Dead Man's Hand by Pati Nagle Page B

Jones got hold of a trick knife? If indeed that was what he’d used. Maybe Clive should get one. He had a general dislike of weapons, but an item like that might prove to be handy.
    The vehicle leaned to the left, following a curve in the roadway. Clive’s stomach protested. He closed his eyes, hoping the queasiness would subside.
    â€œWhat’s a stevedore?” said Mr. Dickerson after a moment.
    Clive took a deep breath and swallowed. “One who loads and unloads freight from a boat, sir.”
    â€œOh, a dock worker. Longshoreman?”
    â€œI’ve worked on the rivers, mostly.”
    â€œYou a union man?”
    â€œAbsolutely, sir, of course. Though I was too young to fight in the war.” He didn’t bother to add that his father and elder brother, who had fought in the war, had been Confederates.
    A long, uncomfortable silence stretched out. Clive had the feeling he and the gentleman had not quite understood one another properly, but never mind. They would not be in company together for very long. An hour at most; Newark was a matter of six miles from Bloomfield, and this vehicle was traveling inordinately fast.
    Even on the thought, the vehicle slowed and he cautiously opened his eyes again. There were more lights now, everywhere on both sides of the road. Lighted signs flashed by, too quickly to read. Trying made his head ache, so he kept his gaze forward.
    â€œYou said you’d been a fireman,” said Mrs. Dickerson in a kindly voice. “That’s a hero’s job.”
    He hadn’t quite thought of it that way, but then womenfolk tended to have romantic ideas. Maybe the thought of a man shoveling coal into the belly of a steamboat’s boiler appealed to her.
    â€œWhy did you quit, if you don’t mind my asking?” she said. “Was it nine eleven?”
    â€œAh—no, ma’am,” he said, wondering what the time of day had to do with anything. The thought made him reach for his watch chain, which he was unsurprised to find missing. He’d give Jones what for when next they met.
    â€œI suppose I just got tired of all the soot,” he added.
    â€œOh, I see.”
    â€œI’d do it again, if I needed work and the opportunity arose,” he added for the benefit of the husband.
    â€œI’m sure you could find a job,” said Mrs. Dickerson. “They always need more firemen. It’s such dangerous work.”
    â€œYes, ma’am.”
    That was one of the reasons it wasn’t his favorite way to earn a few dollars. He’d been on one steamboat whose boiler had exploded. On that occasion, he’d been traveling as a passenger, fortunately, and had escaped the misadventure intact, but a couple of the firemen had been scalded to death.
    The vehicle slowed suddenly, and Clive instinctively grabbed at anything his hands could reach. The lashings held him to his seat as the vehicle swung hard around a corner. His stomach protested again. Had there been anything in it, he would surely have disgraced himself.
    â€œWell, here we are,” said Mr. Dickerson.
    The vehicle rolled to a stop. Clive peered out the window beside him and saw a long, low building with several peculiar-looking rail cars sitting in a row beyond it and one standing in front of it.
    The rail car was uncoupled, sitting by itself on its strange, rounded black wheels. It was made of shiny silver metal, curved on all its edges, and had two bright lights on the front of it like the Dickersons’ vehicle and all the others that he’d seen on the road.
    Was this a railroad station? That was all right—he could get a train down to Camden, and from there take the spur out to Atlantic City. Except that he saw no tracks.
    His benefactors were conferring in whispers again. Clive gazed around, trying to make sense of the lights and all the rest. Through the rain trickling on the window beside him, everything looked dreamlike, divorced from