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He signaled the barkeep for another bottle.
“Thirsty today?” asked Bell.
Wish Clarke smiled, amiably. “How observant you are, Isaac. You’d make a good detective.”
“Hey, mister? Mister?”
A boy was whispering from the door.
“Get out of here!” bellowed Reilly. “No kids in my saloon.”
Isaac Bell recognized the doorboy he’d given a coin to. “It’s O.K., Reilly. I’ll look out for him. Come in, son. What’s going on?”
The boy glanced fearfully behind him and slunk inside. He had a cloth sack clutched to his chest. The sight of four Van Dorns glowering at their supper plates stopped him in his tracks. Bell shepherded him to a corner table. “Reilly, would you have a sarsaparilla back there?”
“The only thing I got that ain’t booze is coffee.”
“Do you like coffee?”
The boy nodded. “Yes, sir.”
“O.K., we’ll take coffee. Lots of sugar. Make it two. What’s your name, son?”
“Luke.”
“I’m Isaac, Luke.” He offered his hand and the boy took it politely. “What can I do for you?”
“Are you really a Van Dorn?”
“Yes, I am. So are those gents at the table.”
“All of ’em?”
“Any particular reason you ask, Luke?”
The boy nodded. “I didn’t tell you the truth about my father.”
“You said you don’t have a father.”
“I do have a father.”
“Good. Where is he?”
Luke looked around and whispered, “Hiding from the cops.”
“Why’s that?”
“The union sent more organizers from Pennsylvania.”
Bell nodded, recalling, again, Jim Higgins’s promise that union men would replace him.
“The cops caught one and beat names out of him.” Luke’s lips started trembling, and Bell saw him stare at the table as if imagining his father smashed to his knees in a hail of fists and blackjacks.
“Whose names, Luke? Your father’s?”
“Somebody warned him. He got away.”
“What’s that smell?” called Wally Kisley.
