by Gemma Files
“So she’s rescued.”
Another laugh. “’Til he cuts the rings off her fingers, and throws her right back in.”
“An’ the third?”
“She don’t even come into it, Morrow; three’s a better rhyme than two, is all.” Chess shot him a quick glance, and even mellow as he was, Morrow felt a quick stab of superstitious dread, unable to deny that even in the bar’s smoky semi-shadow, the pistoleer’s eyes really did throw back light like a cat’s. “You’re an odd sorta bastard when you’re drunk, ain’t ya?”
Morrow swallowed. “Yeah. When I ain’t drunk, too — or so I’ve been told.”
And then, because the Two Sisters was so warm and dark, maybe, packed full to the gills with outlaws and really almost too noisy to talk at all, Morrow found himself asking, without thinking twice, “What the hell was that place, anyhow? Back at Songbird’s?”
But to this, Chess didn’t answer immediately. Instead, he continued to study on his own empty glass a while, once more deep entranced by what he saw there: that cool, sticky green world where nothing mattered, ’cause everything was already well-drained hollow.
“Down in the hole?” he said, at length. “They call it the hospital — not that it’s for gettin’ better, you understand. ’Cause that’s just where they put the whores who really are on their last inch of trim.”
“’Bout how long you think they all got, then?”
“Oh, not too long. Undertakers’ll be by tomorrow. If they ain’t dead by then, they better try harder.”
“So — that woman you were talkin’ with . . .” Another gulp, as the room continued on its merry, wobbly way. “. . . who was she?”
And here Chess’s eyes flicked over yet again, all the more disturbing for their unpredictable lack of anger.
“Well, hell, Morrow,” he said, lightly, “I’d’ve thought you’d’ve already guessed. That there was the famous English Oona . . . Pargeter.”
CHAPTER FIVE
That night, Morrow lay awake without wanting to, trying not to listen to Chess and the Rev fuck. Which was damn hard, since they were so damn loud at it — Chess mostly, Morrow reckoned, though the Rev sure did his share. The racket dripped down through the ceiling, incautious and unashamed as all get out; creak and thump of bedsprings and other accoutrements, plus Chess himself riding Rook like he was some sort of trick horse with a whoop and a holler, singing out his usual refrain at the top of his lungs: “Oh yeah, hit that, God damn! Hit that thing, uh, Good God Jesus! Christ Almighty, go on ahead and hit it!”
While Morrow didn’t really want to know what-all was getting hit, necessarily, the sheer crazy spectacle of it still amazed him somewhat. God knew, he’d never heard a man and a woman get quite so rowdy with each other, not unless incipient physical damage was involved.
“There’s things you need not to ask, concernin’ Chess and the Reverend.” Kees Hosteen had taken Morrow aside and told him, back when Morrow first joined up.
To which Morrow had blurted back, “Those two screwin’ each other, or what?”
Hosteen gave him a long look. “Not each other, as such,” he said, finally. “But Chess takes it from the Rev whenever the Rev cares to give it, and if you feel you gotta make hay on that bein’ against nature, or some such — ”
“Chess’ll shoot me for it.”
“Right where you stand, boy. I’ve seen it done, and more’n just the once.”
“Reverend feel the same way?”
“Who knows what the Reverend feels? Them hexacious ones ain’t for us to understand. But Chess don’t seem to care either way — so watch yourself, or watch the damn wall.”
Pinkerton Agency records didn’t say much about Rook, or his proclivities, back before the hanging. Had he always liked men? Morrow wondered. Maybe the Rev just considered himself so damned it didn’t much matter who he found himself at play with. Or did they consider themselves some version of married, with or without the Rev’s former deity’s permission? That seemed to jibe, though for all Chess might be the one on the receiving end, Morrow somehow doubted Rook thought he was the wife in their arrangement.
So Reverend Rook was a sinner and maybe a hypocrite, according to the tenets of his own Good-turned-bad Book. Chess, though . . . Chess Pargeter was by nature an outlaw born and bred, just like his Ma, and couldn’t’ve ever been anything else, not even if he’d never robbed his first stage, or killed outside of the War. The big decision Chess had probably made before leaving San Francisco hadn’t been to not be a whore, per se, ’cause from what Hosteen let slip, he’d certainly taken payment for favours since — it’d just been to not ever let himself be what Chess considered a victim.
“He’s a mean little man, that’s for sure,” Hosteen had said, half-admiringly. “You know where Chess come from, right?”
Morrow nodded.
“Well, listen. I once went to a cat-house, up on Black Mountain — them gals was so tough they didn’t even have pimps. They set their own rates; enforced ’em, too. I saw one cut a notch in a trick’s ear ’cause he shorted her the minimum — said she’d’ve done it on his tallywhacker, but she wanted to give him a chance to pay her back. And the next week, there he was again! Chess strikes me that way.
“Very first time he come into camp, lookin’ — and actin’ — like he does, the men got to talkin’. Damn if he didn’t even blink, though — just gave out how sure, he’d suck your cock for ya, long as you washed it first. But he always wanted something in return.”
“Money?”
“Naw, trade, usually. Dry boots, bullets . . . you see that knife of his? I give him that. Wouldn’t let you fuck him, though, no matter what. You can do that with your wife, he used to say. Then this one big bastard tries it, and Chess fights back so hard he gives him two black eyes. ’Course, he was big, and he had friends. After, he says: Guess you’re mine now, bitch. But Chess didn’t cry about it none, just said: I ain’t no-damn-body’s, motherfucker.
“And after our next engagement, what do you know? All three of ’em ended up in the doc’s tent, and all three of ’em died ‘of their injuries.’ Which is real interestin’, considering how the only thing that big fucker had was a cracked head, all one of his friends’d lost was a finger, and the last one’d just been shot in the ass-cheek. But there they were the next mornin’, blue and stiff . . . with their throats cut, ear to ear.”
“Is that what landed Chess in the stockade?”
“You’d think so, wouldn’t you? But we was deep in Injun country at the time, so they let it go, ’cause it gave ’em an explanation — plus, the Lieut still had Bluebellies left needed killin’, and Chess was the best we had at that particular game.” Hosteen paused. “Then Rook joined up.”
“And?”
“Oh, Chess wanted him right from the start, but the Rev wouldn’t have none of it, ’cause he said what he really wanted was to save Chess’s soul instead. So he used to spend a good part of each night preachin’, while Chess just sat there noddin’ and cleanin’ his guns — bidin’ his time. What surprised me was exactly how long Chess went along with it all, considerin’.”
“The Rev seems to have given up on that idea somewhat, since,” Morrow said.
To which Hosteen just laughed, and nodded. “I reckon how gettin’ hung will probably do that to a fellow,” he said. “’Specially when it’s for somethin’ you didn’t even do.”
Which probably bore looking into at some point, but not by Morrow, and especially not tonight. Because tonight would be when Ed Morrow finally either got that damn Manifold reading for Professor Asbury, or took off, either way. After the mess at Songbird’s, he’d had just about enough spooky shit to last him the rest of this life, or any other.
God knew, it wasn’t like he hadn’t tried, before this. Those few times he had found himself observed at this practice (never by Rook or Chess, thank Christ, so far as he could ascertain), he’d claimed the Manifold was simply a tricksy sort of pocket-watch he’d picked up along the
way. Got it off a dead Pink, he’d told Hosteen, and felt his heart drop over the way that otherwise so-congenial old man grinned wide at the very idea. Fact was, if any of Rook’s bunch were to find out where his true allegiances were, they’d shoot him first in the back, then in the skull once he was down, like a broke-leg horse.
But every attempt had ended the exact same way, in confusion and doubt. Oh, the needles spun all right, into — and immediately back out of — the coveted red zone. What they didn’t do was stay there long enough to register either way, let alone produce any numbers for Asbury’s equation . . . as though something was interfering with the magical heat Rook threw off, or the man’s precious “ch’i” was being blocked by something at least as powerful as it was.
Still, Morrow didn’t know enough about the Manifold to guess at what that might be; if the thing was broke, he not only couldn’t fix it, but he wouldn’t even be able to tell. Which made this the best possible time for one more try, since at least he knew Chess and the Rev were both as distracted as they’d ever be.
Straining to move quietly as possible, Morrow levered himself up off the bed, feeling his ginger way across the floor, ears peeled for creaks. His shotgun he left leaned up against the door-frame; if anyone did happen to spot him in the already-chancy-sounding act of “looking for a pot to piss in,” he surely didn’t want to have to explain why he was doing it armed. As he shut the door carefully behind him, he could feel how the Manifold’s indigestible lump, hidden deep in his waistcoat pocket, seemed to wake up at the mere possibility of getting back near Rook, clicking fast against his ribs like an extra, malfunctioning, heart.
He mounted the stairs, hoping the romantic din Chess and his boss were making would cover any mistake on his part. ’Cause they were deep in congress yet, for maybe the third time in a row, a faint blur of motion glimpsed reflected in the cheval-glass which hung overtop the bed they currently shared. And the closer Morrow drew, the harder he found to tear his gaze from that very same rude spectacle.
His first thought was, So, Chess is red all over. Second: Do people really do that? But there they were, right in front of him, so the first conclusion he’d have to venture was yes, “people” did — and when they did, they enjoyed it. Quite a whole damn lot.
Rook was half-sat up with Chess balanced in his lap, jouncing him up and down, their mutual effort almost bruising in its enthusiasm. Chess kept pace admirably, sweat-shiny, hands busy in his own lap the whole way. And when it seemed Rook finally couldn’t take the strain anymore, he tumbled them both over and twisted around so he came out on top, which appeared to suit Chess even better.
“Oh yes,” Chess half-snarled, half-squealed. “Pin me down, by God — go on, work your damn way with me — ”
“My Christ, but you’re an undomesticated son-of-a-bitch,” Rook huffed.
“Sorry.”
“No, you ain’t.”
“True ’nough. But I’d sure try to be, if I thought that’s what you — uh! — wanted. . . .”
“Shut up, Chess,” the Rev just growled — came in hard and fast, possibly hitting that unnamed thing a few times in quick succession, ’til Chess clutched and arched beneath him. The results sprayed up between them, splashing sheets and skin; Rook groaned, firing deep. Chess sprawled back, panting and glistening like he’d been shot through the heart.
Saying, a mere breathless moment later: “Let’s do it again.”
“Let’s not, for now,” Reverend Rook replied, “seein’ how it ain’t yet light out, and I’m thirty-eight years old.” He closed his eyes on Chess’s disappointment, stretching. “Go get yourself cleaned up, give me a minute or two to collect my faculties. After that, I’ll fuck you ’til you can’t ride, if you’re still so all-fired up for it.”
“That wouldn’t be too smart.”
“You make me a lot of things, Chess. I’ve never noticed smart to be one of ’em.”
Me either, Morrow thought, as he watched Chess sigh, rise and pad away — the splash of a wash-basin, light flap of soaked cloth. Then saw the Rev jump a bit to feel that same cloth applied deep between his own thighs, with surprising skill and delicacy — gentle, almost reverent.
“That good?”
“Yeah, darlin’. That’s damn good.”
The intimacy of it all made Morrow blush, in turn, at the unlikely thought of ever taking his own turn under those pretty killer’s hands. To distract himself, he eked a little further toward the door, sidelong, as Chess climbed back in to fit himself up against Rook’s side.
“Yeah, well . . . you ever want to receive that sort of service again, Reverend, then you better get it through your head how San Francisco ain’t no fit locale to do business, in future. Christ on a cross, I’ll burn that damn place down myself, if I have to. An earthquake needs to swallow that shit-pit whole.”
Rook laughed. “Poor angry little boy,” he mocked, in fair approximation of Songbird’s voice. “Aw, don’t sulk, Chess — it don’t become you. Let’s talk ’bout something else.”
“Like?”
The Rev’s rumble dipped. “Hear your Ma’s in ‘hospital’; means she’s on her way out, from what I gather. That a prospect bothers you much?”
Chess drew a long breath, and seemed to give the idea some fair amount of thought, before answering: “I don’t rightly know. Best she go quick and quiet, I guess, considering.”
“I could make sure of it. If you wanted me to.”
That same cat-sneeze laugh. “’Course you could. Hell, I know that. . . .”
The Rev propped himself up on one arm, staring down at him — cupped Chess’s face in one huge hand, and said, with perfect seriousness: “But do you want me to, Chess? End her now, easy and pleasant, or let her go rough and slow, for all she done to you — all she let be done, ’fore you finally broke yourself free of that place? You just have to say the word, is all. Just say . . .”
You ain’t no God, Ash Rook, Morrow thought, abruptly gone weirdly cold around the pounding heart, not vengeful or benign . . . no matter how Chess Pargeter might set you up as a false idol, and do you worship on bended knee. ’Cause often as you might read that Bible of yours, it ain’t exactly like you wrote the damn thing, is it?
Morrow watched Chess stare back up at Rook, his green eyes gone somehow wistful. Saw the pistoleer’s gold-shaded brows knit a moment, snarled in what almost seemed like genuine distress — then smooth out once more, signifying he’d come to a conclusion.
“Okay,” was all he said.
Which was more than enough for Rook to work his magic with, or so his cold but gentle smile appeared to indicate. That, and the Bible on his nightstand.
“So be it,” he told Chess, like it’d been Chess’s idea, all along. And flipped the book’s black-bound cover open.
Back in the lime-walled depths of Selina Ah Toy’s, that pit of whoresome darkness, English Oona Pargeter stirred in fitful, over-drugged sleep — turned in on herself, shivering, and assumed the same position her son once had while he still floated inside her womb. Listening as Asher Rook’s voice seeped through one wall and out the next, near fifty miles away, the close-packed silver Scripture typeface spiralling quick and deep as smoke inside her, some unanswered prayer made flesh.
Genesis, 15:16 to 15:18 —
But in the fourth generation they shall come hither again: for the iniquity of the Amorites is not yet full.
And it came to pass, that, when the sun went down, and it was dark, behold a smoking furnace, and a burning lamp that passed between those pieces . . .
Above her, the gals sharing her hospital rack began to twist and moan, sniffing the air like dogs who dreamt of meat. Because that familiarly enticing smell rising up toward them was nothing less than opium boiling off, issuing from Oona’s pores as she cooked from the inside; eyes gone soft and gleeful under their heavy lids, glazing over, unaware even in death how much they resembled Chess’s own.
Oh God, Morrow thought, that primal fear suddenly set back do
wn bone-deep in every part of him. How can I know this? Any of this?
The Manifold burned and chattered against his sweaty palm while he leaned against the wall, bracing himself against the wave of nausea that swarmed from fever-froze head on down, roiling stomach on up. As though the Manifold had seized onto Rook’s spell and conducted it into Morrow as a counter-natural lightning-charge, imprinting it onto him the way a daguerreotype’s acid-etching made a plate. This ill beat in his blood, telegraph messages hammering silently, from one world to the next . . .
“So,” Chess said, finally. “That’d be it, then.”
“It would.”
Chess nodded, and kept his eyes firmly locked ceiling-wards — not on anything in particular about it, so much, as just trained in that general direction, but it obviously helped him talk. “She’d’ve killed me if she could, a hundred times over; tried hard enough, ’fore I even came out of her. That was back when she still thought she could be some big man’s kept girl, ’stead of a penny whore. But there I was anyhow at the end of it, redheaded and screaming, like Judas himself.”
“Uh huh,” Rook said, stroking lightly down Chess’s red-and gold-sheened belly, like he was gentling a horse.
“Kept me on her tit ’til I was three, ’cause she heard it’d keep her from gettin’ knocked up again. Had me goin’ through tricks’ clothes by the time I was four. Oh, she’d pet me some when she was drunk enough, or gay enough on smoke, but otherwise — I wasn’t even there. ’Til the day she figured out what I was, and what that could maybe get her, she let only the right sort of people know.”
“Well, she’s dead now, if that helps,” the Rev said, still stroking.
But Chess reared back up, gaze abruptly furious as ever once more, and fixed Rook with it, so sharply Morrow could almost feel the big man’s surprise. “Just don’t you never leave me behind,” he told him. “’Cause if you do . . . I won’t be held responsible, for what comes after.”
A weirdly ineffectual threat, one might think. Yet even from where he stood, Morrow could see the effect it had on the Rev.
