by Chad Dundas
That’s when he started trying to still his mind with mapmaking. It was a trick he’d learned as a sharpshooter. By day he’d lie hidden for hours in front of some bush or along the wall of a gully, memorizing the zagging lines of the enemy’s trenches, the ant-like movements of the men. At night he’d sit awake under the stars, mapping it in his head, looking for weak spots, trying to locate the most likely places for officers’ quarters and where he might catch them unaware. It had a calming effect, the mapmaking, and came with the knowledge that he’d be well prepared for whatever happened. Now he’d almost finished sketching the hunting camp in his head and had just started to feel a peaceful, drowsy calm settling over him, when he was jarred awake by the unmistakable sound of a gunshot.
The report, a powerful slapping bang, rattled everything in the room. In his haste to grab his rifle from the corner, he toppled the coatrack and sent a glass paperweight to shatter on the floor. Cursing, he flung open a window, a gust of freezing wind slamming into his face. He dropped to one knee to rest the rifle against the sill and held his breath, straining his ears for roaring engines, scanning the perimeter for bursts of floodlights, shadows creeping through the underbrush with guns drawn. He saw nothing and he heard nothing, none of the chaos that would accompany an invading army of government agents. The hunting camp was still and quiet except for Moira Van Dean out in the road with the idiot Canadians.
He watched as one of the Canadians lifted something limp and wet off the ground, raising it to shoulder level. Before Eddy could make out what it was, the Van Dean woman rushed at him, flailing, and the man shoved her with the flat side of his shotgun, dropping the thing back into the dirt. Sighing, Eddy eased the rifle off safety with a flick of his thumb.
He hadn’t fired a gun during his six months in Montana, but he trusted his aim would still be true from this distance, so long as the rifle was up to the task. It was a standard M1917 Enfield, an American knockoff of the original used by the British during the war, and Eddy hadn’t yet had the chance to properly sight it in. The gun had been sporterized for civilian use, altered to take heavier .30-06 hunting cartridges. He’d bought it from an out-of-work miner, a foreigner who placed a classified ad in the newspaper and answered the door to his one-room shack bootless and trembling from hunger when Eddy came calling. He thought the man might actually break down in tears when he handed over the rifle, making him promise to take good care of it. Something about his accent reminded Eddy of the barber.
Eddy had never been what you might call a haunted man, but he thought a lot about the barber these days. If he had been able to keep himself from killing that man, he wouldn’t have had to go away. Maybe O’Shea wouldn’t have shuffled him to the side. Even as he thought it, though, he knew it wasn’t true. He knew at some point O’Shea would’ve cut him out regardless. There was too much money in it now.
Maybe it was always meant to be that way. Maybe at some point, without even realizing it, Eddy had knocked his head against the upper limits of what was possible for him. At best he was a talented and methodical killer. At worst he was a babysitter, dispatched to the middle of nowhere to stand watch over things that didn’t need watching, keeping tabs on O’Shea’s least valuable possessions.
Now, as he rested the gun’s open sights on the slim figure of Moira Van Dean, he thought about the way she’d stood up to Mundt during their first dinner at the hunting camp, needling him for a cut of the promoter’s fees if a match against Lesko was signed. He had to admit he admired her for it a little bit. He was thinking it would be a shame to have to kill her over a dispute with the Canadians, when the figure of Garfield Taft appeared farther down the road wearing his ridiculous fur-lined jacket. Surrounded by the shorter men, he looked even more enormous than usual, and Eddy cursed under his breath. Words were exchanged with the Canadians, but he couldn’t make them out. Taft approached the man Mrs. Van Dean had been fighting with and without any preamble sent him sprawling on the ground with one mighty shove.
Eddy didn’t wait to see what happened next. He left the rifle on the floor under the window and grabbed his pistol, leaping over the upended coatrack as he ran for the door. He didn’t stop to put on his coat, and the shock of sprinting out into the night was like plunging into an icy lake. He slipped once in the frost-covered grass as he charged down the hill, the wet spot soaking through his pants to the knee. By the time he got to the run of cabins, the ugly, dog-faced Canadian was up on his feet, holding Taft off with his shotgun. The rest of them stood with their own guns ready, watching the Van Dean woman try to pull Taft away by the arm. For now, the big fellow was standing his ground. As he got closer Eddy saw that the thing in the road was the old cat Mrs. Van Dean had been feeding. It had been skulking around the property since Eddy had arrived, maybe an old barn cat or somebody’s pet that had run away or been forgotten when the previous owners sold the place. Now it was suffering, nearly dead.
The dash down the hill left him out of breath and it took him a moment to get his bearings. “You cowards,” Mrs. Van Dean screamed. “For no reason, you killed it. The least you can do is put it out of its misery.”
The ugly Canadian’s lips twitched. He acknowledged Eddy with a sideways glance and then looked at the cat, which was trying to drag itself along by its front paws. “I won’t, either,” he said, suddenly nervous, maybe because of Eddy, maybe because he’d pointed his gun at Taft without first figuring out if he really wanted to shoot the man. “I changed my mind. Let the damn thing go.”
“Let it go?” Mrs. Van Dean said. “It could take hours to die like this. If you are any kind of man at all, you’ll do the right thing and kill it now.”
“I’ll kill you in a minute if you don’t stop that screeching,” the Canadian said, shifting the barrel of his shotgun in her direction before settling it again on Taft.
For the life of him, Eddy couldn’t remember the dog-faced Canadian’s name as he stepped up and pressed his pistol to the man’s temple. “I can’t let you do that,” he said.
The Canadian didn’t even try to hide the look of hatred that filled his face. One of his partners, a small hatless man with a horseshoe hairline and a roll of fat underneath his chin, stepped forward and pointed his own gun at Eddy. Aside from a quick look that he hoped said Don’t be stupid, Eddy paid him no mind but felt a slick of sweat bloom under his clothes. It was dangerous to have a gun held on you by a man who wasn’t used to doing it. He hoped the little bald guy didn’t shoot him out of pure nervousness.
“Where’s Templeton?” Eddy said, talking only to the dog-faced man.
“How should I know?” the Canadian spat back. “Probably snug in his ruck with one of his books. What’s that got to do with me? What’s that got to do with this?”
“Listen,” he said, pacing himself, nice and easy, his voice clear and strong. “Everybody out here has a job to do, and right now not a single one of you is doing it. It’s time for you to take your men back up to the barn where you belong.”
“That’s rich,” the Canadian said. “I’ll be damned if I ever had a white man side with a Negro and a whore over me.”
Eddy pushed the pistol a little harder into his head. “Right now there are only two sides,” he said, “one that gets you paid and one that gets you shot. I’m on the side that pays you, but I’m giving serious thought to crossing over.”
Slowly and with what Eddy imagined was secret relief, the Canadian lifted the barrel of his gun so it no longer pointed at Taft. He gave his bald partner a curt nod and that man raised his gun as well. The rest of them stood in the road not making a sound, waiting for a cue from Eddy. He let that feeling linger a moment before he lowered his pistol and walked over to where the tomcat was lying in the road. Its chest was heaving like a bellows with each panicked breath, and before he could think about it he pointed his gun and shot it, the report deafening in the quiet. The blast split the cat’s body open. Innards flopping, its neck
twisting unnaturally to one side. Eddy made the mistake of staring at it a second too long, and all at once his thoughts filled with the idea of rabies and squishy white maggots. He gagged, covering his mouth with the palm of his free hand, then turned away from the others, taking a few steps to let his stomach settle before swinging around.
“Get rid of it,” he said to the dog-faced Canadian, hoping he didn’t look as green as he felt. The Canadian sneered like he might say something smart, but then went to poke around in the brush until he found a long stick. He dragged the cat out of the road, leaving a smear of blood, and stomped back, refusing to meet anyone’s eyes. “Now go on,” Eddy said, waving his gun in the direction of the barn.
“We won’t forget about you,” the dog-faced man said to Taft and the Van Dean woman as his men started back up the road.
She laughed. “Now you’re just trying to flatter us,” she said, some of the pluck returning to her voice.
Eddy had half a mind to follow the Canadians up and order them to drive back to the border that night instead of waiting for the morning. He wouldn’t want to have to explain to Mundt and O’Shea why one of their trucks got lost trying to make the trip in the dark, so he stood his ground until they were out of earshot.
“Don’t mention it,” he said to Taft and Mrs. Van Dean once the men were gone. “You’re very welcome.”
The woman squinted at him. “I wouldn’t have thought you’d go weak at the knees at the sight of a little blood,” she said. “And to think I was worried you might be dangerous.”
“What I am is not your business,” he said. His knee was freezing where he’d slipped, and it was possible his slacks were ruined. His hands felt dirty again, and in order to wash them he’d have to make a special trip down from his room to refill his bucket from the well. It would be worth it.
“I don’t appreciate this,” she said, as if announcing it to the world. “Being lied to, being led on.”
He knew she meant the liquor, and for a split second his eyes strayed away from the group, up the hill to the horse barn. In a sudden flash Eddy understood what he was going to do. He realized the answer to all his troubles had been sitting right there, a hundred yards from his bedroom this whole time. His ticket out of Montana. His ticket out of everything. When he looked back at the woman, she was still staring at him, a queer look on her face like she could read his thoughts. He blinked his eyes and forced his face to go blank again.
“Let me share some advice with you, Mrs. Van Dean,” he said. “The truth of our situation is that you’re not bringing much to the table here. I came down tonight because I don’t think my business partners would be very happy with any eventuality that called attention to this place or led to their star Negro getting killed for no reason. You? Those men can have you for all I care.”
“Hey, now—” Taft said.
“And you,” Eddy said, “if you want me to keep covering for you and our friend Dr. Paulson, I suggest you don’t put me in a situation like this again.”
Taft opened his mouth as if to say something but didn’t. Eddy started up the hill, his arms and legs now feeling very heavy, like he wanted to curl up on his cot and sleep for a thousand years.
“What if those men come back for her?”
This was Taft’s voice from behind him. He considered it and turned to face them. “That doesn’t sound like my problem,” he said.
He left them that way, climbing back up the hill to his room and changing out of his pants. He thought of going up to see if he could rouse Templeton, the big, spiritless man who was supposed to be in charge of the Canadians. He knew it wouldn’t do any good, though, and anyway, the rage that had been seething in his chest had been replaced by a new feeling. For the first time in a long time he could see the future opening up in front of him. He had the urge to drive into town right then, call O’Shea on the telephone, get him out of bed and tell him exactly where he could stick this job. What had he called it that day back in Chicago? An important supervisory position? That was a laugh, and Eddy—sitting at his desk chair in the cold room in just his skivvies—nearly did laugh now at the thought of all of it.
He still wasn’t totally sure why he’d agreed to set up that first meeting between Mundt, O’Shea and Stettler. To think about it now made him feel bewildered all over again. As he remembered it, his dealings with Mundt seemed to take on the quality of a runaway train. As if as soon as the wrestler opened his mouth there had been no stopping it, though Eddy’s mind may have added that sense of things afterward. He should’ve told Mundt to take a hike that first night in the speakeasy, but he hadn’t. Maybe he’d brokered the meeting as a show-off move meant to tell Mundt—and maybe prove to himself—that he could still get O’Shea in a room if he needed to. At first Mundt had been coy about exactly what proposition he had, but he made it clear it was something big. There was no shame in at least hearing him out, Eddy had told O’Shea, even though his friend was dubious that a retired meat tosser and small-time leg breaker could have anything that would interest him.
They met in O’Shea’s office above the tailor’s shop in River North. O’Shea brought in a couple of his new men, goons in outfits they’d bought downstairs, whom Eddy disliked with an intensity he knew could only be jealousy. Billy Stettler showed up alone, his strongman body stuffed inside a tight suit and his hair dyed a preposterous shade of midnight black, so dark it looked almost blue against his scalp. The rumor going around was that Stettler had been injecting himself with monkey hormones to increase his bulk. Eddy wasn’t sure he could believe that. It seemed like the kind of story a schoolboy would make up. Where would you even get something like that? Bribe a zookeeper?
At least Stettler hadn’t brought Stanislaw Lesko, a man Eddy considered so brutishly stupid he lowered the collective intelligence of any room he entered. The fact that the world’s heavyweight champion wasn’t there, either, meant Stettler wasn’t interested in what Mundt had to say, or that he was so interested he didn’t want Lesko to know about it yet. Eddy imagined Stettler leaving a bowl of food on the floor when he left the house so the wrestler wouldn’t starve to death while he was out. He smiled at the image even though he noticed that, despite being the one who set up the meeting, he’d been left to stand by the window while O’Shea and Stettler took chairs around a small table with a coffeepot and a plate of cookies.
Mundt showed up exactly on time, looking like his life had made a complete rebound since Eddy had last seen him. He sported a fresh manicure, and his mustache had been styled with wax that smelled strongly of licorice. He came into the room shaking hands and slapping backs—his eyes no longer glowing with drunkenness—smiling as if they’d all come there to congratulate him on the birth of a new baby.
It took a few agonizing minutes for everyone to get settled. While they poured coffee and O’Shea offered to send out for sandwiches, Eddy felt his mind getting wrapped tighter and tighter. Social gatherings had a way of winding him up, and these awkward moments of small talk before the real business began were almost more than he could bear. Finally Mundt settled into his chair. He thanked both men for meeting with him and thanked Eddy for setting it up. He said he knew they were busy, so he would do his best not to keep them longer than he needed.
“We all have problems,” Mundt said, “but I have a solution that I think could make us all very rich men.”
Eddy watched O’Shea and Stettler as Mundt talked, both of them looking at him as if a traveling salesman had just promised to show them the sharpest set of kitchen knives they’d ever seen. They exchanged a glance, which Eddy read as saying, We’re already rich men. Stettler had his legs crossed at the knee and his hands folded primly in his lap. O’Shea began tugging absentmindedly at his right earlobe. For the first time Eddy felt a small bell toll in his chest, because he knew this was a tic of his, something O’Shea did when he was trying not to look interested.
“Do tell,”
Stettler said with an exaggerated enthusiasm. “What problems do you mean?”
Mundt turned in his seat. “You,” he said, pointing a sturdy finger, “have already put down a security deposit on a date at the Garden in New York at the end of the year, but have nobody the public would pay a buffalo nickel to see wrestle Stanislaw Lesko.”
“We’re going to get Joe Stecher,” Stettler protested, though his face said he knew it was a lame reply.
Mundt ignored him, turning to O’Shea. “And you,” he said. “I understand the police recently raided your brewery on Pacific Avenue. A half million dollars in losses, is that right? Not a crippler, maybe, but quite a setback. It certainly puts you a step behind our friends from the other side of town, does it not?”
O’Shea’s round face had only grown more amused as Mundt talked. He turned to Stettler, the corners of his eyes crinkling. “Mr. Mundt reads the papers,” he said. Then back to Mundt: “All right, sir, you have my ear. Supposing these terrible, debilitating ailments you speak of are real: What tonic do you propose?”
The tone in his voice was mocking, but Mundt didn’t seem to notice. Eddy imagined he’d probably practiced this speech a dozen times at home in front of a mirror and now he was going to stick to his pitch no matter what happened. Mundt spread his hands like a magician about to perform his biggest trick.
“Montana,” he said.
“Montana?” O’Shea said, the way you repeat something back when you’re not sure you heard it right.
“It’s a state,” Mundt said. “It happens to be my home state. You know where it is?”
There was a dangerous second when everyone in the room appeared to be trying to figure out if he was putting them on. O’Shea shifted in his seat. Stettler sat as still as a cat about to pounce. Eddy felt the cold of the window behind him, pressing into his back. Earlier, he’d told Mundt he would be very angry if he’d gone through the trouble of setting up this meeting just so the wrestler could pour garbage in their ears.
