Sundance (23 page)

“Oh yes. Makes me wonder who you really are. Combined with what it was that she saw in you, I am most curious.”

Longbaugh turned his drink around and watched the liquid across the top send tiny circular waves toward the center. “You talk about her, and there she is out of the corner of my eye. People have been telling me things that she would never do, never. But she did them, I recognize her in the details. I've been looking for my wife and I found someone else.” He stared straight ahead. “Like falling in love twice with the same woman.”

Hightower raised his eyebrows. “Then you're a lucky man.”

“Yeah, if she wasn't dead.”

Hightower sneered as if that was just too much. Longbaugh thought that after seeing Parker, he had gotten used to talking and had carried this disagreeable habit into the daylight. Playing the widower had sent out imaginary tendrils of grief that had taken unexpected root. He looked at his untouched drink and did not want it. He looked at the room and wondered why he wasn't leaving. He looked at his hands on the table and saw a crumb next to his finger and brushed it aside. He tried to listen to conversations around him but quickly lost patience.
He tried to listen to the voices in his head, and had less patience. Time came and went. He looked at Hightower and wondered why
he
didn't leave.

“So what do you do now?” said Hightower.

“Do?”

“Now that your wife's dead.”

He shook his head slowly. Hightower took chances. Unless he knew.

“Tourist, you need a distraction.”

“I could change my mind about shooting you.”

“Aw, you like me.”

“I don't
dis
like you.”

“Nah, you like me. And you need to make plans.”

“Okay, now you can go away.”

“You got money? A job? A skill?”

“I got a skill. I could shoot a part in your hair from fifty paces that wouldn't bleed. Unless I decided to miss and core your brain.”

“No, something that interests you.”

Longbaugh was indifferent to the question and the answer, but he heard himself say the first thing that came to mind: “The West.”

“Ah, the frontier. Hopes and dreams for the drab city folk. What is it you know?”

“Wyatt Earp, Bat Masterson.”

“No, no, something new, not all that heroic tripe they endlessly stuff down our throats.”

“Heroic? They were outlaws. They didn't all of a sudden stop thieving when they became lawmen.”

“Forget it, no one wants to hear that, even if it is true.”

“I thought you said crime is the future.”

“Only if you tell it right. No one wants to know their hero's a jackass. What else you got?”

Longbaugh sat back. “I could write a handbook on robbing trains.”

“What are you, some Pennsylvania dilettante who once visited Promontory Summit?”

Longbaugh was surprised and insulted. It was surely coincidence that Hightower mentioned Pennsylvania, but the insult rankled and made him reckless. Yet the moment he said “Butch Cassidy,” he regretted it.

“Dead five years, old news. How do you know about Cassidy?”

Longbaugh kicked himself and took the nearest exit. “I met his cook.”

“Why hear it from you, why not talk to the cook?”

“Somebody hung him for being a jackass.”

“Not enough of that going around.”

Longbaugh cut off the conversation, reaching for his money to pay the bill. Hightower put his hand on Longbaugh's arm. “This is my party.”

Longbaugh let him take it.

“You see, distraction is what you need. You're feeling better already.”

And now you know more about me than I cared to tell
, thought Longbaugh.

“Come work for me. You're good with a gun, from what you say. Although if you kill Moretti, you dry up a steady source of revenue.”

Longbaugh thought to turn the tables, see if he could quid pro quo Hightower into spilling more than he wanted to tell. “Tell me what she did all these months.”

“A little wallow, eh? I can respect that. Man's got to mourn.”

“Where do you think she was hiding?”

“You're the one found her in Brooklyn.”

“That was a new place. What about before?”

“How can it matter? She's dead, let her rest.”

“Because I want to know.” His voice came loud and harsh and heads turned.

“Easy now, tourist.”

“I want to know who she was,” said Longbaugh, more quietly but no less harshly.

Hightower shook his head in disgust. He tore the corner off a newspaper and took a pencil from an inside pocket, poised to write something on its blankness. “This is pointless, but I'm glad it's not my cross to bear. I tracked her to a place she was living, almost caught her, too.”

He handed Longbaugh the newsprint scrap with an address.

“You helped me with Moretti today, tourist, telling me about Silvio, so consider this your reward. Now I get to mess up Silvio and get a little respect back. I imagine he's backtracking right about now, telling Joe it wasn't Mrs. Place after all. Little creep may never grow out of his pimples.” He scratched himself as he stood up, leaving money on the table. “Oh, and the next time you see your wife, say hello for me.”

Longbaugh was not surprised when he found the street with the address he'd gotten from Hightower. Another innocuous boardinghouse in an area full of boardinghouses, not too nice, not too shabby, a place for a person to blend in and vanish. He bribed the elderly landlady to let him in and went up the stairs to the room she indicated. Longbaugh entered Etta's old room to find it furnished. He pocketed the torn corner of the newspaper. The landlady had told him Etta had lived there as recently as three months before. This time he looked immediately at the wooden wardrobe in the corner. From the moment he saw it, he ignored everything else in the room. The wardrobe was fancier than the one in the Levis' boardinghouse, topped by a carved finial, a front piece that added five inches to its height. A line of books stood upright against it, their spines partially covered by the decorative wood. Behind the books he saw the very tip of the flame of a Statue of Liberty toy. He dragged a chair and stepped up to find it perched on a stack of letters held together with an olive ribbon. Her handwriting shaped his name on the top letter. He could smell her, a heart-surging whiff of perfume amid the dust. That letter also had a layer of dust, and he lifted the stack to find a clean, rectangular shape on the wardrobe's wooden top, where the envelopes had been placed. The top of the wardrobe had gone months without a cleaning. Etta had known no one would look there. Hightower had missed it, but he was only looking for her person.

He thumbed the edge of the thick batch of envelopes and realized she had continued to write to him every week. He was amazed. She had been speaking to him all along, all the while knowing he might never receive her words. He stepped off the chair and sat on it, filled with a kind of awe. The volume of her affection and the extent of her
communication now rested in his hands. He undid the olive ribbon and fanned the envelopes out on his lap. She had sealed each one and acted as if she had sent them off irretrievably.

He chose the bottom letter, assuming it to be the oldest, the first that he had not received. It began as did all her letters,
My Dear
. He quickly went to the bottom of the second page, to see the closing sentiment, and he read,
Your Etta
. He sat in silence, so many of her words in his fingers, her gorgeous scent in his nose, and he closed his eyes, overwhelmed, and she was nearer to him than she had been in years.

He returned to the beginning of the letter and began to read. He had planned to skim it, as there were so many letters and so much to learn, but he was bewitched by the sound of her voice in his head and he inhaled her cadence.

My Dear,

I must not send you this letter, and for that you cannot imagine the pain I suffer. Signor Moretti's men captured a letter I had posted to Mina. I did not think it possible, but he showed it to me and said he knew someone in the post office. I know there is massive corruption in this city, but the Black Hand's reach surprises even me. He said he was going to send men to see her. He was warning me that he could find my family. I doubt if he bothered to follow through, I'm sure Mina only thinks I'm too lazy to write. Better she think that than know the truth. Nevertheless, I learned my lesson. As long as I don't send this to you, he can never find out you exist. It appears the Hand has many arms (laugh now, darling, at least I can still joke), and if he was to find this or any future letter, he would know where you are, and send someone to meet you on the day you are to be released from that dreadful place. You would never know someone was coming, as my letter would fail to arrive to warn you. I will not risk you, no matter how much pain my silence may cause. I know what it is doing to you, and I'd do anything in my power to keep you from hurting this way, but it's better you should suffer silence than be lost to me forever. I could not live knowing you were no longer in this world.

 

He stopped reading. He thought of his visit to Mina and the men sent to frighten her. Etta could not have known Moretti had followed through on his threat. Mina had been lucky. Perhaps Hightower had a heart after all, as it had surely been his men.

He returned to the letter.

The very act of writing draws you near, and I selfishly cannot bring myself to break the habit. I do now as I've always done, organize my thoughts days in advance of lifting a pen, as even thinking of writing to you makes me happy. As I plan what to say, that is an intimate time, and when I ink my thoughts into permanence, you are here in the room with me. When I picture you reading my words, I imagine that you can hear my voice, so I try to write as I speak, precisely and never falsely. Oh, my, I just reviewed those last words, can you imagine me saying “precisely and never falsely”? Maybe it's a good thing you'll never read this. But I know these words are for me alone. Again, how selfish of me to be speaking to you this way.

I am conflicted, my darling. I want you to come and find me when finally they let you out, but I also fear it because they will try to hurt you. If I'm lucky, my silence will keep you away and safe. But when you do come, because you will, you must be careful! Swallow your pride, stay safe. Beware of those men. And now listen to me, sounding like a nervous mother. Or maybe like a nagging wife. Why would you marry such a shrew?

I am safe and in hiding. My plan is to relocate frequently, so do not fear for me. I have no planned-out strategy, so they will not be able to detect a pattern. My hope is that they will tire of this game. If I read them correctly, they are childish and impatient. Eventually I will find a way to continue my work.

I met an anarchist named Mabel. You would dislike her. Oh, my, I laugh to think of you two in the same room. For all her haughty attitude, I would fear for her sharing the same room as you. Her philosophy may not be appealing, but the anarchists are a cautious, nervous, and furtive lot, all things I must learn to be. She thinks I am a fool, and perhaps I am, but to underestimate me proves she lacks imagination. No surprise there, after all,
she's an anarchist. Or maybe she just lacks humor. What is it you always say? I can't abide a man without a sense of humor. Or in this case, a woman. I will let her believe what she will and hold my tongue (not so easy, thinks my husband), although I find her imperious and insufferable. Best not to underestimate her in turn. At one time when you and I were looking for hideouts (where were we? Colorado, I think), we would have laughed at the idea of accepting refuge from that sort of person. Now how funny it is to find it to be prudent.

I close now, as it is late and I must rest. I move again in the morning. I always think of what you would do to make sure I was well hidden, so now in your place I take extra care. You would be proud of my precautions, I think.

I love you in silence,

Your Etta

He did not know what to do. His heart was full, she was here, right here, in the room with him, her words lifting him, her humor, her wit, all there, her voice alive in his head, and yet she was gone, out there somewhere, in hiding, and he couldn't reach her. His mind churned in frustration.

It was time to leave the room. He had already fueled the landlady's curiosity, better not to fan it to flames. But wise as that notion may have been, he did not stand up. He looked at the many letters and tried to decide his next move. He reached too quickly for the last envelope to see if she had left a clue to her latest destination and accidentally knocked them all to the floor. They scattered, out of order. He went to his knees and collected them with care to identify the dustiest, the letter that had been on top, the most recently written. If worse came to worst, he would open each one, as she had dated them.

The olive ribbon had left a clean stripe in the dust on her final letter, making it easy to identify, but he also saw a clean square in the middle where dust had not fallen, and he did not at first understand until he remembered the Liberty toy had stood on it. He opened it to a date only twelve weeks before. Twelve weeks. A long time and yet no time at all,
although had he missed her by twelve minutes, she would still be out of reach. He scanned it but her words gave no clue to her current location.

He rewrapped the letters in the ribbon and remembered the toy, on its side atop the wardrobe. He stood on the chair, took the toy, and vaguely noted that one of the books standing along the finial was upside down. He was in the hallway before that fact tripped him and sent him back to stand on the chair and bring down the book. A loose sheet of paper slipped from under the book's cover. He unfolded it, holding his breath.
My Dear
. He turned it over but there was no affectionate close. It was unfinished, words dangling mid-page, the last thought a fragment without a period. She had been writing and was halted mid-thought, the white expanse below a testament to imminent danger. She had had a mere moment, enough time to fold it and slip it in the book and turn the book upside down. He reread the fragment, her last words: