Neva saw Darrow nod toward the elevator operator’s narrow back, silently asking Haywood to be quiet.
“I don’t give a good goddamn,” barked Haywood. “Not now.”
Once they had risen past the second floor (the Federation headquarters) to the third floor (the Haywood suites) and exited the lift, Darrow stood in the foyer and spoke quietly to Haywood. “I told you—there’s little risk to you in this.”
Neva angled her chair back toward the lift operator. “There’s luggage to be brought up, Lester. If you please.”
“Yes, Mrs. Haywood,” came the muffled reply behind the door as it clattered closed.
She watched Haywood and Darrow walk into the drawing room. “You’re staying here, Bill? I thought you were going down to your office.”
“No. I’m better guarded up here,” Haywood retorted.
That made no sense, but there was no point questioning it. She sat for a moment alone in the foyer until Winnie appeared from the kitchen. They exchanged unspoken greetings, and then Winnie wheeled Neva down the hall to the lavatory.
***
In the drawing room, Darrow lit a cigarette. “Orchard is just one witness. They need two.”
“He’s on death row in the Idaho pen,” said Haywood.
“I know. Though I imagine that’s McParland’s doing.”
When Winnie seemed to materialize in their midst, Darrow caught himself fixing on her. He snapped his look away. But the lithe woman was irresistible: the perky way she tilted her chin, the feminine lilt in her voice.
“May I have one of those?” she asked, indicating his cigarette.
“Certainly, Miss,” he said. He pulled a tin from his pocket and popped it open.
“Are these the Marlboro ones?” she asked, taking one.
“What did you expect? Ogdens?” He withdrew some matches, though he wondered that her smile might not ignite the cigarette.
“Ogdens? Not from you, Mr. Darrow.” She cupped his hands as he eased a lit match to her.
“Besides,” he added, “these are better for you.”
“They’re not,” said Winnie, grinning.
“Sure,” Darrow said with a wink. “They’re stronger, more potent, so they make you tougher. Survival of the fittest.”
“Are you two done?” fussed Haywood.
Darrow anticipated Winnie would take the cue and leave the room; but instead, she took a seat on the settee, crossing her legs at the knees, letting a bare foot dangle and bobble like a fishing lure. Darrow inhaled, returning his attention to his melancholy client. “The government of Idaho cannot extradite you from Colorado,” he said. “Not for a crime that occurred in Boise while you were in Denver. The Colorado Supreme Court would never allow it.”
“You think so?” Haywood sniped.
“Granted the governor here might, but not the justices. Certainly not Goddard,” he added, referring to the Chief Justice of the Colorado Supreme Court. “That man would rather eat his firstborn than betray such a central legal principle as habeas corpus.”
“You’re not a naive man, Clarence,” said Haywood, pouring himself a whiskey from a crystal carafe. “But when have you ever witnessed the Colorado Supreme Court aligning with the laboring man? When? When did they ever see things the way of the union?”
“I’m not certain—”
“When they arrested me for writing on a Colorado flag? Then?” Haywood continued. “Or when thousands of men were crushed, fell, blown-up, gassed to death in Colorado mines only to have those goddamned justices turn into blind crones?” He took a drink.
“You need to take my counsel on this, Bill. Justice Goddard is not that sort of man. You’re safe here. Keep your men posted, if it makes you feel more secure. Hell, post a battalion of hired guns. But there’s nothing else to be done at this point.”
“Nothing?” Haywood smoldered. “What about their witness?”
“They’ll need two witnesses before they can seat a jury.”
“Someone shot at Harry in the pen—probably with a Springfield like I showed you in my office. Missed by a hair—but lit his cell on fire. Hit a lantern.”
“Thus his confession,” Darrow muttered, thoughts swirling.
“Well, the man I sent to kill Harry didn’t do it. I know that. So maybe—” Haywood looked at Winnie. “What do you think, Win? Maybe ol’ Clarence here has his own gunmen up in Boise?”
“Oh, I couldn’t imagine that from the dashing Mr. Darrow,” she said, a little too precociously.
“Don’t be ridiculous,” muttered Darrow. “I’m not—”
“Ridiculous?” Haywood snarled. “Don’t go putting on airs with me, Clarence. Highfalutin, like you’ve got clean boots. Don’t do it. You represent men who do what must be done against their oppressors.” Now he was in Darrow’s face. “They’ll do what’s right to hold onto liberty and dignity—for the common worker, the true red-blooded American. Your client, the man standing right in front of you, is the defender of tens of thousands of men, women and children—and if some need die in that cause, even by my own goddamned hand, then those are the wages of liberty.” After easing his thunder, he added, “You’re no better than me. No better.”
Darrow stood, his jaw tense, his playful thoughts of Winnie having evaporated during Haywood’s exhortation. “Yes, I’m just a man. As are you. As we will ever be.” He was sick of Haywood. This case would be the end of it. He wouldn’t subject himself to this patronizing any further. And this case, if there was to be a case, had better get him to Washington, DC, arguing before the Supreme Court.
“That’s goddamned right, you are—just a man. Just another, like the rest of us, doing what you must. You use a law book, I use rallies and bullets. And yes, bombs, Clarence, when required. But mostly—to get things as I want them, to see justice done—I use people’s opinions, their thoughts. Same as you do.”
Darrow nodded, feeling another ache disembarking into his skull. “For now, Bill, I recommend you do nothing. There’s—”
“Don’t tell me there’s nothing to be done. Don’t tell me I’m supposed to just sit here like a staked goat, waiting to be fed to the lion. I am the goddamned lion! I won’t sit around hoping my lawyer’s love of the law is accurate. That somehow an American court is going to protect me. They made Orchard confess—that feeble-minded, goddamned rat. Our man should’ve killed him when he could, in the hotel there. But no—now your courts, your judges, your law, with their dishonorable, mercenary Pinkerton guns—they’re doing whatever they goddamned-well please. While I’m here with my thumb up my ass.” Haywood caught his breath before continuing, “You think now, for the first time in the history of this country, that the courts are going to side with the working man and not a corporation?”
Darrow had retreated into his own strategic thoughts. “McParland must’ve hired someone to shoot at him.”
“Are you not listening to me, Clarence?”
“But they didn’t kill him—they didn’t want that, of course,” Darrow continued. “They found themselves a marksman to shoot just near enough to make him think it was one of your men come to kill him. Scared him right into the confessional.”
“As I said—there’s your law for you. There’s your justice,” bellowed Haywood. “If I did something like that, it’d be an outright hanging offense. But under the cloak of law? No—those devils.”
“I have to agree with you,” said Darrow.
Winnie spoke up. “What do we do?”
Darrow exhaled loudly. “They have one witness. Just one. They need two.”
“No saying they won’t find Adams too,” said Haywood.
“Adams?” asked Darrow. “Who is—”
“Steve Adams,” said Haywood. “He was there too, in Boise. Maggot of a man. But, as with maggots, he’s good at what he does. Orchard wasn’t to get Adams involved—but
he did. And that might give them their second witness.”
“How do you know—”
“I thought Adams was already gone on from Idaho. Gone on to finish another matter. But he was still there.”
“All right,” Darrow tried again. “But how do you know he—”
“Orchard said it in his confession.”
Darrow’s brow knotted. “You’ve seen the confession already?”
Haywood shrugged.
“You had someone in the room?” pressed Darrow.
Haywood gave a single nod.
“In the prison?”
“The stenographer,” said Haywood. “Her son’s at the Silver Reef Mine, in Utah. She’s a Federation mother.”
“All right,” began Darrow, his head rocking in disbelief. “Adams is the key then. They’ll be out to arrest him. Where is he? Can he be convinced to not—”
“Convince him?” said Haywood.
“You know—”
“Yes, Mr. Darrow, I do.”
“We have to get him,” Winnie interjected, “before they do.”
“We need to follow the law, Miss Minor,” Darrow said, giving her a dismissive wave. He considered her. Why was she so engaged in this? Did Neva know?
“No, Mr. Darrow,” she said, tapping ash from her cigarette, her voice now surprisingly unyielding. “We need to help Bill kill that man Adams. That’s what you and I need to do. The worker’s struggle is greater than the life of any one man, or woman, including you and me. And it’s far more important than the life of a man like Steve Adams ... whoever he is.”
Darrow shook his head. “No, dear. I’ll lawfully defend my client, Mr. Haywood, but that’s all.”
Haywood slapped him on the back. “In for a penny, in for a pound, old man.”
“In for a pound,” echoed Winnie, clicking her tongue.
Darrow scolded himself for having ever found her attractive. She was a siren. A dangerous coquette to be sure.
<><><>
Jack chewed his lunch—chicken-salad sandwich with beans and a glass of tea—while glancing to the side, watching as his waitress, Carla, approached in her Idanha-blue uniform.
Passing behind him, she brushed a finger across the back of his neck, just above his high collar, giving him a jolt. “Is there anything else I can get for you, Agent Garrett?” she asked.
“Oh, no, Miss Capone, no,” he stuttered, still tingling from her unexpected touch. As she moved on, he called to her, “Yes, actually. If you don’t mind.”
“Yes?” She brought a warm smile back. “Call me Carla.”
“Alright, then I’m Jack.” He stood, beaming, but didn’t offer his hand, not wanting to seem too eager to touch her—though that was anything but the truth.
“Ok, Jack.”
He took an audible breath and said, “I’ve been asked to acquire a large chalkboard.”
“A chalkboard?”
“Yes. For the chief. A double-sided one. Do you know what I mean?” Though he managed the question without trouble, his mind was on her hazel eyes—they were speckled with green, giving them the color of a forest floor.
“I believe so,” she answered. “Sure.”
“All I’ve found so far are some primary slates. But they’re small,” he said, pantomiming the corners of a foot-square slate.
“Un-huh,” Carla quipped. “I attended school.”
“Of course. I was just … I thought …” His words staggered and swayed like a newborn fawn trying to find its legs. “I wondered—”
“If I might know where to find a large one?”
“Yes,” he said cheerfully, but then saw her brows lift. “Oh! Yes, certainly. You wouldn’t know. You’re as new here as me … as I am.”
“How about a school?” she asked, charmed by his floundering.
“The big ones are all attached to walls. I visited some yesterday.”
“You didn’t have a crowbar?” She gave a wry grin.
“The little kids took it from me,” he replied, thankful for her taking them onto what was far firmer ground for him: the battlefield of wit. “Bunch of smelly little bastards, you ask me.”
“Oh, they are! Especially en masse. You poor dear.”
“I’m glad you understand,” he said with a chuckle.
“You know, there’s a college in Caldwell, out near … where the governor—”
“There is? Do you think—”
“Maybe. We won’t know till we look tomorrow.”
“We? I don’t—” He caught himself. “Alright, that’d be good.”
Carla pursed her lips coyly. “Yes, it will.” As she moved toward another table, she added, “I’ll see you here tomorrow—Jack.”
<><><>
Due to Haywood’s six-foot-three frame under the low ceilings of the Pioneer suites, when he ran his arms into his night shirt, he had to lean forward lest he smack his hand against the ceiling. Neva was already in bed. “It must be difficult,” she observed, “being so tall … and with the eye.”
“How long have you watched me? You’re just noticing this?” he asked, sounding more disapproving than disappointed.
“You look like a giraffe putting on his night clothes,” she said, grinning at her own description. But seeing Bill’s stony face, she let her smile slide away.
He finished buttoning his night shirt and sat upright on her side of the bed. “It’s you who’s the stalwart. What, with the …” He gave a hesitant pat to the covers where he assumed her left leg was. Then he pulled away quickly, as if in the instant of feeling the squish of her limb, his hand might fall lame. “I’ll take rapping my head into low limbs any day, rather than … you know.” He leaned, kissing her on the forehead.
“Will you stay tonight?” she whispered.
“Is that what you want?”
“It is, husband.”
He moved around the bed and slid under the covers, easing against her. “As you command. Wherever you wish me to be.”
She gave a small frown. “Be here only if you want to.”
“I do,” he said blankly, looking at the ceiling.
Neva did the same. “Winnie will have to warm her own bed.”
“Sleeper car.”
“What?”
“Sleeper car. She left for—”
“She’s gone?”
“Yes, I needed her—”
“So that’s why you’re in our bed?”
“No. Not at all. That had nothing—”
She rolled her back to him. “Shut off your lamp.”
He did, leaving them in near darkness. “I’d be here regardless.”
“No, you wouldn’t. Where did you send her?”
“Salt Lake City.”
“Why?”
“Giving a man a message.”
“Who?”
“Why do you ask?”
Silence.
He continued, “A man named Swain. That doesn’t mean anything to you, so I don’t know why you ask.”
“You couldn’t go?” asked Neva. “Or send one of your men?”
“I can’t leave the state.”
“Right.”
“And I can’t chance one of them being a Pink.”
“You don’t trust them? None of your men? Only my sister?”
“Things are tense right now.”
“My, you’re observant.”
“I meant with my work.”
“You couldn’t send a telegraph, rather than send her?”
“We can’t write the, uhmm, message.”
She sat up in the gloom. “Oh, I understand now. So who’s the Swain fellow gonna kill for you?”
Silence.
“Who this time?” she pressed.
Haywood turned his lamp back o
n. “Why are you asking this?”
“I’m angry at you. Shut that off. I don’t want to see your eye.”
He did, then whispered, “I would’ve been here, regardless.”
“You shouldn’t have done that—with that governor.”
“I’m not talking about that,” said Haywood. “Not with you.”
“Oh? What would you rather talk about? That you told Winnie you love her? Go on, you choose: Which do you want to talk about? You blowing up a governor, or you saying nonsense to my sister?”
A long silence devoured the blackness, removing any remaining comfort in the void.
“I wasn’t in Idaho when it happened, and they can’t take me there. And they need two witnesses to say I ordered it. They’ve got one, but he’s selling them a dog.”
“The Orchard man?”
“Yep.”
“Hell’s bells, Bill. Lying or not, it’s still a confession.”
“Maybe.”
Neva inhaled and blew it out noisily. “So, they won’t get the other confession, from the other man, because of whatever Winnie’s going to tell Swain to do?”
“We’ll see.”
“So you made my sister an accomplice to murder.”
“I didn’t. She’s fine. I wouldn’t do—”
“Thank God you’re in love with her. I’d hate to see the trouble you’d get her in if you weren’t!” The covers shifted, and then came the soft thump-thump of the invalid chair being dragged sideways across the rug for positioning. The bedsprings squeaked and rose, the chair clattered, and the wheels began rolling.
“Where are you going?” Haywood grumbled, unable to see her.
“Her room. You stay here.”
“Oh, I thought you might be going to the Metropole.”
The bedroom door slammed with such a concussive report that a framed portrait fell in the hall, shattering the darkness.
<>
American Red Page 23
