by Jon Sharpe
After waiting almost a half hour more, he heard Matilda mutter, “Lord God, but that man does like his vittles, don’t he?”
As far as Fargo knew, there were no men left inside the Blue Emporium, so he continued to trust his instincts and silently opened the back door and stepped into the shadows that surrounded it. Matilda was standing at the counter, her head wrapped up in a towel of some kind and wearing a housedress that was so large it could have served as a field tent for any two normal-sized soldiers.
She was making a large plate of food, most of it out of the cold storage box set into one wall. Fried chicken, cut-up carrots, and coleslaw covered the plate. She added two cold buttermilk biscuits and a large pat of butter. “That ought to do him,” she muttered. “And if it doesn’t, he can damn well make more for his own self.”
Fargo was considering his options when his instincts tried to scream a warning, but it was too late. He felt the cold steel barrel of a pistol pressed up against the back of his skull.
“You don’t want to move, Mr. Fargo,” Horn said from behind him. “Not even a twitch until I say so, understood?”
“I understand,” Fargo said. “I guessed you were still here.”
“You’re a good guesser,” Horn said. “Or just a bit smarter than the others.”
Matilda watched with wide-eyed interest from the kitchen as Horn pushed Fargo into the dimly lit space. “Mr. Horn!” she said. “Why on earth you puttin’ a gun to that man’s head? I thought you wanted to eat!”
“Sit down, Fargo,” Horn said, moving him toward one of the chairs. “Maybe we can talk a bit.”
Fargo sat down and finally managed to get a look at Horn’s face. He appeared tired, but his eyes were still watchful. “You don’t want my guns?” Fargo asked.
“Not unless I have to have them,” Horn said. He sat down heavily in another chair, but kept his gun aimed and ready. “We need to talk.”
Matilda set the plate down on the kitchen table next to Horn’s elbow and said, “I’m goin’ back to my sleep, Mr. Horn. If you need something else, you’re already in the kitchen.”
“Fair enough,” Horn said. “Thank you, Matilda, and good night.”
“Good night,” she said, heading through a door Fargo hadn’t seen which led into the second sitting room, where Horn had been waiting for him.
Once she was gone—her heavy tread making the stairs above their heads creak alarmingly—Horn said, “Good, now we can have a talk without listening to that woman ramble.”
“So, talk,” Fargo said, wondering where this was leading.
Horn reached inside his coat and pulled out a badge. “The name’s not Horn,” he said. “It’s James McKenna. I’m a Pinkerton agent.”
The light dawning, Fargo nodded. “So where’s the real Horn?” he asked.
“Dead,” McKenna said. “I had hoped to use him to find out more about Parker, Beares, and Anderson, but when I went out to his plantation, I found him in his parlor, dead maybe one or two days. It looked like a heart attack, maybe. He was slumped over his desk, and I guess it’s a lucky thing I showed up. All of the money he’d planned on using for this game was in stacks on his desk.”
“None of his workers had bothered it?” Fargo asked, amazed.
McKenna laughed. “Apparently, he’d told them not to disturb him, no matter what.”
“They took his orders seriously, I take it,” he said.
“I’m pretty sure they heard him collapse,” McKenna said, “and just left him in there to die. Horn wasn’t a very nice man, by all accounts.”
“How is it that Parker or Beares didn’t recognize that you weren’t Horn?” Fargo asked. “I assumed they knew him.”
“They did,” McKenna said, “but only through correspondence. Horn’s plantation is up near Lafayette. He was known by reputation to be something of a gambler.”
“I’ll be damned,” Fargo said. He gestured to the gun in McKenna’s hand. “How long do you suppose you’re going to keep pointing that thing at me?”
“Just one question,” McKenna said, “before I put it away.”
“What’s that?” he asked.
“Are you sleeping with Hattie Hamilton, too?”
“Hell, no,” Fargo said. “I prefer my women to be poison free, and she’s the kind that might be death in the sack.”
“Good,” he said, putting the gun back into its holster. “Because then I don’t have to shoot you. Before this is done, I imagine I’m going to have to kill every man involved in this who’s been sleeping with her.”
“Why?” he asked. “How is she wrapped up in all this?”
“Fargo,” McKenna said, “if I’m right, Hattie Hamilton isn’t just wrapped up in all this—she is the source of all this.”
It made a certain amount of sense, Fargo realized, but still it was hard to believe that one Basin Street prostitute could create this much chaos. “How did the Pinkertons get involved?” he asked. “Policing the New Orleans nightlife doesn’t seem like something they’d be interested in.”
“On the contrary, Fargo, we’re very interested in keeping things here just like they are—for now.”
“Why?” he asked. “I’m not sure I understand your interest.”
McKenna smiled grimly. “Because when the time comes, we’re going to make an example of this city to the whole country. But we’re going to do it on our terms and right now, that means keeping the status quo.”
“An example?” Fargo asked. “What kind of example? ”
“This city is going to burn, Fargo, right down to the cobblestones. It’s a cesspool of crime and we’re going to clean it up and we’re going to do it in a way that makes clear to every city in America what can happen if they don’t police themselves.” McKenna leaned back in his chair and dug into the food Matilda had left for him.
Not quite sure how to respond to this statement, Fargo said, “How’d you get Matilda involved?”
“She’s a paid informant,” the Pinkerton man said between bites. “It was her that showed me how to escape the basement unseen and she hid me until the commotion died down.”
Fargo watched the other man eat in silence for a couple of minutes, his mind churning. If McKenna was telling the truth, a lot of innocent people were going to die. Every city had its good and bad, but the good folks shouldn’t be killed along with the bad just to make an example for everyone else.
On the other hand, there was nothing to prove that McKenna was telling the truth. All Fargo had to go on was his badge and he could have gotten that easily enough. It was possible he was Horn, or someone else just playing the game to make money for himself.
It seemed like there was no one in this town he could truly trust, so Fargo did the only thing he could. He stood up, trying to appear casual, and stretched. “It sounds like maybe you’ve got a plan.”
McKenna or Horn or whoever he was nodded. “First thing tomorrow, I’ll take the money down and put it in the bank to be wired to Chicago—confiscated funds.”
“What then?” Fargo asked.
“Then I’ll—” was all the man managed to say before the butt end of Fargo’s Colt slammed into his head, knocking him unconscious.
“Take a nap,” he finished for him. “A good long one.”
“At least you didn’t shoot this one,” H.D. said, looking at the prone form of McKenna on his office floor. “So you found Horn?”
The office was dark and quiet, but morning wasn’t all that far off. Fargo shrugged. “Horn, maybe. He told me he was really a Pinkerton agent.”
“Christ, Fargo, you clubbed a Pinkerton man? Do you want to be chased from here all the way into the Indian nations?”
“Something about his story didn’t ring quite true,” he said. He filled H.D. in on what McKenna had told him.
“Burn the city down?” H.D. said. “I don’t believe it.”
“I don’t either,” Fargo said. “But who knows what the real truth is? For now, we’ve got to get him out of to
wn.”
“What do you suggest?”
“Can you and your men truss him up and get him on a northbound train?” he asked. “Maybe in a freight car where they won’t find him for a while? By the time he gets back, we can hopefully have the rest of this sorted out.”
H.D. nodded. “Yeah, I can manage that. But there’s something I’ve got to tell you, Fargo.”
“Go ahead.”
“I had to let Hattie Hamilton go,” H.D. said. “The county attorney showed up about an hour ago. Parker got him out of bed and forced him to come down here. He told me to cut her loose for a ‘lack of evidence.’ ”
“Damn,” Fargo said. “I was hoping you’d be able to hold her for at least another couple of days.”
“Me, too,” he said, “but he was right. We didn’t have much in the way of evidence and Parker verified her story.”
“Where’d she go?” he asked. “She didn’t come back to the Blue Emporium. That’s where I’ve been most of the night.”
“Parker’s place, I imagine,” H.D. said. “Why?”
“Because I’ve got the feeling that she really is at the center of all this.” He nudged the man on the floor. “Tell you what,” he said. “Just lock him up for now and when he comes around, why don’t you see if you can get some sort of verification of his story?”
“What are you going to do?” H.D. asked.
“What I always do,” Fargo said, turning back to the doorway.
“Do you know who you’re after?” H.D. called after him.
“Just about everyone,” he replied. “But first things first. I’m going to take that money to the only man I can trust with it.”
“You’ve got the money? Why didn’t you say so?”
“Because, my old friend,” Fargo said, his voice sounding tired even to himself, “I can’t trust you with it.”
“What? Why not?”
Fargo stopped in the doorway, not bothering to turn around. “You’re sleeping with her, too, aren’t you, H.D.?”
The silence behind him was answer enough and he sighed. “You should have stayed out west, H.D. This place isn’t good for you.”
“Are you . . . you’re not going to tell my wife, are you?” he asked. “She’d be heartbroken.”
“No, H.D., not unless I find out that you’re in this with her. My advice to you is to find a way to get yourself clear of this place. It’s no good.” He paused, then said, “She’s no good.”
“I know,” H.D. said. “I just . . . I don’t know what to do.”
“Yes, you do,” Fargo said as he stepped out the door and back into the night. “Or at least you used to.”
He listened, but his old friend didn’t say anything else, and Fargo realized that more than likely H.D. wasn’t someone he could call a friend anymore.
Worse, he might just be an enemy.
Still, he would deal with that when the time came. For now, he had to see a man about holding on to a very large sum of money.
Fargo only hoped that his instincts would prove accurate this time. Any kind of game played in this place was dangerous. But he’d managed to find one that was especially so. He remembered something an old friend of his named Cheyenne had told him once: “There’re two things a man’ll kill you for right off. Money and a woman. He’ll kill you faster for the woman but he’ll kill you slower for the money.” Fargo reckoned that that was the kind of good advice that would never go out of style. He’d found it true too many times to doubt it.
And without doubt Cheyenne’s words applied to a place like this.
13
Fargo headed for Anderson’s Café and wasn’t all that surprised to find both father and son still awake and discussing the events of the night. The door was locked and he could see them sitting at a table, an oil lamp burning low between them.
He tapped lightly on the door, then stepped away from it. There was no sense in crowding the space and risk getting shot for his trouble. Tommy peered through the window, saw who it was, and opened the door. “Skye Fargo,” he said, smiling. “What brings you here at this god-awful hour of the day?”
“Can I come inside for a moment?” Fargo asked.
“Sure, sure,” Tommy said. He turned back to where his father was still sitting. “Dad, it’s Fargo.”
“I heard, boy,” Anderson said. “Don’t keep him standing in the doorway. Let him in.”
Tommy moved aside, then shut and locked the door behind him. “Can’t be too careful right now,” he said. “Things are a bit unsettled.”
Fargo chuckled and crossed over to where Anderson was sitting. “Unsettled is putting it a bit mildly.”
“He’s got a gift for understatement,” Anderson said. “Yet that same mouth lands him in so much trouble.”
“He’ll grow out of it,” Fargo said. “Probably.”
“Sit down, Fargo,” the man said. “Can I get you something?”
“No, I’m fine,” he replied, taking a seat across from the mayor. “But I’ve come to ask a favor.”
Anderson laughed. “I’m on my way to being the mayor of nowhere and you want a favor? All right, why not? What can I do for you?”
Fargo pulled his saddlebags off his shoulder and tossed them on the table. “I need you to hold these for me, keep them safe until all of this gets figured out.”
“What’s in them?” Anderson asked.
“About three hundred thousand dollars,” Fargo said. “The money from the poker game.”
“Thank God!” he exclaimed. “How did you find it? Did you catch Horn? What happened?”
“For a man who didn’t seem all that concerned about money during the game, you seem awfully excited to have that money back,” Fargo said.
Anderson nodded. “I was bluffing. Even if I get every damn dime I’m owed by people, I wouldn’t have enough to rebuild what I’ve got here. I was laying it all on the line in that game.”
“I thought so. You’re either really brave or incredibly stupid, Anderson. The game was a setup from the beginning.”
“I figured as much, but what else was I going to do except try to win?” the man asked. “Parker and Beares had me cornered.”
“Beares is dead,” Fargo said evenly, “which gives you one less enemy to deal with. As for Parker, I’m not sure what his role in all this is just yet, but I’ll know sooner rather than later.”
“What happened to Horn?” the younger Anderson asked.
“He’s over in the jail,” he replied. “H.D.’s got him locked up nice and tight.”
Anderson sighed heavily. “Fargo, I know he was a friend of yours, but H.D. Timmons is as crooked as a dog’s hind leg. He’s been on Parker’s payroll for at least two years.”
Fargo absorbed this information in silence, his worst fears about his old friend confirmed. The lure of money had taken him from the side of right and justice. “Are you sure?” he asked. “He’s got a wife.”
Anderson burst out laughing. “Oh, wow, Fargo, you missed that trail, anyway. H.D. doesn’t have a wife.”
“He doesn’t?” Fargo heard himself ask, while his mind raced in another direction. Where was Mary?
“No way,” the younger Anderson said. “He gets his down at the Blue Emporium, like everyone else on the take around here.”
“Ah, shit,” Fargo said. “Things just got more complicated. ”
“What do you mean?” Anderson asked.
Fargo shook his head. “It’s not important right now. Can you get that money into a safe and hold it until all this is straightened out?”
The mayor of Storyville nodded. “Sure. You mind if I take out my investment?”
“Go right ahead,” he said. “But let’s make sure the rest of it stays there. I think we’re going to need it later, to square the accounts.”
Anderson agreed and gave the saddlebags to his son. “Take this to the vault,” he told him. “Count out fifty thousand and set it in my personal drawer. Leave the rest alone.”
“Yes,
sir,” Tommy said, scurrying away.
“Anything else I can do for you, Fargo?” Anderson asked. “It’s been a long night and right now, I just want to get some sleep.”
“No,” he said. “I’ll be back later today, hopefully to settle all this once and for all.”
“Where are you going now?”
“It’s time I had a talk with Senator Parker,” Fargo said. “Do you know where his mansion is?”
Anderson gave him the directions and told him the fastest way to get there. “Just watch yourself out there,” he added. “Parker’s men play for keeps.”
“So do I,” Fargo replied, getting to his feet.
“You don’t lay down very often, do you?” the man asked.
“Not if I can help it,” he said.
“You’ve got sand, anyway,” Anderson said. “Stay safe, and when you get back, I’ll buy you a drink or four.”
“Sounds good,” Fargo said, heading for the door. Anderson’s voice stopped him.
“How come you brought the money to me?” he asked. “Why did you trust me over your friend H.D., or why not just hold on to the money yourself?”
The Trailsman chuckled quietly. “You were the only one at the table tonight playing for stakes that mattered to you,” he said. “Despite your reputation, you actually care what happens to Basin Street and the people who live here. The others just want money and power.”
“Thanks,” Anderson replied. “Thanks, Fargo.”
“Thank me if I live,” he said, then unlocked the door and slipped back out into the night once more.
The livery stable was dark, and Fargo didn’t bother waking the man on night duty, who was curled up on the hay, hands wrapped around a cheap bottle of rot-gut and snoring like a hibernating grizzly. In point of fact, Fargo didn’t think the end of the world would wake him up.
He found his saddle and tack on a rack outside the Ovaro’s stall, and when he opened the gate to let the horse out, it nickered in recognition.
“Been cooped up for too long, haven’t you?” Fargo asked the black-and-white horse quietly. He ran a comforting hand down the horse’s neck. “You’ll get plenty of exercise tonight.”