Bill Pronzini - Quincannon

Boggs sat back after a time and licked his cigar from one side of his mouth to the other. “Not a whisper of Silver City anywhere in here,” he said, tapping the file. “Did Bonniwell mention the place to you in any context?”

“No,” Quincannon said. “He had met someone who might be a boodle carrier for the gang and hoped to have more information for me last night — that was all.”

“This carrier’s name was Smith, he said?”

“Yes. A phony moniker, of course.”

“Bonniwell didn’t know where Smith was living?”

“Evidently not. He had met the man in a saloon.”

“No lead there, then. Not that we’ll need to worry about that, if Whistling Dixon and Silver City prove meaningful.” Boggs frowned abruptly. “John, could that piece of paper have been planted in Bonniwell’s hand? To put us off on a false scent?”

“There’s a chance of it, yes,” Quincannon said. “But the handwriting is Bonniwell’s — I’ve seen it before — and the paper was clenched so tight in his fingers that I had difficulty prying it loose. If the redhead put it there the grip would not have been half so tight.”

Boggs nodded and sat silent for a time, worrying his cigar. Then he said musingly, “Silver City, eh? Not such a bad place for koniakers to set up shop. Isolated, and not much in the way of law enforcement. Plenty of silver for the coney coins, too.”

“It also fits geographically,” Quincannon said. “Not far from there to Portland, Seattle, or San Francisco. They could make shipment by freight wagon, even by train from Boise under false bills of lading.”

“A risky business, though. Freighting paper and ink, machinery, other supplies into those mountains, then freighting out the queer. Any number of things could go wrong.”

“But nothing has. They’re a cocky bunch, and well-organized — that’s plain. And in the normal course of events, who would suspect a coney operation in such a place?” “Just as you say,” Boggs agreed.

Quincannon said, “I can be on a train leaving Oakland this afternoon, Mr. Boggs. And in Silver City in two days.”

“You can and you will. Use an assumed name and occupation; you’ll need to take every precaution.”

“I had already planned on that.”

Boggs allowed a few seconds to pass and then said, “John… you know how important this case is. If we don’t put these queers-men out of business, and damned soon, they have the potential to undermine the West’s economic system. The entire country’s economic system, if they should step up production and distribution to the East.”

Quincannon said nothing. He knew what was coming.

“I would go to Silver City myself if I could, but I’m needed here. And Greenspan hasn’t enough experience. You’re the only man I can send; next to me, you’re the best operative in this part of the country.” There was no false modesty in Boggs; he knew his talents and was not chary about expressing them to others. “Or you were once,” he went on pointedly. “If this were twelve months ago I would have no qualms. None at all. But now…”

“Do you expect me to burrow up in Silver City with a keg of whiskey?” Quincannon asked.

“Of course not. But a steady consumption of liquor distorts a man’s judgment, slows his reflexes, makes him prone to mistakes.”

“I won’t make any mistakes.”

“You might if you continue to drink as you have this past year.”

“What is it you want, Mr. Boggs? My promise not to use whiskey while I’m in Silver City?”

“Yes.”

“Then you have it.”

Boggs looked surprised. “On your word of honor as a gentleman and an employee of the Service?”

“On my word of honor.”

This seemed to relieve Boggs and thus put a quick end to what might otherwise have been a lengthy lecture. They spent the next few minutes settling on Quincannon’s assumed name and occupation — Andrew Lyons, patent medicine drummer, an alias and a cover he had used before — and on other matters relative to his mission. Then Quincannon left to return to his rooms, pack a bag, wait for a messenger to deliver a sample case of patent medicine, and then to proceed by ferry to the Oakland railroad depot.

But he made one stop on his way home, at a Market Street saloon not far from the Mint, where he took two whiskeys. He would have another drink in his rooms, and one on the ferry, and one at the depot, and several on the train, and more in Boise and Nampa — and as much as he needed in Silver City. He could not stop drinking there, any more than he could stop here; he had no desire to quit, because sobriety meant confronting the shrieking ghost of Katherine Bennett and that in turn meant madness. He had willfully lied to Boggs and he felt no remorse for having done so. “On my word of honor,” he had said. But there was no honor left to him; he had lost it forever. So what did it matter if he added “liar” to what he already was?

And what he was, plain and simple, was a murderer. The murderer of Katherine Bennett, a twenty-year-old woman innocent of any crime and eight months pregnant, who had died screaming with his bullet in her stomach.

Idaho had changed considerably since the last time Qnin-cannon had been there, nine years ago on a case involving broken-bank bills — notes drawn on a bank that had suspended operation. Back then, in 1884, Boise had been a quiet little town just beginning to grow. Rail service had just been extended all the way across southern Idaho, ending the area’s isolation: prior to that year, more than two hundred miles in any direction separated Boise from the nearest railhead or steamboat. The railroads had opened up the area to settlement, with the result that the rich soil of the Snake River Valley now burgeoned with farms and Boise itself had grown into a city of more than four thousand.

Rail tracks had recently been laid into the town proper, and it was at a brand new depot that the Central Pacific train from Portland delivered Quincannon on Sunday afternoon, two days after his departure from San Francisco. He made arrangements there for passage to Nampa on the Idaho Central, found he had a wait of two hours before the next train, and used that time to find a saloon and slake his thirst with two large whiskeys and a glass of beer. He also bought a bottle of whiskey to take with him; the two he had brought from California were empty, and his pocket flask was nearly so.

It was dusk when he arrived in Nampa, a hamlet still in its infancy that had sprung up along the Oregon Short Line railroad connecting Wyoming with Bear River and the Snake River Valley. The weather was some warmer here than in Boise — a welcome change from the dreary early-fall rains that drenched northern California. He sought out the stage depot, but it was closed for the day. A schedule in its front window told him that the coach to Silver City departed at nine in the morning.

There was a hotel in Nampa, if it could be dignified by that term; but Quincannon cared nothing for comfort any more. He took a room for the night, drew the shade, had his customary nightcap, and took himself to bed.

But sleep eluded him, as it sometimes did when he was traveling. After a time, restless, he lighted the lamp and tried to read the volume of poems by Emily Dickinson from his warbag. He had three-score volumes of poetry in his rooms in San Francisco, given to him by his mother, and he habitually took one with him on his trips. He had seldom opened any during the past year, but still he packed one. Old habits, good habits, died hard.

I took my power in my hand

And went against the world;

”Twas not so much as David had,

But I was twice as bold.

I aimed my pebble, but myself