32

Hammett wasn’t dead.

Siringo knew it when the silhouette of the other silo changed and he made out the outline of a man rising above the rim on the side opposite Siringo. The eel had detected someone approaching from that side. The darn yonker must’ve been part housefly.

This wasn’t like plugging branches and scraps of waxed paper by the HOLLYWOODLAND sign. When you missed, they waited motionless for the next shot. He was only guessing that Lanyard’s back was to him; he was just a shadow against the reddening sky. Siringo had to expose himself to draw a clear bead, and if he’d guessed wrong …

*   *   *

“God hates a coward, Charlie.”

Jimmy McParland, the greatest Pinkerton who ever lived: hero of the Molly Maguire case, superintendent of the Denver office, and Siringo’s personal idol, was walking square down the middle of Boise’s main street, heading for an interview in the penitentiary, with dozens of eyes tracking his progress, and probably nearly as many firearms from behind cover.

The I.W.W. had blown up Idaho’s ex-governor in his own home and the Wobblies had made it clear the Haywood-Pettibone-Moyer trials would nol-pros or others would join him.

And here was the old man bold as Biddy’s garters, wearing the trademark bowler that had become part of the Agency uniform based on his preference, swooping handlebars, and gold-rimmed glasses, swinging the gold-headed stick that had been presented to him personally by Allan Pinkerton at the close of that affair. All that was missing was a bull’s-eye painted on his chest.

“He may hate a coward, but that don’t mean you have to be in a hurry to make His acquaintance.”

“They’re the yellow ones. They know if they try anything in a crowd they’ll be kicking air long before those men in the dock. Look at Orchard: the worst murderer since John Wilkes Booth, and he didn’t have the sand to plant his charge any closer than the front gate.”

Harvey Orchard had killed twenty-six men for the miners’ federation, including thirteen scabs in one dynamiting in Colorado. He was testifying against his accomplices in the Governor Steunenberg killing in return for a commutation of his death sentence, and it was him McParland was going to see. Siringo had been assigned to bodyguard the superintendent throughout the court proceedings. Every creak of a wagon, each slam of a door had him clutching the handle of his Colt fit to bust it.

“I guess cowards was smarter in your day. I knew plenty dumb enough to think he can outrun a mob.”

“Maybe so, but if we show the white feather, who’s to avenge our murders?”

Well, McParland survived, Orchard got life as a reward for turning state’s evidence, and Haywood, Pettibone, and Moyer were acquitted anyway. It was after that McParland gave Siringo the gussied-up Colt he’d left behind in Los Angeles.

“It’s a parade piece, but I expect it will brighten up that little room of yours.”

“What for? The trial was a bust.”

“You weren’t. I’m alive.”

“I didn’t do nothing.”

“Sure, you did. You walked a foolish old man down Capitol Street not six yards away from four sticks of dynamite.”

“How can you be so specific?”

“We got a tip the next day.”

“Why didn’t he touch ’em off?”

“I sent men to ask him, but he blew himself up in his house when he saw them coming up the walk. Told you they’re yellow.”

*   *   *

He wished now he’d brought that fancy rig along. Three guns didn’t seem near enough under the circumstances.

He rose to his full height, such as it was, spread his feet, shouldered the repeater, aimed at the center of the silhouette on top of the other silo, and fired.

*   *   *

Hammett shifted his gaze from the Browning’s muzzle to the telescopic sight and through it to Lanyard’s eye, shrunken by the reverse lens. It narrowed slightly, bracing for the recoil. Then it snapped open wide in surprise.

The report came after, fading as it walloped around among the hills. The rifle faltered. Hammett closed one fist tightly around the copper pipe and swept up his other hand, grasping the barrel and wrenching it out of the eel’s grip, in the same moment hurling it away.

Lanyard, reeling from the impact of the distant bullet, disappeared. Hammett grasped the pipe in both hands again and closed the last three feet before the top in three seconds. His back was wet, his breathing sounding like steam exiting a ruptured boiler. He took hold of the iron rim that circled the top of the silo, raised his good foot, missed the rim with it, raised it again, hooked it with his heel, and pulled himself up and over.

Something flashed into his vision. He moved his head just as the eel’s fist swept past his jaw and glanced off the top of his shoulder.

It was the wounded shoulder. He lost vision, and when it returned, he was lying on his back with the weight of the world on his chest and two hands closed around his throat. Something hot streamed under his collar and humid, whistling breath dampened his face. Lanyard’s eyes bulged. His face, ordinary—invisible—in repose, was split from east to west by the rictus of his mouth and from north to south by a stream of red coming from a matted temple and the torn remains of one of his small, flush-mounted ears; the blood dripped from the corner of his jaw down inside his shirt and came out the cuff on that side where he was throttling Hammett. His hat was gone, his hair in his eyes.

Hammett couldn’t get to the .38 in his belt; his assailant’s weight was pressing too hard for him to work his weakening arm between their bodies. He groped in the pocket on his other side, felt something solid, and swung it in an upward arc, tearing the pocket and connecting with the center of Lanyard’s head wound. Something collapsed beneath the brass knuckles; the gust of breath in Hammett’s face robbed him of his own. Then the eel’s eyes rolled over white. The grip loosened on Hammett’s throat and he lay beneath Lanyard’s lifeless weight.

*   *   *

How long they lay together couldn’t be measured in terms of time.

When Hammett’s heart rate approached normal, he heaved at the thing pinning him down, but it was like pushing at a sack of wet cement. He braced his hands and his good foot against the planks beneath him and tried to slide out from under. At first he was unsuccessful. He rested again, braced again, tried again. He gained an inch. Three more attempts, with rests in between, and he’d gone six. With one last lunge he shoved his body free, then hauled his leg and arm out into the open.

Sweet oxygen filled his lungs. He tasted it for a while, then dragged himself to the rim, grasped it, and hauled himself erect. Leaning with his hands on the rim and his back to the horizon he looked down at the man sprawled at his feet. He stared at him a long time. The stirring of his back was a fragile movement, the breathing shallow enough to be taken for the action of a breeze from outside. Unbelting the .38, Hammett knelt and placed his ear against the man’s back. His heart beat. Rested. Beat.

Hammett stood, cocked the hammer, and took aim at a point between Lanyard’s shoulder blades. Then he lowered the hammer gently, returned the weapon to his belt, and bent to grasp the man by his collar with both hands. His own back was drenched with his draining strength, but after a few tries he began to make progress, dragging the eel toward the silo’s rim. Hauling him up and over took most of the rest of his stores. He had him draped over the top and was resting again before the final push when Siringo’s voice called behind him.

“Don’t bother, son. Can’t you see he’s dead?”

The young man bent again, listened. The beating had stopped.

For the second time in his adult life, Dashiell Hammett wept.