Smugglers' Gold Read online

  The Western Union clerk on morning duty was a sickly looking man with sunken cheeks and a mustache that made his mouth appear off-center on his face, somehow. One of his eyes was lower than the other, too, as if his face had once been cut in half and reassembled out of kilter, carelessly. Ryder supposed that was the reason why he didn’t smile at customers or hazard any small talk while he took their messages and pocketed their money.

  During his maneuvers to avoid pursuit, Ryder had sketched the content of his telegram to Washington. Again, the address for delivery would be Director Wood’s home in the capital, and after due consideration, Ryder had reduced the message to its simplest form:

  CONTACT ACHIEVED

  He signed it GR, which could stand for George Revere, and paid the sallow clerk to send it on.

  Which left the best part of a day to kill, with no plan for exactly how to spend the time. The one thing Ryder couldn’t do was loiter around Awful Annie’s through the afternoon, assuming that the place was even open during daylight hours. At best, he would seem overeager; at the worst, somebody might suspect that he was prying into gang affairs. In either case, it made a bad beginning to whatever Bryan Marley had in mind for him.

  To fill time, Ryder strolled along the waterfront, watching the work gangs loading and unloading ships. If he was seen and questioned later, he could chalk it up to normal curiosity, a smuggler taking stock of operations in an unfamiliar port of call. In fact, he witnessed nothing that aroused his personal suspicion, but the sheer volume of cargo passing in and out of Galveston would tax an honest team of Customs agents to discover any hidden contraband. If they were paid to turn a blind eye on the docks, the possibilities were limitless.

  Ryder observed no evidence of payoffs going on, but he had not expected to. If Marley knew his business, he would deal with crooked officers in private, letting one or two distribute money to the rest, without a public assignation to embarrass anyone. And since Ryder had been dispatched to deal with Marley, not investigate the local Customs house, his only interest in local officers lay in avoiding them. If he discovered evidence of bribery, he would report it back to Washington and let somebody else follow that trail.

  At noon he stopped for lunch at a restaurant that advertised Acadian cooking, soon identified as a selection of dishes prepared by descendants of French settlers in Louisiana, now transplanted to Texas. He wound up eating jambalaya and a filé gumbo, both of which conspired to set his mouth and throat on fire. As luck would have it, the establishment kept adequate supplies of beer on ice to soothe a scalded palate, and when Ryder left the place an hour later he felt game for anything.

  More time to kill, and he employed it at the now familiar game of watching out for anyone who might be trailing him, pretending to examine wares displayed in windows of the shops he passed, using reflections in the glass to check for anyone suspicious in the neighborhood. As afternoon wore on, he gave it up, secure in knowing that the gang members he’d met last night, at least, were not pursuing him. If someone else had taken up the job, it hardly mattered, since they’d catch him doing nothing that was worth reporting back to Marley.

  Finally, after a stop for coffee at a small sidewalk café and a detour to one of Galveston’s convenient, if unpleasant, public privies, Ryder made his slow way back toward Awful Annie’s through the purple shades of dusk.

  *

  Otto Seitz was covering the door when Ryder got to the saloon. At sight of him, the bald man grimaced as if he had tasted something sour. “Didn’t think you’d make it,” he told Ryder.

  “Disappointed?”

  One side of the smuggler’s mouth ticked upward for a beat, before he said, “Back room. The rest are here already.”

  Ryder led the way, Seitz trailing. Bryan Marley had a dozen men gathered around him in the room they’d occupied last night, most of them smoking. Several, thought Ryder, would have benefited from a bath. Marley shook hands with Ryder, introducing him to those he hadn’t met before, while Seitz hung back a bit and practiced glaring from the sidelines.

  “Big doings?” Ryder asked, after he’d made the rounds.

  “Settling old scores,” Marley replied. “Jack Menefee’s boys have been stepping on our toes for months. Tonight, we put an end to it.”

  “These are the ones who tried for you last night?”

  “None other. We’ll be having the last word this evening.”

  “Ready for that?” asked Seitz, off to his left.

  “O’ course he is,” Marley replied, before Ryder could speak. “He brought his pistol, didn’t he?”

  The Colt Army felt heavier, for some reason, once Marley called attention to it. Ryder glanced around the crowded room and saw that all the others present had some kind of weapon tucked into their belts or close at hand. Most carried six-guns, half of them packing knives as well. Three double-barreled shotguns lay at one end of the table where their chief was sketching plans on butcher’s paper.

  “So, we’re here,” said Marley, as he drew an X to stand for Awful Annie’s on a street he’d represented with a narrow double line. “And this is Gerta’s place.”

  Named for another woman, Ryder noted, which appeared to be a trend in Galveston. Maybe it set a drinking, whoring mood somehow, but that appeared to be superfluous. As far as he could tell, men carried all the weight in Galveston. Except, perhaps, in Awful Annie’s case.

  “We’ll split up when we leave here,” Marley told his troops. “Half of you come with me, down Pearl Street. Otto takes the rest on Gem. We’ll have them boxed in, front and back. My signal, we bust in and finish it for good.”

  A question came to Ryder’s mind. “All of the people in this Gerta’s place belong to Menefee?” he asked.

  “There’s likely to be other customers,” Marley replied.

  “Is that a problem, Georgie?” Otto interjected.

  “Not for me,” said Ryder, “but it strikes me that your sheriff, or whatever kind of law you’ve got here, might not like us putting ordinary people in the cross fire.”

  “Ordinary people,” Seitz repeated, fairly sneering it.

  “He’s got a point,” Marley admitted. “We’ve got fairly good relations with the coppers and I want to keep it that way. When we go in, spot your marks. We know Jack’s plug-uglies by sight. Don’t mix ’em up with yokels. And no shooting women.”

  “What if one of them tries shooting us?” asked Tommy Rafferty.

  “Nobody’s saying that you can’t defend yourself,” Marley replied. “Just do your best. And Jack belongs to me. Any more questions?”

  “What about old Gerta?” Seitz inquired.

  “Gerta can look out for herself. Let’s go.”

  Marley and Seitz each took a shotgun, Joe Wallander picking up the third. As they were crowding toward the exit, Otto said, “I’ll take the new boy.”

  “Never mind,” Marley replied. “He’ll come with me.”

  *

  On the map Marley had drawn, ten or eleven inches separated Awful Annie’s from their target, but in fact, Gerta’s saloon was closer to a quarter mile away. Their party, fifteen men in all, split up as soon as they were on the street. Ryder and half a dozen others followed Bryan Marley north on Pearl, while Seitz and his team vanished down an alley on their way to Gem Street and the rear approach.

  Ryder was anxious as they moved along the mostly darkened street, wondering how he would acquit himself once battle had been joined. It was a murder party, plain and simple, not the kind of thing that was expected from an agent serving Uncle Sam. But what choice did he have? If he had begged off, any hope of staying close to Marley would have instantly evaporated—and the gang might well have turned on him as a potential witness to their scheme. Why leave him breathing if he wasn’t on their side?

  Now he was into it, faced with the quandary of how to pull it off and still avoid a charge of homicide that would contaminate whatever evidence he managed to collect and, incidentally, destroy his new career. The best that he
could think of was to wait and see what happened once they got to Gerta’s place. Protect himself and play the hand that he was dealt.

  Gerta’s saloon resembled Awful Annie’s from the street, three stories tall with clapboard walls and no sign to proclaim its owner’s name. Two drunks, unsteady on their feet, were exiting as Marley and his crew approached the swinging doors. One glimpse of all the guns appeared to sober them, and they were running full tilt by the time they reached the next corner, then vanished from sight.

  “You think they’ll bring the law?” asked Ryder.

  “Screw the law,” growled Marley, as he pushed in through the flapping doors.

  A black pianist with a derby on his head stopped playing as he entered. Conversation dwindled down to nothing in another second, faces at the bar and at a dozen tables turning toward the door in unison. Some of the patrons blanched, cringing, while others scowled and tensed for action. Ryder saw hands slipping out of sight, reaching for weapons.

  “We come looking for Jack Menefee and anyone who serves him,” Marley told the room at large, raising his voice to make it heard upstairs. “Whoever doesn’t fill that bill should get the hell out while you can.”

  Approximately half of Gerta’s customers immediately bolted for the street, past Marley and his men, one of them jostling Ryder as he stood with one hand resting on the curved butt of his Colt. Upstairs, a door banged open on the second-story landing and a tall man with a plume of red hair standing straight up on his head appeared, clad only in long underwear, holding a pistol in each hand.

  “Who wants Jack Menefee?” he called down into the saloon.

  Marley stepped forward, answering, “You know me, Jack. It’s no good playing dumb.”

  “I wondered when you’d come to see me, Bryan,” Menefee replied—then dropped into a crouch behind the landing’s rail, his pistols angling in between the balusters. Marley was quicker, squeezing off a shotgun blast, and then all hell broke loose.

  Ryder was ducking, dodging, as the room echoed with gunfire, bullets whistling overhead and all around him. Somewhere on the upper floor, a woman screamed, the sound cut short as if someone had cut it with an ax. Ryder felt a slug pluck at his sleeve before he reached the nearest table, tipped it over on its side, and hunched behind it. Flimsy cover in the middle of a lead storm, but it beat standing exposed with guns firing on every side.

  He didn’t hear the second party enter from the rear, until Seitz bellowed out some version of a Rebel yell and joined the battle with a vengeance. Ryder raised his head in time to see a blast from Otto’s shotgun lift the barman off his feet and send him tumbling through the air, a lifeless straw man. Marley stood amidst the chaos, empty scattergun discarded, Colt in hand, firing methodically at fleeing enemies. Upstairs, Jack Menefee was on his back, one foot protruding through the rail, blood dripping underneath it to the bar below.

  Behind Marley, a shambling figure rose up from the floor, one hand clutching a bloody, wounded side. It was the other hand that Ryder focused on, a long curved blade protruding from it, drawn back for a lethal strike. He fired instinctively, no thought behind it, dropping the backstabber with a bullet through his chest. The shot, so near at hand, made Marley flinch and turn. He saw the fallen adversary, glanced at Ryder then, and flashed a dazzling smile before he went back to the fight.

  It didn’t last much longer. With their chief down, caught up in the cross fire, Menefee’s surviving men seized any opportunity to save themselves. Ryder saw two of them reach windows, one escaping in a headlong dive through glass, the other hastened by a bullet in the buttocks as he rolled over the windowsill. No one bothered to chase them, or to finish off the wounded groaning at their feet. Police whistles were shrilling somewhere in the dark, outside, and it was time to go.

  Running with Marley, back down Pearl Street, Ryder felt his heart pounding against his ribs. They didn’t slow until they’d covered half a dozen blocks and ducked into a side street, huddling there to catch their breath.

  “That’s twice you’ve saved my skin,” said Marley, from the shadows.

  “Seemed the thing to do,” Ryder replied. Thinking, You’re no good to me dead.

  At least, not yet.

  9

  Back at Awful Annie’s the proprietress broke out champagne to celebrate the raid on Menefee and company, calling her girls downstairs to circulate among the victors if they weren’t already serving other paying customers upstairs. Ryder had only tasted champagne once before, at a long-ago wedding reception, and discovered—for the second time—that fizzing bubbles in a glass of wine did nothing to enhance the pleasure he derived from drinking it.

  Their triumph over the opposing gang, although complete in Bryan Marley’s estimation, had a price attached to it. One of their own—the big Swede, Wallander—had been shot dead and carried off by three of Seitz’s raiders for disposal in some place and way that was supposed to keep police from linking anybody else to the attack on Gerta’s place. Two other members of the gang had suffered minor wounds and had gone off to see a doctor Marley paid to deal with such emergencies clandestinely. Both hoped to make it back and swill their share of booze before the party finally shut down.

  Soon after their return to the saloon, Marley was called upon to eulogize their fallen comrade. While declaring at the onset that he had no gift for “speechifying,” he proceeded nonetheless, with glass in hand, to offer the memorial.

  “You all knew Joe,” he said, while the combatants muttered their assent. “He never feared a man or anything, as far as I could tell. He put his whole heart into anything he did, and that was more than most manage to do. We’ll miss him, but he went the way he would have wanted, fighting toe to toe with them that hated him and putting some of them away before they cut him down. God bless ’im, if the Devil hasn’t got him yet!”

  A cheer went up at that, and there were more drinks all around. Ryder hung back, tried keeping to himself without being standoffish in a way that might offend, sharing the laughs at jokes about how this or that member of Jack Menefee’s crew had bled when they were shot or stabbed. It was the kind of talk he’d heard after horse races, sometimes after boxing matches, although spectators at prizefights were more likely to review the action than the battered pugilists themselves. He doubted whether many soldiers in the wake of battle sat around and crowed about their knack for killing, but then again, the draftees from the recent war had not been in the game for sport or profit.

  The cops arrived some forty minutes later, after alcohol and Annie’s girls had dampened down the first wave of excitement spawned by mortal combat. There were thirteen of them, with a captain in the lead, all looking nervous as they entered Awful Annie’s, hands held close to holstered pistols. They were dressed in blue serge uniforms, vaguely resembling Yankee soldiers, but with peaked caps on their heads and badges made of polished brass. As they formed a ragged skirmish line, their captain asked, “Which one of you is Bryan Marley?”

  Marley sauntered forward, smiling. “Don’t you recognize me, Tom?”

  “It’s Captain Quinn to you,” the officer replied. “We’ve just been ’round to Gerta’s, where you left one fine helluva mess.”

  “How’s that?”

  “Jack Menefee and his boyos. Remember them?”

  “The name’s familiar, but I couldn’t put a face on it,” said Marley.

  “Not tonight, especially,” the captain answered back, “since someone blew it off for him. We’ve got nine dead so far, and three more on the way without much question.”

  “Lord have mercy! What’s this city coming to?”

  “As if you didn’t know. All innocent as babes, I guess?”

  “I wouldn’t go that far,” Marley replied. “But if you’re trying to accuse us of some wrongdoing tonight, the fact is we’ve been here all evening.”

  “And you can vouch for one another, I suppose,” the captain fairly sneered.

  “We can. Along with Annie and her ladies.”

&nb
sp; “Ladies.” Spitting out the word as if it had a rancid taste.

  “I don’t suppose you’ve come with any evidence against us?” Marley challenged.

  “Funny thing about that. Dead men aren’t too talkative, and those you left alive all have that whatchacallit. Bullshit when they can’t remember nothin’ that they saw or heard.”

  “Amnesia,” Ryder offered, from the sidelines.

  The captain spun to face him. Asked, “And who are you, exactly?”

  “George Revere.”

  “A new frog in the pond, is it?”

  “Just helping with your memory,” said Ryder.

  “Don’t you worry, boyo. I’ll remember you, all right.” He turned back toward the others. “I’ll remember all of you, and see you pay for this night’s work, if nothing else.”

  “We paid you lot already,” someone chimed in from the back.

  “Who said that!” Fuming in his rage, the captain studied ranks of passive faces, then, through clenched teeth, told them all, “Don’t think we’re finished yet!”

  “Drop in and see us any time,” Marley encouraged him. “The more, the merrier.”

  Rude laughter saw the coppers on their way, then Marley was beside him, voice low-pitched. “I’m going to relax upstairs a while. In case I miss you later, come around the docks at noon tomorrow. We’ve got cargo coming in.”

  “I’ll see you there,” Ryder replied.

  *

  Smart-aleck bastard. Who’s he think he is?”

  “What’s that?” asked Tommy Rafferty.

  “The new boy,” Otto Seitz replied. “See how he’s kissing ass with Bryan?”

  “Saved his ass a couple times, I’d say.”

  “Who asked you?”

  “You did,” Rafferty reminded him and drank another shot of whiskey.

  “Christ, am I the only one who sees it?”

  “Sees what, Otto?”

  “How he comes out of nowhere and worms his way into our business.”

  “Same way that anybody get to be a part of it. Bryan invites ’em in, is how.”