Chapter 36
Okee
The sun rises, blinding my already hazy, sleepless vision with its bright light that escapes through a slit between velvet curtains.
Boone lies flat on our bed with one boot crossed over the other, flicking playing cards into his hat.
The hat sits upside down on the floor beside the washstand.
A few cards have made it in. More litter the rug around it.
Flick.
The three of clubs clips the brim and falls short.
“Damn.”
I rise to stand at the window and crack the curtain barely enough to see the street below.
Flick.
The queen of hearts sails clean into the hat.
Boone lifts his head from the coverlet. “Could be she’s back.”
I look over my shoulder. “She is not back.”
He shrugs, though it is a poor attempt at ease. “Could be she’s downstairs. Could be havin’ a bath. Could be Pearl’s got her trapped somewhere, spinnin’ a yarn over breakfast.”
“She would have sent word.”
“Maybe Goldie ain’t let her.”
“Why would Goldie keep that from us?”
Boone sits up, another card pinched between two fingers. “Hell if I know. Why does Goldie do anything? Woman keeps us penned in this blasted room like dogs.”
The clock on the mantel ticks. Each second lands hard in the silence beneath the music downstairs.
Flick.
The card misses by a foot.
Boone stares at it. “How long’s it been?”
“Thirteen hours.”
He drags both hands through his hair, leaving it wild around his face. “I hate this.”
“So do I.”
“No, I mean I hate it.” He stands now, sudden, restless, all that nervous energy rising in him with nowhere to go. “Sittin’ pretty while our girl’s God knows where. Waitin’ on Goldie to decide when we’re allowed to know our own damn business.”
Downstairs, laughter rises bright and false. Like the whole Gemini is mocking us.
“Fuck this,” Boone says, abandoning the sprawled-out deck of cards on the blanket. He stands quick, wiping his palms on his trousers. “Goldie wants us to behave, then she ought to do a mite better than this.”
I follow him because I have already made up my mind.
Boone reaches the door first and throws it open hard enough to rattle the latch. Pearl jumps from her chair in the hall, nearly dropping the little blue book in her hands.
“Oh—”
“Move.”
Her eyes go wide. “Goldie said you are not to leave this room.”
“And had you standin’ guard, did she? I’ve had about enough of that woman’s orders.” Boone’s voice is low, which is worse than shouting. “Where is she?”
Pearl looks to me. I hate that she thinks I might be the reasonable one.
“Where is Goldie?” I ask.
“In her office.” Pearl swallows. “But she’s with—”
Boone is already past her.
I follow close behind. The hall feels narrower than it did before. Warmer. Dark paper walls, gilt lamps, the murmur of men’s voices behind closed doors. The Gemini is alive around us, all perfume and laughter and bed ropes creaking.
This was Goldie’s plan. Goldie’s house. Goldie’s daughter.
And Lula walked out dressed up as a snare because Goldie Eld swore she knew best.
We reach the hall outside her office and a man in a derby steps halfway into Boone’s path, frowning like a customer wronged by the sight of trouble.
Boone does not slow. The man thinks better and gets out of the way.
Goldie’s office door is closed.
Boone does not knock. He shoves it open.
Goldie stands behind her desk with a glass in one hand and her ledger open in front of her. Her eyes lift, sharp as razors.
“Well,” she says, resting one fist on one hip. “Manners have entirely fled the Territory.”
“Where’s Lula?” Boone asks.
Goldie’s mouth tightens then she looks to me, as if expecting my explanation. Some of the irritation leaves her face. Not all. Enough.
“She hasn’t returned?”
“How the hell should I know?” Boone snaps. “You’re the one sent her out there like a worm on a damn fishin’ line. She wouldn’t even be out there if you’d have just handed over your ledgers.”
Goldie looks to me again. “Is he addled, or is this a voluntary condition? I try not to strike at a man’s natural limitations.”
That is when the last of my restraint slips its leash. “He has made no error.”
My words come from deep in my chest, and Goldie’s brows lift, her expression falling into that droll cast I have begun to tire of. As if the entire world is some ridiculous play for her amusement.
“It is you who seems determined to spin illusions and demand we all deny the evidence of our own eyes and ears,” I continue.
“You can protect yourself, your ledgers, your reputation, and whatever throne you have built from secrets and men’s appetites, but you do not get to climb up on a cross while doing so. ”
Her expression hardens.
Good.
“You made a choice,” I continue, taking one step forward.
“And that choice put the things you value most in order. Money. Power. Influence. Perhaps fear. I do not know, and I find I no longer care. But Lula is missing, and I have grown tired of being expected to admire the cleverness of the arrangement that lost her.”
Goldie’s fingers curl around the edge of the desk, her attention briefly falling to the pistol on my hip. Boone goes very still beside me.
“Now,” I say, “you will tell us what we need to know to find her, or I will take this office apart board by board and ledger by ledger until there is not a secret left in this house with a roof over it.”
I let the silence sit. The piano from downstairs grows sluggish, then comes to an abrupt stop. For the first time since I have known her, Goldie does not answer at once.
The music starts again, lively and brash, carrying up through the floor. Boone’s breathing is harsh beside me. Mine is worse, though I keep my hands still.
Goldie looks from me to Boone, then back again. Whatever she sees there strips the mockery from her face.
“Well,” she says softly. “There you are.”
That is when the room changes. Boone feels it too. I see his shoulders draw back, all that anger bracing itself around a new confidence.
Goldie looks toward the door. “Pearl.”
Pearl appears behind us. “Ma’am?”
“Did Lula come through the back?”
“No, ma’am.”
“The washroom?”
“No.”
“My room?”
“No, ma’am.”
Boone’s voice drops to nothing. “You mean to tell me you don’t know where she is and you ain’t even thought to check before now?”
Goldie’s eyes cut back to him. My heart gives one hard, sickening beat.
Boone laughs once, a broken little sound with no humor in it. “Jesus Christ.”
Goldie comes around the desk. “Hold.”
“Hold?” Boone says, voice cracking with it. “You had us holdin’ upstairs while she vanished.”
“She has not vanished.”
“You just said you don’t know where she is.”
Pearl goes pale and grips the wall.
“I said she has not come back here.” Goldie turns on Pearl and snaps her fingers. “Do not faint in my doorway.”
Pearl appears breathless. “Esther said her boy down at the livery saw Deputy Hepburn outside Hollister’s office last night. Just standing.”
Goldie’s eyes sharpen. “Hepburn. When did she tell you this?”
“At breakfast, but I didn’t think anything of it till now.”
“Who?” Boone snaps.
Goldie closes her eyes for half a second. When she opens them, the mother is gone and the general remains.
“He’s taken her outside of the camp,” she says.
“How do you know?”
“Hepburn does not guard. He hauls.”
“You know that for certain?” I ask.
Goldie gives me a look. “He moved a dead alderman out of my blue room in ’67 and a living judge out of my pantry last spring. Yes, Mr. Collins, I know the man’s habits.”
“Haul her where?” Boone asks, panic rising.
Goldie’s eyes narrow, not at Pearl, but inward, as if the whole town has become a map behind her face.
Boone steps toward the door, wild at the edges. “I will ride through every door in this godforsaken town if I have to.”
“You ride out wild and you’ll find exactly what Everett wants you to find.”
“We’re supposed to listen to you?” he bites back. “Your plan lost her.”
Goldie’s gaze cuts to me, and for one moment I think she might slap him. Instead, she straightens. The woman gathers herself up, chin high.
“I have spent twenty-five years studying men. Rich men, poor men, drunk men, men with badges, men with Bibles, and men with blood on their cuffs. I could have a damned doctorate in men if universities cared to learn what whores already know.”
Goldie points toward the street. “Everett thinks he is cunning because he has imagined the first thing you will do. And look at you. Both of you. Ready to oblige him like trained dogs.”
Boone’s hand twitches near his gun.
“He expects you to run into the first place you suspect, guns blazing,” she says. “He expects fury. He expects the great diamond boys to kick down a door with murder in their eyes. Then every man in town sees what Everett told them they would see.”
“Aces,” Boone says, muttering. “Ain’t no diamond boys. And she’s out there.”
“Yes. And if you care about her half as much as your faces advertise, you will stop proving it with noise and listen to a woman who is older, meaner, and in possession of better information.”
Boone flinches, then turns to me to see if I have been persuaded as well as he has.
I am not persuaded. I am only listening because Lula is missing and Goldie has finally stopped performing long enough to be useful.
Goldie sees it on my face and nods once, briskly, as if that is all the agreement she requires, then turns back to the map like sentiment is a basin of dirty water she means to throw out.
“Everett will not kill her,” she says. “Everett does not destroy value before he has spent it.”
She begins to pace behind the desk, one hand pressed to her middle, thinking aloud.
“He also has leverage against you two. He knows there are only so many ways men like you can bear waiting. He can set a street full of witnesses between you and her and count on your fear to do what his hired guns cannot.”
My hand curls into a fist.
Goldie points at me. “And there. That. He has your pride too. Your anger.”
I say nothing.