Work Song - Ivan Doig [91]
“Famine!” I exhaled with relief. “You surprised me a little.”
“Didn’t mean to spook you.” He handed me an envelope. “Told me you wanted to see anything with Shycago on it.”
I glanced at the Chicago postmark and the kind of chill that supposedly occurs when some creature of the night treads across one’s gravesite came over me.
“Have yourself some ice cream,” I rewarded my trustworthy messenger with enough money for a vat of it, “and then come back.” He vanished in leaps and bounds, and I trotted downstairs to the auditorium. The Theosophists’ electric tea kettle steamed the envelope open quite nicely.
Two pieces of paper shook out, dire as loaded dice.
“There’s goods to be got on anybody, sucker.” Eel Eyes’ parting shot resounded in me like a cannonade as I examined the sheets one by one. You should never underestimate even the most thick-headed adversary. The goons had been a lot more determined to get something on me than I imagined. Who knew how many underworlds they’d had to try, but they hit pay dirt in a certain den of high rollers beside Lake Michigan. What I was holding was a print of the photograph from Miners Day, Grace and myself frozen-faced as missionaries with the splendor of Columbia Gardens around us. My head was circled in red crayon like a target.
The letter that came with was even worse.
“Photo you sent is positive identification: real name Morgan Llewellyn. Capture him and deliver him to us. We have an old score to settle.”
There was more, but that told the story. The Chicago gambling mob did not forgive; it never even forgot. Like hounds stirred from sleep by an old hunting scent, the betting sharpies were roused all over again about Casper’s last fight and our winnings, and I had to act fast.
Reflex and logic agreed on the same piece of advice: take the next train out of town. Put all possible distance between the contents of the envelope and myself. But that left Grace, literally in the picture next to me, and in for nasty interrogation by Eel Eyes and Typhoon if I wasn’t available. Besides, if I fled now I would be leaving other loose ends flapping in this Butte chapter of life, and that would bother me for the rest of my days.
With the troublesome pieces of paper tucked inside my suitcoat, I made my way upstairs to the mezzanine, thinking as hard as it is possible to think. Rab had gone out with an armload of books for appraisal by the antiquarian dealer; that helped. And further luck: Sandison was down there in the Reading Room, trying to deal with Miss Runyon, highly indignant over something, and would have his hands full for a while. My path was clear, and indicatively it led through an aisle of fiction. Passing through the ranks of Twain and Defoe and the others as I slipped into the office, I was in the company of those who best knew that a greater truth can sometimes be told by making things up. And those wise old heads did not even have my magic kit to work with, the typewriter and fountain pen.
I had two envelopes waiting for Famine to deliver when he scampered back. In the one from Chicago, the goons now were informed in nice fresh typing with a copied signature that, alas, this was a case of mistaken identity, no one back there had ever laid eyes on the nobodies in the photo. In the one to go into the mail to Chicago, the gambling mob was notified that, regrettably, its message had arrived too late, the miscreant Morgan Llewellyn had vanished from Butte.
“YOU LOOK SUNNY THIS MORNING,” Grace observed.
As I sat down to breakfast that next day, it was all I could do not to reach over and pat her on the dimpled cheek in celebration of our mutual survival. “A sound night’s sleep does wonders,” I restricted myself to. She herself looked refreshed by something, taking time off from the kitchen to sit and sip coffee until Hoop and Griff appeared. I still