The Cold Millions: A Novel, стр. 57
“You have a report from our operation in Montana?” Brand asked. Still playing secret agent. “Was our dinner for three a success?”
“It didn’t go,” I said.
“What do you mean?”
“I mean it didn’t go.”
“Wait. None of them?”
“It didn’t go.”
“You said Reston, at least. You promised!”
“It didn’t go. The Serb took their money, but it wasn’t right for the other.”
“You said this was the place—”
“It was a place.”
He was quiet. More than disappointment on his face, desperation—
“I’ll take care of it,” I said.
“You said this Serb gang—”
“My man there—”
“You said the farther from Spokane—”
“Right, it would have been—”
“Are they coming back here? Are you planning to do it here?”
“I don’t know yet.”
His face reddened. “When will you know?”
“I’m gathering information.”
His irritation became something else. Fear, maybe. “Are they here now?”
“As I said, I’m gathering information.”
“Yes, I heard that!” Brand’s face constricted, mouth tight, and he spoke quietly. “I hope I didn’t make a mistake.” His eyes going straight to my grog-blossom nose again. “Hiring reputation over youth.”
My shoulder twitched with the desire to punch his fat mug. “You may of course hire anyone you like. But as long as I am here, I will take care of it. Now, if there is nothing else—”
He grabbed my arm. “Mr. Dalveaux—”
I looked down at his hand. He let go of my arm.
I barely made it out of there with my breath. I seethed on the street. Muttered. Walked until I found a rat tavern and fell in—had a beer, a whiskey, and two more before I could breathe. The last one I sipped, and that’s what started my thinking: So Brand wants youth over reputation? The jobs you do for these sons of bitches. I infiltrated the Molly Maguires and the WFM, and this prig questions me about a union girl and a handful of tramps.
I could do these three in my sleep.
The point, of course—in the old days Del would have done the job himself. Trusting it to Bolin had been soft. Lazy.
I was replaying my mistakes while the bartender dragged a drunk out of the place by his underarms. He edged the man through the door and dropped him on the sidewalk in front of the tavern. Came back slapping his hands together to get the bum off. “Been quiet, with so many in jail,” he said from behind the bar.
I settled up. Outside the tavern, I saw the man dumped on the sidewalk, sleeping it off, legs draped over the curb, head bent like he’d cocked his ear to a joke. I looked back in the tavern. The bartender was wiping down where I’d sat. Below me, the bum slothered like a hog. There was an old hitching post in front of the building. I bent over and lifted the sleeping man’s head, leaned it against that post like a pillow. The bum was maybe forty, skin and bone but for his gut, thin hair, rotted teeth. I lifted my leg and stomped down on his neck. Two more to his ripe melon, one each for Brand and his friend, but on the third stomp, I felt something in my ankle give and I limped away, cursing that slick tramp head and my own temper.
Bolin was easy. Same Sixth Street saloon in Wallace where I’d paid him and where we’d planned the whole thing with the tall gray Serb from Taft.
He wasn’t surprised to see me. He would’ve checked the train tables the minute we stopped talking. Twelve years I’d worked with that ogre and still he gave me a jump—shriveled arm and leg and boiled face and that metal ring holding the gristle of his jaws together.
He sat at a table with a fresh beer, facing the door. A dozen other men were there. Bolin would think he was safe. Nothing better than a man feeling safe. Two men at the bar shifted as I walked in. So Al had at least two men, Dwang and Snool, pointless work, their eyes following me as I stepped to the bar. I pressed between them at the railing.
I said to the barman, “Do you have Scotch, or just that piss whiskey?”
While he poured, I leaned forward on the rail and spoke to the apes on either side. “I might not kill Bolin, but if I do, it’s my business. Either of you makes a move and you’ll go next, right?” I opened my coat on the .32 Savage.
I was alert, three quarters sober, a twitch from tears. I took a sip, stepped from the railing, turned, and smiled friendly, first at Dwang, then at Snool.
“Boys,” I said. I walked across the floor and sat next to Bolin at his table. He’d put an empty chair on his good side—where he wanted me to sit. I grabbed the chair and carried it to the other side of the table. His shite side.
“Looking good, Al. New scars?”
“I figured you’d come.”
“Fucking genius.”
He pointed at my whiskey. “How many of those you had, Del?”
“Every single one of them, Al.”
“Look, there was nothing I could do. In Taft.”
“So you said.”
“Didn’t go is all. Sometimes things just don’t go.”
“So you said.”
“The Serb got his money and I guess he lost interest in the other.”
“Right.”
“It was a drunk crew. Nothing to be done.”
“You could’ve done it yourself.”
“It never occurred to me that the Serb wouldn’t. Son of a bitch killed his own nephew over two bucks.”
“So why didn’t he?”
“The girl got to ’em, Del.”
“What do you mean, she got to them?”
“After they took her money—what she said got to ’em.”
“What did she say?”
“I don’t know, exactly.”
“You weren’t there?”
“Well, no, Del. I cleared out. I set it up and I left. I figured thirty men could handle two bums and a girl. And I didn’t think you’d want me connected to that business. What good would I be to you later if I lost my cover?”
“What good are you to me now?” If my ankle didn’t