Power in the Blood (108 page)

Smith shrugged. “Best not to ask, I say. I’m taking this mess out to the shit dump.”

When he had driven away, Winnie went inside, fully expecting to see Nevis with a bottle and glass before him at the table. She found him instead with a look of great concentration ridging his brow, and a revolver she had never seen before in his hand.

“Where’d that come from?”

“Her.”

“Brannan’s whore?”

Nevis said nothing. Winnie fetched a bottle and glasses and poured two shots of whiskey. Nevis ignored his.

Winnie said, “That man, he had a good woman for a wife, and he trampled on her. He never should’ve done that to Zoe. What other woman would have given him a chance that way, gone off and let him make up his mind if he wants her or not. How many wives would do that, do you think?”

“Most of them, if their husband has the kind of money he has.”

“That wasn’t it with her! She gave him the chance to come to his senses because that’s the kind of woman she is!”

“You talk as if you know her.”

“I … just know how she feels. This other one, this Imogen Starr, what a shitheel. She’s the one wants Brannan’s money. Zoe Dugan’s a woman in a million. She’s better off without him now. He’s welcome to the slut he’s got. Don’t look at me that way. That’s what she is. So I’ve been a whore myself, but I’ve never been like her, not for anything. There’s whores, and then there’s
real
whores, and that’s her kind, and I don’t care if you think her asshole smells like petunias. What’s she to you anyway? Do you love her or something stupid like that? She’s a shitheel, and now you know it. You believed those two, didn’t you, that it was her as had them take your precious Indian? Well, did you believe them? Don’t go all sulky and childish—you’re a grown man.”

Nevis slowly nodded his head. Winnie poured herself another drink.

“Don’t waste a bullet on the likes of her. She’s not worth the trouble. Her and Brannan, they’ll make each other miserable. Two bad people together, that’s my recipe for hell on earth. You know how many good people I ever met in my life? Three, that’s how many. You and Smith and Zoe Dugan. Oh, and a boy back in Galveston, he was a good boy, so that’s four. That’s not many, Nevis. Did you think the shitheel was one of the good people in your life?”

Nevis nodded again, his mouth turning down.

“It’s better to know the truth,” said Winnie, “even if it’s hard.” She came to him and put an arm around his narrow shoulders. “Don’t you be sad over someone like her.”

“How could she have done it?
Why
…?”

“Shitheels are like that. Don’t ask me to explain it.”

“She encouraged me.…”

“Lovey Doll, that’s her real name?”

“Yes. I suppose it is. It’s the name she used to use anyway. I painted her picture years ago. Everyone used it, but I never saw a cent.… I was so disappointed, Winnie. I think … I think that’s what made me turn to drink, I really do. I turned into who I am because of her.…”

“Not her; the painting that no one paid you for.”

“Reproductions of it,” corrected Nevis. “But all this time she was … special. I thought about her so often … and now, after I found her again, she did this to me. I did her no harm, Winnie, none at all.”

“She’ll get hers in hell, if there’s such a place, and if there isn’t, she’ll make one of her own when her looks go, you rest easy about that.”

Nevis swallowed his whiskey, and two whiskeys after that Winnie cajoled him into bed, where they spent a sorrowfully pleasant hour until Smith’s return.

46

The order had been placed, Imogen’s brass elk sent along with it to a foundry in Pittsburgh, with instructions to reproduce the beast in all its magnificence to actual scale. Gold for the casting process would be forwarded to the foundry at the last moment for pouring, and the entire project was to be shrouded in the utmost secrecy for obvious reasons. When the golden elk was ready for public display and transportation to Colorado by rail, then would be the time to make the world aware of its existence, not before.

The train carrying the finished statue would be guarded by a contingent of handpicked Pinkerton agents, all heavily armed; Leo even considered requesting a unit from the army for additional protection, but Rowland Price convinced him this was not a good idea. “You’re a man of the people, Leo, and not beholden to Washington for any favors. You can supply the necessary gunmen for your elk out of your own pocket. It’s so much more impressive that way.”

Leo agreed, and the creation of the elk had begun, all conflicting projects at the Pittsburgh foundry having been set aside for this most prestigious of commissions.

While a mold was assembled far away in the east, Leo enjoyed Imogen in any way he pleased. The elk had been a wonderful idea, a stroke of self-indulgent genius, but he would make her pay for her extravagance. He had promised her, after a severe beating that left her plump buttocks quite bruised, that when the golden elk caught the first rays of sunshine outside his home, he would make Elk House her home also, by way of marriage in the front garden, with her shining brainchild in splendid attendance. Leo reasoned that by then, his first wife would have passed on in good time to allow the taking of a second. Zoe was in fact his ex-wife now, the necessary time having elapsed since Leo’s attorney filed the papers of annulment, but he saw no reason to mention this to Imogen.

Leo was not as happy as he should have been. A letter had arrived, marked for his personal attention, and in it he was informed that his unofficial fiancée was in fact a whore by the name of Lovey Doll Pines, whose portrait in a state of brazen nudity could be seen in half the saloons in the country, if he cared to look. Leo did not care to look. He summoned Rowland Price instead, and showed him the letter.

“Can there be anything of substance to this allegation?”

Rowland paused a moment, to phrase his response in the correct manner. “As a matter of fact, Leo, the name has already been mentioned to me, by accident, as it were.”

“Are you saying Imogen is who this … filthy document says she is?”

“As a matter of fact, Leo … yes.”

Rowland had already begun an investigation into the identity of a woman called Lovey Doll a week earlier, when Nevis Dunnigan let slip the very name Leo was now confronted with, and Rowland’s cohorts among the Praetorians had promptly sent back by express mail the information he sought. Not only was Lovey Doll Pines the ex-mistress of a former Praetorian—one Walter Morrow, whose task of recruiting Leo Brannan had fallen to Rowland after that gentleman’s unfortunate murder—but she was known to have been the mistress of several wealthy figures in California before then. In short, she was soiled goods of the most self-serving type. Rowland had been pondering the approach he should take with regard to his findings, and now, as if orchestrated by the gods of fate, had come independent accusations of a similar nature.

“Explain yourself,” demanded Leo, and Rowland did, by producing the letter he had received from Denver. He poured a stiff drink for Leo while it was being read, and handed the glass over as the sheet fluttered to the floor.

“Oh, Rowland …,” Leo said. “What have I done?”

“What many a man has done before you, my friend.”

“This is … monstrous.”

“That may be something of an exaggeration, but an embarrassment … yes, I believe it could be so termed.”

“What am I to do with such a creature? She has her hooks deep into me, Rowland.…”

“Pay her off. She’ll leave without a murmur once she knows you’ve learned the truth about her.”

Leo was assembling in his mind a larger picture than that suggested by Price. He knew now that he had sent away a good woman to be replaced by a whore, a professional temptress for whom he must have presented the easiest of targets. The way she had introduced herself to him aboard his private car; the way she had succumbed to his advances with pretty confusion and maidenly blushes; the way she had manipulated him into providing her with more than Zoe had ever asked for; the way in which she had suggested to him that the crowning glory of the home that was to be theirs would be a life-sized elk of solid gold … The impudence and cunning of this Lovey Doll Pines were beyond comprehension, beyond the natural avariciousness of the average whore, were in an unnameable class all their own. He had been a perfect fool, the most willing of dupes, a plaything in her practiced hands.

And he had dispatched an anonymous assassin to find Zoe and kill her, because he had preferred the charms of the liar. He had once accused Zoe of being just that, but her lies of omission were as nothing in comparison to the monstrous deception wrought by this Lovey Doll Pines. A whore for a wife. The truth would have emerged sooner or later, possibly while he was seeking political office; it would have been a disaster of tremendous proportions.

“Pay her? Rowland, she has already cost me too much … too much, you see.”

“Then a little more won’t break you, Leo. You gave your wife one million dollars.”

“But she was a virtuous woman, despite her shortcomings. This one … How dare she attempt such a tactic against me! I won’t pay her a single cent!”

“That is your choice to make.”

“How dare she!”

“A devious minx of the worst kind.”

“She won’t get away with it, Rowland.”

“Indeed she will not.”

“And she won’t tell anyone how close she came to succeeding either; you’ll see to that, won’t you?”

“I don’t quite follow your line of thought, Leo.”

“The fellow you sent to Durango, the one with the dagger—have him take care of Miss Pines at the earliest opportunity.”

“Are you sure such a move would be wise? Send her away, and that will be that.”

“It will not! She has attempted to make a fool of me … she
has
made a fool of me, and I can’t forgive her! Set him onto her, I say, and be damned to all liars!”

“Leo, that will be difficult. Our man has left his usual haunts to pursue your wife. He could be almost anywhere. I have no way of reaching him until his current work is completed.”

“But I don’t want it completed! I want Zoe left alone, do you hear!”

“It’s too late for new instructions now. I have no means of conveying them, Leo. Try to understand.…”

Leo slumped in his chair, face flushed, a light sweat gleaming on his brow. Rowland had never seen him so distraught, so clearly without control over himself. It was an unnerving sight. Leo Brannan had never seemed less like presidential material, and Rowland experienced the first faint shudderings of some great collapse in the making, the popping of nails from timbers strained beyond their natural strength. If there was no change in Leo soon, the edifice he was an essential part of might very well come crashing down. Rowland would do what he could to prevent that, since Leo’s fall would bring about his own, so closely were they bound.

“Leave it to me,” he said. “The Garfinkles once were a problem, and then they were not. There are surely answers to all this.”

“Fix it, Rowland, and quickly.”

Availing herself of the funds Leo had set aside for her was a daunting prospect. Since Leo had already attempted to have her killed, Zoe was sure the million dollars in Denver was set up as bait, to lure her into revealing her location. She had withdrawn a small amount through a bank, in Durango, and that had been the thing that drew the killer to that town, she was sure. If she withdrew all or part of the remaining funds by way of some other bank, in another part of the state or the country, Leo would again send his assassin along the path taken by those funds, and this time strike without warning, probably by sniper fire undertaken at such a distance as to render Omie’s inner alarms useless. Zoe could not risk that, and yet she needed every dollar of the million, to take herself and Omie beyond Leo’s reach.

They were living in a cabin near Telluride, having abandoned most of their belongings for the sake of greater mobility, faster flight. Zoe did not want to leave the cabin’s comforting isolation for anything but the best of reasons. She knew they could not stay there forever; her physical appearance, and that of Omie, were beacons for local gossip. The woman who had rented the cabin to them was unable to keep her eyes from Zoe’s stump and Omie’s face; eventually the population of San Miguel County would know they were there, and word would be passed along Leo’s clandestine grapevine to the killer in a dress.

She discussed her quandary with Omie, there being no one else to talk over such matters with.

“Go directly to Denver, Mama, and have them give the money to you there. He won’t expect you to do that.”

Zoe thought it over. The idea had merit.

“But what if the bank manager there has been given instructions to delay giving us the money, so that the awful man with the knife can be set on our trail while we wait.”

Omie had an answer for that too.

Mr. Blye was informed by the head teller that a woman calling herself Mrs. Poe wished to discuss with him in private the opening of a very large account. Mr. Blye, the director of Denver National Bank and Trust, had the woman ushered into his office immediately. Mrs. Poe was accompanied by a small girl wearing a heavily veiled hat that concealed her face completely. Under one arm Mrs. Poe carried a large satchel, presumably stuffed with cash to invest at Denver National; her other arm was in a sling, presumably sprained or broken.

“Please sit down, ma’am, and you too, young lady.”

Zoe and Omie took chairs facing Blye’s highly polished desk, and he sat opposite them. “May I order you coffee, ma’am, and a soda for you, miss?”

“We are not thirsty,” Zoe told him. “You may bring to me my money instead.”

“Your money, Mrs. Poe? I understood it was you who had brought money to me, ha ha!”

“My name is not Poe, Mr. Blye, and I should like to have the rest of my one million dollars, without delay, and without discussion between yourself and any other person.”

“Mrs. Brannan …?”

“Please begin the counting now, Mr. Blye.”

“Mrs. Brannan, such an enormous amount, and in cash …”