A Hanging at Cinder Bottom (31 page)

The cook across the lane threw his cigar in the dirt and tore off the undershirt he wore. He took a boxer’s stance and called out, “Jack Johnson going to whip ole Jeff tonight boys!” and they cheered him hearty and loud.

Abe ignored them and took note of the Chinese man’s silver watch chain. “It’s too late,” he said. “You don’t want to be around here anyhow.” He nodded and pushed on the door.

Ah Tong stuck his foot in the channel. “Wait,” he said. He took out his billfold. He held forth two ten-dollar notes. “The booking fee you paid,” he said.

Abe cocked his head. “Keep it. Cost of travel.”

Tong put the money back and nodded. He said he was obliged. He thought a moment before he pulled back his shoe. He was on the lam and predisposed to keep things private, and he’d even thought on hiding out a few months
in his cousin’s laundry storeroom. But as he stood there, it struck him how he knew the man behind the cracked saloon door, and it seemed too odd to let go. He swallowed before he spoke. “I saw you play cards once in the Bowery, back in April.” He’d taken note of the play that night, for even then he’d recognized the player. “You bottom-decked a fat rich man and cleaned him out, and I remember thinking I’d never seen mechanics like yours before. Smooth,” he said. “Like Canada Bill Jones.”

“Wasn’t me,” Abe said. “Got the wrong fella.” He wondered at the man’s angle.

“Professor Goodblood?” Tong said.

But when he pulled back his shoe, Abe shut the door in his face.

Tong turned and watched a woman dance in her underclothes behind the big front window of Fat Ruth Malindy’s. He struck a match and lit a cigarette and stepped past the empty spool table. He regarded the black men bunched across the street. The sign above their heads read
Food Good and Cheap
.

The cook put his undershirt back on. “What you lookin for Chinaman?” he said.

Tong didn’t answer, but walked on to his cousin’s laundry.

Cinder Bottom recalled the streets of his boyhood in Los Angeles. It recalled to him Calle de los Negros and the railyards where he once played hide-and-seek.

Jim Fort had not ever perspired before stage lights the way he perspired now at the Oak Slab.
You are Chicago Phil
, he repeated in his mind, eyes shut, cards on the table before him. He wished he’d played more poker on his free time, wished he’d drunk a little more courage that afternoon.

He’d been fine on the way in, introducing the other men to Trent and Rufus Beavers as he’d rehearsed. “This is Mr. Boony Runyon from Cincinnati,” he’d said, “and this is Mr. Woodrow Peek and this is Bob Hill,” and so on. All was smooth, even the handing over of his locked metal case. “I trust your safe will be secure housing for what’s in here?” he’d said, and Trent had assured him that neither raging fire nor blast of dynamite could split his big steel bank.

Now Jim Fort mucked his cards. He wiped his sweat and thought,
This is the sweat of Chicago Phil
.

Across the dark room, Rufus Beavers whispered in the ear of Henry Trent. “Old man Tony Sharpley just came by the bar.” He showed Trent the telegram Tony had given him.

RECEIVED
at 1
RAILROAD AVE
        413 PM.
New York
NY
Jul 4 - 10

Missed the first train. Will arrive Keystone on the 7 PM

B says tell H. Trent sorry. Looks forward to meet.

Max

Trent felt young for the shortest of moments, seeing her
B
in line with his name. Were he physically capable, he’d have sprouted a hard-on.

Rufus regarded the card players. He leaned into Trent and said, “That old man’s monkey stared at me funny.” He took out his hanky and blew his nose. “I don’t particularly care for that monkey,” he said.

Abe felt the calm he’d always felt at a card table. He smiled. He looked at the faces around the Wobbler. Taffy Reed. Harold Beavers. Tiny Rutherford. Those who had always longed to sit and play against him. Those who’d practiced sufficient to clean out most professional men.

Still, by any account, it was an odd four-man game.

Taffy Reed had folded every hand.

Rutherford played a more conservative style than he had as a younger man.

Harold Beavers played loose as a goose.

Abe had asked them already, “How do you find the cards?” They were playing with Big Sun Devil Backs.

Taffy Reed said he liked the varnish. The other two said not a word.

Now Taffy studied his hand and folded again.

Rutherford pulled his chips and drank from the tall rye that Goldie had refilled a half hour prior. He stifled a belch.

Harold Beavers yawned and asked once again, “When’s that whore comin back around with more?”

Abe smiled. He said, “A madam is no man’s five-dollar chippy.”

“Say again?”

“She’ll be back presently I’d imagine,” Abe said.

Rutherford was winning. His chip stack was plenty high, but still he was uneasy. He knew there was no reason to be—after Abe had frisked them, he’d returned the favor and searched every inch to be had on the body of the Keystone Kid. After that, he’d checked the table and chairs himself, running his hand along their undersides and legs. Nothing was hidden inside the little brick room.

Harold Beavers lit a cigar and Abe shuffled before his own deal.

Rutherford could wait no longer. “I’ve got to drain it,” he said. He stood and walked to the door and unlocked it. “That the piss hole I seen across the way?” he asked.

“That’s it,” Abe answered. “Bucket’s in the back.” He thought a moment. “Watch out for the snakes,” he said.

Rutherford’s neck skin pricked. He swung open the door and stepped through.

“Leave that open,” Abe said.

“Why?”

“I’ve got to keep my eye on you.”

“You want to shake it off when I’m done too?” Rutherford said. He shook his head and left open the door and walked to the pantry.

“You’d have to be able to find it first,” Harold said.

They laughed.

Goldie came in with a tray of fresh drinks. She set one down in front of Harold. “Extra tall for you,” she said.

“Well, I knew you were sweet on me.” He tried to put his arm around her but she was too fast on her feet.

She went around the table and stood next to Abe. She set down his drink and regarded her fingertips. “This hangnail’s a cocklebur,” she said.

Abe put his arm around her waist and stared at Harold Beavers. He smiled and moved his hand to the small of her back. Under the knot of the apron she wore, his five-shot .38 was snug at the base of her spine. He took the gun in his hand and slid his arm down and put it in his lap beneath table’s edge.

To the two other men, it had looked to be only a back rub.

Harold leaned back in his chair. “Madam, you say?”

Rutherford returned from the pantry. He stepped inside and looked at Goldie.

“Sugar, you look pale,” she said. “Did you want somethin different to drink?”

Rutherford said he was fine. He smiled to her and held open the door.

She called him a gentleman as she stepped back through.

He locked it.

Abe had finished his shuffle. He pointed to the deck before him, then leaned back, hands at his lap. “You want to cut that deck?” he asked Rutherford.

Rutherford remained standing. From his side jacket pocket he withdrew both Derringers. He aimed one at Abe’s face and handed the other to Harold Beavers, who stood accordingly and aimed his at the heart.

Abe smiled. He looked at Taffy Reed for tells. The young man was wide-eyed. He swallowed and breathed from his mouth. He’d had no idea.

“Why the hell you smilin!” Rutherford screamed.

Abe said, “Man can’t smile while he’s dyin?”

Rutherford looked at Harold Beavers, who looked him back. They nodded and turned their heads back to Abe and shut one eye each and squeezed.

The shots were loud inside that little brick room.

Taffy put his hands to his ears and shut tight his eyes.

Abe twitched little more than to blink.

Harold and Rutherford looked dumbly at their guns.

Abe drew his own and stood up. He put his back to the wall and his finger inside the guard. He two-handed his weapon’s grip, right arm extended straight. He thumbed back the blued hammer and said, “You didn’t know they
made blank cartridges for a .41, did you?”

Harold Beavers recognized his position. He thought it best to go on and make a move straightaway, so he threw the little gun at Abe’s head and was fixing to jump across the table when Abe dodged, aimed, and fired. The sound was thrice as loud as the blanks. He’d hit the man in the dick.

Harold dropped to the floor and curled.

“Lord Jesus,” Taffy Reed whispered.

“Those smokeless soft points bark, don’t they?” Abe said. “I got four left. I think you’ve seen my aim.”

Rutherford dropped his Derringer on the table and put his hands over his head.

Taffy put his own up high.

Harold moaned and cursed unintelligible.

“Oh, hush now Harry,” Abe said. “That snake was syphilitic anyhow.” He moved to the door with his weapon still trained. He unlocked it blind.

Goldie stepped inside with an armful of cut rope lengths, burned at the ends. She took the long way around the table and tossed the whole mess in Taffy Reed’s lap. She took out her own gun then, Abe’s little spur-trigger pistol. “Tie up these other two and after that I’ll tie you,” she said. Then she winked at Taffy Reed.

Abe said to Rutherford, “After he binds Harry, take off your jacket and stanch that blood.” He motioned with his gun at the man’s crotch.

When the blood was stanched and the hands and feet of all three bound, Abe and Goldie sat on the Ashwood Wobbler and looked down at the men, their behinds on the dirt floor, their backs against the brick. Taffy Reed tried his hardest not to cry.

Abe trained his eyes on Rutherford, then Harold, then Rutherford again.

Harold moaned low and worked his jaw and rocked.

Rutherford stared at the floor.

Abe said, “For a while, when I was cooking all this up in my head, I thought I’d interrogate you, play you one off the other, and then for another while I thought I’d just kill you both.”

Harold Beavers growled then. He looked up at Abe and snorted and spat on his pant leg.

“You ought to save that spit,” Goldie said.

He spat again, missing her shinbone.

She shook her head. “Ought to save that spit to grease your shot-up prick. Pig might amble by.” She smiled and looked at Rutherford. “I’m sorry Rutherford,” she said. “I suppose I haven’t worked hard enough on my vulgar woman’s tongue.”

Abe crossed his ankles where they hung from table’s edge. He went on. “I figure both of you was up on Buzzard Branch that day. Figure ole Sneakup is the only man capable of swiping that rifle and climbin up the ridge without a sound.”

Now Harold hung his head as Rutherford had beside him. For once he’d shut his mouth. He’d not argue death. He’d welcome his last bullet with nothing.

Taffy Reed looked on. He’d begun to understand Goldie’s wink. They didn’t aim to kill him. It was the other two they were after.

Abe continued his thought. “Only man capable of the marksmanship with a stranger’s rifle too, I’d imagine.” He considered the thousands on thousands of birds Harold Beavers had shot from the Florida sky in order that rich women might don a more reputable hat. He wondered what that did to a man, such daily taking of life in flight. He looked at the crown of Harold’s bent head, the spiraling whorl of the small bald circle, the overabundance of staled hair dressing. “Maybe Rutherford paid you to pull the trigger,” he said. He remembered what Jake had once told him about the little man.
Don’t ever do a thing he asks you to do, and don’t ask from him so much as pass the salt and pepper
. His headache had ceased. He spoke without thinking. “More than likely it was Trent told you to track Jake and cut him down.” He uncrossed his ankles and slid from the table and stood. “But I’m not killing any man. My mother spoke nothing on killing. That’s not her way.” He considered a moment. “Not the way of her boys either.” Now Goldie slid from the table and stood at his side. They regarded the bowed heads before them. Abe said, “It’s the taking my mother was after.”