Wolf Moon

by Ed Gorman

  I stood very still, staring at the envelope, making sure I was alone in the office, listening hard for any footsteps in the hallway.

  I had to be quick. And I certainly couldn't risk reading it in here.

  I snapped the envelope up, stuffed it inside my serge uniform coat, and walked straight out of the office and straight down the hallway and straight to the door, where Docey was still standing up and grimacing.

  "You'll get yours, Chase, just you wait and goddamn see," he said.

  Snow was still on the wind. The people on the street didn't dawdle now, they scurried like all other animals, trying to prepare themselves for the bitter winter soon to come. I imagined the general store, with its bacon and hams and coffee and cheeses and pickled fish and candy and tobacco and blankets and toys, was going to be doing a very good business the next few days as people set things in for the fury of winter.

  I went over to the restaurant and ordered a cup of coffee. By the time the waitress came back with my steaming cup, I had already read the letter twice, and I sure didn't like what Reeves had written.

  23

  Dear Chief Hollister,

  As an upright citizen of this town, I've warned you before about your man Chase. While everybody suspects he gave the robber the key that let him in the bank, nobody can prove it. Till now…

  Ask Hartley, the night clerk at the Whitney, about the robbers and Chase meeting behind the hotel two nights before the robbery.

  If he tells the truth, you'll see that Chase was in on this meeting all along.

  So Reeves had got to Hartley, the night clerk at the hotel where Lundgren and Mars had been staying. Wouldn't take much to bribe a man like Hartley. Just as it wouldn't take much to convince Hollister of Hartley's story, that I had met with Lundgren and Mars to plan the robbery.

  Even if I burned this particular letter, Reeves would send Hollister another one. And keep sending him letters until Hollister decided to put me behind bars… a perfect target for the lynch mob Reeves would quickly stir up.

  I wanted to run. I thought about Mexico and warm blue waters and sandy yellow beaches and Gillian and Annie and I living in a fine stucco house…

  But if I ran now, it would be like signing a confession, admitting that I'd been part of the robbery.

  I sipped coffee. I smoked a cigarette. I thought things through.

  I had only one hope. I had to strike a bargain with Reeves.

  "Yes?"

  "Wondered if I could talk to you a minute, Chief."

  "About what?"

  "I might be a litde late getting to today."

  Hollister waved me into his office.

  "By the way, your wife was here. I just wanted to make sure you got my note."

  "I got it. Now what's this about being late?"

  "Couple hours is all."

  "For what?"

  "Some personal things."

  "Personal things, huh?"

  "Not anything to do with the robbery, if that's what you're thinking."

  He picked up his pipe. He'd been cleaning it with his pocketknife. Now he went back to it.

  "You're not telling me the truth yet, Chase."

  "I am. You just don't happen to believe the truth."

  "You've got those jailhouse eyes, Chase. You think you look like every other man in this town, but you don't. Prison does something to people, and it sure as hell did something to you."

  "I didn't help anybody rob that bank."

  He put the pipe in his mouth and drew on it. There was a sucking sound in the empty bowl. "You could always turn them over."

  "The robbers?"

  "Lundgren and Mars are their names, in case you need help remembering."

  "I don't know where they are."

  "Uh-huh."

  "I don't."

  "Take the two hours." He sounded disgusted. "I don't know why you'd want to waste a fine wife and daughter the way you are."

  "I'll be back by four-thirty."

  "Don't hurry on my account. I'm getting damned tired of seeing your face, in fact."

  24

  Even on a cold drab day like this one, Reeves' Victorian house was impressive and sightly. I sat on my horse staring at it, trying not to notice that I was working up another fever and that my stomach was getting sick again.

  Hanratty, the guard, appeared just when I expected him to, and leveled his carbine at me just when I was sure he would. He came out from behind the scrub pines, seated on a big bay.

  "Nice uniform you got there, Chase. Maybe I could get Reeves to get me one like it."

  "Maybe if you did an extra-good job, he just might do that."

  Hanratty was bundled up inside a sheep-lined jacket, with his hat pulled down near his ears. He spat a stream of juice right near my horse's foreleg. "He'd be real happy to hear you went for your gun and I was forced to kill you. That's one way I could get me a uniform like that." He grinned. "Every time he works that wolf of his these days, he's always callin' out your name. And that goddamned wolf goes crazy, believe me. Crazy as all hell." He frowned. "Except the past couple days. Animal ain't hisself."

  "All right if I go see Reeves?"

  "It's your ass, son. He might put a couple holes in you."

  I smiled. "I'm a policeman."

  "Where you're concerned, I don't reckon that would make a whole lot of difference to him."

  I rode up to the mansion and ground-tied my horse. Before going up the steps, I walked over to the side of the house and looked at the wolf in his cage.

  The wolf, crouched on the ground, watching me carefully, wailed out something that resembled a song, a wolf song, I guessed. I'd never heard anything like it. It was angry for sure, but even more, it was sad.

  I walked a few feet closer to the large, oblong cage that stank of feces and raw decaying meat, and I saw that Hanratty hadn't been exaggerating about the wolf's anger, either.

  He got up on all fours, let out another terrible piercing sound, and then flung himself at the cage. His eyes burned with the same yellow glow I'd seen that night he'd killed my brother.

  His bared teeth dripped with drool, and his entire body trembled as he slammed again and again and again into the wire, trying to tear through the wall to get to me. The reverberating wire made a tinny kind of music. I had my gun in hand and ready, just in case. "Maybe I'll put you in there with him," said a voice behind me, the words accompanied by the nudge of cold metal against the back of my neck. "What the hell're you doing here, anyway, Chase?"

  "Talk a deal."

  "Deal?" Reeves laughed. "What the hell's that supposed to mean?"

  "Let's go inside and I'll tell you."

  He wore a riding costume, a fancy eastern riding costume, one of those things with jodhpurs and knee-length riding boots. He was real pretty.

  "You're really serious, aren't you?" he said.

  "Yes."

  He laughed again. "Then you're a crazy bastard, Chase. A crazy, crazy bastard. Men like me don't make deals with men like you."

  "If you ever want to see any of that bank money again, Reeves, you'd better invite me inside."

  The wolf was exhausted. He'd spent himself and lay now panting, his entire body heaving with hot breath, and making those funny sounds again.

  "Something's wrong with your wolf," I said.

  "You and that goddamned Hanratty. The wolf's just got some kind of bug is all. Wolves get bugs just the same as humans. If he was really sick, he wouldn't be able to throw himself against the cage that way.

  "Be sure to wipe that mud off your boots before you go inside," Reeves said. "I don't want some hayseed tracking up my good hardwood floors."

  "I take it you're inviting me inside," I said, but when I turned around, Reeves was already up near the front porch, as if he didn't ever want to be seen with me, not even on his own land.

  I turned back to the keening wolf and listened to his terrible sounds echo off the surrounding hills, like a distress call of some kind that nobody was answe
ring.

  ***

  "You have two minutes, and then I want you the hell off my property."

  We were in his office, the same one where he'd cold-cocked me that day.

  "I have your money," I said. He was behind his desk. He hadn't invited me to sit down.

  "I'm well aware of the fact that you have my money."

  "But I'm willing to make a deal."

  "You heard what I said about deals, Chase."

  "You get half and I get half."

  "I get half of my own money and you get the other half? That sounds like a hell of a deal, all right."

  "Otherwise you get nothing."

  "We'll see who gets nothing, Chase. This isn't over yet."

  I sat down. He didn't look especially happy about it. "You want to hear about it?"

  I could tell he did but he didn't want to say he did- he didn't want to give any sign that I was in control here-so I went on anyway.

  "You get ahold of Ev Hollister and tell him you made a mistake about me. Tell him that you forgot that one day you hung your coat up over at the Whitney while you were having lunch, and when you got back, you found your wallet missing. The bank key was in there. But while you went to the manager to complain, somebody slipped your wallet back into your coat."

  "In other words, somebody had a duplicate key made?"

  "Exactly."

  "And why would he believe this?"

  "Because it's you talking. Because you're a prominent citizen and he'd have no reason to suspect you're lying."

  "And for this I get half my money back?"

  "Right."

  "And what do you get, Chase?"

  "I get half the money and I get a chance to ease me and my family out of this town without this cloud hanging over me. I'll buy a farm in Missouri and disappear for the rest of my life with Gillian and Annie."

  "Every jailbird's dream."

  "I'm tired of your sarcasm, Reeves.

  He smirked. "A jailbird sits in his cell and dreams up all these sweet little stories about how good life will be after he pulls just one more job." He leaned forward in his seat. "I should put a bullet in your face right here and right now." His anger was overtaking him now. He started spitting when he spoke. "You've got my money, you stupid hayseed asshole, and I'm going to take it back and you're going to regret ever having anything to do with me."

  He waved his hand, spitting and glaring, blood spreading across his cheeks. "Now get the hell out of here."

  "I figured out a peaceful way to end all this," I said. "I thought you'd want to listen."

  He said nothing. Just glared.

  I stood and picked up my hat and walked out of his den and down the hall, my bootheels loud in the silence, and out the front door.

  I put my hat on and watched the wolf a moment. He was still crying, still that high mournful call, and still crouching, as if exhausted-until he saw me… and then he was up on all fours and leaping into the air and hurtling himself against the cage.

  "He sure don't like you," an old Indian cleaning woman said, as she beat a rug against the porch railing.

  "I guess he doesn't," I said.

  On the way out, Hanratty waved to me and called, "Good to see you're still alive." I waved and rode on.

  I just kept thinking of what Reeves had said, how every jailbird sits in his cell and thinks of how pretty things will be after he pulls that final job. Not till the very moment he'd said that had I ever thought of myself as a jailbird-just as a kid who'd gotten himself in some trouble, was all-but in his hard, bitter words I'd recognized myself. And now I felt every bit the hayseed he'd said I was. Trying to make a deal with him had been very foolish.

  After a few more days, I'd gather up Gillian and Annie and the money, and in the middle of the night we'd light out and never be seen by any of these folks again…

  25

  The rain started just after dinner time. Except for the light in the saloon windows, the stores and streets were dark as I made my rounds, trying doors, checking alleys, peering into storage shacks.

  I was starting down Main, past three of the rowdier saloons, when I saw the two drunken miners weaving down the street toward me. They were laughing and stumbling their way home to warm houses and irritated wives and disappointed children.

  Then they saw who I was and stopped and one of them said, "There's that sonofabitch."

  "Who?"

  "Goddamn cop who was in on that goddamn bank robbery."

  "No shit?"

  "Where they killed the poor goddamned clerk with a goddamned double-barreled shotgun."

  "Poor sumbitch."

  By now I was abreast of them, making my way through the cold and the night and the lashing rain. They were too drunk to notice the downpour, or care about it, anyway.

  There wasn't much I could do about them not liking me, the two drunks. I'd planned on taking their abuse and walking on by. I'd feel sorry for myself a few minutes and then the whole thing would be over.

  Then the first drunk hit me.

  I hadn't been expecting it and I didn't have time to do anything about it.

  His punch came out of the gloom and struck me right on the jaw.

  He'd hit me hard enough to daze me. There was pain and there was an even deeper darkness, and then I felt a second punch slam into my stomach.

  It should have brought me down, that punch. It drove deep into my belly right below the ribs and it was expert enough and vicious enough to wind me for the moment.

  But then rage and frustration took over. Suddenly this drunk became the whole town, everybody who smirked about me, everybody who whispered.

  I threw down my nightstick, not wanting to make this an official act in any way, and without even being able to see yet, connected with a strong right to the drunk's face.

  "Hey!" yelled the second drunk, as if defending myself was against some unwritten code.

  But I didn't even slow down. I just kept punching. I even got a knee straight up between the first drunk's legs, and when he started to buckle, I grabbed him by the hair and started hitting him at will with my right fist.

  By now I could see. The guy was bloody, though the rain did a good job of washing him up. He hadn't been intimidated by my uniform, but his friend was. He stood three feet away and called me names.

  At first I wasn't aware of the crowd surrounding us, not until there were twenty people or so. They'd drifted down from the taverns, animals who could smell blood on the wind, animals whose taste for violence was never sated, miners, merchants, cowboys, drifters-it was a taste and thrill that cut across all lines of class and intelligence and color. Most men, and a sad number of women, loved watching other men hurt each other.

  And I was hurting him, hurting him bad, and I couldn't stop. If anything, I was piling more and more punches into his body. The crowd was with me now, frenzied, caught up in my rhythms as I slammed punches first to the head then to the chest then to the belly, the same pattern again and again. He was bleeding so badly, his blood was flying across my own face.

  "That's enough, Chase!"

  At first the voice seemed far away and not quite recognizable. Familiar, yet…

  And so I kept on swinging and slugging and-

  And then, too late, I recognized the voice and I saw him, peripherally, step up next to me and raise his own nightstick and bring it down and-

  And then there was just the eternal cosmic night, cold and dark, not life yet not quite death, either. Just pain and-blankness.

  The crowd noise grew distant-and then faded entirely…

  ***

  I didn't get my eyes open right away. Couldn't. The pain across the back of my head was too considerable.

  I became aware that my arms were stretched out behind me and my wrists were bound together. I became aware that my ankles were also bound. I became aware of some other presence near me. I had to open my eyes. Had to.

  I almost smiled. He was treating me as a respected guest and he didn't even know i
t. None of his men ever got to see the inside of the room where Ev Hollister worked over his prisoners. But now Ev Hollister was letting me see it for myself.

  "You were out a long time," he said.

  He sat in a straight-backed chair directly across from the one I was sitting in.

  "Afraid I tapped you a little harder than I meant to," he said.

  There were dark brown splatters all over the wall, the dried blood of the prisoners he'd worked over in his time. There were also dents and nicks and small holes in the wall. When he got done punching the prisoners, he sometimes liked to throw them around the room. Everybody likes a little variety in his life.

  I brought my eyes back to Hollister.

  "You look pissed, Chase. Real pissed."

  "Why'd you bring me into this room? I'm not a prisoner."

  He smiled. It was a drunken smile, pleasing but crooked and not quite coordinated properly. "You're not a prisoner yet, you mean, Chase. This whole town's just like that miner who swung on you. They hate you, Chase, and they hold you responsible for the clerk's death and they're putting a lot of pressure on me to arrest you whether I've got evidence or not. These are simple folks, Chase, they're not like you and me with our fine respect for the written law." He tried to smile about empty, high-minded words, but what came out was a smirk.

  I decided I might as well tell him. Maybe it was what he'd been wanting all along, anyway. "I'm planning to clear out in the next few days. Gillian and Annie and me. Gone for good."

  "Well," he said, "now that's a damned sensible idea."

  "So all your troubles will be over."

  "The next few days?"

  "So how about untying me?"

  "You and your wife and daughter?"

  "Right."

  "As far away as you can get with no plans to ever come back?"

  "That's the plan."

  He stood up. The crooked smile was back. So was the drunken glaze of the eyes. He walked the four steps between my chair and his, and then he backhanded me so hard I went over backward, cracking my head on the floor.