Wolf Moon

by Ed Gorman

  "Why were you looking in the register anyway?"

  For the first time I noticed that he was watching me carefully. He seemed suspicious of me.

  "I saw two men get off a train. They didn't look right to me. I just wanted to see what names they registered under."

  "Didn't look right to you?"

  "Slickers, was how I had them pegged. Remember that confidence game that man named Rawlins was running on old folks a month ago? That's how they looked to me."

  I didn't tell him about them taking late-night horses from the livery and riding out of town.

  "You ask them their business?" Hollister said.

  "No."

  "That would've been better than bothering that sonofabitch at the Whitney. He's very popular with the 'landed gentry,' as they like to be called, and the 'landed gentry' likes to see us as a group of barbarians. This only gives them something else to bitch about."

  "I won't bother him anymore."

  "I'd appreciate that, Chase. You're doing a good job. I don't want to see you get in any political trouble with one of the mighty."

  "I appreciate the advice."

  He looked at my bandaged fingers. I'd put some iodine on them. They still smarted from the wolf bite. "What's wrong with your fingers?"

  I didn't want to tell him about Reeves. "I cut them when I was sawing some logs."

  He laughed. "You're about as handy as I am." When he laughed, he pushed a little breath up on the air. Pure bourbon.

  I said good-bye and left his office. Before I even reached the doorway, I heard him sliding a drawer open.

  I glanced back over my shoulder just as he was turning his chair to the wall so he could lift up his silver flask and tip it to his lips.

  10

  Before work next morning I took Annie up into the hills. She wanted to collect leaves.

  I found some hazel thickets and showed her how to dig into the mice nests surrounding them. You could find near a quart of nuts that the mice had already shelled and put away for bitter winter. But we didn't take any, of course, because the food belonged to them.

  Annie made a collection of the prettiest leaves she could find, taking care to pluck some extras for her mother, and then we stood on an old Indian bridge and watched clear creek water splash rocks and slap against a ragged dam some beavers had recently built. Annie counted eight frogs and six fish from up on the bridge.

  We took the east trail back, watching sleek fast horses the color of saddle leather run up grassy slopes in the late morning sun.

  When we got near the house, she stopped at the abandoned well. Four large ragged rocks formed a circle around the well, inside of which Gillian had placed a piece of metal to cover the hole.

  Now, expertly, Annie bent down, lifted the piece of metal up, took one of her leaves and closed her eyes and said, "I have to be quiet now and keep my eyes closed."

  "How come?"

  "Because I'm making a wish."

  "Oh."

  "Mommy always says that's what you have to do for God to hear you."

  "Be quiet and close your eyes?"

  "Uh-huh. And drop something down the well that you really like."

  And with that she let the pretty autumn leaf go from her hand. It floated gently down into the darkness.

  Gillian had told me about the well, how it was pretty shallow, and how the folks who had the house before her got sick drinking from it.

  "You glad you're my pop?" Annie said, opening her eyes. She'd heard a boy at school call his daddy his "pop" and had decided she liked it.

  "I sure am."

  "Well, I sure am, too." She smiled and put her hand in mine. "I always knew you were my pop."

  "You did?"

  "In my dreams I always had a pop. I couldn't exactly see him real good but he was always there. And then the day I saw you in front of our house-well, I knew you were my pop."

  "Aw, honey," I said, feeling sad for all the years she hadn't had a pop, "honey, you don't have to worry about not having a pop anymore. I'll always be here."

  "Always?" she said, squinting up at me in the sunshine.

  "Always," I said, then reached down and swung her up in my arms and carried her home just that way, her blond hair flying and her laughter clear and pure. The only thing that spoiled it was the sore throat and aching muscles I had. I was apparently getting sick.

  ***

  Around ten that night, I just happened to be standing half a block from the Whitney Hotel. And Lundgren and Mars just happened to be standing on the porch of that same hotel. They couldn't see me because I was in the shadows of an overhang.

  Lundgren smoked a cigar. Mars just looked around. He seemed nervous. I wondered why.

  Fifteen minutes after coming out onto the porch, Lundgren flipped his cigar away exactly as he'd done the night before, and then, also as he'd done the night before, led his shorter friend down the street to the livery where the Mex gave them two horses already rubbed down and rested and saddled.

  Lundgren and Mars rode out of town, taking the same moonlit road as last night.

  I finished my rounds of the block then cut west over by the furrier, where the smell of pelts was sour on the cold night. Moving this fast didn't make me feel any better. The damned head cold I'd been getting was still with me.

  The alley behind the Whitney was busy with the usual drunks. Henry, a half-breed, had pissed his pants and was sleeping, mouth open and slack, propped up against a garbage can. A hobo with but one finger on his left hand was having some kind of nightmare, his whole body shaking and cries of "Mother! Mother!" caught in his throat. And there was Jesse-Jesse as in female, Jesse as in mother of three, Jesse as in town drunk. Most nights her kids (the father having been killed four years earlier in the mines) kept tight rein on her, but every once in a while she escaped and wandered the town like a graveyard ghost, and usually fell over unconscious in an alley.

  I debated waking them and making them leave. But that would only mean that one or two of them would possibly remember me.

  I made sure as I could that they were all sleeping, and then I climbed onto the fire escape that ran at an angle down the back of the Whitney.

  I moved fast. I could always say that I was following a suspicious character up here. But I wouldn't want to use that excuse unless I had to.

  Lundgren and Mars were staying on the fourth floor. I pulled the screen door open and went in. The hallway was empty. I started toward 406. In one of the rooms I passed, an old man was coughing so hard I thought he'd puke. The corridor smelled of whiskey and tobacco and sweat and kerosene from the lamps.

  I was two doors from 406 when 409 opened up and a man came out. He was so drunk he looked like a comic in an opera-house skit. He wore a messy black suit and a bowler that looked ready to slide off his bald head. He was weaving so hard, he nearly fell over backward.

  I pressed flat to the wall and stayed that way while the drunk managed to get his door closed and locked.

  He didn't once glance to his left. If he had, he would have seen me for sure.

  He tottered off, still a clown in an opera-house turn.

  Shaking, neither my stomach nor my bowels in good condition, I went to 406 and got it open quickly. You learn a lot of useful things in prison.

  The room was dark. Some kind of jasmine-scented hair grease was on the air. I felt my way across the room, touching the end of the bed, a bureau, and a closet door. By now I was able to see.

  I started in the bureau, working quickly. I found nothing special, the usual socks and underwear and shirts without their collars or buttons.

  I then moved to the closet. Nothing there, either.

  I was just starting to pick up one of the two carpet bags sitting on a straight-backed chair when I heard footsteps in the corridor.

  I paused, pulling my revolver.

  In the street below there was a brief commotion as a few drunks made their way from one saloon to another. In the distance a surrey jingled and jangled its
way out of town.

  The footsteps in the hallway had stopped.

  Where had the man gone? Was it Lundgren or Mars coming back?

  My breathing was loud and nervous in the darkness. My uniform coat felt as if it weighed a hundred pounds. My whole chest was cold and greasy with sweat.

  And then I heard him, whistling, or trying to-the drunk down the way, the one who'd barely been able to get his door locked. Easy enough to figure out what had happened. He had made his way down the stairs only to find that the people in the saloon wouldn't serve him. Too drunk. So he'd come back up here.

  It took him several minutes to insert key into lock, to turn doorknob, to step across threshold, to walk across floor, to fall across bed, springs squeaking beneath his weight. Within thirty seconds he was snoring.

  I went back to work.

  I took the first carpetbag to the bed and dumped everything out. The contents included an unloaded.45, a few more shirts without celluloid collars, and a small framed picture of a large, handsome women I guessed was his wife. I took it over to the window and hiked back the curtain. A lone stripe of silver moonlight angled across the back of the picture: SHARON LUNDGREN, 1860-1889, BELOVED WIFE OF DUNCAN LUNDGREN. So he was a widower, Lundgren was. It made him human for me, and for some reason, I didn't want him to be human.

  The second carpetbag didn't yield much more-not at first anyway. Mars was a collector of pills and salves and ointments. The bag had enough of these things to stock a small pharmacy. He seemed to be a worrier, Mars did.

  I had almost given up on the bag when my fingers felt, way in the back, an edge of paper. I felt farther. An envelope. I pulled it out, winnowing it upward through tins of muscle ointment and small bottles of pills that rattled like an infant's toy.

  I went back to the window and the moonlight.

  I turned the envelope face up. In the left upper hand I saw the name and address of the letter writer. My old friend Schroeder, known hereabouts as Reeves.

  The letter was brief, inviting Lundgren and Mars here to "increase their fortunes by assisting me in a most worthy endeavor."

  I didn't have to wonder about what that "worthy endeavor" might be. Not when Reeves owned half a bank in town here.

  I put the envelope back in the carpetbag and the carpetbag back on the chair.

  I went to the door, eased it open, stuck my head out. The hallway was empty. In the hall I relocked the door, checked again to make sure that nobody was watching me, and then walked quickly to the screen door and the fire escape.

  I knew now that I wasn't done with Reeves. Not at all, no matter how much I'd promised Gillian otherwise.

  11

  "He's going to do it again."

  "He?"

  "Schroeder. Reeves. Whatever name he goes by."

  "Do what?"

  "Hire two people to rob his bank and then double-cross them. Take the money and kill them."

  "You sure?"

  "Positive. Those two men I saw in town?"

  "They're the ones?"

  "They're the ones. I got into their hotel room tonight. They had a letter from Reeves."

  She didn't say anything for a long time. We were in bed. The window was soft silver with moonlight. Annie muttered in her sleep. The air smelled of dinner stew and tobacco from my pipe. Somewhere an owl sang lonely into the deep sweet night.

  "You promised to stay clear of it, Chase."

  "I was just telling you who they are."

  "You'll get in trouble. I know it."

  "I didn't mean to make you mad."

  She was silent. "I thought we had a nice life," she said after a time.

  "We do."

  "Then why do you want to spoil it?"

  "I won't spoil it, Gillian. I promise."

  "You promise," she said. "Men are always promising, and it doesn't mean anything."

  I tried to kiss her but she wouldn't let me. She rolled over on her side, facing the wall.

  "You know I love you, Gillian."

  She was silent.

  "Gillian?"

  Silent.

  I rolled over. Thought. Felt naked and alone. My sore throat was getting worse, too, and every once in a while, I'd shiver from chills.

  I couldn't stop thinking about Gillian. How she knew what was going to happen now, with Reeves and all. How betrayed she must feel.

  I tried to make it better for her.

  "I'm not your father, Gillian," I said. "I'm not going to hurt you and I'm not going to run out on you the way he did. Do you understand that?"

  But she didn't speak then, either.

  After an hour or so I slept.

  12

  Next night, I made my rounds early. I had some business to do.

  Lundgren and Mars put in their usual appearance at the usual time, strolling down the street to the livery, picking up their horses and riding out of town just as the moon rose directly over the river.

  I rode a quarter mile behind them out the winding stage road.

  They went just where I thought they would, straight to Reeves' fancy Victorian. But just before reaching the grounds, they angled eastward toward the foothills.

  Half an hour's ride brought them to a cabin along a leg of the river. I ground-tied my horse a long ways back and slipped into the small woods to the west of the cabin. Everything smelled piney and was sticky to the touch.

  When I got close enough to see through a window, I watched Lundgren and Mars talking with Reeves. He poured them bourbon. There was some quick rough laughter, as if a joke might have been told, and then quiet talk for twenty minutes I couldn't hear at all.

  At one point I thought I heard a woman's voice, but I wasn't sure.

  When they came out, Lundgren and Mars and Reeves, they were laughing again.

  They stood making a few more jokes and dragging on their stogies and making their plans for the robbery.

  "You don't forget about that side door," Reeves said.

  "No, sir, I won't," Lundgren said.

  Mars went over to his horse and hopped up. His small size made it look like a big effort.

  "Talk to you boys soon," Reeves said, cheery as a state legislator on Flag Day.

  Lundgren and Mars rode away, into dew-covered fields shimmering silver with moonlight.

  Reeves stood there for a time watching them go, the chink of saddle and bridle, the heavy thud of horse hooves fading in the distance.

  A woman joined him suddenly, as if from nowhere, slipping out of the door and into his arms. Silhouetted in the lantern light from inside, they stood there kissing for a very long time, until it was obvious that they now wanted to do a lot more than kiss. It took me a while to realize who she was.

  A few minutes later Reeves slid his arm around her waist and escorted her back inside. They turned out the lights and walked back out and closed the door and got up in Reeves's black buggy.

  Just before he whipped the horse, I heard her say, "K-Kinda ch-chilly out h-here t-tonight."

  And then they were gone into the night.

  ***

  There was a potbellied stove on the ground floor of the police station, and when I got back there, two men stood next to it, holding tin cups of steaming black coffee in wide peasant hands. Winter was on the air tonight.

  Kozlovsky nodded upstairs. "Don't know where the hell you been, Chase, but the chief's been lookin' for you for the last hour and a half."

  Benesh shook his head. "He's been drinkin' since late afternoon so I'd watch yourself, Chase. Plus he's got a prisoner up there in his little room. Some farmhand who got all liquored up because of some saloon whore. He made the mistake of making a dirty remark to the chief."

  In their blue uniforms, the flickering light from the stove laying a coat of bronze across their faces, they might have been posing for a photograph in the Police Gazette.

  "I'd better go see him," I said, coughing. I was feeling worse.

  The two men glanced at each other as I left.

  The "ro
om" they'd referred to was on the second floor, way in the back beyond the cells, which were dark now, men resting or sleeping on their cots, like zoo animals down for the night. Every time I came up here, I thought of prison, and every time I thought of prison, I thought of all those old men I'd known who'd spent most of their adult lives in there. Then I always got scared. I didn't want to die in some human cage smelling of feces and slow pitiful death.

  Halfway to the room, I heard the kid moaning behind the door ten yards away. I also heard the sharp popping noise of an open hand making contact with a face. The closer I got, the louder the moaning got.

  I knocked.

  "Yeah?"

  "Chief, it's me. Chase."

  A silence. Then footsteps. The door yanked open, the chief, sweating, wearing only his uniform trousers and shirt, his jacket on a coat hook, stood there with his hands on his hips, scowling at me. For all that the police officers and some of the citizens talked about Hollister's "torture room," it was a pretty unspectacular place, just bare walls and a straight-back chair in the middle of an empty room. Right now, no more than half-conscious, thick hairy wrists handcuffed behind him in the chair, sat a beefy farm kid. His nose was broken and two of his front teeth were gone. His face gleamed with sweat and dark blood, and his eyes showed terror and confusion.

  "I've been looking for you," Hollister said.

  "That's what I heard. I had to go home. My daughter Annie's been sick."

  "Nobody could find you for over an hour, Chase. Don't give me any horseshit about your poor little daughter. Now you go downstairs and wait for me in my office."

  He was drunk but you probably wouldn't have noticed it if you didn't know him. The voice was half a pitch higher and there was something wild and frightening in the blue eyes.

  "You want me to put him in a cell?" I said, indicating the farm kid.

  "I'll put him in a cell when I'm ready to put him in a cell."