Sweet Thunder (33 page)

  21  

“M
R.
M
ORGAN, Y-YOU”—
R
AB,
stricken, shocked, next thing to speechless for once but not for long—“you have to be wrong. I can't believe it. I won't.”

Jared, equally jolted, was more to the point. “Are you sure?”

“Unfortunately so,” I spoke with the firm conviction that a sleepless night of thinking can lead to. “It has to be him. No one else comes and goes so readily, in time to tip off Cutlass to what I've written, day after day.”

“But a milk-tooth kid like him?” Armbrister burst out. “How in hell does he do it?”

“That is yet to be determined. And if we simply accuse him, he may swear with all his heart it wasn't him. Rab, do you agree?” Governess of the boy empire of fibbers—to say the least—at the detention school, she could only nod mutely. “To put it in starkest terms,” I said with reluctance, “we have to catch him at it.”

The three of them glanced at one another, then read my face before the words came. “Let me.”

•   •   •

When the
Thunder
rolled off the press as usual that afternoon, Rab and Jared made themselves absent so as not to give away what we were up to, and Armbrister wasn't any more scowly than ever when Russian Famine beelined in from the back shop to the gumdrop jar, mumbling “Hiya” as he passed me, and like a wraith, he was gone again to load his baby carriage with newspapers. I slipped out of the newsroom immediately after, mentally mapping out his route. And down on the street, as the newsboys spilled out of the back shop with their shouldered bags bulging to head for their corners and one came pushing his newspaper-laden pram, I turned myself into a window man.

My disguise, sudden as it was, couldn't be much; Armbrister's derby instead of my fedora, a casual jacket borrowed from a mystified Cavaretta instead of my customary suit coat, several pats of Mary Margaret Houlihan's face powder to gray my beard. My hope was that from a distance I would blend into the downtown shopping crowd, should Famine catch a glimpse of me. That and ducking and dodging from store window to store window like a crazyhouse of mirrors.

From the
Thunder
building Famine dug hard to propel his load, the delivery route stretching literally up the Hill, the tilted streets that were the apron of the higher elevation where the black steel headframes stood silent above the shut mines. The course was also a rise through society, from the newspaper's disreputable neighborhood to that pinnacle of Butte majesty, the Hennessy Building, block by block. It kept me busy adjusting, bearing out all too well Grace's chameleon-on-a-barber-pole accusation. In Venus Alley, where Famine deposited
Thunder
s on the stoop of each brothel—interesting that reading material was in such demand—I had to meld with some other lingerers, my hat on the back of my head as if out for a good time, giving the appearance of shopping the painted-up women smiling and whistling down from the windows. Next a slight step up in respectability, or not, the cigar stores—so called—that essentially were speakeasies with a tobacco aroma. As Famine made his deliveries, setting the brake on the carriage and darting into each drinking establishment with papers under his arm, I followed him from across the street, keeping a careful distance and successfully loitering unseen until he reached the most notorious of the lot, the M&M. Just as the boy sped to the doorway, he ran smack into Smitty, exiting. I felt the shock of their collision in my every bone.

“Hey, kiddo, what's the rush?” I heard the burly bootlegger ask genially as I spun to feign interest in the nearest shop window, which, to my horror, held the casket display of the C. R. Peterson Modern Mortuary and Funeral Home. And in there, scant feet away, long face pursed as he shined up the coffins with a rag and linseed oil, stood Peterson, “Creeping Pete” himself, my former employer. Foreboding hit me like lightning. When I moved on as quickly as possible from representing his funereal establishment at wakes, he had practically wept in trying to persuade me to stay on and keep up the handholding and sympathetic imbibing at those weepfests in Dublin Gulch. “You're the best at it I've ever had, and there's never any end to the Irish kicking the bucket,” he'd pleaded futilely. Now his back was mostly to me as he lugubriously polished his merchandise, but the second he turned around, I was caught there, framed full-face in the window, looking for all the world like an importuning job seeker, and I absolutely knew he would rush out with a glad cry. Meanwhile, stunned as I was, I overheard Smitty joshing the carrier of the
Thunder
, “News too hot to hold on to, that it?”

“Making my rounds, is all,” Famine said with injured dignity.

That brought a belly laugh. “Know what? That's two of us.” From the sound of it, Smitty must have been feeling flush after his day of collecting from speakeasies to add to the stash in the warehouse and dug into his pocket. “Here, buy yourself a sody pop.”

“A whole buck! Gee, thanks!”

There was the bang of a door as Famine rushed into the M&M, which meant he would be right back out and I would be in his line of sight, while a whistled tune growing louder indicated Smitty was crossing the street in my direction. Creeping Pete had stepped back to scrutinize the sheen on a brass-handled casket, his eyes fixed on the accoutrements with undertakerly concern, but he had only to lift his head and there I was. In my paralyzed brain rang the prospective chorus of being discovered by not one, not two, but three sets of eyes:

“Sir! You been following me?”

“Boss! Boy, you're everywhere, huh?”

“Morgan! You've come back to work, thank heaven.”

Instead, something miraculous occurred. I saw by the reflection in the funeral home window Russian Famine come charging out of the cigar store, stop short at what he saw, and shout, “Hey, mister! You dropped some bullets!”

“Hah?” Smitty turned back, recrossing the street with alacrity. “Oh, yeah, thanks, kid. Them are just some reloads—I mean, good-luck charms I carry loose in my pocket.”

Famine's yell straightened up Creeping Pete with a start, craning his neck and peering right over the top of me to see what the commotion up the street was.

And, head down and hunched over, I made myself scarce with the gait of a man who had just remembered an appointment around the corner.

There, breathing freely at last, much the wiser about the pitfalls that went with being a window man, I made myself think through the carriage route Famine was pursuing, from start to end. I was certain he hadn't delivered stolen information either at a brothel or one of the speakeasies, he zipped in and out of those places too fast to hold a conversation with anyone. Besides, those venues did not fit well with Cutthroat Cartwright's elegant manner of machinations. Ahead, as far as I knew, were only deliveries to the colored doorman at the Hirbour apartment building and the last stop, Blind Heinie's newsstand. Neither of those seemed a likely
Post
operative. Maybe I was flatly wrong and the youngster we all thought so highly of was not the culprit smuggling the inside skinny, as he'd have put it, to the other journalistic camp. Yet the fact stood that Cutlass was gleaning enough information from somewhere to rip me to pieces day by day. That thought spurred me on, sending me trotting up the alley that intersected the last leg of the carriage route.

The apartment building doorman, I saw by peeking around the alley corner, was kidding Russian Famine much as Smitty had, and the boy was grinning his ears off. No subversion there, surely. After a minute, he left a bundle of papers, and with the energy of a colt in the homestretch, began pushing the baby carriage up the last block at a rattling pace. Here I had a rapid calculation to do. Blind Heinie's newsstand was located around the corner of the Hennessy Building, its department store side, and so I shortcut through the store to where I knew I'd have a good view, unseen. Hurrying through the aisles past curious clerks, I quickly enough reached the ladies' wear section and all but sprinted to the very same display window—the cloche-hatted mannequins, a bit worse for wear, had resumed their teacup gin party—by which Blaze and I had unorthodoxly entered the store.

Luck was with me, I was in the nick of time to peek past the flapper dresses and see Famine park the buggy alongside the newsstand and heft out his remaining newspapers, quite a stack. Blind Heinie greeted him with something jolly I could not hear, and Famine grinned nervously. I watched him neatly arrange the pile of papers within the vendor's easy reach, then, something I hadn't remembered from the earlier time I accompanied him to the newsstand hutch, Famine bundled half a dozen
Thunder
s with butcher's twine. His fingers were quick, but not quicker than the eye. And so I saw the deed done. Watched him slip the narrow folded pages of overset proofs into the middle of the bundle before knotting it.

Now I knew, and almost wished I didn't. Blind Heinie counted out some money by feel from the upturned hat he used as a cash register and handed it to Famine, then the boy spy of the
Thunder
and—this part hurt even worse—betrayer of my editorial efforts went off pushing the empty baby carriage with one hand. Tempting as it was to rush out and confront him, caught red-handed, on a further hunch I held to my post at the display window. But no longer alone.

“May we help you with something?” a stentorian voice addressed me from behind.

I glanced over my shoulder to the floorwalker, boutonniere and all, evidently summoned by an alarmed clerk. “I think not. I'm merely . . . window shopping.”

“Most people do that from outside,” he said down his nose. Suspicious but uncertain, he persisted: “Interested in dressing the little lady, are you?”

“I suppose, when the alternative isn't possible. I mean, no.” Nothing was happening at the newsstand except Blind Heinie digging in his ear with a finger. Ominous silence behind me growing by the second, I could feel the stare of the floorwalker. My own gaze unremittingly at hem level past the soiree of shapely mannequins, I was desperate not to be thrown out of the store just yet. “Actually, what I am interested in”—it was a reach, but I got there—“are the teacups.”

“The cups, did you say?”

“Naturally. I'm the purchasing agent for the Purity Cafeteria and we're always on the lookout”—keeping my eyes fixed on the newsstand—“for appropriate cupware.”

“I see.” Cautiously the floorwalker asked, “How many?”

“Five hundred. Saucers, too, of course.”

The floorwalker was, well, floored. “That's a considerable order. I'd have to check our inventory, but if we don't have that many in stock, I'm sure we can order—”

While he was speaking, my hunch paid off. A shirtsleeved office worker in a celluloid collar tight enough to choke, an Anaconda minion if I had ever seen one, appeared at the newsstand, said a word or two to Blind Heinie as he dropped coins into the upturned hat, grabbed up the twine-tied little bundle of
Thunder
s, and vanished. Upstairs to the top floor, where the contents of the overset editorial proofs would be conveyed immediately to Cartwright at the
Post
.

“I just remembered,” I whirled so abruptly the floorwalker, startled, reeled back, “the Purity may also need demitasse cups. I must go check.”

“But don't you want to put in your order for—” his voice faded plaintively behind me as I hustled down the aisle. By hotfooting through the department store and racing back down the alley from the apartment building, I had hope of cutting off Famine as he headed back to the
Thunder
building with the empty pram.

It worked too well. As I whirled around the corner nearest the C. R. Peterson Modern Mortuary and Funeral Home, boy and buggy were trundling down the street directly at me. Famine practically screeched to a stop, my face giving me away. I read his guilty expression as all the confession needed. Stunned, we both were further startled by an urgent tapping on the showroom window of the funeral home. Caskets forgotten, Creeping Pete was showing actual animation, gesturing vigorously for me to stay where I was while he came out. I tried to wave him off and simultaneously deal with Russian Famine. The youngster wasn't waiting for what I had to say. I heard again the sentence I had fantasized, only this time, full of anguish, it was not a question.