Smugglers' Gold Page 8

  It made his skin crawl, either way.

  One thing the barrooms had in common was a thick haze of tobacco smoke that clung to Ryder’s clothes and nearly made his eyes tear up. He’d never caught the smoking habit, but abstention placed him in a small minority among the boozers he had seen so far in Galveston. Another common feature, gambling, was displayed in permutations ranging from the standard dice and faro games to something known as keno, where the players marked five numbers on a printed card, then waited while a barker spun a cage atop the bar, extracting numbered wooden balls. Another smoky den encouraged wagering on feats of strength, chiefly arm wrestling. In yet another, drinkers bet their money on a fight between a scorpion and a tarantula, penned up together in a cardboard box.

  Ryder was on his ninth saloon, feeling the hour and the beer he’d drunk, when he spied Bryan Marley on the far side of the room. He wasn’t sure at first, just registered a dark-haired man fitting the general description he’d received, and made his slow way through the press of bodies until he could get a closer look. The man—Marley, or someone else—was sitting with three others at a table, near the west end of the bar as oriented from the entrance, pouring shots of liquor from a dark unlabeled bottle, laughing at some story one of them had told.

  From fifteen feet, risking a glance in their direction, Ryder glimpsed a scar along the tall man’s jaw line, on the left. Better, but still not good enough. He waited, sipping stale, flat beer, until one of the others at the table tugged the scarred man’s sleeve and called him Bryan, then leaned in to ask a question Ryder didn’t catch.

  A lucky turn—but what came next? Approaching Marley where he was, with friends around him, was a losing proposition. Hasty action would not aid his cause and was more likely to rebound against him. It was better, Ryder thought, to wait and watch, eavesdrop a bit if he could get away with it, and maybe follow Marley when he left the bar if that was feasible.

  If not, at least he’d found a place where Marley liked to spend his time and money. Ryder couldn’t say he was a regular, for sure, but once he had a starting place …

  Behind him, at the table, Marley told the others he was leaving. Ryder left some money on the bar and made his own way toward the exit, careful not to look and see if any of the others rose with Marley. Outside, on the sagging sidewalk, Ryder drifted to his left and ducked into the deeper shadows of an alleyway that hid him while he watched the door for Marley to appear.

  His man came out alone, looking around, and struck a match to light the stub of a cigar protruding from his mouth. When it was going to his satisfaction, Marley stood and smoked awhile, then turned away from Ryder, moving west along the sidewalk with a sailor’s rolling gait. Ryder gave him a half block’s lead, then left the alley and began to follow Marley on his way.

  To where?

  It hardly mattered. Any information he could gather on the man, at this point, would be useful. Best of all would be his home address. Beyond that, Ryder thought, he’d take whatever he could get.

  They had covered three long blocks, with Ryder hanging well back from his quarry, when it happened. Three men stepped out of an alley, blocking Marley’s path, while yet another crossed the street to come around behind him, cutting off retreat. From the expressions on the faces he could see, revealed by lamplight, Ryder guessed they didn’t qualify as friends.

  He closed the gap, but cautiously, doing his best to keep from clattering along the wooden planks beneath his boots. From forty feet, he picked out terse, determined voices, though he couldn’t make much sense of what they said. A challenge, maybe, or an accusation of some kind. Marley stood tall, facing the men in front of him, then glanced over his shoulder at the one standing behind him.

  “Only four of you?” he asked them, sounding reasonably calm.

  “We reckon it’s enough,” one of them answered, as he drew a wicked-looking knife.

  7

  Ryder had stopped dead on the sidewalk when the men accosted Marley, hanging back in shadows where no lamplight fell. He had a choice to make, and quickly. Should he intervene or let the confrontation run its course? If Marley died before his eyes, was that the end of his assignment or a complication that diverted him toward other targets? On the moral side, could he stand by and watch a murder, even if the victim was himself a criminal?

  Oddly, he found the latter prospect did not tweak his conscience much. There was a class of people, he had found, who lived outside the law and settled their disputes without involving courts and lawyers. Generally, when they killed or maimed each other, it had no more impact on so-called polite society than when he crushed a cockroach. They existed in a world apart, and only when their violence spilled into “better” neighborhoods were any but the most extreme of moralists alarmed.

  No, Ryder thought, he could stand back and watch a killing, but he worried how it would affect Director Wood’s opinion of him, and his service with the agency.

  Having decided he must intervene, the question that remained was how? He had no time to ponder it and took the only avenue that instantly occurred to him, slumping his head and shoulders, making sure to drag his feet and mutter to himself distractedly as he moved forward, doing his best imitation of a drunkard.

  They were bound to see him, three of Marley’s adversaries facing the direction Ryder came from, but they did not seem to notice him at once. He overheard a bit more of their conversation as he lurched and staggered toward them, tilting like a sailor on a storm-tossed deck.

  “You had your chance to quit,” one of the ambush party said.

  “I didn’t feel like leaving,” Marley answered.

  “Well, you’re—what’n hell is this, now?”

  So they’d spotted him. Ryder lifted his head, eyes narrowed down to slits, wearing a loose,

  lopsided smile. “Evenin’, gents,” he slurred. “Nice night for it.”

  All of them were watching his approach now, Bryan Marley likely wondering if the distraction could be useful, maybe even his salvation.

  “Just a sot,” the man nearest to Ryder told his three companions. “I’ll get rid of him.”

  Ryder met him halfway, stumbling on his last step so the thug would either have to catch him or jump back and let him fall. Instinctively, the burly man reached out to grasp Ryder with knobby-knuckled hands, his face a mask of pure contempt.

  Ryder let his momentum carry him, driving his right forearm into the stranger’s mug. He felt the nose crack, heard the shout of pain, then brought his right knee up into his target’s groin with crushing force. The shout became a wheeze, his interceptor doubling over, dropping to his knees, and vomiting across the wooden planks. To keep him there, Ryder hauled back and kicked him in the face.

  Marley was lashing out by then, himself, punching the nearest of his enemies with force enough to stagger him. The other two leaped in immediately, flashing knives, but Marley managed to avoid their blades, hopping away from them and off the sidewalk, to the unpaved street. One of them followed him, still swiping at him with his long knife, while the other turned toward Ryder.

  “Don’t know who you are,” he said, advancing, “but I’m gonna gut you like a tarpon.”

  Ryder scuttled backward, gave himself some room, and drew his Colt Army. “I’d think about that twice, if I were you,” he said.

  The bruiser thought about it for a second, made his choice, and cocked his arm as if to throw the knife. Before he had a chance to follow through, Ryder lunged forward, pistol-whipping him across the face. It staggered his opponent, drawing blood, and Ryder struck again immediately, kicking at his enemy’s right knee, buckling the leg. As he collapsed, Ryder stepped in and brought a boot down on his knife hand, crushing it, then bent down to relieve him of the dagger.

  Marley was dodging, feinting with his last standing assailant, parrying the brawler’s quick thrusts with a knife he’d drawn from somewhere underneath his coat. Steel clanged as blades collided, both men ducking, circling, as if they were used to fighti
ng for their lives. The strange part, from the look on Marley’s face, was that he seemed to be enjoying it.

  Until the odds shifted against him, anyway.

  The slugger he’d knocked down a moment earlier was rising, groggy but determined not to miss the action’s finish. Ryder moved around the dancing duelists, closing in to meet the odd man out. Distracted, turning toward the interloper he had never seen before tonight, the ruffian stooped to retrieve his fallen knife.

  And it was Ryder’s turn to try a throw, although he’d never practiced it. Holding his borrowed dagger by the blade, he put his weight behind the pitch with no idea which end would hit his target, if it struck at all. In fact, the pommel smacked into his adversary’s forehead with sufficient force to pitch him over backward, sprawling empty handed in the street.

  An anguished cry behind him suddenly demanded Ryder’s full attention. Turning, he found Marley in a clinch with his would-be assassin, both men standing rigid for a moment in the lamplight. Marley pushed away a moment later, gave his dirk a sideways flick to clear its blade of blood, and watched the man he’d stabbed collapse facedown.

  “Well, now,” he said to Ryder. “I suppose you’d better tell me who you are, or maybe use that Colt.”

  “You want to talk about it here? Right now?” Ryder inquired.

  Marley considered it, surveyed the scattered bodies of his enemies, and said, “All right. Put up the gun and come with me.”

  Ryder holstered his Colt and fell in step beside the man he’d traveled some twenty-three hundred miles to find. Marley seemed perfectly relaxed, now that the skirmish was behind him, but he kept an eye on Ryder all the same.

  “George Revere,” said Ryder, when they’d covered half a block and turned a corner, with their fallen adversaries out of sight. “And you are … ?”

  “Bryan Marley. You aren’t drunk at all, I take it?”

  “Thought I’d have a better chance to get in close,” said Ryder, “if they didn’t take me seriously.”

  “Right. And why’d you bother?”

  “As opposed to watching you get killed, you mean?”

  “Or turning back and going on about your business. It’s what I’d have done.”

  “You have a funny way of saying thank you, Mr. Marley.”

  “Make it ‘Bryan,’ since you saved my skin. Same question: why?”

  “I might have watched you fight with one, or even two. The four of them, I guess it just seemed wrong to me.”

  “Felt wrong enough to risk your life?”

  “Maybe I didn’t think it through.”

  “We haven’t met before,” said Marley. Not a question.

  “No.”

  “You don’t sound much like Galveston.”

  “I move around a lot,” said Ryder.

  “Doing what, if you don’t mind my asking?”

  “This and that. I move commodities from here to there.”

  “Commodities. What kind?”

  “Whatever’s in demand. Man has to make a living.”

  “True. I’ve done a bit of that myself,” Marley replied.

  “And made some enemies along the way, I guess.”

  “Competitors. Some take it worse than others when you top them on a deal.”

  “Apparently.”

  “So, thank you.”

  “Welcome.”

  “Since we both agree you’re sober, could you stand a drink?”

  “I wouldn’t mind.”

  “You ever been to Awful Annie’s?”

  “Haven’t had the pleasure,” Ryder said.

  “Some might not call it pleasure,” Marley told him, “but the Menefees won’t find us there.”

  “The Menefees?”

  “Our sparring partners. There are more than four of ’em.”

  “I see.”

  “The good news is, they won’t know who you are if you’re just new in town.”

  “My lucky day.”

  “The bad news is, the ones we didn’t kill will recognize you next time.”

  “Ah.”

  “You might consider getting out of town.”

  “I just got in today.”

  “Like what you’ve seen so far?” asked Marley.

  “I’ve seen worse.”

  “Moving commodities.”

  “You never know where you’ll end up.”

  “Ain’t that the truth.”

  “This place we’re going—”

  “Awful Annie’s.”

  “Right. Is it much farther?”

  “Two blocks, give or take.”

  “It’s a saloon?”

  “They sell a bit of everything.”

  “That’s handy.”

  “Can be, if you know the management.”

  “And you do.”

  “Pretty well. It’s like my second home.”

  Ryder refrained from asking where his first home was. Too much, too soon.

  “And here we are,” said Marley, as they neared a three-story ramshackle building with a tavern on its ground floor, music from a trumpet and piano blaring past its bat-wing doors into the street. There was no sign announcing Awful Annie’s, maybe something that you had to know before approaching the anonymous establishment.

  Marley pushed through the swinging doors and Ryder followed him inside.

  *

  Another crowded, smoky room. As awful went, it didn’t seem much worse than any other place Ryder had visited so far in Galveston. In fact, he might have said the painted women circulating through the room, some perched on knees or hanging over gamblers’ shoulders, were younger and marginally more attractive than those who’d been working the saloon where he first spotted Bryan Marley.

  He was trailing Marley toward the bar when someone shouted, “There’s the boy himself!” and shouldered through the crush to intercept them. Balding and bearded, flat-nosed. Ryder couldn’t see his chest, but he assumed that this was Otto Seitz.

  Marley confirmed it when he spoke, saying, “I see you’re nice and comfortable, Otto. I could’ve used your help tonight. More trouble with the Menefees.”

  Seitz glowered. “You’re okay, though?”

  “Thanks to George, here,” Marley said, cocking a thumb over his shoulder.

  Seitz appeared to notice Ryder for the first time, narrowing his eyes. “George, is it? Got another name to go with that?”

  “Revere,” Ryder replied. “No kin to Paul.”

  “Huh?”

  “Never mind.”

  Seitz shifted his attention back to Marley. “So, what happened?”

  “Hunsaker and Sloan were waiting for me outside Jenny’s, with a couple others. Thought they might filet me.”

  “But you beat ’em.”

  “We did,” Marley said, tipping a nod toward Ryder. “If he hadn’t happened by, you just might be in charge.”

  Seitz turned his gimlet gaze on Ryder once again. “Awright, so he’s a Good Samaritan. Now he can—”

  “Stay right here and have a drink or three,” said Marley, interrupting his lieutenant. “Right, Otto?”

  Before Seitz had a chance to answer, someone shouted Marley’s name out in a brassy voice and Ryder saw a woman of astounding girth approaching them, plowing ahead and jostling anyone who blocked her path without a semblance of apology. She must have weighed three hundred pounds, confined after a fashion by a larger version of the outfits worn by other women prowling the saloon. Her face was painted garishly, with bright rouge on her cheeks and kohl smugding her eyelids under reddish hair piled high and spiked with feathers.

  “Annie,” Marley said as she embraced him.

  Riddle solved.

  “You’ve been a stranger lately,” Awful Annie chided, as they disengaged.

  “Been keeping busy,” Marley said, by way of an excuse.

  “And raising Cain, from what I hear?”

  “Who from?” asked Marley.

  “Oh, the usual.”

  “Uh-huh.”

 
; She looked past Marley now, toward Ryder, asking, “Who’s your handsome friend?”

  “Annie, meet George Revere. He pulled my fat out of the fire tonight.”

  “My girls tell me there ain’t an ounce o’ fat on you,” the lady of the house replied. “Though I have yet to find out for myself.” She winked at Marley, then reached out for Ryder. “Welcome, George. I hope you’ll make yourself at home.”

  Ryder was reaching for her hand when she enfolded him with stout arms, crushing him against her more than ample breasts. The hug was brief but powerful, leaving him close to breathless when she pushed away.

  “You’ll want the usual, I guess?” she said to Marley.

  “Maybe just a quiet corner, first,” he told her.

  “Quiet’s hard to come by, but you want to use the room in back, it’s free.”

  “Appreciate it, Annie.”

  Marley led the way, Seitz making sure he got between his boss and Ryder, giving no sign that he meant to shed the sour face. Before they reached the back room, three more men had fallen into step with them, all peering curiously at the stranger in their midst.

  Annie was right about the room. It offered privacy, once Marley shut the door, but music from the main barroom was only muffled by its walls, and Ryder heard a bedstead creaking rhythmically above them, from the second floor.

  Another job well done.

  When they were settled at a table, whiskey all around, Marley finished off the introductions. Joining him and Seitz were Tommy Rafferty, Ed Parsons, and Joe Wallander. Ryder repeated each new name in turn while shaking callused hands and memorized their rugged faces. Once they’d heard their boss’s story, each of them seemed fairly well disposed toward him for helping Marley out of a tight spot.

  Except for Otto Seitz. Ryder had worked out for himself that Marley’s second in command would need a better reason to relax his vigilance than Ryder saving Marley’s life. He would be one to watch with special care, a wild card in the game they were about to play.