Ragtime Cowboys (15 page)

“Maybe he stayed with the train when you got off in L.A.,” Earp said. “Maybe he's on his way to Mexico to get laid.”

“Maybe. Wouldn't be the first time I impressed myself with my own importance for nothing. On the other hand, a man Paddy Clanahan trusts to watch his back could probably bed a woman closer to home. Mexico heats up this time of year. If I'd been headed north towards Canada, I'd be more inclined to subscribe to your coincidence theory.”

“I might be more inclined toward yours if you'd tell me what Clanahan's got planned.”

“If we knew that, we wouldn't of had to come down here. It's got to do with oil in California and Wyoming, or it ain't. It's got to do with Kennedy wanting the White House, or it ain't. If Charmian London is right, it for sure has got to do with getting hold of her vineyards and soaking the country with wine, which is where Kennedy may figure, being a gentleman bootlegger. Whatever it is, it was important enough the eel tried to stop us from snooping around up there by killing Butterfield.”

“This thing's nearly as complicated as Tombstone politics.” Earp pushed away his plate and stood. “Charlie, let's take a walk. Hammett, I hope you don't take it an insult if I ask you not to join us.”

“I didn't want to come here at all, but Siringo's only got eyes in the front of his head. I'll be swell.” He took out his flask.

*   *   *

The others descended the slope toward the track, where the stable boy was letting the racehorse eat an apple out of his hand. “That man is ninety percent alcohol,” Earp said.

“I don't know where he puts it, but I mean to order a case of his brand and give a bottle to everyone I ever work with again. If you tell him I said that I'll deny it; he's drunk enough on himself as it is. Also I wish his taste in politics was as good as his instincts.”

“I had business with a Kennedy once. I didn't want to say it in front of Hammett. It reflected poorly on me.”

“Tell me. If I can use it I will, if I can keep you out of it. If I can't use it, nobody need never know we had this conversation.”

“I believe you.” Earp leaned on the fence circling the track, stroking an unlit cigar. “It was in '71, and started in Fort Gibson, over there in the Nations. I was a yonker, but that's no excuse. Two fellows, Ed Kennedy and John Shown, and I got drunk and stole two horses from a man named Keys. Keys caught up with us in Arkansas. We were arrested: Kennedy stood trial and beat the charge, but I didn't have his same faith in twelve men good and true. I made bail and I haven't been back to Arkansas since, nor drunk more than a jigger of liquor in one sitting.”

“Seems to me I heard something about that, though the details was muddy.”

“There's more. My wife Urilla died the year before: Typhus, the doc said. She was carrying my child. They both went together. I lost my bearings for a spell.”

He straightened, fished out matches, and puffed the cigar into life. “Well, it don't signify, and I won't hide behind it. But that one bad decision's chased me my whole life. Whatever mistakes I've made I made because I lost my good opinion of myself and I've been fifty years trying to get it back.”

“We all put a foot wrong somewheres.” Siringo shook his head. “It ain't the same Kennedy. This one's too young, and his name's Joseph. Anyway, Kennedy's Irish for Jones. But I respect you for telling me. I know how hard that is for a man like you.”

“You're the first ever to hear it from my lips. I'd take it as more than a personal favor if no one ever hears it from yours.”

“I promised that already.”

“I know. I'm getting distrustful in my old age. You can trust everyone or no one and get in the same trouble either way.” He raised his voice. “Bring her here, George. I want to introduce her.”

The stable hand led the horse across the enclosure. The animal was a fair size for a filly, with a reddish-brown coat and a broad blaze on its forehead. Siringo reached up and stroked its muzzle. Spirit Dancer whickered and shook her mane.

“I take back what I said before. She's got winning in her eyes.”

“Sure you're not just trying to duck out of a bet?”

“Yep. I put a lot of store in my bump of judgment.”

“Rub her down, George. Mix in a little sour mash with her feed. She likes it.”

Siringo chuckled.

Earp bridled. “Just because the country's dry doesn't mean she has to be. Nobody ever gave her a vote.”

*   *   *

Hammett was rolling a cigarette when they returned. Earp excused himself, entered his house by the back door, and came out a few minutes later carrying a Smith & Wesson revolver. Hammett scrambled to his feet, groping inside his coat; but his host stepped past him, raised the weapon, thumbed back the hammer, and fired. The slug clanked against the weathervane atop the stable roof, a sheet of tin cut into the shape of a buffalo, and sent it spinning. The target was a good hundred yards away.

Earp lowered the revolver and smirked at Hammett. “Civilian, hell.”

Hammett said, “Depends on whether you were aiming at the barn.”

“Don't shoot him, Earp,” Siringo said. “He's full of my moonshine and might explode.”

*   *   *

“This isn't so bad,” Hammett said. “I was holed up worse in Butte.”

“That's 'cause it ain't raining.” Siringo took the pot off his stove with a bandanna wrapped around the bail and spooned beans and sowbelly into the bowls on the table. He'd pushed the Smith-Premiere typewriter to one side.

“There's something strange about this machine.”

“It's got twice as many keys as you're used to. The black ones are for the capitals. They hadn't got round to inventing the shift yet when it was made.”

“Well, I'd trade you my Remington for it. It probably works twice as fast and gets double the rejections yours does in half the time.”

“I don't need to counsel an Agency man about the virtues of patience.” Siringo unscrewed the top from a Mason jar and poured an ounce into each of their cups of coffee. “Four, five years, you'll be rich as me.”

“At least your view's better than mine.”

“I wish somebody'd set fire to that sign. You shouldn't have to take up that much real estate to sell real estate.”

Something thumped the front door. Hammett started, reached for his .38.

“Simmer down. It's the boy with the paper. I forgot to stop it, which is how I got the fire started in the stove. Get it, will you?” Siringo had just sat and picked up his spoon.

Hammett found the day's
Los Angeles Times
on the wooden front step and unfurled it as he shut the door behind him. “Good news for once. Harding commuted Eugene Debs's sentence.”

“Do me a favor and don't spice up my stew with radicalism.”

A one-column headline farther down the page caught the other man's eye:

BODY FOUND IN SAN FRANCISCO BAY

Police Identify Local Resident

He read the lead, looked up. “How do you feel about murder with your meal?”

“So long as it ain't mine.”

“It's Mike Feeney.”

 

18

Siringo snatched the paper from Hammett and read:

SAN FRANCISCO, March 18—(AP) Michael A. Feeney, familiar to many local residents as a “jobber” for the Democratic Party, has been identified as the man whose lifeless body was discovered floating beneath a pier in San Francisco Bay yesterday evening. It is believed he lost his way in the morning fog and fell in.

Feeney was a familiar sight in establishments still associated with Barbary lore …

“We was still in town yesterday morning,” Siringo said, tossing the paper on the table. “Time enough for the eel to run an errand for Clanahan before he followed me to L.A.”

Hammett nodded. “Dropping Doheny's name in the Shamrock Club was a bad idea. It tipped Clanahan off that we're sniffing around the oil scheme.”

“I get a heap of ideas, half of 'em bad. How'd this one work its way around to Feeney is what I'd like to know.”

“That call I made to Beauty Ranch had an eavesdropper on the line: Clanahan'd make it a point to know what goes on there. It isn't hard to trace a long-distance call, or to link the caller in this case to Pinkerton. That's when he put Feeney on us, to find out what we're up to. I'm local, you're not, so Feeney played a hunch and followed you when we split up. When Clanahan found out we knew the name Doheny, he knew we had to have gotten something out of his boy.

“You saw how easy it was to crack him open. After the eel got what he wanted, he threw Feeney into the bay like so much garbage.”

“He'd of wound up there anyway. The Feeneys of this world always do.”

“The question is, what's Clanahan got in mind for us?”

“He's a careful man, or I don't know nothing about playing cards. But there's a lot more ways to be cautious than there is to go off half-cocked. Is he going to watch how we play and figure out our hands before he bets, or is he going to play the percentages and serve us like he did Feeney before the odds change?”

“All I know is he won't waste time. Lanyard's too valuable an asset to throw away on a simple tail job. Clanahan's competition might get the bright idea he's left his flanks exposed. There's all kinds of new talent in town since Prohibition came in. They're not as discreet about disposing of an obstacle as the eel.”

“I was in Chicago during the Haymarket riot. A bomb blew a company of police officers into so many pieces they still ain't sure how many was kilt. I don't see a nickel's worth of difference in slaughtering for politics and slaughtering for money.”

“We agree on that at least. Mr. Siringo, I think there's a radical in you waiting to bust out.”

The old detective gulped Irish coffee, looked sour; not necessarily in that order.

“That's the danger of living alone. You get a dumb idea, nobody calls you on it, you get a dumber one later, nobody calls you on it, and before you know it you got a head full of dumb ideas and you run around like a blind horse till you smack up against the side of a barn. Where's that gal you're fixing to marry?”

“Montana, where she was raised. Why?”

“You ought to go pay her a visit. There's nothing like a woman or a slap with a two-by-four to right a man's thinking.”

“Jose can swing a two-by-four. She's little, but she'll surprise you. She practically carried me on her back when I came down with TB in Tacoma. She was a nurse before I knocked her up.”

“That was a right romantic story till the end.”

“I didn't get to the end. The end part is I'm not hiding behind anybody's skirts while you deal with Clanahan and his gunny. They aren't as easy to buffalo as a common horse thief like Butterfield. That homemade hooch has got you thinking you're half your age and twice your size.”

“I didn't say go to Montana. I said you ought to. If Clanahan knows you was with the Agency he knows your personal situation too. He won't think it odd you got a hard-on and decided to smuggle it east. The eel won't follow you any farther than the state line. He'll count that proof enough you're headed where it says on your ticket. Get off in Carson City, then take the next train back and meet me in Frisco.”

“What good's splitting up?”

“While he's busy making sure you're a-courtin', I can pay a visit to this fellow Kennedy and ask him what kind of deal he made with Clanahan that's got Clanahan putting the boots to Charmian London for seed money.”

“Why Kennedy?”

“Because Clanahan was head skunk till Kennedy spoke up. Paddy knows too much about us, and all's we know for sure about him is he's fat and plays a cautious game of poker. I aim to even the odds, but I can't do it with no eel wrapped around my ankle.”

“Why don't
you
go east, see that little boy of yours, while
I
pump Kennedy?”

“Three reasons. One, I don't know where Lillie took him when she left. Two, how do I know while I'm gone you won't do something dumb to show off in front of Becky London? I seen you tripping on your pizzle every time she came into the room.”

“I've got eyes too, old-timer. That wasn't Washoe Ban's ass you were admiring in the stable.”

“Charmian turned out different from what I had pictured, that I'll warrant. I wouldn't object to making her the third Mrs. Siringo if she'd consider it. But the advantage of being an old-timer is you've learned to follow your brain instead of your pizzle.”

“What makes you so sure she'd consider marrying a gimpy old saddle tramp with a roof full of holes?”

“I ain't, but there's no hobbles on either of us. You got a gal picking out kitchen curtains and a loaf in the oven.”

“Are you telling me you never stepped out on your wife while you were on a case?”

“That was in the line of duty. Mamie never had a reason to think me disloyal; Lillie neither, if she'd only gave me half a chance to prove it. You're just a young goat with blue balls.”

“I ought to knock you on your ass.”

“I wouldn't.”

“Yeah? How come?”

“'Cause it's still sore.” Siringo brought his hand up from under the table and drew back the hammer on the Forehand & Wadsworth.

“You won't shoot me.”

He raised the revolver an inch and fired.

The slug burrowed into a plank behind Hammett's head as the young man, moving already, launched himself across the table, tipping it over under his weight, while Siringo threw himself off his chair to the floor. They rolled around among the beans and dust bunnies, grappling for the gun. Hammett lanced his fist against the old man's jaw in a short right cross that put Siringo's eyes out of focus; but as he did so he loosened his grip on the wrist belonging to the weapon. Siringo bared his teeth and swung the revolver to the left, laying the barrel alongside Hammett's temple. A gong rang and the room broke up into black-and-white checks. The white checks kept shrinking until it was all black.