Sundance

by David Fuller

  Parker stood up and hitched his trousers, slipping the gold coin in his pocket. “Glad to see you again, Kid.”

  Longbaugh nodded.

  “Wish I could help you in this thing you have to do.” Parker looked at him wistfully. “But you’re no good for me. Whenever I’m around you, I get the urge to rob something.”

  “Was about to say the same about you.”

  “Those were good times, though, weren’t they? I miss ’em, I do. But the two of us back together? I can’t be famous again. I only just learned to be dull. It’s not so bad.”

  “I would never ask.”

  “No. You were always good that way. Let a man choose his own path, even if you did lead him right to the trailhead.”

  They both laughed. Then Longbaugh looked at him with complete sincerity. “Bobby, you can’t help me with this thing. I know you, you always want to help. But it’s good this time to walk away.”

  Parker nodded. He reached out and Longbaugh shook his hand. Parker held on to it. He looked sorry. “I’m glad you’re all right.”

  “It was good to know you, Parker.”

  “And you, Longbaugh.”

  Parker let go of his hand and left him there. After a moment, Longbaugh looked around, realizing Parker hadn’t told him what name he was using. By then he was gone.

  13

  During the search for Queenie, Longbaugh and Hightower had often met at the Hotel Algonquin, as it bordered the Tenderloin. Longbaugh knew Hightower liked it there, so it was the first place he looked, in the busy, loud, huge restaurant in the hotel, and found him in a business meeting at his regular table, somewhere in the middle of the sea of diners. Longbaugh was determined to stay out of sight, but he was interested in Hightower’s conversation. When a table came free not far from a waiter’s screen at Hightower’s back, he moved in to eavesdrop.

  Hightower’s adversary was an overdressed young sport in a colorful waistcoat, which may have been ostentation or perhaps a sly commentary on the sartorial choices of his business associates. On the other hand, as the rich did not need to shout, perhaps this young man was attempting to amuse his mentors with his frank, peacock-like display of appetite. Longbaugh leaned to see his shoes. Tired and worn. A few steps yet from his goal.

  He listened.

  Hightower’s voice played in a different register, lower, slower, even more furry and deliberate than before. “It’s time to reopen the discussion about my friend.” Longbaugh gathered that Hightower’s “friend” was Moretti.

  “I will take back any message you care to send, but I can promise, with all candor, the answer will not change.”

  “My friend is looking to expand his business, and he thinks your friend is a good match.”

  The overdressed young sport was aloof. “Just so you understand, this is not personal, my friend is simply not interested in taking on partners.”

  “Your friend is in a dangerous business.” Hightower was not happy. “Any man with extraordinary access to ordnance requires extraordinary protection.”

  “I repeat, it is nothing personal.”

  Hightower brooded. “My friend has a problem when people say no.”

  “Would he threaten us? The way he threatens his Italian kin, with a note and a child’s drawing of a hand?”

  “You know the information we have. It could make things uncomfortable for your friend, as he is too comfortable in the company of a certain type of lady.”

  “You overestimate your leverage. Do you truly imagine he fears for his reputation?”

  “Perhaps he should.”

  “Perhaps you’d be better off threatening to use our own weapons against us.”

  Hightower showed his frustration. “You deliberately misunderstand, Mr. Wisher.”

  “I understand perfectly, Mr. Hightower, but blackmail works only when your quarry has a secret he needs to hide. My friend cannot be threatened and he does not want your friend’s sort of muscle.” The overdressed young sport named Wisher paused dramatically. “I, however, have his ear.” Hightower perked up, leaning forward. Wisher smiled knowingly. “And I have never been averse to allowing a bit of grease to be applied to my own wheels.”

  Hightower was relieved. “Good boy, Wisher, I’m proud of you. That is a mature attitude. You’re wasting your talent working for your friend. But much as I’d like to hire you away from him, you may not leave his employ before you make this marriage happen.”

  Their negotiation was at an end and Longbaugh slipped out of his chair. Wisher stood. Hightower stayed seated, his half-eaten breakfast before him. Longbaugh saw them shake hands. As he was interested to know more about Hightower’s business, he moved out of the restaurant to wait outside.

  The overdressed young sport named Wisher came out to the street. Longbaugh looked him over. He again thought that Wisher was replacing his wardrobe piece by piece as his finances improved. The grease for his wheels would likely slide him into a new pair of shoes. Wisher’s eyes locked onto the bosom of an attractive woman as she passed. Appetite in other things as well. Longbaugh filed that away and stepped into Wisher’s eye line.

  “Pardon you,” said Wisher unpleasantly.

  “You have a match?”

  “No.”

  “Say, I believe I know you.”

  “You do not.”

  “We haven’t met?”

  “Lord no.”

  “Not Mr. Wisher?”

  Wisher did not bother to look closely at Longbaugh’s face. “No.”

  Wisher moved around him and walked after the attractive woman.

  Longbaugh went back inside, but stayed by the entrance. He caught the eye of Hightower’s waiter, and tipped him to hand-carry a note to his customer, asking to meet outside.

  Hightower took his time finishing his coffee, then paid his check. When he reached the street, he was wiping crumbs down his front. He was not unprepared, however, when Longbaugh grabbed his collar and pinned him against the wall, as Hightower brought a knife blade up against Longbaugh’s throat.

  “You called me out the last time, tourist. You’re getting predictable.”

  Hightower heard a pistol cock and a cool metal muzzle blocked the sound in his left ear.

  “Am I?” said Longbaugh.

  Hightower drew a long breath. He lowered the knife. “You got a beef, Place?”

  “You might say that.”

  “I’d like to know what I’m dying for.”

  “Why should you? No one warned her why she was dying.”

  “You’re not talking sense.”

  “The Moretti way, remember? They don’t know why they’re dead, they just are.”

  “Queenie? Wasn’t me, I swear.”

  “Of course not.”

  “Place, you’ve got a gun in my ear, I’ll tell you anything you want to hear.”

  Longbaugh thumbed the hammer back gently against the cylinder. Hightower straightened himself and made his knife disappear under his coat.

  “Oh hell. I think I understand. Not Queenie. Your wife.” Hightower spoke softly as he began to piece things together. “And you think I did it.”

  “Dynamite.”

  “All right. I see why you’re here. Moretti’s signature, and I’m his employee.” Hightower spoke with care, talking aloud as he worked through it. “You think I lit the fuse. Not an unreasonable assumption, I would think the same.” His tone of voice was similar to the cautious way he had spoken to Wisher. “One thing you should know—even though Moretti is willing to let people die in ignorance, in this situation he would want to see her face. The ones who go anonymously are business associates. This thing with your wife is personal. He looks at her brand on his cheek every day of his life. My own theory is, if she was blown up, one of his people was taking initiative in an attempt to please him. Rest assured, Moretti will not
be pleased, he dislikes initiative. Men with initiative always think they can do a better job than their boss. Had it been me, I’d have had him there to watch. And make no mistake, if she’s dead, that is not good news for your friend Agrius Hightower. If I’ve been kept in the dark, then Moretti’s attitude toward me has changed. Now you have no reason to believe me, as you know me for a stout guttersnipe, but let me say this in all honesty, what you see before you is an innocent stout guttersnipe.”

  While Longbaugh thought Hightower was lying, he also thought he was lying very well—almost as well as Longbaugh was lying, leading Hightower to believe it had been Etta in the explosion. As his anger receded, he thought that if Hightower had been responsible, he was a coldly brazen bastard to so casually return to his table at the Algonquin and dip his buttered toast in his sugared coffee. Had it been a charade to appear innocent, then Hightower was more cynical than even Longbaugh’s low opinion allowed. In the end, it did not matter. Just as long as he told Moretti that Etta was dead.

  “Maybe what you say is true.”

  “Listen, Place, your wife just passed, I don’t care how long it’s been since you saw her, for all I know you could be relieved, but either way you have to be in shock. I’m buying you a drink.”

  Now that he no longer needed to sell her death to Hightower, Longbaugh began to deflate. The explosion had taken something out of him. Even with no connection between Etta and E’s death, his sense of hope had been undermined by the blast. She seemed farther away and he despaired at the possibility of ever finding her.

  They returned to the hotel restaurant. The lighting had not changed, but the room appeared darker, and Longbaugh realized that he was the darkness in the room. Hightower caught the waiter’s eye and ordered.

  “Where’d it happen?”

  “Brooklyn.”

  “Brooklyn? Oh, nasty, dying in Brooklyn.”

  “Brilliant way to console a man.”

  “My apologies, that was clumsy.”

  The waiter returned with their drinks. Longbaugh did not want his, but he did not offer it to Hightower.

  “What made you think it was me?”

  “Other than the dynamite?”

  “Never touch the stuff. Too unstable.”

  “I thought you were following me. Turned out to be one of Moretti’s boys.”

  “Flexible?”

  “Pimples.”

  “Silvio? You sure? You saw him?”

  Longbaugh nodded.

  “How’d he miss killing you?”

  “I wasn’t with her at the time.”

  “But you saw him tailing you?”

  “No. I looked, but . . . I was watching for you.” Longbaugh narrowed his eyes with profound self-loathing.

  Hightower stared off, thinking. “When was this?”

  “You playing Pinkerton?”

  “Just conversation, tourist.”

  Longbaugh was quiet. He had no reason to share information. He didn’t trust him, didn’t want to know him, and didn’t care to drink with him, but after running all that through his mind, he also sat in self-imposed darkness and realized he did not want to be alone, even if it meant spending time with a man such as this. He heard himself answer.

  “After we left Queenie.”

  “Christ.” Hightower rearranged the puzzle. “Silvio wasn’t following you. Silvio was following me. Probably a team, one stayed on me when I went to the oyster bar and Silvio took you. Son of a teetotaler’s bitch.”

  Hightower’s face changed while appearing to remain still. A spark under his eyes sent a blaze of fury through his skull, flushing his cheeks and thinning his lips until he went cold, grim, and hollow. Longbaugh realized Hightower was not angry, he was humiliated. He had lost Moretti’s trust.

  “Would you have done it if Moretti had asked?”

  “Before I met you, without hesitation.”

  “Now not so sure.”

  “Moretti must have suspected that.”

  Longbaugh said nothing. Again he thought the man a magnificent liar.

  Hightower ordered a second drink.

  Longbaugh had all he needed from Hightower. But he still did not leave. He fell into a brood, as if he were the grieving husband.

  “Talk about her, Hightower.”

  “Don’t be morbid.”

  “I wear morbid like a paper cut. Talk.”

  Hightower adjusted himself in his chair, widening his nostrils dyspeptically. His words came out archly, his voice a step too high. “She was a lovely woman, charming, really, quite pretty . . .”

  “And that you can save for the eulogy.”

  Hightower’s demeanor changed. “She’s dead, Place, take your cherished memories and go back where you came from. Don’t ask questions if you don’t want answers.”

  “Talk.”

  “You don’t want this from me.”

  Longbaugh stared at him and Hightower relented, narrowing his eyes and gathering his thoughts while deciding just how politic to be. He gave Longbaugh a full look.

  “I did not like your wife. She was a thorny progressive nitwit who believed everyone deserved a chance, and all the rest of that Bull Moose rot. But then, she didn’t much like me either. Thought I was a flunky pig for sale to the richest fat cat. The moose, the pig, and the cat, welcome to the zoo. While there may be truth in all that, she could at least have pretended to charm me. Look at me, am I so bad? I carry a certain rough appeal. She didn’t need to judge me so quick. You’re not so much better than I am.”

  He checked Longbaugh’s reaction and saw he was not offended.

  “Although I’ll say one thing. She never showed interest in any man that I could see, so maybe it wasn’t just me. How’d you get so lucky?”

  Hightower stared off with a tiny shrug as if it was against his religion to share good news. Then he perked up with another thought. “Oh, and one more thing, she was headstrong, the least appealing quality in a woman. She refused to compromise. She was rigid about everything. But then I am rigid about nothing whatsoever, a rabbit in springtime is rigid in comparison.”

  “Give you that.”

  “She’d get a look in her eyes, like she was thinking of something unexpected, off-key. A little smile, a glance to the side.”

  “I know that look.”

  “She thought she was outthinking everyone else in the room. That arrogant look of larceny.”

  “That’s it, isn’t it?” Longbaugh smiled with the memory.

  “You get that look, Place.”

  “Do I?” He was caught off guard, then pleased to be tarred with the same brush.

  “Oh yes. Makes me wonder who you really are. Combined with what it was that she saw in you, I am most curious.”

  Longbaugh turned his drink around and watched the liquid across the top send tiny circular waves toward the center. “You talk about her, and there she is out of the corner of my eye. People have been telling me things that she would never do, never. But she did them, I recognize her in the details. I’ve been looking for my wife and I found someone else.” He stared straight ahead. “Like falling in love twice with the same woman.”

  Hightower raised his eyebrows. “Then you’re a lucky man.”

  “Yeah, if she wasn’t dead.”

  Hightower sneered as if that was just too much. Longbaugh thought that after seeing Parker, he had gotten used to talking and had carried this disagreeable habit into the daylight. Playing the widower had sent out imaginary tendrils of grief that had taken unexpected root. He looked at his untouched drink and did not want it. He looked at the room and wondered why he wasn’t leaving. He looked at his hands on the table and saw a crumb next to his finger and brushed it aside. He tried to listen to conversations around him but quickly lost patience. He tried to listen to the voices in his head, and had less patience. T
ime came and went. He looked at Hightower and wondered why he didn’t leave.

  “So what do you do now?” said Hightower.

  “Do?”

  “Now that your wife’s dead.”

  He shook his head slowly. Hightower took chances. Unless he knew.

  “Tourist, you need a distraction.”

  “I could change my mind about shooting you.”

  “Aw, you like me.”

  “I don’t dislike you.”

  “Nah, you like me. And you need to make plans.”

  “Okay, now you can go away.”

  “You got money? A job? A skill?”

  “I got a skill. I could shoot a part in your hair from fifty paces that wouldn’t bleed. Unless I decided to miss and core your brain.”

  “No, something that interests you.”

  Longbaugh was indifferent to the question and the answer, but he heard himself say the first thing that came to mind: “The West.”

  “Ah, the frontier. Hopes and dreams for the drab city folk. What is it you know?”

  “Wyatt Earp, Bat Masterson.”

  “No, no, something new, not all that heroic tripe they endlessly stuff down our throats.”

  “Heroic? They were outlaws. They didn’t all of a sudden stop thieving when they became lawmen.”

  “Forget it, no one wants to hear that, even if it is true.”

  “I thought you said crime is the future.”

  “Only if you tell it right. No one wants to know their hero’s a jackass. What else you got?”

  Longbaugh sat back. “I could write a handbook on robbing trains.”

  “What are you, some Pennsylvania dilettante who once visited Promontory Summit?”

  Longbaugh was surprised and insulted. It was surely coincidence that Hightower mentioned Pennsylvania, but the insult rankled and made him reckless. Yet the moment he said “Butch Cassidy,” he regretted it.