“THERE ARE MANY ways to make a man talk,” Murrill continued. “It’s not the pain itself, or the fear of pain. What makes him talk in all but a few cases is the fear of what will become of him. Did you know that if a bicycle spoke is inserted into the spine in a skillful way the victim becomes completely paralyzed? Which means he becomes a thing, no longer a man, unable to do anything for himself.”
Gatling felt a trickle of sweat inside his shirt, and he knew Carlo was capable of doing anything Murrill told him to do. A big clock ticked on the wall; how long did he have to wait before the horror began?
“They did that to an informer in Angola Prison,” Murrill said. “Angola is a savage place, or it can be. This man was serving a life sentence for rape and robbery, so they couldn’t very well let him go. He lay there in his own filth, a foul creature shunned by guards and prisoners alike. For years he had to be fed, the food rammed into his mouth, with never a bath or a wash. Finally he died. It took him eleven years to die. He was unable to take his own life. Would you like that to happen to you?”
Outside the sky was dark and the wind was rising. Gatling thought of Colonel Pritchett sitting comfortably in his New York office. If the colonel ever heard of his death, he would shrug and murmur a few words about what a fine chap Gatling was. The colonel was not a sentimental fellow.
Murrill told Carlo to make sure all the windows were securely shuttered. There were storm warnings out on that part of the Texas coast.
“Try to put yourself in a similar position,” he said to Gatling. “What a shame, a big, strong man like you, with many good years ahead. A man in the prime of life, to be deposited on some street corner in some city. Like a carcass. You would then be taken to some wretched charity hospital, to live out your life among the crippled, the spastic, the insane. What do you think?”
“I think you’re a crazy son of a bitch.”
Murrill made the same peculiar sound and touched his fingers to his mouth. “You’re hoping I’ll draw my pistol and shoot you. But there is no way you can drive me to anger. You don’t know what patience is. In Angola I was patient for nearly thirty years. At first I raged at everything and everybody. They flogged me, threw me in solitary. Eventually I learned that my behavior was futile. So I became a model prisoner, in time a trusty. They gave me books because I was a good boy. And I waited and I read and I planned. And now all my plans are a reality.”
“Somebody will bring you down,” Gatling said.
“I doubt it,” Murrill said. “Anyway, it won’t be you. I have told you what can happen to you if you continue to defy me. Now I will tell you what you can become if you decide to cooperate. In a way you have been useful. The fact that you have slaughtered so many of my associates proves how dangerous even one man can be. This has caused me some trouble, but nothing is beyond repair. You think I must kill you because of what you have done to my face. That is because you can’t understand a mind such as mine. I can use you, a simple fact. You have no refinement, but I think you are intelligent. Join me as my strong right arm. The men you killed were thugs, my face can be repaired. Actually, what my face looks like is not of much importance to me. I see few people, so why should it matter? Now be sensible: What is your name and who sent you to kill me?”
“I’ll have to think about it,” Gatling said. It was a lame answer, but it might buy him a little time. Murrill was a strange man, and he might agree to it.
“You will have until morning,” Murrill decided. Carlo was back behind the chair and Murrill told him to take Gatling downstairs. “You will be fed. But I must have an answer by morning. A simple yes or no. If the answer is no, you will be finished as a man.”
Carlo locked Gatling in what once had been a wine cellar. Dusty racks were still there; the bottles were gone; barred windows were set high in the wall. A little light came through the barred door. Carlo didn’t answer when Gatling asked him to take off the handcuffs.
Later, Carlo brought food and coffee and waited outside until Gatling finished eating. He had to eat with his hands, and the coffee cup was heavy tin, useless as a weapon. Except for the windows, the wine cellar was below ground. It was close to dark and the wind was building up to gale force. Carlo looked frightened when a tree, or something heavy, came crashing down.
He was running his cuffed hands over the wine racks when he heard a single shot and knew Malley was dead. Nothing happened after that. In the back of a rack there was a loose nail and he pulled it out after a lot of trying. It was bent and rusted, and he sharpened it on the stone floor. Then he worked it into the lock of the handcuffs until it clicked open.
But the door lock wouldn’t budge no matter how hard he tried. At some point Murrill or Carlo came and looked in through the bars. Nothing was said, and the footsteps went away. He tried to sleep, but the floor was cold and he lay awake listening to the rising storm. It sounded like a real hurricane, not a blow that would pass after a few hours.
He was dozing when he heard a trickle of water coming from one of the windows. Soon all three windows were spilling water, and the cellar was filling up. Trees went down and part of the hotel was tearing loose. The water in the cellar was getting deeper. It was up to his waist when he heard footsteps pounding down the stairs. He stood to one side of the door with the handcuffs on his hand like a pair of brass knucks.
Carlo yanked the door open and the onrushing water hit him and knocked him down. He came up gasping with the gun in his hand and fired twice before Gatling threw himself forward and snatched the gun from his hand. Gatling stuck the gun in his face and pulled the trigger, killing him instantly.
Upstairs there was no sign of Murrill, but the door was open and banging in the wind. Gatling searched the hotel room by room. The guns were still on the table in the big room, and he checked them before he went out into the storm to look for Murrill. But he was gone. Gatling wondered why he didn’t try to make a fight of it. Maybe he was no good with a gun. Whatever the reason, he had run.
Trees were down all over the place and one side of the hotel was wrecked. Making for the long bridge, Gatling had to brace himself against the fury of the storm. The sea was running high, washing over the roadbed of the bridge. Finally he holed up in a small stone building, some kind of tool house, and waited for the storm to wear itself out.
The worst of the hurricane was over by morning. Now it was mostly wind-driven rain. He went back into the hotel to look for dry clothes; his own were bloodstained and muddy. There was nothing of his size in any of the closets; all he could do was make a fire and dry himself out. He heated up cold coffee and drank it while his clothes steamed, keeping the Skoda ready in case Gowdy or some of Murrill’s other men came around to see how things were going.
Before he left, he found two books on Jean Laffite in Murrill’s bedroom. They were well-worn, and had been read many times. There was nothing else of any significance, but the books had to mean something.
No trains were running when he got to the depot and he had to wait until one came along in two hours. The solid, brick depot was crowded with people sheltering from the storm, so he didn’t stand out too much. But the depot began to empty out as the rain turned to drizzle. A city policeman came in rubbing his hands, but he was too wet and miserable to be interested in anything more than getting warm. He looked at Gatling the way policemen look at everybody, then went back to warming his hands at the stove. He left after a while.
Waiting was hell, but there was nothing else to be done. He wondered why Gowdy and his men didn’t come looking for him. But maybe Gowdy had other things on his mind, like having his saloon wiped out. Things could be worse, he decided; he could be down in that cellar waiting for Carlo. And if Gowdy’s men found him before the train came, he would die on his feet.
He bought a ticket to New Orleans; there had to be a connection between Murrill, New Orleans, and Jean Laffite. The train was crowded and he sat in a coach and read about Laffite, the pirate. Many passages were underlined; it looked like Murrill had been an admirer of the swaggering pirate. For years Laffite had raided up and down the Louisiana coast, and in time he built up a fleet of ships that were the terror of the Gulf region. He had been a pirate before and after he fought on the American side in the Revolutionary War. He liked to boast that he was the King of Pirates. Then he disappeared. Rumor had it that after suffering a crippling wound he had gone far into the bayou country and built a great house with slave labor.
A good story, Gatling decided. But was it true? Did Wilson Murrill see himself as another Jean Laffite? Had he found the famous pirate’s house and made it his headquarters. Questions on top of questions. No answers. Gatling decided to get some sleep. Danger or no danger, a man had to sleep or he’d be no good for anything.
But the trip was easy, and he got to New Orleans without having to fire a shot.
New Orleans was a long way from Frisco, and he felt he could ease up a little. To Southerners, especially those with long family histories, Frisco was still the Wild West, a wild brawling town where killings happened all the time. What happened in Tijuana was of no interest at all.
It was raining and he bought a slicker and new clothes. Then he went to a barbershop to be shaved. The barber was a card and he said, “Run into a door, did you? Or was it your lady friend’s husband? That’s a nasty lump you got on your noggin.”
“Take your pick,” Gatling said.
He checked into a middling hotel where a lot of salesmen stayed. Business had taken him to New Orleans a number of times, but never to this hotel. Anyway, he hadn’t been in the city for two years; the chances of being recognized were slim.
Before he took a bath, he locked the door and jammed a chair under the doorknob. It was good to sit in the tub with the hot water running. He dressed, sent a bellboy out for cold beer, and drank it before he went to bed. The day was shot, it was raining, and there wasn’t much he could do before morning.
Lying in bed, he paged through the books about Laffite. Most of the underlined passages had to do with Laffite’s enormous lust for power. One writer believed the house in the swamps theory; the other did not. That made no difference: It was worth looking into.
In the morning he rented one of the lockboxes off the lobby. Salesmen used the boxes to store their sample cases. He took the Colt .45, but left the Skoda and the Borchardt.
At the public library, a snippy old gent with a bad head cold directed him to the shelf where books about Jean Laffite were kept. “I’m afraid you won’t find much,” the librarian told him. “Should be more, but people keep stealing books. Your best source would be the New Orleans Historical Society on Lattimer Place. But you’re welcome to look around here. Come on, I’ll show you.”
There were four books about Laffite: two were copies of the books Murrill had read so often; two were for children. “You ever heard of the house Laffite was supposed to build in the bayou country?” Gatling asked. “After he disappeared for good. That was in 1826.”
The librarian snuffled into a handkerchief. “They say it was 1826. The truth is, nobody knows for sure. Retired is as good a word as disappears. Well, there’s always been talk about that big house of his. Scholars still argue about it, where it might be. But for all that, it might’ve been a shanty, not a big house at all. 1826. No shanty or even an ordinary house would last that long, such a climate, you know. Or it could’ve changed hands or been torn down and carted away. People have been known to make off with entire houses. Might I ask what your interest is?”
Gatling said he worked for a writer who was always digging up legends, haunted houses, that sort of thing.
“Then you’d best pay a visit to the Historical Society. Did I tell you it’s on Lattimer Place? They got all sorts of books and papers over there. Probably letters. Laffite must have been able to read and write. But don’t quote me on that. I wouldn’t want to be laughed at for giving wrong information.”
Gatling thanked him and found his way to Lattimer Place, a narrow, winding street of very old houses. The Historical Society had a brass nameplate out front, leaded windows, an iron boot scraper.
An elderly lady with white hair and a pronounced Southern accent greeted him when he went in. No one else was there; the place looked as if nobody except the old lady had been there since it opened. It smelled of old books and dust and coffee-and-chicory. A pot bubbled on a tiny alcohol stove.
“I’m Mrs. Lamartine. You want to know about Jean Laffite? Are you a member, sir? If you’re not, the annual membership is five dollars.”
Gatling gave her the five dollars and said he was Mr. Frazier from Baltimore. “I’m not as much interested in Laffite’s life as in his disappearance. His house in the bayou country. Do you think it exists or ever existed?”
“I really don’t know,” the old lady said. “Oh, yes, I know it’s still a bone of contention among historians. Some newspaper fellow claimed to have found it, but it turned out to be a lot of nonsense. But I can look through all our papers and books. Would you believe it, after all these years they still haven’t been properly catalogued. There will be another five-dollar fee for special research. Perhaps you can come back at the end of the week? You would never find anything by yourself.”
Ordinarily he would have been amused by being taken for five dollars by an old lady, but this was too important to find any humor in it. For all he knew, she might sit there sipping coffee-and-chicory and tell him she’d come up dry when he came back on Friday. Getting tough would be a waste of time; the police just loved big men who pushed around old ladies. But he had a hunch that she was straight enough for all her cut-glass airs. He would wait. In his line of work, he had to do a lot of waiting.
He had to face it that Murrill could be anywhere in the city. The mad bastard could be anywhere at all. He could be in Galveston, pontificating to Gowdy. Murrill was as slippery as a snake. Twice he’d gotten away, vanished without a trace, and that was a talent in itself. Gatling decided he’d never take another cent of Maxim Company money until he killed Murrill.
Not having anything to do bothered him more than he wanted to admit. He ate a late breakfast of fried ham and eggs and read the morning newspaper. In it was a short article about the hurricane that had chewed up a lot of the Texas coast. Nothing about a dead man in the basement of the Gulf Coast Hotel. It was possible that Gowdy had come back and removed the body. If the police found it, they wouldn’t break their backs over a dead pimp.
For want of something better to do, he went to the offices of the New Orleans Daily Herald and asked to see the newsman who claimed to have discovered Laffite’s house in the bayou country. No, he didn’t have the name, but when he pressed a five-dollar bill on some office boy he was taken upstairs to talk to an old reporter who was drinking his morning coffee with a very shaky hand. He said his name was Clarence Hauser. His hands and shirt front were stained with ink.
“You’d be talking about Joker Monroe,” he told Gatling. “Too many practical jokes, not enough brains. That final joke about Laffite’s mysterious house got him fired. Went way back in the boondocks on his vacation. Came back and told the editor he’d found the place. It didn’t help his case to come back drunk. The editor fired him on the spot. Some rag printed his story, but everybody laughed at it. Just the same, he swore up and down the house did exist.”
“Did you believe him, Mr. Hauser?”
“Oh, Lord, I don’t know if I believed him or not. We were good drinking friends, but with all his foolish jokes, who knew what to believe? One time he put out a story that Comiskey, the managing editor, was born in Russia and was an anarchist. We all knew Comiskey was a goddamned Irishman.”
“But did you think there was something in Monroe’s story?” Gatling asked. “You sort of hinted you did.”
Clarence Hauser said, “I guess you could say that. Except if the editor didn’t believe him, what difference did it make? As I said, he got booted out for what the editor called his final foolishment. I quizzed him half the night, but he stuck to his story. He swore blue blazes when I said he was making it up. ‘What did they give you to drink down there?’ I asked him. You got to watch that Cajun moon. It’ll get you in the end.”
“Did he say where the house was?” Gatling knew that Hauser was still as much a boozer as Monroe had been. Or still was.
Hauser rubbed the top of his bald head. “Way down in Fontaine Parish, I guess. Mister, I don’t want to send you chasing wild geese. I think he said Fontaine Parish. Never been there, never want to be. City suits me fine. They got blacks and Cajuns and half-black Cajuns in there so wild and ignorant they don’t know what country they’re living in. At least that’s what I’ve heard. Some are probably cannibals, but I can’t vouch for that.”
Gatling didn’t know what to make of the story; so many crazy yarns came out of the bayous. But it had to be tracked down. “Is Monroe still alive,” he said.
“Last I heard of he was,” Hauser said. “Truth is I haven’t seen him for years. The editor warned me off after he started coming around here for handouts. We used to drink at Monroe’s Scotch Ale House. I guess he still does. Old Monroe is some kind of relative. Don’t tell him you saw me or he’ll be over on the next horsecar.”
Monroe’s was a big, rundown saloon on Canal Street. A sign with thistles and tartans was above the door. It claimed to have been in business since 1837. Another sign advertised its robust bitter ale, fast-brewed according to the original formula. Gatling went in and ordered a mug. No one took any heed of him. Like the Bowery, Canal Street got all kinds.
“I’m looking for Joker Monroe,” he told one of the two elderly men behind the bar. “He used to be a newspaperman.”
The bartender looked Gatling over before he answered. “I guess you’re not from the police,” he said. “You don’t look mean enough. What do you want him for? If it’s a bad check, he ain’t here.”
“Nothing like that,” Gatling told him. “There might be a little money for him.”
The old man brightened when he heard about the money. “Glad to hear it,” he said. “Now maybe he can pay his tab. That’s him down the bar, the man with the washed-out look. Used to be a reporter, you say. Thinks he still is.”
Joker Monroe was well into his sixties, but still had the air of a rake. He wore a worn checked suit, a dirty shirt with a glazed collar, and a stained necktie. His grey derby was perched on the back of his head. In front of him was a half-quart stein of ale. His jokes seemed to have deserted him, but he was trying desperately to keep up his jaunty manner.
For some reason he put on a dumb-sounding Scottish accent that he didn’t do very well. “Well now, laddie,” he said. “How did ye hear about the ould Joker? Am I as famous as all that? For certain sure I’ll ha a wee drink of whiskey with ye. A double there, my guid man.”
The aged barkeep glowered at him, but poured whiskey when Gatling put money on the bar. Gatling stayed with his ale. Monroe clinked his glass against Gatling’s and said, “So ye want to know about Laffite’s house? Well, it was all true, every word of it, only that miserable editor didn’t want to give me the credit by publishing it. Miserable cur thought I was after his job, something like that.”
Monroe’s had soaked up fifty years of alcohol fumes; the air stank like a three-week poker game. Gatling didn’t like Joker Monroe, but it looked like a wet week, and he had to hang around until Friday.
“Then it’s true?” he said.
Monroe’s dented hat was ready to fall off, but he caught it just in time. His eyes were red-rimmed but wary. “Aw, Christ, of course it’s true. You think I’d make up a story that silly? There was always talk about the house. I hadn’t had a vacation in four years and the bastard editor gave me three weeks to settle down in the drinking department. He told me to go to some health farm, but I been in such places and hated it. So I went to the bayou country instead. Idea was to put a lid on my drinking and look around for Laffite’s house at the same time. I found the blasted thing. You don’t believe me either, I don’t suppose.”
The double whiskey was taking effect; Monroe was getting truculent. He called for another double without being invited.
“I believe you if you say so,” Gatling told him. “Just one thing I don’t understand. You’re a city man. How did you find it?”
Monroe knocked back his drink. “By accident, that’s how I found it. Tell the truth, I was blind drunk when I found it. Wouldn’t have paid those Cajuns so much if I hadn’t been drunk. They knew where the house was, but said nobody had been near the place for years. They spook easy, those Cajuns, but they took me way back in the back country.”
“It was in ruins?” Gatling felt he was getting close, like a professional gambler who knows he has the right cards.
“What do you think?” Monroe had dropped the stupid Scottish accent. “It’s been years since I found it, and it was old by then. What kind of shape you think it was in? It was all falling down, run over by rats and swamp creatures.” Monroe ordered another double whiskey. “Next you’re going to ask how I knew it belonged to Laffite.”
Gatling nodded. “I was,” he said.
Monroe gulped his drink. “Sure you were. The place had old maps with Laffite’s name on them. Not printed, handwritten. His name was carved in a big dining table. Must have done it with when he was drunk. They say he was a big drunk.”
“Aren’t we all,” Gatling said, ordering another ale for show. Drunks got tetchy if you didn’t drink with them.
“Not me,” Monroe said. “I don’t carve my name in tables.”
“Could you find it again? The house?”
Monroe gave a wheezing laugh. “Christ, mister, I don’t think I could find my way to the shitter. Won’t do any good to ask me when I’m sober. I’m never what you’d call sober.”
“But it was in Fontaine Parish?” Gatling wanted to get some real information before the rumpot fell off the stool.
“Sure it was,” Monroe said. “I think it was. I don’t want you coming after me. On the other hand, it may have been Lafayette Parish. Pay attention, my good fellow. I think you ought to pay me for all this information.”
Gatling put ten dollars on the bar and walked out. He had an odd feeling that Monroe was telling the truth. There had been moments when the reporter was genuinely angry about the way the biggest story of his shabby career had been ignored. But he wasn’t about to make a long journey on the word of a drunken scribbler. The old lady at the Historical Society might have nothing to tell him. Even so, he would wait to hear what she had to say.
On the way back to the hotel, he sent a telegraph message asking that the Hotchkiss Cannon and the Lee-Enfield be shipped to New Orleans.