“Seattle seems like a nice place.”
“You wouldn’t mind the rain?”
She placed one hand on Sean’s arm and his heart skipped a beat. “Hon, I’ve lived with worse.”
Across the lobby, the Pinkerton sat to the right of his traveling companion, a woman equally thick bodied, as if it were a Pinkerton employment requirement. Her amber and black cotton print dress had a matching belt that defined her waist by its presence. She wore fur-lined calfskin boots and thick support hose. Their overcoats were piled on the seat to her left, and she sat with her purse in her lap.
They still hadn’t spoken.
Sean felt like everyone but the snoring man at the ticket counter was staring at him, and he hugged the knapsack even tighter.
“You’re shaking, hon,” said the waitress, still smoking a cigarette beside him. “You afraid of me? I ain’t gonna bite.”
“No, I—”
“You’re cold. That’s it, ain’t it? You leave your coat on the bus?”
“Didn’t think to bring one.” He hadn’t had time to pack or to shop before he left St. Louis, and he wore nothing but loose-fitting blue jeans and a green short-sleeved, button-up shirt.
The waitress finished her cigarette. Then she crossed the terminal lobby, stepped behind the counter, and kicked the sleeping man’s chair. He woke with a grunt and wiped at his eyes.
“Move your ass, Clyde,” she said. “I need to get into the lost and found.”
The oldest person in the bus station, the ticket agent’s weathered face was a road map of hard miles. He wore a white dress shirt, sweat-yellowed at the collar and beneath the arms, and high-waisted, black dress slacks frayed at the waist and the cuffs.
“And for God’s sake, don’t breathe on me.”
The ticket agent scooted forward, his left knee knocking against the pump-action shotgun under the counter, and the waitress opened the door behind him. A moment later she returned to Sean with a red-and-black plaid hunting coat someone had left on one of the buses. He put it on without releasing his hold on the knapsack, and he found gloves and a watch cap in the pockets.
At the counter, the ticket agent took another nip from the mason jar of shine he kept in the bottom desk drawer, and he watched the man in the gray-checked sport coat stand and cross the lobby.
The Pinkerton stopped in front of Sean. “I’ve been watching you with that knapsack, kid,” he said. “You never let go of it, so what’s so god-awful important about it?”
When Sean didn’t respond, the Pinkerton grabbed the knapsack and jerked. Sean held tight, but one of the buckles broke and three banded stacks of ten-dollar bills spilled across the floor.
Everyone stared.
“Where’d you get the money, kid?”
A bagman for the mob had shoved it in Sean’s arms and had pushed him out the hotel room window just before a pair of triggermen kicked the door open. Sean watched through a gap in the curtains as they shot the bagman, and then he hightailed it down the fire escape, ran seventeen blocks, and bought a ticket on the first bus leaving the city for the Coast. He left behind everything he owned but for the clothes he wore.
Sean had no desire to give up the knapsack, so he dove onto the cold slate floor and scrambled to retrieve the scattered currency. The sound of a shotgun being pumped stopped him and he looked up.
The old man stood a few feet away, the shotgun from beneath the counter pointed at Sean’s head. “Leave go of the bag, son.”
Before Sean could, the Pinkerton tore it from his grip.
“How much is in there?”
The Pinkerton dumped out the contents and stacked the banded tens as he counted to fifty thousand.
The old man whistled. “That’s an awful lot of money, son. You rob a bank?”
“I ain’t no thief.”
“It don’t matter where he got it. What matters is what we’re going to do with it.” The Pinkerton looked around the room. “There’s ten thousand each.”
The short-order cook heard the commotion in the lobby and stepped out of the diner, a carving knife gripped in one hand held low against his thigh. He had a pack of Camel cigarettes rolled up in the left sleeve of his food-stained white T-shirt. An equally stained white apron tied around his waist hung to his knees over blue chinos, and he wore military-issue black lace-up boots. Anchors tattooed on his forearms were souvenirs from his stint in the Navy, and the Polynesian hula girl tattooed on his right bicep danced when he flexed his muscles.
The ticket agent saw the short-order cook behind the Pinkerton and said, “There’re six of us.”
“It ain’t yours,” the waitress protested as she rose from her seat. “Y’all give it back.”
The other Pinkerton also rose. “Butch—”
“I can handle this, Marge,” the Pinkerton said. He reached into his jacket pocket and retrieved a worn brown wallet containing his ID and badge. He flipped it open to show everyone. Then he made a motion toward his female companion and said, “We’ve been tailing this kid for a while.”
Sean knew better. The couple hadn’t been tailing anyone. He’d overheard them on the bus discussing a new job in Kansas City.
The Pinkerton glared at Sean. “This kid won’t put up a fuss long as we don’t run him in.”
“But—” the other Pinkerton said.
“Let it go, Marge.”
The Pinkerton scooped up the banded stacks of tens and stuffed them in the knapsack. He pushed himself to his feet, unaware of the carving knife in the cook’s hand.
Sean scrambled to his feet and reached for the knapsack. The waitress saw the look in the short-order cook’s eye as he stepped forward. She grabbed Sean’s arm and pulled him back. The hula girl danced as the cook thrust the carving knife into the Pinkerton’s lower back. The blade became entangled with the private eye’s cheap jacket, so the blade did not bite deep. Even so, the Pinkerton staggered and half-turned toward the cook.
“That’s my going-away money,” the cook said.
He drew the knife back and thrust it toward the Pinkerton’s exposed belly. The Pinkerton blocked it with the knapsack.
The ticket agent swung the shotgun around and blew off the cook’s face. Then he jacked another round into the shotgun and pointed it at the Pinkerton. The spent shell bounced across the floor. “Elmer’s right. That is going-away money. Drop the bag and kick it over here.”
The Pinkerton dropped the knapsack. Sean tried for it again but couldn’t pull himself free of the waitress’s grip on his arm. Harshly, she whispered, “Don’t.”
No one was paying attention to the other Pinkerton. She pulled a .32 from her purse and said, “Put down the gun, mister.”
The ticket agent swung the shotgun in her direction and she drilled three shots into his chest before he could complete his turn.
She kicked the shotgun away from the dead man’s hands. Once she felt confident that the ticket agent wouldn’t rise, she asked her traveling companion, “You okay, Butch?”
“Yeah.” The Pinkerton retrieved the money-filled knapsack, settled onto a chair, and pulled it into his lap.
“You two.” The other Pinkerton waved her revolver at Sean and the waitress. “Get back where you were.”
The waitress pulled Sean backward until they were both seated.
The other Pinkerton looked at her partner. “You’re bleeding, Butch.”
“It’s nothing,” he said. “I’m fine.”
She hesitated a moment and then returned to her seat beside him.
The two couples sat in silence for several minutes, staring at one another across the lobby, before the waitress turned to Sean. “You ever hit a woman?”
“No. Never.”
“You ever kissed one?”
Sean looked away. He’d only ever kissed Big Moe, and he hadn’t liked it.
“That’s okay, hon,” she said. “Ain’t nothing to be embarrassed about.” Sean had run away from home when he turned fourteen and had been living on the streets of St. Louis, begging for handouts until he met Big Moe, the bagman who had taken him under his wing and into his bed. Big Moe had treated him better than his father, buying him clothes and providing a clean place to sleep in exchange for physical affection.