Graves' Retreat (15 page)

    Les thought a minute and said, in a sigh, “All right. Let’s go down to the tavern.”

    

    

    Neely got the Rayo table lamp going and then went over and nudged T.Z., who slept hunched up like a baby.

    “C’mon.”

    “Wha’s wrong?” T.Z. said. He wasn’t even awake yet and he was scared.

    “We got to move. Fast.”

    “Why?”

    “Because I found Black Jake Early’s room.”

    "And what happened?”

    “I found the poster.”

    “My poster?”

    “Yes.”

    “Neely, what the hell am I going to do?”

    “We got to move fast, T.Z. Damn fast.”

    “Where we going?”

    “You just got to trust me, T.Z. You just got to trust me. Start packin’ your things.”

    T.Z. was up and off the bed and packing.

    Neely watched him and for just a moment he felt the guilt again. T.Z. couldn’t help it that he was the way he was-

    But then Neely couldn’t help it that the baggageman had lived long enough to identify T.Z.

    “Hurry up,” Neely said.

    “God, Neely,” T.Z. said. “I’m hurryin’ as fast as I can.”

    

    

    He was one of those men who are surprisingly nimble despite massive weight. All the way to the tavern he kept easy pace with Les, and when a dog jumped out of the shadows and nearly knocked him over, he stepped effortlessly out of its way.

    Business at the tavern had thinned out. Tomorrow was a workday. The place smelled of yeast and the free Swiss cheese placed on big plates at several places along the bar.

    When Les and the fat man came in, the six customers turned to stare at them. Several smiled at Les and one made the remark “You should be home sleepin’ for the game.”

    His voice carried admiration for Les.

    “You’re something of a celebrity,” the fat man said after the bartender had brought them two mugs of beer, the heads of which he’d cut off with the edge of his hand.

    “I guess.”

    “Guess, hell. Right now you’re the most famous man in Cedar Rapids. And I hear you’re very good, too. You ever thought of trying out for the pros?”

    Les glared at him. “I don’t think you brought me here to talk about baseball.”

    The fat man smiled. “I guess that’s one of the drawbacks to my job. I try to be nice to people, but they don’t seem willing to accept it.”

    “Just what is your job, anyway?”

    “It goes by various names.”

    “Such as?”

    “The most popular is bounty hunter. But when I worked for judge Parker, he always told me to refer to myself as an ‘auxiliary peace officer.’ That sounds a lot more official, I guess.”

    “Judge Isaac Parker?”

    “You’ve heard of him then?”

    Les stared at the fat man. “I don’t think I’d brag about the fact that I worked for a man like that.”

    Isaac C. Parker had once been a Missouri senator who, after being turned out of office, had been made a judge by President Grant. In seventeen years the judge had personally seen to it that more than one hundred sixty men had been hung. In addition to outlaws, he enjoyed executing anybody who had anything to do with the labor movement or what he invariably called “anarchy.” His executioner, an emaciated man with a flowing white biblical beard and the gaze of a zealot, was named George Maledon, whom the newspapers called "The Prince of Hangmen.” To date, he had hung sixty men and shot down four others.

    “My name is Jake Early,” the fat man said, putting forth his hand. Les did not accept the handshake.

    Early withdrew the gesture and smiled.

    “I guess I wouldn’t shake my hand if I were you, either. I mean, given what I’m here to do.”

    “You’re Black Jake Early,” Les said.

    “That’s what they call me. Because my mama was a Blackfoot Indian, I guess.”

    Only a slight red cast to the man’s skin gave any indication of Indian blood. Otherwise he might have been a successful merchant with his expensive suit and massive gold pocket watch chain and clean celluloid collar and deep red necktie and Vandyke beard. Only the Smith and Wesson.44 he wore strapped to his waist betrayed his real purpose.

    Early said, “He’s here, isn’t he?”

    “Who?”

    Early smiled and nodded to the bar. “Like that fellow said, you should be home sleeping. You don’t have any time to be sitting here playing cat-and-mouse with me.” Early had some beer, wiped off the foam with the back of his thick hand. “I seem to have developed a reputation for being rough sometimes.”

    “You’ve developed a reputation for being a butcher.”

    “I’m trying to make a point here.”

    “Make it.”

    “When I get riled, or when I feel it’s necessary, I pursue men without much mercy. That I’ll admit. But I always try to contact their kinfolk first so that things don’t have to get that way.” He smiled. “It’s a matter of playing the odds, Mr. Graves. The fewer men I have to fire on, the fewer men who have to fire back on me. I have a wife and two children and one of those children is about to make me a grandfather.

    I want to live long enough to see that grandchild. So I’d just as soon take your brother peaceably.”

    “I don’t know where my brother is. I haven’t seen him in two years.”

    Early smiled again. “Do you know a man named Dubbins?”

    Les said, “Sort of. He’s a friend of my brother’s.”

    “Well, he’s also serving time in Judge Parker’s jurisdiction for assault and battery. The judge gave him twenty years.”

    “Why should I be interested in that?”

    “Because the judge asked me to interview him. The judge asks me to do that to some of the prisoners, sometimes.”

    “That’s a fine-sounding word. ‘Interview.’ ”

    “As I said, sometimes I pursue men without much mercy. That’s also how I pursue the truth.” He had some more beer and then pointed to the bartender for two more. Les had not touched his. “In the course of interviewing Mr. Dubbins, I learned a number of things. And one of the things I learned was that your brother and a man named Neely planned to come here to Cedar Rapids and look you up.”

    “Well, they must have changed their minds. They’re not here.” The bartender set down two beers and put out his hand. Early set some coins in it.

    “You don’t seem to understand the situation here, Mr. Graves.”

    “I don’t?”

    “No, you don’t.”

    “Then explain it to me.”

    Early leaned forward on his elbows. “If at the end of this conversation you haven’t agreed to turn your brother over within twenty-four hours, then I’m going to find him myself.”

    Les just sat there and stared at the man. His ears rang and his stomach was painful with knots. He did not know what to say or do. All he knew was that this man meant to kill his brother and he had no idea how to stop him.

    Les had his first sip of beer. He needed it to wet his mouth, which had dehydrated from fear. “Just say, for the sake of argument, T.Z. is here.”

    “All right, for the sake of argument, let’s say that.”

    “You’re saying you wouldn’t shoot him.”

    “Not unless he forced me to.”

    “What would you do to him?”

    “Take him back to Judge Parker.”

    Les sighed. There was no hope. Either way-if T.Z. resisted or if he allowed himself to be taken back to Missouri-he would die.

    Les said, “Well, he isn’t here.”

    Early laughed. He seemed genuinely amused. “Cat-and-mouse, Mr. Graves. I thought we both agreed we didn’t have time for it.”

    “I haven’t seen him for three years.”

    “A few minutes ago you said you hadn’t seen him for two years.” Les stood up. He was sweating and trembling and he felt as if he were going to vomit.

    He kept thinking of Judge Parker’s executioner George Maledon and his zealot eyes and the fact that he boasted he wanted to “hang two hundred men before the Lord sees fit to take me.”

    “You’re not being very intelligent,” Early said after Les had stood up.

    “He isn’t in Cedar Rapids. You’re wasting your time.”

    “The newspapers like to print accounts of the men I’ve killed.”

    “Or how about the man you stabbed in the forehead?”

    “Simple necessity, Mr. Graves. That’s all.” He looked down at his thick hands and shook his head. “I’ve apprehended more than one hundred men and I’ve killed only twenty-three of them. I’d say that’s a small number, given the type of men I pursue.”

    “He isn’t here. He wouldn’t have any reason to come here.” Early laughed again but not quite so heartily. “He’d have a very good reason to come here, Mr. Graves.” He stared at Les for a long moment. “You work in a bank and your brother’s a thief. You could help him get some escape money.”

    Then Early went back to staring at his hands. In a voice little more than a whisper, he said, “Good night, Mr. Graves.”

    Les left.

    

    

    “Good night, dear,” Byron Fuller’s mother said, bending over to kiss him on the cheek.

    “Good night, Mother.”

    When she pulled back from him, she said, “You’ve been acting queerly tonight, Byron.”

    “Have I, Mother?” He didn’t look at her. Simply stared straight ahead.

    “Quite queerly.”

    Mrs. Thaxton Fuller was a large woman given to busted silk dresses that somehow managed to make her look formidable instead of feminine. Her husband had made one of the city’s first fortunes by organizing an insurance company that worked exclusively with farmers in areas that the larger companies in Chicago and Kansas City and New York did not want to risk. But the risk had paid off, as was evident by the fact that this was the second-largest estate in Cedar Rapids, and that its sprawling living room contained not only a real electric light but such items as a Louis XVI gilt bronze and Chinese porcelain candelabra and rare English pewter porringers dating back to the 1400s and several original paintings by Vandyke. Mrs. Thaxton Fuller was a great world traveler, and a great world spender, and it was entirely too bad that Mr. Thaxton Fuller, who had made the money, had died at age thirty-five of pneumonia, six months after his son was born and a scant year and a half after the first time that his company had taken in more than three million dollars in premium revenues. So it had fallen to Mrs. Thaxton Fuller to protect both her husband’s fortune and her son’s upbringing, both of which she had done perhaps too well. She went to the insurance company once a month and fired one or two people on the theory that this would keep all the others in line, and much oftener than that she demanded from Byron subtle expressions of filial allegiance that could have unmanned General Sherman.

    “It’s Susan, isn’t it?”

    Byron looked up at her. “I’d rather not talk about it.”

    Mrs. Thaxton Fuller clucked. She was a past master of clucking. “She’s too headstrong, Byron. I’ve told you that many times.”

    He frowned. “Mother, I’ve already told you. I don’t want to talk about it.”

    His words came out angrily, a rebuke.

    His mother’s retort was no less angry. “It’s this age we live in. The suffragettes and all the rest of it. They just confuse women about their place and the natural order of things. Women belong in the shadow of their men.”

    A curious smile lit Byron’s eyes.

    “Do you find something funny, Byron?”

    “Yes.”

    “And just what would that be?”

    “You, Mother. I find you funny.”

    He had never taken this tone with her. It was exhilarating.

    He got up from the chair and walked over to the wide fireplace, above which hung a huge oil painting of his father. He kept his back to his mother, studied the portrait of the man above him. His father had been handsome, no doubt about that, but it was not unlike Byron’s handsomeness. There was something melancholic in the gaze and something weak in the mouth.

    “You owe your mother an apology, Byron.”

    But Byron seemed not to hear. “I suspect something, Mother.”

    “I am waiting for an apology, Byron.”

    He continued to stare at the portrait. “I suspect it was you who made his fortune for him.”

    “The apology, Byron.”

    “I suspect you were the real power, not Father.”

    She came up and turned him roughly about by the shoulder. “Have you lost your senses? Do you know how you’re speaking to me-your own mother?”

    Calmly, Byron said, “Susan is moving to Omaha.”

    Mrs. Thaxton Fuller seemed unable to keep a glow of satisfaction from touching her lips. “I’m sorry to hear that. But there are other women your age in this city.”

    “Other women who are more likely to be intimidated by you-the way Susan isn’t?”

    “It’s not only me she’s disrespectful to.” Mrs. Thaxton Fuller snapped. “It’s her own father.”

    “Her father,” Byron said in a soft but considered way, “is a bully and a tyrant.”

    “Byron! He’s one of the most important and respected men in this town!”

    That was Mrs. Thaxton Fuller’s only measure for judging a man’s worth. His importance. True, she often expressed feelings that this or that man was a boor or uneducated or that he was not “cultural,” but none of these failings mattered much if he was “important,” meaning of course that his fortune was equal to if not more substantial than her own.

    “He’s destroying Susan and he’s destroying me,” Byron said. “I’m going to resign tomorrow.”