City of Dark Corners by Jon Talton (novels to read .txt) 📗

“Sentimental enough to know your thugs should leave those people alone. They’ve lost their farms and jobs. Mines have closed or are mothballed all over the state. Even the railroads have cut employees.”

He spat in the dirt. “I’m not a political man, Hammons, but this country’s in big trouble.”

“True, but maybe Roosevelt can turn things around.”

“Maybe,” he said. “But he doesn’t take office until March. If it even happens, I’m not sure I trust the man. You know, he’s a cripple. I saw him when he campaigned here in ’31 with Carl Hayden and Governor Hunt.”

“He had polio.”

Marley shook his head. “He’s a damned cripple, Hammons. People see that handsome head in the newspapers. They hear his voice on the radio. But they don’t see how he has the braces on his legs and needs to lean on someone or the podium to stand. I don’t trust a man like that.”

I stared at him.

He said, “Did you know that only about 20,000 Bolsheviks took over Russia, a country of more than a hundred million people?” His eyes blazed like a blast furnace of paranoia. “It can happen here. Look at Germany. Brownshirts and Reds fighting in the streets. This Hitler will put a stop to that if Hindenburg names him chancellor this month. Mussolini got it right in Italy.”

“I don’t care for dictators.” I lit another cigarette.

“Those are very bad for your health.” For a bootlegger, Marley could be quite a prig. He waved the smoke away. “Maybe we need a dictator. I’ll tell you this: No Reds are going to take away my property. No Huey Long, either.”

“Nobody in the camp down there wants your property,” I said.

“Well, I’m not taking chances, and we need that rabble gone. Sends a message. We have to stop these people from bumming their way from town to town. Gas moochers. Our help should only go to local taxpaying citizens.”

“It’s hard to pay taxes when you’ve lost your job,” I said.

“Look, there’s the worthy unemployed and the others.”

I couldn’t resist blowing smoke in his face. “And you’re the one to make that determination?”

He made a face and waved it away. “I agree with President Hoover, no federal relief for individuals. It will sap the American spirit. There’s plenty of work for a man who wants to show some gumption. This Depression, they call it, is only a passing incident. That’s what President Hoover says, and he’s right.” He tried to push me aside, but I didn’t move. “You want to stop me? Oh, I forgot, you’re not a policeman any longer.” His thin lips turned up.

I briefly considered shooting the SOB but thought better of it. I’d killed tougher men than him during the war. But I didn’t need the distraction tonight.

Reading my thoughts, he said, “I would have fought over there if I’d been old enough. Don’t think I wouldn’t have.”

Marley would have lasted about a day against the Huns. He’s the kind of idiot who would have stuck his head above the trench and had it turned to pudding. Or be badly wounded and end up a cripple himself, without Roosevelt’s leonine head, fine voice, and first-rate temperament. I let that pleasing thought go and stepped aside.

“Who’s that in your car?”

I spoke over my shoulder. “A lost soul I’m putting on the train back to Chicago.”

Marley shook his head. “I’ll never figure you out, boy. Come by and see me tomorrow. I have some work for you.”

I felt bile coming up my throat and walked back to the Ford. By the time I had made the U-turn to head for town, Marley and his gang had disappeared toward the tree line. Me, letting it happen.

Two

At Phoenix’s impressive new Union Station, I put Sam Dorsey on the eastbound Golden State Limited, escorting him to the Pullman berth I had purchased and slipping a ten and my business card to the porter to keep an eye on him. The train seemed only about half-full, another casualty of our “passing incident.” I stepped off as the locomotive signaled highball with two bursts of its whistle and its bell ringing like Sunday morning church.

As the train departed, huffing and clanking, I gave Dorsey a fifty-fifty chance of getting home—he might slip off somewhere along the way. It was the best that could be done. I stopped at the Western Union desk in the depot and sent a telegram to his family, telling them he was on the way and when the train was scheduled to arrive.

This part of the job was much easier than it would have been eight years ago. Until then, Phoenix was only connected to mainline railroads by branches, south to Maricopa on the Southern Pacific and north to Ash Fork on the Santa Fe main. I would have had to ride with him to those junctions. My dad was a conductor on the “Ess-pee.” I wished he could have lived to see this.

Now, with the Southern Pacific’s main line coming through Phoenix, we had a wealth of trains from which to choose, even in the Depression: west to Los Angeles, San Diego, and San Francisco, east to New Orleans, Texas, and Chicago. This railroad had so far avoided the fate of so many others, going into bankruptcy.

Then, out of an impulse that was too delinquent to be called noble, I drove back to the camp.

Marley and his men were gone, but a snazzy 1928 Nash Advanced Six Coupe was sitting beside the road, green, two doors and a rumble seat. I looked toward the hobo jungle, which was now visibly on fire. The smell of ashes and gasoline mingled with the pungent scent of the Tovrea Stockyards. The wind had shifted and was coming from the east.

I leaned against the Nash watching low-level lightning strikes from the direction of the camp. In ten minutes, a young woman in tan trousers marched up the grade. Her lush mane of black hair was tied in a ponytail, and she