“They’ll be down to the tavern,” the man answered quickly, taking a couple of steps back from us. “Anyone who ain’t home, that is. They’ll all be down there.” He nodded at the general area near the riverfront some three or four blocks behind us.
“Oh.” Miss Howard turned to try to locate the tavern the man was talking about, then nodded. “I see…” She turned back round again. “I don’t suppose you could help us, by any chance? It was a long time ago, so-”
“I been here my whole life, ma’am,” the man said. “If it was someone who lived in this town, I’ll know better than those dagos and micks who’ve come up to work the mills.”
Miss Howard paused, studying the man and then smiling just a bit. “I see. Well, then-we’re looking for information about a woman. When she lived here, her name was Libby Fraser, although since then-”
“Libby Fraser?”The man’s face did an odd little dance: in quick, panicky ripples it went from shock to fear and finally to hatred. “What the hell d’you wanna know about her for?”
“Well, you see, we’re involved in an investigation-”
“Ain’t nobody that’s going to want to talk to you about Libby Fraser. Not in this town. Ain’t nobody that’s got nothing to say.” The man’s eyes stared out from his dirty face like he was getting more scared and angry by the second. “Understand? Nobody. She went away from here a long time ago. You want to ask questions about Libby Fraser, you find out where she went after she left and go there.” He spat into the dusty street. “That’d be the smart thing to do.” Tucking his shirt into his pants more tightly as if to make it clear that he was serious, the man turned-and walked straight back into the house he’d just come out of.
Both Miss Howard and I watched him go with what you might call blank faces. “Well,” Miss Howard finally said, “you’ve got to hand it to the woman, she inspires strong reactions wherever she goes.”
Looking back down the street, I saw a sign hanging outside one of the buildings on the riverside, past the factory works. I couldn’t read just what it said in the near darkness, but it was pretty obvious what the general message was. “You figure we ought to try that tavern?” I asked, pointing.
“I suppose we have to,” Miss Howard answered. “We’ve come this far.”
We didn’t bother to get back into the buckboard, but walked the three blocks or so to the building with the sign, which did in fact reveal that an establishment what could get away with calling itself a “tavern” in that town (but that in New York wouldn’t have amounted to more than a cheap dive) was located inside. I wasn’t at all sure how smart it was for a woman and a kid to head into a place like that alone, and I think Miss Howard could read the worry in my face: she pulled out her pearl-handled revolver and let me get a glimpse of it.
“Ready?” was all she said, as she slipped the gun back amongst the folds of her dress.
I nodded to her, though I was still plenty nervous. “Okay,” I said, and then I pulled open the screen door of the old clapboarded building.
The room inside reeked of all the usual stenches-beer, booze, smoke, urine-but, being as it also sat on top of a nice dead part of the Hudson, rotten river water got into the mixture, too. There was a long bar and a pocket billiard table, and the joint was lit (or something like it) by a half-dozen kerosene lamps. About twenty men were scattered around, only a few of them talking or doing anything at all, other than staring at the walls and out the windows with the dead eyes of hardworking characters engaging in the only recreation they’d ever known or were ever likely to know: sitting and nursing a stiff drink. As’ll happen in such places in such towns, they all turned toward the door at the same time when we entered; and it was a bit of a surprise for us to see, standing at the corner of the bar, the same man we’d been talking to not three minutes earlier. Whatever Libby Fraser’d done and been in that town, it was powerful enough to make a big, tired man run a long, roundabout route at what must’ve been a flat-out pace so’s to be able to warn his pals that there were strangers in town asking questions about her.
Miss Howard nodded in the man’s direction. “Hello,” she said quietly; but the man just turned back to the bar like he’d never seen us before. Not sure of her next move, Miss Howard looked to me.
I waited for the low mumbling in the room to start up again before I said, “The bartender,” very quietly. We found an empty space at the far end of the bar, then waited for the thin, sour-faced man behind it to come our way. He didn’t say anything, just looked at Miss Howard coldly.
“Good evening,” she said, trying the common pleasantries again. But they didn’t work any better this time around: the man just kept staring at her. “We’re trying to find out some information-”
“Don’t sell it,” the bartender answered. “Got drinks. That’s all.”
“Ah.” Miss Howard considered that for a second, then said, “Well, in that case, I’ll have a whiskey. And a root beer for my friend.”
“Got lemonade,” the man answered, turning the cold stare to me for a second.
“Okay, so lemonade,” I said, not wanting the mug to know he was making me nervous.
It took the bartender only a few seconds to fetch the drinks, and as Miss Howard laid down some money, she said, “We don’t expect the information to be free…”
But that just seemed to frost the bartender even more: his eyes got thin, and he leaned over the bar to her. “Now, you listen to me, missy-” All of a sudden every man in the place was staring at us again. “You already been told that there ain’t nobody in this town that’s going to talk to you about Libby Fraser. She ain’t the smartest person in the world for anybody to talk about-including strangers.”
Miss Howard glanced around the dark, dirty room quickly, then asked, “I don’t understand. What is it that you’re all so afraid of?”
A flutter of dread went through me: we weren’t in the kind of place where you wanted to go accusing men of being cowards. But oddly, the bartender didn’t leap straight down Miss Howard’s throat, nor did anybody else who’d heard the question. They just kept staring steadily, and finally the bartender, in a hushed voice, answered, “Fear’s nothing but common sense sometimes. So’s keeping your mouth shut. And after what happened to the Muhlenbergs-”
“The Muhlenbergs?” Miss Howard repeated; but the bartender caught himself, realizing he’d said too much.
“Just finish up your drinks and get out of here,” he said, walking down to the other end of the bar.
“Can’t you at least tell us where these people live?” Miss Howard asked, pushing our luck. “I don’t think you understand, we’re conducting an investigation that may result in the woman’s being brought up on serious criminal charges.”
Everybody in the room just stayed silent. Then one mug in a corner whose face we couldn’t see said, “They live in the old yellow house at the south end of town.”
“You shut the hell up, Joe!” the bartender growled.
“What for?” the man in the corner said. “If they’re gonna go after the bitch-”
“Yeah?” said the man we’d spoken to on the street. “And what if they don’t get her, and she finds out you were part of their trying?”
“Oh…” It wasn’t much more than a scared whisper; but it was the last we heard from the fellow in the shadows.
“I ain’t gonna tell you again,” the bartender said. “Finish your drinks and leave.”
The smart move seemed to be to follow the order, being as the atmosphere in the place was becoming very uncomfortable. Fear was having its usual effect on ignorant people, making them antsy and prone to violence; and I figured that we’d best be getting back outside, and maybe back out of town altogether. Miss Howard, unfortunately, saw things differently. When I tapped her shoulder and then started toward the door, she did follow; but as we reached the end of the bar, she paused one more time to look at the collection of faces in the room.