The Angel of Darkness - Caleb Carr [202]
Looking back down the street, I saw a sign hanging outside one of the buildings on the riverside, past the factory works. I couldn’t readjust what it said in the near darkness, but it was pretty obvious what the general message was. “You figure we ought to try that tavern?” I asked, pointing.
“I suppose we have to,” Miss Howard answered. “We’ve come this far.”
We didn’t bother to get back into the buckboard, but walked the three blocks or so to the building with the sign, which did in fact reveal that an establishment what could get away with calling itself a “tavern” in that town (but that in New York wouldn’t have amounted to more than a cheap dive) was located inside. I wasn’t at all sure how smart it was for a woman and a kid to head into a place like that alone, and I think Miss Howard could read the worry in my face: she pulled out her pearl-handled revolver and let me get a glimpse of it.
“Ready?” was all she said, as she slipped the gun back amongst the folds of her dress.
I nodded to her, though I was still plenty nervous. “Okay,” I said, and then I pulled open the screen door of the old clapboarded building.
The room inside reeked of all the usual stenches—beer, booze, smoke, urine—but, being as it also sat on top of a nice dead part of the Hudson, rotten river water got into the mixture, too. There was a long bar and a pocket billiard table, and the joint was lit (or something like it) by a half-dozen kerosene lamps. About twenty men were scattered around, only a few of them talking or doing anything at all, other than staring at the walls and out the windows with the dead eyes of hardworking characters engaging in the only recreation they’d ever known or were ever likely to know: sitting and nursing a stiff drink. As’ll happen in such places in such towns, they all turned toward the door at the same time when we entered; and it was a bit of a surprise for us to see, standing at the corner of the bar, the same man we’d been talking to not three minutes earlier. Whatever Libby Fraser’d done and been in that town, it was powerful enough to make a big, tired man run a long, roundabout route at what must’ve been a flat-out pace so’s to be able to warn his pals that there were strangers in town asking questions about her. Miss Howard nodded in the man’s direction. “Hello,” she said quietly; but the man just turned back to the bar like he’d never seen us before. Not sure of her next move, Miss Howard looked to me.
I waited for the low mumbling in the room to start up again before I said, “The bartender,” very quietly. We found an empty space at the far end of the bar, then waited for the thin, sour-faced man behind it to come our way. He didn’t say anything, just looked at Miss Howard coldly.
“Good evening,” she said, trying the common pleasantries again. But they didn’t work any better this time around: the man just kept staring at here. “We’re trying to find out some information—”
“Don’t sell it,” the bartender answered. “Got drinks. That’s all.”
“Ah.” Miss Howard considered that for a second, then said, “Well, in that case, I’ll have a whiskey. And a root beer for my friend.”
“Got lemonade,” the man answered, turning the cold stare to me for a second.
“Okay, so lemonade,” I said, not wanting the mug to know he was making me nervous.
It took the bartender only a few seconds to fetch the drinks, and as Miss Howard laid down some money, she said, “We don’t expect the information to be free …”
But that just seemed to frost the bartender even more: his eyes got thin, and he leaned over the bar to her. “Now, you listen to me, missy—” All of a sudden every man in the place was staring at us again. “You already been told that there ain’t nobody in this town that’s going to talk to you about Libby Fraser. She ain’t the smartest, person in the world for anybody to talk about—including strangers.”
Miss Howard glanced around the dark, dirty room quickly, then asked, “I don’t understand. What is it that you