“Good, now we can have a talk without listening to that woman ramble.”
“So, talk,” Fargo said, wondering where this was leading.
Horn reached inside his coat and pulled out a badge. “The name’s not Horn,” he said. “It’s James McKenna. I’m a Pinkerton agent.”
The light dawning, Fargo nodded. “So where’s the real Horn?” he asked.
“Dead,” McKenna said. “I had hoped to use him to find out more about Parker, Beares, and Anderson, but when I went out to his plantation, I found him in his parlor, dead maybe one or two days. It looked like a heart attack, maybe. He was slumped over his desk, and I guess it’s a lucky thing I showed up. All of the money he’d planned on using for this game was in stacks on his desk.”
“None of his workers had bothered it?” Fargo asked, amazed.
McKenna laughed. “Apparently, he’d told them not to disturb him, no matter what.”
“They took his orders seriously, I take it,” he said.
“I’m pretty sure they heard him collapse,” McKenna said, “and just left him in there to die. Horn wasn’t a very nice man, by all accounts.”
“How is it that Parker or Beares didn’t recognize that you weren’t Horn?” Fargo asked. “I assumed they knew him.”
“They did,” McKenna said, “but only through correspondence. Horn’s plantation is up near Lafayette. He was known by reputation to be something of a gambler.”
“I’ll be damned,” Fargo said. He gestured to the gun in McKenna’s hand. “How long do you suppose you’re going to keep pointing that thing at me?”
“Just one question,” McKenna said, “before I put it away.”
“What’s that?” he asked.
“Are you sleeping with Hattie Hamilton, too?”
“Hell, no,” Fargo said. “I prefer my women to be poison free, and she’s the kind that might be death in the sack.”
“Good,” he said, putting the gun back into its holster. “Because then I don’t have to shoot you. Before this is done, I imagine I’m going to have to kill every man involved in this who’s been sleeping with her.”
“Why?” he asked. “How is she wrapped up in all this?”
“Fargo,” McKenna said, “if I’m right, Hattie Hamilton isn’t just wrapped up in all this—she is the source of all this.”
It made a certain amount of sense, Fargo realized, but still it was hard to believe that one Basin Street prostitute could create this much chaos. “How did the Pinkertons get involved?” he asked. “Policing the New Orleans nightlife doesn’t seem like something they’d be interested in.”
“On the contrary, Fargo, we’re very interested in keeping things here just like they are—for now.”
“Why?” he asked. “I’m not sure I understand your interest.”
McKenna smiled grimly. “Because when the time comes, we’re going to make an example of this city to the whole country. But we’re going to do it on our terms and right now, that means keeping the status quo.”
“An example?” Fargo asked. “What kind of example? ”
“This city is going to burn, Fargo, right down to the cobblestones. It’s a cesspool of crime and we’re going to clean it up and we’re going to do it in a way that makes clear to every city in America what can happen if they don’t police themselves.” McKenna leaned back in his chair and dug into the food Matilda had left for him.
Not quite sure how to respond to this statement, Fargo said, “How’d you get Matilda involved?”
“She’s a paid informant,” the Pinkerton man said between bites. “It was her that showed me how to escape the basement unseen and she hid me until the commotion died down.”
Fargo watched the other man eat in silence for a couple of minutes, his mind churning. If McKenna was telling the truth, a lot of innocent people were going to die. Every city had its good and bad, but the good folks shouldn’t be killed along with the bad just to make an example for everyone else.
On the other hand, there was nothing to prove that McKenna was telling the truth. All Fargo had to go on was his badge and he could have gotten that easily enough. It was possible he
It seemed like there was no one in this town he could truly trust, so Fargo did the only thing he could. He stood up, trying to appear casual, and stretched. “It sounds like maybe you’ve got a plan.”
McKenna or Horn or whoever he was nodded. “First thing tomorrow, I’ll take the money down and put it in the bank to be wired to Chicago—confiscated funds.”
“What then?” Fargo asked.
“Then I’ll—” was all the man managed to say before the butt end of Fargo’s Colt slammed into his head, knocking him unconscious.
“Take a nap,” he finished for him. “A good long one.”
“At least you didn’t shoot this one,” H.D. said, looking at the prone form of McKenna on his office floor. “So you found Horn?”
The office was dark and quiet, but morning wasn’t all that far off. Fargo shrugged. “Horn, maybe. He told me he was really a Pinkerton agent.”
“Christ, Fargo, you clubbed a Pinkerton man? Do you want to be chased from here all the way into the Indian nations?”
“Something about his story didn’t ring quite true,” he said. He filled H.D. in on what McKenna had told him.
“Burn the city down?” H.D. said. “I don’t believe it.”
“I don’t either,” Fargo said. “But who knows what the real truth is? For now, we’ve got to get him out of town.”
“What do you suggest?”
“Can you and your men truss him up and get him on a northbound train?” he asked. “Maybe in a freight car where they won’t find him for a while? By the time he gets back, we can hopefully have the rest of this sorted out.”
H.D. nodded. “Yeah, I can manage that. But there’s something I’ve got to tell you, Fargo.”
“Go ahead.”
“I had to let Hattie Hamilton go,” H.D. said. “The county attorney showed up about an hour ago. Parker got him out of bed and forced him to come down here. He told me to cut her loose for a ‘lack of evidence.’ ”
“Damn,” Fargo said. “I was hoping you’d be able to hold her for at least another couple of days.”
“Me, too,” he said, “but he was right. We didn’t have much in the way of evidence and Parker verified her story.”
“Where’d she go?” he asked. “She didn’t come back to the Blue Emporium. That’s where I’ve been most of the night.”
“Parker’s place, I imagine,” H.D. said. “Why?”
“Because I’ve got the feeling that she really is at the center of all this.” He nudged the man on the floor. “Tell you what,” he said. “Just lock him up for now and when he comes around, why don’t you see if you can get some sort of verification of his story?”
“What are you going to do?” H.D. asked.
“What I always do,” Fargo said, turning back to the doorway.
“Do you know who you’re after?” H.D. called after him.
“Just about everyone,” he replied. “But first things first. I’m going to take that money to the only man I can trust with it.”
“You’ve got the money? Why didn’t you say so?”
“Because, my old friend,” Fargo said, his voice sounding tired even to himself, “I can’t trust you with it.”
“What? Why not?”
Fargo stopped in the doorway, not bothering to turn around. “You’re sleeping with her, too, aren’t you, H.D.?”
The silence behind him was answer enough and he sighed. “You should have stayed out west, H.D. This place isn’t good for you.”
“Are you . . . you’re not going to tell my wife, are you?” he asked. “She’d be heartbroken.”
