The Big Rock Candy Mountain (61 page)

Underwood was watching Bo steadily. He had a slight cast in one eye. Bo was instantaneously reminded of the cop who had been killed in Little Chi a week before. This was the kind of cookie that might have done that sort of job. At best he was a bouncer. At worst he might be a hatchet man.

“Heimie tells me you just been north,” McGovern said. He squatted on a keg and tipped it back carefully against the wall.

Bo nodded.

“Still doing the old land office business in Govenlock?”

“They got a warehouse big as a freight yard,” Bo said. “And their ideas are getting as big as the warehouse. Hiked the price of Scotch eight bucks a case this time.”

“There wasn't any raise last time I was up there,” Underwood said. He spoke flatly, without lifting his voice or changing his, position against the wall, but there was a challenge there, a hard deliberate will to pick a fight. The thought that he might be in a trap, that Heimie might have fixed all this up, made Bo slow to answer. He sipped his drink, getting a look all around through half-closed eyes over the rim of the glass. He moved a little so that his back was to the furnace. “When were you up there last?” he said.

“Ten days ago.”

“They raised it on the first, they said.”

“I hadn't heard about it from anybody else,” Underwood said.

Bo deliberately drained his glass and put it down. “Then you haven't been talking to the people that know.”

McGovern cut in. “Heimie says you're slick at getting back and forth.”

“I manage to make a few trips,” Bo said.

“Sixteen loads without a knock-over,” McGovern said. “You must have all the cops fixed.”

“I was talking with a prohi that works the Chinook territory,” Underwood's flat voice said. “He was telling me he chased a guy a month or so ago, so close he could hear the guy banging over the bumps up ahead, running without lights, and then all of a sudden the guy vanished. The prohi tried every crossroad for ten miles up and down, no go. Just evaporated.”

Bo looked at him steadily. This bird knew something. His tone, however, had got less nasty since McGovern had cut in a minute ago. Still it wasn't good. Something was behind that first tone, and behind this little probing, apparently aimless, conversation. “That was me,” Bo said. “That sonofabitch cost me three cases in breakage.”

Blackie Holmes squirmed his back against the wall. “What did you do, take a disappearing powder?”

“I missed a bridge,” Bo said. “I was loaded so heavy behind I just sailed out flat as an airplane and lit in the bottom on all four wheels. Blew out every tire. So I sat there while the prohi ran up and down a. while, and then I came in on the rims.”

McGovern wagged his head and spat at the base of the furnace. “Lucky!” he said.

“That was the one time,” Bo said, his eyes steady on Underwood, “when I took advice about a road. From a guy at the warehouse in Govenlock. He wouldn't be a friend of your prohi friend from Chinook, would he?” ,

He held Underwood's eye, or tried to, but Underwood had the advantage of the slight cast. It was hard to tell whether he was looking at you or past you. “I don't keep track of any prohi's friends,” Underwood said.

After a minute Bo took his eyes off him. He had lost the feeling of being in a trap, but he was surer than ever that this Underwood was not only dangerous, but was deliberately making himself look dangerous. It was perfectly possible that Underwood was the stool who was responsible for all the knock-overs at the line. He was in the business, he would have hot tips on who was coming through, and when.

McGovern raised a hand. “Somebody on the door?” he said.

He went upstairs fast, his sneakers thudding softly on the treads. Bo heard the door open. Steps came down the stairs, and Heimie appeared around the furnace, ducking his head and shuddering his shoulders together.

“Jesus, it's getting cold,” he said. “Hi, Bo. Hi, boys. How's every little thing?”

“Can't kick,” Bo said. Underwood nodded. Holmes raised his glass. Heimie rubbed his hands together, reached up and felt the furnace pipe over his head, stood reaching with both hands against the warm tin. “I just been talking to Bill Burman from Kalispell,” he said. “You remember, I told you this morning I was going to see him.”

Bo nodded.

“He's a bright boy,” Heimie said. “Made me a proposition sounds pretty good.”

“Better take it then,” Bo said. Heimie took his hands from the pipe, flapping and slapping them from loose wrists. He moved around jerkily, smiling.

“He's got a lot of know-how,” he said. “There's only one way this racket can be made to pay big and keep on paying big. This'll interest you, Bo.”

Bo waited. He looked at Underwood, slumped down, almost lying, against the wall, his face in shadow.

“This is how Bill lays it out,” Heimie said, “and it ain't bushwah. The Federals are getting tough, and the state and city are beginning to work with ‘em. You can pay off the city and maybe some of the state, but the Federals are hard to get at, and every once in a while they're going to knock you over. Lose your car, lose your load, pay a big fine. There's no percentage in it.”

“Not unless you stay out of their way,” Bo said.

“Yeah,” said Heimie, “but you can't. So Bill lays out a proposition for some big-time distribution that's a honey. We've got the connections here, see? Here and in Havre. Bill's got ‘em in Kalispell and Helena. That's four good towns. We can work into Butte later, after we get organized. We have a bunch of guys to bring it in from the line, we have another bunch to truck it around where it's needed. When one town gets loaded up we drain it off to the others. Take about ten guys, we could supply the whole state with stuff. Anybody gets in a jam, we spring him, hire a lawyer that can play all the cards. How's that sound?”

“Sounds all right for the guys that don't take the chances,” Bo said.

“It's all right for everybody,” Heimie said. “Look what you get: You get protection in town, and that'll be foolproof. And if the state or Federals gets hot and you get knocked over, the organization pays your lawyer, pays your fine, sets you up to a new car and puts you back to work. You can't lose.”

“How much would a man make?” Bo said. “That's the angle I'm interested in.”

“That'd have to be figured out.”

“It looks like a guy could make about twice as much alone.”

Heimie put his hands up to the pipe again, took them down to remove his overcoat. He had changed clothes since morning, and the shirt he wore now was whitest silk. When he opened his coat to smooth out his shirttails Bo saw the blue embroidered butterfly on the shirt pocket. “A guy alone could make more,” Heimie said, “until he got knocked over. Then he could lose about five times as much. And it's a cinch that any man working alone is going to get knocked over oftener than if he works with us.” His eyes strayed over to Underwood, sprawling against the partition, and Underwood met his look.

Bo sat still, as if considering. They made it clear enough. The threat was doubly underlined. Rising and stretching, Bo smiled into , Heimie's pale, widow‘s-peaked face. “Yeah,” he said. “It sounds like a good layout. You want me to come in, is that it?”

“You'd be doing yourself and us both a favor,” Heimie said.

“When you planning to get going?”

“Right away. We've already got this place for a depot. Bill's got another in Kalispell. We've got everything we need except the organization, and that shouldn't take long.”

“Well, you let me know,” Bo said. “When you get things moving, call me up.”

“I'm asking you in right now,” Heimie said. “There's a beautiful chance to get rid of this Scotch of yours in Helena. Bill could move it like water down a drain.”

Bo let his eye drift over the others as he reached out a cigar. Underwood was sitting up. Holmes had his glass to his lips, watching Heimie over the rim. McGovern was slouched against a barrel, watching.

“I couldn't come in with this load,” Bo said. “I've got this promised. Suppose I think it over and let you know next week.”

The point of Heimie's widow's peak moved down, then back, and he shrugged. “There's such a thing as waiting too long.”

“I guess I'll have to take that chance,” Bo said. “I can't go back on the promises I've already made.”

For a moment they looked at each other, then Heimie shrugged again. With his overcoat thrown around his shoulders like a cape he followed Bo up the stairs and into the dark hall. The cold pushed in in a solid, moving mass as Heimie shot the bolt and opened the front door.

“There's one thing I want to know before I do anything,” Bo said. ”That's about this Underwood cookie.”

“What about him?”

“He's a stool.”

He could not see Heimie's face, but Heimie's low laugh filled the hall. “He knows which side his bread is buttered on,” he said. “You don't need to worry about him.”

“Far as I'm concerned,” Bo said, “a stool pigeon is like a clay pigeon. He can fly any way he's pushed.”

“I said don't worry,” Heimie said. “I've got enough on that bruiser to make him be a good dog.”

“Yeah,” Bo said. “Well, long as you're sure.”

“If that was what bothered you, why don't you come in now and get on the gravy boat?”

In the dark Bo stood for a minute silent. “I'll have to see you about that next week,” he said. “And I'll have to have the dough for these three now. I need it.”

Without a word Heimie shut the door, snapped on a little blue light, and counted out the money. He laughed. “Anything you ask for you get,” he said. “That's the way this new outfit works.”

“That's a good start,” Bo said. “Well, see you next week.”

“You going to be in town all week?”

“Yeah,” Bo said. “I'll be around.”

“I'll call you if anything hot comes up.”

“Okay.”

He went out down the rubbishy path, the night very dark, with a chilly, searching wind. His eyes were narrowed and his blood hot with rage. Come in with us little shyster crooks or get run out of business. Come in and be our errand boy, driving a truck in our transfer business. Take all the chances for little piddling wages and we'll bail you out of the hoosegow when you get caught! Wasn't it a dandy! Why, the dirty little pimping son of a bitch ...

But it would pay to be careful. It would pay to be careful as hell. Underwood had been planted there to scare him, but if he didn't scare then Underwood might be used for other things. It was complicated and dangerous, and by the time he pulled into the garage he had decided not to leave the next morning as he had planned. It wasn't too far-fetched to believe that Heimie might try to stool him off. That might happen either at home or on the road, but he had to take that chance. He'd better lie low for a day and slip out when the coast looked clear.

From the back door Bo looked out across the yard, across the alley to the back hedge of a house on the next street, up to the corner where the street light had just come on, dim and popping in the November dusk. There was no one in sight; the fresh and slightly smoky air made him anxious to start. He had already been lying around the house too long, just because of Heimie and his gang of two-by-four toughs. The car was loaded, the Wyoming plate installed, the dummy in the front seat.

He went back into the kitchen and picked up his overcoat. “Guess I'll be going,” he said. Elsa dried her hands and left the sink to call the boys in from the front room.

They came out, Chet tossing his new football. “Goodbye, Pa,” they said, like parrots. Bo looked at them, Chet husky, stringy with muscle, the younger one thin, puny actually, with staring hungry eyes and spindly legs.

“So long, kids,” he said. “You mind your mother now, while I'm gone.”

As they stood looking at him he had a feeling that they were a thousand miles away, unreachable; they were strangers who studied him, critically and without affection. He reached back into his hip pocket and got the wallet. “Brucie, you didn't get anything to match Chet's football. What do you want?”

“I don't know,” Bruce said. A wavering grin split his face and he threw a quick, triumphant look at Chet. “A Boy Scout hat, maybe.”

“You aren't old enough to be a scout,” Chet said.

“Well, I can wear a scout hat, can't I?”

“How much this hat cost?” Bo said.

“I don't know.”

“Here,” Bo said, and laid a five dollar bill in Elsa's hand. “Get him his hat. That'll make everything even.”

He stooped and kissed both boys, and under his hands their slight bodies were stiff and unemotional. Obscurely baffled, he roughed their hair once, put his arm around Elsa, and led her to the door. He kissed her long and hard, the boys watching. “I'll be about a week,” he said. “Don't worry, now. All I have to do is unload and turn right around and come back. I'll be hightailing it all the way.”

“Goodbye,” she said. “Please be careful.”

He squeezed her arm and ducked out under the trellis, and she followed to close the garage doors after him. As he drove out the alley he saw her standing with her hand on the door, watching after him, and the picture struck him as somehow pathetic. These trips were pretty hard on her.

And that was the last he thought about his family. He let them slide out of his mind, concentrated on getting out of town, covering ground. If Heimie had posted any prohis on the road they'd be tired of it and gone by now, after a day and a half. Just the same, he wouldn't go down the good road to Helena and Three Forks. He'd cut over the Little Belt Mountains and hit Livingston that way. It was a bad road to run with a load on, but it was shorter.