“These guys here were asking me the same thing.” The clerk pointed to Doyle and Shaughnessy. “I told them no, and I got to tell you the same thing.” The register was on a plate that spun. The clerk spun it so it was right side up for Bushell. “You can see for yourself.”
The pages open for Bushell’s inspection showed people who’d registered at the Hastings Arms for the past ten days: a good sign the place wasn’t doing much business. A look at the lobby would have sufficed to tell Bushell that, though. The register showed no sign of tampering, but he looked at some earlier and later leaves all the same. As Chief Lassiter had said, you never could tell. But he found nothing out of the ordinary elsewhere in the register, either.
“All right, the man’s not staying here,” he said. “Have you seen him in town?”
“Afraid I haven’t, sir,” the desk clerk replied, spinning the hotel register so it faced back toward him once more. “If I had, I expect I’d know it, too. You make him sound like a right bruiser, and that’s a fact.”
“He is, I think,” Bushell said. “If you do see him, ring me at the Ribblesdale straightaway.” The clerk touched a knuckle to his forehead, just below the hairline, in token of obedience. From the look in his eyes, though, Bushell figured the chance he would telephone was at best one in three. When you factored that in with a one-in-a-million chance of the man’s actually spotting Kilbride, the odds of hearing from him again weren’t what you’d call good.
Bushell turned away. The Jameson headache with which he’d got up still throbbed at his temples. The best cure he knew was more of the same, especially since frustration was making his head hurt more than it would have otherwise. Charleroi didn’t have much going for it; even here downtown, it was a grimy, depressing place. But one thing it did have was plenty of watering holes. A voice inside his head jeered at him: Go ahead, drink your luncheon, it said. Maybe tomorrow you’ll drink your breakfast, too. Maybe the day after that you’ll drink your breakfast and forget you’ve done it.
Shut up, he told the voice fiercely. I’ve only done that once. Discovering he’d had half a day carved out of his memory had frightened him enough that he’d stayed teetotal for - longer than usual when he tried laying off, anyhow.
Kathleen Flannery was saying, “Why don’t you go away and quit pestering us and let us do our job?”
That pleased Bushell enough to take his mind off whiskey for a while.
“It’s just our own jobs we’re doing,” Michael Shaughnessy answered, striking a dramatic pose.
“Keeping the people informed, you might say - more than the tame papers in every town do, that I tell you. And you, you’re no police dog. Talk of your job, why aren’t you back at your precious art museum?”
“Because something precious is missing,” she said in the controlled snarl Bushell had more often heard aimed at him. “If you haven’t the eyes to see that, God and the saints help you.”
“But Dr. Flannery, all we’re trying to do is make North America free from the Crown that - “
Shaughnessy’s voice rose shrilly.
Kathleen cut through his tumbled words: “Go away.” She turned her back to make it plain she was taking no further notice of the man from Common Sense.
He kept on talking. Bushell stepped between him and Kathleen. He was older, smaller, and lighter than Shaughnessy. “Don’t you think it would be polite to do as the lady asked you?” he asked quietly. Shaughnessy turned to Jerry Doyle. “Do you hear him threatening me?” he said in a loud voice.
“I asked you to be polite, sir,” Bushell said. “If you find that a threat - well, you’re working for the right publication.”
“Come on, Mike,” Doyle said. “If we go on with it, they’ll find some way to make trouble for us.”
Reluctantly, his colleague accompanied him toward the street door of the Hastings Arms. As they went out, Doyle fired a Parthian shot at the RAMs: “You’ve not seen the last of us, I’ll have you know.”
“Thus unlamenting let me die,” Bushell said, slightly changing Pope’s “Ode on Solitude” to good effect. By then, though, the door had closed, so the reporters didn’t hear him.
“Thank you,” Kathleen said, turning toward Bushell. “I don’t like being badgered - by anyone.”
“Really?” His mouth dropped open in surprise. “I hadn’t noticed.” Her eyes sparked dangerously for a moment. Then she let out a strangled snort that was evidently intended as a laugh: as if she didn’t want to admit, even to herself, that he’d amused her.
“Where now, Chief?” Samuel Stanley asked.
Bushell didn’t answer till after he led his companions out onto the sidewalk: no telling what affiliations the desk clerk had. Doyle and Shaughnessy were already a long block away, and by all appearances arguing with each other. He approved.
“Where now?” he said. “I’ve been thinking about that.” It was a thumping lie, but his mouth was smarter than his brain, because he came up with a good answer: “Aside from art, what does Kilbride do? He sells food and spirits. A business trip would give him a coronium-tight alibi for coming here. If we check some of the taverns around here, we might find someone who’s seen him.”
“That’s a fine notion,” Kathleen said, nodding vigorously.
Sam Stanley looked at Bushell out of the corner of his eye. Any time Bushell proposed going into a tavern, he turned suspicious. Since the idea did make sense, though, he too nodded after a moment.
“Maybe one of them will have a decent luncheon spread set out, too,” he said. “I’m getting on toward feeling peckish. You can’t be sure with things like that - they might not, too, what with so many of their customers down underground right now. Only one way to find out.”
They started working their way west along Royal Street, away from the Monongehela. The impressively named avenue had as rich a supply of drinking establishments as any of the other streets Bushell had seen in downtown Charleroi. They didn’t lack for customers, either, despite the early hour. None of the bartenders and proprietors with whom Bushell spoke admitted to having heard of Joseph Kilbride. One of them said, “Wish I had, pal. If he can keep himself in business up in the Six Nations, what with the taxes they charge there, I bet he’s a man I could deal with.”
A couple of saloons had Independence Party flags prominently displayed in back of the bar along with sparkling rows of liquor bottles. Since that wasn’t illegal - and since he hoped his barroom brawling days were behind him - Bushell didn’t make an issue of it. He garnered quite enough suspicious looks just by walking into those places in a suit and tie and wearing a fedora rather than a shapeless cloth cap.
“Here we go!” Samuel Stanley said when they found an establishment that catered to a somewhat higher class of customer: it was across the street from the Charleroi Central Bank, and full of earnest young men in somber business clothes and young women in flowery dresses and hairstyles that had been all the rage in New York and New Liverpool the year before. As many of them were eating as drinking. “Something better than tinned steak-and-kidney pie, with luck.”
“Business first,” Bushell said, but the man behind the counter (who also proved to be the owner) denied any knowledge of Kilbride. Still, the place did seem about as good as they were likely to find for luncheon. They grabbed a table. When a waitress came by, Bushell ordered corned beef and cabbage and a Jameson to go with it. Samuel Stanley coughed significantly. Bushell had expected that, and pretended not to hear it - Sam was his adjutant, not his nursemaid. He hadn’t expected a dirty look from Kathleen, who’d chosen a bacon, lettuce, and tomato sandwich for herself.