Sundance

by David Fuller

  “Hey, this table’s taken,” said the tall man, reaching for the curtain to get the manager’s attention. The tall man’s voice was deep and melodious, perfect for charming innocent women.

  Longbaugh took the seat beside him and kicked the man’s foot forward so that he sat back down hard in his chair.

  “What’s the idea!” said the tall man.

  Longbaugh looked him dead in the eye. The tall man was unsure as to his next move. He waited for an explanation and was greeted with silence. The tall man sized up Longbaugh. He was bigger than Longbaugh, younger, possibly stronger, but Longbaugh’s eyes bored in on him and gave him pause. He decided to be forcefully polite.

  “I got this table reserved, ‘sir,’ and I’m expecting my companion any moment.”

  Longbaugh maintained his silence, and the man’s eyes shifted nervously, hoping a waiter or anyone would come by, trying to figure a way to get rid of this annoying fellow.

  “I’m not sure where they seated you, ‘sir,’ but you can’t stay here, I have an important meeting, and—”

  “I know why you’re here.” Longbaugh spoke slowly and quietly.

  “So, hey, that’s it, I’m getting someone to throw you out.” The tall man put his palm flat on the table to push himself up, and Longbaugh grabbed his wrist and held it down in a tight grip. The man froze, looked down at Longbaugh’s eyes, and was frightened. He took a moment to decide what to do next, then slowly, slowly, sat back down.

  “There’s no need for that, mister, really. Look, I don’t know who you are, but I’m sure there’s been some kind of mistake.”

  Longbaugh said nothing but kept a firm grip on the tall man’s wrist. The tall man suddenly tried to wrench and twist his hand away. He was unsuccessful, and as quickly as he started, he stopped. A new understanding of his situation came to him.

  “Oh God, you’re the husband. Hey, listen, mister, there’s been a mistake here, I wasn’t going to do anything, I swear.”

  The tall man’s eyes trembled with panic. He tried to look at Longbaugh’s belt, to know if he was armed.

  “It wasn’t me, I swear, it was all her, she came to me, she even suggested this place.”

  Longbaugh did not move, did not take his hand away, did not stop looking directly into the man’s eyes.

  Finally the tall man quit fidgeting and sat quietly, awaiting his punishment.

  With his free hand, Longbaugh dipped the small spoon into the salt dish and carried a heaping mound directly over the back of the tall man’s hand. He angled his head slightly without losing contact with the man’s eyes. Then slowly his hand turned the spoon and salt fell out of it, bouncing, then piling up on the man’s skin. The tall man stared at his hand as if he was being burned by lye.

  “Oh God, I swear, it was a joke, I would never touch her. I’m a married man, I would never do that kind of thing. I’m a good family man, I swear.” The tall man spoke quickly, desperately, in a full-out panic.

  Longbaugh said nothing. He put the small spoon back in the salt dish.

  “So, hey, listen, let me go, and I swear, I’ll never do anything like this again. I won’t even come back to this restaurant. I don’t have time for stuff like this, please, mister.”

  Longbaugh reached down, took a pinch of salt off the back of the tall man’s hand and flicked it at the tall man’s eyes. An involuntary spasm shuddered in the tall man’s cheek. “Stay away from her,” said Longbaugh. “From her and the Chinese kid.”

  “No, I swear, I won’t, I mean I will, oh God, please—”

  “You know where the back door is.” He let go of the wrist. The tall man lurched out of his seat, wiping the salt off his hand and scrambling away, out of the restaurant in a flash.

  Longbaugh was glad to have terrified the tall man, but thought it would only stymie him for a week or so, and then he’d be back at it. He thought about Abigail, coming a long way to meet a man like that, although she was unaware that he was a man like that. Until he bedded her, the tall man would shower her with affection, as he had enough experience preying on vulnerable women to fake empathy. But something inside her wanted what the tall man had to offer. Longbaugh considered her marriage and wondered how she had ended up with Levi, then thought he was being too hard on the young man. Somewhere along the way, Levi had become uncertain. Perhaps it was Abigail’s fault, perhaps his own, but Levi’s uncertainty had led to jealousy, mistrust, and a drought of affection. It was possible her intent had been not to meet a man, but to attend the free love lecture as a way to help save her marriage. At the moment of truth, at her most defenseless, standing there on the sidewalk, the tall predator had swooped in, oozing charm and dripping with concern. Longbaugh ached for Levi then. He tried to picture Levi as a groom. Levi would have been a force of nature in the early days of their courtship, the risk-taking sandhog, teeming with power and life. He may even have looked like her best hope, a man who might have the inner confidence to allow his woman to bloom.

  Longbaugh drew the curtain partway aside to watch the room. Abigail had yet to arrive. He hesitated to leave, as she was due any moment. He kept his eye on the front door, prepared to drop the curtain when he saw her. Customers came in, greeted warmly by the manager, menus in his hand. The restaurant was almost half full and the best tables were being taken quickly, the only ones still available in the middle of the room. More time passed as more diners were seated. He considered leaving through the back, but that way felt tainted by the tall man’s escape, so he stayed where he was. A woman came in, leaning amorously on her gentleman escort, and for one unnerving moment he thought it was Etta with another man. He let the curtain drop, then drew it back again to prove it was not his wife. His heart beat quickly. A waiter drifted over, and he waved off the menu. It was time to give up the table.

  He moved to the front door but skirted the center of the room so that Abigail would be less likely to see him. Then he realized that she was so late she almost certainly wasn’t coming. His step changed and was lighter, and he was suddenly pleased, as if her rejection of the tall man was somehow related to any similar decision Etta might have made.

  He reached for the front door at the same moment it was being opened from the outside, and he took a casual, polite step to the side. Two laughing men came in, and Longbaugh reached to catch the door as it closed behind them but stopped short when he saw Abigail across the street. He brought his arm back and allowed the door to slowly close so she would not see him.

  He remained there in shadow, and a moment later, when the door was reopened by a party of three, Abigail had not moved. She stood very still in the same spot on the sidewalk. He then understood she had been standing there for quite some time.

  She stared at the restaurant, her expression blank, trying to decide whether or not to go in. Her toes touched and she held her purse flat against her thighs with both hands. When the door closed, his view was blocked. But he stayed where he was.

  Another hungry group pulled the door wide, and this time he noted that her hair was pinned, her dress lovely, but she wasn’t as pretty as she had been that day in the kitchen, and then he was appalled at himself, as if he had some sort of proprietary claim on her because she had once shown an interest in him. As the front door closed on her again, he recognized the sadness at the core of her indecision, and it broke his heart.

  Another couple came in, and he saw how the sunlight fell against her hair and shoulders, making a mournful shadow at her feet.

  She had no way of knowing the tall man was not inside waiting for her.

  The door closed and blocked his view.

  The door opened. She was so very still.

  The door closed and blocked his view.

  The door opened and she was gone.

  He waited, letting the door close and open again, then stepped outside and looked both ways. Abigail was nowhere in sight.

 
Once he was certain that she was gone, he made his own decision quickly, resolutely. He set out for 23 Washington Place. To know what had happened to his wife in the fire.

  7

  Charlie Siringo stepped off a train under the streets of Manhattan, climbed the exit stairs, and entered the main concourse of Pennsylvania Station. He was not much interested in the glory of the place and did not slow down. Siringo was there on a hunch.

  Siringo was an unusual lawman. He was a loner as well as a dedicated bloodhound, known to spend months chasing one criminal. He’d worked as a cowhand for fifteen years, then was briefly a grocer, before spending twenty years as a Pinkerton. After he quit the Pinkertons, he clashed with them when they blocked publication of his memoirs. In a fit of pique, he wrote an exposé of their strikebreaking methods and rigging of elections. The Pinkertons bought up most of the copies of the books and confiscated the plates. Nevertheless, he was well known as a published author, and at fifty-eight years old, still a lawman, with the freedom to choose his quarry. Today he was after a murderer, a man who may have been one of his old friends.

  Somewhere in the state of Utah he had lost the trail of the man who called himself Alonzo. He believed that this Alonzo, who had shot a seventeen-year-old son of a local sheriff, was now in the city of New York. Siringo had not been able to identify him with absolute certainty, but there was circumstantial evidence to convince him that the convict Harry Alonzo was in fact Harry Longbaugh, and not just any Harry Longbaugh, but the notorious former outlaw. Joe LeFors had seen him face-to-face and hadn’t recognized him, but LeFors was an idiot. After that encounter, Alonzo/Longbaugh had vanished off the face of the West.

  Siringo felt an affinity with the man. Longbaugh had often ridden with Cassidy, and Siringo had a history with both of them. In the late ’90s, Siringo had infiltrated the gang as a fellow gunman, calling himself Charles Carter. He and Longbaugh had become friends, but when the gang’s plans were regularly thwarted, Cassidy was told that Charles Carter was in fact Charlie Siringo and had been warning the railroad about every planned robbery. Cassidy had been furious and had gone after him. Butch cornered him in a canyon, and with no way out, Siringo expected to die. But Butch surprised him and backed off. Siringo knew no reason for it. Butch and his boys had simply turned and ridden away. To this day he wondered why, a mystery, and he disliked mysteries.

  He went after the gang as a lawman, chased them across the West, and didn’t quit until he was informed that they had fled the country. Some time after that, the newspapers reported they had died in a gunfight in South America. Siringo had recently been surprised to learn that Longbaugh may have been in prison during the time he was supposed to have been shot dead in Bolivia.

  That started the fuss, making a simple killing of a sheriff’s boy into a LeFors-led posse over a half dozen states. If this was a famous outlaw, as rumor had it, everyone wanted in. LeFors, however, was so inept that Siringo had been forced to take over. It was just bad luck that he hadn’t been there on the night Alonzo/Longbaugh had visited his sister-in-law. He would have recognized him and arrested him or known it was someone else, either way making this journey unnecessary.

  He had sent LeFors and his boys after Alonzo that night at Wilhelmina Matthews’s home, knowing they would never catch him. Then, in the ensuing quiet, he had taken the opportunity to question Miss Matthews.

  She had been gracious but not helpful. But when Wilhelmina was out of the room, he had managed to get a look at a letter from her sister and had memorized the return address in New York City.

  LeFors, to cover his ineptitude, had told the world that he had seen the man in question and it was definitely not Harry Longbaugh. Because of that, the West quieted down, the posse went away, and no one was looking for this Alonzo character any longer. No one but Siringo.

  Siringo spoke with the warden at Rawlins, and learned that while the prisoner appeared on the books as Alonzo, the warden believed it to be an alias. Under further questioning, Siringo learned that the warden believed it essentially because the prisoners and guards believed it. He had no proof. But Alonzo had been receiving letters from someone named Etta Place, who shared a name with Longbaugh the outlaw’s wife.

  If this was the same Harry Longbaugh, Siringo knew he would go to New York to be with her.

  Siringo’s first order of business was to locate a place to stay. He wasn’t picky, and he didn’t imagine he’d be here long. Longbaugh was the ideal prey, relaxed, unsuspecting, and confident that he had fallen off the map. The element of surprise belonged to Siringo. He would choose a hotel, freshen up, rest in the afternoon after his long train ride, then track down the address of Etta Matthews Place. He would move in slowly, ask around to see if anyone new had ventured into the neighborhood, and by nightfall he would position himself to watch the place and grab Longbaugh when he showed up.

  • • •

  LONGBAUGH worked his way back to Fifth Avenue, past the homes of the rich, through the Ladies’ Mile, with the fancy shops and oversized department stores that sold, among everything else imaginable, the ladies’ shirtwaists that had once upon a time been made at the Triangle factory. He passed motorcars waiting curbside for shoppers, the uniformed drivers standing around smoking. He slowed at Washington Square and gathered his courage to approach the Asch Building, where Washington Place met Greene Street. While it was important to know her actions up to the time she vanished, he feared being there. Or, more to the point, he feared to learn more impossible things about her that he might not be able to reconcile. He tried to remember the timing—had he heard from her after the fire? He was sure that he had, but now, so close to where the fire had killed so many, his certainty fled. He worked backward to convince himself, of course she had survived the fire. He was sure of it. He almost remembered it clearly.

  Washington Square was crowded. On that Saturday afternoon in late March of ’11 it had apparently also been crowded. It had been a hard winter, but because of the unpleasant living conditions, people came out to the streets whenever possible, even when the weather was less than ideal. He walked up the block and came face-to-face with the building. He turned his head to the upper three floors. He was surprised to see no evidence of a fire. He had expected a scar.

  He crossed the street onto Washington Place and walked along the exterior. The fact of normal everyday existence distressed him. Here was a case where history did not blurt its anguish, but whispered in his ear. There should have been a scar. But the building carried on, as if the past was the past.

  At the corner of Greene Street, he came upon a small man setting fresh flowers on the sidewalk, holding in the crook of his elbow similar flowers that appeared almost as new as the ones he was putting in their place. This was where, according to the newspaper, so many of the girls had jumped. He counted the floors up to eight and nine. Then his gaze fell down the face of the building to the sidewalk. A long way down.

  Longbaugh was quiet. The man with the flowers approached him.

  “You I don’t know,” said the flower man.

  “No.”

  “What I mean to say, I come here every day, and you I don’t know. I know all the others, even the ones who did not have someone in the fire. Some come regular, some come just now and then, some don’t come anymore at all. You I don’t know.”

  “I was away.”

  “You knew someone, then?”

  “Yes.”

  The man with the flowers pointed down Washington Place. The thicket of trees in Washington Square at the far end of the block seemed to billow from the ground, framed by the taut vertical buildings, like a low gathering of green clouds. “Death has a hold on this place. Down there is where they hung people.”

  “What do you mean, ‘hung people’?”

  “Before the Revolutionary War. And then later, in the Civil War with the riots. You spend enough time here, people come by and tell you stories.” The
flower man looked up at the ninth floor. “I try to imagine surprise death, how it feels. You walk down the street and people grab you and hang you and you’re dead. Or a person goes to work filled with plans and hope, and decides in a minute that instead of burning to death, the only thing is to jump out a window to die faster.”

  Longbaugh pictured the girl with the handkerchief whose clothes had to burn off before she could fall. He was gripped by that image, seared as it was on his brain.

  Longbaugh looked at the flower man looking up at the window. The flower man was a youth, barely a man at all, despite appearing older. The fire had made him an elderly young man.

  “I went up there once, before it happened. All over were little bits of cloth, shirtwaists hanging, sewing machines pushed in close. Who’s surprised that one dropped cigarette makes it go up? Those owners, they don’t care, they locked the other door. The only other way out they locked, and why? To keep the girls from stealing. What is there so important to steal?” He forced himself to calm down. “But you’ve heard all this, everyone knows, everyone knows.” He got a faraway look in his eyes. He rocked on his shoes. “You know the jury let those bastard owners off because they couldn’t prove they knew it was locked that day? Every day they locked it. Blanck and Harris, the shirtwaist kings, took their insurance money and they walk around free right now.”

  Longbaugh was aware of fingers in his belly that closed into a grip on his insides.

  “They had coats on,” said the flower man. “Work was done, the girls waited for the signal to go home. The cigarette drops two minutes later, they live. Two minutes and she is standing here at my side, instead of you.”

  Longbaugh turned away from the flower man’s calm face. He looked back up at the ninth-floor window, but his gaze caught on the wires. Strange that the man’s words seemed unreal, while the newspaper’s story of the girl with the handkerchief seemed not only real but made it seem as if he had known her personally. But then the girl with the handkerchief had his wife’s face.