What the Dead Men Say (11 page)

    “He left this,” James said, and slid the bill and several greenbacks to the edge of the table.

    The waiter fingered the money with the skill of a pickpocket. “I’ll be bringin’ you your change,” he said, though given the slight hesitation in his voice, James knew that the man hoped there would be no change.

    “He said it was all for you.”

    The waiter laughed hoarsely. “Well, now, isn’t that a way to gladden a man’s day?” He offered James a small bow. “And I hope your day is gladdened, too, young one.”

    “Thank you.”

    “And thank you,” the waiter said, and left.

    

    

    In half an hour a rented wagon was to pull up in front of the restaurant and James was to go out and meet it. Septemus said he would be driving. He said that James should come out fast and jump up and ask no questions. His appetite sated, his hangover waning, he had started wondering again exactly what his uncle was doing.

    
Why the wagon? Why come out fast? Why ask no questions?

    He put his chin in the palm of his hand and stared out the window at the dusty street filled with pedestrians walking from one side to the other. He started thinking again of last night, of what he’d done with the girl, and he decided that the first thing he was going to do when he got back to Council Bluffs was get himself a good friend so he’d have somebody to tell about his experiences.

    Then he started thinking of Uncle Septemus’s comment that James was only half a man, that only when he took “responsibility” would he be a full man.

    James started wondering where Uncle Septemus was right then.

    

    

    In the lobby, Dodds went over to the desk and asked if Septemus Ryan was in his room.

    The clerk shook his head. “Saw both him and his nephew go out a while ago.” The clerk wore a drummer’s striped shirt and a pitiful scruffy little mustache and had a lot of slick goop on his rust-colored hair. He was the Hames’s eldest, nineteen years old or so, and this was his first job in town. As far as Dodds was concerned he took it far too seriously. The only law and order the kid respected was that of Mel Lutz who owned the hotel and two other businesses.

    “I’m going up to their room.” He put out his hand. “I’d appreciate the key.”

    “Sheriff, now you know what Judge Mason said. He said you shouldn’t ought to do that unless you check with him first. ’Bout how people had rights and all. And anyway Mel says I shouldn’t ought to do it unless I check with him first.”

    “He in his office?”

    “Yup.”

    “Then go check an’ I’ll wait here.”

    “What about the judge?”

    “The judge’ll be my concern. Now you go talk to Mel.”

    “Who’ll watch the desk?”

    “I’ll watch the desk.”

    “I ain’t sure that’d be right.”

    “What the hell you think I’m gonna do, boy-kid, steal somethin’?”

    “No offense, Sheriff, but you ain’t one of Mel’s employees. And Mel’s rule is that only a bona fide employee can be behind the desk.”

    “Boy, I just happen to be sheriff of this here burg. Now if that don’t qualify me to be behind that desk, what does?”

    “Guess that’s a fair point.”

    “Now you go tell Mel I want the key.”

    “Can I tell him why you want the key?”

    Dodds sighed. “’Cause I want to go up there and look around.”

    “Can I tell him why you want to go up there and look around?”

    “Kid, you’re lucky I don’t punch you right on the nose.”

    “I’m just askin’ the questions Mel’s gonna ask me.”

    “I think Ryan’s up to somethin’ and I want to see if I can get some kind of evidence on him.”

    The kid leaned forward on his elbow and said, “What’s he up to?”

    “Git, now. Go ask Mel. That’s all I’m gonna say.”

    The kid stood up, frowning. Obviously disappointed. Like most desk clerks, the kid was a gold-plated gossip.

    “Git,” the sheriff said.

    The kid got.

    

    

    In all, Dodds leaned on the desk for ten minutes while the kid was away. He said hello to maybe twenty people, sent icy stares at a couple of others he suspected of being confidence men working the area, and helped three different ladies out the front door with their packages.

    Dodds liked the hotel’s lobby, the leather furnishings, the ferns, the hazy air of cigar and pipe smoke, the bright brass cuspidors, the seemingly endless pinochle game that went on over in the corner. This was where the town’s men spent their retirement years. Didn’t matter if they were married or not, they always came down there. It was almost like working a shift at a factory. The missus made breakfast and then one took a morning walk and ended up at the hotel. The first thing to do was sit in one of the plump leather chairs and read the paper and then discuss any pressing politics and any pressing town gossip and then help oneself to the pinochle game. Dodds was a piss-poor pinochle player. He would have to get one hell of a lot better before he retired.

    “Here’s the key, Sheriff,” the kid said when he came back. “Mel said five minutes.”

    “So he’s setting time limits now, is he?”

    “I’m only tellin’ you what he tole me, Sheriff.”

    Dodds took the key. “Thanks, kid.”

    The kid held up the five fingers of his left hand and pointed to them with the index finger of his right hand. “Remember, Mel said five minutes.”

    Dodds restrained himself from telling the kid what an aggravating bastard he could be.

    

    

    Dodds had always liked hotels. He liked the idea of all the different kinds of people and different kinds of lives being led in them. After his wife died, he’d thought of giving up the small house they’d lived in and moving in to the hotel. He still thought about it, about taking three meals downstairs at a long table covered with a fresh white linen cloth every time, sitting up in his room with a cigar and a magazine and a rocker and watching the sunset and listening to people on their way into the festive night, just sitting there smelling of shaving soap and hair oil, clean as a whistle and without a care.

    He thought of all these things as he moved along the corridor to Ryan’s room. Taking no chances, he pulled out his revolver, put an ear to the door, and listened. That kid desk clerk could easily have missed Ryan coming back up to his room. Or hell, maybe for some reason Ryan snuck up the back way.

    He tried the door knob. Locked. He took out the key, fit it into the lock, and turned it.

    He’d been in these rooms many times. In the daylight they looked somewhat shabby. The paint had faded, some of the wallpaper had worked free, the brass beds were getting a little rusty, and the linoleum was pretty scuffed up.

    The first carpetbag he tried belonged to the kid. Or at least he assumed it did, unless a grown man carried a slingshot and a Buffalo Bill novel.

    In the second carpetbag he found the newspaper stories. There were ten in all, clipped carefully from the front pages of newspapers around the state, some with pictures, some not. It was the same terrible story again and again, the thirteen-year-old girl slain during the bank robbery, the huge rewards offered for the capture of the men, the grieving father and the outrage of the townspeople.

    Dodds also found the letter.

    The thing ran three pages on a fancy buff blue stock and it was written in a fine, clear longhand that managed to be both attractive and masculine. It said just about what one would expect such a letter to say. While reading it, Dodds kept thinking of Ryan’s brown eyes, forlorn and angry and mad all at the same time.

    Dodds had to smile about who the letter was addressed to-it was addressed to him. Ryan had thought of everything. He would come to Myles and do what he wanted and, when it was done, Dodds would have the letter for explanation as to who had done it and why it had been done and what was to be made of it in the common mind.

    Shaking his head, Dodds tucked the letter back inside the unsealed envelope, put the letter back inside the carpetbag, and left the room. He moved very quickly for a man his age.

    If he didn’t find Ryan fast things were going to get real bad in town. Real bad.

    

    

    

    There was something wrong with a man in his forties sitting in a small, crowded confessional telling the priest that not only had he taken the Lord’s name in vain, not only had he missed mass several times in the past few months, but also that he’d defiled himself. That was the term Kittredge had been taught, “defiled.” Kittredge had a prostate problem. The damn thing got boggy as a rotten apple. This was because of Mae, of course; ever since Mae had miscarried, she’d shown little interest in sex, and Kittredge never felt like forcing himself on her. He felt sorry enough for her as it was, what with the sheets a bloody mess that night and Mae not quite right about anything ever since. He’d tried whorehouses twice but afterward he felt disgusted with himself. There he was liquored up and laughing with some woman who had no morals at all and there was Mae at home in the shadows of their little house, her hands all rosary-wrapped and her gaze fixed far away on something Kittredge had never been able to see.

    Earlier this morning, just after waking, the day in the open window smelling of impending rain, these were the thoughts Kittredge had.

    Soon after, he went downstairs and scrubbed and shaved for the day. He took the clothes Mae had set out for him and tugged them on and then went into the kitchen where she had two eggs, two strips of bacon, and a big slice of toast waiting for him. She sat across from him, watching him as he ate. This always seemed to give her a peculiar satisfaction he could not understand but found endearing. She would have looked even more fondly at their child eating, he knew. Maybe that’s what she pretended, watching him this way, that he was their child.

    “You got any special plans today?” she said.

    “Sloane says there’s no work. Thought I might go down by the creek and do some fishing. Maybe I can catch us something for tonight.”

    She smiled, watched him stand up and go to the door. “Maybe I’ll bake us a cake.”

    “Now I know I’m gonna have to catch us a fish.”

    “A chocolate cake with white frosting.”

    It was his favorite kind. He walked back to her and took her face tenderly in his hands and kissed her gently on the lips. “You’re a good woman, Mae.”

    “You keep on tellin’ me that often enough, Dennis, I’m likely to start believin’ it.”

    This time he kissed her on the forehead.

    

    

    Two hours in, he’d caught nothing. He sat on a piece of limestone. The day was hot but overcast. The water was cloudy. A wild dog came by and tried to steal the lunch he’d brought along but he shooed it away, though for a few moments there the damn animal had scared him some. The county had been infested with rabies just a year ago and doctors everywhere were warning folks to be careful.

    His favorite time to fish was autumn, when the days were gold and red and brown with fall colors and the nights were silver with frost. Then he worked fyke nets and basket traps and moved downriver in his johnboat where he made driftwood fires to keep warm. The autumn embraced him and held him in a way furious summer did not. There was solace in autumn and in summer none.

    Ryan pulled the buggy into a copse of poplars. The soil there was red and sandy, the bunch grass brown from heat. His hangover was still pretty bad. He had to stop every mile or so to pee, and he kept thinking he had to vomit. The food hadn’t helped all that much.

    He left the Winchester in the buggy and set off across the woods to Kittredge’s house.

    Almost immediately after he knocked, a small, worn-looking woman came to the door.

    “Mrs. Kittredge?”

    “Yes.”

    “I’m Special Deputy Forbes.”

    “Special deputy?”

    He knew instantly she was alarmed. It was just what he wanted her to be.

    “I need to speak with your husband.”

    “With Dennis?”

    “Yes.”

    “Has he done something wrong.?”

    Ryan shook his head. “Not at all, ma’m. Not at all. He may have seen something the other day and we need to get his testimony.”

    “Seen something?” She still sounded suspicious, wary.

    “An incident in town.” Ryan smiled. Now he wanted her to ease up some, relax. “Something was taken from the jewelry store. We’re told your husband was standing in the middle of the street at that time. He may have seen the thief.”

    “Which jewelry store would that be? I didn’t know we had no jewelry store.”

    It was Ryan’s intention to remain calm. He inhaled sharply, put the smile back on his face, and said, “Forgive me, ma’m, I’m down from the state capital so I’m not all that familiar with the town here.”

    But she wasn’t trying to trap him. In fact, she helped him out of his dilemma. “Ragan’s sells jewelry. That’s the general store. They keep some jewelry in the back. Maybe you mean Ragan’s.

    “That’s exactly what I mean. That’s exactly the name the sheriff used.”

    He saw her face slacken, the heavy worry lines fading some. She shook her head. He thought he even detected a small, oddly bitter smile. “Wouldn’t that be just Dennis’s luck?”

    “Ma’m?”