“You are of course entitled to your opinion, Colonel,” the governor said in a voice like ice, and pointedly turned away. Bushell realized he’d succeeded in offending another politico. He’d long since got past the point where that worried him.
He looked around to see what Kathleen Flannery was doing, and spotted her deep in conversation with Sergei Pavlov, the Russian Empire’s consul in New Liverpool. When Pavlov wasn’t decked out in knee breeches and dark green velvet swallowtail coat - Russian notions of formal attire being even more conservative than those of the British Empire - he was a leading wholesaler of caviar and the tasteless but potent spirit the Russians distilled from potatoes.
Kathleen said something that made him laugh. They were both speaking French, which educated Russians often preferred to their own language. Bushell could hear that, but not what they were saying. His own French was accented but serviceable; it was a useful language for a RAM to know. He thought about joining the conversation, but couldn’t see a way to do it without being impolite. Another glance round the Drake Room showed him few people with whom he did feel like talking. He drifted toward the bar. He’d just taken his first sip of Jameson over ice when Samuel Stanley materialized at his elbow.
“Everything all right, Chief?” his adjutant asked, his voice studiously casual. That was the second time tonight Stanley had asked him the same question; he realized his hastily lit cigar back at the office hadn’t fooled the other RAM. “It passes muster,” he said. “Seeing The Two Georges from about three feet makes up for a lot.”
Phyllis Stanley came up beside her husband. “Now that’s something I can hardly wait to do,” she declared. “Anyone who tries to slide in there between me and that painting is going to get an elbow where it will do me the most good.”
“I wouldn’t have expected anything else.” Laughing, Bushell kissed her on the cheek. She was a pleasantly plump woman of about his age, slightly darker than her husband, and she carried herself like a queen. Her dress of orange beaded silk brushed the floor but left her shoulders bare.
“Anyone who tries to get between Phyllis and what she wants is going to end up trampled,” Samuel Stanley said: admiration, not criticism. He went on, “Somebody must have rung up headquarters when the coal miners started getting noisy - I’ve seen a few more of our boys in red shirts about.”
“By rights, keeping the miners in check should be a job for the New Liverpool constables.” Bushell shrugged. “Let it go. I’m not about to fret over jurisdiction, not withThe Two Georges in town.”
“Just what I thought,” Samuel Stanley said. “As far as I’m concerned, the more, the merrier.”
Governor Burnett strode up to the podium and waited to be noticed. Bushell snuck a look at his pocket watch. Whatever you thought of Burnett for cronyism, he ran his show on time. This was when the schedule called for the guests to troop upstairs and admire The Two Georges - and, no doubt, for Burnett to make a speech the local papers would play up.
But before he could start, the picketing coal miners outside began yet another new chant, this one suggesting an intimate relationship between Tricky Dick and the steam dispersal pipes of the vehicles he sold.
The Steamer King had already shown nothing was wrong with his ears. “Bastards!” he growled, brandishing his cane. “I’ll show them they don’t have Honest Dick to kick around!” He stormed out of the Drake Room. Moments later, Bushell heard him shouting at the picketers. They jeered back. By his face, Governor Burnett now heartily wished he hadn’t invited the used-car magnate to this exhibition. He had no choice, though, but to make the best of it. “Ladies and gentlemen,” he began in the rounded tones that made him a master of the wireless, “we are gathered here this evening to celebrate once more our union with the mother country, and to - ”
Again he was interrupted, this time by four or five popping noises from outside. “Fireworks,” someone said. “Boiler tubes bursting in one of Tricky Dick’s steamers,” someone else suggested, and got a laugh. Bushell turned to Samuel Stanley. “That’s rifle fire,” he said in a flat voice. His adjutant didn’t argue; he was already shouldering his way out through the crowd. Behind them, Governor Burnett, unaware anything was seriously wrong, resumed his speech.
The two RAMs sprinted up the hall from the Drake Room to the entrance of the governor’s mansion. Before they reached it, a shrill scream brought the rest of the guests pounding after them: the cloakroom girl had gone outside to see what the popping noises were about. She stood in the entranceway now, hands pressed to her face in horror.
Bushell and Stanley ran past her. The coal miners had fallen silent. They and the RAM sergeant who’d been at the door crowded round a crumpled figure still clutching a stick. One bullet had caught Honest Dick in the neck. Another had taken him just above one eye and blown off most of the back of his head, splashing blood and brains and bits of bone all over the pavement.
II
Along with Bushell and Stanley, the miners stared in horror at the crumpled corpse of the Steamer King. One of them, his eyes wide, his mouth an O of dismay, looked from the still-spreading pool of blood beneath Honest Dick’s head to the tunics of nearly identical hue the two RAMs wore. Seeing those tunics, recognizing them for what they were, may have helped him build up steam to talk.
“Wasn’t us, sirs,” he said. “Wasn’t none of us who done him, swear to God it wasn’t.”
“That’s right,” another picketer said amidst a growing mutter of agreement. “Wouldn’t have minded breakin’ the handle of my sign here over the damn fool’s head, that there’s a fact. But to blow it off like this here - ” He gulped and turned away, as if about to be sick.
Two miners pointed north toward the brush-covered knoll across Sunset Highway from the grounds of the governor’s mansion. “Shots came from over there somewheres,” one of them said.
“That’s correct,” said one of the blue-suited New Liverpool constables who’d been making sure the picketing coal miners didn’t do anything more than march and chant. “Tricky Dick - uh, Honest Dick came out here to the location of his decease and began a, well, a harangue, to which some of these here gentlemen responded, mm, intemperately. He was just commencing his reply when the perpetrator caused him to expire.”
Another New Liverpool constable trotted toward the mansion, saying, “I’m calling Captain Macias.”
Bushell nodded to the New Liverpool constable who’d spoken first. “This is your case, sir. RAMs have no primary jurisdiction in homicide cases, even if the homicide is by gunfire. My adjutant and I will, of course, help you in any way we can.”
The other constable was having a tough time pushing his way into the mansion against the stream of distinguished people emerging to gape at the murder that had been done. “Fools,” Samuel Stanley said.
“If that maniac is still out there, he can pot anybody he pleases.”
“Jesus God, you’re right,” the New Liverpool constable near him exclaimed. He turned to a couple of his comrades. “Hank, Mortimer, go cross the highway and see if you can flush the bugger out.”
Hank and Mortimer obeyed with an alacrity that spoke well of their training and their courage. Bushell wouldn’t have cared to try chasing down a man with a rifle who’d already proved he wasn’t afraid to use it, not in pitch darkness and carrying nothing more lethal than a truncheon. A newspaper photographer touched off a flashbulb next to him, then another reporter on the far side of the Steamer King’s corpse used one, too. That second flash made Bushell blink, filled his eyes with tears, and left a glowing purple spot in the center of his vision. More and more flashbulbs went off; Honest Dick would have nothing to complain about over the publicity his passing would get.