The Cold Millions

by Jess Walter

  Early had me cross the railroad tracks and drive past the courthouse once, then around back, while he checked things out. We came up from the south and idled on Madison, a tree-lined road across from the front of the courthouse. I pulled in under a bare maple. I looked around for Everett but didn’t see him.

  There was a commotion outside: maybe three dozen people milling about, newspaper reporters and photographers, protestors with placards. Must have been why Early chose this place—it was a circus—the end of the trial of Gurley Flynn and Charlie Filigno.

  “Give me your hat,” Early said, and I swapped my flat cap for his fedora. “Keep the car running. I’ll be right back.”

  “You think something happened to Everett?” I asked.

  “No,” Early said. “Change of plans.”

  “What are you talking about,” I said. “Who is—”

  And then I saw you.

  You were thirty yards off, standing away from that clutch of people beneath a maple tree. You were wearing a fancy suit, gray-blue, with shiny new shoes, a vest, and a necktie looped into a perfect knot. Who taught you to knot that necktie without me there to do it? You shifted your weight and I could see it then, my God, you just wanted to belong.

  You looked like a man dressed for a fancy club—

  “No,” I said to Early, who was reaching around the backseat for the second satchel. “Not Rye.”

  “Gig, he’ll be fine,” Early said. “It’s the only way.”

  “Jesus, Early, no.”

  “He wants to do this, Gig.”

  “No.”

  “He’s the one who can get close to Brand. It’s gotta be him, Gig.”

  “How can he get close to Brand?”

  He looked over at me. “Jesus, think for just a second, Gig. How is it you got out of jail? When the rest of that crew was getting six months, how did you get out in only a month?”

  “I wasn’t an elected official—”

  “Come on! Rye did that! He’s been Brand’s guy on the inside from the beginning. Him and Ursula.”

  I closed my eyes. It’s never the whole truth. But it’s enough.

  “And now he wants to make up for it,” Early said. “He’s carrying five thousand dollars from Brand. We take that and he takes this satchel to Brand. He’ll be long gone by the time Brand opens it.”

  I looked up at you, Rye-boy, in your fancy suit. And you saw me.

  “Five thousand,” Early said. “Think of what we can do with that.” And then he reached into the backseat for the satchel again.

  34

  On Sunday, the day before Gurley’s verdict, and the day before he was to meet Early at the courthouse, Rye took a streetcar up the South Hill, walked six blocks, and stood shivering at Lem Brand’s gate, on the street below Alhambra. A young man stepped out of the gatehouse. He asked Rye to wait, and a minute later, Willard came down the driveway in his Ford. He gestured and Rye got in.

  “Mr. Brand’s out of town,” Willard said.

  Rye delivered Early’s message: “He wants five thousand, and for that, he says he’ll give Mr. Brand the evidence of their deal and disappear forever.”

  Willard wrote in a small notebook as he said, “What evidence?”

  “He didn’t say.”

  “Five thousand?”

  “Yes. Delivered to me Monday morning. And then I give it to him.”

  Willard wrote all of this down. Then he sent Rye back to the gatehouse and drove back to the main house. Rye stood with the guard, who kept blowing on his hands, even though he wore gloves. “Do you like your job?” Rye asked.

  “Are you kidding?” the man asked.

  Willard came back down the drive ten minutes later. Rye got in the car again.

  “Okay,” Willard said. “I bring you the money Monday, and you give me whatever papers and evidence Reston has regarding his deal with Mr. Brand?”

  “He wants the money first,” Rye said. “Then he gives me the evidence. And I bring that to Mr. Brand at the Spokane Club in the afternoon.”

  Willard wrote all of this down. “Where are you meeting Reston?” he asked without looking up.

  “I’m not supposed to say,” Rye said. “I’m supposed to tell you that if you follow me, the deal is off.”

  Willard wrote this down. “And what assurance does Mr. Brand have?”

  “I don’t know what that means.”

  “How do we know this is the end of it,” Willard said, “that Reston won’t keep coming after him?”

  “I don’t know,” Rye said.

  Willard wrote this down. He looked over his notes. “Okay,” he said, “give me a minute.” Rye got out and Willard drove to the house again while Rye stood with the guard in the small guardhouse, just a few feet from each other.

  “You got a job?” the guard asked Rye.

  “I work in a machine shop,” Rye said.

  “You like it?”

  “Yeah.”

  The guard said, “Huh,” as if he’d taken some wrong turn in life.

  “Can I ask you something?” Rye asked. “Is Mr. Brand really out of town?”

  The guard glanced at the house, then back at Rye. He shrugged with one shoulder.

  A minute later, Willard drove back down to the guardhouse. “Get in.”

  Rye did and Willard drove him back down the South Hill, through downtown, over the river, toward Mrs. Ricci’s house. “I’ll bring you the money at eight o’clock tomorrow morning,” he said. “Mr. Brand wants you to tell Reston that the only reason he’s agreed to this was that unfortunate business with Del Dalveaux. This closes the books between them forever. If, for some reason, Reston resurfaces, or tells anyone that Mr. Brand hired him, Mr. Brand will spend the rest of his fortune hunting him down and killing him and his compatriots.” He cleared his throat. “And Mr. Brand wants you to know that we’ll start with you.”

  “I’m not—” Rye started to say.

  But Willard held up his hand, as if embarrassed to have delivered such a threat. “Don’t worry about it, it’s just what people say.”

  Rye looked out the window at the deep sky, thinking of Prince Andrey lying wounded in the battle of Austerlitz, believing he was dying, realizing too late his own insignificance, the emptiness of valor and honor, the finality of death.

  They drove in silence for a few blocks. Willard parked in front of Mrs. Ricci’s house. He offered his hand and Rye shook it.

  “After this, tell Mr. Brand it’s over. I really am done.”

  “Sure thing, kid,” Willard said.

  35

  Rye had beef and cabbage with Mrs. Ricci and a new short-term boarder she had taken in, a thin Canadian salesman with a long, open face. “What line are you in, Mr. Dolan?” the Canadian asked.

  “Machinery,” Rye said.

  “There’s the future,” the man said. “Machines will do it all one day.” He held up a bite of beef. “A machine will raise the cow and a machine will kill it and another will cook this steak and another will serve it to you. A machine will chew it up and take out the gristle and dribble it down your throat like a baby bird. Another machine will digest it for you. I’ll be gone, and you, too, my young friend. We will be on an assembly line, and then we will be part of the assembly line, and eventually, there will just be a machine.”

  Rye wasn’t sure what to say.

  “Sta’ zitto,” Mrs. Ricci said.

  “Exactly,” said the Canadian man.

  After dinner, Rye sat by the fire and read a chapter of War and Peace.

  “What are you reading?” the Canadian asked, but when Rye held up the book, the man gave no reaction and went back to his newspaper. Rye had trouble concentrating on the book, and he went to bed early. He fell asleep right away but woke well before dawn and lay in bed waiting for morning.

  With the sun just beginning to spill across the horizon, Rye rose and went to the outhouse. He cleaned and powdered himself, wet down his hair. He began to get dressed in his new suit. It was winter. Wa
s he supposed to wear his long johns with a suit? He worried they would be too bunchy under his pants, so he put on summer undershorts instead. Then he put on the smooth suit pants, running his hand down the crease in the center. He put on the stiff white collared shirt, braces, the vest, the thin new socks, and the shiny calfskin shoes. He laced and knotted the shoes tight around his feet. He put on his coat. And his bowler. And finally, he grabbed the necktie. Chester the clothier had given him a quick lesson on knotting it, but that had been in front of a mirror, and he couldn’t remember the steps. And there was no mirror in Mrs. Ricci’s house. He felt a moment of panic. He could never loop this tie without a mirror. And anyway, what even was the point of having such clothes if he couldn’t see himself in them?

  Mrs. Ricci was making breakfast for the Canadian salesman when Rye came out of his bedroom. “Sharp suit,” the Canadian said. “Single-breasted vest, elegant cut, fine, fine, where’d you get it, the Crescent?”

  “Burks and Feyn,” Rye said. “Downtown?”

  “That’s a thirty-dollar suit if I’ve ever seen one, nice, nice, very nice.”

  Rye’s face was burning. He could ask the Canadian for help with the tie, but the man bothered him. Maybe Mrs. Ricci had helped her sons knot neckties. But she just stared at him, spatula in hand, bacon grease popping behind her.

  “I can’t eat this morning, Mrs. Ricci,” Rye said, “no mangia,” and he went into the front room, peeked through the curtains, and saw, at the curb, Willard’s Model T idling in front of the house.

  Rye unlocked the front door and walked out, went down the walk. He knocked on the passenger door and startled Willard again.

  “You can’t keep doing that,” Willard said. He ran his hand along the right side of his face. “Glaucoma. No peripheral vision.”

  “How was I supposed to know that?” Rye asked.

  Willard looked Rye up and down. “Christ. What happened to you?”

  “Gurley’s verdict is today. I want to look nice.”

  “Well,” Willard said, “you do.”

  Rye held out the necktie. “Do you have any idea—”

  “Sure. Get in.” Willard had Rye sit in the passenger seat and face away, toward the house. “Double Windsor?”

  “Whatever it’s supposed to be,” Rye said, embarrassed that he’d bought clothes that he couldn’t even operate.

  Willard lifted Rye’s collar and draped the tie over his neck. He lowered the collar and narrated as he looped it. “Okay. This is simple.” He put his hands over Rye’s, and they did it together. “Over the top, around, over, through the loop, around again, and once more through the hole. Then pull tight. Adjust. There you go.”

  He patted Rye’s shoulder and sat back in his seat. Rye settled in and Willard handed him a fat envelope. “You want to count it?”

  “Not really.”

  “Good. Put it in your inside pocket.”

  Rye did.

  “I’m going to be at the courthouse, watching.”

  “No, Willard, he said nobody—” Rye began.

  “I know what he said. You won’t know I’m there, and neither will he.”

  Rye felt less than confident.

  “I’m not doing this for Brand,” Willard said. “He doesn’t even know. He’s scared stupid of this Early Reston, or Ennis Cooper, or whoever he is. Thinks he’s a ghost. But I know he’s not. I worked with sons of bitches like this. He’s no anarchist, no ghost. He’s not even a detective. He’s just a thief and a murderer.”

  “A murderer?” Rye felt a chill.

  “He’s killed at least two men, easy as swatting flies.”

  “Who?”

  “Doesn’t matter,” Willard said. “But I want you to know, I’ll be watching in case something happens.”

  “But what if it’s in your peripheral vision?” Rye asked.

  Willard sat for a moment before a corner of his mouth went up and he made a noise—“Hmm”—that Rye realized was the closest he had to a laugh. The big man patted Rye on the lapel of his jacket. “You look good, kid. A real gentleman.”

  36

  Willard dropped Rye off two blocks from the county courthouse. It was a cool, clear day, wind agitating a row of young maples lining Broadway in front of the courthouse, which sat on a knoll across the railroad tracks, above the river gorge.

  Outside, people were milling about, Wobbly organizers from Idaho and Seattle, tramps from all over, cops, men in work clothes, goateed socialists, newspapermen in fedoras, women from church and temperance societies, lawyers in worn workaday suits with winter rubbers pulled over their shoes. Rye looked down at his own shoes, so shiny they seemed to be lit from within. Rye was the only one here who had come dressed for a soiree.

  He felt so foolish. What had he expected? Some kind of pageantry? He blamed Anna Pavlovna, Prince Andrey, the Rostovs. Now here he was, dressed in fancy new evening wear, with five thousand dollars in his breast pocket—what had Early said, Who are you? It was a fair question. He wondered what Gig would think of him now.

  He looked for Willard in the crowd, or his Model T on the street, but didn’t see either. He followed some lawyers up the wide courthouse steps. His whole idea had been to come see Gurley on the day of her verdict, but this was all so much more elaborate than he’d imagined, like some kind of production he was attending, like Ursula the Great at the Comique. But if that was the case, who was the cougar?

  Up the stairs and inside the courthouse, a uniformed cop was stopping everyone. He asked if Rye had credentials, and Rye said, “For what?” and the cop sent him down the hallway to stand with other hangers-on. Apparently, every seat in the courtroom had long ago been assigned. Rye had imagined this would be like his own courtroom appearance, with just a few onlookers, Mr. Moore, and the prosecutor, Fred Pugh. But the whole building was packed, corridors full of newspaper reporters and lawyers, unionists and curious people from all over the country. Rye found himself pushed to the end of a hallway with a group of lawyers around a spittoon, none of them with decent aim. A splatter of tobacco juice crossed the bow of one of Rye’s new shoes, and he dropped to wipe it away with his bare hand.

  These lawyers were a scraggly bunch, reminding him of a pack of tramps around a cook fire. They were debating how badly the union was going to lose—six-month to one-year sentences the consensus, although a lawyer with a massive boiler of a gut said Pugh planned to argue that these were the masterminds of all the trouble and to seek exceptional sentences of five years. “The judge would have them drawn and quartered if the prosecutor could find a precedent,” he said.

  One of the lawyers said that Gurley Flynn had succeeded in distracting from the state’s case, but the heavy lawyer leaned in and confided that it didn’t matter because Pugh’s own neighbor was the jury foreman “and he’s got no sympathy for unions, bums, foreigners, or wives who run out on husbands.” Another lawyer said Gurley had so angered the judge that the jury’s instructions had basically been about how far they could go in sentencing. The third lawyer pointed out that Pugh had won every case against the IWW this year and wasn’t likely to lose the biggest yet.

  All of this angered Rye, and he had the urge to tell the spitting lawyers that Pugh hadn’t won them all, that Fred Moore had gotten at least one Wobbly out of jail, but he kept his tongue.

  People moved in and out of the hall, but the cops wouldn’t let anyone go upstairs. They stood for over an hour, and then a commotion arose, people yelling from the floor above, newspapermen like birds startled off a wire. “A shocker!” someone yelled, although Rye couldn’t tell which way, someone yelling, “Guilty!” and someone else yelling, “Acquitted!” He tried to get closer but was pushed even farther back as the hall was filled by more reporters and onlookers, a sea of fedoras, and a cheer went up and then there was some angry yelling, and Rye might not have known what was happening except a newspaperman turned and yelled right into his face, “Filigno’s guilty, Gurley Flynn’s let go!”

  Rye was pushed against
the wall and he saw the prosecutor, Pugh, come down the staircase, red-faced and furious, chasing after a man in a gray suit. “You let the worst of them go free!” On the steps, a man who was apparently a juror turned to the prosecutor. “Aw, she ain’t a criminal, Fred. You want us to send some pretty Irish girl to jail for being bighearted and idealistic?”

  There was more yelling, people pushing, and someone stomped on Rye’s new shoes, scuffing them. He stood at the end of the first-floor hallway for another half hour, with the lawyers chattering about this great upset—a defeat for the city, shame for the mayor and Police Chief Sullivan, who now could not ignore Gurley Flynn’s allegations about the jail.

  Then, from down the hall, Rye saw Fred Moore descend the stairs, his arm around Gurley, who looked angry, nothing like a person who had just been acquitted. Rye was surprised at both how pregnant she was—her belly well out in front—and how small she seemed in the crowd around her. She was yelling back up the stairs to a scrum of reporters following her. “We should have both been convicted or both cleared!” She vowed to appeal, and at Rye’s end of the hall, the spittoon lawyers began debating whether a defendant could actually appeal her own acquittal.

  “I don’t think that’s even possible,” one of them said.

  “We are not done fighting for justice here!” Gurley yelled. “Nor am I done exposing the venal corruption of the police and prosecutors, and the millionaire mining concerns that own them!” At that, Mr. Moore pulled Gurley by the arm, and the whole spectacle moved down the steps and spilled out the doors.

  Rye tried to follow, but people coming down the staircase kept pushing him farther away from Gurley and his old lawyer. He’d hoped to see her, to talk to her, to say, to say—