Peacemakers (Peacemaker Origins Book 1)

by Sean Michael O'Dea

  “Bourbon,” Mink replied.

  Quincey stared at her for a moment.

  “For the ladies,” the waiter reiterated.

  They all ordered lemon tonics.

  “Whose paying the tab, anyway?” Mink said, trying to cover up her mistake.

  “My employer,” he replied.

  “What is it exactly that you do?” Mink asked.

  Quincey’s smile automatically pulled one of his eyebrows up. “You mean you haven’t heard of me? Quincey Gartrell? International big game hunter? World’s finest taxidermist? My father, Quinton Gartrell? The explorer and hunter? My grandfather Quillen, he was the inspiration for Allan Quartermain?”

  Mink shook her head.

  “Christ boy, read the paper once in a while, will you?” he said, putting his bear arms around Christina and Katerina. They both laughed.

  “Who is your employer, then?” Mink asked.

  “Well, a generous benefactor hired me to bring back some exotic animals from all over Africa and India. A few live ones will go to a zoo in New York, and the others I will stuff and donate on his behalf to the Smithsonian. Hell, there is an entire train car attached with just my animals and my rifles. You ever shoot a rifle, son?”

  “Yes.”

  “By the time I was your age I’d already tracked, trapped, killed, and stuffed every beast for every king and queen on this planet.”

  “It sounds like dangerous work,” Mink said.

  “Ha-Hah. Dangerous? Let me tell you something.”

  Two waiters came back into the car carrying all the drinks. Quincey swigged beer after beer, regaling anyone who would listen with his hunting stories. Siberian tigers, African water buffalo, Nile River crocodiles, Norwegian reindeer. Each story was an epic Greek myth where hubris was never punished. With every new story came another drink, and then, another drunken story. Mink sat listening and quietly welcoming the inebriation.

  One by one, the floral ladies retired as the evening got late. The last one, Christina, quietly pleaded with him to show her the animals in the rear train car. Quincey declined and she stormed off, leaving just him and Mink.

  “Well, Michael,” he said. “I think it might be time to retire.” The huge man rose from the booth, swaying almost to the point of toppling. Mink propped up his colossal frame like a skinny Atlas. An Atlas whose bladder was on the verge of exploding from too many drinks.

  “I’m headed to the first class cabins,” Mink said. “I can help you as far as there.”

  “First class, huh? Me too! Let’s go!”

  They stumbled to the next car forward, Quincey resting his arm over Mink’s shoulders. “Wait, wait,” he said. “I need to piss.”

  Mink cringed. Quincey slammed the water closet door open and rushed inside. He left the door open as he braced himself, one hand against the bulkhead, and urinated for what was easily a full minute. Every second a cruel reminder to Mink who could barely contain herself and crossed her legs.

  “You all right?” Quincey asked, finishing up.

  “Fine, fine.”

  “Don’t be shy boy, if you gotta piss, piss!”

  “I’m fine, really.”

  Quincey shook his head, turned, and started to wash his face with the cold pitcher of water. “So, I never asked you, are you getting off at New York or sooner?”

  “New York,” Mink said.

  “Me, too. Listen,” Quincey said, ducking his head into the sink and pouring another pitcher of water on his head. “My apprentice at the shop just quit, if you are looking for work in the city.”

  “Uh . . .” Mink said, stepping into the water closet.

  “I’m just saying,” he continued, “Taxidermy is an art and you seem like a smart young man who can actually listen.” Quincey smoothed his hair back in the mirror and turned around to see Mink, pants around her ankles, sitting on the toilet, relieving herself. She looked up at him, conveying both relief and embarrassment.

  “Sorry,” she said, removing her cap and covering her waist.

  “Huh,” he said, shuffling around and letting her finish.

  Wage W. Pascal

  August 12, 1914

  Consolidated Rail Passenger Train

  West of Youngstown, Ohio

  The repligrapher sat on the narrow wooden table just beneath the first-class cabin window. Wage sat on plush bench and stared at the machine with its stack of papers on a wooden platform that was the base. A condemned fountain pen hovered above the papers tethered to a moveable wooden arm that looked like miniature gallows. The entire pen assembly connected to a small whizzing box lining the top of the platform. A thick wire connected it to the heavy battery on the floor. Wage grabbed the pen and began to write on the paper like a traditional letter, his curved and precise strokes supposedly being replicated in Edison’s lab:

  Dear Mr. Edison,

  We have discovered the whereabouts of Kasper Holstrom’s secret residence in New York

  City, one not listed in any of your documents. Its location was revealed by one Doctor F.

  Fatum—who, by the way, is also dabbling in some rather interesting and unusual

  experiments. Anyway, we are on a train headed there now. I will convey more when we get

  there.

  Your pal,

  Wage W. Pascal

  “All right,” Wage said to himself. “That should do it.” The pen began scribbling furiously in short, linear strokes as if by the hand of some impatient ghost. Below Wage’s words were the following:

  IS FATUM STILL ALIVE?

  Wage stared at the sentence, trapped somewhere between marvel and shock. He grabbed the pen again.

  Dear Mr. Edison,

  The good doctor is still alive but will probably require the use of a cane for the rest of his

  natural life.

  Regards,

  Wage W. Pascal.

  Edison wrote back:

  YOU ARE AN IMBECILE. IS KASPER STILL ALIVE?

  Wage replied:

  Edison,

  It remains to be known. There is no indication of his death at this time.

  —Wage

  Edison wrote back.

  A NEW PROBLEM. ANOTHER ARCHITECT IN NEW YORK CITY.

  Wage changed the paper underneath the pen as the words started to overlap. On a new page he wrote:

  Edison,

  Well, isn’t that convenient. How would you recommend I proceed?

  —Wage

  FIND OUT WHAT YOU CAN AT KASPER’S. WRITE BACK. FOLLOW NEW

  ARCHITECT. WRITE BACK.

  Edi . . . Wage began to write, but the pen jumped out his hand.

  STOP FORMALITY, IDIOT. REMEMBER! HAND KNOWS WHO YOU ARE.

  “Yeah, yeah, I know,” Wage said to himself. He wrote:

  One question.

  WHAT!

  How do I find this new Architect?

  WALDORF HOTEL. ENGLISH BARON. ONE EYE. VERY DANGEROUS.

  “Very dangerous?” Wage snickered. “Is there anyone who isn’t at this point?” He checked his pocket watch, a silver piece engraved with crossed sabers on the outside and seven lucky horseshoes on the inside, the symbols of the 7th Cavalry Regiment. A gift from his father. It was just past eight, and Wage took another moment to look out the window at the blurred green foliage bathed in the rich orange glow of the setting sun. “I do believe it’s time for a drink,” he said while adjusting his charcoal vest and slicking back his black hair behind his ears. He slid open the door to his cabin and charged out, nearly running into a passerby.

  “Why, Captain Wage Pascal, what are the odds,” the passerby said, her straw hat decorated in black ribbon and small tassels that hung from the brim.

  Wage looked into the deep, waterless wells that were her eyes. “My apologies, Miss . . .”

  “You don’t remember my name, do you?”

  “Names escape me, but faces most certainly do not,” Wage said. With no hat to tip, he nodded slightly.

  She smiled in a sinister fashion,
with teeth fitted for a Bram Stoker novel. “Well perhaps you can guess it over a drink.”

  “You read my mind, mon chéri. After you.” Wage gestured to the door that led to first-class observation, and beyond that, the first-class lounge. Wage stared as the hypnotizing rear of her black dress moved up and down like two angry badgers tussling in a gunny sack. He snapped his fingers. “Mallory Macy!”

  The lounge was far from bustling, with most of the first-class passengers taking their dinner in their own cabins or the dining car. Ol’ Bill sat in a booth by himself rereading the morning’s paper and sipping a tonic water. “William, you remember the lovely Mallory Macy,” Wage said.

  Bill stood and removed his flat cap. “Good evening, ma’am.”

  “Mr. MacDonough. I trust you are well,” she said and curtsied. Wage gestured for her to sit next to Bill, and before taking the seat across from her, he signaled for the porter who now played the role of waiter. The teenage boy in a sweat-stained navy coat ran up to him. “Three bourbons, boy, tout suite.” Wage flipped a dime in the air. The boy fumbled it and picked it up from the floor.

  “Actually, I’ll have an absinthe,” Mallory Macy said.

  “C’est magnifique. Well done, mon chérie,” Wage said.

  “Would the gentleman like one as well?” the young porter asked.

  “No. Three bourbons will still be fine,” Wage replied. He sat down and propped a boot over his knee, the handle of Ol’ Snapper barely visible under his belt and beneath his vest. Ol’ Bill unfurled a small cloth on the table, revealing a pipe, matches, and tobacco pouch. He packed it meticulously.

  “Why, Captain Pascal, you do know it is illegal to carry such a weapon on a train?” Mallory asked, pointing to Wage’s belt.

  “Why, Mrs. Macy, did you know my granddaddy, Jean Pierre Pascal, drank a bottle of Burgundy every day he breathed and still lived to be almost 100 years old? Now, do you know how he did that?”

  “By drinking all that wine?”

  Wage leaned forward. “By minding his own business.” Wage said with a wink.

  “Oh Wage, you are crass, I will give you that.”

  “Outstanding,” Wage said and clapped. “Is there anything else you’d like to give me?”

  Ol’ Bill cleared his throat and spoke through one side of his mouth while he lit his pipe. “Wage, do recall Mrs. Macy here is recently married.”

  “I recall it just fine, William. Where is your dear husband, anyway?”

  “Resting. He gets sick on trains,” she replied.

  “Well, that’s too bad,” Wage said.

  The porter returned with their drinks, shuttling them from a pewter tray to the polished wooden table. He sat three glasses of bourbon down and a glowing green decanter of absinthe. The porter fumbled for the empty snifter, sugar cube, and spoon before handing it over to Miss Macy. She confidently placed the sugar cube on the spoon and placed it over the empty glass and poured the silky verdant liquid over it. With a pinky in the air, she drank the fizzing drink in one swallow. Wage followed suit by downing one of the glasses of bourbon. Ol’ Bill sipped and savored his own bourbon.

  “It’s the devil’s work,” an elderly woman in the booth across from them said loudly, the comment clearly directed at Wage. She and her husband were the only patrons left in the lounge car.

  “I beg your pardon, ma’am?” Wage asked.

  “Alcohol was made by the devil to tempt man. Temperance is coming, young man, temperance is coming. It is God’s will,” she replied, talking to her empty dinner plate. Her elderly husband slept next to her, his head resting against the window.

  Wage signaled for the porter and demanded a bourbon for the elderly lady. She protested, but Wage flipped another dime into the air. “I insist,” he added. “Tell me, ma’am, how is the recreational imbibing of spirits contrary to the Lord’s will when his only son, sent to us to forgive our sins—of which I have many,“ he winked at Mallory, “turned so much water into wine?” The elderly lady said nothing. “What’s a matter? Cat got your tongue?” Wage asked. He downed his other bourbon and used his thumb and forefinger to wipe away the remnants from his moustache.

  “Temperance is coming, young man,” she said again. “God’s will be done, temperance is coming.”

  The porter discretely placed the glass of bourbon on the edge of her table. Wage lifted himself from his seat, leaned over and grabbed the glass. “Let it come, then,” he said. “Just more for the rest of us.” Wage finished the drink and signaled the porter again. “Just bring the bottle, son,” he said, flipping a quarter into the air.

  The elderly woman woke her husband. They stood and slowly made their way forward to the first-class cabins. Moments later, a group of young women in hoop skirts of yellow, white, purple, and scarlet sat down. One of them removed a deck of cards from her purse and started to shuffle them. “Good evening, ladies,” Wage said.

  “Tell me, Wage,” Mallory said, changing the topic of conversation, “why are you not married? I find it hard to believe that no woman has yet to steal your heart away.”

  Wage sipped his remaining bourbon. “I love nearly every woman I come across.” The porter placed a nearly full decanter of bourbon on the table. Wage poured some into his glass. “But you can’t steal a heart that was already stolen.”

  “Already stolen? Who stole it?”

  “It don’t matter, now,” Wage replied, staring at his own distorted reflection in the bourbon glass.

  “Don’t tell me that big, strong Wage Pascal still pines for the one who got away?” Mallory said.

  “She didn’t get away.” Wage rolled his tongue around his mouth in growing frustration. “I know exactly where she is.”

  “And where is that?”

  “Chicago.” Wage finished his bourbon and poured another glass. Ol’ Bill’s pipe smoke sweetened the air around their booth.

  “So why not ride into Chicago, oh brave knight, and take back thy damsel who owns thine heart.”

  “Why not tell me about the knight who stole your heart, hmm? When will we get to meet the honorable Sir Nauseous?”

  “Oh, you’ll meet him soon enough,” Mallory replied with a predatory glance.

  “What is it exactly that your brave knight does?”

  There was a commotion behind them. Wage turned his head and out of the corner of his eye, he could see the young porter laying on the ground, covered in the drinks he was about to serve to the card players. Someone stood over him in a brown trench coat with a cattle hat pulled down low. Wage smiled. The card-playing ladies across from him gasped. Ol’ Bill leaned over to see the source of the ruckus, and Mallory Macy’s lip curled back in strange excitement.

  “Wage,” Bill said.

  “Speak of the devil,” Wage murmured.

  “Wage,” Bill said again.

  “Not a problem, William. I will handle this.”

  “Wage!” Bill repeated.

  Wage held up his hand. “I said I’ll handle it.” Wage stood up and spun around, “Hello, Mink.”

  A large man with broad shoulders and blockish features threw his equally blockish fist at Wage, catching him near the temple. Wage dropped to the ground.

  Ol’ Bill nearly leapt from his chair, but a well-placed stiletto dagger in his stomach kept him in his seat. “Stay in your seat, Mr. MacDonough,” Mallory snarled.

  The trench coat attacker pulled out a Colt 1911 and aimed it at Wage’s head.

  “Wage!” Bill screamed.

  “He’s armed!” Mallory yelled, twisting the knife in Bill’s stomach.

  Wage instinctually kicked the attacker in the shin with the heel of his boot. The gun fired, the bullet narrowly missing Wage’s head. The sound rendered everyone in the lounge momentarily deaf as the card-playing ladies all fled the car through the opposite exit. The attacker limped backward and tried to steady the pistol back on Wage, who sprung to his feet and immediately turned his body sideways, making himself less of a target. The gun fired again, the bul
let traveled the length of the car and struck the bulkhead. Wage crashed into the man and the gun went flying upward, firing another shot into the ceiling. Adrenaline and self-preservation combined to generate the force necessary for Wage to shove the now-piping-hot pistol barrel against the attacker’s face. Skin sizzled, and the blocky man let out a primitive cry. The gun fell to the ground, and Wage unleashed a barrage of punches at close range. He might as well have been punching a slab of granite.

  The attacker lifted his hand in defense before pushing Wage off like a boxer on the ropes might do. Wage flew across the aisle and landed on his back with a groan. He reached for and drew Ol’ Snapper.

  Three rounds fired and struck the attacker in the stomach. The attacker continued forward, barely fazed.

  With one hand, Wage fired another round that struck the man squarely in his chest, and his head flew back. The cattle hat fell off behind him revealing unkempt brown hair. The attacker lurched forward again.

  “Goddamn it!” Wage yelled, firing another round that exited out the man’s neck. Blood sprayed onto the porter’s navy jacket behind him. The attacker paused, his eyes wide open and his scraggly brown hair glued to his forehead with sweat. Yet somehow, he still continued forward.

  Wage took Ol’ Snapper in two hands this time, and the sixth and final bullet opened a small hole on the man’s big brow, and a much larger hole in the top of his head. He collapsed onto Wage’s legs, pinning him. It was enough time for Mallory to get up and race for the fallen 1911. She bent over to pick up the pistol. Wage absurdly admired her derriere once more. She whirled about. “Goodbye, Captain Pascal,” she said.

  Wage winced, lying down and closing both eyes as another shot whizzed. He heard a high-pitched squeal. Blindly, he checked his body for bullet holes. He leaned up and opened one eye. Mallory lay collapsed on the floor, her own stiletto dagger hilt deep in her torso. Its four-inch blade hadn’t been able to penetrate the layer of fat protecting Ol’ Bill’s vital organs, but unfortunately Mallory Macy did not have the same protective layer on her.