“Dear lad, you have to turn the opposite direction to focus the naked ladies.” Helios Augustus smiled and shook his head at my provincial curiosity. He passed me a cigar, but I’d never acquired a taste for them and stuck with my Lucky Strike. He was in town on business, having relocated to San Francisco. His fortunes had waned in recent years; the proletariats preferred large stage productions with mirrors and cannon-smoke, acrobats and wild animals to his urbane and intimate style of magic. He lamented the recent deaths of the famed composer Moritz Moszkowski and the Polish novelist Wladislaw Reymont, both of whom he’d briefly entertained during his adventures abroad. Did I, by chance, enjoy classical arts? I confessed my tastes ran more toward Mark Twain and Fletch Henderson and Coleman Hawkins. “Well, big band is a worthy enough pleasure. A certain earthy complexity appropriate to an earthy man. I lived nearly eighteen years on the Continent. Played in the grandest and oldest theatres in Europe. Two shows on the Orient Express. Now I give myself away on a weeknight to faux royalty and well-dressed rabble. Woe is me!” He laughed without much bitterness and poured another drink.
Finally, I said, “What did you call me here to jaw about?”
“Rumor has it Conrad Paxton seeks the pleasure of your company.”
“Yeah, that’s the name. And let’s get it straight—I’m looking for him with a passion. Who the hell is he?”
“Doubtless you’ve heard of Eadweard Muybridge, the rather infamous inventor. Muybridge created the first moving picture.”
“Dad knew him from the Army. Didn’t talk about him much. Muybridge went soft in the head and they parted ways.” I had a sip of sherry.
“A brilliant, scandalous figure who was the pet of California high society for many years. He passed away around the turn of the century. Paxton was his estranged son and protégé. It’s a long story—he put the boy up for adoption; they were later reconciled after a fashion. I met the lad when he debuted from the ether in Seattle as the inheritor of Muybridge’s American estate. No one knew that he was actually Muybridge’s son at the time. Initially he was widely celebrated as a disciple of Muybridge and a bibliophile specializing in the arcane and the occult, an acquirer of morbid photography and cinema as well. He owns a vault of Muybridge’s photographic plates and short films I’m certain many historians would give an eye tooth to examine.”
“According to my information, he lives north of here these days,” I said.
“He didn’t fare well in California and moved on after the war. Ransom Hollow, a collection of villages near the Cascades. You shot two of his men in Seattle. Quite a rumpus, eh?”
“Maybe they were doing a job for this character, but they weren’t his men. Dirk and Bane are traveling guns.”
“Be that as it may, you would do well to fear Conrad’s intentions.”
“That’s backwards, as I said.”
“So, you do mean to track him to ground. Don’t go alone. He’s well-protected. Take some of your meaner hoodlum associates, is my suggestion.”
“What’s his beef? Does he have the curse on me?”
“It seems plausible. He killed your father.”
I nodded and finished my latest round of booze. I set aside the glass and drew my pistol and chambered a round and rested the weapon across my knee, barrel fixed on the magician’s navel. My head was woozy and I wasn’t sure of hitting the side of a barn if push came to shove. “Our palaver has taken a peculiar and unwelcome turn. Please, explain how you’ve come into this bit of news. Quick and to the point is my best advice.”
The magician puffed on his cigar, and regarded me with a half smile that the overly civilized reserve for scofflaws and bounders such as myself. I resisted the temptation to jam a cushion over his face and dust him then and there, because I knew slippery devils like him always came in first and they survived by stepping on the heads of drowning men. He removed the cigar from his mouth and said, “Conrad Paxton confessed it to some associates of mine several years ago.”
“Horse shit.”
“The source is…trustworthy.”
“Dad kicked from a heart attack. Are you saying this lug got to him somehow? Poisoned him?” It was difficult to speak. My vision had narrowed as it did when blood was in my eye. I wanted to strangle, to stab, to empty the Luger. “Did my old man rub out somebody near and dear to Paxton? Thump him one? What?”
“Conrad didn’t specify a method, didn’t express a motive, only that he’d committed the deed.”
“You’ve taken your sweet time reporting the news,” I said.
“The pistol aimed at my John Thomas suggests my caution was well-founded. At the time I didn’t believe the story, thinking Paxton a loud-mouthed eccentric. He is a loud-mouthed eccentric—I simply thought this more rubbish.”
“I expect bragging of murder is a sure way to spoil a fellow’s reputation in your refined circles.” My collar tightened and my vision was streaky from my elevated pulse, which in turn caused everything on me that was broken, crushed, or punctured to throb. I kept my cool by fantasizing about what I was going to do to my enemy when I tracked him to ground. Better, much better.
“It also didn’t help when the squalid details of Conrad’s provenance and subsequent upbringing eventually came to light. The poor chap was in and out of institutions for most of his youth. He worked as a clerk at (illegible) University and there reunited with papa Muybridge and ultimately joined the photographer’s staff. If not for Eadweard Muybridge’s patronage, today Conrad would likely be in a gutter or dead.”
“Oh, I see. Paxton didn’t become a hermit by choice, your people shunned him like the good folks in Utah do it.”
“In a nutshell, yes. Conrad’s childhood history is sufficiently macabre to warrant such treatment. Not much is known about the Paxtons except they owned a fishery. Conrad’s adoptive sister vanished when she was eight and he nine. All fingers pointed to his involvement. At age sixteen he drowned a rival at school and was sent to an asylum until he reached majority. The rich and beautiful are somewhat phobic regarding the criminally insane no matter how affluent the latter might be. Institutional taint isn’t fashionable unless one derives from old money. Alas, Conrad is new money and what he’s got isn’t much by the standards of California high society.”
“I don’t know whether to thank you or shoot you,” I said. “I’m inclined to accept your word for the moment. It would be an unfortunate thing were I to discover this information of yours is a hoax. Who are these associates that heard Paxton’s confession?”
“The Corning Sisters. The sisters dwell in Luster, one of several rustic burghs in Ransom Hollow. If anyone can help you against Conrad, it’ll be the crones. I admired Donald. Your father was a killer with the eye of an artist, the heart of a poet. A conflicted man, but a loyal friend. I’d like to know why Conrad wanted him dead.”
“I’m more interested in discovering why he wants to bop me,” I said. Actually, I was more preoccupied with deciding on a gun or a dull knife.
“He may not necessarily wish to kill you, my boy. It may be worse than that. Do you enjoy films? There’s one that may be of particular importance to you.”
* * *
Dick gave me a look when I brought Helios Augustus to the curb. He drove us to the Redfield Museum of Natural History without comment, although Bly’s nephew Vernon frowned and muttered and cast suspicious glances into the rearview. I’d met the lug once at a speakeasy on the south side; lanky kid with red-rimmed eyes and a leaky nose. Pale as milk and mean as a snake. No scholar, either. I smiled at him, though not friendly like.