Ragtime Cowboys (13 page)

“I had a standing membership in all the best clubs in Denver and Santa Fe. They're where men go to talk about their women.”

Hammett watched Siringo, waiting until the bartender served their drinks and moved off.

“I didn't know you old-timers spent so much time thinking about—”

“The gentle sex?”

“Sure. Let's call it that.”

“The problem with your generation is you don't understand the power of an empty compliment. You can't get no place nowhere calling 'em dames and tomatoes and twists and what you was just now thinking. You think it's plain speaking, but the only thing plain about it is dumb. There ain't one of them thinks she's Lillian Russell or Dorothy Gish, including Lillian Russell and Dorothy Gish. They got mirrors, and they see what's in 'em, not like us. It's our job to convince 'em otherwise, or at least make them think we're convinced ourselves.

“What was we thinking about? Son, the winters was seven months long and there was one woman for every ten men. You think those ole boys was working out sums all the time they buggered the calves?”

Hammett colored. That hadn't happened since he'd stolen his first cigarette.

“Not that I ever done that, understand,” Siringo said, pouring the dregs of his first drink into the second. “I was saving myself for marriage.”

 

15

“I used to know my way around this neighborhood blindfolded,” Siringo said. “Now it looks like Mars.”

“The quake moved like a crumb-scraper, sliding everything this side of Telegraph Hill clear into the ocean. So I'm told,” Hammett added. “I was twelve at the time, failing geography in Baltimore.”

“I was living it while you was studying it. What's the point? One shake and it's gone.”

They were standing on the corner of Front Street and Pacific Avenue. Siringo pointed across Pacific. “The Old Ladies' Club was there, in a shack built from ships run aground. I don't recollect its real name. They called it that on account of all the girls were older than thirteen.”

It was a brick hotel now, five stories high.

“You've got a good memory.”

“You never forget where you caught your first dose of clap.”

“Backseat of a Pierce-Arrow for me. Her father's Pierce-Arrow. Here's the joint.”

It was an Edwardian house, gabled all over, with four chimneys and eight different shades of paint. Its only identification was a sign suspended by chains from the semicircular porch roof, shaped like a four-leaf clover.

“Looks like an undertaker's parlor.”

“What's more respectable than that?” Hammett opened the wide front door and they stepped inside.

The foyer had been partitioned off with tongue-and-groove boards into a broad corridor ending in a gracefully curving staircase, at the base of which and to the right stood a podium supporting an open book the size of a ledger. Behind it on a high stool sat Mr. Pickwick: bald as an egg, with side whiskers combed straight out from their roots, a starched flaring collar, and a swallowtail coat and checked trousers. He looked up from his feather quill to blink at the visitors. “Names?”

“Mr. Hammett and Mr. Siringo,” said Hammett.

“Visiting whom?”

“Mr. Sean Patrick Clanahan.”

“Reason for visit?”

“Social call.”

“Expected?”

“No, we're just dropping in.”

“Members don't entertain unexpected visitors.” He returned to his writing.

Siringo said, “How come it's easier to bust out of jail than into a gentlemen's club?”

“I believe ‘gentlemen' is the word in operation.” He didn't look up.

Hammett took the roll of cash he'd gotten from the bank, peeled off a dollar bill, and smoothed it across the pages spread out on the big book. The book snapped shut on it so quickly it nearly caught his hand. “Card room. Top of the stairs, first door on the left.”

“So that's what it takes to be a gent,” Siringo said on the way up.

“Always did. You were just out in the wilderness too long to see it.”

The door stood open to a room occupying fully a quarter of the second floor, paneled in cherrywood, with massive portraits of cardinals, bishops, and bearded men wearing judicial robes in elaborately carved frames leaning out from the walls. Below them hung sporting prints in smaller frames: boxers, baseball players, jockeys, and track-and-field men striking competitive poses. Another frame held a brown and chipped poster advertising the Fitzsimmons-Maher fight in 1896. No date or place was mentioned.

“I recollect that one,” Siringo said, pointing. “Judge Roy Bean put it on down in Langtry after the U.S. and Mexico outlawed boxing. I was assigned to accompany the Texas Rangers sent to stop the fight. The train carrying the lumber for the ring and bleachers stopped there for water, then went on without unloading. I smelled a trick, but the ranger captain told me to stick with the train. It was scrap wood; the real order had already been delivered and nailed up. By the time I got back to Langtry, the fight was finished. The judge just winked at me and paid me my winnings.”

Hammett laughed, startled. “You put down a bet?”

“Well, sure. Anybody with half an eye could see it was Fitzsimmons all the way.”

“Is there a soul you
didn't
meet on the frontier?”

“I just missed Belle Starr. She was dead a week when I got to the Injun Territory.”

The room was furnished with a bar and round tables with green baize tops, around which several parties of men were playing poker. There wasn't a bare head in the place and a pall of cigar smoke hung just below the high ceiling like overcast. It stung the eyes and blurred all the well-fed bodies in the room into one.

“I ain't seen so much beef in one spot since I quit running buffalo,” Siringo said.

Hammett went straight to the bar and ordered Scotch. The man in charge, built along Siringo's slight lines but with a hard face creased sharply like crumpled brown paper, asked if he was a guest of the club.

“Nope. Just visiting.”

“Sorry, mister. Only members and guests get served.”

Siringo said, “We're here for Clanahan.”

“Who is?”

Hammett spoke before Siringo could. “Ed Doheny.”

“Mr. Doheny's a member. You ain't him.”

“Tell him we're here on Doheny's business.”

“Tell him yourself.”

“Which one's Clanahan?” Siringo asked.

“The one with all the chips.”

At first, the man the bartender had pointed out seemed to squat on his haunches. His bulk entirely obscured the shake-bottom chair he was sitting on. He wore black broadcloth, enough for a half-dozen suits of ordinary size, and a bowler the size of a washbasin, but a snug fit for that. The hand of cards he held looked like stiff postage stamps in his hands, the fingers swollen-looking and the color of lard, with the nails rounded and glistening with polish. His broad face grew straight up from his shoulders, with rings of flesh overlapping one another to conceal whatever collar and tie he might have been wearing.

A rumbling, somewhat flabby bass issued from deep in his well-upholstered chest.

“Well sir, the time has come to lay aside subterfuge and disclose all assets.”

“Talk English, Paddy.”

“That's precisely what I'm speaking, my dear fellow. Lay your cards on the table.”

The other man, fat as well but not in Clanahan's class, spread out his hand flat on the baize. “Read 'em and weep, you fancy-talking bag of wind.” His brogue was far more pronounced than his opponent's.

One of the other players, shorter than the man who'd just spoken but fully as wide, threw down his cards with a disgusted snort. “Aces full, damn your eyes.”

The fourth man shook his head with a grim smile. He was younger than the others by at least a decade, in a tailored suit and glasses with tortoiseshell rims. “I folded just in time. O'Neill doesn't bluff.”

“Nor does he play well, or he'd have been aware the essence of the game is not the cards, but rather the man who holds them. Four queens of Erin, Seamus: As you'd have known had you paid attention and knew how to count.” Clanahan laid his pasteboards faceup with a circular gesture that shaped them into a perfect fan. As O'Neill stared, the huge man scooped the pile of chips in the middle of the table to join those he had stacked neatly in front of him.

“You son—” O'Neill reached a hand inside his coat.

Hammett wasn't watching the players, but the crowd gathered around the table. An arm moved, but then whom it belonged to was lost in the shuffle of bodies straining for a closer look at the cards. In any case, when O'Neill's hand came out holding only a wadded handkerchief to mop his face, the movement came to nothing. All he saw was that the arm wore a black sleeve with a charcoal stripe, among half a dozen men dressed identically.

He looked at Siringo, also watching the crowd. “Anything?” he murmured.

“Not to act on. Life was simpler back when all the hardcases didn't dress like bankers. I reckon he checked his straw bonnet today.”

“No cameras this time. Eels like to blend in with their surroundings.”

The enormous man sat back, mining a heavy watch on a platinum chain from his folds of fat. The chair beneath him creaked like a galleon under full sail. “My friends, I have time for one more hand. Who among you wishes to deprive me of the burden of carrying away all this plunder?”

“Not me. I can't beat black magic.” Seamus O'Neill shoved back his chair and pushed himself to his feet. “You're a slippery one, Paddy, but I'll flour my hands and have you yet.”

“I welcome the challenge, sir. Good day.” He turned his attention to the other fat man. “Mr. Clancy? Has your angel awakened?”

One of the young men in the crowd helped Clancy to his feet; the effort turned both their faces bright red. “I'd need a Ouija board for that. Good-bye, and to hell with you.”

“Mr. Kennedy?”

The bespectacled man nodded shortly. “Sure. I'm in.”

“Me, too,” Siringo said. “If you don't mind playing a stranger.”

Clanahan looked up at him, taking in Hammett at the same time.

“And the name of my challenger, sir?”

“Charlie Siringo.”

“A melodious name. Irish?”

“Half. But not the Siringo side. Does it signify?”

“Have you the wherewithal?”

He took out his wallet, removed the sheaf of bills, and riffled them with a thumb.

“Then it does not signify. And your friend? Is his angel awake as well?”

Hammett showed his roll.

Clanahan smiled, his fat cheeks riding the creases, and inclined a blubbery hand toward the remaining player. “Allow me to present Joseph P. Kennedy, a visitor from Boston, and a fellow with a rare sense of humor. Please indulge me, sir, and tell our new friends what you told me earlier.”

But Kennedy wasn't smiling. “I never joke about politics. I intend to make my son the first Roman Catholic president of the United States.”

 

16

A steward in a green jacket with gold buttons brought a tray of chips, which he traded to Siringo and Hammett for cash. Shortly afterward, a waiter arrived with setups for the players and a bottle of Kilmartin's Crest with the wax seal in place. Clanahan did the honors, and when they all had drinks, he shuffled the deck and dealt. Siringo waited until he had a complete hand before saying anything.

“If you don't resent a fellow speaking his mind, Mr. Kennedy, that's a tall order. Most folks think a Catholic president would take his orders straight from the pope.”

“You've nailed the main hurdle on the head, Mr. Siringo. It will take years to set people's minds at ease on the point; many years, and I may not live to see the thing out. In any case, my oldest boy is far from the age of eligibility. But Joseph, Jr., has a sound head on his shoulders for a boy, and if it isn't to be him, he'll have the patience to carry on until we succeed.”

Kennedy spoke with a broad New England accent, with no trace of a brogue.

“It'll take more than patience,” Hammett said, arranging his cards. “What do you do for a living, if I may ask?”

“Mr. Kennedy is a man of many parts,” said Clanahan. “He's come here to produce picture plays with his own money. Ante up, gentlemen.”

The man from Boston threw his chips into the center of the table with the others. “I'm an investment counselor, and I've taken my own counsel so many times I'm in absolute danger of having to give half of it to Mr. Harding's government. It seems I must lose some in order to keep more, and the motion-picture business promises quick action in that department.”

“Tom Ince said the same thing. Two cards.” Siringo discarded a deuce and a trey, leaving himself with two queens and a jack. “Since he was already setting himself up with an excuse not to pay me, I sent him on his way.”

Clanahan, evidently a serious poker player, said nothing until he'd dealt the two cards. “Are you in pictures, Mr. Siringo?”

“I just said I ain't. But they was pestering me for a while to sell 'em my memoirs. I was a cowboy and a detective, and they can't make up their minds which one they want more; though they don't want neither bad enough to make a decent offer.”

“Indeed! I hadn't thought the two professions had much in common.”

“Just me. Far as I know I'm the one and only.”

“And you, sir?”

“I'll stay with these.” Hammett tapped his cards.

“As you wish, but that was not the question I had in mind. It's your vocation I'm curious about.”

“I'm a writer.”

“Splendid! A writer, a cowboy-detective, the father of a future president, and your humble servant all seated around one table. Our little club has come up in the world from its shanty origins. Have I read your work, sir?”