Билл Пронзини - The Bags of Tricks Affair

Behind the long, brass-trimmed bar in McFinn’s Gold Nugget Saloon and Gaming Parlor, Quincannon drew two more draughts from the lager spigot, sliced off the heads with the wooden paddle, and slid the glasses down the bar’s polished surface. The Cornish hardrock miner who caught them flipped him a two-bit piece in return.

“Keep the nickel change for yourself, lad.”

Quincannon scowled as he rang up the twenty-cent sale. Lad. Bah! And a whole nickel for himself, finally, after six hours of hard work in a noisy, rowdy atmosphere. He debated leaving it in the register, but his Scot’s blood got the best of that; he pocketed the coin. The lot of a bartender was neither an easy nor a profitable one, a fact he hadn’t fully realized until the past two days. Nor was it a proper undertaking for a man who no longer drank strong waters of any kind.

He cursed himself for a rattlepate. Adopting the guise of a mixologist had been his blasted idea, not Amos McFinn’s. Not that serving beer and hard liquor to Grass Valley’s constant stream of Cornish miners known as Cousin Jacks and other denizens tempted him to resume his formerly bibulous ways, as the perfume of Golden State Brewery’s steam beer had during his undercover work in the Plague of Thieves Affair the previous January. Having successfully resisted that temptation made resisting this one easy enough. No, it was the hard work combined with the penny-pinching ways of the Gold Nugget’s customers, and the insults they hurled at him when he failed to serve them quickly enough, that made this undertaking difficult.

For the moment there were no more demanding drinkers at his station. Most of the miners and sports lining the mahogany were watching the square raised platform in the center of the cavernous room, where the two women faced each other across a green-baize-skirted poker table.

The play between the pair had been going on for nearly three hours now. At first the other gaming tables — poker, faro, roulette, chuck-a-luck, vingt-et-un — had had their usual heavy clutch of players. But the spectacle of the two lady gamblers engaged in a moderately high stakes stud-poker match was too enticing. The number of kibitzers around the platform, watching the flash of cards reflected in the huge overhead mirrors, had doubled when it became apparent that the challenger, the Saint Louis Rose, was a formidable mechanic in her own right. Now the crowd had swelled so large that some of the nearby tables had been shut down for the duration.

The fact that the two women were complete opposites added to the appeal of their match. The house favorite, Blanche Gaunt Diamond, better known as Lady One-Eye, was ten years older, dark haired, dark complexioned; her dress was of black velvet and encased her big-boned body so totally that only her head and her long-fingered hands were revealed. The black velvet patch covering her blind eye gave her a faintly sinister aspect. She sat quiet and played quiet, seldom speaking, but she was nonetheless a fierce competitor who asked no quarter and granted none. The only times her steely one-eyed gaze left the cards was when she glanced at the two well-dressed gents who occupied a ringside table — her handsome gambler husband, John Diamond, who called himself Jack O’Diamonds, and her taciturn brother and financial manager, Jeffrey Gaunt.

The Saint Louis Rose cut a slimmer and far gaudier figure. Too gaudy by half, in Quincannon’s judgment. She wore a fancy sateen dress of bright green, fashioned low across the bosom and high at the knee so that a great deal — a great deal, indeed — of creamy skin was exposed. A red wig done in ringlets, a little too much rouge and powder, false eyelashes the size of a daddy longlegs, and mouth painted the same rose color as the wig completed her image. She laughed often and too loud and was shamelessly flirtatious with the kibitzers. Even Jack O’Diamonds now and then let his gaze stray away from his wife — and from the sultry, flame-haired presence of Lily Dumont, whose faro bank was close by — to rest on the Rose’s swelling bosom.

Quincannon was one of the few in the hall not paying attention to the game. As it had all evening, even while he was serving customers, his gaze roamed the packed room in search of odd or furtive behavior. No weapons were permitted inside the Gold Nugget, but few if any of the patrons would have stood still for enforced searches by McFinn’s bouncers. Quincannon was willing to wager that there were at least a handful of hideout guns in the hall on any given night.

Movement at the edge of his vision turned his head. But it was only Amos McFinn once more slipping around behind the plank. He was a nervous little gent, McFinn, even at the best of times; on this night he hopped and twitched like a man doused with itching powder. Sweat gleamed on his bald dome. The ends of his brushy mustache curled around his downturned mouth in the manner of pincers.

He drew Quincannon to the backbar and asked in a hoarse whisper, “Anything suspicious?” It was the fifth or sixth time he’d come to voice that or a similar question. He had spent most of the evening shuttling back and forth among the half-dozen bouncers spotted around the hall and Quincannon behind the bar.

“Only two small things, Mr. McFinn. Your actions being one of them.”

“Eh? My actions?”

“Stopping by to bend my ear every half hour or so. Someone might wonder why the owner of this establishment is so interested in his new mixologist.”

“No one is paying any attention to us.”

“Not at the moment. At least not overtly.”

“Well, I can’t help worrying he may be here tonight,” McFinn said. “Not that I expect he’ll make an attempt in front of so many witnesses—”

“If an attempt is to be made. That isn’t certain yet.”

“No, but a packed room is an ideal place for one. Especially if the assassin is deranged enough not to fear for his own safety.”

Quincannon said nothing to that, his gaze roaming again.

McFinn sighed. “All right, then, I’ll leave you be.” He started to do this and then stopped and once more leaned close. “Two small things, you said. What’s the other?”

“Jack O’Diamonds.”

“Eh?”

“Have you noticed his interest in Lily Dumont?”

“No. Lily Dumont?”

“They were thick at her table before the poker match began, while Lady One-Eye was in her dressing room.”

“You mean you think they—?”

“More than likely.”

“I don’t believe it. Why, Jack is devoted to Lady One-Eye. I’d stake my reputation on it.”

Then your reputation, Quincannon thought sardonically, is worth no more than a plugged nickel.

One of the reasons he’d chosen the guise of a bartender was that gaming-hall employees were far more likely to pass along private knowledge to a fellow drone than to a detective or even a customer. A bouncer and one of the other barmen had both confided that Lily and Jack O’Diamonds had spent time alone at her cottage on more than one occasion. They had also told him Lily’s swain, a Nevada City saloon owner named Glen Bonnifield, knew about the affair and was in a rage over it. Quincannon had had proof of this; Bonnifield, a tall thin gent in a flowered vest, was in the crowd tonight, and the look in his eye as he watched Lily and Jack O’Diamonds earlier was little short of murderous.

Lily seemed not to care that she was being observed by Bonnifield, or by Lady One-Eye’s gimlet-eyed brother. Several times she had pressed close to Diamond and whispered in his ear, and she did so again now, stepping over from her faro bank. From the look on the gambler’s face, she had passed a comment of an intimate nature. He nodded and smiled at her — a rather lusty smile — and touched the three-carat diamond stickpin in his cravat, his trademark and good-luck charm. His wife didn’t seem to notice; her single eye was on her cards. But Jeffrey Gaunt did, and it was plain from his curdled expression that he didn’t like it. Neither did Bonnifield. His smoldering look kindled and flared; he took a step toward the pair, changed his mind when Lily returned to her table.