23 
AT THE END OF THAT longest day, the restless city settling for the night as much as it ever did, I approached the darkened boardinghouse. Immediately I was filled with longing, remorse, regret, all the shades of emotion that come with loss. Be that as it may. The next challenge had to be faced, then and there.
Hearing me let myself in, Grace appeared at the top of the stairs in her rose-colored dressing gown, my favorite. Blinking against the light of the dining room chandelier I had switched on, she said as if my presence might bring on a fresh outbreak of hives: “That had to be you, nuisance. What now?”
My gaze up at her should have said it all, but just in case, I wreathed the words with all I could, spoken from the heart. “I am here to reclaim my beautiful bride.”
A flush to match her gown arose in Grace’s cheeks as my intention registered on her. She scratched an arm nervously. “Morrie, we’ve been through this and through this. You can’t just dance in here in the middle of the night and expect us to go back to being”—she faltered for the term—“lovebirds.”
“No, and we both know a prime reason for that, don’t we.” I could hardly contain myself. Actually, I couldn’t. “Where is the swine?”
“The which?”
I was as determined as I had ever been in my life. The Italian gigolo was about to get a taste of my brass knuckle if it came to that. Backing away from the stairwell to give myself sparring room, I roared, “Mazzini! Get down here now. We’re going to have this out.”
In the ringing silence, nothing ensued at first except Grace peering down at me in astonishment. Then came the sound of shuffling footsteps in the upstairs hallway behind her. Braced for battle, I motioned for Grace to stand aside, which she mutely did, as I waited for the wife-stealing cur to show himself.
Only to be confronted by not one figure but two.
“Keeping kind of late hours, aren’t you, Morrie?” said Griff.
“Not that we can’t get back to sleep when you’re done yelling at the top of your voice,” said Hoop.
It was Grace’s turn. “And you’ll have to shout even louder to reach Mr. Mazzini. He’s in Genoa. His stay was up some time ago and he’s gone home to his wife and five children.”
“Ah.” I cleared my throat in embarrassment. “Good place for him.” The pair at the top of the stairs in underwear tops and pajama bottoms shook their heads in unison and shuffled back to bed, while the third member concentrated her frown at me. “Grace,” I saw nothing to do but start over, “I have much to tell you.”
“Do you. Who will be doing the talking, Morgan Llewellyn or Morrie Morgan or some deceiver yet to be invented?”
“Can you please come down, so I don’t have to do all this with a crick in my neck?”
She hesitated, our fate as a married couple in the balance, and something in the air between us tipped it. Wordlessly she descended the stairs, her dressing gown swishing. Mesmerized, I could not help hearing in my head Robert Herrick’s yearning poem, Whenas in silks my Julia goes / Then, then (methinks) how sweetly flows / That liquefaction of her clothes. Thoughts of that sort ended abruptly when my vision of liquefaction planted herself a safe distance from me, arms crossed and eyes snapping. “Well, I’m here.”
With a pleading look, I ushered her to the dining room table, the electric chandelier overhead glowing gamely in the Butte night. Neither of us saying anything, we sat there as of old, she in her place nearest the kitchen, I in the star boarder’s spot across from her, her Arthur watching eternally from the wedding photograph on the sideboard. I mustered myself. “There have been developments.”
“My, my. There generally are with you.”
If ever there was a guarded listener, it was Grace, but at least she was listening. Where to start? “It will be in the paper tomorrow,” I plunged in, “the Thunder is putting out an Extra. The lockout is over.”
• • •
Jared made the announcement, at my prompting after closeting himself in Armbrister’s office for a significant phone call to the top floor of the Hennessy Building. The negotiation went on for some minutes, helped by the ammunition I had given him, and he emerged with the solemn look of a plenipotentiary who had settled for an armistice when victory was too costly for both sides. Dutifully he gave me a little salute and called the staff together.
“Folks, here’s the size of it. Anaconda has agreed to end the lockout, at the start of first shift tomorrow.” At the first whoops and Armbrister’s bray to the back shop to be ready for an Extra, he held up his hands. “That’s the good part, and then there’s this. To get the men back to work, the union had to take a pay cut.” The newsroom went quiet and tense as he mustered the rest. “Fifty cents an hour. I hate that like poison, but something had to be done to get the Hill working again. I promise you this,” he pledged as if taking an oath of office, “we’ll fight like hell to get the full dollar back in the next go-round.”
He paused, the strain showing. “So we didn’t get all we wanted, but neither did Anaconda.” In a corner of my mind, I could hear Rab, always wiser than her years, forecasting a draw. “They’re gambling that they can defeat the tax commission measure,” Jared forced the words out, “and it’s about fifty-fifty that they may be right. What they don’t know,” his voice lifted, “is that if it goes down this time, the governor and I will tinker with it a little and get it back on the ballot at the regular election next year. We’ll keep doing that over the long haul until we get something passed that reins in Anaconda, by damn.”
Looking around at the intent faces surrounding him, that most unsentimental man choked up. “I want to thank every one of you for working your hearts and guts out the way you have. Sometimes it’s been a rough ride”—he managed to crack a thin grin in my direction—“but this is a different town because of you and the Thunder. And,” his voice rose and steadied, “we’re not done yet. This newspaper started from nowhere, and we’ve got this far.” He made the same vowing fist Quin showed the world of corporate rulers. “We’ll keep on, putting out the best damn paper Butte has ever seen.”
Armbrister clapped first, then the others, the entire newsroom in a thunder of ovation.
• • •
“That’s good news, of course,” Grace allowed, still cautious. “But you’re still up against that awful Cartwright.”
“Ah, him.”
• • •
Some hours before, the Purity was busying up with home-goers grabbing a quick bite at the end of the workday, the proprietor ringing up profits as if the cash register were a set of chimes, and watching worriedly when Cartwright made his appearance. The self-styled Cutlass sauntered to my table in his usual swanky manner, although I saw him cautiously eyeing the plate of spaghetti and meatballs in front of me; I was famished after the headframe experience. “So now you don’t mind being seen with me in this joint?” he said with bravado but staying just out of range. “Change of heart, pal?”
“Let’s restrict ourselves to the cranium, shall we?” He looked at me speculatively. “Sit down, Cutthroat.”
“Do I need to wear a bib?”
“Not unless you burp haphazardly.”
He snickered and took a seat across from me. “I have to hand it to you, you’ve got more moves than a weather vane, Morgan.” Lazily he let drop what I knew was coming. “If you don’t mind my using your first name.”
“So you are capable of legwork when you’re not pandering in print for Anaconda. I suppose that’s in your favor.”
“I must be slipping, though,” he shook his head at himself. “It took longer to click than it should have, who you reminded me of. But when it finally did, it was plain as day—you’re the ghost of your brother. Same build plus a little, same phiz somewhere under that beard, same way of putting up your dukes.” Confidently he leaned toward me, grinning in triumph. “Same razzmatazz. In certain circles back in civilization”—he meant Chicago—“they still talk about that fixed fight the Llewellyn brothers pulled off. And you know what?” He raised an index finger as though inspiration had just hit. “I’ve heard rumors, back there, of a pretty big bet somebody out in this direction snagged from the big boys, on the Sox World Series. Somebody who knows a fix when he sees one, would be my guess. Boy oh boy, Llewellyn,” he laughed, “you like to live dangerously, don’t you.”
“Actually, no.”
“Well, you sure give a good imitation of it.” He slapped the flat of his hand on the table. “Let’s get down to business. That scarecrow of a kid said you’re ready to make a deal. It’s about time. What’s your price for putting Pluvius to rest for good?”
“Nothing.”
Genuinely taken aback, Cartwright stared at me as though I were betraying the hired-gun brotherhood. “Don’t be a chump. Take the long green and go buy yourself a new life. Anaconda expects to pay, plenty.”
I speared a meatball and dabbed it in spaghetti sauce, just to further unnerve him, then set aside the morsel and fork on my plate. “You misinterpret. I have no payoff coming because I’m not going anywhere. It’s Cutlass who is. Yet tonight.”
“Have you gone nuts?” His voice rising in register, he slapped the table harder this time. “I’m calling the shots here. Sure, I can’t order up a funeral for you myself because of that damned Evans bunch. But if I drop word to the right people who got burned on the Sox Series, they’ll be happy to do it for me. Get hold of yourself, wise guy, before—”
“I wonder, Cartwright,” I interrupted, “whether you know the story of the Laconians, from whom we get the word laconic. It goes like this. During the Peloponnesian War, the Macedonians threatened Laconia with an ultimatum to surrender. ‘If we prevail in battle, we will kill every man, woman, and child.’ The Laconians sent back a one-word message. ‘If.’”
“That’s cute,” he sneered. “But what makes you think you can get away with that answer?”
“Because, if you were to tip off my whereabouts to certain gambling interests in Chicago, I will provide documentation from a number of Rough Riders that your San Juan Hill dispatch was an utter fraud.”
To my satisfaction, I have to admit, the pencil-thin mustache twitched like cat whiskers finding danger.
“As you with me, there was something I couldn’t quite figure out,” I kept right on before he could say anything. “Why you shied away from the Rough Riders angle in the parade coverage. You didn’t dare make a peep while they were in town, did you, for fear they’d remember you and your famous dispatch all too well.” I watched to make sure this was having its effect on the suddenly less sleek figure across the table, and it was, every word.
“Roosevelt’s men won the battle on foot,” I went on remorselessly, “not galloping up the slope under an azure sky like horsemen of the Apocalypse, tsk. Which indicates, wouldn’t you say, that you weren’t even there. The only high ground you were on during the charge up San Juan Hill was the height of deceit.”
If looks could kill, he would have done me in then and there. “What happened, I wonder,” I went on. “A bit too much Cuban rum the night before, perhaps? It was easier to hang around the cable office and send in your supposed scoop when word that the Rough Riders had won trickled in? Am I getting the story right? Close enough, I see.”
Cartwright managed to find his voice. “You’re bluffing.”
“Care to try me?”
I saw him waver, then concede. “Casper was the best counterpuncher I ever saw,” he said thinly. “You must have picked it up from him.” He paused, by the look of him still tempted to remind me of my brother’s fate.
“Just in case,” I headed that off, “I have left instructions, should anything happen to me, that all the proof needed to ruin your career will be—”
“Skip it, Llewellyn, we’ve all read that in cheap novels.” He cocked a resigned look at me. “Out with it. What do you want from me?”
“You should have read a little further, Cutthroat. Absence and silence, of course, in that order. Must I spell it out? You go back to Chicago, right now, and never mention me to the gambling mob.”
Cartwright let out his breath in a soundless whistle. “You’d make a helluva poker player.” Following that up, he made a gesture of throwing in his cards. “I fold. May I go now?”
“Nearly. First, I am going to threaten you with brass knuckles”—one hand’s worth, anyway—“and loudly tell you to get out of Butte and never return. And you will comply.”
“Theatrics, is it,” he groaned, looking around the cafeteria at the audience of miners and others already watching us. “It figures.” Turning back to me with a doleful expression, the most feared columnist in America shook his head regretfully. “You’re ruining a good newspaper war, you know.”
“I fervently hope so.”
He couldn’t resist. “Lapdog of the Bolshies.”
Nor could I. “Purveyor of puerile nonsense.”
“Fancy-pants fabulist.”
“Windy City windbag.”
“There, see?” Cutlass to the last, he spread his hands persuasively. “We could have had a lot of fun with each other yet.” One glance at me dispelled that. “All right, all right. Put on your pinky ring, let’s get this over with.” He started up from his chair, but paused midway. “There’s something I still don’t get. You’ve got me bottled up. But what’s to stop the right people in Chicago from stumbling onto you, like I did, and then it’s your death warrant even if I didn’t have anything to do with it?”
“Can’t you tell?” I said, rising to my feet and slipping on the brass knuckles as Cutthroat Cartwright and I prepared to part for good. “I’m bulletproof.”
• • •
“How can you be any such thing?” said Grace in disbelief now as I told her the same. “I hate to side with that Cartwright creature on anything, but why on earth can’t the gamblers still come after you?”
“Not if they know what’s good for them.”
• • •
Beeping its horn once but that told enough, the Golden Eggs truck pulled up in front of the manse at dusk. The neighbors on Horse Thief Row may have wondered why, instead of a delivery from the van, I was delivering myself to it by climbing in the back.
The Highliner had vacated the driver’s seat and awaited me there amid the egg cases concealing the bootleg load. No gun in sight this time, to my relief.
As ever, the pair of us took in each other’s likeness, as if looking into a mirror with a slight waver in the glass. After some moments of this, he tipped his fedora up an inch and gave me a rogue’s wink. “So, twinsy. I don’t know how you do it, but that kid found me. Thank God he’s not a cop.”
“Never underestimate the abilities of newsboys,” I said fervently.
“What’s up?” His gaze locked with mine, as though reading my mind. “This is just a guess, but do you need somebody bumped off?”
“I appreciate the thought, but that’s not quite it.” No one could hear us, but I dropped my voice, the moment seemed to require it. “What I really want done”—I took a decisive breath—“is for you to become me. In certain quarters.”
His head turned sharply to one side, the Highliner heard out my fuller explanation. When I finished, he made sure: “That’s all you want? Just run a bluff on some boobs back in Chi?”
“It would be exceedingly helpful.”
He stroked his beard while thinking the matter through. “Pretty sharp of you. That has its advantages for both of us, doesn’t it. You get to be just plain Morris Morgan, and I get to be someone with a reputation attached, in case anybody gets nosy about my ‘real’ name, eh?”
“An identity switch, yes. That’s precisely what I have in mind.”
“This moniker I’m supposed to take on,” he checked, “how’s that spelled?”
“Double L,” I recited, “E, W, E, double L, Y, N. The Welsh are an inventive race.”
“I’ll try live up to that,” he said drily. “So here’s the deal, then.” Leaning forward, he tapped my knee to signal mutual trust. “I’ll have a few of the boys spread the word around Chicago that any mobster who sets foot into Montana for any reason will go back out in a box six feet long. Message signed, sealed, and delivered by Morgan Llewellyn, better known as the Highliner.” The fleeting smile moved in his beard, no doubt reflecting my own. “That suit you, chum?”
“A perfect fit.”
• • •
“There you have it,” I concluded, Grace sitting spellbound, glued to her chair during every word of my tale. “Oh, except for one thing.” I couldn’t help a note of regret in letting her know, “Pluvius is no more, alas. It is time for me to move on from the newspaper. Cavaretta will take on the editorial writing, he’s a good choice.” I drew a difficult breath. “I shall miss the Thunder”—the truest way to say it was also the hardest—“like a lost brother.”
For hopeful spells during my telling of it all, she had been the Grace I so happily trotted the world with, bright eyed, thoroughly attuned, avid for what came next. Now her face fell. “I’d rather take a beating than have to say this, but that’s always been the trouble, you. Something goes off in your head, and the next thing, there you are again, free as a bird and with about the same means of support.”
“Grace, wait. Before we deal with moving on, there’s something I must say. It matters more than anything.” It welled out of me. “You are my all. I will love you until—I don’t know what. The pyramids turn upside down. The stars lose their twinkle. The last breath is out of me. The—”
“Stop! That’ll do.” She caught her breath. “You are a case, Morrie.” She studied me fiercely, her expression a mask of exasperation until, at last, the dimple crept in. “That’s not all bad, I suppose.”
Before my hopes could soar, she too spoke her heart. “Well and good, everything you’ve told me. And you’re such a temptation when you’re not up to some shenanigan, there’s nobody in the world I’d rather be with. But there’s still the matter of”—she sorted a moment for the right name—“Morris Morgan’s habits. If you’ve left the newspaper, how are you going to, you know.” She bit her lip before saying it. “Provide.”
I said humbly, “You are looking at the new city librarian of Butte.”
Grace covered her mouth with her hand as if to slap down astonishment.
• • •
“Sandy,” my own incredulity burst forth when the man himself announced that thunderclap, along with his casual gruff remark that he had the place shaped up enough by now that even I could not make a mess of the Butte Public Library and the finest book collection west of Chicago, so it was time for him to sit back and write his memoir, “I don’t mean to accuse you of plotting, heaven knows. But did you plan this from the very start? With the manse and all?”
Here came The Look, the blue gaze over the cloud of beard. “Did you just now figure that out, dunce?” He shifted in his thronelike desk chair to fuss with the latest rare book arrival—Boswell’s Life of Samuel Johnson, ripe for plucking for a certain kind of memoir, no doubt—all the while shaking his head and clucking to himself. “You’re slowing down, Morgan. Heh, heh.”
• • •
“Sandison has some sway with the library board,” I said innocently in response to Grace’s flabbergasted look.
Recovering, she warned me by manner and word: “Morrie, you’re leaving something out, I can tell.”
“Ah, that,” I sighed. “Sandison has them over a barrel. It’s either me in the job or, as I believe he told the trustees in somewhat plainer terms, every book in the public library with his nameplate in it goes good-bye.” I paused, leaving her practically teetering toward the next revelation. “The salary is such that we may actually be able to meet the demands of the manse.” I threw up my hands to show her I had nothing up my sleeve. “So you see, I am gainfully employed in spite of myself.”
At that bit of honesty, she started around the table to me, her eyes shining. Just as swiftly I was up and toward her. We met halfway.
Grace being Grace, she made doubly sure, scanning my face, beard, eyes, deeper than any of those. “You’ve really turned over a new leaf?”
“Better than that, Mrs. Morgan.” I moved to take her in my arms. “Book upon book of them.”
THE END