Sweet Thunder (36 page)

“Skip it, Llewellyn, we've all read that in cheap novels.” He cocked a resigned look at me. “Out with it. What do you want from me?”

“You should have read a little further, Cutthroat. Absence and silence, of course, in that order. Must I spell it out? You go back to Chicago, right now, and never mention me to the gambling mob.”

Cartwright let out his breath in a soundless whistle. “You'd make a helluva poker player.” Following that up, he made a gesture of throwing in his cards. “I fold. May I go now?”

“Nearly. First, I am going to threaten you with brass knuckles”—one hand's worth, anyway—“and loudly tell you to get out of Butte and never return. And you will comply.”

“Theatrics, is it,” he groaned, looking around the cafeteria at the audience of miners and others already watching us. “It figures.” Turning back to me with a doleful expression, the most feared columnist in America shook his head regretfully. “You're ruining a good newspaper war, you know.”

“I fervently hope so.”

He couldn't resist. “Lapdog of the Bolshies.”

Nor could I. “Purveyor of puerile nonsense.”

“Fancy-pants fabulist.”

“Windy City windbag.”

“There, see?” Cutlass to the last, he spread his hands persuasively. “We could have had a lot of fun with each other yet.” One glance at me dispelled that. “All right, all right. Put on your pinky ring, let's get this over with.” He started up from his chair, but paused midway. “There's something I still don't get. You've got me bottled up. But what's to stop the right people in Chicago from stumbling onto you, like I did, and then it's your death warrant even if I didn't have anything to do with it?”

“Can't you tell?” I said, rising to my feet and slipping on the brass knuckles as Cutthroat Cartwright and I prepared to part for good. “I'm bulletproof.”

•   •   •

“How can you be any such thing?” said Grace in disbelief now as I told her the same. “I hate to side with that Cartwright creature on anything, but why on earth can't the gamblers still come after you?”

“Not if they know what's good for them.”

•   •   •

Beeping its horn once but that told enough, the Golden Eggs truck pulled up in front of the manse at dusk
.
The neighbors on Horse Thief Row may have wondered why, instead of a delivery from the van, I was delivering myself to it by climbing in the back.

The Highliner had vacated the driver's seat and awaited me there amid the egg cases concealing the bootleg load. No gun in sight this time, to my relief.

As ever, the pair of us took in each other's likeness, as if looking into a mirror with a slight waver in the glass. After some moments of this, he tipped his fedora up an inch and gave me a rogue's wink. “So, twinsy. I don't know how you do it, but that kid found me. Thank God he's not a cop.”

“Never underestimate the abilities of newsboys,” I said fervently.

“What's up?” His gaze locked with mine, as though reading my mind. “This is just a guess, but do you need somebody bumped off?”

“I appreciate the thought, but that's not quite it.” No one could hear us, but I dropped my voice, the moment seemed to require it. “What I really want done”—I took a decisive breath—“is for you to become me. In certain quarters.”

His head turned sharply to one side, the Highliner heard out my fuller explanation. When I finished, he made sure: “That's all you want? Just run a bluff on some boobs back in Chi?”

“It would be exceedingly helpful.”

He stroked his beard while thinking the matter through. “Pretty sharp of you. That has its advantages for both of us, doesn't it. You get to be just plain Morris Morgan, and I get to be someone with a reputation attached, in case anybody gets nosy about my ‘real' name, eh?”

“An identity switch, yes. That's precisely what I have in mind.”

“This moniker I'm supposed to take on,” he checked, “how's that spelled?”

“Double L,” I recited, “E, W, E, double L, Y, N. The Welsh are an inventive race.”

“I'll try live up to that,” he said drily. “So here's the deal, then.” Leaning forward, he tapped my knee to signal mutual trust. “I'll have a few of the boys spread the word around Chicago that any mobster who sets foot into Montana for any reason will go back out in a box six feet long. Message signed, sealed, and delivered by Morgan Llewellyn, better known as the Highliner.” The fleeting smile moved in his beard, no doubt reflecting my own. “That suit you, chum?”

“A perfect fit.”

•   •   •

“There you have it,” I concluded, Grace sitting spellbound, glued to her chair during every word of my tale. “Oh, except for one thing.” I couldn't help a note of regret in letting her know, “Pluvius is no more, alas. It is time for me to move on from the newspaper. Cavaretta will take on the editorial writing, he's a good choice.” I drew a difficult breath. “I shall miss the
Thunder
”—the truest way to say it was also the hardest—“like a lost brother.”

For hopeful spells during my telling of it all, she had been the Grace I so happily trotted the world with, bright eyed, thoroughly attuned, avid for what came next. Now her face fell. “I'd rather take a beating than have to say this, but that's always been the trouble, you. Something goes off in your head, and the next thing, there you are again, free as a bird and with about the same means of support.”

“Grace, wait. Before we deal with moving on, there's something I must say. It matters more than anything.” It welled out of me. “You are my all. I will love you until—I don't know what. The pyramids turn upside down. The stars lose their twinkle. The last breath is out of me. The—”

“Stop! That'll do.” She caught her breath. “You are a case, Morrie.” She studied me fiercely, her expression a mask of exasperation until, at last, the dimple crept in. “That's not all bad, I suppose.”

Before my hopes could soar, she too spoke her heart. “Well and good, everything you've told me. And you're such a temptation when you're not up to some shenanigan, there's nobody in the world I'd rather be with. But there's still the matter of”—she sorted a moment for the right name—“Morris Morgan's habits. If you've left the newspaper, how are you going to, you know.” She bit her lip before saying it. “Provide.”

I said humbly, “You are looking at the new city librarian of Butte.”

Grace covered her mouth with her hand as if to slap down astonishment.

•   •   •

“Sandy,” my own incredulity burst forth when the man himself announced that thunderclap, along with his casual gruff remark that he had the place shaped up enough by now that even I could not make a mess of the Butte Public Library and the finest book collection west of Chicago, so it was time for him to sit back and write his memoir, “I don't mean to accuse you of plotting, heaven knows. But did you plan this from the very start? With the manse and all?”

Here came The Look, the blue gaze over the cloud of beard. “Did you just now figure that out, dunce?” He shifted in his thronelike desk chair to fuss with the latest rare book arrival—Boswell's
Life of Samuel Johnson
, ripe for plucking for a certain kind of memoir, no doubt—all the while shaking his head and clucking to himself. “You're slowing down, Morgan. Heh, heh.”

•   •   •

“Sandison has some sway with the library board,” I said innocently in response to Grace's flabbergasted look.

Recovering, she warned me by manner and word: “Morrie, you're leaving something out, I can tell.”

“Ah, that,” I sighed. “Sandison has them over a barrel. It's either me in the job or, as I believe he told the trustees in somewhat plainer terms, every book in the public library with his nameplate in it goes good-bye.” I paused, leaving her practically teetering toward the next revelation. “The salary is such that we may actually be able to meet the demands of the manse.” I threw up my hands to show her I had nothing up my sleeve. “So you see, I am gainfully employed in spite of myself.”

At that bit of honesty, she started around the table to me, her eyes shining. Just as swiftly I was up and toward her. We met halfway.

Grace being Grace, she made doubly sure, scanning my face, beard, eyes, deeper than any of those. “You've really turned over a new leaf?”

“Better than that, Mrs. Morgan.” I moved to take her in my arms. “Book upon book of them.”

THE END