Louisiana Laydown

12

The acrid smell of gunpowder still hung in the air when Fargo reached the top of the steps, with H.D. and Anderson hot on his heels. The front door of the Blue Emporium was standing open, and lying face-down in a pool of his own blood was Senator Beares.

Hattie was standing over the body, her back to the stairs and a small pistol in her hand, while Parker stood next to the door, his mouth hanging open in shock.

“What the hell happened up here?” Fargo demanded.

Hattie spun toward him, and he quickly reached out and disarmed her. A woman with a gun was a dangerous thing in almost any circumstance, which Fargo knew from hard-won experience.

H.D. took the pistol from Fargo’s hand and demanded his own explanation.

“I didn’t kill him, if that’s what you’re suggesting,” ]Hattie snapped.

“I hadn’t suggested it yet,” H.D. said. “But you are the one standing here with a gun and Senator Beares looks pretty dead to me.”

“She didn’t do it,” Parker said. “We . . . Beares opened the door and there was someone standing on the steps, waiting for him. He shot Beares and Hattie pulled out her pistol and fired back, but the villain had already fled down the steps and into the street.”

Fargo stepped over Beares’ body and looked out on the street, where curiosity about the shot was bringing people outside. He scanned the crowd, but the dark made most of the faces virtually anonymous. He knelt down on the steps, looking for any traces of blood. “There’s no sign here,” he said to H.D. “No blood except for Beares’.”

“Hattie,” H.D. said. “I’ve got to take you in for questioning and send a couple of men over to pick up Senator Beares’ body.”

“Questioning?” Hattie snapped. “Why? Senator Parker just vouched for me.”

“I’m aware of your relationship with Senator Parker, ” H.D. said. “And it makes sense that he’d want to protect you—and his investment in the Blue Emporium. You need to come with me.”

“This . . . this is outrageous!” Hattie screeched. “Why would I kill Senator Beares?”

“I don’t know,” H.D. said. “But you can tell me all the reasons you wouldn’t down at the jail.”

“Is this absolutely necessary?” Parker demanded. “We have a game to finish.”

“Not really,” Anderson said, coming up the stairs for a second time.

“What do you mean by that?” Parker asked.

“Horn is gone,” Anderson said. “And so is our money.”

“Game called on account of murder,” Fargo said. “Perfect.”

“Why are you up here, Fargo?” the senator asked. “You were supposed to be downstairs watching over our money.”

“No, Senator,” Fargo said. “I was supposed to be watching the players, remember? That’s what you hired me for. When the players split up, I had to make a choice. I chose to stay downstairs until the shooting started up here.”

“Damn it all to hell!” Parker shouted. He stepped outside and walked down the steps. “Michaels, Douglas! Get over here!”

Two men drifted in from the crowd and Parker spoke rapidly to them, no doubt sending them out to search for Horn and the missing money. He came back up the steps and said, “They’ll find him.”

“I wouldn’t bet on it,” Fargo said. “All of this, I think, was pretty well planned.” He turned to Hattie. “Wasn’t it, Miss Hamilton?”

“I don’t have any idea what you’re talking about!” she snapped.

“Why don’t you take her away now, H.D.?” Fargo suggested. “I’ll come by in a bit and see if I can help you shed some light on this mess.”

“You do that, Fargo,” he said. He took Hattie by the arm and began walking her down the steps. Her voice rose to a screeching protest that faded as he moved her down the street at a rapid walk.

“What are you going to do now, Fargo?” Anderson asked.

“What I do best,” Fargo replied. “I’m going to find Horn.”

“This isn’t the wilderness, Fargo,” Senator Parker said. “There are no tracks in the dust for you to follow.”

“I don’t quit that easily, Senator Parker,” Fargo said. “I’ll find him and bring him back.”

“Just make sure you don’t lose your way,” he said. “With all our money.”

Anderson chuckled grimly. “I think maybe you hired the wrong kind of man, Parker,” he said. “Fargo doesn’t strike me as the kind of fellow who would do such a thing.”

“Maybe,” the senator admitted. “But it’s more likely that my men will find him first.”

“And then where will our money go?” Anderson asked. “And that doesn’t even begin to address the true stakes we were playing for.”

“No, it doesn’t, does it?” Parker replied. “Perhaps we’ll have to work out another arrangement later.”

“This is my part of town,” Anderson said. “If you want it, you’ll either win it or take it by force. But I’ll be damned if I’m going to give it to you just because you threaten me.”

“You’re fighting a losing battle, Anderson,” he replied. “Sooner or later, all of this will belong to me.”

“I guess we’ll see, won’t we?”

“That’s enough,” Fargo said. “I’m not going to stand here all night while you two work yourselves up to a fight. Go on back to your places and I’ll get to work.”

Parker waved a hand dismissively. “Whatever you say, Fargo. Just be sure that if you do find Horn, you come back with our money.”

Anderson didn’t speak, just turned and stalked out into the night. Several men fell in next to him as he moved down the street, and Fargo watched long enough to make sure they were gone, then waited until Parker, too, found some men to bring up his carriage and drive him back to his mansion. Inwardly seething, Fargo started into the warren of streets surrounding the Blue Emporium.

Somehow, Horn had slipped out with a lot of money and half the thugs in the city would be on his trail. But Fargo knew that sometimes the fastest way to track a man was to follow instinct instead of a trail. He’d meant to play the people tonight, and had been played himself.

It was not a sensation that he enjoyed very much at all, and he was certain that Hattie was mixed up in the whole thing somehow. But before he could prove that, he’d have to catch Horn and get the money that had been stolen.

Worse still, if his suspicions about those involved were correct, he had more enemies right now than Horn himself.

The city streets were quiet once more when, two hours after the shooting, Fargo slid around the back side of the Blue Emporium. He’d wanted to listen to H.D. question Hattie, but his instincts told him that Horn hadn’t gone all that far.

Kicking a scavenging rat out of his way, Fargo moved to stand beside the door that led into the kitchen. Inside, Matilda alternately spoke and sang softly to herself. She had a sweet voice that carried long, low notes of melancholy in it. He imagined that working for Hattie Hamilton would do that to most anyone.

After waiting almost a half hour more, he heard Matilda mutter, “Lord God, but that man does like his vittles, don’t he?”

As far as Fargo knew, there were no men left inside the Blue Emporium, so he continued to trust his instincts and silently opened the back door and stepped into the shadows that surrounded it. Matilda was standing at the counter, her head wrapped up in a towel of some kind and wearing a housedress that was so large it could have served as a field tent for any two normal-sized soldiers.

She was making a large plate of food, most of it out of the cold storage box set into one wall. Fried chicken, cut-up carrots, and coleslaw covered the plate. She added two cold buttermilk biscuits and a large pat of butter. “That ought to do him,” she muttered. “And if it doesn’t, he can damn well make more for his own self.”

Fargo was considering his options when his instincts tried to scream a warning, but it was too late. He felt the cold steel barrel of a pistol pressed up against the back of his skull.

“You don’t want to move, Mr. Fargo,” Horn said from behind him. “Not even a twitch until I say so, understood?”

“I understand,” Fargo said. “I guessed you were still here.”

“You’re a good guesser,” Horn said. “Or just a bit smarter than the others.”

Matilda watched with wide-eyed interest from the kitchen as Horn pushed Fargo into the dimly lit space. “Mr. Horn!” she said. “Why on earth you puttin’ a gun to that man’s head? I thought you wanted to eat!”

“Sit down, Fargo,” Horn said, moving him toward one of the chairs. “Maybe we can talk a bit.”

Fargo sat down and finally managed to get a look at Horn’s face. He appeared tired, but his eyes were still watchful. “You don’t want my guns?” Fargo asked.

“Not unless I have to have them,” Horn said. He sat down heavily in another chair, but kept his gun aimed and ready. “We need to talk.”

Matilda set the plate down on the kitchen table next to Horn’s elbow and said, “I’m goin’ back to my sleep, Mr. Horn. If you need something else, you’re already in the kitchen.”

“Fair enough,” Horn said. “Thank you, Matilda, and good night.”

“Good night,” she said, heading through a door Fargo hadn’t seen which led into the second sitting room, where Horn had been waiting for him.

Once she was gone—her heavy tread making the stairs above their heads creak alarmingly—Horn said, “Good, now we can have a talk without listening to that woman ramble.”

“So, talk,” Fargo said, wondering where this was leading.

Horn reached inside his coat and pulled out a badge. “The name’s not Horn,” he said. “It’s James McKenna. I’m a Pinkerton agent.”

The light dawning, Fargo nodded. “So where’s the real Horn?” he asked.

“Dead,” McKenna said. “I had hoped to use him to find out more about Parker, Beares, and Anderson, but when I went out to his plantation, I found him in his parlor, dead maybe one or two days. It looked like a heart attack, maybe. He was slumped over his desk, and I guess it’s a lucky thing I showed up. All of the money he’d planned on using for this game was in stacks on his desk.”

“None of his workers had bothered it?” Fargo asked, amazed.

McKenna laughed. “Apparently, he’d told them not to disturb him, no matter what.”

“They took his orders seriously, I take it,” he said.

“I’m pretty sure they heard him collapse,” McKenna said, “and just left him in there to die. Horn wasn’t a very nice man, by all accounts.”

“How is it that Parker or Beares didn’t recognize that you weren’t Horn?” Fargo asked. “I assumed they knew him.”

“They did,” McKenna said, “but only through correspondence. Horn’s plantation is up near Lafayette. He was known by reputation to be something of a gambler.”

“I’ll be damned,” Fargo said. He gestured to the gun in McKenna’s hand. “How long do you suppose you’re going to keep pointing that thing at me?”

“Just one question,” McKenna said, “before I put it away.”

“What’s that?” he asked.

“Are you sleeping with Hattie Hamilton, too?”

“Hell, no,” Fargo said. “I prefer my women to be poison free, and she’s the kind that might be death in the sack.”

“Good,” he said, putting the gun back into its holster. “Because then I don’t have to shoot you. Before this is done, I imagine I’m going to have to kill every man involved in this who’s been sleeping with her.”

“Why?” he asked. “How is she wrapped up in all this?”

“Fargo,” McKenna said, “if I’m right, Hattie Hamilton isn’t just wrapped up in all this—she is the source of all this.”

It made a certain amount of sense, Fargo realized, but still it was hard to believe that one Basin Street prostitute could create this much chaos. “How did the Pinkertons get involved?” he asked. “Policing the New Orleans nightlife doesn’t seem like something they’d be interested in.”

“On the contrary, Fargo, we’re very interested in keeping things here just like they are—for now.”

“Why?” he asked. “I’m not sure I understand your interest.”

McKenna smiled grimly. “Because when the time comes, we’re going to make an example of this city to the whole country. But we’re going to do it on our terms and right now, that means keeping the status quo.”

“An example?” Fargo asked. “What kind of example? ”

“This city is going to burn, Fargo, right down to the cobblestones. It’s a cesspool of crime and we’re going to clean it up and we’re going to do it in a way that makes clear to every city in America what can happen if they don’t police themselves.” McKenna leaned back in his chair and dug into the food Matilda had left for him.

Not quite sure how to respond to this statement, Fargo said, “How’d you get Matilda involved?”

“She’s a paid informant,” the Pinkerton man said between bites. “It was her that showed me how to escape the basement unseen and she hid me until the commotion died down.”

Fargo watched the other man eat in silence for a couple of minutes, his mind churning. If McKenna was telling the truth, a lot of innocent people were going to die. Every city had its good and bad, but the good folks shouldn’t be killed along with the bad just to make an example for everyone else.

On the other hand, there was nothing to prove that McKenna was telling the truth. All Fargo had to go on was his badge and he could have gotten that easily enough. It was possible he was Horn, or someone else just playing the game to make money for himself.

It seemed like there was no one in this town he could truly trust, so Fargo did the only thing he could. He stood up, trying to appear casual, and stretched. “It sounds like maybe you’ve got a plan.”

McKenna or Horn or whoever he was nodded. “First thing tomorrow, I’ll take the money down and put it in the bank to be wired to Chicago—confiscated funds.”

“What then?” Fargo asked.

“Then I’ll—” was all the man managed to say before the butt end of Fargo’s Colt slammed into his head, knocking him unconscious.

“Take a nap,” he finished for him. “A good long one.”

“At least you didn’t shoot this one,” H.D. said, looking at the prone form of McKenna on his office floor. “So you found Horn?”

The office was dark and quiet, but morning wasn’t all that far off. Fargo shrugged. “Horn, maybe. He told me he was really a Pinkerton agent.”

“Christ, Fargo, you clubbed a Pinkerton man? Do you want to be chased from here all the way into the Indian nations?”

“Something about his story didn’t ring quite true,” he said. He filled H.D. in on what McKenna had told him.

“Burn the city down?” H.D. said. “I don’t believe it.”

“I don’t either,” Fargo said. “But who knows what the real truth is? For now, we’ve got to get him out of town.”

“What do you suggest?”

“Can you and your men truss him up and get him on a northbound train?” he asked. “Maybe in a freight car where they won’t find him for a while? By the time he gets back, we can hopefully have the rest of this sorted out.”

H.D. nodded. “Yeah, I can manage that. But there’s something I’ve got to tell you, Fargo.”

“Go ahead.”

“I had to let Hattie Hamilton go,” H.D. said. “The county attorney showed up about an hour ago. Parker got him out of bed and forced him to come down here. He told me to cut her loose for a ‘lack of evidence.’ ”

“Damn,” Fargo said. “I was hoping you’d be able to hold her for at least another couple of days.”

“Me, too,” he said, “but he was right. We didn’t have much in the way of evidence and Parker verified her story.”

“Where’d she go?” he asked. “She didn’t come back to the Blue Emporium. That’s where I’ve been most of the night.”

“Parker’s place, I imagine,” H.D. said. “Why?”

“Because I’ve got the feeling that she really is at the center of all this.” He nudged the man on the floor. “Tell you what,” he said. “Just lock him up for now and when he comes around, why don’t you see if you can get some sort of verification of his story?”

“What are you going to do?” H.D. asked.

“What I always do,” Fargo said, turning back to the doorway.

“Do you know who you’re after?” H.D. called after him.

“Just about everyone,” he replied. “But first things first. I’m going to take that money to the only man I can trust with it.”

“You’ve got the money? Why didn’t you say so?”

“Because, my old friend,” Fargo said, his voice sounding tired even to himself, “I can’t trust you with it.”

“What? Why not?”

Fargo stopped in the doorway, not bothering to turn around. “You’re sleeping with her, too, aren’t you, H.D.?”

The silence behind him was answer enough and he sighed. “You should have stayed out west, H.D. This place isn’t good for you.”

“Are you . . . you’re not going to tell my wife, are you?” he asked. “She’d be heartbroken.”

“No, H.D., not unless I find out that you’re in this with her. My advice to you is to find a way to get yourself clear of this place. It’s no good.” He paused, then said, “She’s no good.”

“I know,” H.D. said. “I just . . . I don’t know what to do.”

“Yes, you do,” Fargo said as he stepped out the door and back into the night. “Or at least you used to.”

He listened, but his old friend didn’t say anything else, and Fargo realized that more than likely H.D. wasn’t someone he could call a friend anymore.

Worse, he might just be an enemy.

Still, he would deal with that when the time came. For now, he had to see a man about holding on to a very large sum of money.

Fargo only hoped that his instincts would prove accurate this time. Any kind of game played in this place was dangerous. But he’d managed to find one that was especially so. He remembered something an old friend of his named Cheyenne had told him once: “There’re two things a man’ll kill you for right off. Money and a woman. He’ll kill you faster for the woman but he’ll kill you slower for the money.” Fargo reckoned that that was the kind of good advice that would never go out of style. He’d found it true too many times to doubt it.

And without doubt Cheyenne’s words applied to a place like this.