Ragtime Cowboys (6 page)

The room had a steel radiator that shuddered when the furnace kicked in, scraping the chill off spring in San Francisco. The particles of rust and dirt rattling in the pipes sounded exactly like an old Pinkerton clearing his throat.

Which reminded him. His valise was still on the bed. He handed Hammett a Mason jar from inside.

“What is it, blasting oil?” The clear contents distorted his features like a magnifying lens when he held it up to the light.

“It's the barrel aging adds color. My friend in Barstow's clients won't wait that long.”

Hammett unscrewed the top, sniffed, shrugged, took a sip. He shook himself. “I was right the first time. You could blow a safe with a jigger of this stuff.”

“That Canadian blend spoilt you.” Siringo took back the jar and helped himself. “What do we do with this?” He kicked an ankle belonging to the man they'd dumped in the room's only chair, upholstered in green tufted leather. It made his suit look all the worse for lack of pressing. His hat had slid down over his eyes and he was breathing evenly.

“We'll let him rest a while. He's an angel when he sleeps.”

Just then Feeney's mouth dumped open, exposing teeth like yellow tumbledown tombstones and taking in air with a rattling snort.

A bellman came to the door, carrying a tray with two glasses, a brass ice bucket, and a pitcher that belonged with a washbowl. Hammett gave him a quarter and poured moonshine into the glasses, adding water and cubes to cut the bark off it.

“Tell me about this Clanahan.” Siringo stretched out on the bed with his glass.

Hammett leaned in a corner, pushing his hat to the back of his head and holding his glass. He looked down at it dubiously, like a diver judging his chances.

“He came in on the boat, like all the rest of us. A little later than most, and they say he left a wife and three kids behind in Limerick. Sometimes it's five, but it's always just the one wife. As if that weren't reason enough to leave, they say he got into some trouble with the authorities. He couldn't come through Ellis Island with that on his back, so he shoveled coal in a tramp steamer all the way through Panama and swam ashore off Santa Barbara to avoid Immigration. A few years ago he bought citizenship, which comes dear, but it was worth it to him not to get deported. There's a rope waiting for him in Ireland, not to mention an angry woman saddled with three kids. Maybe five.”

“I'd take my chances with the rope.”

“Who wouldn't? There's no appeal from a butcher knife. He's got himself a place on Nob Hill that looks and smells like a museum. Before that he did business in a packing-case parlor on a wharf, peddling whores. After a little it got to be the place where the money men and the board of supervisors rubbed shoulders, and that's where he got his toe in.

“They tried him out first as a messenger boy, carrying cash in a little black satchel between Ed Doheny and Sacramento, then had him knocking on doors, trading free coal for votes. I told you about his big break when Washington changed hands. Now Clanahan's the one sends out the messengers. Our boy Feeney, for one.”

“Who's Doheny?”

“Pan-American Oil.”

“Never heard of it.”

“You would if you owned an automobile. Doheny invented the drive-in filling station. Before that, you needed gas, you had to buy it by the jar in a drugstore. Now he's got them all over the country. And you're likely to hear more about it soon. Pan-American's merging with Mammoth Oil. Harry Sinclair?”

Siringo drank, frowned, shook his head.

“Well, it seems even the rich aren't rich enough to have everything they want. They're pooling their resources to buy leases on oil fields here in California—which is where Clanahan comes in, smack-dab in the middle—and in Wyoming.”

“Where in Wyoming? I know every inch of that place.”

“This one's after your time, I think. Place called Teapot Dome.”

 

7

Siringo shook his head. “I don't know it. It don't even sound like Wyoming.”

“It's there, or everybody wouldn't be scrambling all over it. The navy took over the oil reserves about fifteen years ago, when it started converting from coal. The talk is President Harding's considering transferring them to the Department of the Interior.”

“Interior of what? All I know about Washington is to stay clear of it.”

“It's run by a bird named Fall. Maybe you crossed trails sometime. He was a cowboy before he got into politics.”

“So was Tom Mix—though not politics—but we never met either. What's it signify?”

“Maybe nothing. But it's a sure thing he knows a lot more about the country west of the Mississippi than a president from Ohio.”

“What this all has to do with a stolen horse is what I'd like to know.”

A groan from the direction of the armchair drew Hammett's attention. “Welcome back, Feeney. We were just talking about you.”

But Feeney's eyes remained closed.

“Last time a little buffaloing put a man out this long, he had a bad brain leak,” Siringo said.

“Well, he can't afford it.” Hammett scooped up the big pitcher and splashed him head to foot.

Feeney sat up straight, spluttering like a horse. A hand went automatically inside his coat. Hammett showed him the .45. The thin man glared, water dripping off the end of his long nose. “Everybody's a tough gee with a rod in his hand,” he said.

“Everybody except you. Who's your partner?”

“Flo Ziegfeld.”

Feeney's long legs were stretched out in front of the chair, his buttocks perched on the edge of the cushion. Hammett hooked a foot behind his ankle and jerked. The thin man skidded forward and fell hard on his tailbone on the floor. Vile insults followed.

Hammett started coughing from the exertion, his hacking mingled with cursing from the man on the floor. Siringo, concerned about the neighbors, set his glass on the table, got off the bed, and kicked Feeney on the side of the knee, hitting the knob of bone that sent pain rocketing in all directions. Feeney howled.

“Stop disgracing yourself and get back up in the chair. I don't believe you know what Mr. Hammett's ma did for a living. That was just idle speculation on your part.”

“You wrinkle-ass old piece of—”

Siringo drew back his foot for another kick. Feeney's slash of mouth snapped shut like a trap and he levered himself up off the floor, supporting his throbbing knee with one hand as he climbed back onto the chair.

“You okay?” The old detective looked at Hammett.

“Yeah. Just swallowed another piece of lung.” He studied the white lawn handkerchief folded in his hand, then stuck it into an inside pocket. “Who's your partner, Feeney? Don't say Fanny Brice. She's too picky for the likes of you.”

“Go fuck yourself.”

Hammett scooped up the pitcher to give him another douse. Siringo touched his arm.

“Don't waste it. I got a better idea.”

As the young man watched, Siringo unplugged the electric lamp on the table next to the bed, picked up the lamp, and broke the cord near the base with a yank. He put the lamp back down and took his bowie from the valise. He stripped two inches of fabric insulation from the two strands of wire, one copper, one silver, put them on the bed, then laid the wires aside while he opened the room's only window and used the knife to slash the screen free of its frame. It peeled away with a shower of rust.

At a nod from him, Hammett held the prisoner at bay with the big pistol while Siringo snatched up each of his feet and stripped it of shoe and sock. Then he lifted them again to slide the screen under his bare soles. There was black dirt between his toes and his nails were as thick and yellow as old isinglass. Finally Siringo connected the strands of electrical wire to the edges of the metal screen and got up, holding the plug out for Hammett to take.

The young detective had caught on by this time. He belted the automatic, took the plug, and knelt by the baseboard outlet, waiting for his cue.

Feeney grasped the arms of his chair, prepared to spring to his feet, but was restrained by Siringo's stubby revolver trained on his sternum. When Siringo picked up the pitcher of water, he knew what was going to happen, but before he could cry out, he was soaked once again from head to feet. Hammett, grinning, lined up the prongs of the electric plug with the slots in the outlet.

“Jesus!” It was a shriek. “You'll fry me alive!”

“Why are you trailing me?” Siringo asked.

“I don't know!”

“Plug it in,” Siringo told Hammett.

“Just follow you wherever you go and report back, that's all I was told! Nobody ever tells me nothing. Oh, God, don't kill me!”

Siringo looked at the other detective. “You know him. He that good a liar?”

Hammett remained kneeling, poised with the plug a quarter-inch from its connection. “Take a whiff. You tell me.”

The stink of corruption rose to Siringo's nostrils. He lowered the pitcher. “We had a saying: ‘If he shits—'”

“‘—he ain't shittin'.' It was still around when I came on. But I told you Clanahan doesn't confide in a mutt like Feeney.”

“I believed you. I just wanted his measure. Your turn.”

Hammett blew on the end of the plug, brushed an imaginary piece of lint from a prong, bent again to his task. “Who's your partner? Say George M. Cohan. It isn't every small fry can say he blew out all the fuses in a ritzy joint like the St. Francis.”

Feeney hyperventilated.

Siringo thought. “What was the name of that first fellow they electrocuted, back in '89?”

Hammett touched the prongs to his lip, thinking. “Kemmler: killed his girl. Something went wrong with one of the electrodes. He crackled for ten minutes. They said it smelled like a barbecue in a shithouse. Nobody consulted Kemmler on his point of view. He was black enough there was some discussion about burying him in the colored section of the Auburn Prison cemetery.”

“That was a fluke. They used too big a jolt, that being the first electrocution and they wanted to make sure, and they didn't wet him down properly. That won't be a problem here. Feeney looks like he just came in from a swim around Alcatraz. Fire him up.”

Hammett spat on the plug, aimed it at the outlet.

“The eel!”

Hammett stopped, shook his head.

“Horseshit. The eel only works Mexico, everyone knows that. It's the chair for him the minute he shows his face this side of the border. Stand back, Charlie.” He leaned forward on his knees.

“It's the eel! Oh, Christ on the Cross! It's the eel! The eel!”

Hammett sat back on his heels, nodded at Siringo.

Siringo kicked the screen out from under Feeney's feet. The thin man's belly filled with air, becoming almost a paunch, then let out. He found a cracked yellow handkerchief in a pocket and mopped his face.

“How skinny do these fellows get?” Siringo asked. “Feeney looks plenty eel-ly to me.”

Hammett stood, twirling the plug by its cord. “I think they call him that because he slips in and out without so much as a fish fart. I can't think of a soul who knows what he looks like, except Clanahan. The eel's a top-notch shadow, but his real specialty is filling graveyards.”

Siringo looked at Feeney. “Who's Wyatt Earp?”

“What's that, a cure for hiccups?”

“What do we do with him?” he asked Hammett.

“Kick him loose. Feeney wouldn't swat a fly, on account of it might swat him back.”

“G'wan, shamus, talk big. Forest Lawn needs daisies.”

“I sort of hate to see him go,” Siringo said. “I made a lot of friends singing cowboy songs. He and I could write one together.”

“Feeney can't read or write. It's a great loss to literature. Maybe we should put out his eyes and send him on the road like Homer.”

“Try it, peeper; just try it, and bring your pal Homer along, whoever he is. You two and the old bird'll wind up swimming across the bay with a coal wagon tied to your backs.”

“You call it,” Hammett said.

“You're right. He wears thin on close acquaintance.”

Hammett unlocked the hall door and swung it wide. “Fly, flea.”

Feeney fumbled into his shoes and socks, stood, swept a hand under his nose, and looked down at the result on his knuckles.
Cocaine-dipper,
Siringo thought. He'd worked with some, against others; it was the character of a man that affected the outcome. “What about my gat?”

“What's a gat?”

“Hogleg,” Hammett told Siringo. He unshipped the heavy automatic, kicked the magazine out of the handle, and offered it butt-first to Feeney; keeping a finger inside the trigger guard. Siringo knew what was coming.

“Smart guy.” Feeney reached for it.

Hammett executed a neat border-shift, twirling the pistol on his finger until the butt rested in his palm and the muzzle pointed at Feeney. “One in the chamber, Young Wild West. No charge for the lesson.” He worked the slide, springing a glittering brass cartridge out of the chamber onto the rug, and turned the weapon over to its owner.

“Smart guy. Smart guy.” Feeney tried twirling the weapon, nearly dropped it, flushed, and socked it under his belt.

Hammett hoisted his brows nearly to his white hairline. “History in the making, Charlie. Aloysius McGonigle Feeney ran out of patter.”

“Go fuck yourself.” The thin man left, his feet squishing in his shoes.

Siringo and Hammett gave him the respect of a minute to the elevator, then began to chuckle.

“You don't know Mrs. Bloomer, but you remember Kemmler.”

Hammett stirred the half-melted cubes in his glass with his forefinger. “I know my criminals down to the ground. I'm working on the rest of my education from the noose on up.”

“We'll attend to it.”

“That was a swell trick with the lamp. I don't know why I didn't think of it myself.”