Charley would very much like to go back and tell them to their faces how much they meant to him. How much he loved them. But he couldn’t bear to show up on their doorstep penniless and jobless, like some tramp begging for a handout. He had his pride to think of. When he returned to Kentucky, he wanted them to be proud of him, not ashamed.
Tony had turned left into a street with fewer gas lamps. Loritz and Arch followed, pacing him. They brushed aside a fallen dove in a blue dress who had brazenly blocked their path and thrust her chest out for them to admire. She swore like a soldier but shut up when one raised a hand to cuff her.
Several more blocks fell behind them. Charley was half-convinced the pair were tailing Tony to learn where Tony lived and nothing more. Then Fabrizio stopped at the mouth of an alley and peered down it as if trying to decide whether to take a shortcut. The taller of the pair nudged the other, and they quickened their pace until they were practically running. Too late, Tony heard them. He took a few steps but was grabbed by the arms and hauled into the alley. He didn’t resist.
Charley wasn’t a fast runner, but he could move when he had to. When he reached the alley, the shorter man had Tony up against a wall, and the tall one was smacking his right fist against his left palm.
“—sends his regards,” Charley heard him say. “To prove he’s a man of his word, you still have until tomorrow night to come up with the money you stole. But Mr. Radtke figures you should have—” He looked at his companion. “What was it the boss said again, Arch?”
“Incentive, Loritz,” Arch quoted. “Mr. Radtke wants we should give this guy some incentive.”
Loritz grinned and smacked his fist against his palm again. “That was it. So where do you want your incentive, boy? Above the belt or below it?”
Charley barged into the alley. “Lay a hand on him, and you’ll answer to me.” He had never been in a fight in his life, but he could not stand there and do nothing. “Let him go, and there will be no hard feelin’s.”
“Who the hell?” Loritz blurted. “Oh. It’s the hick. Mind your own business, stupid, or we’ll show you why the city is no place for bumpkins.”
Tony amazed Charley by saying, “Do as they tell you, Charley. I am the one Radtke wants to get even with. Leave me. I know what I’m doing.”
“I won’t desert a friend.”
“You must, for both our sakes.” Tony tried to wave him away, but Arch pinned his arms to the wall. “Please, Charley. You will only get us in deeper. I have everything under control.”
Arch laughed. “Sure you do, jackass.” He punched Tony in the gut. Not with all his might, but enough that Tony sputtered and gasped.
“I warned you.” Charley moved closer. Loritz swore and flicked a looping right cross, which Charley blocked. He swung at Loritz’s jaw, but Loritz ducked, sidestepped, and hit Charley twice in the gut. Charley stepped back, surprised there wasn’t much pain. Setting himself, he raised his fists as he had seen boxers do at the county fair. “I don’t go down easy.”
“We’ll see.” Loritz was taller than Charley but nowhere near as big in the chest. Skipping from side to side, he jabbed a few times without trying to connect, testing Charley’s reflexes. “I’m about to stomp you into the dirt.”
“You do, and you’re a daisy,” Charley blustered, then had to defend himself from a barrage of blows. He blocked some but not all and was rocked onto his heels by an uppercut.
“Quit it!” Tony hollered at Loritz. “Let him go, and I will give you the money I have left. It is in my pocket.”
Loritz stepped back. He was not even breathing heavily. “You should have thought of that at the Crown Royal Hotel. Your pal here asked for trouble, and now he’s going to get it.” Again Loritz waded in, in earnest this time.
Charley tried. He truly did. But the man was older and had a lot more experience. For every two punches Charley countered, one slipped through. He was taking a terrible beating, but it still didn’t hurt anywhere near as much as he had thought it would. His years behind a plow had lent him muscles to spare, and they absorbed the worst of the punishment.
“End it, Loritz!” Arch urged. “The boss will be upset if we get hauled in by the law, and the last thing we need is him mad at us.”
Loritz feinted high to the face, and when Charley hiked his forearms to ward the blow off, Loritz drove his left knee into Charley’s groin.
To Charley it felt as if he had been smashed with a sledgehammer. There was no denying the pain; it washed over him in excruciating waves that brought him to his knees.
“Say so long to your teeth.” Loritz drew back his fist.
“No!” The cry came from Tony. Simultaneously, he tore his right arm free and whipped it out and down. Cold steel glinted dully in the dark. A stiletto had appeared in his hand. He slashed the blade across Arch’s throat, and Arch jerked back, a scarlet mist spraying from his severed jugular. Again Tony cut him. Arch backpedaled, but he had nowhere to go except against the opposite wall.
Loritz sprang to help. From under his jacket he flashed a short-barreled revolver that he cocked as he drew. Fast as he was, though, Tony was faster. The stiletto sliced deep into Lortiz’s knuckles, and he howled and dropped the six-gun. “I’m getting the hell out of here!” He never went anywhere.
Tony thrust the blade to the hilt into Loritz’s ribs, and Loritz oozed to the ground without another sound.
“Good God!” Charley bleated. “You’ve killed them!”
“Would you rather I let them put you in the hospital?” Tony stared at the blood dripping from his stiletto. “I am a dead man, Charley. A judge will sentence me to have my neck stretched. Or else Walter Radtke will have me cut into little pieces and fed to coyotes in the foothills.” Tony squatted and wiped the blade clean on Loritz’s jacket. “It is the old ways all over again. I came here to start over. Instead, all I have done is dig my own grave.”
Charley struggled to his feet. His oysters, as his pa always called them, were throbbing. But Tony needed him, and he would not let his friend down. “Quit talkin’ like that, and put your pigsticker away. We’ll waltz out of this alley like we don’t have a care in the world. Smile some. Laugh some. Act like this never happened, so anyone who sees us won’t suspect.”
Wrapping his right arm around Tony’s shoulders, Charley strolled to the street. No one paid the slightest attention as they blended into the ebb and flow.
Tony was unusually quiet. He never spoke once the whole time they followed a roundabout route back to Tony’s apartment. At the iron gate that opened onto the gravel path to the house, he paused.
“This is as far as you go. I will pack up and be gone by noon. San Francisco is nice, I hear. They do not have much snow. And there are Italians. My own kind. A lot more than here.”
Charley couldn’t stand the notion of Tony leaving. To lose one of the two people who made Denver bearable was enough to make him want to rip the gate from its hinges. “Maybe we can think of a way you can stay.”
“Be serious. Signore Radtke will know I am to blame. He will report me to the police, and a warrant will be issued for my arrest. I must get out of Denver while I can.”
“What about your cart and your bottles?”
“Keep them. You can earn more selling water than you ever will cleaning horse stalls. Or maybe give them to that girlfriend of yours. Potatoes are only in season a short while. She will need a new means to support herself.”
“Promise me one thing. Promise me you won’t leave without saying good-bye. It would hurt something awful.” Wheeling, Charley hurried away before he made a fool of himself.
Normally, the city’s nightlife held an allure Charley found fascinating. But tonight he plodded along, overcome by sorrow. There had to be something he could do to help Tony. But his mind, like his legs, had never been very fast, and he could not come up with anything.