For someone who bluffed so much and spent most of his days with folks doing their best to bluff him, it was refreshing for Mason to be with someone who told him everything, whether it was good to hear or not. By the time one of Greeley’s men came along to collect him, Mason was feeling almost as good as if he’d gotten some sleep. The young man who’d knocked on the door of Mason’s cabin was tall and dressed in black pants and a white shirt. If that didn’t make it clear he was one of the waiters in the largest of the Jack’s dining rooms, the small red apron tied around his waist sealed the deal.
When they went to the fore of the riverboat’s third deck, Mason said, “This isn’t the way to Mr. Greeley’s office.”
“No, sir. It isn’t.”
“Where are we going?”
“Mr. Greeley wanted to meet with you. He’s having breakfast right over there.”
They were in an elegantly furnished restaurant looking out to the Mississippi. The sun’s rays reflected off the swaying waters, and the entire front wall of the room consisted of large windows for people to take it all in. Food was brought in from a kitchen located elsewhere, freeing up all the space within the bright room for wrought-iron tables and polished wooden chairs. A light green carpet completed the illusion that passengers were dining on the terrace of a mansion instead of floating down a river. Greeley sat at the table closest to the window so he could look straight out at the water while his ever-present armed escorts kept other folks a good distance away.
As soon as he saw Mason, Greeley stood up and waved him over. The young waiter came as well, plastering a smile onto his face as soon as he got close enough to be heard without shouting. “What can I get for you gentlemen?” he asked.
“I’ll have some more of these crepes,” Greeley said.
When he heard Greeley request the fancy little pancakes, Mason couldn’t help thinking of an old phrase about putting a dress on a pig but not being able to make it dance. “Coffee for me,” he said.
“You must be hungry. Order whatever you like,” Greeley insisted.
“Fine. I’ll have some biscuits and gravy.”
“Good choice,” Greeley said while shooing the waiter away. “Now have a seat. We got some things to discuss.”
Mason sat across from Greeley. He tried to get comfortable but finally had to concede the fact that the chair had been made as more of a display piece than anything that might make a man feel grateful for being off his feet.
“So,” Greeley said, “tell me about Sedrich.”
“I would have thought your spy had told you all about it.”
“Oh, come, now. You must have guessed I’d send someone to keep an eye on you.”
“Yeah,” he said. “I suppose I did. I take it he came back on his own?”
Greeley didn’t respond to that. He showed no emotion whatsoever. Mason took that as a sign that he wasn’t a suspect in Garza’s disappearance and was more than happy to move along to other matters.
“So,” Greeley asked, “what happened?”
“I rode to the Bistro and found him just like you said I would.”
“Simons is hard to miss, ain’t he?”
Now that he thought the hook was sunk in nice and deep with Mason, Greeley had taken a more familiar manner with him. While it made for easier conversations, Mason already missed the terse threats of bodily harm. Having Greeley treat him like an old friend made Mason want to vomit.
“He sure is,” Mason replied through a smile that he wore like a cheap coat of paint.
Greeley was so wrapped up in his own smugness that he barely seemed to notice. “What about the bounty hunters? Did they give you any trouble?”
“The men I saw were armed, but they looked more like rowdies than assassins. And there weren’t too many of them.”
The expression on Greeley’s face showed no sign of suspicion, which meant he almost certainly already knew what he’d just been told. He nodded, anxiously awaiting the next part of the story.
“I sat down at Simons’s table and played poker for a few hours,” Mason continued. “Got him good and drunk and then followed him to his home. Once he was there, I went in and killed him.”
Naturally that was the moment when the waiter returned with coffee. He refilled the cup that Greeley had already been working on, set another cup in front of Mason, filled that, and did all that without showing that he’d just overheard a conversation involving murder. “Your food will be ready in a short while,” he said.
“Much obliged,” Greeley said. After the waiter left, Greeley stirred some sugar into his coffee and said, “That man’s served me breakfast and lunch more times than I can count and I couldn’t tell you his name. So, how’d you do it?”
“Do what?”
“Kill Simons. I had to deal with that obnoxious little turd on more than one occasion and would have liked to kill him myself. I wanna know how he finally met his end.”
“I shot him,” Mason replied.
“Before or after you took his finger?”
“What does that matter?”
Somehow Greeley managed to handle his coffee cup like a truly civilized dandy when he said, “It’s a matter of how much screaming was involved.”
Unable to contain himself any longer, Mason said, “I’m not going to dredge up such matters for you or anyone else’s amusement. If you want to tack a fine onto my debt, then go right ahead.”
Greeley laughed once and sipped his coffee. “Don’t try to look down at me from some high horse. That may have suited you when you were just some gambler who made a bad call. Soon as you brought me that finger wrapped in a bloody rag, you showed your colors well enough.”
“Colors? You didn’t leave me any choice.”
“But you performed your duty, ugly as it was, real well. Ain’t that right, Abner?”
“I would’ve laid good money on you coming back here with just the ring. Maybe some blood on it for appearances, but just the ring.” Not only did Greeley’s eyes take on the steely chill of which Mason had become so familiar, but they looked across that table as if expecting to find similar dead orbs in Mason’s face. “So, tell me. I know you remember. Did that little weasel scream?”
“Yeah,” Mason replied as he thought of all the carrying on Simons had done from the next room during the fight with Garza. “He screamed.”
“I knew it.” Greeley leaned back in his chair as the breakfast plates were brought to the table. The waiter set them down along with silverware and hurried off. Picking up his fork, Greeley used it to point at Mason and said, “You’re gonna work out better than I expected.”
“Thanks, Mr. Greeley.”
“Call me Cam.” After using the fork to take a small piece of crepe to his mouth, Greeley pointed it once more at Mason, but a little lower than the last time he’d done so. “How’s your hand?”
Mason had completely forgotten about catching his hand beneath the hammer of his own Remington. When he and Simons had taken Garza out of the house to be buried in the closest patch of ground, Mason grabbed the cleanest towel he could find and shredded it to be wrapped around his hand. The wound hurt, but no more than any other number of aches, pains, cuts, and bruises he’d collected of late. For Greeley, he summed it up with “It’s fine.”
“What happened to it?”
“There was a scuffle at Simons’s house.”
“Scuffle?”
“I’m sure you can imagine,” Mason said. “I was, after all, there to kill him. Most folks don’t take too kindly to that sort of thing.”
“Why were you so much more pleasant when we were playing cards?”
“Because that’s my element.”
“Does this sort of work truly put you out of your element?” Greeley asked. “Or might you be confused about what your element truly is?”
“This place, these dainty tables, these expensive plates,” Mason said while motioning to each of those things in turn, “aren’t even my element. I’m a cardplayer. A gambler. While I do enjoy civilized niceties, I’ve come to realize that I don’t enjoy what comes along with them.”
“And what’s that?”
Mason had done exactly what he hadn’t wanted to do. He’d spoken out of turn and out of the character he was trying to portray. Once again, it seemed, Greeley had outplayed him. Before too many awkward seconds ticked by, Mason salvaged his misstep by putting on a smile and tapping his coffee cup. “Civilized folk don’t drink whiskey for breakfast. That is something I simply cannot abide.”
Back when Mason was new to the Delta Jack and its owner, he would have been certain that the smile he saw on Greeley’s face was genuine. Now he wasn’t so sure. Instead of sitting and pondering the matter, Mason simply dug into the biscuits and gravy as if there weren’t anything else in the world requiring his attention.
“Civilized folk don’t do a lot of things,” Greeley said. With a wink, he added, “That’s why I don’t allow them on my boat.”
“So, when was the last time you saw the man I sent to keep an eye on you?”
“You mean the spy?” Mason asked.
“As you like.”
“He was dealing with some of Simons’s men.”
“That’s right. And how did you know he was there in the first place?”
Mason took a bite of biscuit before replying, “I got lucky.”
Greeley didn’t take long to digest that response. It seemed to fit in with what he’d expected, so he took another bite of food.
“I want to talk about Virgil Slake for a second,” Mason said.
“Who?”
“Virgil Slake. The man with the loaded dice. Surely you must have had a look inside his cabin after his partner and I took our unexpected departure from this boat.”
“Oh, right!” Greeley said. “You two did leave quite a mess. I nearly forgot about him.”
“Well, I didn’t. I sniffed him out when he could have been soaking your craps games for a good while longer than he already had.”
“And I let you apply the money you took to your debt.”
“He would have taken more from you,” Mason insisted. “At least another couple thousand over the course of a week or two.”
“And?”
“And I want to apply the money you didn’t lose . . . money you still have because of me . . . to my debt as well.”
Greeley took another bite and gnawed on it as if he was also trying to eat the tines from his fork. “That’s crazy.”
“Why?”
“Because you might as well say I’m saving money because you’re not sittin’ at any of my card tables winning hands that might have gone to me.”
Raising an eyebrow, Mason said, “I hadn’t thought of that. But that’s different than what I’m asking for.”
“How?”
“Because I wasn’t cheating,” Mason said. “Virgil Slake had a real good system going. More than likely it would have kept going because of someone on your payroll. After all, those dice had to get switched out somehow. Having it happen once or twice is possible. Having it happen consistently enough to make a man set up shop in his cabin is something else.”
“Tell you what. If you find how them dice were gettin’ switched or if any of my people were in on it, then I’ll see about shaving off some more of that debt.”
“All right, then.” Mason breathed a little easier and took a bit of breakfast that he was actually able to enjoy. Now that he’d shown some confidence along with a liberal dose of greed, Mason was fairly certain he’d regained some of Greeley’s trust. They were once again two snakes in the same patch of grass. “So, who’s next on the list?”
“You don’t recall? I thought any man that’s been on the gamblers’ circuit would have a sharp memory for names and faces.”
“I didn’t see any faces on that list. Second, it’s a list. It was written down. If it’s written down, I don’t have to recall it.”
Greeley shook his head. “That’s just plain laziness.”
“Fine, then. Keep your job and we’ll call it square.”
“Just because I’m giving you some credit for what you done to Simons, don’t think that entitles you to give me lip,” Greeley warned.
Mason nodded and used the hunk of biscuit on his fork to sop up as much gravy as he could. Now that he’d started eating, his stomach was reminding him of how long it had been since it was properly filled.
“Maggie,” Greeley said.
“She’s not on that list,” Mason replied. “I would’ve remembered that.”
“No, she ain’t on the list. I hear you’ve been spending a lot of time with her.”
“That’s right.”
“May not be such a good idea,” Greeley said. “I hear she’s also been spending time with Jervis Crane.”
“That twitchy fellow from our game?”
“One and the same. Could be she’s making the rounds to get something on some of the better players here. Women gamblers do that sort of thing to get an edge.”
“Do you really think you need to tell me something like that?” Mason asked.
“Just making sure you’re not blinded in a way that every man can become blind.”
“All right, you delivered your warning. What about the next name?”
“The next one on the list is Seth Borden,” Greeley said.
“I suppose you’ve got something in mind for me to bring back after I kill him?”
“Don’t need to kill him.” Greeley took a bite of his crepes and washed it down with some coffee. “You’re to bring him a message.”
“No mementos?” Mason chided. “This should be easy.”
“Come to think of it, I would like something else. His wife and daughter.”