Vendetta Trail

by Robert Vaughan

Before going to the depot, Rachel stopped by the riverboat terminal to study the schedules of all the riverboats going north. It was just as she thought. It would be quite easy for her to overtake the Delta Mist. That would allow her to join Mason Hawke. He wasn’t expecting her, of course, but she was sure that he would help her…for old times’ sake—if for no other reason.

  “One hundred dollars?” the railroad ticket agent asked in surprise. He studied the bill Rachel had given him.

  “Yes, is there anything wrong? I was assured by the bank that this is a federal note and would be legal tender anywhere.”

  “No, there’s nothing wrong. It is just that I don’t see very many bills this large.”

  “I am going to be doing some traveling,” Rachel said. “And I thought it might be easier to have my money converted into a few large bills.”

  “Very well, a ticket to Memphis,” the ticket agent said. He picked up a lead ink stamp and began stamping on the tickets. Then he handed the tickets to Rachel.

  “Thank you.”

  “That’ll be nine dollars,” the ticket agent said. “You’ll change trains in Jackson, Mississippi. I’ll get a porter for your luggage.”

  “That’s all right.”

  “It’s no problem, madam. It’s what they are here for.”

  “I…uh…don’t have any luggage,” Rachel admitted.

  The ticket agent looked surprised. “You have no luggage?”

  “No, I, uh, will be buying all new things when I get to Memphis.”

  The ticket agent looked at her as if he didn’t believe her. Then he saw the blood on her dress.

  Rachel saw that he was looking at the blood and, self-consciously, she put her hand over it.

  “Are you all right, miss?”

  Rachel laughed, nervously. “I had a nosebleed.”

  The blood was on her skirt.

  “A nosebleed?”

  “Yes,” Rachel said pointedly. “It happens frequently. Do you know if the train is on time?” she asked, changing the subject.

  “As far as I know, it is on time.”

  “Thank you.”

  Chapter 18

  “YOU’VE GOT SOME NERVE COMING BACK HERE,” Clarisse said to Vizzini when he and Tangeleno showed up at the House of the Evening Star. “Well, you are wasting your time. Evangeline doesn’t want to see you anymore.”

  “I don’t care anything about that bitch,” Vizzini said. “Where is Rachel?”

  “Rachel? If Evangeline won’t see you, what makes you think that Rachel will? Anyway, Rachel has an engagement this evening.”

  “Get her,” Vizzini said in a menacing voice.

  “I can’t get her. I told you, she isn’t here. She is keeping an appointment elsewhere tonight.”

  “Where is her room?” Tangeleno said.

  “It’s upstairs.”

  “All the whores’ rooms are upstairs,” Tangeleno said, gruffly. “Which room is hers?”

  “It’s the first room on the right when you reach the top of the stairs, but I told you…”

  Even as Clarisse was talking to them, Tangeleno and Vizzini pushed by her and started up the stairs, doing it so quickly that they forced a customer who was coming downstairs into the wall.

  “Hey, who do you think…” the customer started to say, but Vizzini turned around quickly with a gun in his hand.

  “You have something to say?” Vizzini asked.

  “No no,” the man replied quickly. “I don’t have anything to say.”

  “I didn’t think so.”

  When they reached Rachel’s room, Tangeleno tried the door, but it was locked. Stepping back from the door, he kicked it hard, right beside the doorknob. The door popped open.

  “Hey! What’s going on out there?” a man’s voice shouted from inside one of the rooms.

  “Don’t you worry about it,” Vizzini said. Then he shouted down the hall for everyone to hear. “You men just stay in bed with your whores. If anybody sticks their head out into the hall, I’m going to blow it off!”

  By now Clarisse was at the top of the stairs, having followed the two of them up.

  “Why did you do that? I told you she wasn’t here,” Clarisse said angrily. She pointed to the door. “Somebody is going to have to pay for that door.”

  Tangeleno pulled some money from his pocket and handed it to Clarisse. “Will this cover it?” he asked.

  Clarisse looked at the money. There were several twenty-dollar bills.

  “Yes,” she said. “Yes, I believe this will cover it.”

  “Light the lantern,” Tangeleno said. “Let’s have a look around.”

  Vizzini lit the lantern that sat on the dresser in Rachel’s room.

  “What is all this about?” Clarisse asked. “What are you doing in Rachel’s room? What are you looking for?”

  “What is Rachel’s last name?” Tangeleno asked.

  “I don’t know.”

  “What do you mean you don’t know? She works here, doesn’t she? Isn’t she one of your girls? How long has she been here?”

  “Not very long,” Clarisse said. She was growing more cautious and circumspect with her answers now, because she didn’t know what all this was about.

  “I know she’s been here over a year,” Vizzini said as he looked through things on her dresser. “Because I have been seeing her here for that long.”

  “She’s been here for over a year and you don’t know her last name?” Tangeleno asked.

  “I never ask any of my girls for their last name,” Clarisse replied. “Most of them only stay for a short while, then they go on to other lives. When they do that, they don’t like for their past to catch up with them.”

  “Don Tangeleno, look at this,” Vizzini said, taking a packet of letters from a little rosewood box. He handed the packet of letters to Tangeleno.

  “What are you doing? Those are Rachel’s private letters!” Clarisse said, reaching for them. “You have no right to look at…”

  Clarisse’s proetest was cut off when Tangeleno brought the back of his hand across her cheek, driving her back onto Rachel’s bed. Clarisse sat down, hard, and held her hand to a cheek that was already beginning to show a bruise.

  “Who is Louise Smalley?” Tangeleno asked as he looked at the letters.

  Clarisse didn’t answer. Instead, she sat on the edge of the bed, staring at the two men with eyes that showed not only her anger but were now welling with tears.

  Tangeleno drew his hand back as if ready to hit her again. “I asked you a question,” he said. “Who is Louise?”

  “Louise used to work here,” Clarisse answered in a frightened voice. “She was Rachel’s friend.”

  Tangeleno looked through all the letters. “What is this? No letters from her family?”

  “The only family Rachel has is Fancy.”

  “Fancy?” Vizzini asked. “What do you mean, she is the only family?”

  “Fancy is Rachel’s sister. But Fancy isn’t here either.”

  “What are you trying to tell me?” Vizzini asked. “Fancy is colored.”

  “She is only half-colored,” Clarisse said. “She and Rachel shared the same father.”

  Vizzini laughed out loud. “Well, I’ll be damned. So her daddy liked the ladies who had a touch of the brush, did he?”

  “Fancy is her only blood relative, but I like to think that we are all her family here. And if she is in trouble, any one of us would do whatever we can to help her.”

  “Anyone would do anything to help her?” Tangeleno asked. He held up the letters. “How about this woman? Do you think she would also do anything to help Rachel?”

  “Yes, of course she would. Louise is married now, but I do believe she would help if she were needed. We are all very close here. Now please tell me what this is all about.”

  “Nothing,” Tangeleno said, putting the letter with the latest date into his pocket. “Nothing at all. I’m sorry we bothered you. Come on, Vizzini. Let’s go.”

 
“Where are we going?” Vizzini asked.

  “If you were going to go to Kansas, how would you go?”

  “By train.”

  “Where do you find trains?”

  Vizzini smiled. “At the railroad station,” he said.

  Chapter 19

  THE TICKET AGENT LOOKED UP WITH SOME CURIOSITY and a little concern as the two approached his window.

  “Yes, gentlemen, what can I do for you?” he asked.

  “We’re looking for a woman,” Vizzini replied. “We think that she may have bought a ticket from you.”

  “A lot of ladies buy railroad tickets.”

  “We are only interested in one, and she would have bought it earlier this evening. We want to know when she left and where she is going.”

  “I’m sorry, but unless you are with the police, I don’t think I could answer such a question.”

  “Mister, if you know what is good for you, you will…” Vizzini started, but Tangeleno held up his hand, interrupting him in midsentence.

  “You might say we are working with the police,” Tangeleno said.

  “Do you have some sort of identification?” the ticket agent asked.

  “Yes, as a matter of fact, we do,” Tangeleno replied, handing the ticket agent a twenty-dollar bill.

  The agent took the twenty-dollar bill, examined it for a moment to make certain that it was legitimate, then folded it and put it away. He smiled at Tangeleno and Vizzini. “Yes,” he said. “I think this is all the identification I will need. But let’s step away from the ticket window, shall we?”

  “Why?”

  “One can’t be too careful,” the ticket agent said as he walked down to the far end of the counter. Tangeleno and Vizzini walked with him, keeping the counter between them.

  “I must say that, earlier tonight, there was a woman who bought a ticket from me under most curious conditions. She was a very pretty young woman, about five feet four inches tall.”

  “That sounds like half the women in New Orleans,” Vizzini said. “What makes you remember this one?”

  “Three things. First, she paid for her ticket with a one hundred dollar bill. And second, she had no luggage.”

  “You said three things,” Vizzini said.

  “Oh yes. The third thing is: She had blood on her dress. She said it was from a nosebleed, but I didn’t believe her.”

  “What color was the dress?”

  “I believe it was yellow,” the agent answered.

  “Ticket agent, I would like a railroad ticket please,” a man called from the window.

  “Excuse me for a moment,” the ticket agent said. The ticket agent walked back down to the window, far enough away to be out of earshot of Tangeleno and Vizzini.

  “That’s Rachel,” Vizzini said. “It has to be. She was wearing a yellow dress, and I don’t see how she could not have gotten blood on it.”

  “But the agent said she paid for her ticket with a one hundred dollar bill. Where did she get such money?”

  “Maybe De Luca paid her to come to his party,” Vizzini suggested.

  “Why would he pay a whore one hundred dollars when he could get her for five dollars?”

  “I don’t know. But if he didn’t pay her, where did she get the money?”

  “Hennesy,” Tangeleno said.

  “Hennesy?”

  “You said he was there, didn’t you? De Luca was paying him off. Did you find any money?”

  “We didn’t look,” Tangeleno admitted.

  “That’s where she got the money,” Tangeleno said.

  “I’m sorry, Don, I should have looked for the money.

  To Vizzini’s surprise, Tangeleno smiled. “No,” he said. He chuckled. “This is working out very well.”

  “What do you mean?”

  “We didn’t think she had enough money to go where she wanted to go and we had no idea where she would wind up. But now that she does have money, we know exactly where she is going. She’s going to Bellefont, Kansas.”

  “But the ticket agent said she only bought a ticket to Memphis.”

  “I know. But I think that was just to throw us off.”

  “I’m sorry for the interruption, gentlemen,” the ticket agent said, returning from the transaction at the window. “Is there anything else I can help you with?”

  “Yes. If this woman was going to Bellefont, Kansas, where would she change trains?”

  “Well, she isn’t going to Bellefont,” the ticket agent said. “I sold her tickets only as far as Memphis.”

  “Yes, I know, but it may be that she did that just to throw off the police. If she was going to Bellefont, where would she go from Memphis?”

  “Oh well, in that case, she would have to continue on up to St. Louis and take the train west from there,” the ticket agent said. “But if that is so, why didn’t she just buy a ticket all the way to St. Louis? It would have been cheaper to buy it all together, rather than buy it as a separate ticket.”

  “Who knows the workings of a criminal mind?” Tangeleno asked.

  “Yes, who indeed,” the ticket agent replied.

  “What do we do now?” Vizzini asked as they left the station.

  “I don’t know about you, but I’m going home and going to bed,” Tangeleno said. “It has been a long night.”

  “But Rachel?”

  “Rachel is on the train, headed for Memphis. We can’t do anything about her until she gets there.”

  “How? If the train has already left, we can’t beat it to Memphis.”

  Tangeleno smiled. “We can’t…but a telegram can.”

  The sign on the front of the store on West Capitol Street in Jackson, Mississippi, read: LADIES’ CLOTHING AND MILLINERY GOODS.

  “Yes, may I help you?” a woman asked, coming up to the counter when Rachel entered.

  “I do hope so,” Rachel replied. “I am on my way to Memphis. But when I changed trains here in Jackson, my luggage was sent, by mistake, to Montgomery, Alabama. I simply must have some clothes if I am to continue my journey. I hope you have some ready-made clothes that I could buy.”

  “Oh, you are in luck, my dear,” the store clerk said. “I have several beautiful dresses that our own seamstresses have made. I’m sure we can get you outfitted quite nicely.”

  One hour later Rachel left the store wearing a new dress and carrying a portmanteau filled with the rest of her wardrobe. Hailing a hack, she had the driver take her to the Illinois Central Railroad Station. There, she exchanged her Memphis ticket for one that would take her to Cairo, Illinois.

  As Tangeleno sat on his patio, having breakfast, one of his servants brought a man back to see him. The man wore a sweeping mustache and a bowler hat, and he took his hat off and made a sweeping bow as he was introduced.

  “I miei rispetti a Lei, Padrino,” the man said. “I kiss your ring.”

  Tangeleno, who was sitting at the breakfast table, dabbed at his mouth with a linen, then held his ring out to allow the man to kiss it.

  “What is your name?” Tangeleno asked.

  “Il mio nome è Giovanni Giordano,” the man replied. “I am a baker. My shop is at 1124 Bourbon Street. I have brought you some cannolis.” He picked up a package, wrapped in cheesecloth, and held it toward Tangeleno. Tangeleno nodded at his servant, and the servant took it.

  “Grazie. What can I do for you, Signore Giordano?”

  “I did not tell the police,” Giordano said.

  Tangeleno squinted his eyes. “You did not tell the police what?” he asked.

  “I did not tell them about the pianista who plays piano at the whorehouse.”

  “Signore Giordano, I still don’t know what you are talking about.”

  “It was last week,” Giordano said. “I was working late when I saw it.” As Giordano began telling the story of witnessing a gun battle in the empty lot next to his bakery, it was clear that he was reliving the trauma of what he had witnessed.

  “The police questioned me,” Giordano said af
ter he finished telling his story to Tangeleno. “But I said nothing. Omerta, omerta.” He put his finger to his lips.

  “Then I learned that the men the whorehouse piano player killed were your men, Don Tangeleno. And because they were your men and because of my great respect for you, I have come to tell you.”

  Tangeleno had listened incredulously to the entire story. It seemed improbable that one man could kill three of his best men in such a way. It seemed impossible that the one man who did it would be a whorehouse piano player.

  And yet, even as he was weighing the credulity, Tangeleno knew he believed the story. He believed the story because there was no way this baker would know that he had sent his men after the piano player.

  “My friend,” Tangeleno said, putting his hand on Giordano’s shoulder. “You have done right in coming to me like this. You have done me a great favor. What can I do for you?”

  “There is a colored woman in the 800 block of Rampart Street,” Tangeleno said. “She is making bread and pastries. It is all right if she makes it for her own kind, but she is making Italian bread and pastries. She is not as good as I am, she does not know all the secrets of the old country. And because she does not use the best ingredients, she sells for less money than I can sell for. She is hurting my business.”

  “It is not good that a colored woman bakes for Italians. I will go and talk to her,” Tangeleno promised. “I will make her listen to reason.”

  “Grazie, Padrino,” Giordano said, again kissing Tangeleno’s ring. “Grazie.”

  That evening, as Tangeleno was having his supper, Vizzini stepped into the dining room. Tangeleno had just lifted a forkful of spaghetti to his mouth and he sucked in all the noodles before he spoke.

  “What do you have to tell me?” Tangeleno asked.

  “The colored woman that Giordano spoke about will not be baking any more bread for Italians. I spoke to her, and I got her to listen to reason.”

  “Good, good,” Tangeleno said.

  “Also, I have found out some very interesting things,” Vizzini said.

  “Such as?”

  “The man who played the piano at the whorehouse is named Mason Hawke.”