Even though their backs and arms still ached from the loads, the crew was refreshed by the gas lamps and the late workers who manned stores, transported goods, and swore back and forth at the gamblers and drunks. The prairie was a lonely place for three men too exhausted to talk (or even to bicker); and the city might not mean welcome, but it would warm them and supply them.
They moved deeper into the heart of the place, keeping to themselves even as they drew the occasional curious eye. There were places in the west, as everywhere, where free black men could find no haven-but likewise, as everywhere, there were places where useful men of a certain sort could always find a reception.
In the central district, where the street lamps were fewer and farther between, the saloons were plentiful and the passersby became more varied. Indians walked shrouded in bright blankets; and through the window of the Hotel Oriental, Hainey saw a circle of Chinamen playing tiles on a poker table. On the corner a pair of women gossiped and hushed when the old coach drew near, but their business was an easy guess and even Simeon was too tired to give them more than a second glance.
Along the wheel-carved dirt streets, Hainey, Simeon, and Lamar guided the horses beyond the prostitutes, the card-players, the cowboys and the dance hall girls who were late for work.
And finally, when the road seemed ready to make a sudden end, they were at the block where Halliway Coxey Barebones ran a liquor wholesale establishment from the backside of a hotel. He also ran tobacco that the government had not yet seen and would never get a chance to tax, as well as the occasional wayward war weapon en route to a country either blue or gray-wherever the offer was best. From time to time, he likewise traded in illicit substances, which was how he had made the acquaintance of Croggon Hainey in the first place.
The side door of the Halliway Hotel was opened by a squat white woman with a scarf on her head and a carving knife in her hand. She said, “What?” and wiped the knife on her apron.
Hainey answered with comparable brevity, “Barebones.”
She looked him up and down, then similarly examined the other two men. And she said, “No.”
The captain leaned forward and lowered his head to meet her height. He minded the knife but wasn’t much worried about it. “Go tell him Crog is here to ask about prompt and friendly repayment of an old favor. Tell him Crog will wait in the lobby with his friends.”
The woman thought about it for a second, and swung her head from side to side. “No. I’ll tell Barebones, but we don’t have no Negroes in here. You wait outside.”
He stuck his foot in the door before she could shut it, and he told her, “I know what your sign says, and I know what your boss says. And it don’t apply to me, or to my friends. You go ask him, you’ll see.”
“I’ll go ask him, and you’ll wait here,” she insisted. “Or you can make a stink and I can make a holler-and you won’t get anywhere tonight but into a jail cell, or maybe into a noose. And how would you like that, boys?” Her eyebrows made a hard little line across her forehead and she adjusted her grip on the carving knife.
Hainey did a full round of calculations in his head, estimating the value and cost of making a stand on the stoop of the side door at the Halliway Hotel. Under different circumstances, and in a different state, and with a night’s worth of rest under his belt he might have considered leaving his foot in the door; but he was tired, and hungry, and battered from a hard crash and hard travels. Furthermore he was not alone and he had two crewmen’s well-being to keep in mind.
Or this is what he told himself as he wrapped a muffling leash around the insult and his anger, and he slipped his foot out of the door jamb so that the toad-shaped woman in the scarf could slam it shut. He said aloud, “We shouldn’t have to stand for it,” and it came out furious, lacking the control he wanted to show. So he followed this with, “It only adds to his debt, I think. If he can’t tell the kitchen witch to respect his guests, it ought to cost him. I’ll tack it to what he owes me, one way or another.”
But neither of his crewmen made any reply, even to point out that Barebones already owed the captain his life.
For another five minutes they stood on the stoop, rubbing at their aching shoulders and tightening their jackets around their chests. Simeon fiddled with the tobacco pouch in his pocket and had nearly withdrawn it to roll up a smoke when the side door opened again. The chill-swollen wood stuck in the frame and released with a loud pop, startling the men on the stoop and announcing the man behind it.
Halliway Coxey Barebones was a short man, but a wide one. What remained of his hair was white, and the texture of wet cotton; and what remained of his eyesight was filtered through a pair of square, metal-rimmed spectacles. His hands and feet were large for a man of his understated size, his nose was lumpy and permanently blushed, and his waistcoat was stretched to its very breaking point.
He opened his arms and threw them up in greeting; but the effect somehow implied that he was being threatened. He said, “Hainey, you old son of a gun! What brings you and your boys to Missouri?”
Hainey mustered a smile as genuine as Halliway’s warm greeting and said, “A beat-up, crashed-down, worthless piece of tin and gas we never bothered to name.”
They shook hands and Barebones stepped sideways to let them pass, a gesture which only barely lightened the blockage of the doorway and the kitchen corridor. The three men sidled inside and followed their host beyond the meat-stained countertops and past the surly kitchen woman who gave them a scowl, and Hainey fought the urge to return it.
Barebones led them into a wood-paneled hallway with a cheap rug that ran its length, and back into the hotel’s depths where an unmarked doorway led to a cellar crammed with barrels, boxes, and the steamy, metallic stink of a still. He chattered the whole time, in a transparent and failing attempt to appear comfortable.
“It’s been awhile, hasn’t it? Good Lord Almighty, our paths haven’t crossed since…well, almost a whole year now, anyway. Not since Reno, and that was, yes. Last Thanksgiving. We’ll be coming up on the holiday again, won’t we? Before very long, I mean. Another few weeks. I swear and be damned, I thought Jake Ganny was going to blow the bunch of us up to high heaven. If ever there was a man with a weaker grasp on science, or fire, or why you don’t shoot live ammunition anyplace near good grain alcohol and a set of steel hydrogen tanks, I never heard of ’im.”
“It was a hell of a pickle,” Hainey agreed politely, and a little impatiently as he watched the fat man walk in his shuffling, side-to-side hustle.
“Hell of a pickle indeed. But you and me, we’ve been in worse, ain’t we? Worse by a mile or more, it’s true. It’s true,” he repeated himself and only partially stifled a wheeze. “And it’s a right pleasure to see you here, even if I must confess, I don’t remember everybody’s name but yours, Crog.” He pointed a finger around his side and said, “You’re Simon, isn’t that right? And Lamar?”
“You got Lamar right,” Hainey answered for the lot of them. “The other’s Simeon. Looks like your operation’s grown a bit since last I was here to see it.”
Barebones said, “Oh! Oh yes, it’s been longer than a year since you last came through Kansas City. Closer to half a dozen, I guess.”
“At least.”
“Yes, things have been going well. Business is booming like business always is, in wartime and sorrow. The grain liquor is moving like lightning, no pun intended, and we can hardly keep the tobacco in the storehouses long enough to age a smidge. Between Virginia and Kentucky going back and forth, the fields are getting tight and the crops are being squeezed. We have to import from farther down south, these days-as far south as they’ll grow it. And the sweets,” he said. “Tell me how the business goes for the sweets you bring me from back up north, in the western corners.”
Hainey shrugged and said, “The gas is moving fine,” because that’s what Barebones was really asking after-a heavy, poisonous gas found in the walled port town of Seattle. The gas was deadly on its own, bu
t when converted into a paste or powder, it became a heady and heavily addictive drug. “It’s easy to collect, but it’s hard to process. That’s the big problem with it. There aren’t enough chemists to cook it down to sap fast enough.”
“That might change, soon enough.”
“How you figure?” Hainey asked.
Barebones said, “I’ve heard things. Folks have been asking after it, wanting to know where we get it, and how it’s made. The more customers want it, the more it costs and the more of it we have to find; so I’ve heard tale of chemists moving west, thinking of hitting up that blighted little city and taking up the gas-distilling for themselves.”
The captain smiled a real smile and said, “They’re welcome to try it. But I think they might be surprised by what they find.”
“What’s that mean?” Barebones asked.
And Hainey said, “Not a thing, except I wouldn’t recommend it.”
“But I heard the city is abandoned. Surely some of these folks can find a way in to harvest what they need?”
“You heard wrong,” the captain assured him. “It isn’t abandoned, and the people who live there don’t much care for visitors. So if you, personally, have sent somebody west to look into it-and if you give half a damn for this person’s continued health-I recommend you send him a telegram urging him to reconsider.”
The hotelman cringed nervously but neither confirmed or denied anything. “Well then, I thank you for the good advice. I suppose you’d know, wouldn’t you? You spend a lot of time out that way.”
“I spent plenty of time out that way, sure enough. And I’m not telling you this because I’m worried about you or your men stepping on my toes. I’m no chemist, and I don’t have one of any preference who I’m interested in protecting. I’m only telling you, in a friendly exchange of information, that there’s a damn good reason there’s only a handful of folks who ever get their hands on that gas. That’s all I’m saying.”
Halliway flapped his hands in a casual shushing gesture and said, “I hear you, I hear you. And I’ll absolutely take it under advisement, and pass it around. I trust you, more or less.”
“I appreciate it, more or less.”
And there they found themselves stopped at a pair of double doors. “Right through here, gentlemen,” Barebones said. He opened one of the doors and held it, revealing a gameroom beyond that was half filled with card-playing men sitting at round, felt-covered tables. Bottles of alcohol were granted to each group, and stacks of red, white, and blue chips were gathered together in puddles and mounds, or clasped between fingers, behind cards.
Most of the men glanced up and held their gaze, surprised and sometimes unhappy to see the newcomers. Three men towards the back folded their hands, placing whatever cards they’d been dealt on the table and gathering their things.
“Fellas,” Halliway said. “Fellas, come on with me, right through here. There’s a spot in the back where we can talk.”
The captain, Simeon, and Lamar threaded their way around the tables and past them like cogs in a watch, keeping circular paths to dodge the chairs and the quietly gossiping players. One man said, too loudly as they went by, “I didn’t know this was that kind of joint, Barebones. You letting just about anybody in, these days?”
To which Halliway Coxey Barebones said back, “Keep it to yourself, Reese. They’re colleagues of mine.” And once they were well out of reach, he said, “And if you have a problem with it, you can get your lightning elsewhere.” But it was a feeble defense, spoken hastily and over his shoulder. “Back here, fellas.”
Simeon whispered to Lamar, “Back where nobody can see us, you want to bet it?”
Lamar said, “No, I won’t take that bet.”
If Halliway heard them, he didn’t react except to usher them into an office space crammed from floor to ceiling with cabinets, crates, and leftover glass bits that belonged in a still. The room smelled like sawdust and hard-filtered grain, but it was spacious and featured enough chairs for everyone-and a desk for Barebones to lean his backside against while he spoke and listened.
When the door was shut, a small panel beneath the nearest cabinet revealed a liquor set and a stack of glasses. “Could I offer any of you boys a sip?”
Simeon and Lamar accepted with great cheer, but Hainey said, “No, and you can stick to calling us ‘fellas’ if you like. You don’t have ten years on me, old man, and I’m no boy of yours.”
For a moment, the hotelman looked confused, and then something clicked, and then he said, “You’re right. Of course, you’re right. I didn’t mean it that way, not like…I didn’t mean anything by it. I only meant to offer you a drink.”
The captain believed him, though he didn’t let it show. He only nodded. “That’s good of you, but I still don’t need a drop quite yet.”
“You need something else.”
“We need a ship. It’s like I told you, the bird that brought us here went to ground. We crashed her bad,” he flipped a thumb at Lamar, “But my man here put her back together good enough to get us here, and now we’ve got farther to go-and no wings to carry us.”
Barebones poured himself three fingers of cherry-colored liquor from an unmarked bottle. He took a swallow, leaned with half a cheek sitting on the desk, the other half leaning on it, and said, “That’s a tall order you’re placing. We’ve got docks here, back another half mile at the southeast edge of town, but I don’t know of anyone looking to sell a ship. You got money, I’m guessing?”
“Like always,” Hainey said without resorting to specifics. “We can pay, and pay big if we’ve got to.”
Behind the square glass lenses, the hotelman’s eyes went shrewd. “You’re stopping just short of saying that money’s no object.”
“I’m stopping well short of it,” the captain corrected him. “And this isn’t a money run, or a gun run, or any other kind of run. This is a personal venture, and I’m willing to spend what’s necessary to see it through-but I’m not willing to let anyone take advantage of us, just because we’ve got needs and means.”
“Oh no, obviously not. Of course not. You misunderstand me,” Barebones said, but Hainey didn’t think he did.
“I don’t misunderstand a thing, and I want to make sure you don’t, either. We need a ship, and that’s all. We need a ship and we’ll be out of your hair first thing come dawn.”
Halliway said, “But I don’t have a ship to give you. Hell, right now I don’t even have one to sell you-and that’s saying something. You’ve caught me between runs of guns down to Mexico and smokes up to Canada, and it’s not that I don’t want to help, but not a one of my ships is home safe for me to spare it. If you don’t believe me, check the docks-you know where they are, and you know where I keep my birds cooped. If I had wings to loan you, I’d hand you the deed on the spot. But now I simply must ask: What on earth happened to your Crow?”
The captain grimaced and frowned, and after a moment’s hesitation he laid out the truth. “Stolen. The Free Crow was taken by a red-haired crook called Felton Brink-and don’t ask me why,” he added fast. “If I knew, I’d have an easier time chasing him. I don’t suppose you’ve seen him come through here, have you? You couldn’t miss him. He’s got a head that looks like a fire pit, and he’s piloting my ship-you’d know it on sight, I know you would-but he’s calling her Clementine.”
“No,” Barebones said thoughtfully. “No, I haven’t heard a thing about that, or I’d have been less startled to see you on my doorstep. But if you ask around down at the docks, you might hear something more encouraging.”
The captain made a small shrug that was not disappointed, exactly, but rather resigned. He said, “I’m not surprised. They filled up outside of Topeka, and can probably run another couple hundred miles. I don’t know if Brink knew I had contacts in Kansas City, but I do know he’s sticking to the rural roads and airways as much as he can.”
“And you don’t know where he’s going?”
“Haven’t the fainte
st idea,” Hainey said. “If I knew, I’d try and sneak underneath him, and head him off. But it was a damned unfair thing, to steal my war bird. It was damned unfair, and damned stupid.”
“I hope he’s being paid, and paid gloriously,” Halliway said through another mouthful of alcohol. “If the poor fool knew who he was stealing from, I mean.” He sounded nervous again, and Hainey made a note of it. “Crossing you, that’s not a healthy thing for a man to do, now is it?”
“Not at all. But you know that better than anyone, don’t you?”
“I’ve seen it in action,” Barebones said. “Yes sir, I surely have. But I’ve never crossed you before and I won’t start now-which doesn’t change the fact that I don’t have a bird to give you. But then again…” he said, and fiddled with the corner of his glasses.
“Then again?” Hainey prompted him.
He considered whatever he was on the verge of saying, and when he had his thoughts laid out correctly, he said, “Then again, and this is strictly off the books, you hear me, all right?”
“Absolutely.”
The hotelman lowered his voice for the sake of drama, since no one in a position to overhear would’ve cared. “Refresh my memory, now. Your Free Crow was a war bird you…acquired, shall we say, from the Rebs. That’s right, ain’t it?”
“That’s right.”
“Well let’s say, for the sake of argument, that I’ve heard tale of a Union bird getting a gauge fixed over here at the Kansas City docks, and I think she’s going to be fixed up sometime in the next day or two. She’s on her way back to New York to get a few more tweaks made to her defenses; I think someone’s going to give it a top-level ball turret. Your fellow here,” he pointed at Lamar, “he boosted a crashed-up bird back into the air?”
“Sure did,” Lamar answered.
“Then I reckon he could fix a valve gauge in ten minutes flat. Maybe, and I’m just saying this for the sake of argument, but maybe he could even fix it someplace else, if you and your boys felt like taking it for a little ride.”
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