Smugglers' Gold by Lyle Brandt Page B

recognize you next time.”
    â€œAh.”
    â€œYou might consider getting out of town.”
    â€œI just got in today.”
    â€œLike what you’ve seen so far?” asked Marley.
    â€œI’ve seen worse.”
    â€œMoving commodities.”
    â€œYou never know where you’ll end up.”
    â€œAin’t that the truth.”
    â€œThis place we’re going—”
    â€œAwful Annie’s.”
    â€œRight. Is it much farther?”
    â€œTwo blocks, give or take.”
    â€œIt’s a saloon?”
    â€œThey sell a bit of everything.”
    â€œThat’s handy.”
    â€œCan be, if you know the management.”
    â€œAnd you do.”
    â€œPretty well. It’s like my second home.”
    Ryder refrained from asking where his first home was. Too much, too soon.
    â€œAnd here we are,” said Marley, as they neared a three-story ramshackle building with a tavern on its ground floor, music from a trumpet and piano blaring past its bat-wing doors into the street. There was no sign announcing Awful Annie’s, maybe something that you had to know before approaching the anonymous establishment.
    Marley pushed through the swinging doors and Ryder followed him inside.
    *   *   *
    A nother crowded, smoky room. As
awful
went, it didn’t seem much worse than any other place Ryder had visited so far in Galveston. In fact, he might have said the painted women circulating through the room, some perched on knees or hanging over gamblers’ shoulders, were younger and marginally more attractive than those who’d been working the saloon where he first spotted Bryan Marley.
    He was trailing Marley toward the bar when someone shouted, “There’s the boy himself!” and shouldered through the crush to intercept them. Balding and bearded, flat-nosed. Ryder couldn’t see his chest, but he assumed that this was Otto Seitz.
    Marley confirmed it when he spoke, saying, “I see you’re nice and comfortable, Otto. I could’ve used your help tonight. More trouble with the Menefees.”
    Seitz glowered. “You’re okay, though?”
    â€œThanks to George, here,” Marley said, cocking a thumb over his shoulder.
    Seitz appeared to notice Ryder for the first time, narrowing his eyes. “George, is it? Got another name to go with that?”
    â€œRevere,” Ryder replied. “No kin to Paul.”
    â€œHuh?”
    â€œNever mind.”
    Seitz shifted his attention back to Marley. “So, what happened?”
    â€œHunsaker and Sloan were waiting for me outside Jenny’s, with a couple others. Thought they might filet me.”
    â€œBut you beat ’em.”
    â€œ
We
did,” Marley said, tipping a nod toward Ryder. “If he hadn’t happened by, you just might be in charge.”
    Seitz turned his gimlet gaze on Ryder once again. “Awright, so he’s a Good Samaritan. Now he can—”
    â€œStay right here and have a drink or three,” said Marley, interrupting his lieutenant. “Right, Otto?”
    Before Seitz had a chance to answer, someone shouted Marley’s name out in a brassy voice and Ryder saw a woman of astounding girth approaching them, plowing ahead and jostling anyone who blocked her path without a semblance of apology. She must have weighed three hundred pounds, confined after a fashion by a larger version of the outfits worn by other women prowling the saloon. Her face was painted garishly, with bright rouge on her cheeks and kohl smugding her eyelids under reddish hair piled high and spiked with feathers.
    â€œAnnie,” Marley said as she embraced him.
    Riddle solved.
    â€œYou’ve been a stranger lately,” Awful Annie chided, as they disengaged.
    â€œBeen keeping busy,” Marley said, by way of an excuse.
    â€œAnd raising Cain, from what I hear?”
    â€œWho from?” asked Marley.
    â€œOh, the