by Ed Gorman
When I walked in she was standing on a stool and thumbtacking flyers to a cork board. The flyers appeared to be samples of the quality of printing you could get there. Few newspapers survived without being a job printer as well.
She looked down at me.
“Be right with you.”
“No hurry.”
“You’re the federal man?” She said this while stretching and talking around a mouthful of thumbtacks.
“Aren’t you afraid you’ll swallow those?”
“You didn’t answer my question.”
“Well, you didn’t answer mine.”
“Well, as all the six-year-olds say, I asked you first.”
“Yes, I’m the federal man. How many tacks do you have in your teeth?”
“They’re not tacks, they’re long nails about three times as long as tacks.”
“They look like tacks.”
“That’s because they have bigger heads. And I only have two of them between my teeth.” At which point she held up a new poster, picked a nail from between her teeth without relinquishing the hammer, and nailed the poster into place. She did the final one in half the time. Then she turned and jumped down from the stool.
She walked over to the counter, set the hammer down, dug in the left pocket of her butternuts, pulled out a small handful of nails, and laid them down next to the hammerhead.
“Coffee?”
“You people drink a lot of coffee.”
“You may not have noticed but it’s pretty cold here sometimes. But I should warn you, my granddad says, and I quote, ‘Liz makes coffee that tastes like goat piss.’”
I laughed. “You two like each other?”
She went behind the counter and poured herself some coffee. “Depends on the month, day, hour, and minute. It’s a constantly shifting relationship.”
“I’ve had a couple of those.”
“I have, too. Unfortunately, I was married in one of them. He was wise enough to walk away from it. I mooned for a long time. Are you familiar with mooning, Mr. Ford?”
“Much more than I care to be.”
“Good. At least we understand each other about the important things.”
She came over and leaned on her side of the counter. The longer you looked, the more you liked. Behind her I could see the Standard Washington Hand Press and the type forms, the key elements in the laborious business of printing. In the East I’d seen a linotype machine, the wave of the future they’d said, where setting the type was done in hot metal and set in long strings of words. This cut the biggest chore of printing—setting type by hand—in half. Out here, with few able to afford it, the linotype was the stuff of legend.
“So go ahead and ask me another question so I can get back to work. And quit staring at me because it makes me nervous. For one thing, you’re too old for me.”
I blushed. That’s the true sign of manliness—to blush when an attractive lady digs at you a little.
Then she said: “Damn. I’m sorry. It’s just I hate men so much—”
“You’re right. I am too old for you.”
“Yeah, but you’re sayin’ it nice and I meant it mean.”
“I’ll probably survive.”
She touched my hand, which I had resting on the counter. I liked the feel of her much more than I cared to at the moment.
“Maybe we’d better just stick to business.”
“Good idea. I want to know about a federal agent named Grieves.”
“You mean the ‘heartbreaker’?”
“As in ladies’ man?”
She shrugged. “I suppose to some women he was. Not to me.”
“You ever talk to him?”
She thought a moment. “Just that one time, I guess. He wanted to borrow a couple of back issues.”
“Do you happen to remember what they were?”
“No. But I can find out. We charge a penny to take out a back issue and you have to sign for it the way you do at the library. The issues he took’ll be listed on the checkout card. I can’t do it right now, though.”
“Durn right, she can’t,” said the stubby little man with the oily apron. He worked the press with a certain passion that bordered on violence. “Right now I need her to set some lines of type for me.”
“You going to let me say goodbye at least to the gentleman, Tom?”
He grinned. “Depends on how long it takes.”
“Tom,” she said in a perfectly droll voice, “is under the impression that he’s boss of this newspaper. And you know something? He may just be right.”
He’d probably been the joke of his schoolhouse. Skinny, sort of bug-eyed, and already balding, even though he couldn’t have been much more than twenty-two or -three. He wore a cheap brown suit that looked too big for him and carried a briefcase that was so swollen it looked to be half his weight.
He came right at me. He put his hand out to shake when he was still five feet away.
Before he reached me, a woman in a bonnet and shawl hurried up to him. They had a conference right then and there. Five, six, seven minutes or so. Very intense. I couldn’t hear the words. The wind whipped them away. Finally, she waggled a finger at him and said, “And I don’t expect to get no bill from you till you get this settled in my favor. Some lawyer you are.”
She stalked off.
“Friend of yours?” I said.
He smiled. “Just one of the local lunatics. If we had a day or two, I could explain what she wants me to do. Since I don’t have any important connections here, they think they can walk right up to me and I’ll help them. The ones who really need help, I don’t mind. But a lot of them are like jailhouse lawyers. They get in an argument with somebody about property rights or something like that and want me to sue them for a lot of money.” Then: “You’re the federal man and I’m David Longsworth. I heard about Molly Kincaid. She needs legal advice.”
We stood about ten yards from the sheriff’s office. The late afternoon traffic was getting heavy. People heading home, some probably with mighty long journeys.
“I met that agent of yours one day. Didn’t like him.”
“Why’s that?”
“Way he treated me. I know I sort of look like a short version of Ichabod Crane but he kept rubbing it in. Calling me ‘sonny.’”
“What’d you talk about?”
He snorted. “Wanted to know how much money the widow Coltrane was worth.”
“Ella Coltrane?”
“One and the same. I told him I didn’t have any idea. Everything she and Swarthout have is in the mine.”
“Wonder why he wanted to know.”
“Same thing I wondered.” He lifted his briefcase. A faint expression of strain played across his face. “Well, wish me luck with Molly Kincaid. I don’t see how Terhurne can hold her much longer.”
“I hope not. She’s had a rough time of it.”
He smiled. “You’ve restored my faith in federal men. Sure glad they’re not all like Grieves.”
Chapter 12
I had two messages waiting for me at the telegraph office. One was from D.C. The boss was informing me that he’d gotten word that several foreign agents who operated out of the capital had been sniffing around people in our office for information about Grieves. He said that Grieves had apparently put his name in the foreign-agent circuit indicating that he was ready to do business and that he had something that every agent would want to bid on. The boss said that this information had come to a German agent via a telegram from Grieves dated six days earlier. But that apparently none of the foreign agents had heard from him since.
Every major capital in the world had spies thick as fireflies on a hot summer night. The agents seemed to have special powers for sensing that certain classified information or weapons were on the contraband market. They were rarely violent, they didn’t have to be. The men and women selling the secrets were greedy for money. They were only too happy to deliver the goods without any fuss.
But I wondere
d if this particular set of agents mentioned in the telegram weren’t out of luck. By the time they’d figured out where Grieves had been, the matter would have been closed. At least I hoped so.
The second telegram was from Grieves’s wife. “You are the only hope my children and myself have of finding my beloved husband and their father. As you know, I am expecting another baby, too. I’m praying for you every waking moment.”
I felt like a shit. She was back at home well into her pregnancy worried that her “beloved” husband might have suffered an accident or something. I didn’t want to be the one to tell her the truth. That, I would happily leave to somebody else. I’d file my final report and that would be that.
Rogue agents weren’t all that uncommon. A fair number of temptations were put in our paths, everything from woman flesh to real gold. And just about everybody was susceptible at one time or another. The number of rogue agents was a lot higher than our government liked to let on. It wasn’t any different from the way police departments covered up rogue cops. A few years back in Chicago more than seven hundred cops had been fired at the same time for being crooked. As one of the local newspapers had pointed out, given the pool from which the cops were drawn, a good number of the new officers would be just as corrupt.
I stood at the table in the telegraph office trying to figure out how to respond to Mrs. Grieves. What I came up with was:
I HAVE LEADS I AM FOLLOWING.
HOPE TO HAVE GOOD NEWS SOON.
I knew it was a chickenshit telegram but didn’t the woman deserve at least a sliver of hope? The “beloved” Grieves was probably in some whorehouse at that moment. His wife deserved some pleasure, too. A little false optimism was all I had to offer.
I took a chance on Swarthout not seeing me in his bank. He seemed to be out on the street a lot. Or maybe he’d be in a meeting. If he found out what I wanted, he’d ask me a lot of questions I didn’t want to answer.
The bank clerk was a young man straight out of a Horatio Alger novel, those yellowbacks that always featured young men who rose from humble circumstances to become scions of industry. His celluloid collar was so tight you could see the red marks on his neck. He’d battened down his cowlick with axle grease.
“My pleasure to serve you, sir. Good morning!”
“I need to speak to an assistant manager.”
“Perhaps I could help you, sir.”
“Sorry. Say, is Mr. Swarthout in?”
“Sir, Mr. Swarthout is out on one of his community calls. He makes a point of locating people in need and helping them. We’re very proud of him.”
I wanted to add a few red marks of my own to the kid’s neck. I believe the word is strangulation.
“Then please find me the assistant manager.”
“May I say what your business is about?”
“Just say it’s federal business.”
An invisible fist punched the kid in the belly. “Federal? Say, that is something.”
He went away and came back with a beleaguered-looking man with a weak handshake and dog-sad brown eyes.
“Norm said ‘federal’ business, sir?”
I showed him my identification.
“Maybe you should come back when Mr. Swarthout is here, sir.”
He hadn’t even asked me what my business was.
“Afraid I’m in a hurry. Is there somewhere we could talk?”
I was adding to the sadness in his dog eyes and I didn’t feel good about it. I imagined that Swarthout was probably an imperious boss and would work this poor little bastard over pretty good for talking to a federal man.
With great resignation, as if he knew that the noose was about to be placed around his neck, he said: “Very well, sir. Very well. Let’s step into my office.”
As he slipped behind his desk, he said, “Philip Axminster is my name. Guess I should’ve introduced myself out there. But I’m nervous about this. Nobody divulges any sort of information—other than the routine things, I mean—without Mr. Swarthout’s approval.”
“I’m told he used to run slave ships.”
“I beg your pardon?” He’d been startled.
“That was a little joke.”
“I apologize. I’m just a little anxious about this.” Then, in a childlike voice, after an enormous gulp, “Am I in any position to refuse answering questions?”
I was tempted to make a joke—try to calm the miserable little man down—but I didn’t seem able to amuse him.
“I’m only going to ask you one question. And, yes, much as I hate to say it, you can refuse to answer until either Swarthout is here or you have a lawyer present.”
“I sound like an old stick-in-the-mud, don’t I?”
“You sound like a man who probably has a wife and children and needs to worry about keeping his job.”
He smiled nervously. “You’re very polite for a federal man. And I appreciate it.”
“If you’re talking about Mr. Grieves, that’s who I’d like to talk about.”
“Oh, dear.”
“What?”
He thought a moment. “It’s just—well, he and Mr. Swarthout and the widow Ella—well, they seemed sort of thick for a time.”
“Thick?”
“You know, friendly.”
“I see. You mean going out to dinner and things like that.”
“Exactly.” He hesitated again. Glanced at the closed door as if somebody might have an ear pressed to the other side. “I’m told Grieves even went to the widow Ella’s for dinner several times.”
I rolled myself a cigarette. “What I’d like to know is if Mr. Grieves opened a checking or savings account here.”
A tic appeared beneath his right eye. “That’s what I was afraid of.”
“I don’t understand.”
“Confidential information. If I gave that out without Mr. Swarthout’s approval—”
“He’d put you on the slave ship?”
The tic stayed but at least the smile was wide and genuine. Then decorum got the best of him. “Confidential information is something we hold sacred here.”
“That’s good to know. I’d expect the same from my own bank.”
“I’m sorry.”
But he’d answered my question. He wouldn’t have looked so put upon if he hadn’t wanted to keep something secret from me. Something like a savings or checking account.
“You gave the impression that Swarthout and Ella and Grieves might have had some sort of falling out?”
“I did?”
“You said they were thick ‘for a time.’”
“Oh, yes. I see. Well, that’s correct. They spent a lot of time together—or so I’m told, you know how whispers spread in a workplace, people love gossip—but then apparently they stopped going around together.”
“And you have no idea why?”
“Well, I’m not privy to that sort of information. Mr. Swarthout doesn’t confide in me.”
I stood up and shoved my hand over to him. He had an unexpectedly strong handshake. “I appreciate your time, Mr. Axminster.”
“I hope I was helpful. I mean without divulging anything. I mean if you should ever have a conversation with Mr. Swarthout I hope you’ll—”
“I’ll tell him you refused to cooperate in any way.”
“But that I was pleasant about it. Mr. Swarthout has a fit when his employees aren’t polite.”
“I’ll bet Swarthout’s unpleasant to his employees, though, isn’t he?”
His face burned with all the anger he’d stored up for his boss. “Please don’t put me on the spot.”
“You weren’t helpful in any way and you were one of the most polite gentlemen I’ve ever dealt with.”
“I’d appreciate it if you’d say exactly that.”
“That’s exactly what I’ll say. Thanks, Mr. Axminster.”
One place I’ve learned to stop by when I’m tracking somebody is the library. Not that the people I’m after are usually book readers but people on the
run have need of different kinds of information and in most towns that means the libraries.
That’s only one of the reasons I stop, of course. As much as I have great need of getting out of Washington after only a week or two there, I like to find out what’s going on back in D.C. And libraries usually have the best collection of newspapers and magazines.
The size of the library in Junction City surprised me. It had the floor space and selection you’d expect in a much larger town. It was also busy for a weekday.
The librarian was a handsome woman of fifty-something, her gray hair done in a bun and her red dress possessing a touch of the regal. She had a smile like a beacon.
“Good morning, may I help you with something?”
“Yes, I’d appreciate that. You’ve got a real nice library here.”
“Well, thank you. A wealthy farmer was thoughtful enough to remember us in his will. I taught him how to read and I guess he never forgot it.”
I discreetly showed her my badge. I didn’t want to attract any attention.
“My, federal. That’s something we don’t see much of around here.”
“I’m actually looking for another federal man.”
“You must mean Mr. Grieves.” She had a wry, intelligent smile. “He took a liking to one of the young women who works here—a widow—and he sent her flowers every day for five days. That’s something else we don’t see much of around here. We’ll be talking about that for years, I imagine.” She was obviously amused by Grieves’s grand gesture. “But Martha—who is very pretty, by the way—is no young naïf. She knows a professional ladies’ man when she sees one.”
“So she never went anywhere with him?”
“Wouldn’t even let him walk her home. Her husband was something like that, a nice man but an eye for the ladies he couldn’t control. Poor Martha suffered through their whole marriage because of that. So when Mr. Grieves tried courting her—he brought back too many unpleasant memories. So she shared the flowers with the churches around town. I doubt Mr. Grieves would’ve liked that if he’d known about it.”
