“Sorry for the mess,” she said. “This should have been cleaned before you sat down. We’re short-handed.”
“Thanks, I’m still working on this drink. But I wonder if I might ask you a question. Is Hunter Covington in here tonight?”
Straightening and folding her dish rag, the waitress looked wary. “Not as I know of.”
“Do you think he might be in later?”
She shrugged and gave Book a forced smile. “You never know with Mr. Covington. He comes and goes.”
“Thank you. I’m wondering if you know where else I might look for him. I’ve tried the quartermaster’s, and here.”
“Taggart’s,” she said without hesitation.
That was the same thing Dunwoody had told him. It was also where Covington had arranged to meet with Mal. Probably it was going to have to be Book’s next port of call. And if he struck out there, then — and only then — would he try Mika Wong.
“That’s his home base,” the waitress explained.
“Thank you,” Book said again. Then he reached into his pocket, took out the folded paper, opened it, and showed it to her. “And by any chance, do you know anything about this woman, Elmira Atadema?”
The waitress drew back slightly, then shook her head and clicked her teeth. “Be careful, preacher,” she said. “The wrong person overhears you asking them kind of questions and you could get yourself dispatched to meet your Maker afore your time, that there fancy dog collar notwithstanding.”
Book raised an eyebrow, and the waitress glanced from side to side so as to make sure no one was listening. She leaned over the table again. He leaned to meet her halfway.
“I will tell you this,” the waitress said. “People around here are saying that woman got herself mixed up in something way over her head. Not that she wasn’t already mixed up with criminals, professionally speaking, being a bondswoman and all. But this time she got her own hands bloody. Her bondholder — Hunter Covington, no less, but you know that from the poster — dragged her into it. People are saying Mr. Covington might even have gotten her murdered.”
Book cocked his head. “Murdered. Good heavens above. Why?” This situation was getting murkier by the second.
The waitress ran her fingertips along her white sash, not provocatively, but as a way to collect her thoughts. “I don’t know why. Maybe because the others involved were afraid she was going to give them up?”
“What was the nature of this supposed crime?”
She lowered her voice. “Something they were planning. Kidnap with violence, that’s what I’ve heard.”
He kept his face neutral. “Whom were they supposed to be kidnapping?” Was it Mal? Almost certainly it was.
“I’m sorry, sir,” she said. “It was an organized thing, that’s all as I know.”
“A gang of criminals, you mean?”
She nodded.
“Who are they?”
She shook her head and rolled her eyes. “I work three jobs and I still can’t get all the bills paid. I don’t have the energy to keep track of all the idle gossip that’s swirling around, know what I’m saying?”
He decided to take a chance at revealing that he might know something himself. “Have you heard anything about people taking the law into their own hands because of things that happened during the war? People whose violent endeavors might be directed against—” he lowered his voice practically to a whisper “—Browncoats?”
“Some folks aren’t willing to forget about the war,” the waitress said. “They say wrongs were done, and they want to right them.”
It sounded as if she might agree with that notion. “And can you provide me with any information on these folks?” Book said. “Or the nature of the wrongs they want to right?”
“I might be able to.” She shrugged and toyed with the sash again.
Book pulled out a heavy coin and waved it at her. She took it from him, and after depositing it safely into her cleavage, she nodded. “Yeah, there’s a group of guys around here who seem like they want to stir up trouble. Rake up the past. Can’t tell you their names or where they hang out. Don’t know. They keep themselves to themselves. But they’re definitely active.”
“Is that all you have on them?” He was exaggerating his disappointment, but not by much.
“I’d name names if I could, Shepherd, I swear to you, but I can’t. Now can I ask you something?”
“Of course.”
She raised one penciled brow. “Why is a man of the cloth so interested in Elmira Atadema? And in Hunter Covington for that matter.”
“I’m asking about Elmira because one of the brethren is a relation of hers,” he lied smoothly. “I promised him I’d look into her disappearance. So, I suppose you could say I’m interested for his sake.”
She smirked. “Well, doesn’t that just take the gorramn cake. Imagine two grown men both connected to Elmira, both asking me where she is on the same day.”
Book was an expert on maintaining an empathetic but otherwise neutral expression, a requirement for someone whose life’s calling entailed listening to the often-grisly confessions of others. But it was also a skill he had honed from his earlier, less honorable life. Though it was anything but the case, he appeared only moderately interested.
“May I ask what the other man looked like? Maybe you caught his name?”
All at once she looked stricken. “Oh,” she said. “No. I, uh, I made a mistake.” She was spooked, just like Smotrich. Clearly she had said more than she felt she ought to.
He said, “I won’t tell anyone that you told me.” When the silence dragged on with no end in sight, it became clear the pump required more priming. He fished out another coin and she, after a moment’s hesitation, took it.
“Guess if you can’t trust a man of the cloth…” she said. “He’s retired Alliance. He comes in now and then, goes in the back room with the manager, comes out smug. I think…” She lowered her voice. “I think we’re paying him protection money.” She swallowed. “Maybe I shouldn’t have said that.”
“No, it’s all right. It will go no further. I promise.” Book waited a beat and then he asked again, “Can you tell me his name?”
She squeezed the coin in her fist, deliberating. “His name,” she said eventually, “is Mika Wong.”
Book managed to mask his astonishment, just about. Wong? Protection money?
“Do you know where I might find Mr. Wong?” He readied another coin. It was like feeding money into a slot machine. You pulled the lever, the reels turned, but you never knew what combo was going to result.
The waitress hesitated, and then she shook her head. “No, I can’t shake you down for that,” she said. “I really don’t know where he is. But he was in here not two hours ago.”
The facts were starting to dovetail and the trail was heating up. Book wondered if Mika Wong was somehow mixed up in Mal’s disappearance. Might a ransom demand come in shortly?
“Thank you. You have been an invaluable help,” he said.
Silently, she nodded. It was clear that she regretted confiding in him.
He gently pushed the water away and rose. “I should be going.” He gave her the last coin, even though she had failed to fully earn it, and she deposited it with the rest. Her cleavage was nothing if not capacious.
“Bless you,” he said, and the waitress nodded without looking at him. He patted her shoulder and took his leave.
He saw himself out, and once in the street, he scanned the sidewalks. His eye fell on the man Dunwoody, who was standing at the mouth of a narrow passageway to his left. The crippled fellow was holding himself up with one hand on the passageway wall and waving weakly at Book with the other. His mouth was bloodied and he looked dazed.