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.
“That’s your supper,” said Mack Fulton.
“Not these buffalo chips. I smell something good. Hey, boy, what’s in that sack?”
Luke clutched his bag tighter.
Bell whispered, “Is that for your dad?”
“Yes, sir,” Luke whispered back. “From my mother.”
“Why’d you come here?”
“I thought if you’re private detectives, maybe . . .”
His voice trailed off.
“Maybe what, Luke?”
“Maybe I could hire you to protect him from the cops. Or at least help him get away?”
“Detectives cost a lot of money,” Bell said gently.
“I don’t have any money—excepting what you gave me. But I’m wondering if maybe I could trade something.”
“Like what?”
“Like things I heard.”
“Things you heard where?”
“Jake’s Saloon, where the cops hang out . . .”
“Does Jake allow boys in his saloon?”
“We climb up from the river, under the cellar, and we can hear ’em yelling upstairs.”
Wally called, “What do you have in that sack, boy?”
“Fatback and biscuits and baked taters, sir.”
The Van Dorns looked at their plates, then at Luke’s sack.
“I have an idea,” said Wally Kisley.
“No,” said Isaac Bell. “Luke’s got a job to do, delivering supper. And we’re going to help him.”
Truculent expressions on the faces of his men told Bell that he had a rebellion on his hands if he didn’t think quick. “Gents: Wally and Mack and Archie are going to the company store to buy fatback and flour and lard and coffee and sugar and milk and butter and potatoes, which they will carry to Luke’s mother and pay her five dollars to rustle up a couple of days’ worth of fatback, biscuits, and baked taters.”