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“Workin for Tunstall?”
“Yep.”
“And your age is all of what, fourteen?”
“Eighteen.”
“Boot ye ain’t even shavin yet!” Murphy grinned at Waite, who did not grin back. “The lad looks sweet as Baby Jesus in velvet pants!”
“Old enough to do damage,” Waite said.
Murphy measured the Kid and frowned. “How’d a handsome fella like you fall in with this unholy bunch?”
The Kid smiled. “?‘To dig I am not able, to beg I am ashamed.’?”
With a harrumph Murphy said, “Quotin scripture to me, he is.” He took a bottle of Double Anchor whiskey from his overcoat pocket, screwed out the cork with his side teeth, and took a swallow.
Even passersby on the street could hear McSween shouting with exasperation that the Merchants Life Assurance Co. was in receivership and with his travel to New York to argue the case the residue of the Emil Fritz estate wouldn’t even cover his fees.
“Aye right!” Jimmy yelled. “Away on that!”
“Look at the paperwork if you disbelieve me,” said McSween.
Murphy ignored the office wrangling as he recited the placarded prices he saw. “Sellin a poond a butter for fifty cent. Doozen eggs, fifty cent. Even beef on the hoof, eight cent the poond. Headin for doom the Brit is at them prices.” He fiercely gazed at Waite and Brewer. “We han’t sold nary a thing in six weeks,” he said, then his face changed and he hurriedly sought out the spittoon by his chair to vomit orangely into it.
The onlookers grimaced and fended the odor from their noses, but the Kid joked by asking the store, “Who else besides me is feeling hungry?”
Wiping his mouth on his overcoat sleeve, Murphy swished with whiskey, bulging his cheeks, and he swallowed as his gaze again lit on the Kid. “So, you’re the joker in the deck.”
“And I hear you’re Lord of the Mountain.”
“Ye heared right.” And then he smiled as he limericked, “I have conquered the aging disease, that has brought lesser sorts to their knees. I’m a strapping old man and I’ve proved that I can blow out candles with only one wheeze.”
“Could I jot that down for a hundert years from now?” asked the Kid.
Murphy just stared for a while. “So, ye a hired hand or hired gun?”
“Whatever needs doing.”
He lifted his Double Anchor in salute and said, “Good on ye, sham.”
Still haranguing his rival on future litigation, Dolan threatened, “We have friends in high places, you know.”
And they overheard McSween saying, “You’ll recall I have encountered the partisan Judge Bristol and our miscreant district attorney.”
The famous sot in the front room sighed and called to the office, “Oh, go on with the talk, you!” And to the others he said, “Talk don’t cost nothin but air, a scrape of the hind leg, and a jupe of the head. Riches is in the doing.” And then he craned his neck to see the door. “Where’s Brady finally?”
“Up to no good, prob’ly,” Dick Brewer said.
Murphy smiled. “Well, that’s the point, int it?”
And just then the sheriff barged in. He was a wide man with little slanted-down-at-the-corners green eyes, close to Murphy in age with a like Irish heritage, and the father of eight half Mexicans with one more on the way. His full, toast-brown mustache curtained his mouth, and there was a dapper paintbrush of beard affixed to the center of his chin. A tin badge of office was pinned to his navy blue overcoat lapel.
Murphy smiled. “How’s the big size of ye, Bill?”
“Bang on, L.G.,” said Brady. Seeming to look among the glaring faces for someone to properly address, he gave up and lifted a page overhead, the formal handwriting on it in the loopy Spencerian style. Crying out unnecessarily, he proclaimed, “I have a writ of attachment signed by Judge Warren Bristol on this store in its full entirety, exacted by the sister of Emil Fritz, deceased, and pursuant to a civil action against Alexander A. McSween, Esquire, the Englishman being in league with him.”
Hearing his name called out, McSween emerged from his office and frowned in disdain. “Oh, this has gone far enough.”
