Dry Rot

by S. L. Stoner

  “What about Earl Mackey?” Sage asked.

  The smile dropped off Merrill’s face.“Mackey told Williams, that he had only recently discovered that Bittler and the union work crew had been conniving to cheat the repair jobs. He insisted they’d conspired to steal and sell off the new bridge timbers and to creosote over the dry rot. Mackey claims he knew nothing whatsoever about the scheme until yesterday.”

  “And Williams believed him?”

  Merrill gave him a pitying look. “They play golf together and belong to the same so-called ‘gentlemen’s’ club. What do you think?” he asked.

  TWENTY FIVE

  “I believe you, John, I believe you,” Johnston said, his tone making clear his impatience. “It’s just that there’s not a damn thing to be done about it. There’s no way to print a story like that without solid evidence.” Regret knitted the newspaperman’s eyebrows. “I need more proof that Mackey bribed Bittler. Remember, given Earl Mackey’s political clout in this city, his business cohorts will rush to defend him as will The Gazette. The mud will fly through the air like muck in a feedlot stampede. I don’t mind slinging a little mud myself now and then, you know that. In this case, though, I’ll need more mud on my side than just the written say-so of that absent and self-confessed crook, Horace Bittler.”

  Johnston’s regret was genuine, Sage knew that. The newspaperman stood up for the working man at every opportunity—in fact, Johnston’s well-advertised commitment to the “little guy” accounted for The Journal’s growing circulation numbers. Even so, he couldn’t expect Johnston to stick his newspaper’s neck out without more evidence to back him up.

  “So I guess Earl Mackey is going to breeze through this entire disaster without a single hair on his pomaded head being messed,” Sage said, frustration giving his words bite.

  “Except for the fact that he’s lost his father,” Johnston gently reminded him.

  “Yah, well I’ve got to wonder just how much pain that loss caused him. In fact, I’m not too sure his hand wasn’t in it.”

  Johnston held up a hand, “Whoa, Sage. Unless there’s solid proof of that particular allegation you need to be careful who might be around when you give tongue to it. If Mackey hears that you’re alleging patricide, he’ll take you to court. And, he’ll win. Mackey has the reputation of being a generous, public-spirited man. He and his wife are regulars on The Gazette’s society pages because they fund one charitable cause after another. The jury will remember those good works and they’ll tend to believe him, unless you can offer irrefutable proof that he’s behind the murder.”

  Sage rose from his chair to pace the small space in front of Johnston’s desk. “People like Mackey always construct an admirable public exterior,” he said. “Poke beneath that exterior you’ll find moral rot. Take Andrew Carnegie, for instance. People think he’s a great public benefactor with all those libraries he funds.” Sage kept talking even as the more calm part of his mind knew that he was preaching to the choir. It didn’t stop him. Sometimes a man needs to hear the truth spoken out loud, even if he’s the one doing the talking.

  “What you don’t hear about is how Carnegie acquired all that money he parses out. How he speeds up production in his steel mills until his workers collapse from exhaustion. That damnable Taylorism time-management system he uses sucks the last living ounce from a body. ‘Scientific management’ my backside. There’s not a whit of difference between that scheme and an overseer with a damn whip!” Sage hit the top of a bookshelf with his fist. “Carnegie epitomizes evil, that’s how I see it. His obscene level of wealth comes from sucking the life out of his workers. He uses just a fraction of his ill-gotten gain to act the beneficent God so people will throw rose petals at his feet. Carnegie, Mackey and the other robber barons are all cut from the same bolt of cloth! They turn my stomach.”

  Johnston, his elbows planted on his desk, calmly eyed Sage across a bridge of folded hands. Once Sage resumed his seat, his outburst over, Johnston said mildly, “I sympathize with your views, Adair. I hold the same ones. You know I do.” Johnston leaned forward over his desk, his eyes regretful.“I am also a businessman responsible for keeping this ‘voice of the people’ we’ve created going. I can’t risk the future of this newspaper on a shaky story. If I did, and lost the paper, the city’s only daily would be The Gazette.” The newspaperman straightened and said with finality. “Bottom line, John, there’s no way I will print your story until it’s well supported— however much I might want to expose Mackey’s rotten activities.”

  s s s

  Sage walked into a near empty Mozart’s just after the dinner hour. He paused at the threshold, noticing that new cream-colored paint now coated all the walls above the dark mahogany wainscoting. When he looked for an indication of where Daniel’s handiwork might next appear, he saw nothing. Maybe the sad, peculiar man was done with painting.

  “How in the world did Daniel manage to finish painting that entire room in such a short time?” Sage asked his mother when he entered the kitchen and found her stirring the contents of a steaming pot. He sniffed and stepped closer to peer over her shoulder. Creamy chocolate pudding, one of his favorites.

  “He arrived here again at the crack of dawn and worked without stopping. He finished an hour before dinner started.” Mae lifted the pudding from the heat and began spooning it into small dishes.“Say, you’ve been taking care of his pay, haven’t you?” she asked, looking at him.

  “You mean we haven’t paid him?”

  She bristled, “What is this ‘we?’ You carrying a mouse in your pocket? I know I haven’t paid him. I thought you took care of that.”

  “No, not me. And who’s been buying the paint?” She shrugged her shoulders.

  “Fine job were doing watching out for him. Maybe that was the point Herman kept trying make—that we needed to pay the man.” Sage looked around. “Where is our industrious but forlorn painter, anyway?”

  “Last I saw Daniel, he was carrying the ladder down into the cellar. Dinner was hectic and I never saw him again. Maybe he’s still down there puttering around.”

  Sage headed toward the cellar door. “I’ll see if he is and I’ll make sure we settle with him before he leaves tonight.”

  The cellar yielded no evidence of the painter, only the musty smell of its dirt floor. Surplus canned foodstuffs for the restaurant were stacked neatly on the wall shelves that hid both the second stairwell from the third floor and the tunnel leading to the alley.

  Lighting a gas jet, Sage looked for Daniel’s painting equipment. Only the ladder leaned against one wall and, come to think of it, that was Mozart’s ladder. A few near empty cans of the paint sat on a shelf. Otherwise, Daniel’s buckets, drop cloths and paint brushes had vanished, leaving nothing to show that Daniel’s painting project was still underway. Back upstairs he searched the small storage closet near the restaurant toilets and found nothing there. Next, he looked in other logical places where Daniel might store paint buckets and the like, even climbing into the musician’s balcony. There he got a surprise. Colorful flower garlands filigreed freshly painted walls. Sage stepped closer, amazed at the artistry in the painted flowers. “Beautiful,” he muttered to himself. “I wonder if he’d paint a few of these decorations on the dining room walls?

  Returning to the kitchen, he told his mother, “His painting gear isn’t in the cellar. Does he usually take it home at day’s end?”

  She was at the stove, stirring a different pot. He looked over her shoulder. Beef barley soup. His stomach growled. She laid down the spoon and said, “No. Daniel always neatly stacks his painting gear in the cellar. He washes his brushes in the kitchen sink, dries them carefully and takes them down into the cellar.” Concern wrinkled her brow as she tossed him a roll, picked up the spoon and began stirring again.

  “Well, he’s left nothing behind this time. Not a single brush.” Sage stood silent for a moment, chewing the roll as he pondered over the painter’s strange behavior before saying, “Have you
seen how beautifully he decorated the musician’s balcony? It’s incredible. Garlands of flowers everywhere.”

  She shook her head and they looked at each other.“Do you suppose he tired of waiting for us to pay him? Maybe he just packed up his equipment and headed out for good. After all, he’s been working here almost a week and we haven’t paid him a single cent, not even for the paint. No wonder Herman worries about him,” she said, adding as an afterthought,“Well, at least we weren’t starving him too. I always made sure he ate.”

  “We’ve been just a might distracted this week,” Sage muttered, although he felt shame at the thought that he had passed up more than one opportunity to compliment or say something positive to the grieving man.

  She merely looked at him, her lips pressed tight together. Sage gave way. “Oh, all right, I’ll go to Herman’s shed now and settle up with Daniel. I’ll even ask if he’d maybe like to come back and paint some more.”

  “Now, there’s a good idea,” she said, before turning back to vigorously stir the pot’s contents.

  s s s

  For once, the clouds clung to their water although water dripped sporadically from leaves and roof edges to plonk onto hard surfaces. The rain’s let up was likely short-lived. To the south, black clouds roiled high as if slamming into an invisible barrier. Sage hurried, fearful of the impending deluge catching him out in the open. Sure enough, just as he stepped beneath the shed’s overhang, the clouds let loose with booming thunder. A sudden wind blew the chill rain slantwise. Sage rapped sharply on the wooden door. Hearing no response he opened it noticing that it swung silently open. The hinges had been oiled.

  No one was inside. Sage hesitated. What next? Wind and blowing rain rattled the glass in the shed’s only window. He stepped further inside and closed the door. He might as well hang around until it let up. The shed looked different from the last time he’d seen it. A huge pile of dry wood filled one corner. “No harm in heating the place up,” he thought. It took a few minutes for his cold hands to kindle a fire in the small wood stove. Once the fire started snapping, Sage sat down on the cot and thoroughly surveyed his surroundings. Besides the addition of a neatly-stacked woodpile, whitewash now coated the walls, covering new caulking that filled every gap between the boards. Despite the heavy downpour, tin cans were no longer needed because the roof was now watertight. Three new heavy blankets lay on the bed, along with two new feather pillows. What remained of Eich’s porcelain projects, after the intruders’ invasion, sat neatly organized on the workbench. On the wall, a new tool rack held Eich’s tools. Even the cot Sage sat upon was, once again, square and sturdy.

  “Daniel has fixed this place up for Herman’s return,” Sage said aloud. “Yet, he’s clearly not going to be here when the ragpicker returns.” The young man’s bedroll was no longer in the corner. The pegs where Daniel’s clothes once hung were bare. Uneasiness washed over Sage. He shrugged it off, telling himself that Daniel probably found a paying job and moved on to better quarters.

  s s s

  Rank upon rank of wispy black clouds drifted across the bright disk of an early rising moon. As he headed back to Mozart’s, Sage didn’t pause to admire the effect. He had just a few minutes to change his clothes and man his post before the supper hour began.

  He made it on time. The evening routine proved soothing. The music coming from the balcony seemed especially sweet and clear. Maybe the musicians found Daniel’s floral offering inspiring. Sage studied the various patrons sitting at their tables, some eating and conversing, others companionably silent. He pushed himself to see each one as an individual—tried to see, as Eich apparently did, into the core of every one of them. Some of them he knew.

  At a table against the wall sat the doctor he’d last seen treating Rufus. The doctor didn’t recognize Sage, who now sported a white blaze in his black hair, a sculpted mustache and an expensive broadcloth suit. Sage, however, remembered him clearly—remembered the man’s exhaustion and his sorrowful, pinched face. Tonight, the man was easy and joking with his friend. Probably a colleague. Yet, the price the doctor paid for his compassion was there, in the lines around his eyes, in the pensive way his mouth drooped during the conversational lulls.

  Compassion was at that doctor’s core, Sage decided. Wonder what sound compassion makes? Maybe a soothing croon, he surmised. The memory of Eich’s fevered face slid into his thoughts. Near the center of the room a young couple dined in what seemed a celebration since, given their simple clothes, Mozart’s appeared above their financial means. Excitement enlivened the young woman’s face as she eagerly looked about. Her partner’s gawking was more restrained but his sparkling eyes and uneasy fingering of his shirt collar gave him away. Sage asked a passing waiter to present a glass of champagne to each of them. His re-

  ward was their surprised pleasure at the gift.

  Sage’s interlude of quiet contemplation ended with Philander Gray’s entry into the restaurant. The lawyer’s face was grave and he waved away Sage’s offer to show him to a table.

  “Don’t feel like eating right now, Adair. Been to see Lockwood.”

  “What’s wrong? Is Leo sick or something?”

  Gray shook his head dolefully, pursing his lips before saying, “Well, if you said he’s sick with worry, you would be on the mark.”

  “Poor Leo. Damn, I wish there was something more for me to do. I’m hoping Fong shows up soon with some good news,” Sage said. “His men are trailing those two thugs wherever they go. I expect him to report in sometime soon.”

  “We better come up with something awful darned fast,” Gray said. “The prosecutor has informed the judge that he’s ready to begin the trial the day after tomorrow.”

  “That’s too soon,” Sage said. Panic hit hard as a log flying out the end of a chute. “We need more time to find those two and their boss, tie them to Earl Mackey, and make them confess to killing the old man. It isn’t possible to accomplish all that in one day.”

  “Whether we accomplish it or not, Leo’s trial starts the day after tomorrow, sure as rain will fall in November,” Gray responded.

  TWENTY SIX

  The dark form glided into Sage’s room just before day lightened the sky. Sage was awake. With Leo’s trial just 24 hours away, Sage had stared into the dark all through the night.

  “Not to worry. It is only me,” Fong’s said, somehow knowing that his friend lay awake.

  Sage lit the oil lamp, its flaring yellow light catching in the dark hollows beneath his friend’s eyes. Fong had been ceaselessly trying to track Mackey’s three thugs. That effort, coupled with the strain of housing the desperately ill Eich, left the man looking exhausted. Sage didn’t know Fong’s age. He’d always thought it improper to ask. He guessed the other man to be somewhere in his mid-fifties. Most days, his impassive countenance and quiet strength made him seem younger than Sage felt. Not today.

  “Sit, Mr. Fong. You look like you’ve been to hell and back,”

  Sage said. Throwing back the covers, Sage pulled pants on over his long johns.

  Fong slowly eased himself into the wooden rocking chair as if his bones were aching or about to snap. “And, you look like Chinese ghost scared by demons,” he replied tiredly, with just a hint of his usual twinkle.

  “Have you news?” Sage asked. “Don’t tell me we lost those two galoots.”

  Fong shook his head. “We followed them to Covington Hotel.” Sage knew the Covington. Older and lacking the Portland Hotel’s prestige, the Covington was still considered a respectable, middle-class hotel. It catered to businessmen and financially comfortable traveling families. Not the type of place he’d expect to find the two men he’d come to think of as “Wheezy” and “Whiny.”

  “Strange to think that the two of them are staying there.”

  “Oh no, they are not staying there Covington is where third man staying.”

  “Great! What’s his name?”

  “It took some time to find out. The only Chinese man who works
in hotel is down in laundry and he belongs to different tong than mine. First, I obtain approval from tong leader for him to help me. He try to discover the man’s name.” Fong smiled briefly. Sage recognized the problem. It was hard for the hotel’s only Chinese employee to ask questions about a guest without attracting the wrong kind of notice. Fong cleared his throat and spoke,“Laundry man pretty certain third man is staying in room 309. He says number 309 is only single man staying there who is younger than forty years.”

  “What’s his name?”

  “Charles O’Connell is name hotel staff call him by.”

  “Did you stay and watch for him to come out?”

  “I stayed for many hours. Many ways to exit that hotel. I am not sure he still there. My cousins follow other two bad men when they leave hotel so I stay to watch by myself. I pace back and forth between two sides of hotel like rooster locked out of hen house until cousin come to assist. I tell man to stand watch. Describe to him this O’Connell . . . told him to look for single man, of younger age and follow.