The Cold Millions: A Novel, стр. 47

“Dalveaux,” said I.

“Willard,” said he.

Three other men worked the edges. This Brand was spooked. Or just had money to burn. He offered to show me the grounds, but I declined, much to his disappointment. I was already feeling one of my harder thirsts.

His lecture had reached the part about him representing “a consortium of industrialists, mining and timber men looking to fight back against the anarchists and unionists.”

“Consortium,” I repeated. Nothing better than a consortium. Ten rich hens to pluck instead of one.

He explained that the Spokane police chief had been properly tough with the Wobblies in the first round, and if they stayed tough until spring, the tramps would give up and go back to work, and trouble would take care of itself. But there were “pockets of weakness in the city’s resolve,” and a new union organizer had arrived, a girl. “The consortium hopes to augment the actions of the police while keeping this young woman organizer from getting a foothold.”

“So it’s augmenting you want,” I said. “Why me? Plenty of augmenters here. Indeed, there were three national detective agencies with shops in Spokane—Thiel’s thugs and Pinkerton’s too-smart-for-their-own-goods and Allied’s bargain boys. Any of them could augment, plus at least four regional head-knock shops. Why go all the way to Denver and old Del—this part I did not say—ten years far side of prime?

“First, this can’t be local,” Brand said. “And it can’t be one of my men. No tracing it back. It needs to be off the books. And made to look . . .” He searched for the word. “Natural. You came highly recommended for that.”

Then he said a name. Rich Spokane monger. Nasty job I had done for him last time I was here. During the low period. The kind of thing the Pinkertons and better agencies wouldn’t touch. A woman-in-the-way kind of thing.

Christ this town.

We went up the steps, and as if to wave off my conscience, Brand swept his arm at the entryway. “Welcome to Alhambra, Mr. Dalveaux!”

“Like the Spanish castle.”

He looked stunned, and if he hadn’t hired me already, he’d have done so on the spot. “Well. I must say—you live up to your reputation.”

These mining guys. Knew so little and wanted to believe so much. How hard was it to find the name of his bloody house?

I followed him through a fancy landing, beneath dual staircases, to a two-story library. Books that hadn’t been cracked since they were shelved. Give money to a monkey and he’ll fill his cage with bananas. Give the same money to a dim American and he’ll build a show library every time.

Brand had a bottle brought in. Brandy. I stared at it while he mentioned again the Spokane mining prince I’d done the job for a few years back—son of a prominent family in a rub with a hotel girl—a dove run by some cop in town—told the boy’s father that the girl was pregnant—father deciding it was cheaper to pay old Del once than this rat cop over and over—Can you make it seem . . . accidental—

On and on, anon, anon, begat, begun, begone. The brandy stared back.

“And so, in talking with my colleagues, you seemed a good candidate for the kind of thing we need.”

“Which is?”

“Which is . . . the kind of thing we need.”

His tone surlied me—or the bottle did, just sitting there, doing none of us any good. And the sour taste of that other job: hiring the girl, getting her drunk in her crib behind the tavern, pouring booze and lye down her throat until she drowned. Easing out of the room. Took a peek-feel as she died and she wasn’t even pregnant—likely just a play this dirty cop made against the wealthy kid. But the girl was gone now, while the rat cop, shit kid, and old Del, we all woke up next morning and breathed air. In a better world, I’d have done them, too, the cop, the kid, the dad, but that wasn’t the job. The job was the job and the girl had to go. And Del—a little more of him in the process.

Finally, Brand handed me a glass of brandy.

“They’re planning another major action, November twenty-ninth,” he said. “They’re going around giving speeches, raising money, recruiting bodies to fill the jail. They want to hire Darrow.”

“Sure they do,” I said. After he got Big Bill Haywood acquitted of a murder conspiracy in Boise in ’07, every jailed radical prayed at night to Clarence Darrow.

“We would like their efforts . . . hindered.”

Hindered? The only thing I hated more than a booster was a euphemism. Augment? Hinder? I ought to augment his chin with my right fist and hinder his dick with my left. I drained my glass.

“I was thinking,” Brand said, “what if, at some point of their travels, their party was relieved of whatever funds they’d raised?”

“You want them robbed,” I said. Euphemisms.

“Is it considered robbery if the money is intended for an illegal purpose?”

“Yes,” I said. “How much money?”

“The money isn’t important.”

“The money’s always important.”

“The money is important only in that it conflicts with our larger purposes. You can keep the money. What I’m wondering is if the presence of the money provides an opportunity to . . . make one thing look like another?”

I finished my brandy through gritted teeth, thinking: You don’t hire a man forty goddamn years in this thing and tell him how to make one thing look like another thing. Just like you don’t go into a restaurant and hand the chef a recipe for a bouillabaisse. You order bouillabaisse and you let the goddamn chef do his goddamn job. You don’t hire Del for a dirt bath and say make it look like a manicure.

“You have names?”

“I have dossiers.”

Good Christ. Dossiers. Save me from these mining men—little girls playing dress-up in their mother’s wardrobe.

He handed me a file. Dalveaux typed on the outside. Six pages. Four names: two tramps, brothers, Gregory and Ryan Dolan, twenty-three and almost seventeen. Montanans. Arrested in the labor trouble. The younger