Ragtime Cowboys (14 page)

“That depends, Mr. Clanahan. Have you ever been an editor back East?”

“I've been many things, including a hod carrier and a street sweep, but never that.”

“Then, no.”

“Unpublished? If I'm not being too curious, how do you cope?”

“I take the odd job now and then. I used to be a detective, like Siringo. We both worked for Pinkerton.”

A look passed between Kennedy and Clanahan. Hammett saw that Siringo saw it as well.

The political boss dealt Kennedy a card at his request, concentrated hard on his own hand, and discarded three for a new trio from the deck. “Such a variety of talents. Mr. Kennedy was being modest earlier. He didn't mention we're drinking his stock.”

Siringo took a sample from his glass. “This is good sipping whisky. I'd of got around to asking who your bootlegger was eventually.”

“Importer,” Kennedy corrected. “Just one of the interests in my portfolio. The shipments are purchased lawfully from the distiller in Edenderry, Ireland, carried with other legal cargo to Nova Scotia, where it's approved by Canadian Customs and brought legitimately by rail across the country and then by truck to San Francisco.”

“It's that last two hundred miles the law cares about,” Siringo said.

“I'm in for a buck.” Hammett threw a chip after the others. “This is the third time today Canada's come up in a drinking conversation. They ought to crank down the bear flag in Sacramento and run up the maple leaf.”

“It doesn't spend enough time in Canada to pick up any French,” Kennedy said. “I'll see that and raise you five.”

All three of his opponents met the raise.

Kennedy met Siringo's gaze over his cards. “My father came here during the Famine. He learned the Constitution and the Declaration of Independence by heart, and could recite whole sections of American history; every family meal was a lesson at school. Prohibition isn't the first ludicrous and unjust law the people of this country have been moved to protest. In the past, they did so by sending delegations to England and, when peaceful means failed to change the situation, through civil disobedience. You can't live in Boston any length of time without being reminded constantly of how the early patriots disposed of overtaxed tea. I see no difference between my activities and theirs.”

“Good speech,” Hammett said. “Your son—or grandson—should work it into his inaugural. He might leave out his ancestor was the first to turn his patriotism into profit.”

Kennedy colored slightly. Siringo chuckled.

“I'll ask you to excuse Mr. Hammett's poor manners. He's opposed to capitalism.”

“A lesson, young man, in economics.” The investment advisor's complexion had cleared. “Money is only scraps of paper and bits of metal. People who pursue it to its own end are miserable creatures, which is why they spend it on country houses and private railway cars and women who would otherwise be unobtainable to them, to fill a hole that has no bottom. When you have money, you have power, and those things will come to you in the course of events without your having to spend a penny. The mere reputation of wealth is sufficient. Meanwhile it grows and grows, along with the perception that goes with it. That's a lesson you won't find in Mr. Wells's history, and there are many who would pay any amount to learn what I've provided you free of charge.”

“Thanks. Where do I pick up my diploma?”

“You've led your horse to water, Mr. Kennedy,” Clanahan said. “A man can do no more.”

Siringo grinned at his cards. “Sure he can. All you need do to make it drink is stick its head in the water and suck on its ass.”

Even Kennedy laughed.

They played for an hour, and the stakes climbed. At one point Siringo was up a thousand, Hammett three hundred, but Kennedy performed more consistently, doubling his bets when he'd lost a hand and halving them when he won, attracting a fresh crowd of spectators from the other tables and making Clanahan forget what he'd said about having time for only one more hand. At length, the man from Boston pushed all his chips into the center of the table.

“Trying to buy the pot?” Siringo asked.

“Then call it.”

Clanahan shrugged, smiling, and threw down his hand.

Siringo counted his chips. He was short a hundred dollars.

Hammett folded and shoved his own chips forward. “I'll back your play.”

“You haven't seen his cards,” said Kennedy.

“I don't play cards. I play the man playing.”

“How about you, Mr. Siringo?”

“This here's for Texas.” He tossed the rest of his chips into the pot and laid down his hand faceup. “Four ladies.”

Kennedy placed each of his cards side by side, one at a time. “Ace high flush. I bet only when I have the cards.”

“Your lessons get more expensive all the time,” said Siringo.

*   *   *

Clanahan consulted his watch. “Let's be off, Edgar.”

A man in a black suit with a gray stripe came forward as the rest of the crowd was retreating. His glossy black hair lay flat and his small ears were flush to his skull. Apart from a permanent blue beneath the skin of his cheeks and chin, there was nothing about his description that would ring a bell with anyone it might have been given to. He was holding a brown Chesterfield coat with black velvet patches on the lapels and a glistening white-silk lining, which he held while Clanahan pressed his palms on the table, reddening a shade, and levered himself to his feet.

“My personal assistant, gentlemen,” he said, pushing his fists into the sleeves of the coat. “Edgar Edison Lanyard. Edgar, Mr. Charles Siringo and Mr.—I apologize, Mr. Hammett; I don't know your Christian name.”

“Dashiell.”

“Colorful and heraldic. And Mr. Dashiell Hammett: Pinkertons emeriti.”

“I don't know what that is.” Lanyard's speech smacked of the flat Midwest. He finished helping the fat man into his coat, but he didn't offer his hand.

Clanahan adjusted his bowler. “A most entertaining afternoon. In future, gentlemen, you must wait for an invitation rather than bribing Mr. Perkins downstairs. The club bylaws are adamant on the point. Mr. Kennedy.” He touched his brim and turned away, followed closely by Lanyard.

“What was the point of all that?” Hammett asked as he and Siringo descended the staircase. “I mean, apart from cutting our grubstake almost in half.”

“We got to meet Joe Kennedy,” said the old cowboy. “You like coincidences too much if you think he ain't in this thing.”

“You don't really believe he meant that about making his boy president.”

“Well, he ain't much for bluffing. What it has to do with oil in California and Wyoming and shooting at a stable boy at Jack London's ranch, or if it's got nothing to do with 'em at all, is what we need to find out. You can't work a riddle without all the parts.”

“Trouble is we don't know how many parts there are.”

“I reckon there's as many as Kennedy's got dollars. He needs more or he'd be on about his business instead of juggling pasteboards with the kind of mick his old man left Ireland to get away from.”

“That's why he went from being an investment advisor to running liquor. We know from the way he gambles he doesn't take risks.”

“Sure he does. That's why it's called gambling.”

A block from the Shamrock Club, Hammett took off his hat and swept his handkerchief around the sweatband.

“Where?” Siringo asked.

“Hundred feet back. I wouldn't have spotted him if I didn't get to meet Edward Edison Lanyard. The eel's something more we got out of that poker game.”

 

17

Wyatt Earp was in a better mood than Siringo had ever seen him; he said as much to Hammett later.

“Come to study on it, it's the first time I saw him in a good one.”

They dined in the backyard of Earp's modest ranch house overlooking a stable and corral, the whitewashed wood standing out against green grass. His wife Josephine was visiting family in San Francisco, leaving him in the care of a Mexican cook. Abner Butterfield's replacement, a thick-bodied youth in a flannel shirt and dungarees, was walking Spirit Dancer around the test track, cooling her down after a hard run. It was the first glimpse either guest had gotten of the beast that had caused so much fuss.

“She's my ticket out of debt,” Earp said, slicing a coarse loaf of bread. “I've had the longest string of bad luck since Odysseus.”

“Never heard of the fellow.” Siringo blew on his soup. “I know I been stretching the same dollar since I came to California.”

Hammett steered the subject away from argument. “I'm no judge of horseflesh, but it looks like a fine animal.”

Siringo said, “Looks chesty to me. My experience is a horse built for the long stretch takes a while to get going. The Derby's only a mile and a quarter. Hope she likes dust with her oats.”

“Care to lay a wager?”

“Nope. I got a roof needs patching.”

Hammett asked Siringo how sure he was about the horse.

“Sure enough to bet your money, but not my own. I ain't much for gambling.”

“Charlie and I have that in common, at least,” Earp said. “We left all our luck in the streets of every cow town worth talking about.”

“No, I tend to win at cards and such. The way I see it, a man's born with only so many lucky breaks. There'll come the time I need one to save my hide. I won't waste it on games of chance.”

Hammett said, “I didn't see any of that luck in the Shamrock Club.”

“You think I lost by accident?”

“What were you two doing in a place like the Shamrock?” Earp asked. “You need to be Irish on both sides going back to St. Patrick just to get in the door.”

Siringo wiped his moustaches with his napkin. “The money we slipped the doorman was green enough. We got us a lesson in poker from a fellow named Kennedy.”

“Don't know him.” Earp's tone was oddly strained.

“He was a guest of Paddy Clanahan.” Hammett watched the old lawman's face congest.

“Was he with a man named Lanyard?”

“You know the eel?” Siringo asked.

“I saw him just once, crossing Market behind his boss. I knew Clanahan, and I saw Lanyard for what he was the second I laid eyes on him: Man walks a pace behind and a step to the right, looking all around while the one he's with looks straight ahead—because he can, in that company—you know what the connection is.

“Bat Masterson was with me, visiting from New York. He knew them both from sporting circles, writing for the
Telegraph.
He hasn't been a journalist so long he forgot what he learned in Dodge City and Adobe Walls. ‘Wyatt,' he said, ‘in the old days we'd've come up on someone like that from two sides. I'd strike up a conversation while you buffaloed him and threw him aboard the outbound train.'”

“‘I saw him for a killer,' I said.

“Bat said, ‘No ordinary kind. You recollect some are close-up murderers, like Luke Short, while others work from a distance, like Jim Miller. The eel—that's what he's called, on account of his initials—doesn't have a preference. And he'll use a blade or his bare hands as like as an iron.'”

They were seated at a plane table covered with a red-and-black-checked oilcloth. Hammett played checkers on it, using biscuits for men. “That's him, all right. We got a sample of his long-range work the other day.”

“You mean at London's ranch? You never gave me any details beyond where to find Spirit Dancer.”

“That was another deal,” Siringo said. “It's still going on, which is why we invited ourselves here.”

“I wondered about that. I never knew you to step out of leather unasked.”

“I don't trust the telephone. There's too many people shouting down the line. We just wanted you to know what we're about, in case they fish us out of the harbor.”

“I'm doubtful aid. I haven't carried a pistol in public since the Sharkey-Fitzsimmons fight. I got into a mess of trouble for forgetting I had it on when I took off my coat to referee.”

“I hadn't straddled a horse in years until just recently. My ass is one big blister, but I didn't fall off. It makes me less jumpy knowing somebody who knows how to crack a cap knows my business. Mr. Hammett was against it.”

“I don't like working with civilians.” Hammett crowned one of his biscuits. “They're where stray bullets come from.”

“Earp hits where he aims.”

“You said that. You also said he doesn't always aim at the right party.”

“You're still telling that lie?”

“I ain't here to dig up old bones.” Siringo glared at Hammett. “I wouldn't of come clear back here, even to recruit your gun, except it seemed a good idea to let Clanahan think I come back home to stay. I left a trail a blind man could see, to draw the eel off Mr. Hammett. Him showing up here would of tipped our hand.”

“No need. I was the best shadow man the Agency had, and I'm just as good at throwing off someone else's.”

“It seems to me you told me that when I hired you.” Earp looked at Siringo. “How much of what this sprout says he can do can he do?”

“Hammett's young, and substitutes talk for reputation. He did a fair job of doubling back on Clanahan's man Feeney in Frisco, and he spotted the sun flashing off the eel's long gun at Beauty Ranch. I reckon I can stand his jawing so long as he continues to back it up.”

“You're saying the eel followed you here,” Earp said.

“Me for certain. We took separate trains, and like I said, I put on a good imitation of a mama bird faking a busted wing.”

“But did you see him? Bat said when you spot him behind you he means to be spotted.”

“Bat says a lot of things, most of 'em hogwash. Anyway, he never was a detective. You can change hats, put on or take off a coat, even hook on a false set of whiskers, but changing the way you move isn't something most people have practice in. I seen him walking away from me through the dining car and again when we stopped in Salinas, browsing a newsstand while I was buying fish wrapped in wax paper from a peddler. He thinks when he ditches the straw hat and puts on a pair of cheaters it makes him invisible. He's good, though. I didn't see him again.”