Boon by Ed Kurtz (smallest ebook reader txt) 📗

“Ball about to go up?”

“Matter of fact, it might.”

“Good luck, Johnny Mack,” the pretty waiter girl said, and with that she went out like a bird.

The Pinks started their measured pace to the back corner, where Boon sat. She stood up. I went for my knife.

Then the ball went up.

Chapter Thirty-One

Boon’s hands came quickly and gracefully out of her sleeves when the one Pinkerton swept back one side of his frock coat to reveal the sawed-off he had poorly concealed there. He said, “Boonsri Angchuan,” and almost got it all the way right.

“I’m just another China girl,” she said. She wasn’t trying to act the part at all anymore. I got a hold of the hilt in my boot and took the knife out slow.

“How’s about you tell us where your accomplice is and come along like a good girl,” said the other Pink.

Boon half-smiled.

“I never was much good,” she said, slipping her hand into the opening at her hip.

I understood, picked up my feet. Her gown exploded near her right thigh before I reached her. The fabric caught fire and the Pinkerton with the scattergun collapsed in a haze of blood and gunsmoke. Two or three of the sporting girls screamed. Most everybody ran for cover, or at least those who weren’t heeled themselves and raring to join the mayhem.

Flames licked up Boon’s front, eating up the silk as she hurried to expand the tear in its side to rip herself free. The fiddler on the platform withdrew a belly gun, a little Derringer, and fired indiscriminately into the fray. I ducked. The dying detective on the floor blew a hole in the ceiling with the shotgun and expired. The remaining Pinkerton growled like a wolf and charged Boon. I meant to put my sticker in his heart, but she was faster. Her gown came apart and she tossed it up, smoking black, and brought the whole burning mass down on the man’s head.

Reduced to her chemise and knickers, Boon raised up the .44 she’d smuggled in beneath the gown and brought the grip down hard on the crown of the man’s skull, even as his hat and collar ignited from the flames. Her unmentionables blackened and skin red as strawberries, she furrowed her brow and took two steps back as the Pink clawed furiously at the silk burning up his head and neck.

“You yellow cunt,” he sputtered, tearing away gown, hat, and collar. His pomaded hair continued to burn, but he did not seem to notice. Even if he had, it would not have much mattered: Boon fired her Colt, and the bullet slammed right through his forehead and out the back of his skull. Half his brains spattered the bar behind him and the bartender hit the floor. It was the last ugly insult that Pink would ever give, and I couldn’t be too fussed about it.

When at first we heard the whistles, neither of us knew quite what to make of the racket. I had never heard such a noise before, and I winced at the pain of it in my ears. It was so shrill and unpleasant. What few people remained in the musty cellar started to scatter, and in watching them move, Boon’s face lightened and her eyes went wide, and she said, “Police.”

I had never seen a policeman to that point in my life, though I had read about them in newspapers. Eastern cities seemed to be lousy with them, organized militias of uniformed men who went about the streets and alleys, staving in heads with their cudgels and clubs. Some stories made it look like there were all-out wars in faraway places like New York City between the gangs and the police departments, some of their battles bloody enough to rank right up there with the Indian Wars in our neck of the woods. You might see a posse in Texas or Arkansas comprising ten or even fifteen men; in the cities there were dozens on top of dozens of these bell-capped killers, the preponderance of them Irishmen by the sound of it, just looking for skulls to crack and practicing their shooting skills on warm bodies.

I was not eager to meet the men with the whistles.

“Back stairs,” I said, though I hadn’t any idea as to where they led, apart from whatever accommodations the working girls kept up yonder.

Boon nodded once, sharply, and I led the charge for the opposite side of the cellar. Boots stamped like hooves down the stairs behind us, but then also in front of us. They were descending upon us from every direction. Only two others remained besides Boon, myself, and the bartender, and those were the melodeon player and the Chinaman, both of whom flattened themselves against walls on either side of the place as if they believed this to make them invisible. Boon thumbed back the hammer on her Colt and I stood still, stupidly, grasping the hilt of my knife and pivoting my head from side to side.

I would go down slashing, but I was fully confident that I would, in fact, go down.

A chorus of voices shouted over one another, and I found myself listening carefully to determine if they were indeed Irish. I couldn’t tell. The first of them I saw, scrambling down from the back stairs, looked like any other white man I’d ever seen. If there was anything particularly Irish about his countenance, I didn’t know about it.

The policeman wore a blue tunic with a star affixed to his breast, and in his hand was a shiny new single-action revolver. I would have been surprised to learn he had ever fired it. The man was younger than me by a decade at least, and his oily hair poured sweat down his brow and cheeks. He looked scared half to death, and his comrades who quickly followed him into the cellar did not appear much braver