Two in the Field (41 page)

I looked up at the Club House’s fortress-like brick walls, wishing dolefully that our safe blower had shown up.

Slack had cleaned them up as much as he could, and in their identical gray suits and black ties, they looked a lot better than when we’d gone over things a few hours earlier at the tramp encampment. One by one they’d drifted into the Club House, and now were scattered among the public tables.

Waiting for my signal.

The public floor was more jammed than I’d ever seen it, and
more people were crowding in as the Morrisseys’ banquet emptied on the far side of the Club House. The day’s track winners had already been paid; we would be robbing only the casino. Slack was outside, guarding our escape route.

The time had come.

My stomach was a mass of knots.

I nodded slowly and judiciously, as if witnessing something at the roulette booth that pleased me, then moved to the foot of the staircase. Five gray-suited men began working their way toward me. Heart pounding, I stepped aside for them to climb the stairs. This was the first critical point. I’d pointed out Grogan to them. He had to be handled quickly and quietly, or we’d be finished before we began.

Now!
I screamed silently as they paused uncertainly on the landing before starting up toward the forbidden third floor. As if on cue, Grogan appeared. Before he could ask their intentions, the lead man jammed a Derringer in his ribs and steered him upstairs.
Yes!
Grogan carried a key to Morrissey’s office, a privilege so far denied me. From the look of things, we hadn’t attracted attention from Baker or anybody else on the second floor.

So far, so good.

I’d been holding my breath. I let it out at the sight of two men in gray coming down again, which meant Grogan had been taken care of and they’d entered Morrissey’s office. I wheeled and headed for the banquet room, arriving just as Old Smoke emerged with Susie. The sight of them—the bejeweled socialite on the arm of one of the nation’s most powerful and ruthless scoundrels—made my heart plummet. Our plan was ridiculous. This was my last chance to bail out. I felt like bolting for the front door. Morrissey’s black eyes locked on mine and I knew it was too late.

I leaned in close to him. “Some men are here,” I said in a low tone. “They say the President is upstairs.”

“The President? Grant?” He looked at me as if I’d landed from Neptune. “Why the devil would Grant be upstairs?”

“I don’t know.”

“Where’s Grogan?”

“Second floor, last I saw.” I gestured toward the staircase, now flanked by our two men, each fairly good-sized. “They’re Secret Service. They say the President wants to see you in private.” I nodded toward the dazzling Susie. “And that Mrs. Morrissey should come.”

“Secret Service?” He scowled.

Uh oh. Did it exist? Morrissey, an erstwhile Congressman, would know about that.

“Presidential guards,” I amended, feeling beads of sweat in my armpits.

Morrissey’s scowl deepened. “Grant fancies quiet games with his cronies,” he grumbled. “He don’t like fuss. Why would he come in on the busiest night of the season? And why’d Grogan put him in my office?”

I had no answer.

Then, bless her heart, Susie jumped in. “The President requires his privacy, John. He’d be mobbed in the game rooms, don’t you agree?”

Morrissey nodded grudgingly but continued to give me a hard stare. I could almost read his mind:
How did the President of the United States come in here without you seeing him?

“Ulysses is probably a guest in one of the great houses here,” she went on. “Perhaps he missed wagering on the horses, John, and wants a private game with you.” She squeezed his arm. “You
must
go see him, and of course I’d like to say hello.” She smiled wickedly. “Especially if his dreary wife isn’t along.”

Morrissey turned reluctantly toward the stairwell.

I took a deep breath and followed.

Stage two underway.

“They don’t much resemble operatives,” he grumbled as he neared the gray suits.

He had a point.

“Senator Morrissey?” Speaking in a whiskey-ravaged voice, one of them nodded meaningfully upward. “He’s expecting you.”

Shaking his head in wonderment, Morrissey led his wife up the stairs. I followed several steps behind, the two “guards” bringing up the rear. As soon as we passed the landing, I heard soft rustlings of fabric behind me and knew they were slipping their masks over their heads.

In the doorway to his spacious office, Morrissey froze at the sight of Grogan bound and gagged on the floor. Three men held handguns trained on Old Smoke. They wore Mickey Mouse heads. Well, not quite. The noses were too pointy and lacked whiskers; the ears were too small and they drooped. But the effect was definitely Disneyesque. Flaws notwithstanding, it was a world debut of the famous rodent, some sixty years before he would next appear.

“What the hell—” Morrissey blurted.

Susie let out a little cry.

The trailing mouseheads shoved us roughly inside and closed the door. Seeing Morrissey bull his shoulders to attack, I went into action.

“You bastards!” I yelled, and lunged at the nearest mousehead. His pistol flashed and the sound of it filled the room. I recoiled and sagged against a cabinet, clutching my side and in the process bursting a small sausage skin filled with tomato sauce. A red stain spread between my fingers.

Susie screamed. A mousehead clamped his hand over her
mouth and pressed his gun to her neck. I wasn’t worried about the noise. Morrissey’s office was so soundproofed that only if the lower floor were silent could we be heard there. Certainly not in tonight’s din.

“I’m hurt,” I moaned.

“Shut up,” said the mousehead holding Susie; then, to Morrissey, “Give us the safe combination and she don’t get hurt.”

Morrissey, eyes narrowed, took a step forward and grated, “I’ll give you a goddamn combination—”

Blam!

The revolver beside Susie’s head went off and she bucked wildly, eyes rolling and chest heaving; for a second I thought she was having a seizure.

“Next one goes into her head,” said the mousehead.

If Morrissey had the time and presence of mind to examine the wallpaper behind his wife, he would have seen no trace of entry. He couldn’t know that the pistol held blanks, but still he hesitated.

The mousehead moved his hand from Susie’s mouth.

“For God’s sake, John!”

He blurted out the combination.

Within minutes the mouseheads had filled four large canvas bags with gold and greenbacks. Silver was rejected as too heavy. The Morrisseys sat on the carpet beside Grogan, bound back to back, gags secured in their mouths.

“The big gump saw too much of us.” A mousehead leveled his pistol at me. “I’ll finish him, like Red Jim said.”

Morrissey strained at his bonds. Implicating McDermott, I thought, was one of our nicer touches.

“No, please!” I begged.

Blam!

With a pathetic groan I lapsed into silence. For a dead man I felt reasonably optimistic. This just might work out after all.

“Drag him out!” the mousehead barked. “Toss him off the fire ladder. The boys down below’ll get rid of him. Red Jim wants him gone for good.”

“Shh,” another cautioned, as if they weren’t supposed to mention McDermott. It was a weak ploy and wouldn’t hold up long. The idea was to plant confusion. My eyes were closed but I could feel Old Smoke bumping hard against the floor, struggling again. Good. My getting out of this alive depended in large part on his believing I’d been killed.

Several mouseheads lifted me bodily through a window and dumped me on the escape landing. Out of Morrissey’s view, I gripped the railing to break my fall on the iron platform. The mouseheads followed me, shuffling around to make noise. I handed one my “Club House” lapel pin—I wasn’t sorry to lose those stupid rhinestones—and watched as they climbed back through the window.

“Okay down below,” one said, for Morrissey’s benefit. “They’re carting him off.”

I tiptoed down the metal rungs. It would have been nice if all of us could have escaped by this route, but I needed to distance myself from the others. Besides, it would have put the mouseheads and our heavy bags of loot behind the building, where there was no way out except through the crowd assembling around the fireworks balloon. Too risky.

The mousehead who’d taken my lapel I.D. had volunteered (for extra money, of course) to take his mask off while the others kept theirs on. He would lead them downstairs as a band of goofy revelers, saying “Private party, make way!” into the empty luncheon salon near the entrance. Once inside, they would bolt the door behind them and escape the building on the side farthest from the balloon event.

Meanwhile, I’d work my way around to join them in the thickest
woods of Congress Park. There we’d bury the masks and evening wear in a hole Slack had already dug. From the bags of cash he’d pay our robber tramps, who then would scatter and fade back into their old lives. Slack and I would jump the boxcars of a westbound freight leaving in less than half an hour.

We’d done the hard part.

We just had to get away.

Morrissey would naturally call out all available police and militia. Maybe the U.S. army, for all I knew. He’d turn the whole state upside down. But first there would be turmoil. It might be hours before the Morrisseys were rescued. Old Smoke might not relish confessing that he’d been held up by armed rodents. Time would be consumed searching for my body. The cops would telegraph all surrounding points, but this was Saturday night; messages wouldn’t be received until Monday morning in many places. By the time all roads were blocked and all trains checked, we’d be long gone. And once gone, in an era lacking fingerprint files and the means to transmit images instantaneously, chances were we’d be gone for good.

My outlook was almost rosy by the time I reached the last rung of the fire escape. There was a six-foot drop to the ground. It was pitch black below. I let go, knees bent to cushion the shock. As I landed my left foot struck a rock and my ankle twisted painfully. I straightened and took a few steps. It wasn’t broken but it hurt like hell as I limped toward the front of the building.

A man’s silhouette appeared ahead. I pulled my coat across my chest to conceal my stained shirt.

“Who’s this?”

The voice sounded ominously familiar.

“What’re you up to back here?”

Oh no, I thought.
Oh, Christ …

He emerged from the shadows. Moonlight and ambient glow
of gaslights on the distant street revealed McDermott’s unlovely features. So much for playing dead. Of all the shitty timing. What was he doing skulking around the Club House? I reached to my boot for the Derringer—Slack had my Schofield waiting for me—and discovered that it was gone. Probably jarred loose when I landed.

“Come over here,” I said. “I found something I want to show you.”

“Sure you did,” McDermott said sneeringly, then yelled, “He’s here!”

“Hey, you don’t have to—”

“It’s Fowler!”

A thin shape emerged from the trees, and I nearly pissed my pants. A nightmare figure: LeCaron. I was unarmed and facing my worst horror. A shock of fear energized me and dulled the pain in my ankle as I took off at top speed.

“Look out for his belly gun,” I heard McDermott call.

Maybe that concern would give me a few more seconds, but I knew I couldn’t escape LeCaron. Even if I reached the other side of the building, people there wouldn’t necessarily provide safety. On the contrary, LeCaron might take even greater pleasure in sinking a knife into my bowels in the middle of a crowd.

I ran blindly through the darkness, lungs on fire, breath coming hard, imagining the blade sinking into my back. I made it around the first corner and nearly to the second when I glanced over my shoulder and saw him loping after me. I picked up a rock and threw it hard, making him duck.

Then I was around the last corner and into the crowd. Ahead of me stood the low platform where the fireworks balloon was about to be launched. The throng was thickest there. Instinctively I headed for it, pushing my way past drunken men, some of whom pushed back. My red-stained shirt was attracting attention;
hands reached out to slow me. A woman cried out in fear and somebody started yelling.

I risked a glance and saw LeCaron only a few strides back. Congress Park beckoned across the street, a dark mass. I’d never make it there. The balloon scared me, but not nearly so much as LeCaron did. Suddenly it seemed my only hope. The bag held hot air, gas being too dangerous with fireworks going off. The brazier for heating the air had just been taken away, and the bag was tugging at a single remaining rope. The balloon man trailed the heavy guide rope over the side to steady it just as I launched myself onto the platform.

“Hey!” he exclaimed. “Keep back!”

I shoved him aside and dove into the basket. It swung away and then back into the balloon man, knocking him down. Fireworks were still piled on the platform, not yet loaded. I had the basket to myself. Hands clutching at the wicker rim vanished when I yanked a hatchet from the toolbox and brought it down on the guy rope. The gondola canted sharply and started to rise.