5

Hammett, leaning a little on the banister—not because of the liquor in his system, Siringo thought, so much as because of his illness—led the way to the ground floor, where he gave the landlady a coin and used the wall telephone in the foyer to place a call through the long-distance operator. Once the connection was made, he stuck his finger in his ear and raised his voice. Ellis was a busy street and the neighborhood liked its chain drives and Klaxons.

“Mrs. Shepard, is it? My name is Walter Noble Burns.”

After that, Siringo heard only snatches of the conversation and couldn’t make head nor tail of it.

Hammett pegged the earpiece. “That was Eliza Shepard, London’s stepsister. She’s managed the ranch since before London died. She hired the boy—Abner Butterfield, his name is—on Earp’s recommendation. She says we can come see him tomorrow.”

“He’ll bolt for sure when she tells him.”

“I asked her not to, so he wouldn’t form any preconceived notions before I talked to him.”

“Who’s this fellow Burns?”

“Historian of some sort. I did some snooping for him just before I left the Agency, tracking a couple of saddle tramps he wanted to talk to. He was writing a history of the Old West, he said; personally I think he was trying to dig up blackmail. I don’t know what ever came of it, but he was keen on the Earp brothers.”

“She ever hear of him?”

“No. I didn’t expect her to, but a lie gets off the ground quicker when there’s some truth under it. She thinks I’m writing Earp’s biography and I want a worm’s-eye view from a former hand.”

Siringo felt himself grinning. “Promise her a footnote?”

“Her name in the acknowledgments. And a signed copy of the book, of course. You approve?”

“It’ll serve. If I was your age I’d turn on the manly charm. A woman’s heart is a fine soft place to look for sign.”

“My experience is different. All women are dark to me.”

A strange observation.

“This place reachable by taxi?”

“That’d be dear, but I’d rather not hire a car.”

“What about a livery? You ride?”

“Not since I broke up the Wobblies in Butte. I don’t guess they’ve gotten any easier on the ass.”

“It’s been a spell for me too. I never could feature how sitting on something stuffed with hay raises blisters.”

“Alcohol’s best. Applied internally.”

“I got to line my belly first. Where’s a good place for chow?”

“John’s Grill. I’ll get my hat and coat and join you. John’s particular about dress, if not about who he serves.”

*   *   *

John’s, across from a fleabag called the Golden State Hotel, advertised steaks and seafood on an electric sign. Inside, it was pleasant enough, cedar-paneled like the inside of a humidor, with waiters in ankle-length aprons serving the predominately male clientele seated at linen-covered tables. It was noisy as a Dodge City saloon, but instead of a tin-tack piano and random gunfire the racket came from clattering crockery.

“Two setups, Gus.” Hammett hung his hat and topcoat on a clothes tree next to a booth upholstered in worn leather.

The waiter, who looked as if he’d slammed face-first into the caboose of a train he was running to catch, nodded and went away. Moments later he returned and set two glasses on the table with ice cubes inside. He waited, looking bored, while Hammett slid a large pewter flask from inside his suit coat and floated the cubes in whiskey.

Hammett looked up from his leather-bound menu. “How are the chops today?”

“I wouldn’t know. I’m a vegetarian, remember?”

The young detective smirked at Siringo. “Gus gave up eating meat after he killed Sailor Dumphrey in the sixth round in El Paso.”

“Juarez,” corrected Gus. “Governor Culberson banned prizefighting in Texas, so we took it across the river. It was the fifth, not the sixth. How was I to know he had a bad appendix, I ask you?”

Siringo said, “I was at that fight.”

The waiter’s scarred face was unimpressed.

“You and half the forty-six. If everybody that says he was there was there, the gate would have been millions.”

“I didn’t pay. I was posted at the back door to sing out if there was a raid. I got paid twice that day, once by the promoter and the second time by the Pinkertons, who were going to be the ones raiding the place, only Chicago backed out at the last minute. The Agency decided it didn’t want to start a war with Mexico just yet.”

The ex-fighter stroked a badly sewn lower lip. “If this joint’s going to be a hangout for dicks, I’m off to the States Hof Brau.”

Hammett said, “Bring me a couple of chops, Gus. Plenty of onions in the fried potatoes.”

“I’ll have the same.” Siringo handed his menu to Hammett, who stacked it with his and gave them to the waiter.

“You take chances,” he told Siringo. “There was a revolution on. Either side might have blundered on the side of caution and shot you for a spy.”

“There’s been a revolution on down there since Sam Grant was a shavetail. Anyway, I like to keep an eye on my investments. I had fifty bucks on Dumphrey. I’d of broke even if the promoter didn’t stiff me on my pay.”

“Well, you were working the double-cross.”

“He didn’t know that.”

The meals came, and they ate for a while without speaking. Siringo chased his drink with water, shook his head when Hammett offered to pour again from the flask. The young man’s water stood untouched while he drank more whiskey.

“What’s my part in this historian story?” Siringo asked.

“You’re my publisher. You said yourself you’re a man who looks after his investments.”

“No wonder you ain’t in print. If you knew anything about publishers you’d know they never get up from their desks. Make me your researcher.”

“It’s copacetic with me, if you don’t mind the demotion.”

Siringo ordered coffee. When it came, he blew on it, set down the cup untasted, scratched his left eyebrow.

Hammett caught the gesture; that much about the Agency hadn’t changed. He glanced over his right shoulder, as if looking for the waiter. The man Siringo had spotted was loitering by the narrow paneled hallway leading to the toilets, reading a copy of the Chronicle with yesterday’s date. He wore an out-of-season white linen suit, severely wrinkled, a Panama hat with the brim turned down all around, and had a dead cigarette hanging from a corner of his mouth. His face was even thinner than Hammett’s and sallow to the point of jaundice.

“It ain’t that big of a newspaper,” said the older man. “It shouldn’t take you two days to get through it.”

“He’s a cheap crook any way you look at it. Why spend a nickel when you can scoop it out of a trash bin for free?”

“You know him?”

Hammett nodded. “Mike Feeney. Runs errands for Paddy Clanahan. The kind that’s hard to muck up.”

“Bootlegger?”

“Boss politician. Eight years ago he was just a ward heeler, but when T.R. split the ballot with Taft and Wilson got in, the Democrats back East took notice. Everybody who got the vote out moved up a notch.”

“Ancient history. Harding’s Republicans are in now.”

“Everything comes back around. There’s an oil scandal heating up in Sacramento, with cabinet officials involved. Clanahan’s on it with both feet. If his timing’s right, he could be postmaster general.”

“For an anarchist you know a lot about government.”

“Marxist. When the wind shifts from the capital, you don’t have to be close to the governor to smell the stink.”

Siringo frowned. “You think this fellow Feeney’s trailing you around to find out how much you know?”

“All I know is what everyone does who’s got ears. But if Clanahan’s put Feeney on the job, it means I’m supposed to spot him: All you need to tell him is don’t get seen, and he’ll do the rest. That way I won’t look at who’s really trailing me.”

“Who’s that?”

“We’ll ask Feeney.”

“Good luck with that. These fellows run like rabbits when you go to brace them.”

“Why would I do that? He goes where I go; in this case the gents’ room.”

“I never knew a case to draw fire this early. What else you working on?”

“A story for Smart Set, but I doubt that’s the attraction. You?”

“Not even that. Maybe it’s Earp they’re after. He’s sold gold bricks and town lots he had no claim to. This oil mess sounds like just his meat.”

“If all he wanted was to scare somebody off, why bother with the horse-theft dodge?”

“He knows I don’t do that kind of work.”

“Me neither.”

“Could be it’s an old complaint. Earp makes enemies the way Will Rogers makes friends.”

“If Clanahan was ever to confide in people, he wouldn’t start with Feeney. But his invisible friend might know something.”

Siringo borrowed Hammett’s flask, sweetened his coffee, and gave it back. He took a bracing sip. “What do you need from me?”

“Nothing right now. Two of us might spook Feeney. Go back to my place and wait for me. I never lock up. What’s to steal?”

“I reckon I’ll offer you my hospitality at the St. Francis instead.”

“Got a bottle?”

“How you feel about shine?”

Hammett grinned wide.

Siringo glanced Feeney’s way. He seemed to be reading the women’s page. “Don’t lean too hard. He looks brittle.”

“These reedy ones can surprise you. They just bend where Sandow the Magnificent would break in two.”

Hammett paid his half of the check, put on his hat and coat, and strode down the hallway, passing within inches of the skinny man in the wrinkled suit, who suddenly became interested in an article and pulled the newspaper up in front of his face. Siringo lingered over his coffee, looking at nothing in particular.

After five minutes or so, Feeney began to fidget. He checked his strap watch twice, tore his paper snapping it open to the sports section, kept glancing down the hall toward the toilets. Siringo rose then, put a banknote on the table, and went out.

He turned two corners, window-shopping, paying attention to the sights of the city, which had changed demonstrably since he used to report to the Agency office there. There was Telegraph Hill trailing its strings of cable cars like circus streamers, and down below the wharves, with more smokestacks than sails straining at the hawsers; but where were the opium dens, the almost-respectable gambling hells, the saloons built from wrecked ships, the girls working balconies wearing nothing but what God gave them? It didn’t seem possible that a little quake and some vigilante raids could have destroyed the Barbary Coast after fifty years of loyal service. Likely it had just gone underground, where a detective never knew where to start looking for what he needed to know. You had to leave a good source of villainy for seed; that was something the crusaders never understood.

He stopped to light his pipe, turning into the doorway of a haberdashery to shield the match from the wind. He kept his back to the street and saw Feeney’s scrawny figure reflected in the glass of the door, hurrying along now in the direction Siringo had been heading with the day-old newspaper tucked under one arm. He was following Siringo, not Hammett.