The Cold Millions

by Jess Walter

  He did.

  “That’s for a train ticket out of here and a hotel somewhere. Now take another twenty for your troubles.”

  He did.

  “And another ten to buy your apes a beer and a meal.”

  He did.

  I took fifty dollars from the stack, pressed them into his hand. “And that’s from me, Al. For old times.”

  The rest went in my pocket. I had given him the hundred he’d asked for, but I’d done it. I did not let him make Del Dalveaux look ripe for prigging up the back avenue. His face still on the table, Al squeezed the hundred in his hand like it was my throat and stared up at me with that one good eye. I leaned in and whispered in the hole where his ear used to be. “You’re gonna come out of this, and when you do—go fuck off, you half-roasted shitsteak—”

  I gave the metal ring the slightest tug, then I let it go and his head snapped back like it was a tree branch. I stood slowly, the gun still leveled at Al’s two men.

  Al rubbed the bad cheek and smiled with the other one. “One of these days, Del, someone’s going to bury you, and not a single living soul will be sorry.”

  Wasn’t often I couldn’t come up with a proper retort to these western cunts, but Al batty-fanged me on that one. Of course, the old half-miner didn’t know about the doctor in Denver and the bump on my skull, but still—it was a cruel thing for one friend to say to another, and I stewed as I backed out of the bar into the street.

  And now? Find Flynn and the young Dolan tramp and plant them where they stood. Collect five grand from Brand and ask about this Pinkerton he apparently hired and wanted dead. Or better, take the Pinkerton with me to see Brand.

  I got a room with a girl in Wallace, but the situation had me lobcocked and she went to sleep unruffled. I was visited all night by visions: Bolin and the hobo’s neck and the pregnant girl in Spokane I drowned, on and on. At three, I sent the girl away and dressed to catch the first train back to Spokane. A cold dark walk to the station, no sign of Bolin or his apes.

  God of morbs, pulling back into Spokane that morning I felt low, and I nearly wept as we eased into the station. Was I never to be free of this place? In the seat in front of me, a man said, “First time to Spokane?”

  I just stared at him.

  “Make sure you see the Auditorium,” he said. “Biggest theater stage in the whole—”

  I leaned over the seat and punched him in the throat.

  Hell with Spokane, hell with Lem Brand and his consortium of prigging gentlemen, with the doom doctor’s diagnosis in Denver, all of it. I had money from two weeks’ surveillance and the money I took back from Al Bolin. Maybe I could quit. Let Brand keep his bonus for the dirt baths. I had a daughter in Lexington, I’d go live with her and fish and read books to her boy. He’d be, what, five now? Eight?

  Porters were helping the man I’d punched. I hurried off the train and went to my hotel. I had the clerk make a phone call to the Allied office in Missoula, to ask a favor of an eye who worked the Anaconda with me ten years ago.

  “What are you doing out here?” he asked, heavy on the word doing.

  I told him, and thirty minutes later he called back. He said Gurley Flynn’s Missoula speech had been canceled and his man at the train station had Dolan and Reston railing back to Spokane today, on the Great Northern 1356, scheduled to arrive at one p.m. I checked my pocket watch: eleven-forty.

  And Gurley Flynn?

  “Sent back to Butte to be with her husband,” the man said.

  I felt a great lightening then, glad to be free of that woman. I have never liked killing the lesser sex and prefer not to. Half the world being women, you can’t avoid it, but still it unsettles me. Even a shrill dollymop like her, better for everyone if she’s making pasties in Butte and avoids my shadow the rest of her life.

  I limped to a restaurant across from the Great Northern station and got a corner table by the window, where I could wait for the train from Missoula. I could at least drop the Dolan kid, fix that mistake, collect a thousand. If Brand wanted, I could even come back and do the brother when he got out of jail.

  Fog had rolled in and the Great Northern 1356 was running late. The waiter delivered my eggs and I ate them as I watched out the window, carriages and autos beginning to pull up to the station. It had me imagining Lexington, my daughter greeting me.

  The waiter came by to take my plate away, and I asked for a whiskey, but he said, “We have the luncheon out, sir,” and I said, “I know it’s lunch, I want a bloody whiskey for my lunch,” and him, “I’m not allowed, sir,” and my flush rose again, and that’s when I looked out the window to see people spilling out of the train station, porters loading bags onto hansom cabs, folks hugging on the street in front. I tossed my napkin on my plate.

  But I was stumped. Gurley Flynn and Dolan were coming out of the train station together, her in a black cape with a carpetbag, him in that same ill-fitting suit with his bowler hat. So she’d come back after all. Well, that would be more money. But where was Reston?

  I reached into my pocket for a dollar coin, dropped it on the table, and was about to stand when a shadow fell and I looked up to see Early Reston.

  “Del Dalveaux,” he said, like we’d met before.

  It is the strangest aspect of aging—how faces blur, a language you no longer speak. Up close this man seemed familiar, but perhaps the way a common face is reminiscent of others—thin, weary, plain—an age that might be twenty-five or forty-five, so ordinary in appearance that only another agency man would appreciate the difficulty of achieving such anonymity, like walking in snow without making a footprint.

  “You have me at a disadvantage,” I said, my hand finding my .32.

  “Oh, I doubt that,” he said. “Has any man ever had the great Del Dalveaux at a disadvantage?” He took the chair next to mine. “Brand hired you?” he asked.

  “Indeed,” I said, my hand square on the Savage grip. “And you?”

  “Yep. A month ago,” he said. “Wanted me to work both sides, rile things up, get the union throwing bombs and the cops busting heads. He wanted to avoid what happened in Missoula, the cops and mayor going soft.”

  “Well, no one’s gone soft,” I said.

  “You hire me to rile—I rile.” He looked away. “Maybe too much.”

  “You think that’s why my employer didn’t tell me about you?”

  “He didn’t?”

  “No. I thought you were just one of the bums.”

  “Really? He didn’t tell you?”

  I shrugged. “Would have been good information to have.”

  “For me, too.”

  “I’m sure. A snake, isn’t he?”

  “Did he do the driver bit with you?”

  I laughed. “And the dossiers?”

  “Jesus,” he said.

  “So, what office are you out of?”

  “Office?”

  This confused me. “I thought you were a Pink. Are you freelance?”

  He chuckled like there was a funny story in that, and shifted in his chair and looked around for a waiter. “I’m going to have a drink. You want one?”

  Out the window I could no longer see Gurley or Ryan Dolan. I craned my neck. I’d find them later. “It’s lunch. They won’t open the whiskey,” I said.

  “Of course they will.” Reston spun toward the passing waiter, “Excuse me,” but the man skated by without stopping, and when Reston turned back, it was with a lunge, the blade sliding between ribs and nearly lifting me off my chair. I felt more pressure than pain, a thrust-lift-swipe in my chest and lung, the man’s full weight—not jerking but easy and practiced, like a butcher cutting rib roasts, and what felt like eight inches of steel in my side and God I was dead on my chair—

  My hand had come off the handle of the .32. I scrabbled for it, but it was gone.

  Reston was leaning on the knife—Ah, there’s the pain—I yelled, coughed, and sputtered, but he was standing, bent over me as if concerned about my condition. He spoke
with—was that an attempt at an English accent? “Oh, Del, what’s the bother?” Left hand on the handle of the knife, right reaching around his backside to tuck my gun into the back of his pants—can a man admire his killer’s method? Except for the shite accent—

  “Oh my, you’re coughing blood, Del!” He called out to the bar: “Stay back!” He put that right arm around me, helped me to my feet. “My brother is consumptive,” he said. “I need to get him some air.”

  The waiter gave us a wide berth, as Reston must’ve known he would, and he had me upright, pulling me out the door, the waiter held it for us, Reston’s right arm over my shoulder holding me up, his left reaching across his own body into my suit coat, onto the hidden handle of his knife, which jutted from my side and which he used like the tiller of a boat to steer me.

  I got out a weak “Help” to the waiter, but Reston said, “I’m trying, Del, I’m trying to help,” and he gave the knife a slight twist, the pain buckled my knees, and I cried out again.

  “My brother is quite ill,” he said as he lurched me down the block, over the curb, and into the street. “Consumption, stay back,” he repeated, knowing TB could explain the blood, and that people would steer away from a man coughing it up. He was so convincing that I almost wished he were my brother taking care of me—Oh, Del, dead Del, god Del—and I cried out again.

  “Quiet now,” he whispered. “Won’t be long.”

  I faked a stagger, mustered some last fight, and gave him a sharp elbow, and followed that with a fist, and was almost able to spin away from him, but that knife was heavy in my side and he gave another turn to the handle and oh-goddamn-weeping-sorrow-goddamn pain—I could do nothing but collapse against my brother and surrender to it.

  “None of that,” he said.

  “Fucking Brand—” I muttered, for that was my true killer—luring me to this hell-city and hiring me to kill my brother and God I wanted my brother to go and kill Brand next—God weeping sorrow.

  “Quiet, now,” he said. “Tell me, are you a religious man, Del?”

  “No,” I managed.

  “That’s good,” he said, “because I don’t believe we have time for rituals.”

  Oh God weeping pain

  “I’m sorry. I know it hurts,” he said. “Try not to talk or breathe too deeply. We’re almost there. Stay quiet and I’ll help you along.”

  Oh weeping God

  “You shouldn’t have drunk so much, Del!” he called out to someone who must’ve seen us staggering, and him half-carrying me, for he was having trouble supporting my weight now.

  I wished I could stop my weeping. Was this how it had felt for the people I’d planted? Jesus, the horror. At least I was quick. And the shame of it. I could have gone to see my grandson and daughter in Lexington. Oh, that little girl running into my arms. Shame weep shame goddamn Spokane morbs, sorry for it all, sorriest for me, shame weep God panic weep shame weep.

  We walked east and then turned north. He had me step over railroad tracks. We were moving toward the river.

  He laid me down in some wild grass and the pain nearly undid me. I opened my eyes. We were in a little grassy strip between railroad sidings, just above the south channel of the river. He was crouched, a little winded from carrying me so far.

  “Exhale,” he said, and when I did, he pulled the knife from my side, and I felt blinding pain and then a loosening and a relief, that blade and handle out of me. But the burbling of blood in my breath was enough to know I would drown one way or another. He took my hand and pressed it against the wound. “Hold your hand here. And take shallow breaths. It’s okay now. I will put you out quickly once you answer some questions.”

  I opened my eyes. He was standing above me, wiping clean the blade, which was smaller than I’d have thought, long and narrow, barely wider than an ice pick. The sky was low and gray behind him.

  “What are you going to do?”

  “Me? Finish the job I was hired for and go collect my money.”

  “I didn’t know”—wince weep shame—“he said you were a dangerous bum—said you punched a cop.”

  “Oh, I did more than that,” he said.

  It hit me then. “The cop who was shot?”

  He said again, “You hire me to rile, I rile.”

  It became clear then: Brand hires Reston, but he kills a cop, so Brand hires me to fix that problem. I pictured his consortium. “If anyone found out he hired you—” I didn’t finish the sentence.

  “Hey! Look at there.” A smile crept over Reston’s face. “The great Del Dalveaux has solved his last crime.”

  Weeping sorrow.

  “I’m sorry, Del,” he said, and started to come at me again.

  “The kid,” I said. “Brand got to him, too.”

  This stopped him. “What?”

  “The kid. Dolan. I met with him in Seattle. He’s the one who told me you were going to Wallace. Brand bought him for twenty bucks.”

  The look on his face. “Ryan?”

  “Yeah.” I hoped he’d kill the kid. Hoped he’d finish the whole lot, the bums, Gurley Flynn, Brand. I imagined him going door-to-door, killing the whole city, marching those millionaires into that big fireplace, all that pig-fat wealth crackling and melting, him killing every booster and setting fire to that bloated theater stage. I imagined the whole city gone, and it was a great feeling, picturing Reston wiping the morb town from the planet. He was like no Pinkerton I’d ever known, those priggish bookkeepers—and I felt a terrible respect for whatever he was—

  “You’re not—” Even to my own ears, my burbling words made no sense. “I need to—” I stared at the sky. Old prayers.

  “Okay, quiet, now,” he said. He bent over me and blocked the sky, looked in my eyes—such warm eyes, you’d never know—and then I felt one of his hands open my coat. He reached for my wallet, but I got the strength to push his hand away. Terrible form while a man still breathed. Would he go for my fillings next?

  “Sorry, Del,” he said. “You’re right.”

  Oh blessed weeping shame—“Wait,” I said, “wait—” Oh cold morbs—and he bent again and covered my eyes, and I tried again, “W—” but he drew the blade across my throat and the warmth spread and my arms went out in wide embrace and that’s when—

  24

  Rye stared out the window as they crossed the Idaho border. Winter air had blasted down from Canada and dropped the temperature forty degrees in two days. A thick band of fog belted the valley. That morning, a freight train had slammed a junk wagon at a foggy crossing, its cowcatcher tearing an old dray in two, and so the Great Northern 1356 slowed to a crawl. The passenger train eased into Spokane like a man feeling his way into a dark room—ghost buildings, pale faces in the mist.

  They’d left Missoula before dawn, Gurley spending the whole trip writing articles for the Industrial Worker and penning letters to supporters. She’d decided at the last minute to come to Spokane instead of going to Butte and had convinced the train agent to exchange her ticket. “I’ll go home when this is done,” she told Rye.

  “What about your husband?”

  “He knows who he married.”

  The closer they got to Spokane, the more energized she became. She read lines from her articles aloud. She looked up from her writing to tell Rye new ideas. Five days wasn’t much time, but she could go to nearby granges to rally farmhands; wire organizers in nearby towns for immediate help; recruit better in Chinatown and among the Negro hotel and street workers, and at the new Balkan hotel. In the meantime, she’d give a daily speech in the hall, maybe even on the street.

  “I’ll give the first today,” she said.

  She sounded a little frantic, Rye thought, and he worried something was wrong with her. “Today?”

  “We’ll be back by noon. I’ll speak at seven.”

  “I just mean, you don’t want to take a day to rest?”

  “I don’t have a day, Ryan. We have to keep the pressure up.”

  “But you said yourse
lf, we have no money and no bodies.”

  “The other side doesn’t know that,” she said. “We could have another five hundred floaters coming to town.”

  But they didn’t, and Rye thought about his conversation with Early, who sat two rows back, slumped in his seat, hat pulled over his eyes. He’d spent most of the trip like this, after a few hours in a Missoula saloon. He was still drunk at five-thirty in the morning when they boarded the train, and announced it would be “my last official duty. All due respect, I tenderly tender my resignation.”

  Now, as they pulled into the Spokane station, Early coughed, leaped up like he’d remembered an appointment, grabbed his pack from the luggage rail, and patted Rye on the shoulder. “I’m off, kid,” he said. “Take care.” He tipped his hat to Gurley. “Good luck, believers,” he said, then darted down the aisle. The train hadn’t even come to a full stop when Early dropped to the platform outside. Through the window, Rye watched his friend slide away again.

  “He does that,” Rye said.

  “We don’t need him,” Gurley said, Rye thinking, Maybe it’s time to blow up the castle. He helped Gurley up and got both of their bags down from the luggage rack. She rose belly first, pushing on her lower back. With the other hand, she took Rye’s arm, and he carried their bags through the crowded station, like husband and pregnant wife, past newsboys hawking the dailies and men selling ales and sandwiches. By the time they were outside, Early was long gone. Like being friends with a storm cloud, thought Rye.

  Cars and carriages lined the station curb like cattle at a salt block. Rye walked Gurley through the smoking, shitting traffic and across the bridge, two icy blocks to the union hall, which was empty, desolate.

  “Where is everyone?” Gurley asked.

  They’d only been gone a few days. The door was open, but there was no one in the canteen or the newsstand. The big hall was empty, too. Finally, they found Charlie Filigno in the cold meeting room, playing cards with the cook and the newsstand clerk.