Simeon said, “So the Union could sure as hell afford to pay the Pinks.”
“But that doesn’t mean they’re behind this,” Hainey was quick to say. “They might be, sure. It might be worth our time to ask around, if we can. But we’ll have to balance our time real careful. If we’re going to stay on the Free Crow’s trail, we need to get ourselves together, swipe that Union bird, and get back in the air.”
“Sounds like a plan to me,” the first mate declared. He down-ed the last of his coffee and left the tin cup sitting on the basin.
Hainey stood up and pulled a shirt over his undershirt, then reached for his sharp blue coat. “Let’s see about the horses and that rotten coach, and head out to the service yards. We don’t have all day before the Pinkerton op finds his way into town, and I’d like to be gone before he gets here.”
They left the High Horse by nine o’clock and took their secondhand coach down near the service yards, where they paid a Chinaman named Ling Lu to hold it and keep the horses behind his laundry. Another hundred dollars, spread around judiciously, revealed the general location of the Valkyrie and the name of a Pinkerton informant who had been known to let information flow in more than one direction.
Hainey sent Lamar ahead to the ship, with a forged document that declared him a free citizen and a Union veteran. He also included a letter of recommendation, composed as a fictional white man who managed a shipping yard in Chattanooga, declaring that Lamar was handy with tools and rich with integrity. Lamar was, in fact, handy with tools and absolutely faithful to his captain; and Hainey trusted that the engineer would learn what needed to be learned in order to fly the craft.
Meanwhile, he took Simeon back to the red quarters at the yard’s edge-where the saloons and billiards were cheap and easy, and the dance hall girls were either far older or far younger than they really ought to be. It wasn’t a pretty place, and it smelled like a cross between a coyote den and a leaky still. But in the right corners, hiding in the right shadows, information could be bought and sold as easily as a newspaper-even by a dark-skinned man with a terrible scar, and a foreigner with an accent that no one in Kansas City could place.
Behind a grocery store that dealt contraband ammunition out the back doors, Hainey and Simeon found Crutchfield Akers-a man with a hand-rolled cigarette sticking moistly to his bottom lip, and a pair of suspenders with eagles printed from top to bottom. His pants were rolled to keep them out of the wet sawdust and tobacco juice that covered the grocery stoop, and if he’d shaved or trimmed any part of his face the last six weeks, you couldn’t have proved it to the captain.
“You Crutchfield?”
“That’s me,” he answered with a nod that dipped his hat so that a shadow covered his eyes. “Who’s asking?”
“A man with money and some questions, looking for a man with answers and an open pocket. Maybe we can share a drink next door and have a conversation.”
He shook his head. “Not next door.” The hat lifted enough to reveal a pragmatic gaze. “I don’t mind sitting down with a Negro, but there’s folks who’ll hold it against me. Nothing personal, you understand.”
“Nothing personal,” Simeon repeated with a snort.
Hainey didn’t press it. “All right. We can talk out here if it preserves your social standing. My money spends just as easy as anyone else’s.”
“Let’s see it.”
“Let’s see if you’re the man to ask.”
Crutchfield shrugged and said, “All right.”
“You used to be a Pinkerton operative?”
He said, “No. But I’ve worked for ’em on my own, every now and again. When it suited me, or when the money suited me.”
“Rumor has it you’ll share a word or two about your old employer. Or part-time employer,” Hainey corrected himself. “So if I needed to learn a thing or two about an operative who’s on his way from Chicago right now, maybe you’re the man I ought to ask?”
At this point, he produced a wad of bills from his money belt. He did it slickly and fast, like a magician producing a dove from a waistcoat.
Crutchfield nodded, and smiled with something more than greed. “I’m the man you ought to ask. And I even know which operative you’re asking after, though you’ve got a thing or two wrong. I guess that makes you Croggon Hainey, don’t it? One of the Macon Madmen, ain’t you?”
Hainey refused to look startled. Instead he said, “Good guess, I suppose-though truth is, I’m an easy man to recognize, even if you’ve only heard of me in passing. And tell me why you know it, and why you grin like that when you say it.” He peeled off a ten dollar bill and placed it on the rail beside Crutchfield’s elbow.
Crutchfield slid his hand along the rail and palmed the bill.
He said, “Did you know Pinkerton-the big man, not the agency-used to be a Union spy? He’s retired from it now, obviously. Got better things to do with his time, or maybe he’s just getting old. A lot of those old guys who worked hard at the start of the war, if they ain’t dead yet, they’re too old for the war game.”
“I did not know that,” Hainey said with impatience. “But I’m not sure what it’s got to do with me.”
“Hold your horses, man. I’m getting to it. So the big man invites a new operative, somebody from his old line of work.”
“Another spy?”
Crutchfield nodded. “That’s right. But not a Union spy-a Rebel spy. A rather famous one, if you see what I’m saying.”
“I’m afraid I don’t. I could name a whole handful of Southern spies, so you’re going to have to be more specific.” He fiddled with the roll of money for a moment before asking, “Is it someone who had a beef with me? Maybe someone from the Macon crowd?”
The informant shook his head and cocked it at the cash. Hainey unspooled another ten and set it down where he’d placed the first.
“It’s nobody you know, I don’t think. But it’s somebody with an agenda. The Rebs don’t want her no more, so she’s got something to prove by bringing you in; and that’s why she got the assignment.”
The captain didn’t hide his confusion. “What do you mean, they don’t want her no more? Pinkerton sent a woman to chase me down?”
“Not just any woman-Belle Boyd.”
“Belle…oh now Jesus Christ in a rain barrel. That’s a tall tale you’re spinning, and I don’t believe it for a second.”
Crutchfield shrugged. “Believe me or don’t believe me, that’s what I heard, my hand to God. This is her first job, so it’s a loaded one.”
“Loaded,” Hainey agreed. “But not with good sense. I’m just baffled,” he said, scratching his head. “And maybe a little insulted, that they send out a woman to bring down a man like me.”
“I wouldn’t take it like that, not yet. Pinkerton doesn’t hire folks as a joke-and he doesn’t hire fools, and he doesn’t throw his operatives away on suicide missions. He wouldn’t have sent her after you if he didn’t think she could bring you in.”
While Hainey pondered this, Simeon stepped in and took another ten.
He set it on the rail, waited for Crutchfield to collect it, and said, “All of that’s real interesting, no doubt. But why don’t you give us a hint about who hired the Pinks in the first place? They wouldn’t send anyone to nab a runaway without being told to, or paid to.”
“You have a point,” he said. “And I don’t know much about the gig, except that there’s a ship called Clementine that’s moving supplies-and it’s being hounded by a Negro captain in a bird that’s got no name.”