about him. His charm and how he liked to play at things. A part of him never grew up and I loved that. Sometimes I wanted him to be more mature and responsible—sometimes I got pretty mad at him—but the good times made up for all that.”

  It made me jealous, hearing this kind of tribute. Not jealous of her or David in particular, but of any two people who could have a relationship like that. The even stranger thing was that eventually I’d suffocate in the setup she’d described. The fun would go gray; the nights would pall. But I’d never had a relationship like that and it was probably something I should try at least once before a bullet or time itself started making my tombstone.

  Then she said, “Fairbain was hurt tonight or something?”

  “Somebody tried to kill him.”

  “You said ‘tried.’”

  “He’s at your hospital. I’m wondering if it had anything to do with David and the gun.”

  “You think it doesn’t?”

  “What did David think of Fairbain?”

  “He didn’t like him. He didn’t like any of them, in fact. The gun merchants. They were like spoiled children. They were always threatening him.”

  “Threatening him with what?”

  “Oh, you know how men talk. Fairbain said that if David didn’t sell him the gun, he could always hire somebody to steal it from David. The others were always threatening to expose him to the government. Or to put the word out that the weapons David had didn’t really work the way David claimed. Or that maybe they’d figured out how the gun functioned and they could get somebody to make a copy of the weapon for them and save themselves a lot of money.”

  “David didn’t believe it?”

  “Of course not. I mean, it was obvious they knew that David had what they wanted, and that they were going to pay a lot of money for it. The only thing he was afraid of was that a gang would come in the middle of the night and steal it. He hid it somewhere. Even I didn’t know where it was.”

  “He didn’t trust you?”

  “He didn’t want to see me get tortured. So he didn’t tell me. Wherever it was, he’d set up a trap with nitroglycerin. If you went near the weapon, the nitro would explode and kill you. You had to know how to undo the trigger mechanism he’d set up. David told me he’d used a similar setup when he’d been in Cincinnati and that it blew up a man so badly that he was just pieces of meat after the blast. And the gun was fine.”

  “Then maybe it really wasn’t for the gun.”

  “What wasn’t?”

  I thought a long moment. My food had been brought to me and was setting there getting cold. “David’s murder.”

  “Why do you say that?”

  “I’m assuming that David told all his potential customers about the nitro.”

  “Of course. Fair warning.”

  “Then they’d know better than to try and steal it. Unless they hired a nitro man who knew how to disarm the nitro trigger.”

  We finished our coffee. I paid the bill. We went outside and walked.

  “I wish it stayed fall forever,” she said. “David always said that it was his favorite season, too. He said he used to hide up in the treehouse and scare you.”

  “Yeah. He loved Halloween when we were little. And he’d have lived in trees if my folks had let him.”

  “He must’ve been so cute when he was young. He made such a good-looking man.”

  “He was lucky to have an admirer like you.”

  “Much more than an admirer. I loved him, Noah.”

  This was the second time today I’d felt pretty isolated. I suppose David’s death had gotten to me more than I’d thought at first. Whatever our differences, I’d loved him, even if I hadn’t liked him much. He was blood. But even more was the sense of being alone. There was no way I could ever return home. For a few years after the war I’d thought that maybe David and I could find each other and become cautious friends again. But selling arms to anybody who had the money wasn’t exactly my idea of an honorable calling. He was still the old cynical David. Fun counted for more than anything else. And if it was reckless fun, fun that even destroyed lives, he didn’t care.

  I glanced at Jane several times as we walked along in the starlight, an occasional wagon or rider passing us by. She was making me recall how jealous I’d been of David growing up. I’d always been the good one. Took school seriously, never got into any really bad trouble, tried to show my folks how appreciative I was of all they’d given me, even though the books I’d been reading had convinced me that slavery was wrong in every respect—meaning that my father’s plantation didn’t have any right to exist, that the entire South had been established on the backs of slaves and was therefore corrupt. Not everybody in it, of course. Rich whites exploited and used poor whites to their own ends. David and I used to argue about this to the point of bloody noses and even a busted nose—his. He was handsomer, cleverer, slicker, but I was tougher. The temper I had couldn’t be controlled past a certain point, as David had found out many times.

  The mystery to me was that all the girls who tried so hard to be respectable—the daughters of other plantations—seemed drawn to David
the more he got into trouble. He once had to spend a night in jail for stealing a buckboard—and some of the prettiest girls in the county were there to greet him when my father’s lawyer got him released on bail.

  Same way with Jane. She was the good woman every man wanted—quiet, proper, intelligent, dutiful—and yet she’d fallen in love with a man in one of the dirtiest callings you could be in. I didn’t blame David for taking up with her. I just blamed her for not seeing that sooner rather than later he’d go on to the next one.

  “Well,” she said, “here’s my little house.”

  Maybe it was the moonlight. Maybe it was the aromas of the autumn night. Maybe it was just her pretty face. Whatever it was, the house, which was really just a cottage, seemed like something out of a painting, with its thatched roof and mullioned windows. A swift, high creek ran behind it, starlit birch trees like silver sentries along the edge of the water. There was even a sweet, plump mama raccoon crouched in the long grass with her young ones. Mama’s eyes glistened and gleamed the way only a raccoon’s can.

  “This is quite a place,” I said.

  “Really? Everybody tells me how small it is.”

  There was even smoke twisting up from the chimney.

  “If you’re here long enough, I’ll make dinner for you some night.”

  “I’d appreciate that.”

  She glanced at the door with a clear longing in her eyes. “Even David consented to have dinner here a few times. He didn’t like the place very much. I think he thought it was a bit ‘common.’ He always said that was the hardest adjustment your folks had to make—that they’d had to sell off most of the plantation and live like they were ‘common.’”

  I laughed. “That sounds like David. My folks have been reduced to having only one palatial estate, rather than two, and instead of slavery they now pay their colored servants ten cents a day so nobody can confuse them with slaves. I’m sure my father thinks even that’s too much. That was the only real problem we ever had—the war. My brother fought for the South. My only feeling was that I just wanted to find some other solution than all the killing that went on.”

  Whatever melancholy had been in her voice and eyes went hard when I talked about the war. Now, voice and eyes were even tighter, harder. “David said that you were both spies and assassins.”

  “It was war. There were some people we had to kill to win. That’s how the South felt about it and that’s how we felt about it. I used to have a boss who was a Pinkerton. He always said, ‘What you have to remember, son, is that this is nothin’ personal. You’re killin’ them just because it’s your job.’ I used to think he was crazy, but by the end of the war I figured he was right.”

  I knew I’d made a mistake even before I’d finished speaking. Her eyes filled with tears and a tiny sob caught in her throat.

  “I wish you hadn’t told me that,” she said, pulling away from me. “‘Nothing personal.’ I don’t like to think of either you or David that way.”

  I watched until she was inside and lamplight bloomed in the window. Then I headed back to town, where the two men hiding in the alley found me and tried to beat my head in without quite doing me the service of killing me.

  Chapter 10

  They knew what they were doing.

  They had apparently followed me for some time as I walked Jane to her place. They gambled that I would take the same route home, just reversed. Therefore, it made sense for them to wait in the alley. Therefore, it made sense for them to wear dark kerchiefs over their faces and low-riding wide-brimmed hats that would shadow even their eyes. Therefore, it made sense for them to lunge at me before I’d even crossed the mouth of the alley.

  I had no time to react, especially not with my arm in a sling. I heard them and started to turn backward to see what they were doing—the scraping sound on the sandy alley soil told me that they were basically running for me, so instinctively I knew I was being assaulted—but by the time I was able to get my first glimpse of them one kicked me straight in the groin and the other one grabbed me around the neck with such force that I was in perfect position for the ball-kicker to crack his Colt across my head two or three times and send me off into the realm of cold darkness.

  They’d blindfolded me. They’d lashed me to a straight-backed chair. They’d dumped several gallons of water on me. I was shivering.

  My wound hurt, my groin hurt, my head hurt. I wasn’t so much afraid as I was mad—mad at them for obvious reasons, but also mad at myself. Maybe I couldn’t have stopped them from grabbing me, but I should have been a lot more aware of my circumstances. I’d been thinking about Jane, which I shouldn’t have been doing in the first place.

  “Give him some more water.”

  Man’s voice. Raspy with tobacco and whiskey.

  Clank of a bucket handle. Grunt from the man lifting it.

  Cold angry splash of water all over my head and most of my torso.

  The splasher said: “Better be careful we don’t drown him.”

  Bossman: “We want him good and cold. We used to do this to them stinkin’ Rebs all the time. They’d get so cold they’d tell you anything you want to hear.”

  Splasher (walking right up to my face): “Where’s the fuckin’ gun, you asshole? The one your brother had.” Giggling. To Bossman: “Lookit that sumbitch shake.”

  Bossman walking across the wooden floor, closer to me.

  Where was I? Somewhere near the railroad yard. I could hear cars being switched to sidings in the long, dark, lonely, prairie night. Men shouting back and forth to each other; men at work. Probably somewhere near the big barn the railroad used for repairs.

  Bossman: “Where’s the gun?”

  “I don’t know.” I had to clear my voice and repeat myself. “I don’t know. How about shutting the window?”

  “Sure,” Splasher said. “And then how about a nice steak and then a nice big farm gal for some pussy?”

  Bossman: “The window’s open to keep you nice and chilly, Ford. You should see yourself. You’re shakin’ all over.”

  Splasher put his face up to mine again. “Where’s the fuckin’ gun, you asshole?” Good ol’ Splash. He was obviously the bright one of the two.

  Bossman: “Don’t mind him. He’s getting cold, too. Just wants to close that window and get warm, same as you and me. Go get some more water from the creek.”

  Splasher: “Shit, I just got some.”

  Bossman: “You don’t want to be here all night, do you? Now hurry up.”

  Splasher muttered under his breath and picked up the clanking bucket and then went out, slamming the door.

  Mention of the creek fixed the location for sure. Down behind the railroad barn ran a narrow creek that was deep enough for the workers to dive into when the summer heat got too much at night.

  Bossman: “I was fooling you. We’re cold as hell, too. We’ll all end up with pneumonia, we’re not careful.”

  “I don’t know where the gun is.”

  “He was your brother.”

  “I still don’t know where it is. The last time I saw it, he was demonstrating it to the four men who were interested in buying it. No doubt one of them is probably paying you to work me over like this.”

  It’s hard to convey what my voice sounded like. My teeth were literally chattering and my voice was wavering up and down so raggedly that not all of the words came out clear.

  “You like a smoke, Ford?”

  “Is that a trick question? Of course I’d like a smoke.”

  “I’m afraid your makings are pretty soaked. But how about I give you one of mine? One of those prerolled smokes.”

  “I’ll take it.”

  And I did. I was shaking so hard the cigarette fell out of my mouth before he got it lighted. Then I got the cigarette so soaked from hair dripping water that he had to pitch it and give me another one. And then I finally started taking sweet, pure smoke into my lungs.

  “Where the hell’s that water at, anyway?”

 
; The gunshot. One of them. Loud, lone. A muffled shout.

  “What the hell was that?” Bossman said.

  Walked to the door. Door creaking open.

  “Where the hell is he?” Bossman, turning back to me: “You don’t try nothin’ funny.”

  “What could I try?” I shivered, speaking around my cigarette.

  He went outdoors. Footsteps on dry ground. Retreating. Searching.

  I was curious, too, of course. Send a man out for a bucket of water to a nearby creek, how long could it take him? Then a gunshot. What was going on?

  I smoked the cigarette down to the nub. The flame was about to burn my lips. I finally had to spit it out. With my arms tied tight to my torso, I didn’t have a hand to use. The arm in the sling was numb by now. They’d cinched the rope around me too tight. Not that this would have broken their hearts. They’d figure the extra pain would just get me to tell them about the gun. You read in books and stories how men, and sometimes women, stand up to hours of torture. I’m always chary of such claims. They know how to break you. It’s trial and error; it’s duration. Either they find the precise method to break you or they keep trying different methods until you snap from sheer exhaustion. I’m sure there are men and women who’ve stood up to whatever torture was imposed on them. But I doubt there are many of them.

  Another gunshot. No muffled scream this time. Wind seemed to hide what sounded vaguely like a heavy weight slamming against the ground.

  Then just wind. Showing off a little, I guess. Rattling trees, spraying sandy soil against the cabin I was in, whipping up the prelude to a real rainstorm—little drops of water blown against my already wet face.

  No human sounds. No animal sounds. The wind hiding the noises of the railroad barn.

  Becoming aware again of how cold I was. Sneezing. My throat already burning. I’d always had tonsil trouble.

  Fuckers. You know how you get when you’re getting sick. At least I do. Irrational rage. A reasonable amount of pain, I can handle. But not being sick. I didn’t care so much now that they’d beaten me, kidnapped me, tied me up, demanded to know where the gun was. I wanted to get my hands on them and beat them to death—literally, at this point in my rage—because in addition to the gunshot wound and the sling holding me down, I would now have a bad cold that was bound to slow me down. Assuming they didn’t kill me.