The Cold Millions

by Jess Walter

  “Why?” she asked without looking up from the letter.

  “I’m under a lot of pressure here, Elizabeth.”

  “What pressure, Arn?”

  “I’d rather not say.”

  Finally, she looked up. “Pressure not to let”—she read from the letter—“ ‘a pregnant, wayward wife’ take the stage?”

  “It just don’t play well here, Elizabeth, Jack wanting you back in Butte and you out here speaking on street corners. Makes us look barbaric. And it makes you look . . .” He didn’t finish this thought. “It ain’t just Jack. The other unions object to having you speak, Elizabeth. The AFL, WFM—”

  “I know who they are,” Gurley said. “So, you’re saying we just let those men rot in the Spokane jail, surrender to the forces—”

  He cut her off. “Don’t jaw me, Elizabeth. I know what you can do. And it worked here. Cops blinked. But they ain’t blinking in Spokane. No one wants that here. Five hundred in jail, Walsh and Little on a hunger strike. Hard enough to get men to sign up for red cards, you want ’em to sign up for bread and water and beatings and rock piles and a year in prison, too?”

  She looked away. “Are you saying I should give up, Arn?”

  “I’m saying that after your second arm gets bit off, it might be time to stop poking the bear.”

  “Yeah.” Gurley sighed. “Time to start kicking the son of a bitch.”

  “I’m sorry,” he said. “Nothing I can do.”

  “Arn, they sent me to Spokane to organize and raise money to hire a national lawyer to challenge this law. We are a week away from the second free speech action, and you’re sending me back with no men, no money, nothing.”

  “What do you mean, no money?”

  She looked down. “We ran into some trouble in Taft.”

  “What in God’s name were you doing in Taft?”

  Gurley’s eyes trailed around the busy depot—travelers greeting family, porters handing luggage to travelers. “Doesn’t matter,” she said.

  “I’m sorry, Elizabeth,” Arn said. “I’m at a loss here. This is all I can do.” He reached in his back pocket and handed her three train tickets. Two second-class tickets to Spokane. And one to Butte. “Time for you to go home.”

  Del Dalveaux, 1909

  THE HOTEL clerk handed me a message from Bolin. Flaccid old lobcock wanted me to call a number. I had the girl on my end connect us.

  Right off, Al said, “It didn’t go, Del. Taft didn’t go.”

  The girl on my end was chewing nails.

  “They took the money is all. And let ’em go on to Missoula.”

  I said nothing.

  “It’s a lazy bunch up there is the thing.”

  I said nothing.

  “And there were surprises.”

  Said nothing.

  “Wasn’t like you said.”

  Nothing.

  “So what I figured now is—”

  I snapped my fingers and gave a nod to the girl, who yanked the call.

  I was ripe enough with that whorepipe Bolin to grab the next rattler to Wallace and beat him to death before he could hobble off.

  But first I needed to deliver the news to Brand. And the thought of telling that fat church bell anything but “It’s done” and “Goodbye” sank my guts. Goddamn Spokane.

  I caught a hansom to his house. Algoddamnhambra. The stones on that man. His doorman said he was having a drink at his club, so I had the cab take me there, to a pillared building above the river where I found the man smug in a gauzy library, having Scotch and cigars with what he called the consortium—half a dozen fat whiskered high-collared white men sunk like nails into plush chairs in front of a fireplace so big three of them could’ve held hands and walked into it. Butter on bacon, that room was: white marble floors and velvet chairs, Negro waiters behind the rich men, and two bored security men along the wall. Thirty millionaires in Spokane and six of them sat right here, like potted plants in this gilded room, ripe prig-pipes playing chess with the whole town.

  Low chatter rose from the chairs—a set of whiskers complaining about the mayor hiring the Olmsted brothers to map a new park system. “I said to Pratt, you’ll spend a million dollars to have some New Yorker tell you to put grassy fields where our grassy fields are.”

  The other men laughed, and one said, “What’s your complaint, Charles, if they pass the bond, they’ll buy up your scabland, hire your crews to build the parks, and you’ll end up with half the money.”

  “He’s complaining because he wants all of it.”

  I wondered how many I could get in that fireplace before the security men stopped me.

  Brand’s back was to me, so I edged into the room, past more wall portraits of bristled white faces. He looked up and saw me, smiled, and began to speak, “Oh, Mr.—” before he remembered my admonition and brought his finger to his lips. I tilted my head to the hallway, stepped out, and waited for him.

  When one of the waiters walked by with a tray of cognacs, I snagged one, drained it, put it back.

  Finally, Brand came out in the hall. He was bleary-eyed drunk. Worse, one of the other men in the library had come with him and stood nearby, a few steps back. He was thin and pale, with a few long hairs pulled over his pate like wild grasses on a beach.

  Brand chattered: “I’m sorry, Mr. . . . Grant. I know you said not to mention your real name, but Mr. Tate here is my dearest friend and closest ally, and I promised I would introduce him.”

  I opened my mouth to say it wasn’t a good idea, him introducing us, but drunk Lem Brand had already turned to his mate and waved him over: “Bernard, come, meet the famous detective”—and now he whispered—“Del Dalveaux.”

  Christ.

  “Such a pleasure!” This Bernard was drunker and more gal-boy booster than even Brand. “And how are you finding our fine city?” he asked. “I have heard it described more than once as the London of the West.”

  “Have you?”

  “Because of the rivers, I mean. The Spokane and the Thames.”

  “Yes,” I said, “those are both rivers.”

  “I hope someone has taken you to the Auditorium,” he said. “It has the largest stage in the world.”

  “Perhaps you could tell me about it another time,” I said. “I really must speak with Mr. Brand.”

  “Of course,” he said. “Anarchists and dynamiting bums—we appreciate the work you’re doing—Lem here has kept us all abreast and has told us of your great reputation. But it must have been quite a surprise when you found out that Lem’s driver was Lem himself!”

  “Mmm,” I said, a bullfrog’s croak.

  Lem Brand jumped in then. “But we’ve got them on the run, don’t we, Del? Chief Sullivan squeezing from the top and you and I from our end.”

  “Mmm.” I felt the sweat on my brow—wiped it with the back of a spotty hand. I had aged ten years in a week in Spokane, and I was old when I arrived. “Speaking of which, Mr. Brand, I really must speak to you in private.”

  This was too much excitement for his friend Tate. “Of course! Infiltrations and espionage, much to discuss!” He fluffed the tails of his coat as if he were a partridge and backed away.

  “You have a report from our operation in Montana?” Brand asked. Still playing secret agent. “Was our dinner for three a success?”

  “It didn’t go,” I said.

  “What do you mean?”

  “I mean it didn’t go.”

  “Wait. None of them?”

  “It didn’t go.”

  “You said Reston, at least. You promised!”

  “It didn’t go. The Serb took their money, but it wasn’t right for the other.”

  “You said this was the place—”

  “It was a place.”

  He was quiet. More than disappointment on his face, desperation—

  “I’ll take care of it,” I said.

  “You said this Serb gang—”

  “My man there—”

  “You said
the farther from Spokane—”

  “Right, it would have been—”

  “Are they coming back here? Are you planning to do it here?”

  “I don’t know yet.”

  His face reddened. “When will you know?”

  “I’m gathering information.”

  His irritation became something else. Fear, maybe. “Are they here now?”

  “As I said, I’m gathering information.”

  “Yes, I heard that!” Brand’s face constricted, mouth tight, and he spoke quietly. “I hope I didn’t make a mistake.” His eyes going straight to my grog-blossom nose again. “Hiring reputation over youth.”

  My shoulder twitched with the desire to punch his fat mug. “You may of course hire anyone you like. But as long as I am here, I will take care of it. Now, if there is nothing else—”

  He grabbed my arm. “Mr. Dalveaux—”

  I looked down at his hand. He let go of my arm.

  I barely made it out of there with my breath. I seethed on the street. Muttered. Walked until I found a rat tavern and fell in—had a beer, a whiskey, and two more before I could breathe. The last one I sipped, and that’s what started my thinking: So Brand wants youth over reputation? The jobs you do for these sons of bitches. I infiltrated the Molly Maguires and the WFM, and this prig questions me about a union girl and a handful of tramps.

  I could do these three in my sleep.

  The point, of course—in the old days Del would have done the job himself. Trusting it to Bolin had been soft. Lazy.

  I was replaying my mistakes while the bartender dragged a drunk out of the place by his underarms. He edged the man through the door and dropped him on the sidewalk in front of the tavern. Came back slapping his hands together to get the bum off. “Been quiet, with so many in jail,” he said from behind the bar.

  I settled up. Outside the tavern, I saw the man dumped on the sidewalk, sleeping it off, legs draped over the curb, head bent like he’d cocked his ear to a joke. I looked back in the tavern. The bartender was wiping down where I’d sat. Below me, the bum slothered like a hog. There was an old hitching post in front of the building. I bent over and lifted the sleeping man’s head, leaned it against that post like a pillow. The bum was maybe forty, skin and bone but for his gut, thin hair, rotted teeth. I lifted my leg and stomped down on his neck. Two more to his ripe melon, one each for Brand and his friend, but on the third stomp, I felt something in my ankle give and I limped away, cursing that slick tramp head and my own temper.

  Bolin was easy. Same Sixth Street saloon in Wallace where I’d paid him and where we’d planned the whole thing with the tall gray Serb from Taft.

  He wasn’t surprised to see me. He would’ve checked the train tables the minute we stopped talking. Twelve years I’d worked with that ogre and still he gave me a jump—shriveled arm and leg and boiled face and that metal ring holding the gristle of his jaws together.

  He sat at a table with a fresh beer, facing the door. A dozen other men were there. Bolin would think he was safe. Nothing better than a man feeling safe. Two men at the bar shifted as I walked in. So Al had at least two men, Dwang and Snool, pointless work, their eyes following me as I stepped to the bar. I pressed between them at the railing.

  I said to the barman, “Do you have Scotch, or just that piss whiskey?”

  While he poured, I leaned forward on the rail and spoke to the apes on either side. “I might not kill Bolin, but if I do, it’s my business. Either of you makes a move and you’ll go next, right?” I opened my coat on the .32 Savage.

  I was alert, three quarters sober, a twitch from tears. I took a sip, stepped from the railing, turned, and smiled friendly, first at Dwang, then at Snool.

  “Boys,” I said. I walked across the floor and sat next to Bolin at his table. He’d put an empty chair on his good side—where he wanted me to sit. I grabbed the chair and carried it to the other side of the table. His shite side.

  “Looking good, Al. New scars?”

  “I figured you’d come.”

  “Fucking genius.”

  He pointed at my whiskey. “How many of those you had, Del?”

  “Every single one of them, Al.”

  “Look, there was nothing I could do. In Taft.”

  “So you said.”

  “Didn’t go is all. Sometimes things just don’t go.”

  “So you said.”

  “The Serb got his money and I guess he lost interest in the other.”

  “Right.”

  “It was a drunk crew. Nothing to be done.”

  “You could’ve done it yourself.”

  “It never occurred to me that the Serb wouldn’t. Son of a bitch killed his own nephew over two bucks.”

  “So why didn’t he?”

  “The girl got to ’em, Del.”

  “What do you mean, she got to them?”

  “After they took her money—what she said got to ’em.”

  “What did she say?”

  “I don’t know, exactly.”

  “You weren’t there?”

  “Well, no, Del. I cleared out. I set it up and I left. I figured thirty men could handle two bums and a girl. And I didn’t think you’d want me connected to that business. What good would I be to you later if I lost my cover?”

  “What good are you to me now?” If my ankle didn’t ache from the bum-stomp earlier, I might have meloned Bolin’s rotten face, too. What a mistake, giving him this job. Old and tired, Del, you are. “Where’s my money, Al?”

  “I have it. I decided—”

  “You decided?”

  “I decided I’m keeping half for my trouble.”

  I laughed. “Those boys in Taft have your money, Al. Go get it from them. My money was for the job you didn’t do.”

  “Well, I’m keeping two hundred.”

  I laughed again.

  “Okay, one hundred. I have to get out of town, Del.”

  “I’ll get you out of town for nothing. Out of every town.”

  “I’m keeping a hundred, Del.”

  I looked up. The apes were staring. Barman, too. And one at the door. So that was at least four. Christ, Bolin was spooked. But in a place like this, more wasn’t necessarily better. Give me one good man over four rattled mettle fetchers any day. Especially for close work. The bark of the Savage would be to my advantage, the question was order: which first. Dwang. Taller ape. Do that one and everyone stops to watch that man curl around his guts and then Snool, and that’s when I turn and do Al, slow, no rush or panic, then see if any other man makes a move, although in my experience, those three will be plenty—

  Al interrupted my thinking. “There were surprises, too. You didn’t tell me the girl was pregnant. And you could’ve told me Brand had another man inside.”

  I turned and looked straight into Al’s mangled face. I did feel compassion for him, carrying that mug around. And it was true, I hadn’t told him Gurley Flynn was pregnant. Had I thought Al wouldn’t follow through if he knew that? Or was it some kind of guilt over the other Spokane job I’d done? I also hadn’t told him about the younger Dolan. I was slipping. “I should’ve told you about the kid.”

  “What kid?”

  “Ryan Dolan. He tell you that Brand has him on retainer?”

  “What are you talking about?” Bolin asked.

  “What are you talking about?”

  “I’m talking about the Pinkerton.”

  “The what?”

  “The Pinkerton. Reston. The guy playing a bum. What if we’d done him in? The shit they’d rain down on us? Even in Taft you can’t just go kill a Pinkerton. You should have told me, Del.”

  I was quiet.

  “You didn’t know,” he said.

  “You’re sure?” I asked.

  “Yeah, I’m sure. He slipped out and followed me. Knocked me down in the snow. Asked a bunch of questions about who paid me. Said he’d been on the job almost a month, that Lem Brand hired him to go deep.”

  Jesus. How
many men did Brand have on this job? I thought back to the dossiers. Was it possible he didn’t know Reston was the man he’d hired? Back when I went deep, I used fake names. Or was it darker than that? Had Brand wanted me to take out a man he’d hired? Was possible with him. Christ, planting a Pinkerton could’ve ended me. You can plant a dozen mutton-shunter cops, but you start killing Pinkertons, they will hound you to your last day.

  And even if Brand hadn’t known Reston was his man inside, he would’ve known he had a man inside. And he didn’t tell me that. I had asked him, “Is there anything else?” and he had stalled. Told me about the kid but not another detective inside.

  “You look like a man with troubles, Del.”

  I shrugged. “Put my money on the table, Al.”

  He sniffed. Then, thinking he had the upper hand, he put a small stack of cash on the table. I swept it into my pocket without counting it. “Now the other half.”

  “Like I said, I’m keeping—”

  I grabbed the metal piece that held his jaws together and yanked it like a kid on a carousel. I pulled his face down to the table and, with my other hand, pulled the .32 Savage from my waist and leveled it below the table at the two men by the bar railing. They came up straight, but their hands were up and out, as if calming an angry animal. I held Al’s face down by the ring in his cheek. “Where’s my money, Al?”

  He fiddled in his coat and set the rest of my money on the table.

  A dozen years I’d known Al Bolin, since I worked him inside the WFM, back during the silver wars. I liked him. He had courage. Easy to turn a coward, but a coward’s work left much to be desired. A man like Bolin, you only had a small shot of turning him, but if you did, he was gold. He was inside for me when an anarchist blew up a safe house—Al the only survivor. In the hospital, his wounds bubbled and seeped, but when he came to, I was there to whisper in the hole where his ear used to be: You’re gonna come out of this, and when you do, come and find me. He did and I took care of him. Gave him money and opium, and when he could move again, I got him work. Paid him to watch meetings and stoke a riot in Havre so my employer there could convince the police to crack down on the union.

  Still, I should’ve known better than leave a job like this to him.

  I held my finger in the ring through his cheek like the trigger guard of a pistol, his head on the table between us, money in front of his nose. He looked up at me with his good eye. I spoke quietly. “Now. To show that I am not a vindictive man, take twenty back.”