“And who was the person you were to be paid to harm?” Bierce asked.
“That is neither here nor there.”
Metal wheels screeched noisily past outside. A high-sided wagon rolled by, a colored man in an overall perched in the rear corner.
“Tell me,” Bierce said to Klosters. “Is the person who offered you good money for this particular harm the same one who hired you to harm Albert Gorton?”
It was as though these questions required a great deal of thought on Klosters’s part.
“I did not come here for this kind of palaver, Mr. Bierce. The Reverend has shown me the way and the light. I have come as a Jesus-man to tell you that the Reverend forgives you your trespasses against him, but there is others in that congregation that might not.”
“Oh, this is a threat after all.”
“The Reverend would not want you to think of it in that way,” Klosters said.
His bloodshot eyes regarded me with a kind of total inspection and turned away as though I did not interest him.
“We are concerned with events in Virginia City in 1863,” Bierce said.
“Highgrade Carrie,” I said.
Klosters raised a hand, palm toward me. “Tell you something, young fellow. You too, Mr. Bierce. Just stay out of Carrie’s business. You will be better off for it.”
“She is a friend of yours?”
“That lady is more than friend to anybody that knew her back then,” Klosters said.
“That lady will presently be in a circumstance of propinquity,” Bierce said.
Klosters gaped at him.
“San Francisco,” Bierce said.
“Is that a fact now?” Klosters said. He rose with a ponderous motion of shoving his chair back and heaving himself out of it. He clapped on his hat. Immediately he looked more dangerous.
“You came by my boardinghouse to deliver the queen of spades card,” I said. “Did Senator Jennings hire you for that?”
Sucking on a tooth, Klosters squinted at me. “Tell you, young fellow, there is someone that is interested in you changing your ways.”
“With harm in mind?” Bierce said.
Klosters shrugged. “You, too, Mr. Bierce,” he added.
Bierce said, “Mr. Klosters, what would it take for you to give evidence that Senator Jennings tried to hire you to murder Mrs. Hamon?”
Klosters did not reply. He adjusted his hat and departed.
I touched the still-sore spot on my head where I had been harmed by a slung shot.
“So,” Bierce said, seating himself again. “Jennings tried to hire him to murder Mrs. Hamon, but Klosters has taken the pledge, so to speak.”
“Not against arson,” I said.
“Nor intimidation. Although the only real threat he uttered was to stay out of Lady Caroline’s business.”
That consideration opened new doors.
“Both you and I have been threatened,” Bierce went on. “Miss Brittain was actually assaulted, surely by the Slasher. I can only believe these were different protagonists. There is a madman out there, no doubt of that. There is also Jennings, who is not a madman, although he may be a frightened man by now.”
“And there is Jesus-man,” I said.
“Whose loyalty to Lady Caroline is evident.”
“Everyone seems to be loyal to Lady Caroline.”
He nodded grimly and drew his watch from his vest pocket to consult it.
“Time for Dinkins’s?” he said.
I told him I had to attend a True Blue club meeting and help defend the Democracy from the Monopoly.
20
VALOR, n. – A soldierly compound of vanity, duty and the gambler’s hope.
–THE DEVIL'S DICTIONARY
The meeting was in the basement of the Stoller building on Mission Street, about thirty of the True Blues on a collection of rickety wooden chairs, and Boss Chris Buckley at the podium with his toadies around him. He gazed out over us with his blind eyeballs and managed to appear amiable and impatient at the same time, as though he still had to talk to half a dozen Democracy or Antimonopoly Clubs tonight.
He waved his hands for silence.
“When the Lord created the Universe,” he began, “He looked around and said it was good enough for ordinary folks, but there must be a better piece of handiwork for the Democracy, so He created California. And then He said that the special folks that lived in California ought to do something to earn this special piece of His Handiwork, so He let the Enemy create the Monopoly so that California would have to do some labors to get rid of it.”
That started things off with a laugh and applause, and the Blind Boss went on from there. I sat with Emmett Moon and August Leary in the third row.
There were other matters than Regulation of the Railroad to discuss, and after Buckley and his bunch had gone on, Sam Rainey took over the meeting, and we listened to opinions on the United Street Railways of San Francisco who wanted to install overhead trolley lines, and the latest scandals from the water works.
So we were a long way off the evils of the Railroad when a dozen bullies crowded in and began breaking up the furnishings. A good many of the True Blues evaporated out the door into Mission Street, but those of us who had sworn off being pushed around went into action. I engaged a fellow with a black cap on and hit him a couple of good wallops before he took up a chair to swing at me. Emmett and August and Fred Till were in action also, but, though we outnumbered the toughs, they were more certain what they were after. I heard my name.
Three of them came for me. Small, Medium and Large, Large with a puffy clean-shaven face, an undershot jaw and a chest like a barrel in a faded blue shirt. “Redmond!” he shouted at me. He had fists balled up like melons.
I hit him left and right and backed up and hit him again, but he kept coming with his cronies blocking the flanks so I was pushed into the corner, panting like a locomotive and wondering where my own pals were. Large hit me so hard in the belly that I spewed any air I had left in me along with my dinner. When I was crawling on the floor he kicked me in the chest so I thought my ribs were broken. After that he stood back with his meathooks on his hips and watched Small and Medium kick me around.
“Back off!” Large said. “Hear?”
I lay there aching all over and half fainting, and I nodded.
“Back off!” the chief tough said again, and the pack of them banged off, kicking chairs over and stamping on them, and trooped out and were gone.
August and Fred Till helped me home and up my stairs where they washclothed the blood and vomit off my face and rolled me into bed. It felt good to groan. I waked up to see a figure in a tweed suit standing with the light from the window turning him black with bright edges. Bierce was looking through the books in my bookcase. Morning sun gleamed in his frosted hair. He swung around to stand over me, looking down.
“It wasn’t Pusey this time,” he said.
“No,” I croaked. I ought to be asking him to take a chair, but it was too much trouble. I ached from my face on down. I moved a leg carefully.
“Back off,” I said.
“Pardon me?”
“The message was to back off.”
He paced over to be haloed at the window again. “Tom, I am sorry. You have taken punishment that should more rightly be mine. I cannot ask you to be the recipient of any more of it. Should we abandon the piece on Jennings? For that is what this seems to be about.”
“Be damned to them.”
He turned, his cold face twitching into a slight smile. “Very well. Be damned to them shall be our motto.”
It was easier to nod than to speak.
“I have brought you something.” He took a Colt’s revolver from his jacket pocket and placed it carefully on the taboret beside my bed.