by Rob DeBorde
“What do we do?”
“I don’t—”
And that’s when the first shot rang out.
8
A few minutes before the mayor and his deputy walked through the front door of Wylde’s, Booksellers and Navigation, Kate stepped off the Jefferson Street trolley and onto a muddy platform just above Fifth Avenue. This was as far as the streetcar could go without risking becoming fouled in the floodwaters. A series of sodden planks half submerged in the soggy street provided passage to the sidewalk, which Kate made without a misstep.
“We’re on foot the rest of the way.”
“Good,” the marshal said, hopping from the last plank to the sidewalk.
“You’re not tired?”
“Heck no. Used to it. Astoria ain’t but one big hill.”
Kate smiled. She hoped that meant the marshal had spent some time beyond the walls of his own house. Her vision of him alone, slowing going stir crazy, had grown over the past year, culminating in its near certainty after the incident in the graveyard. “At least he got outside,” Joseph had commented. Kate was not amused.
Still, if he could keep up with her now, perhaps he’d done better on his own than she’d thought.
A few blocks on, Kate stopped at a corner behind a line of pedestrians waiting to cross a narrow, elevated walkway. A small skiff floated beneath the bridge, pushed along by a lone Chinese man. Several tightly wrapped packages were stacked in the well of the boat, guarded by a small, flat-faced dog with big eyes, straw-colored fur, and a curly tail.
“What is that?” said the marshal, eyeing the animal directly as it drifted past. The dog appraised the marshal briefly, then seemed to lose interest and turned its attention elsewhere.
“Laundry service,” Kate said.
“No, no, in the boat. That some kind of Siamese cat?”
“It’s a dog. A pug. Chinese are fond of them, although there’s a family a few blocks above us that has one, too.”
“That’s a dog?”
“Be sure to tell Maddie you saw one. She’s quite fond of them—pugs, I mean. She says their eyes are big and round, just like a person’s.”
The marshal watched the laundry boat cross the flooded street to a storefront on the other side. The dog remained seated while its master clambered over the side to deliver his packages.
“You’re sure that’s a dog.”
“Yes. Now, come on. We’ve a ways to go yet.”
Five blocks from the family store, Kate finally got up the nerve to ask the question that had been on her mind since they’d left the house.
“Would you like to help out? With the business, I mean.”
The marshal considered the offer. “I don’t know much about bookselling.”
“No, I mean with our other work, our investigations.”
The marshal said nothing. When Kate had asked the question, his mind had been elsewhere, back at the house, perhaps, in his room. It took him a moment to shake loose what he’d left behind.
“Help out with the investigations,” he repeated, more for himself than his daughter. “You want me to dig out my badge? It ain’t legal. I’m not affiliated with the U.S. Marshals, or even Clatsop County, for what it’s worth.”
“No, I don’t mean like that,” Kate said, deciding not to add that Joseph already had a badge that he’d flashed on several occasions despite its dubious legality. “It’s just you’ve got a lot of experience dealing with certain low-level elements of society. And it seems our investigations occasionally take us into situations where practical experience in this area might be a useful tool to lean on.”
The marshal took his daughter’s arm, stopping her in the middle of the sidewalk.
“Are you in trouble, Katie?”
“Absolutely not!”
“Sounds to me like you are,” the marshal said. “Sounds to me like you’re wantin’ someone to look over your shoulder, someone knows how to handle a weapon.”
“That’s not it at all,” Kate said, wondering if her words sounded as false to her father as they did to her own ears. “I’m just saying,” she began, but got no further.
The marshal relaxed his grip but didn’t let go of Kate’s arm.
“What?”
“Most of what we do is fairly benign, boring even. But there are times, rare occasions, when I think it would be wise to have an experienced lawman on our side to help negotiate certain situations.”
“Negotiate, huh?” the marshal said, letting go of his daughter’s arm. “Sounds like a fancy way of sayin’ ‘shoot somebody.’”
“I doubt it’ll ever come to that.”
The marshal recalled the conversation with Joseph and his insistence that Kate knew how to handle herself … in certain situations.
“What’s your husband think of this idea?”
“It was his,” Kate said, which was a lie. It wasn’t Joseph’s idea—not yet, anyway.
The marshal considered the offer. There was no doubt he would take it, would run whatever kind of negotiations his daughter had in mind, but he was pleased to find himself more than a little excited about the idea. It felt good. It felt right.
He would need to wear a gun.
“Course I’ll help you, Katie. Whatever you need. Just tell me when and where and I’ll back your man with whatever set of skills you fancy are best suited for the, ah, negotiations.”
“Thanks, Dad,” Kate said as she curled an arm around her father’s and pulled him back into the flow of the morning’s foot traffic.
“So, does this mean you’re expectin’ a specific conversation to commence this morning?”
Kate laughed.
“Not at all. I would say this morning’s business will be as boring as usual.”
* * *
Joseph heard the deputy mayor pull the small, two-shot pocket revolver from his coat, cock the hammer, and place the muzzle at the back of the mayor’s head, but he didn’t react, initially. He knew about the gun, of course, had since the man walked through the door, but he was still surprised the deputy had chosen to act so rashly. He wouldn’t make that mistake again.
“Bart, what is the meaning of this?” demanded the mayor.
“I’d think it obvious, Jim.”
“What? Are you in league with this Greeley?”
The deputy mayor’s eyes went wide.
“You are such a stupid man,” he said and depressed the trigger, deciding only the instant before the hammer fell to raise the angle of the weapon.
The bullet passed close enough to part the hairs on top of the mayor’s head. Joseph heard it ricochet off the spiral staircase and lodge in a book on the second-floor loft. He thought momentarily of the kids in the storeroom and then returned his attention to the mayor and his deputy. The kids were smart. They would stay out of sight.
Bart brought the handle of the pistol sharply down on the back of the mayor’s head, then repositioned it at the base of the man’s skull.
“I’m Greeley, you moron!”
The mayor cringed, stung by his deputy’s words as much as by the butt of his gun. He looked to Joseph for help, although whether more for safety or satisfaction, Joseph wasn’t sure.
“There is no Seamus Greeley,” Joseph said. “There never was. Your deputy forged him from the ether to keep me off his scent.”
Bart leaned in close to the mayor’s ear. “He’s a clever one, isn’t he? You should have put him on the payroll years ago.”
“It was a good plan, but the trail left for me to find Seamus was clumsy and more revealing than I believe he intended.”
Bart put a hand on the mayor’s shoulder and slid the gun around to his temple. He eyed Joseph.
“You’re a prideful man, aren’t you, Joseph? You couldn’t simply accuse me out in the open. It had to be face-to-face. That was foolish.”
“To each his own,” said Joseph.
The deputy mayor grinned. “And now I’m a fool.”
The gun turned from the mayo
r’s temple, requiring only a slight readjustment to find its new target. Joseph would have missed the motion completely had it not been for the faintest of gasps he heard coming behind him.
“Do you suppose a hole in the head would throw you off the trail?”
Joseph knew he could move out of the way of any shot fired by the deputy, but would leave the mayor vulnerable in doing so. He remained still.
“Foolish pride notwithstanding, I’m still at a loss, gentlemen,” said the mayor. “Why exactly is there a gun at my head?”
Bart stepped back, resetting the weapon low on the mayor’s skull.
“My reasons are simple enough. I don’t like you. I never have, although what man is really worthy company in an arrangement such as ours? Better to find enjoyment in the work, but I’m afraid even that has lost its appeal. Mostly, however…” The deputy mayor flinched several times and then seemed to shake it off. “Mostly I just hate the goddamn rain. I hate it. Everything’s wet here, every day, all the time. Whole wretched town is nothing but a giant mud hole ten months out of the year.”
“That’s not true,” said the mayor. “Look at today! It’s lovely, sunny, must be eighty degrees.”
“And yet we’re under three feet of water and will be for weeks! And you can’t wait for it to start raining again.”
“Well, of course, for the festival—”
“Damn the festival! Who wants to tromp around in the muck and mire, in the damp, dark cold? Nobody! Just you and your soggy followers.”
The mayor sighed. “I didn’t know you felt that way, Bart.”
Bart turned his gaze from the back of the mayor’s head. The gun remained on target.
“Maybe you should listen more carefully when you’re not the one doing the talking.”
“Fine,” said the mayor. “What do you have to say?”
* * *
Kick pushed his sister’s feet above his head and through the trapdoor that led to the loft above the storeroom. Maddie reappeared an instant later.
“Gimme your hands,” she whispered, reaching back through the small opening.
Kick stretched as far as he could, which was just enough. Maddie pulled him over the edge and soon both were beneath a table at the back of the space. The twins crept forward slowly, keeping on their hands and knees, until they reached the railing at the front edge of the loft.
The view from above didn’t change the situation—their father and the mayor were still held at gunpoint by the deputy mayor.
“What do we do?” Maddie asked.
“I don’t know.”
“Because you don’t know, or because you don’t know what’s going to happen? You can’t tell yet, right?”
Kick looked at his sister. They rarely spoke about it, but the twins’ ability to predict how a situation would unfold had become increasingly accurate. For years they’d been able to act as one, knowing instinctively what the other would do or say in almost any situation. Recently, they’d found their instincts leading them beyond their own to the actions of others. They could guess how a person might react, what he might say, even when exactly he was going to do it. They couldn’t predict the future exactly, but they could follow its path and intercept it down the line.
They rarely spoke about it, because they didn’t have to. They understood what they could do and that was enough.
“Something still seems wrong,” Kick said. “Like I can’t see everything.”
“Maybe we can’t. We’re not close enough, or something’s out of sight, or—”
“Hidden.”
Maddie nodded.
Both watched the scene below, waiting for something to reveal itself, something they couldn’t see but knew was there.
* * *
“… Two days I spent, sitting on my hands, waiting for you to finish your damn meeting. Not once did you consult my opinion of the situation. Not once! And I had an opinion, of that you can be most certain.”
“Bart, I’m going cut you off there, because I’ve made an executive decision. This ends now.”
“Excuse me?”
“I believe I’m in the right, here,” the mayor said, and then, in what was likely the bravest (and stupidest) thing he would ever do in his life, he turned to face his colleague directly.
Joseph was just as surprised as the deputy.
“Bart, you need to put that weapon away and see reason. This is not the way men—professional men—behave. I’ll have none of it in my administration.”
Bart stared at the man whose life he’d nearly ended minutes before. “You think you can talk your way out of this? That you can just open the great maw and spew forth a proclamation to end hostilities, is that it?”
Joseph knew the deputy had decided to pull the trigger a full minute before the shot was fired. He heard it in the man’s voice. Resentment and anger had been joined by futility, which in Joseph’s experience were never a good combination.
“I fail to see how violence will serve our current situation in any meaningful manner,” said the mayor. “You’re not thinking this through, Bart.”
Joseph retreated to the counter behind him, moving slowly so as not to attract attention. Without raising his shoulders, he found two books within reach: a first edition of Herman Melville’s Moby Dick and the latest edition of the Chicago Journal of Tanning & Blackening. Melville’s was by far the thicker tome (and the more valuable), but as Joseph slid the book off the counter he wondered if it might be too heavy for the maneuver he intended to employ. It was too late to test it now.
“This is foolishness, Bart. I’ll see you removed by morning. You’ll never get a dime. I don’t care who you try to peddle this false smut to, I’ll not have it!”
“Who’s the fool now, Jim?”
Joseph bent slightly at the knees and then popped up quickly, flipping his wrist so as to launch the novel over the back of his head in a long, arcing rotation. The motion was silent and practically invisible save for the book now flipping end over end above the men’s heads. As it was, neither the mayor nor his deputy saw the book even as it fell between them at the exact moment Bart fired his weapon.
The bullet struck the book squarely, sending it slamming into the mayor, who toppled backward in front of Joseph.
A path now clear to his target, Joseph let fly with the journal, striking the deputy squarely in the face with the leading edge.
The deputy howled in pain and dropped to one knee, clutching his face. Blood began to pour from between his fingers.
Joseph grabbed the mayor’s hand and led him around the counter, between several shelves, all the way to the back of the store, where they found cover beneath a four-foot shelf filled with oversize research volumes on topics of a botanical nature.
“Are you hurt?”
“I don’t … I don’t think so,” the mayor said, only just starting to catch his breath. He still clutched the book that had saved his life tightly to his chest. Closer inspection revealed a hole in the front cover and a small raised bump in the back. The mayor flipped through the pages and was nearly to the end before a small, flattened slug slipped harmlessly into Joseph’s outstretched hand. The bullet, which had no problem cutting through most of Melville’s epic, had stopped thirteen pages shy of the end.
“Lucky I used the first edition,” Joseph said. “Thicker paper.”
The mayor nodded silently.
Joseph raised his head and listened. The mayor’s breathing was by far the loudest thing in the room, but not the only thing. The deputy remained at the front of the store, his breathing wet, but in control. Joseph’s attack would do little permanent damage, though blood continued to flow from the deputy’s nose and scalp, making it hard for him to see as he reloaded his weapon.
Not reloading, Joseph thought, checking the chambers. The deputy had another gun.
“How many weapons does he carry?”
“I assume it was the Remington that was put to my skull. He also has a small five-shot revolver, an
d a six-inch blade that he carries inside the left breast pocket.”
Joseph wasn’t surprised he’d missed the knife, but the second pistol bothered him. He should have caught that, but hadn’t. He’d been sloppy. Kate was going to be mad.
* * *
Maddie handed Kick a small but solid book about the rearing and harvesting of the eastern oyster. Kick tested its weight, nodded, and then turned his attention back to the scene below.
The deputy mayor stood at the counter, stooped slightly but still high enough to see the tops of most of the shelves. He held a revolver in his right hand, a bloodied handkerchief in his left. He scanned the room, looking left and right repeatedly, but never up.
Their father and the mayor were not visible directly, but a line of polished metal panels near the ceiling gave away their position at the back of the store to anyone who knew how to read the amorphous reflections.
Kick held the book up before his face, waiting. He and Maddie watched the deputy move forward around the counter, past the center table, look left and then right, and move forward again. He was halfway to the back of the store.
When he looked to his right again, Kick lofted the book into the air.
* * *
Bart was three rows from Joseph and the mayor when the book hit the ground near the front of the store. The deputy turned and fired twice, losing one bullet in the wall, the other in an explosion of pages that had been an architectural history of Florence.
Joseph clamped a hand on the mayor to keep him from crying out. He knew immediately what had happened, but found the advantage he now had—three shots, down from five—was not worth the exchange—four targets, up from two.
Kate was definitely going to be mad.
“Stay here,” Joseph whispered. “And stay silent.”
The mayor nodded.
At the front of the store, Bart checked the door once more, scanning the boardwalk as he did. A handful of pedestrians could be seen on the other side of the flooded street, but no one seemed to be paying the bookshop any extra attention. The deputy turned back to the store.
“Here I was beginning to think you’d lighted out a back exit, leaving me to stumble around until reinforcements arrived.”