Somehow, Horn had slipped out with a lot of money and half the thugs in the city would be on his trail. But Fargo knew that sometimes the fastest way to track a man was to follow instinct instead of a trail. He’d meant to play the people tonight, and had been played himself.
It was not a sensation that he enjoyed very much at all, and he was certain that Hattie was mixed up in the whole thing somehow. But before he could prove that, he’d have to catch Horn and get the money that had been stolen.
Worse still, if his suspicions about those involved were correct, he had more enemies right now than Horn himself.
The city streets were quiet once more when, two hours after the shooting, Fargo slid around the back side of the Blue Emporium. He’d wanted to listen to H.D. question Hattie, but his instincts told him that Horn hadn’t gone all that far.
Kicking a scavenging rat out of his way, Fargo moved to stand beside the door that led into the kitchen. Inside, Matilda alternately spoke and sang softly to herself. She had a sweet voice that carried long, low notes of melancholy in it. He imagined that working for Hattie Hamilton would do that to most anyone.
After waiting almost a half hour more, he heard Matilda mutter, “Lord God, but that man does like his vittles, don’t he?”
As far as Fargo knew, there were no men left inside the Blue Emporium, so he continued to trust his instincts and silently opened the back door and stepped into the shadows that surrounded it. Matilda was standing at the counter, her head wrapped up in a towel of some kind and wearing a housedress that was so large it could have served as a field tent for any two normal-sized soldiers.
She was making a large plate of food, most of it out of the cold storage box set into one wall. Fried chicken, cut-up carrots, and coleslaw covered the plate. She added two cold buttermilk biscuits and a large pat of butter. “That ought to do him,” she muttered. “And if it doesn’t, he can damn well make more for his own self.”
Fargo was considering his options when his instincts tried to scream a warning, but it was too late. He felt the cold steel barrel of a pistol pressed up against the back of his skull.
“You don’t want to move, Mr. Fargo,” Horn said from behind him. “Not even a twitch until I say so, understood?”
“I understand,” Fargo said. “I guessed you were still here.”
“You’re a good guesser,” Horn said. “Or just a bit smarter than the others.”
Matilda watched with wide-eyed interest from the kitchen as Horn pushed Fargo into the dimly lit space. “Mr. Horn!” she said. “Why on earth you puttin’ a gun to that man’s head? I thought you wanted to eat!”
“Sit down, Fargo,” Horn said, moving him toward one of the chairs. “Maybe we can talk a bit.”
Fargo sat down and finally managed to get a look at Horn’s face. He appeared tired, but his eyes were still watchful. “You don’t want my guns?” Fargo asked.
“Not unless I have to have them,” Horn said. He sat down heavily in another chair, but kept his gun aimed and ready. “We need to talk.”
Matilda set the plate down on the kitchen table next to Horn’s elbow and said, “I’m goin’ back to my sleep, Mr. Horn. If you need something else, you’re already in the kitchen.”
“Fair enough,” Horn said. “Thank you, Matilda, and good night.”
“Good night,” she said, heading through a door Fargo hadn’t seen which led into the second sitting room, where Horn had been waiting for him.
Once she was gone—her heavy tread making the stairs above their heads creak alarmingly—Horn said, “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 was Horn, or someone else just playing the game to make money for himself.