Cut to the Quick

by Tony Masero

  ‘Well, spit it out,’ said Kirby. ‘What is it?’

  ‘I found out something damned surprising whilst I was down staying with my sister.’

  Belle was feeling uncomfortable under Lomas’ fixed stare. ‘Something to do with me?’ she asked.

  Lomas nodded, ‘It seems we might be a lot closer than we thought.’

  ‘Who? You and me?’ Belle gasped.

  ‘Did you never think of the similarity in our names? Bell and Belle?’

  ‘Sure I did but I never paid it no mind. Just a coincidence I always thought.’

  Lomas took a deep breath, ‘My sister had some letters given her by our parents. She’d held onto them for years and never told me about them. Her idea was to protect me, I guess. You have to understand Belle, I was a somewhat wayward fellow in my youth….’

  ‘Wait, what are you saying?’ Belle burst out.

  ‘I had a thing with a lady back then,’ Lomas continued. ‘I never knew about any of this Belle, you have to believe me. The lady in question was a neighbor’s daughter. It was a fine old romance we had for a while. There was talk of marriage and everything but I was young and full of verve and went off to join the Rangers without a backward glance.’ He breathed a deep sigh, ‘Turns out the lady I left behind was with child. She was carrying my baby.’

  Belle stared at him open-mouthed.

  ‘Thing is the family were pretty high and mighty, big plantation owners and right up there at the pinnacle of Southern society. They couldn’t stand the prospect of having an illegitimate child in their house nor let it be known that their daughter had fallen by the wayside, it would have ruined her chances in the marriage market and they had big plans for her. I knew nothing of this, I swear. Ladybell and my folks kept it all from me. It’s only now I got to hear of it.’

  ‘You saying that Belle’s your daughter?’ asked Kirby. ‘Your own flesh and blood.’

  ‘They had the child adopted, gave her away along with a sack of gold to a poor farming family who couldn’t resist such an offer. They had a proviso, the family must move out of the county, never return and never say a word of where the child came from. The only thing your mother had to give you of me was my name. Bell, so they named you Belle that being the closest. Yes, it’s true Belle. The family they gave you to was named Slaughter.’

  ‘You’re my daddy?’

  ‘Afraid so.’

  Belle was dizzy with the revelation, ‘And my true mother?’

  ‘Dead now. She died years ago, way back before the war. It was she though that wrote all them letters. Telling me about the baby. The letters I never saw until recent.’

  Belle was shaking her head in shock, ‘I knew I never fitted into that family its true,’ she said, remembering the poverty-stricken household of her Appalachian upbringing. Her drunken father, idiot brother, two feral sisters and obese mother, none of it had ever felt like she belonged there. Her entire childhood flashed before her. The muddy pigs her father kept when he wasn’t falling down dead drunk. Her stupid and gross brother and pair of wretched sisters, one a slut and the other simple minded. Even the small kindnesses her albino, chair-bound whale of a mother had shown her. All of it whirled about in her head.

  ‘We missed out on a lot of years, girl,’ Lomas said somberly.

  ‘So we did,’ Belle said, staring at him and trying to recognize some similarity to herself in his face. ‘I… I just can’t take this in,’ she ended limply.

  ‘I know it’s hard,’ Lomas frowned. ‘I’ve been beating myself on it for months. I didn’t know whether to tell you or not. It’s been eating me up but in the end I reckoned it was best to come clean.’

  ‘I think you did right,’ said Kirby quietly. ‘And for what its worth I’d rather have you as a daddy-in-law as well as a friend than any other I could name.’

  ‘Thanks, Kirby. That means a lot.’

  ‘I still can’t get it,’ stumbled Belle. ‘Lomas, you as my father…. It’s incredible.’

  ‘Don’t sweat on it,’ said Lomas hurriedly. ‘We’ve been close friends for years. It don’t have to change anything. I really don’t want things to be different between us.’

  Belle brightened suddenly and sat up straight. ‘I think I like the idea,’ she said decisively.

  ‘You do?’ asked Lomas.

  ‘Why not? I’d rather have you as kin than any of those no-accounts I left in Tennessee any day.’

  Lomas breathed a heavy sigh of relief, ‘Lord, that does my heart glad. Bless you Belle for saying that. I was so worried, I can’t tell you.’

  ‘And we thought you was having romantic notions,’ laughed Kirby.

  Lomas raised one eyebrow speculatively, ‘You did what?’

  ‘Well, the way you was looking at Belle all of a sudden, getting all tongue-tied and such. It looked kinda funny, Lomas. We thought maybe it was some kind of mid-life crisis or some such.’

  ‘Damned fools,’ growled an embarrassed Lomas.

  ‘So what do I call you now?’ asked Belle, arching her own eyebrow. ‘Do you prefer ‘daddy’, ‘pa’ or ‘father’? What’s it to be?’

  ‘Just call me ‘silly old ass’, that about fits the bill.’

  Belle got up and crossed over to him, she sat on the arm of his chair, put an arm around his shoulder and kissed him on the forehead, ‘I’ll just call you ‘Lomas’ like I always did. But maybe I’ll love you a sight more than I did before.’

  ‘Thank you, girl,’ croaked Lomas, choking up enough for tears to glisten in his eyes.

  ‘Can you tell me about my real Ma?’ Belle asked him.

  ‘Sure,’ Lomas answered huskily, relieved and at the same time exhausted by all the emotion. ‘We’ll sit down together and I’ll tell you it all. One thing I can tell you for sure though, that’s where you earned your looks, as it certainly weren’t from me. She was a fair and wonderful looking woman, your Ma. She certainly was.’

  They rode the train on the Rock Island and Pacific line into Chicago and all the way Belle was pretty silent, trying to absorb the wholly new concept of Lomas as her parent. Kirby meanwhile was considering the strange coincidence of them riding on the very line that had been Jesse’s first railroad robbery.

  He said little to her, allowing her the space to get her head around the new state of affairs and it wasn’t until they approached the joint terminal station of the great sprawling city that he spoke on the subject.

  ‘You okay with it?’ he asked.

  Belle looked up, her eyes coming back from far away. Their electric blue, that magical color that had been the entrapment of so many men in the past, had taken on a warmer, calmer hue.

  ‘I am,’ she allowed. ‘Strange isn’t it? I feel quite alright with the notion. Besides, it changes little in reality. Lomas and I, we’re still the same two strangers that became friends through chance, there’s not much you can say that’s different in the relationship except now the bond is a sight tighter. Been a breath of fresh air though, to realize my roots weren’t in that pig farm in Appalachia.’

  ‘Pity your real ma is gone, might have been nice to catch up with her.’

  Belle nodded and looked out the carriage window, she looked at her reflection overlaying the approaching vast grid of the city and the distant waters of Lake Michigan. For a moment it was as if Belle was looking at her mother’s ghostly image in the reflected face in the glass.

  ‘Yes,’ she said softly. ‘It is a shame. Lomas says the family is still down there; most of them survived the war. They still own their old plantation land so he says.’

  ‘You thinking of visiting?’

  ‘Oh, I don’t think so,’ said Belle, pulling her attention away from the window. ‘I can’t see a lot of point in that. Be like opening old wounds for them.’

  Kirby was a touch angry on Belle’s behalf, ‘What about your old wounds?’ he asked. ‘They threw you out for the sake of propriety and left you with a drunkard and an ass as a father, let alone the rest of the pitiful breed you had
to call kin.’

  Belle touched his arm gently, ‘It’s okay, Kirby. Let it lie. It’s all old history now.’

  Kirby was not about to be mollified, ‘I don’t know about that, Belle. They owe you something in the way of recognition, even if its just a howdy-do and how-are-you.’

  She rested her head on his shoulder, ‘Don’t fret so. I am what I am. Just look at it this way, if things hadn’t been as they were I might never have met you that day in Variable Breaks.’

  Kirby smiled and shook his head, ‘What a picture you were, sitting up there on that wagon seat with bullets whizzing all around. Why, I couldn’t help myself. I just had to jump up and sweep you out of there.’

  ‘You’re such an old romantic,’ she teased.

  The great Chicago fire of 1871, three years before had ripped through the whole business district of The Loop and gutted the original Pinkerton Agency offices so it was to the brand new headquarters at 137 South Wells Street that they made their way in a hire carriage.

  Allen Pinkerton was his normal fireball self, full of energy and eagerness and he greeted them warmly although once again a little miffed at the failure to capture Jesse yet again. He sat behind a paper-strewn desk and eyed them from beneath bristling eyebrows.

  ‘A good try,’ he allowed, his Scots brogue still broad. ‘And it almost came off.’

  Kirby sighed, ‘Not good enough though, chief. I’m afraid the fellow’s still out there and maybe closer to home than we think.’

  ‘What do you mean by that?’ asked Pinkerton.

  ‘That unfortunate business with his mother,’ said Belle in a slightly critical tone.

  ‘Aye, well,’ Pinkerton frowned. ‘A misjudged affair if ever there was, I’ll allow. But that fellow rankles me, he sorely does. It was never the intention to harm his kin, I’m afraid it was an excess of action there.’

  ‘We think he’ll come after you personal,’ said Belle.

  Pinkerton wave a dismissive hand, ‘D’ye think so? I doubt that most sincerely.’

  ‘Don’t be so sure,’ said Kirby. ‘He’s one mean varmint and that particular debacle at his home struck hard. It’s best you be warned, Mister Pinkerton and take some precautions.’

  ‘We saw his face when he heard the news,’ Belle added. ‘There was death in his eye, he swore heads would roll.’

  A keen light brightened in Pinkerton’s eyes, ‘He’ll not get this particular head,’ he swore confidently, tugging on his beard. ‘I’ve no fear of such a scoundrel. His day will come, be assured of it. We’ll get him yet.’

  ‘Just be careful,’ Belle advised.

  ‘Aye, aye, don’t you worry. I’ll watch my back. Now, to other matters, what are you about now?’

  ‘We have word of Xavier Bond.’

  Pinkerton sat back sharply in his chair, ‘Him? Surely that’s old history now. We have more pressing matters.’

  ‘Not for me,’ said Belle forcibly. ‘I want him brought to justice.’

  ‘An admirable sentiment,’ Pinkerton allowed with a shrug. ‘But surely….’

  ‘Do you know of a man called Teddy Lobelia?’ Belle interrupted.

  Pinkerton shook his head negatively, ‘Can’t say I have heard of him.’

  ‘Well, I’d like permission to go through the archives, see if I can find word of him.’

  Across the years Pinkerton had seen to it that a filed collection of photographic images of criminals and their relevant information had been made and stored in an indexed library. Much had been destroyed in the earlier fire but Belle hoped that enough remained or had been updated in the intervening years for her to find Bond’s contact.

  ‘You may certainly take a look,’ Pinkerton allowed, then added a touch pompously. ‘But I’ll not have this interfering with your regular tasks.’

  ‘Then I’ll take a leave of absence and do it on my own time,’ Belle said sharply.

  Pinkerton was surprised by her response, ‘It means that much to you?’

  ‘It does.’

  ‘Very well then. I take it his case for conspiring with the enemy is still open, so we have every right despite all the pacification that has gone on since hostilities ceased. I’ve no doubt such a fellow will have been making his way by some underhand method. As I recall, did he not plan various raids on Union property during the war?’

  ‘He did indeed.’

  ‘A traitor then and still liable.’

  ‘He organized the Knights of the Golden Circle if you will recall, Allen?’

  Pinkerton hummed thoughtfully, ‘And they were a pack of Southern sympathizers and insurgents. See what you can find out. Keep me informed.’

  With that they were dismissed and the two left Pinkerton to plough through his paperwork whilst they made their way to the rogues gallery situated in another part of the building. It was the first such collection of mug shots ever made and Pinkerton had arranged that whenever a local sheriff had news of a crime he would forward newspaper clippings and witness information on to the office. It was therefore an extensive collection and Belle and Kirby approached the archive clerk with every anticipation of a long search.

  ‘Yes, indeed,’ said the clerk at their request as he thumbed through a large tome which indexed the various names and their pseudonyms. ‘Edward Frederick Lobelia, also known as Teddy Lobelia and sometimes as ‘Teddy Flowers’.’

  ‘You have a photograph?’ asked Belle.

  ‘No, I’m afraid not. Friend Teddy is apparently small time, some cases of stealing mail and passing dud checks. Nothing major, he has been an informant on occasion though. We have used him in the past.’

  ‘You know where he’s situated?’

  ‘He’s here in Chicago. Last known address is 84 Miners Lane, pretty seedy place on the South Side, I believe.’

  ‘Thanks, we’ll find it.’

  The couple booked themselves rooms in a hotel and Kirby decided they could not approach the slum district in the clothes they wore. It took a call to a church charity hostel and his parting with a few dollars to find clothing suitable to approach the South Side hovels.

  ‘Do I have to?’ said Belle, distastefully holding up the ragged skirt and bonnet he returned with.

  ‘You go down there looking like you do and no one will speak to us,’ said Kirby.

  ‘I think you’d best do this alone. I reckon this is more your style than mine,’ Belle advised. She had always been one to dress in the best of clothing; even when young she had aspired to only the most fashionable wear. The prospect of putting on the dirty rags Kirby had supplied did not appeal to her in the slightest.

  ‘Suits me,’ said Kirby, setting a battered bowler hat on his head at a rakish angle and holding up a shabby jacket.

  ‘Be sure you take your pistol, won’t you?’

  ‘Wouldn’t be without it,’ he said, strapping on the shoulder holster under the jacket.

  Belle let a distressed shawl slip from her fingers and toed it disdainfully under the bed. ‘Lord, there’s no way I can bear wearing such things.’

  Kirby chuckled as he worked his way in a pair of pants with the knees worn down to the thread.

  ‘You’ve lived at the fancy end too long, Belle.’

  ‘Just don’t come near me until you’ve bathed after wearing that trash,’ she warned.

  ‘One has to look the part,’ he smiled, advancing threateningly on her. ‘Come on, honey. Give me a kiss for luck before I go.’

  ‘Get away from me, Kirby Langstrom,’ she squeaked. ‘I declare I’ll brain you if you come near me in those disgusting rags.’

  With a laugh, Kirby flicked the brim of his bowler on his way to the door. ‘I’ll see you later.’

  Miners Lane was more of a dead-end narrow alley than a lane, it was held in shadow by overlooking two-story brick buildings and sewage sluiced in a trickling open drain down the central cobblestones. Windows in the houses were broken and many of them boarded or stuffed with cloth against the chill winds that blew off the lake, although
that breeze didn’t do much to disguise the stink harnessed by the enclosing terrace. Downtrodden looking women hovered in doorways and peered out suspiciously as their scruffy children ran and played noisily in the crammed pathway outside.

  A group of four men lingered at the far end of the alley where they sat on bins smoking clay pipes and cautiously watched Kirby’s approach.

  ‘Any of you fellows Teddy Flowers?’ he asked as he came up to them.

  They stared at him coolly without saying an answering word.

  ‘You know him then?’ Kirby asked again.

  One of the men, a dowdy looking fellow in a stained sailor’s cap, sniffed. ‘Who wants to know?’

  ‘A friend,’ Kirby answered ambiguously.

  ‘He ain’t here,’ the man said.

  ‘Lives in number 84, don’t he?’ asked Kirby.

  ‘He did,’ said the man.

  ‘So where’s he at now?’

  ‘Look, mister. We don’t know you. Ain’t ever seen you around, what makes you think we’s about to tell you anything.’

  ‘I got a silver dollar says you can tell me.’

  The man allowed his tongue to roam over a set of brown teeth. He looked at his companions.

  ‘A silver dollar, heh? Where there’s one there’s maybe more.’

  All the men rose to their feet. They were equally large and down at heel with feral faces and dirt stained clothes.

  ‘Ain’t the way to go, boys,’ Kirby suggested. ‘Just tell me where he’s at and we’ll leave it at that.’

  ‘I don’t think so,’ said the sailor hat, drawing a curve-bladed boning knife from inside his jacket. ‘Best you shell out what you got before we open you up.’

  Kirby noticed it had gone suddenly quiet behind him and he glanced around to see that doorways had emptied and children disappeared from the alley as if by magic.

  ‘You the local hard men are you?’ he asked.

  ‘This is our patch and you’re a country boy come trespassing. What you want with Teddy anyway?’

  ‘Put that away,’ said Kirby, jerking his head at the sharp blade that reflected the dim light in an oily gleam.