The Killing Machine by Ed Gorman Page A

rules.”
    â€œI’m not here to argue the war. I’m just saying that you went against your own government and so did I. That gives us something in common, I guess.”
    â€œYes, your brother said you were a spy for the North. I wouldn’t be proud of that. And I resent your saying that we have anything in common. I’m a man of principle.” He took a long drink of beer. I realized that the birthmark was below a crusted area of acne. He was an ugly man, and you could almost feel sorry for him if the ugliness hadn’t extended to his soul.
    I leaned back and sighed. “He cheated you. He pulled a very old trick on all four of you. He told each of you that if you’d give him a thousand dollars, he’d tip you to the other bids. So he pockets four thousand dollars the easy way and then sells to the highest bidder, anyway.”
    â€œHe was a despicable man, your brother.”
    My sudden anger surprised me as much as it did him. I reached over and grabbed him by his greasy hair and lifted him off his chair. I knocked over his beer in the process. The beer ran off the edges of the table. The serving woman hurried over. People began to watch. I shoved him back in his chair.
    â€œWhatever he was, whatever I am, he was my brother. So keep your tongue off him. He wasn’t perfect and neither am I. And neither are you, Brinkley. You’re an arms dealer, which isn’t exactly a higher calling in my book.”
    I forced myself to calm down—long intakes of breath.
    Brinkley gathered himself with a kind of funereal dignity, planted his gaze on the front door so that hewould have no eye contact with anybody, and proceeded to leave the saloon.
    I was frozen in place for a while. Everybody staring at me, everybody speculating on what had happened. Embarrassing now that the fury had quieted in me. The nice thing about rage is that nothing embarrasses you. Then comes the aftermath when you begin to second-guess yourself. Maybe I didn’t have to get quite so mad…There were times when somebody else took over my mind. Somebody who sounded like me and thought like me, at least for the most part, but somebody who…There were times I didn’t like to remember or think about.
    I waited till their attention went back to whatever they’d been talking about before. Then I got up and walked out just the way Brinkley had. No eye contact with the drinkers who’d had a few minutes of minor violence and major thrill. And they hadn’t even had to buy tickets to see it.
    I remembered that Fairbain’s room number was 204. I nodded to the clerk, who was apparently still innocent of the little scene I’d caused in the saloon, and went on up the stairs, passing a couple of drummers and a pair of old men who wore some kind of red lodge caps I’d never seen before. Until I found a lodge that regularly served free women, I was not about to join up.
    A narrow strip of new carpeting ran down the center of the hall. The flooring was some kind of blond wood, which seemed an odd choice for a hotel, with all the shoe marks, carpetbags being dropped, and winter mud. Not to mention spills and the occasional vomit-spewing drunk. But that was their problem.
    I knocked on 204 twice before I saw it, and I probably wouldn’t have seen it then if the smell hadn’t stung my nostrils. There are some folks who’ll tell you that it doesn’t smell at all. These are people, take my word for it, who’ve never been around it much. To me it’s the stench of wet metal. That’s as close as I can come to a physical description of it. A somewhat tart smell.
    I walked down the hallway.
    I didn’t knock on Brinkley’s door. We’d do a little dance, and I was in no mood for a little dance. I’d tell him who it was, and he’d say go away, and I’d say I needed to talk to him, that this was urgent, and he’d still say go away, and so I’d end