Clay Hand (24 page)

“I bought it. A man’s entitled to a bottle now and then. What’s this world but a misery without it?”

“Where did you buy it?”

Whelan’s voice rose to a falsetto. “In the liquor store. Where else would I buy it?”

“I thought maybe you made it. I’ll take it along for tests in the morning.”

As the sheriff let go of his shirt, Whelan rocked on his feet. He threw his hands up pleading to the men. “He’s trying to distract youse, making me out a bootlegger.”

“You’ve been drinking his liquor,” Fields said. “How do you feel?”

A chorus of “greats” went up.

“You’ll be retching your guts before morning.”

Whelan lurched toward the sheriff, the whole weight of his bulk falling against him. He was not that drunk, Phil thought. He moved in quickly, taking the bottle from Fields where he was falling back over a chair under Whelan. He no more than had the bottle in his hand when someone, in howling glee, leaped on him. Another man wrested it out of his hand. The bottle was hurled against the wall and smashed in a thousand pieces.

Fields got up and went to the bar. “Close up, Mac.”

“Why don’t you run Whelan in, Sam?”

“Because running him in, he’d be all by hisself, and Whelan never did anything by hisself in his life.”

Fields went outdoors to a chorus of laughter, Phil after him. They crossed the street to where the taxi was parked. Fields threw his flashlight on it. It was as dirty and sloppy looking as its owner. He examined the upholstery, spotted and torn, and pointed the light under the seats. The only thing he caught in its beam, aside from tools, was an old paving brick under the front seat. “For parking on hills,” Fields said. He turned the light on the dashboard and looked at the mileage. “Broken.”

He turned off the flashlight. “If only he had brains,” he said, more to himself than to Phil.

“For bootlegging?”

“For distributing it. That’s the rub. He’s giving out nips and pulls there tonight. But I’ll bet there wasn’t a man had a bottle in his hand more than a minute. They’re not hard drinkers, McGovern.”

“How about Glasgow? He seems to have the time. Does he have the brains?”

“Maybe. He’s got the cunning. One thing interesting, McGovern—for all their information in there in the tavern, nobody mentioned that room in the mine being marked.”

The men began to lurch out of McNamara’s, sullen, fuzzy and tired. Fields pulled Phil back into the shadows and watched. Whelan was lingering outside the tavern door, not detaining the men, indeed seeming to speed them on their way. Phil caught the sheriff’s arm. “That guy isn’t drunk,” he said. “He’s as sober as we are.”

Fields grunted. “Look at the other poor devils. They’re out on their feet.” He shoved the keys of the car into Phil’s hand. “Keep out of sight, but get the car ready. When he starts his engine you start coasting, and pick me up. Don’t turn on the lights.”

“I got you,” Phil said.

He moved swiftly up the street in the shadows. It was not much trouble keeping out of the lights in Winston. He reached Krancow’s, and then, acting on a hunch, got into his own car. The last of the men gone, Whelan crossed the street briskly and started the taxi motor. He drove toward the railway station, and Phil started down the hill. Fields got in.

Before he reached the station, Whelan turned right at Lavery’s corner, taking the road in the opposite direction of Mrs. O’Grady’s. He turned back on the town, then, in back of Krancow’s so that he would drive past it. His brake light flashed on as he slowed down to look in at the parlor.

“Good boy,” Fields said. “He was checking to see if my car was there.”

Picking up speed then, Whelan once more drove toward the station. He crossed the tracks and started on the road alongside them. It was little more than a path, used by the rail workers when they drove back to the loading tracks. He had made no more than twenty yards, however, when he was flagged down by one of Fields’ deputies. Phil and the sheriff drove by on the main highway, seeing the deputy talking to Whelan.

“Damnation,” Fields said. “The ones I want on the job are asleep, and this one’s alert as a hoot owl. Drive on out to Clauson’s now, and we might as well see where we’re going.”

The two deputies there had nothing to report. They climbed into the back seat. On the way back to town, they stopped at the station. One of the men on duty came over to the car.

“What’d Whelan say when you stopped him?” Fields asked.

“Aw, the drunken bum. He thought he was on Mill Street going home.”

“In a pig’s eye he did. All right, knock off for the night.”

He directed Phil to drive up Mill Street. There the cab sat alongside the house. Through the unshaded window they could see Whelan struggling out of his clothes.

P
HIL AWAKENED AS USUAL
to the heavy footsteps of the boarders going down the stairs. He could hear Mrs. O’Grady shaking down the ashes in the grate. How long could she go on like this, an old woman getting up in the cold of mornings? But if she were not to do it, what would become of her?

The wind was crying outside his window like a small child. He got up and dressed, and went into the hall. He paused outside Margaret’s door, thinking he heard movement within her room. It was only the wind, or the old house creaking. Margaret Coffee was never up at that hour in her life unless it was finishing a day. The board sounded beneath his foot. Mrs. O’Grady would cock her head and listen. She would trace his journey down the hall. He moved quickly to the stairs.

He washed in the back kitchen, and sat down to breakfast as the two men were almost finished. “You’re lucky to be working on Number Two,” he said.

“Lucky?” one of the men repeated.

“As lucky as any guy who digs coal for a living. I mean you’re not in the confusion over on Number Three.”

“I wouldn’t work Number Three if I was to starve,” the man said. “There’s a curse on it.”

“Peh!” the widow said, her first comment of the morning.

“Wherever a woman’s been in a mine there’s a curse on it,” the man said, pointing his fork. “And mark my words, the mine’ll get her one way or the next.”

“Rubbish,” Mrs. O’Grady said.

“It got Laughlin’s wife when she went down there, didn’t it?”

“You’re full of ignorant superstitions,” the widow said. “Finish your breakfast.”

“Superstition,” he started again.

“That’s enough of your gab,” the widow said fiercely.

He looked up at her. “What the hell’s eating you this morning?”

She flung the wet dishcloth she was carrying across his face. “Get out to your work!”

He got up sullenly. “You old witch. If you wasn’t so crippled I’d say you was the haunt of them.”

The old woman laughed then, and for one wild moment Phil wondered if she were going out of her mind. There were indeed moments when the devil seemed to ride between her hunched shoulders. The two men went out of the house, banging the door behind them. She turned on Phil abruptly. “What did Sam Fields say to that thing?”

“He didn’t say anything. It belonged to the Clausons.”

“Tell me something I didn’t know. Did they own up to it?”

“Yes. The old man said he gave it to Dick.”

“What for?”

“He didn’t say.”

“He didn’t say. Isn’t there ways of making him say?”

“Mrs. O’Grady, how well do you know Jerry Whelan?”

“What do you want with him?”

“He’s been trying to stir the men up. I’d like to know why.”

“He’s a stupid lump. There’s no harm in him.”

“There’s not much good in him either. He makes the most of the information Anna takes home out of here. It didn’t take him long to carry the tale of that magic piece down to the tavern last night.”

“He’s the tongue of an old woman.”

“He’s the tongue of an asp. They’re saying Dick and the Glasgow woman killed old Laughlin.”

“They bottled the gas and took it into the mine,” she said sarcastically. “They lured the poor man in and left him there. The stupid lumps. Aw no, if there’s blood on her hands it isn’t poor Laughlin’s.”

“It’s too bad you weren’t at McNamara’s last night. They could have used some of that eloquence.”

The widow poured herself a cup of coffee, ignoring him. The kitten crawled out from under the stove and began mewing.

“Have you fed it yet?” Phil asked.

“Tell me the cat caught a mouse on a full stomach.”

Phil poured some milk in his saucer and set it on the floor. The cat reached it no quicker than the old lady’s cane. She tipped the saucer over, and the cat fled beneath the stove. “I’ll say what’s to be fed in this house. You’re not the master here.”

He pushed away from the table, got his coat and went outdoors. The six o’clock siren sounded. Men would go to work in Number Two, and others would arise with the wish for going to work, or, he thought, remembering the liquor some of them consumed, the wish to stay asleep. The church bell tolled early Mass. Father Joyce would come in from the sacristy to the altar of God, to God Who gives joy to His youth, and only the angels would attend His sacrifice. The priest would turn with his
Pax Vobiscum
on an empty church. There was no peace in Winston.

As he watched the sun sweep the mists from the valley, he saw Sheriff Fields turn up past Lavery’s. He went to the gate to meet him. The sheriff was unshaven and grey with the lack of sleep. He handed Phil a telegram without speaking.

CHICAGO MOVEMENTS COFFEE EARLY DECEMBER. FREQUENTED CLARK STREET AND CHICAGO AVENUE TAVERN SEVERAL TIMES. WIFE WITH HIM LAST OCCASION. HAVE OPERATIVE ON IT. WILL INSTRUCT FURTHER. BANK WITHDRAWAL FIFTEEN HUNDRED DOLLARS DECEMBER FIFTH. NOT USED FOR TRANSPORTATION. TRANSPORTATION PAID TRAVEL AGENCY BY CHECK.

Phil returned the telegram to him.

“The wife up yet?” Fields asked.

“No.”

“Good. I’d like to get to her before she gets her mask on. What’s Clark Street like?”

“In that section it’s pretty rough, as I remember it.”

Mrs. O’Grady met them at the kitchen door. “Are you carting trouble here this hour of the morning, Sam Fields?”

“I want to talk to Mrs. Coffee. I’d thank you to call her and give me a seat in your house till she comes down.”

“You can sit or lie down, and call her yourself.”

It was Phil who went to the stairs and called up to Margaret. He did not mention that Fields was waiting. It was ten minutes before she came down, as long a ten minutes as he could remember. Fields sat at the table as though he were asleep. The widow sat on a stool watching him. There was an occasional crackle of fire in the kitchen range, and the floor above creaked under Margaret’s footsteps.

When she came, her face was carefully made up, and not a strand of the ash blonde hair was out of place. But for all her patience with the mask, as Fields called it, the tiny lines had begun to tighten on her. A stranger, meeting her, and knowing only the story of her husband’s death, would say the full impact of her loss was coming home to her now, two days after the funeral. And, Phil thought, the full impact of something was hitting her. For all her grace and beauty, she suffered what must have been most painful to her: Dick had left her, and if nothing else, he had done that before his death.

“Milady’s looking pert this morning,” the widow said. “Isn’t she, Philip?”

He looked from one to the other of them without speaking.

“I feel wretched,” Margaret said.

“It’s the lumpy mattress,” said the old lady. “She’s as tender as a princess sleeping on a pea.”

Fields cleared his throat. Margaret went to the table and sat down beside him. “More questions?”

There was no ceremony left in Fields. “I got word from Chicago this morning your husband was seen a lot in a pretty low tavern there. What can you tell me about it?”

Margaret’s face blanched. She lifted her head a little. “I knew about it.”

“What did you know about it?”

“I knew he was going to a cheap rotten place. I knew he was seeking the company of the dregs—the derelicts and dope fiends, whores and worse than whores.”

The tautness of her face did indeed make a mask of it. Phil stifled the anger he felt choking him.

“Were you ever there with him?” Fields asked.

“I followed him once. I wanted to salvage something of the person I once knew.”

“My information says you went with him,” the sheriff said. “The Chicago police have a way of being exact when they say something. If you followed him there, they’d of said that.”

“All right. I went with him. He made me go. He didn’t want to go to hell alone, he said. He was all rotten.”

“No,” Phil said. “I don’t believe it. If you swore it before God and all his angels I wouldn’t believe it. If Dick was there he had a reason for being there, but it wasn’t to go to hell himself or to take you there.”

“You’re simon pure, aren’t you, Phil? There’s no evil in the world where anyone you love is concerned. A saint can do no wrong. You wouldn’t believe in a Magdalene if the Lord Himself came and told you about her.”

“I would if you told me about her, Margaret,” he said quietly.

The old lady chuckled. This was the sport she liked.

“Mrs. Coffee,” Fields persisted. “Suppose you tell us just what your husband did in this Clark Street place.”

Mrs. O’Grady wagged her head. “Tell him the whole story, dear.”

Phil looked at her. Had she and Margaret gone over it together? The old woman sat, her head nodding, for all the world like Madame LaFarge watching the mobs of Paris.

A roistering sailor could not have given a more lascivious account of his brawling than Margaret unfolded for them.

Fields got up stiffly at the end of it. “That would take a lot of money, wouldn’t it? That would account for him taking fifteen hundred dollars out of the bank, December fifth?”

Margaret’s eyes widened, and then filled with tears. The only comfort offered her was the boney caress of the widow’s hand scratching her tender flesh.

F
IELDS WENT DOWN THE
steps quickly, his mouth toughened with anger. He slammed the door of the car, and for the first time Phil had to hurry to keep up with him.