Chapter Nineteen

“Afternoon, Mr. Dwyer.”

The man lounging at the scarred table with a glass of black ale set before him glanced up lazily when Mitch spoke and then leaped to his feet. “Mitch Carter, here?” he marveled. “What in God’s name’s brought you to an Irish bar in South Buffalo?”

Mitch eyed the fellow carefully. Dwyer, tall and stringy, with rawboned shoulders, wore his shock of dirty-blond hair long and had enough freckles for a respectable appaloosa. Looked a bit like a horse, when it came to it, with big square teeth. But his eyes held evidence of a hard and canny intelligence.

“You and I need words together,” Mitch told him.

“Do we?” Dwyer crooked an eyebrow.

“You leaned on one of my boys not long ago, roughed him up and broke his arm. I wanted to say if you have business with me you come to me, right? Because it’s tit for tat—you hurt one of my boys, I’ll hurt you back. But that’s all water under the bridge now. I came here today to suggest we quit battling each other long enough to discuss a common problem.”

“Well, I have to say you’re a bold man, a brave man to come here onto my stamping ground. Takes balls, that does.”

“You know me, Dwyer—ever one to take a risk.”

Danny Dwyer grinned unexpectedly. “A calculated risk, maybe. So is it a truce you’re after seeking?”

“Maybe a temporary one.”

“Then sit down. Meg, bring the man a drink. What will you have, Carter?”

“Beer’s fine.” Mitch, contrary to the talk about him, rarely drank. Oh, he might take a glass of whiskey—mostly Scotch—when he desperately needed to unwind. By and large, though, he couldn’t afford to drink to excess and cloud his wits.

“Bring him a whiskey, Meg,” Dwyer called to the barmaid, and she nodded. Everyone else in the bar stared. Mitch wondered how many of them were Dwyer’s minions.

“I hear congratulations are in order,” Dwyer said when the barmaid had brought the drink, “on your recent marriage. Beautiful girl is your wife.”

Mitch bored Dwyer with a glare. “How do you know anything about my wife’s appearance?”

“It’s all over town, who you married. Or should I say who you bought?”

“You’re an offensive ass, Dan Dwyer. No wonder I never do any business with you.”

Dwyer didn’t like that; his pale eyes narrowed. “We’ve never done business together because I don’t want to associate with the likes of you.”

“Well, I think you might change your mind.”

“I doubt that.” Dwyer raised his glass and supped some ale. “All I’m saying is, a pretty wife like that needs looking after. You wouldn’t want anything nasty to happen to her.”

Mitch stiffened in every limb. His first instinct bade him inform the cretin sitting across the table that if anything nasty even so much as winked at Tessa he, Mitch, would tear Dwyer to bloody pieces with his bare hands. But it wouldn’t do to reveal the depth of his feelings for her and hence his vulnerability. So he shrugged instead and said, “She’s a status symbol—a mark that I’m moving up in the world, just like my house and car.”

Dwyer seemed to find that amusing. “Your house and car?”

“All expensive toys.”

“And you call me an ass.”

“Meanwhile you’re living down here in this rabbit warren.”

Dwyer’s eyes glinted with annoyance. “I prefer to spend my money on other things. I can tell you, I’m not much enjoying this conversation, Carter. So spit out whatever you came here to say.”

“All right, I will.” But leave my wife out of it. “You and I find ourselves in competition—for real estate, mostly.”

“That could be.”

“No ‘could be’ about it. We’ve outbid one another no less than six times. Oh, you tend to use agents to do your buying, but I always know it’s you.”

“How?”

Now Mitch smiled. “You buy in patterns, a property here or there and then fill in the neighborhoods with other purchases. You don’t like to bid above a certain price, but you will, if you don’t want me to have it. You’re steadily encroaching on my turf.”

“Your turf, is it?”

“Yes.”

“So,” Dwyer sneered, “you’ve come here to warn me off.”

“No. As I said when I sat down, I’ve come to suggest we work together, repugnant as that prospect may be.”

Dwyer stirred in his chair and sat up straighter. “The hell, you say.”

“What do you know about a man called Pat Kelly?”

Dwyer’s expression changed. “I know he’s not a man. I know he almost got destroyed a couple months back. And I know he’s a”—Dwyer sneered—“cop.”

“And Irish. Just like you.”

“Well, now, there’s a question. Can an automaton actually be considered Irish? Kelly’s a machine that might fancy itself as being Irish, so to speak.”

“Involved with a lot of things in this city, would you say?”

“Aye, so.”

“A mover and a shaker—just like us?” Mitch pressed.

Dwyer scowled. “Not like us. I sweat and I piss—I bleed and I know you do too. I’d say there’s a difference.”

Mitch played with the glass on the table, though he didn’t take a drink. “What’s your stand on these automaton rights?”

“You come here, on my turf, to ask me about my politics? Christ! The things are fecking machines, and dangerous ones at that. I say shut ’em all down. Give the employment to my fellow countrymen and women.”

“That’s not the way it’s heading. They’re gaining rights. Using our laws. Buying property.”

Dwyer, not stupid after all, didn’t take long to grasp the point. “The hell, you say!” he exclaimed again.

“So I’ve been informed.”

“Well, I’m not the man to doubt your sources. Some of the best in the city, so I understand. You say Pat Kelly’s in it?”

“He’s their leader, isn’t he?”

Dwyer shrugged.

“And,” Mitch added deliberately, “moving in on your turf, and mine.”

Dwyer grimaced hideously. “So what do you suggest, great King?”

“I thought we should pay a call on Mr. Kelly, advise him it might be prudent for him to focus his interests—and center his purchasing—somewhere other than downtown.”

“Work together, you say. Us?”

“Look, Dwyer, I don’t like it any more than you do. But if we don’t act, we might both be cut out.”

Dwyer pondered it while supping another measure of ale. “If I should agree to such a thing, Carter—and it would gall me no end to do so—I doubt our usual methods will serve. How do you lean on a bunch of machines?”

“Kelly has a wife. I understand she’s human.”

“Is that so?”

“Do your research. Get back to me. But, Mr. Dwyer”—Mitch leaned across the table—“you beat up another of my boys, you’ll learn about hurt, understand?”

Dwyer scowled. “I thought that’s what we do—hurt each other. Can’t your boys take it, Carter? I thought they was tough.”

“Tough as nails.” His boys, most of them, had been through hell and back.

“Well, then. And if we should dispose—together—of Mr. Patrick Fecking Kelly, what then? How do we come to terms between us?”

“I’m thinking we share downtown. A reasonable division.”

Dwyer’s eyebrows leaped upward. “Share, is it? Blow me! Well, I suppose stranger things have happened. Meanwhile, you look after that pretty little wife of yours, eh?”

Mitch got to his feet. “I intend to.” And he did.

He went out into the autumn sunlight, where the car waited and a number of his boys with it. They’d been exchanging looks like daggers with an equal number of Dwyer’s lads, though so far no trouble had erupted.

Mitch got into the steamcar; his men followed.

“Where to, Boss?”

“Home.”

And would Tessa be there when he arrived? If not, where would she be? Off visiting her fancy man—again?

Mitch had no doubt that’s where she’d gone last time. Marty had told him how she’d asked him to wait at the park and gone walking off south down Delaware. Being no fool, Marty had followed at a discreet distance.

And seen which house she’d entered.

A bit of circumspect investigation had told Mitch who owned that house, a family named Trask. Once wealthy, they’d invested in clockwork rather than steamworks and, when clockworks became secondary, lost big. Now, like a lot of other flashes in the pan, they’d spent beyond their means and were hurting.

It seemed Mitch would have to pay yet another call. On Mr. Richard Trask.