“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.”
“What are you and Wish doing while all that shopping and cooking and waiting is going on? Eating the kid’s?”
“Wish and I will provide Luke with an escort.”
* * *
James Congdon’s secretary carried a single sheet of paper into his office and laid it on his desk. “I’m sorry for the delay, sir. Detective Clay’s code is complicated.”
Congdon read it, twice.
“Are you sure you deciphered it correctly?”