Edge nodded. ‘That was the way it started out, ma’am. But now it’s what’s called vice versa. Nothing to do with your kind of vice…’
‘I know what vice versa means!’ Fancy Fay snapped. ‘If you’re givin’ me a message, it better be one I can make some sense out of.’
Another nod as the woman shivered, solely because of the damp clothing that was clinging against her flesh.
‘Figure your feller sees a lot of Marlon?’
‘All the time.’
‘Fine. So you tell Orlando to tell Marlon that he made a mistake. I was just a feller caught in the middle of the shootout between his boys and the ones working for Black.’
‘Black?’ the woman rasped.
‘Just listen. You tell Orlando to tell Marlon that the mistake he made was a fatal one after what happened at the hotel and in the alley. I could spend my entire life killing his hired hands. Has to be better for me if I get the top man.’
Fancy Fay had been confused while Edge touched on the Kansas shoot-out and mentioned the murder attempts she knew nothing about. Now she threw back her head and laughed. It was a derisive sound.
‘You kill Emilio Marlon?’ she flung at the helf-breed scornfully. ‘If you’re that anxious to commit suicide, why use me for a message carrier, you stupid hick? Shit, it ain’t no secret where he lives. He’s got one of the biggest estates over on Staten Island.’ She paused, suddenly worried that this might not be the easy and quick way out she had suspected. ‘Or did you know that already?’
‘Everybody lives and learns, ma’am.’
She scowled. ‘You could have stopped almost anybody on the street and just asked. Instead, you had to kill two men and snatch me. Nothing you can do about John and Philip. What about me?’
‘Like for you to lie down on your belly, ma’am.’
‘What for?’ Fear made inroads into her confidence again.
‘Keep me from having to hit you again.’
‘I don’t trust you to...’
Edge sighed. ‘Just do like you’re told, uh?’
The coldness of his tone and manner persuaded her to comply and she made no sound until he placed a foot on the small of her back and stooped to reach a hand up into the voluminous mass of the sopping wet petticoats. ‘You perverted sonofa...’ she began as his hand touched her naked legs, then curtailed the enraged accusation as she felt him yank at the petticoats, then heard the fabric tear. She screwed her head around to glare up at him as he left his foot on her back, put away the razor and began to rip the petticoats into strips. ‘You’re goin’ to leave me here?’
‘Aim to travel light. No baggage.’ He stooped again, to force her wrists together at the back, then knotted a length of the torn petticoats around them.
‘I’ll scream loud enough to bring every patrolman in New...’ This time her words were cut off by Edge, as he yanked up her head by the damp hair and pulled a length of lacy fabric across her open mouth. She grunted and tried to writhe free, but now he had dropped a knee on to her back and she quickly gave up the struggle as he knotted the gag at the back of her neck. And made no protest by sound or movement when he bound her ankles.
‘Obliged to you for the help, ma’am,’ he told her as he rose.
Her hate-filled eyes directed a stream of tacit obscenities at him. She tried to voice them but succeeded only in venting a babble of unintelligible noises through the lace gag. Then was frightened into a new silence as he picked her up and slumped her over his shoulder again to carry her along the shore to a timber dock where a dozen or so pleasure rowboats were moored. She began to writhe and force words out through the gag once more when he lowered her gently into the bottom of a boat and cast off the line. He touched the brim of his hat as he used a booted foot to shove off the boat, sending it riding smoothly out toward the centre of the lake.
‘Easy, ma’am,’ he muttered. ‘You’ll get brought in before your time is up.’ The gurgling of water along the hull of the boat masked the noises of anger she was making as the half-breed turned and headed back the way he had come. He breathed deeply of the almost fresh air that filled the park, which was the only area of the city where he could relish a sense of freedom. But soon he was back on the paved streets, with the buildings to either side, driving south in the stolen buggy. There were not so many people on the sidewalks and vehicles on the streets now for it was that hour of the night when most people who had gone out had gotten to where they were going. Theatres and restaurants, bars and dance halls, gambling establishments and whorehouses.
But it would be some time yet before that period was reached which Edge liked best. He had been in Washington during the war and San Francisco since then. And places like Omaha and Denver that were cities in the making. But never had he been anywhere that was so crowded with people, so over-developed with buildings and filled with so much raucous noise and so many bad smells as New York. Only in the dead of night, in the hours that preceded the dawn of a new day, did the city become almost silent, the streets virtually deserted and the air reasonably fresh.
‘So why the hell ain’t you aboard that westbound train, feller?’ he chided himself as he gazed sourly along the sheened back of the grey gelding in the buggy shafts and down the narrow length of the building-flanked Whitehall.
But it was merely a rhetorical question that required no answer from a man who knew himself as well as he did. He knew when to back away from trouble when it was not his business, but when somebody tried to kill him - and somebody else had given the order - it was solely his business and to hell with everyone else.
He already knew that the Negro Boss Black had connections in California so it was quite likely that Emilio Marlon could issue orders that would be obeyed far away from New York. But the half-breed was not concerned with other places in the future, except to the extent that when he did leave this cement and stone jungle of the city he did not want to have any reason to remember it.
Somebody had made a mistake - Marlon. Somebody had taken a shot at him and was still alive - Kirkby. A lawman had more or less told him to get out of town - Gilpatrick. Another man, with help, had tried to make the half-breed’s business his business - Boss Black. Any of these incidents in isolation might not have been sufficient to hold Edge in this city he hated so much. But in combination he was unable to ignore them. It was like having a rock in his boot, a burr in his pants and a bunch of hornets buzzing around his head all at the same time. He was irritated, in the worst possible way. Which was why he had gunned down two men and beat up on a woman to learn something which Mason Dickens could have told him if he had thought to ask.
He left the stolen buggy on a dark street behind the waterfront and ambled toward the row of ferry houses, eyes searching the signs for one which announced the service to Staten Island. Just as the streets of the city were quiet and sparsely populated at this hour, so was this stretch of the waterfront. But the tall, lean half-breed with the impassive face maintained his alert surveillance on his surroundings while appearing to be totally indifferent to them. Even at the best of times it was in his nature to mistrust every stranger until it was proved beyond doubt that the man or woman posed no threat to him. And this was not the best of times, with four of Marlon’s men dead, the woman of his godson possibly still floating aimlessly in the boat on the park lake and Edge still alive and free in the city.
So, after he had paid his ten cents fare, he chose his seat carefully in the gaslit passenger cabin of the ferry, with his back to a bulkhead and an unobstructed view of all who came, went or stayed. There were not many. A half dozen couples of various ages, two families with three small children each, a group of four young giggling girls and perhaps a score of men in small parties, pairs or alone, all of them looking like home-going workers from office or factory.
Down here at the tip of Manhattan Island, the half-breed’s mode of dress drew no curious glances and the only people he saw showing surreptitious interest in him were the four young girls who eyed him
from under their bonnets with either coy admiration or grimacing distaste between their bursts of laughter. Every other man in the cabin who was not in his dotage or encumbered with a wife and children received a similar mixture of attention, for the girls had reached that stage of adolescence where their bodies got ideas their minds could not handle.
The man with the cardboard suitcase came aboard just before the ferry cast off from the slip and looked around the un-crowded cabin as if he was searching for somebody in particular. It seemed that he noticed Edge last of all, and smiled brightly as he sank into the seat opposite the half-breed. He was a man just a year or so older than Edge, but in no other way was he similar. He was short, fat around the middle and across the shoulders, pale skinned and balding. He was dressed in an old and creased suit which was at least a size too small for him and a derby hat which he placed on the seat at his side as he rested the suitcase on his knees. At first glance he merged into the group of ferry passengers as an insignificant nobody. When he was seated, directly under a cone of light from a gas mantel, his dough-colored face set with small black eyes and featured with a bushy red moustache above an almost lipless mouth looked diabolically evil. Now the smile seemed not so much bright as brittle.
‘Howdy, cowboy. You’re a long way from Texas,’ he greeted in a gravel voice.
Edge pursed his lips. ‘Once rode with a herd from the Rio Grande to Laramie, feller. But I wasn’t punching cows. And a long way from Texas is where I like to be.’
The smile stayed in place, showing yellow stained teeth that looked a little big for the mouth where they grew—or were fitted. ‘My mistake.’
‘I can forgive and forget.’
The ferry was clear of the dock now, changing course across the Upper Bay and being thudded by what was left of the ocean rollers after passing through the Narrows. The man began to lose his composure as the boat juddered, and gripped his suitcase and the seat tightly.
‘Not everything, from what I’ve been hearing, Mr. Edge.’
The half-breed showed no physical response to what the man said. ‘New York’s full of surprises.’
‘Many of them unpleasant in your experience.’
‘That don’t make this city unique, feller.’
The man attempted to release the case and push forward a pudgy hand. But the ferry sliced through a big swell and the attempted handshake went by the board. As did the smile, which left his face looking as nondescript as his build and dress. ‘Name’s Lincoln, Mr. Edge. Hell, I hate riding boats.’
‘Any relation?’
‘Too distant to be of any use. I’m just a very small cog in the big Washington machine. You want to play some poker?’
‘No.’
‘Be a good idea if we did. Those three men down at the other end of the cabin.’
Edge allowed his narrowed eyes to wander briefly over his fellow passengers and spotted the trio Lincoln meant. All in their mid to late-twenties, well dressed and recently washed up and shaved. Seated side by side and peering out of the window at the lights of the city with expressions of boredom on their clean cut faces. The half-breed spent no more time eyeing them than anyone else before he returned his undemonstrative gaze to the sick looking Lincoln.
‘Another unpleasant surprise. Unless you’d spotted them before.’
‘Seen everyone who came into the cabin, feller. Those three look like they came out of the same mould as some I met in Kansas awhile back. Figure they might have Italian names.’
Lincoln showed a shadow of his former evil smile. ‘Don’t know their names, but you’re right. They’re Marlon men. Know all about you.’
‘Why else would they be aboard this ferry?’
‘If we play a little poker it might take their minds off what we’re talking about.’
‘And yours off what’s happening to your stomach, feller. No poker. What are we talking about?’
‘New York criminals and corrupt New York police, Mr. Edge. And how you can help rid the city of the scum who grow rich in that kind of situation.’
‘Why?’
‘You’re not that stupid, Mr. Edge,’ Lincoln growled impatiently. ‘These men are in business to make money and...’
‘Not that why,’ the half-breed cut in. ‘Why should I help?’
‘Not for money, if that’s what you’re thinking.’
‘I’m not thinking anything.’
The government man snatched a glance over his shoulder, along the length of the cabin to where the three well-dressed men sat. One of the trio realized he and his partners had been singled out for special attention and nudged the others, to whisper the news to them.
‘Self interest, Mr. Edge.’
‘What was that, feller?’
‘You were in Kansas at least once before. Just after the end of the war.’ He stared hard at Edge with his small, crafty looking eyes.
The half-breed’s own eyes narrowed to such an extent that it seemed as if he had closed them. And his hands which had been resting easily on the seat to either side of his thighs abruptly clenched into tight fists.
Lincoln smiled his satisfaction that he had at last drawn a response from the tall, lean man seated opposite him. ‘Thombs,’ he said softly.
The Civil War veteran Edge - then Josiah C. Hedges - had killed while he hunted the murderers of Jamie. Once before the half-breed had come close to facing up to the legal consequences of that killing. That time, hatred and spite had driven an officer of the law to search him out and attempt to take him back to Kansas. For the lawman had been another suitor for the hand in the ill-fated Beth Day who blamed Edge for the woman’s death. The lawman had been ill-fated, too.
‘Name means something to you, I guess?’
‘You ain’t guessing, feller.’
A nod. ‘You’re right. I’ve got one of the wanted posters right here in my case. Yellow and curling with age, but it still means what it says. But you can change that, Mr. Edge.’
‘It never caused me any trouble but the once.’
Now a shrug of the broad, flabby shoulders. ‘But it could. At any time. In Kansas or anywhere else some hungry bounty hunter or eager beaver lawman spots you and recognizes you.’
‘Like you?’
Edge asked the question of Lincoln, but directed the gaze of his slitted, glinting eyes elsewhere: along the aisle which ran, railroad car fashion, down the centre of the cabin. At the three smartly dressed young men who had risen from their seats.
‘I was in the bar of the Fifth Avenue Hotel earlier this evening,’ Lincoln replied, unaware that he had lost most of Edge’s attention. ‘But I was on to you before that. I’ve had you under surveillance ever since Marlon’s and Black’s men shot it out in…’
The government man broke off as Edge rose lazily to his feet.
‘Need to attend to some business, feller.’
Lincoln blinked, confused and ready to be angry. But then he thought he knew what the remark meant. ‘Oh, yeah. It’s down at the back somewhere, I think.’
But Edge had already gone; abruptly abandoning his pretense of being casual, to swing around, jerk open the door, power outside and slam the door closed behind him. The short, stoutly built Lincoln continued to think he knew the reason for the half-breed’s departure - and that the matter had suddenly become urgent. Until one of the three men in the aisle dropped down on to the seat beside him and pressed the muzzle of a revolver into his ribs.
‘Don’t move, mister,’ the man rasped out of the side of his mouth, the words faintly accented. ‘Unless you are in a hurry to meet your maker.’
Seasickness threatened to give way to a more violent kind of nausea in Lincoln’s tubby belly. But he brought it under control in time to fake a response as he watched the other two men power out of the cabin door. ‘My goodness,’ he croaked. ‘Am I being robbed?’
‘You have already lost what we want, mister,’ the swarthy complexioned young gunman replied softly. ‘It had better be that you did not know what you
had.’
Lincoln remained silent and unmoving as he beat genuine fear and worked to make the man at his side believe he was terrified. As he wondered if he would have a chance to bring out the Frontier Colt which was in the suitcase on his lap. And what it would feel like to fire a gun at a human being again, instead of at targets on the range. He had not done that since he worked for Allan Pinkerton’s military intelligence group during the war.
Out on the aft deck of the ferry the two men had come to a tense halt, right hands hidden inside the lapels of their suit jackets as their derby hatted heads swung to left and right, eyes searching for the quarry. The broad beamed boat had lumbered more than halfway to the end of its journey and was shuddering more violently than ever as it battled against the conflicting currents that raced and whirled at the point where the Narrows met Upper Bay. Far astern the myriad lights of Manhattan threw a glow up into the cloudy sky. Brooklyn to port and the St George area of Staten Island ahead offered less competition to the moonlight which filtered through the city’s cloud cover. Other craft crisscrossed the dark water, some showing just navigation lights, others as emblazoned as the ferry on which death waited to strike.
But the boat carried many pockets of shadowed darkness and it was from one of these that Edge surveyed the men outside the aft door of the cabin. He stood in the cover of a tall ventilation duct that provided air for the engine room immediately below, his right hand draped over the butt of the Remington which jutted from his holster. Immediately to his right was a long lifeboat slung on davits. To his left was an area of open decking that gave access to the second passenger cabin on the other side of the ferry. Beneath and in front of this was the vehicle and livestock section of the boat, with less than half its space taken up by wagons and carriages. Down there, drivers sat hunched on their seats or stood holding the bridles of nervous horses.
No one was on the aft deck except for Edge and two men who intended to kill him.
The thud of the engine and slap of water against the hull might or might not mask the sound of gunfire. The slipways of St George were still too far distant to offer escape from the ferry if killing shots were heard and a murder hunt was started aboard.
EDGE: WAITING FOR A TRAIN (Edge series Book 30) Page 6
