THE NEXT MORNING Fallon walked into the store with a big smile on his face. He looked like a man who had just won a big bet. Without waiting to be asked he got a cup and helped himself to coffee.
“Anything else I can get you?” Gatling asked. “Buttered biscuits maybe?”
Fallon smiled. “How was the night with Molly?”
Gatling gave him a blank stare. “Why ask? You probably had your ear pressed to the wall.”
“No need for that. I saw her come in here. When I didn’t hear any gunshots I went home. That was after an hour of standing in a dark doorway. Did you know Molly is working for Kane?”
Gatling said, “I figured she was on your payroll.”
“Rubbish! She’s working for Kane. She’s been seen going into Counselor Rose’s office in the Dyer Building. Rose is Kane’s local attorney and all-round bribe handler and go-between. Nothing dirty he doesn’t have a hand in. Molly was in there a good twenty minutes.”
Gatling said, “How do you know it was Rose she went to see? The Dyer Building has four floors. I pass it every day.”
“I followed her in there.” Fallon wasn’t smiling now. “Rose’s office is the first door top of the stairs, second floor. I saw her go in, waited across the street so I could time when she came out.”
What Fallon was saying dovetailed with Molly’s behavior of the night before. But he didn’t trust Fallon any more than he trusted her.
“Maybe wants to sue somebody,” Gatling said. Fallon was losing patience. Let him, Gatling thought.
Fallon said, “You don’t have to play it dumb, Taggart. Rose works strictly for Kane and gets well paid for it. A man like that wouldn’t give a waitress the time of day. You probably know what he looks like. Takes most of his meals at your hotel. A roly-poly man with gold-rimmed eyeglasses and a soup-strainer mustache.”
Gatling nodded. “Eats by himself most of the time.”
“He has his cronies, but few lawyers will have any truck with him unless it’s under the table. There was a movement to get him disbarred, but they couldn’t make it stick. A dangerous man, that law-talker, and not above arranging a murder.”
“How do you know he set Molly to spying on me?”
“He didn’t. I mean he didn’t hire her to do that. She’s been waitressing at the hotel for two months. Always figured her for some kind of spy, but it didn’t seem that important. Spies and informants are thick on the ground here. But Rose planted her at the hotel. What better place to listen in, get a line on what’s going on?”
“How did you peg her for a spy?”
“Just a feeling I got, the old detective’s nose. For a big girl right off the farm she’s a damn good waitress, the best they’ve got. She can cover more tables than three other girls. Well, almost. The more tables, the more she hears. Another thing, till you came along she never gave any man a tumble. Guess there was nobody important enough to get the bed treatment. But you got it. Plenty men’ve tried to give her a tumble, but had to make do with their wives or whatever else was available. Oh, she’s always ready to joke with the paying customers, only that’s as far as it goes. Then you happen along and she starts chomping at the bit. At your table there’s never any hurry.”
Gatling said, “Come on, Fallon. How can you know that? When was the last time you ate at the hotel?”
Fallon got his smile back. “The dining room manager told me, as simple as that. That Frenchman is queer and hates women, especially young, sassy women. He likes ’em fifty-five with swollen ankles. Jules tells me everything, likes to do favors for the police.”
Gatling asked the question Fallon expected him to ask. “Why are you looking out for me? If that’s what you’re doing.”
“That’s what I’m doing. It’s my job to protect honest citizens. Like it or not, Kane has an interest in you, and for you that could be as dangerous as trying to get a rattlesnake. So I’m looking out for you as a ... well ... as a friend. We are friends, I trust?”
“Are we?”
“Sure we are. I told you about Molly because I want you to be on your guard, not against Molly particularly—but Kane. Did Molly try to pump you?”
Gatling held out his empty cup and Fallon filled it with coffee. “I pumped her more than she pumped me.” He didn’t expect Fallon to be pleased with his answer.
“We can do without the lame wit, Taggart. This is serious.”
“She was more direct than I expected. She might have been more roundabout if she hadn’t been drinking. I could see she was nervous, on edge. Why I don’t know. When she saw she wasn’t getting anywhere, she left in a huff.”
Fallon thought about that. “Rose could be pushing her for results. I figure Kane is pushing Rose and Rose is pushing her. These people expect to get what they pay for. They can get nasty if it isn’t forthcoming.” Gatling thought of Molly and their time in bed; he’d be a liar if he said he hadn’t enjoyed the good part of it. Whatever they were paying her wasn’t nearly enough, not with a savage like Kane calling the shots.
“How nasty is nasty?” he asked.
“It depends,” Fallon said. “To teach her a lesson, a good beating. As a lesson to others, a splash of vitriol in the face. Or to shut her up for good—if they think she knows too much—a bullet in the head. They’re as bad as that. If she’s as edgy as you say, I wouldn’t be surprised if she took off for parts unknown. They might send men after her, they might not. Rose might take it on himself to order her death. Any embarrassment, any trouble for Kane, would mean trouble for him.”
“But what could she do?”
“She could talk to some reporter. Reporters like to buy drinks for ladies with stories to tell. She can’t know a hell of a lot. It’s just that Rose is a very careful man.”
Gatling said, “Nothing to do with me what happens to her. She picked her playmates. None of my business if the game turns rough.”
Fallon shrugged. “I don’t give a shit what happens to her,” he said roughly. “But you’re wrong. It is your business. If Kane decides you’re a threat—and he doesn’t have to have proof—that’ll be the end of it.”
“I can take care of myself,” Gatling said.
“Not alone you can’t. All it takes is a rifleman with a good eye and a steady hand. Or a bomb. Kane likes bombs. If he doesn’t have a good dynamiter on tap he can send for one.”
Fallon stood up. Gatling looked at him. “I’ll keep a sharp lookout for packages that tick.”
That got a sorrowful shake of the head. “Foolish man,” Fallon said. “You’re not the hard man you think you are. Nobody is. Every man needs someone to back him up. You ever feel like talking straight, I’m your man.”
Now it was Gatling’s turn to smile. “Thank you, Reverend Fallon. I’ll keep it in mind.”
“Go thou and sin no more. But if you have to sin, don’t get caught.”
Fallon went out.
That night, Gatling ate supper in a small restaurant run by two fat German women who might have been twins. He had roast pork, red cabbage, mashed potatoes with gravy. He stayed away from the hotel because of Molly, and if she was still there, he didn’t want to talk to her.
Coming back up the street he spotted Fallon standing in front of the store. Fallon, in civilian clothes, was turning away from the door when two men opened fire from behind a stack of barrels on the other side of the street. They fired fast and Fallon crashed against the steel door and went down. Gatling drew his gun and started to run as the two gunmen stepped into the street. The two men heard him coming and turned and opened fire at him. Gatling fired three bullets at a run and one of the gunmen clutched at his chest and dropped. The other man fired and missed and ran for the slope that went down to the river. Gatling put two bullets in his back and he staggered and fell and rolled into the water.
Gatling made sure the first gunman was dead before he went to look at Fallon, who lay on his back bleeding from a head wound. There was so much blood it was hard to see if his skull had been shattered. He was breathing if that meant anything. Down the street a police whistle blew. Gatling unlocked the door and dragged Fallon into the store. The lamp above the workbench was turned down to a glimmer and he left it that way. He carried Fallon into the back room and went back for the lamp. The back room had no windows. He closed the door and turned up the lamp. Blood from Fallon’s wound ran down the side of his head, soaking the blankets on the cot. Out in the street a paddy wagon clanged to a halt and there was shouting.
Gatling got his one bottle of whiskey and held it to Fallon’s lips. Some of the whiskey dribbled out. Fallon coughed and opened his eyes and tried to get up. Gatling pushed him back down.
“Lay still,” Gatling ordered. “You just took a bullet in the head. I’ll send for a doctor. Two men shot at you. I killed them, but there may be others out there.”
“Mother of Christ, my head hurts!”
Gatling grabbed Fallon’s hand before he could touch the wound. “Leave it be. Drink some whiskey and wait for the doctor. You have to wait. I’m not opening that door till I see a uniform.”
Whiskey gurgled down Fallon’s throat. “Don’t even trust the uniform,” he mumbled. “Make sure. Don’t turn your back. Policemen have been known—”
Somebody pounded on the street door and a loud voice called out, “Police! Open up in there! This is Lieutenant Evans!”
Fallon’s grin was sick and weak. “That’s Lardbutt Evans all right. Don’t turn your back on the son of a bitch. Watch him.”
The pounding and shouting started again. “I’m coming!” Gatling yelled back. He took a 10-gauge from the rack and loaded it before he unbolted the door. He pushed the door open, then stepped to one side of it.
Lieutenant Evans, the Mayor’s nephew, was a youngish man, but shaped like a pear. Narrow in the shoulders, wide in the hips. He had a very small head and wore a cap that was slightly too big for him. He pushed his way in, trailed by a sergeant and three patrolmen.
“What the hell is going on?” he asked, looking at the 10-gauge. “There was shooting. There’s a dead man lying in the street. Did you shoot him?” Evans looked past Gatling to the lighted back room. “Who you got in there?”
“Sergeant Fallon. Two men tried to kill him. He needs a doctor bad.”
Evans spoke to a patrolman and he went away fast. “Can’t we get some light in here?” the lieutenant said peevishly. “How can I conduct an investigation when there’s no light?”
Gatling put a match to the other lamp. The lieutenant told the sergeant to stay, but the patrolmen were to wait outside. Gatling followed the two policemen into the back room. He hung onto the shotgun because of Fallon’s warning. Even if they were part of the conspiracy to kill Fallon, it was unlikely that they’d try to finish him off with patrolmen outside the door and the street crowded with people. But you never knew.
Lieutenant Evans looked at Fallon without getting too close. “You have any idea who shot you? Why anybody would want to shoot you?”
Fallon’s voice was weak; he spoke with his eyes closed. “I didn’t get a look at them. Mr. Taggart shot them.”
Evans was surprised. “You killed more than one?” he said to Gatling.
Gatling said, “You’ll find another in the shallows if the current hasn’t carried him away.”
The lieutenant scratched the side of his head. “You ever see them before?”
Gatling shook his head. “Strangers to me. I think you’ll find they’re from out of town. You may find papers, though I doubt it. Hired killers—professionals—seldom carry papers. That way they can’t be traced back to who hired them.”
The lieutenant stared at Gatling. “The one in the street had no papers on him. You sure know a lot for a gunsmith.”
The doctor came in and looked at Fallon’s head. “Hold that light closer,” he snapped at the sergeant. The doctor was a small, elderly man with big hands. Fallon winced as the doctor poured disinfectant onto a wad of cotton and proceeded to wash away the blood surrounding the wound. Then he took a surgical scissors from his bag and cut away the hair.
“Go easy with those scissors, Doc.” Fallon was trying to make a joke of it. “I got little enough hair as it is.”
The doctor told him to button his lip. “You’re lucky to have a head to grow hair on. An inch closer and that bullet would have laid your thick skull wide open. As it is, you got off with what our Western barbarians call a crease. Your eyes don’t indicate any evidence of concussion, but that remains to be seen. For now I’ll bandage the wound and look in on you in the morning. You will remain in bed until I give you permission to get out of it. And no more of that,” he said, meaning the bottle of whiskey.
“We’ll take you to your house,” the lieutenant told Fallon after the doctor left. “A guard will be posted. But I can’t help wondering if they mistook you for someone else.”
Fallon said, “That must be it. Why would anybody want to kill me?”
The lieutenant gestured and the sergeant moved in to help Fallon get up off the cot. Fallon’s face was gray, but his eyes were alive. He raised his hand and the sergeant stood back frowning with indecision. Fallon’s eyes moved to Gatling, then away from him.
“I’m all right,” he told the lieutenant. “I’d like to rest here for a while. Mr. Taggart can get me home. That all right with you, Mr. Taggart?”
“Sure,” Gatling said.
“Well, all right then,” the lieutenant said. “Just don’t overdo it. Remember what Doc Beale said.” He turned to Gatling. “I’ll be talking to you later. Damn it to hell! This business is going to keep me up half the night.”
Gatling bolted the door and came back to find Fallon sitting up with his back against the wall. He drank from the bottle before Gatling took it away from him. Gatling ordered him to lie down, but he refused to do it, saying he felt better sitting up. And he waved away the headache pills the doctor had left for him.
“Don’t nag me, Nurse Taggart. I’m all right.” But he lay down when Gatling took off his coat and rolled it up to make a pillow.
“You had a close call,” Gatling said, pulling up a chair. The kerosene lamp, standing on a barrel, was bright in the small, cluttered room. “And no matter what the lieutenant thinks or pretends to think, it was no mistake. You were the target. It was light enough and hired killers usually have good eye sight.”
Fallon tried to turn on his side; that put pressure on the wound and his face jerked with pain. “They might have thought they were shooting at you. We’re about the same height and build. We wear dark suits. I was standing outside your store.”
“Lay on your back,” Gatling ordered. “You don’t have to look at me to talk to me. There was no mistake, Fallon. They were after you, nobody but. Will you do what I tell you? Stretch out the way you were.”
Fallon rolled over on his back and groaned with relief. “I guess you’re right. I was the pigeon. You haven’t seen Molly, have you?”
“Not today.”
“I saw her today. In fact, she came up and spoke to me. First time that happened. I was surprised.”
“What did she want?”
“To help her find her lost purse. She went on and on about the purse, describing what was in it, ten dollars in bills and change, a silver lapel watch. She wasn’t sure she’d lost it or had it stolen. I told her to go to police headquarters and make a report.”
No more noise came from the street; it was quiet. “She was putting the X on you,” Gatling said, using the city underworld expression.
Fallon sighed. “I didn’t know it then, but that’s what she was doing while the killers got a good look at me, which meant they were new in town. She might as well have chalked the X on my back. I owe Big Molly something for that. But I doubt if we’ll see her again. She can’t be that stupid.”
Gatling found a bottle of warm beer and drank it. He hoped Fallon wouldn’t ask for whiskey. He didn’t. Gatling said, “Why were you standing in front of my store?”
“I was trying to warn you. Isn’t that a laugh? Twenty minutes before the shooting I got a wire from a Chicago police friend who does outside work for the Holmes Agency. In his wire he said two gunmen had left Chicago and were on their way here or had already arrived. He wasn’t sure because his source of information wasn’t sure. These men were professional killers who worked for big money, so their target here had to be somebody important. I figured it had to be you.”
Gatling didn’t answer right away, but he knew he had to make up his mind. Fallon had taken a bullet trying to warn him of danger. It made no difference that he himself was the one marked for death.
“I’m pretty sure I know who you are,” Fallon said. “You want to tell me yourself?”
Gatling told Fallon his name. “I work for the Maxim Arms Company in New York. Colonel Harry Pritchett is the boss there. He sent me here to kill Kane. How did you figure me? Through Holmes?”
The cot creaked as Fallon straightened his legs; he was tall, like Gatling, and the cot was too short for him.
“I cracked a big insurance fraud case for Holmes that was two years old. The insurance company was grateful, so was Holmes because it made them look good. They’re always glad to do me a favor. I described you down to your fondness for cold beer and love of weapons. But they weren’t absolutely sure—they have no picture of you—so I couldn’t be sure. But I was sure enough.”
Gatling said, “What about you? I know you’re a sergeant, but is Fallon your real name?”
“That it is. William T. Fallon. What I told you is true. I was a New York detective before I joined Holmes. Now I’m with the Butte Police Department.”
“Talk straight. I just saved your life.”
“As I did yours.”
“You were the man laid out Nick in the alley.”
“Those bastards would have killed you if not for me. They had you cold.”
“You say you’re just a flatfoot?” Gatling said.
Fallon laughed in spite of his head. “Surely not that. I didn’t pound the pavements long enough to get flat feet.”
“Fuck your feet! What are you when you’re not pretending to be a policeman?”
“I work for the United States Secret Service.” Fallon took a deep breath and let it out. Gatling thought he knew how Fallon felt. It was hard to trust anyone. “I’ve been with the Service since I worked for Holmes. They were looking for men with detective experience. I had police and private detective experience, so they signed me on. After testing me with small cases, they sent me here to see what I could dig up on Kane.”
“Such as?”
“Anything that could hang Kane or put him behind bars for a couple of hundred years. I haven’t had much luck, though. God damn! I haven’t had any luck. As you must know by now, Kane’s a hard man to get at. The bastard has layer upon layer of protection. No one will testify against him if they want to go on living.”
Gatling said, “I thought all the Secret Service did was track down counterfeiters.”
“That’s how it started back in ’65,” Fallon said. “We’ve branched out since then. These days we hunt down all kinds of evildoers, though few people know about it. We answer to nobody but the Attorney General. Where he points we go. We’re faceless, nameless men who never get our names or pictures in the paper. Any agent who does gets the gate.”
Gatling wondered if the colonel had lied to him. The colonel was capable of anything, but it was possible he hadn’t known the Secret Service was mixed up in this. Of course, all he had was Fallon’s word that he was a government agent. Asking to see a badge or some sort of indentification would be a waste of time. Anybody could have a badge made or papers forged. But given the circumstances, he thought he could trust Fallon. Trust him, that is, until something proved him wrong. All things considered, Fallon’s story held together pretty good. Fallon had to be the man who had saved his life in the alley. At least he wasn’t lying about that.
Gatling had another question ready when he realized Fallon was asleep.