The Cold Millions

by Jess Walter

  To say what?

  In the commotion, his own thoughts froze him: What were you hoping to say? Rye stood stone-still in the swirling crowd. He had created a whole fantasy in his mind—her seeing him dressed like this, thanking him for delivering her story to the Agitator, for saving the movement. She would no longer see him as a mole and a traitor, a desperate, unsophisticated orphan bum, but as a man who had done the right thing.

  And how far did this fantasy go? That she would no longer be married and pregnant? That Lem Brand wouldn’t still be rich, that Charlie Filigno wouldn’t be going to prison, that the speaking ban wasn’t still in effect and the IWW still banned? That his brother wasn’t off somewhere being a drunk? That Early Reston wasn’t out there waiting for him? He’d read in the newspaper that since the free speech riots, the number of job agencies had actually grown, from thirty to forty. What good were they doing out here, any of them? Even her?

  He thought of Count Tolstoy’s book and how, after the horrific, bloody battle of Borodino, the war just seemed to peter out, ending not in bravery but in retreat—exhaustion and the change of seasons having as much to do with the final Russian victory as any decisive action. Was that just the way of things? Rye found himself wishing he could talk to Gig about it.

  But then he remembered: Gig hadn’t read that far into War and Peace. Only he had done that.

  He felt disoriented as he stepped out into the brisk February air, the sky above him chalky blue, the wind shaking the bare tree limbs. From the top of the stairs, he could see Gurley down at the curb, surrounded by reporters and well-wishers, people calling, “Gurley!” And a few others calling, “Whore!”—a blur of faces and voices and the trees shaking and then she was eased into a long automobile by good Fred Moore, the lawyer calming the crowd: “That’s enough! No more questions!”

  But right before she slid into the car, Gurley happened to glance up, and she must’ve seen Rye on the courthouse steps, because she smiled just a little and raised her hand to wave—

  Or did she?

  He could never be sure, because then Fred Moore climbed in the car and it pulled away, stopped for a man crossing the street, and sped off.

  Standing there, alone on the courthouse steps, Rye thought that history was like a parade. When you were inside it, nothing else mattered. You could hardly believe the noise—the marching and juggling and playing of horns. But most people were not in the parade. They experienced it from the sidewalk, from the street, watched it pass, and when it was on to the next place, they had nothing to do but go back to their quiet lives.

  On the wide marble steps, someone bumped Rye and he moved down the staircase to the sidewalk. On the lawn in front of the courthouse, the crowd lingered, argued, made cases to people who couldn’t hear a word the other side said. Rye looked east to the big clock tower above the train depot. It was eleven-twenty, ten minutes before he was to meet Early Reston and give him the money in his coat.

  Newsboys were already selling extra one-sheets from the Chronicle, and Rye bought one for a nickel, amazed at the speed of news nowadays. The verdict had been less than an hour ago, and here he was, holding a story about it in his hands. He walked away from the courthouse with the paper, leaned against a tree, and read the coverage of his friend’s trial. There were three big headlines: IWW GETS DOUBLE DEFEAT! and IRISH REBEL GIRL CUT LOOSE! and ITALIAN AGITATOR TO PRISON!

  “The IWW has this day been twice defeated,” the writer opined. “By the conviction of the violent labor leader Mr. Filigno, the power of the law and the action of civil authorities is upheld. By the acquittal of pitiable Mrs. Jones, the organization loses its most delightful chance to coax money and sympathy from people in remote parts of the nation.”

  But it was the last line of the story that Rye knew would infuriate Gurley, and which made him go red with anger, too. “May it be hoped that Mr. Jones now will come from Montana and take his wife back to enjoy the beautiful home life which it should be every American woman’s privilege to enjoy.”

  Rye looked around. The crowd was still here on the lawn in front of the courthouse steps. He thought about that line—the beautiful home life which it should be every American woman’s privilege to enjoy. He thought of his mother, of Mrs. Ricci, of Ursula the Great. Then he turned to the back page of the special edition. It was filled with advertisements. So many companies had wanted to be part of this. Soap and pocket watches and corsets and combs and potatoes and writing desks and fine linens and Remnants! Remnants! Remnants! and one particular ad that caught his attention and seemed somehow as important as the news story on the other side: “SKILLED DENTISTS, CROWNS, PLATES, AND BRIDGEWORK, $5 EACH, EXTRACTION, 50 CENTS.”

  So, it was ten times harder and more expensive to fix things than it was to extract them, to just take them out—this seemed like some philosophical truth that even Count Tolstoy would have to admit.

  Rye folded up the newspaper, put it under his arm, and looked up.

  A Model T was idling on the street across from him. Early Reston was in the passenger seat. And his brother was on the driver’s side. Rye’s first thought: When did he learn to drive a car?

  “Gig?” He took a step toward the Model T.

  But the car lurched out of its parking spot into the street. It turned a tight circle, then slowed for a moment, the passenger door flew open, but no one got out, and the car sped up, veering away from Rye and the courthouse. It looked like Gig and Early were fighting inside the cab.

  The car swerved wildly as it sped away from Rye. It barely missed hitting a light pole, then a buggy, and then the car veered straight down Madison Street, the open passenger door flapping like a broken wing, back toward the web of railroad tracks, and just beyond them, the river gorge.

  Gig, 1910

  HE REACHED back for the satchel and I popped the hand brake, yelled, “No!” and jacked the throttle. The car jumped and Early fell back in his seat. He looked over at me with a half-smile. “And what do you think you’re doing?”

  “Not Rye!”

  He smiled wider and reached for his door handle, but I cranked the steering wheel to the right and he fell against me. I spun the car in a circle away from the courthouse. I was unsure where I was going—just going.

  I’d always been going. Since I left Whitehall, maybe since birth. Always running. But in that instant I saw my brother in his new baggy suit—my God, the kid just wants to be somewhere—I was felled by regret and wonder—where was I going all those years? why couldn’t I just be still?

  “Come on now, Gig,” said Early.

  And I said again, “No. Not Rye.”

  He made a quick thrust with his left hand, and I felt a tightness in my chest and let go of the throttle—my God, he’d put a blade in me, in my rib cage, the snake was murdering me—he was a goddamn murderer—and I wondered if I’d always known what kind of man this was.

  We were barely moving now, listing like a boat in chop. He grabbed the satchel and reached for his door again, but I knew something else: that even with his knife in my side, and after a month in jail, I was still stronger than he was, and as he opened his door, I reached over with my right arm and pulled him into a headlock. I held his neck as tight as I’ve ever held anything, cranked my arm like I owned his skull, his hat tumbling to the floor of the car as I held his face just below the knife handle, and then he swung at me—but with his head down, he had no angle and couldn’t get anything behind it. I squeezed his treacherous neck as if juice might come out.

  With my knee, I kicked the throttle lever up and the car began moving faster, Early squirming and fighting with me, and I sensed in him a shift as he realized how hard I would go to keep him away from my brother.

  We ripped down Madison, struggling and squirming in the cab, the car veering and shaking, him grunting and choking and slapping at my legs, my face, anything—still no force behind his blows. I let go of the wheel with my left hand to give him a quick pop to the nose and then grabbed the wheel again.
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  He pawed at the knife, maybe to stab me once more, but I had his neck so tight he could do nothing but kick wildly, one leg out the flapping door, the other forward into the windshield, which cracked and buckled, and now he was crazed, like a dying animal, like anything dying, I guess, and still I squeezed that goddamn neck, choking him, and me, too, choking on the pain in my chest, so sharp now that I cried out, and he cried out, a hacking, bleating sound as we bounced over the first set of tracks—

  We rattled over the second set and I hit the roof of the car, and we bounded over the third, then down a small embankment into a field and I slammed against the wheel but I held his neck as we tumbled downhill through weeds and rocks, shaking and falling until we were at the edge of the canyon and that was when I let go of the murderous son of a bitch and he sprang up like a jack-in-the-box, squealed in terror as I yelled in triumph, because for just a moment, Rye, we goddamn flew—

  37

  Rye was aware of sounds as he ran, his own breathing and crying, the clap of his new shoes on the street, people yelling, crashing metal, then a thunderous boom! and still he ran, down Madison Street toward the river gorge, over the railroad tracks, and down an embankment as black smoke began to waft up, and finally, he reached the gorge and peered over the edge.

  He’d watched the car speed away, down Madison Street, past buildings, swerving and jerking, the passenger door flapping, and then it had crossed the tracks and then it was just gone.

  And now he was looking down at what appeared to be the back half of a Model T, burning on a ledge on the steep hillside forty feet below. The front half of the car had been sheared off or blasted away and had cartwheeled over the gorge, another two hundred feet into the river. Smoking pieces of debris littered the banks and floated in the water, moving slowly downstream toward Peaceful Valley.

  Rye stood panting at the edge of the canyon. He looked around. People were rushing to both sides of the gorge. On the bridge, a streetcar had stopped, and passengers were running to the railing to look over the side.

  “Did you see that?” a man asked him.

  Rye slumped over, his hands on his knees. He vomited in the grass.

  Then he slid over the edge and began picking his way down the canyon wall to the burning wreckage, using his hands to hold on to grass and rocks. The hillside was steep, though, the footing loose, and he slipped and tumbled before catching himself on a tree root. He slid on his belly toward the burning car. “Gig!”

  He reached the small ledge that had caught part of the car, and Rye stood shielding his face from the smoke. He was staring at the smoldering rear end of a Model T, the torn backseat, two back fenders, one broken wheel, and the twisted frame of the top. The rest of the car had been shorn completely off and tumbled down the canyon or blasted into the river.

  Down there, he could see part of a tire, floating around the bend, toward Peaceful Valley, where they had all met.

  “Ryan!”

  He looked up. A big man was sliding down the ledge toward him. He braced himself against the canyon wall, leaned over, and offered Rye a hand up.

  “Come on,” Willard said. “We gotta get you out of here.”

  Sullivan, 1911

  THE POLITICIANS are what I hate, them and the newspapermen. In fact, I maybe hate the newspapermen worse than the politicians, and both I hate worse than the vagrants, which I spent a life knocking around. At least a vagrant has the decency to shit on your lawn because he needs to, not like politicians and newspapermen, who shit on your lawn to make a point.

  They come at me all at once that winter, all the lawn shitters in the world. All that fall, I had beat back the Wobblies, five hundred I’d knocked and thrown in jail, and I’d have made room for another thousand if that labor tart Gurley Flynn brung them. I’d make room for every Slav bum and socialist Jew and old Indian who raised a stink in my streets, streets I was paid to protect.

  But then Gurley Flynn spends one night in the women’s jail and makes a terrible fuss of it, and the church and women’s groups huff and protest, and every paper from here to Boston prints this story that we’re running a brothel down there, and Christ, no one wants to protect women more than me, that’s why I don’t allow them to work in the jail, but they twist it around like I’m Chief Pimp, protecting cops. And do my boys make an occasional play for themselves? Sure, some of them are in on the dip. The city council knew it because their pockets were being lined by the same men who owned the cribs and brothels, the same men who owned the mines, the same men who paid my cops so their birdhouses could run straight.

  But to put this scandal on me? Me, who was never in on it? Me, who if I had a dollar for every girl who come at me over the years, every dove tried to get off an arrest by opening her legs, I wouldn’t need a pension. Me, who never touched a one. But after Gurley Flynn writes this about the women’s jail, the mayor says, John, we need to do something about this.

  Point being I should have never taken the job, I said to Annie in our living room in the flats near the courthouse, and pretty soon, every time I said that she took to patting my arm and saying, I know, John. Especially since I never even got the job I shouldn’t of taken! Acting police chief!

  And that whole winter of 1910, it’s one buggering thing after another for the acting chief. First they acquit Gurley Flynn! Acquit her! When the judge should turn her over his knee and throw her in jail until she bleeds gray.

  Again the mayor calls me in. John, with her acquitted, we can’t ignore this women’s jail thing anymore. And I say, Who’s ignoring it, Nellie? Not me. I got a hole the size of a fist in me guts over it. And then a patrolman sticks his head in the mayor’s office and says, Chief. You’ll never guess what happened.

  Not two hours after the verdict, a Ford Model T has taken flight right into the river gorge. The mayor and I run outside and peer over the edge, and I will be damned, but there is the butt end of a car burning on the hillside across the gorge. My cop tells me the gas tank must have blown, for the front half of the car was shot off and down the canyon into the river.

  Drunks, I assume, or the shite kids who steal automobiles, and if there is any justice, it’s there smoldering on the hillside.

  But the day’s not even done, for one of my detectives finds a bomb in a satchel left outside the station. It’s sealed in a carpetbag, left suspicious right at the door, like maybe the bomber lost his nerve and ran off, says this detective, a good man named Hage, poor Waterbury’s old pal, and Hage says that when he saw the satchel, he thought it odd on the day of the verdict in the big union case. So rather than open it at the top, which might be wired, he cut into the leather on the side. And what did he find?

  Dynamite. Hage asks me if I think it’s connected to that car in the river.

  Christ, I say, do you think it is? I hadn’t thought of it.

  And I really wish I was smarter, because there’s nothing in the bomb to tell us. Just dynamite and a cap stolen from a mine in Montana, and some metal scraps taken from a tin shop, but that’s it. Cold after that.

  Until a few weeks later, when a note comes for me. Unsigned. Typed.

  The note says, What if a certain prominent mining man in town hired someone to get inside the union, to put them at odds with the police? How far do you think that inside man would go? Would he try to bomb the police station? Would he have another bomb that might blow up a car in the river? Would he even shoot a cop investigating a burglary?

  And that’s it. The whole note.

  God, I wish I was a smarter man, I tell Annie that night.

  Why, she asks.

  Well for one, I say, to shut up those newspapermen coming at me every day, especially those pot-stirrers at the Press who mock my brogue, Nat on your loife, they quote me saying, like I’m just off the boat, and who wrote that I run the rottenest police system in the nation and must be removed and the whole department reorganized.

  You are smart, John, Annie tells me.

  But I’m not. And the worst is tha
t I know I’m not. I’ve got a car in the river and a bomb outside the police station, both on the day of the unionists’ trial, and a note saying it’s maybe connected to poor Waterbury’s death, and I can’t figure any of it, Annie.

  And she says, Maybe there’s nothing to figure, John.

  And I say, See, even you’re smarter than me.

  But here is something I do know. I know when a man’s support and protection have given out on him.

  For soon, with Gurley Flynn’s release and the bad publicity and the prospect of another riot and spring coming and those mining and timber men wanting their floating workers back, the city council surrenders to the IWW and sets all the prisoners free. A commission shuts down the worst job sharks and lets the Wobblies operate again, practically gives them the key to the city.

  All because of this women’s jail business. And they blame me for it and threaten to charge me with misconduct. Charge a man what gives his life to be a policeman in your town and been doing it since the Great Fire? Charge the last man standing from that class of twelve cops back in ’89, a man only wants to keep your streets safe, and you charge that man with misconduct?

  I had already agreed to hire a policewoman to shut the noise, but I put her on dance halls and parks and theaters, stuff for a proper woman, and then the mayor says, That’s not the point, John, the city has taken a beating and we want her in the jail and paid the same as a man, and I said, Nellie, that’s where I draw the line, for no one loves a woman more than me, but I’m not going to pay her to pick daisies for the same wage I pay a man who puts his life on the line.

  And all this time, the preachers and ladies’ clubbers are coming at me in the newspaper: Clean up the city, clean up the city.

  What do they think I done my entire life, but I give in on that, too, and I send out my cops to arrest every working girl in town, and rid the streets of vagrants and faro boys and opium dens, and we fill the jail again, just like we did with the unionists, we shut down the brothels and nail up the cribs.