Chapter 1 Chapter 1 The Woman in Green Shoes and the Man in Gray Clothes
The first time I ever heard someone call it was On, on a boat called The Big Ship, by a red-haired cleaner named Hickey Dewey.He also called the shirt "really hurt," so I didn't take him to the wrong city name.I later found out that people who can pronounce the retroflex correctly say the same thing, but I still didn't see it, thinking it was just a senseless sense of humor in a special collection of slang.A few years later, when I went to Bosheng City, I realized why.
I called the editorial office of the "Herald" from the station phone, asked for Donna Wilson, and told him I was here.
"Can you come to my house at ten o'clock tonight?" His voice was clear and melodious, very cheerful, "2101 Mountain Boulevard. Take a car on Broadway, get off on Laurel Avenue, and go west two intersection."
I promised to do so, and then took a ride to the Great Western Hotel, dropped my bags, and went out to see the city.
The city is not pretty, and most builders prefer a gaudy but gaudy style.It might have been successful at first, but since the brick smelting furnaces rose beside the dark mountains to the south, their yellow smoke made everything dark and dirty.The ugly city of 40,000 people is stuck in the ugly gap between two hills filthy from mining, with a filthy sky outside that looks as if it too came from a smelting furnace Just popped out.
The first cop I met needed a shave, the second had two buttons missing from his battered uniform, and the third was standing in the middle of the city's main intersection—Broadway and Union—directing traffic, the corner of his mouth Smoking a cigar.I didn't pay any more attention when I met him afterwards.
At nine-thirty I caught a Broadway streetcar and followed Donna Wilson's directions to the corner.The house stands on a meadow surrounded by a fence.
The maid who answered the door told me that Mr. Wilson was not at home.Just as I explained that I had an appointment with him, a slender, blond woman in a green crepe dress, about thirty years old, came to the door.Even smiling didn't diminish the indifference in her blue eyes.I explained to her again.
"My husband isn't here now." With an imperceptible accent, she slurred slightly when she pronounced the "s" sound, "but if he asks you out, he should be back soon."
She took me upstairs to a room facing Laurel Street.This is a reddish-brown staggered room, and there are many books in it.We each sat down on leather chairs, half facing the grille of the burning coal stove.She started asking about my business dealings with her husband.
"Do you live in Bosheng City?" She asked first.
"No, in San Francisco."
"But this isn't your first time here, is it?"
"It's the first time."
"Really? Like our city?"
"I haven't read the whole thing, so it's hard to tell." This is a lie, I have seen enough, "I just arrived this afternoon."
The search faded from her twinkling eyes, and she said, "You'll find this a boring place." Then she pressed, "I think all mining cities are like that. Are you in the mining business?"
"Not yet."
She looked at the clock on the mantelpiece and said, "I'm sorry Donald kept you waiting after calling you all the way here. It's late and the office hours are past."
I said it's okay.
"Maybe it's not about business!" She continued to explore.
I didn't speak.
She smiled—a short, dry laugh.
"Actually, I'm not like you think, I'm not a nosy person." She said cheerfully, "But you are too mysterious, so I can't restrain my curiosity. You are not selling bootleg alcohol Right? Downer changes players a lot."
I grinned and let her guess.
The phone downstairs rang.Mrs. Wilson stretched her green slippers over the burning fireplace and pretended not to hear the bell.I don't know why she needs to do that.
"I'm afraid I'll have to—" she began, and then she stopped and looked at the maid in the corridor.
The maid said there was a phone call for Mrs. Wilson.She apologized and followed the maid out of the house.Instead of going downstairs, she spoke from a nearby extension.
I heard her say, "I'm Mrs. Wilson... I'm sorry, please say it again... Who?... Can you speak louder, please?...What?...Okay...Okay... Who are you, please? ... Hello! Hello!"
The hook jingled as the phone hung up, and then there was the sound of her footsteps—quickly—crossing the corridor.
I lit a cigarette and stared at it until I heard her begin to descend the stairs.Then I went to the window, raised the corner of the curtain, and looked out at Laurel Street and the square white garage in the corner on the other side of the house.
After a while, a slim woman in a dark coat and a dark hat came into my sight.She came out of the house and hurried into the garage.It was Mrs. Wilson.She drove off in a Buick coupe.I sat back in my chair and waited.
Forty-five minutes passed.At 11:50, there was a screeching sound of brakes outside.Two minutes later Mrs. Wilson entered the room.She had taken off her hat and coat and was pale and her eyes had grown so dark they were almost black.
"I'm terribly sorry," she said, her lips twitching nervously. "It looks like I'll keep you waiting for nothing. My husband won't be coming back tonight."
I said I could find him at the Herald tomorrow morning.
When I left, I wondered why the toe part of her left slipper was black and wet, as if stained with blood.
I walked to Broadway and caught a streetcar.Got off three blocks north of the hotel to see what the crowds were doing by a side entrance of City Hall. Thirty or forty men and a few women stood on the sidewalk, looking at the gate marked as a police station.There were miners and smelter workers still in overalls, tacky punks from the pool room or the dance hall, quick-witted babes with greasy hair and pink faces, respectable dull-faced husbands, a few women who were just as decent and equally dull, and a few more. A girl who works the night shift. I stood at the edge of the crowd, next to a boxy man in a rumpled gray suit.Although he was just over thirty years old at most, his complexion looked equally gray, as did his thick lips.His face was broad, deep-lined, and intelligent.The only color on him was red against a gray flannel shirt. "What's the matter with all the noise?" I asked him. He gave me a wary look before answering, as if to make sure the message was getting into safe hands.His eyes were as gray as his clothes, but not so soft. "Donald Wilson went and sat on God's right hand, if God didn't mind seeing the bullet holes in his head." "Who killed him?" I asked. The man in gray scratched the back of his neck and said, "A guy with a gun." I need information, not wisecracks.If the red tie hadn't caught my attention, I'd have tried my luck with someone else in the crowd.I said, "I'm not a local. Don't make jokes, you just like to bully outsiders." "Donald Wilson, great gentleman, publisher of the Morning Herald and Evening Herald. Found lying dead in Hurricane Street not long ago, shot dead by unknown murderer." He seemed to be reciting a quick song. Lyrics, "So it won't hurt your feelings, right?" "Thank you." I reached out a finger and touched the loose end of his tie. "Is there any point, or are you just wearing it casually?" "Bill Quint." "Damn it!" I yelled, trying to remember the name, "Gosh, it's so nice to meet you." I pulled out my business card case and rummaged through the IDs I'd collected from various sources.I produced a red card that said I was a sailor named Henry Neal, a member of a world-renowned industrial union.Not a word of it is true. I handed my card to Bill Quint.He looked carefully, flipped back and forth, handed it back to my hand, and looked at me from head to toe with distrust on his face. "He's not going to die again anyway," he said. "Which way are you going?" "casual." We walked down the street together, turning at intersections, aimlessly at least in my opinion. "If you're a sailor, why are you here?" he asked casually. "How do you know I'm a sailor?" "Your business card!" "I've got another one that proves I'm a Beast of the Woods," I said. "If you want me to be a miner, I can get one tomorrow." "Impossible. This is my territory." "So you received Ji's telegram?" I asked. "Go to his season! This is my place." He nodded towards the door of a restaurant and asked, "Would you like a drink?" "As long as there is something to drink." We walked through the restaurant, up a flight of stairs, and into a cramped second-floor room with a long bar and a row of tables.Bill Quint nodded to the men and women at the bar and tables, said "Hi!" and led me across the bar.There were many cubicles lined with green curtains along the walls. We spent the next two hours drinking whiskey and talking. The man in gray thought I had no right to misuse the business cards I showed him, and neither did the one I just mentioned.He didn't think I was a good member of IWW.As an important figure in the Industrial Workers of the World Organization in Bosheng City, he believed that it was his responsibility to obtain inside information from me, and tried his best not to get too excited when talking about radical topics. I don't care about these, what interests me is the affairs of Bosheng City.He didn't mind taking the time to talk about Bosheng City while probing my "red card" in a chatty tone. Here's what I've heard from him in summary: For forty years, old Elihu Wilson--the father of the man just killed tonight--had owned Bosen, inside and out, heart and soul.He is the president and largest shareholder of Bosheng City Mining Co., Ltd., as well as the president and largest shareholder of First National Bank.He owned the Morning Herald and the Evening Herald—the only two newspapers in the city.He has more or less shares in all important enterprises.In addition to these assets, he also manipulates a U.S. senator, several representatives, the governor, the mayor, and most of the state assembly.In the past, Elihu Wilson was the city of Bosheng, and almost the entire state. Back in the days of the war, the Industrial Workers of the World was in full swing and then expanded westward.It mobilizes members to help employees of Bosheng Mining Co., Ltd.The workers, who had never been pampered before, used this new power to demand what they wanted.Old Elihu took all the orders and waited for the opportunity. In 1921, the opportunity finally came.The business was terrible, and Elder Elihu took the risk that the company would be closed for a while, arbitrarily tearing up the agreement with his workers and kicking them back to the pre-war situation. Naturally, the workers began to turn to workers' organizations for help.Bill Quint was therefore sent by the World Trade Organization from its headquarters in Chicago.He opposed strikes and public demonstrations, and instead urged the old troublemakers to keep working and sabotage from within.But this move was not accepted by members of Bosheng City, who felt that it was not positive enough; they wanted to jump on the stage and make labor history. They are on strike. The strike lasted eight months, with heavy losses on both sides.WWW members had to fight in person, but old Elihu hired gunmen, scabs, National Guardsmen, and even parts of the regular army to bleed for him.Until the last skull was broken and the last rib was kicked off, the labor organization in Bosheng City finally turned into a pile of broken firecrackers. But, Bill Quint said, old Elihu didn't know anything about the Italian Mafia.The old guy won the strike but lost control of the city and the entire state.In order to defeat the miners, he had to let the hired thugs do whatever they wanted until the end of the strike.He gave them the city, only to be powerless to take it back.They took a fancy to Bosheng City and were very happy to take charge of it.They helped him win that strike, and the city became their prize.He couldn't openly break with them, because they had too much power in their hands, and he was responsible for everything they did during the strike. By the time we get to this point, Bill Quint and I are a little drunk.He drank the wine in the glass again, brushed away the hair that blocked his eyes, and began to talk about the follow-up development of this old past today. "Probably the strongest of them all right now is Finn Pete, who owns the thing we're drinking right now. Then there's Lou Yard, who owns a lending firm on Park Street and does a lot of bail bond business. , dealing with the hottest things in town. They also told me he was very close to Police Chief Noonan. Then there was a kid named Max Thaler - nicknamed The Whisperer - who had a lot of friends. A swarthy A sleek little guy with a bad throat who can't speak well and does some speculation. All three, plus Noonan, are helping Elihu run the city—even more than he wants. So he You have to play along with them, or—” "That guy who got killed tonight—Elihu's son—what did he do?" I asked. "He will do whatever his father asks him to do. The place where he is lying now is also his father's order for him to go." "You mean, it was his father who put him—" "Maybe. But I don't think so. The prince just came home and runs the newspaper business for me. It's not like the old devil, and although he's almost in his grave, he's not going to let someone else take him from him." He had to watch out for those guys. He brought his son and his French daughter-in-law back from Paris and used him like a monkey—a beautiful father-son scene. The prince wanted to start a war through the newspaper Reformation, clean up the city of evil and corruption - which means, if it's clean enough, it's Pete and Lu and the Whisperers. Get it? The old man is using his son to get rid of them, I guess they're getting annoyed." "That guesswork doesn't seem quite right," I said. "There's more than one thing going wrong in this awful city. Have you heard enough of the stories?" I said enough had been heard, and we went downstairs into the street.Bill Quint told me he was staying at the Miners Hotel on Forest Street and that he would pass my hotel on the way back, so we walked together.On the curb in front of my hotel, there was a muscular guy and what looked like a plainclothes cop talking to someone in a Stutz station wagon. "Whisperers were in the car," Bill Quint told me. I looked over the muscular man to Thaler's profile.A young, dark-skinned little man, with handsome, regular features that seemed to have been carved out of a mould. "He's cute." I said. "Well," the man in gray agreed, "it's also very dangerous."
Notes:
I walked to Broadway and caught a streetcar.Got off three blocks north of the hotel to see what the crowds were doing by a side entrance of City Hall. Thirty or forty men and a few women stood on the sidewalk, looking at the gate marked as a police station.There were miners and smelter workers still in overalls, tacky punks from the pool room or the dance hall, quick-witted babes with greasy hair and pink faces, respectable dull-faced husbands, a few women who were just as decent and equally dull, and a few more. A girl who works the night shift. I stood at the edge of the crowd, next to a boxy man in a rumpled gray suit.Although he was just over thirty years old at most, his complexion looked equally gray, as did his thick lips.His face was broad, deep-lined, and intelligent.The only color on him was red against a gray flannel shirt. "What's the matter with all the noise?" I asked him. He gave me a wary look before answering, as if to make sure the message was getting into safe hands.His eyes were as gray as his clothes, but not so soft. "Donald Wilson went and sat on God's right hand, if God didn't mind seeing the bullet holes in his head." "Who killed him?" I asked. The man in gray scratched the back of his neck and said, "A guy with a gun." I need information, not wisecracks.If the red tie hadn't caught my attention, I'd have tried my luck with someone else in the crowd.I said, "I'm not a local. Don't make jokes, you just like to bully outsiders." "Donald Wilson, great gentleman, publisher of the Morning Herald and Evening Herald. Found lying dead in Hurricane Street not long ago, shot dead by unknown murderer." He seemed to be reciting a quick song. Lyrics, "So it won't hurt your feelings, right?" "Thank you." I reached out a finger and touched the loose end of his tie. "Is there any point, or are you just wearing it casually?" "Bill Quint." "Damn it!" I yelled, trying to remember the name, "Gosh, it's so nice to meet you." I pulled out my business card case and rummaged through the IDs I'd collected from various sources.I produced a red card that said I was a sailor named Henry Neal, a member of a world-renowned industrial union.Not a word of it is true. I handed my card to Bill Quint.He looked carefully, flipped back and forth, handed it back to my hand, and looked at me from head to toe with distrust on his face. "He's not going to die again anyway," he said. "Which way are you going?" "casual." We walked down the street together, turning at intersections, aimlessly at least in my opinion. "If you're a sailor, why are you here?" he asked casually. "How do you know I'm a sailor?" "Your business card!" "I've got another one that proves I'm a Beast of the Woods," I said. "If you want me to be a miner, I can get one tomorrow." "Impossible. This is my territory." "So you received Ji's telegram?" I asked. "Go to his season! This is my place." He nodded towards the door of a restaurant and asked, "Would you like a drink?" "As long as there is something to drink." We walked through the restaurant, up a flight of stairs, and into a cramped second-floor room with a long bar and a row of tables.Bill Quint nodded to the men and women at the bar and tables, said "Hi!" and led me across the bar.There were many cubicles lined with green curtains along the walls. We spent the next two hours drinking whiskey and talking. The man in gray thought I had no right to misuse the business cards I showed him, and neither did the one I just mentioned.He didn't think I was a good member of IWW.As an important figure in the Industrial Workers of the World Organization in Bosheng City, he believed that it was his responsibility to obtain inside information from me, and tried his best not to get too excited when talking about radical topics. I don't care about these, what interests me is the affairs of Bosheng City.He didn't mind taking the time to talk about Bosheng City while probing my "red card" in a chatty tone. Here's what I've heard from him in summary: For forty years, old Elihu Wilson--the father of the man just killed tonight--had owned Bosen, inside and out, heart and soul.He is the president and largest shareholder of Bosheng City Mining Co., Ltd., as well as the president and largest shareholder of First National Bank.He owned the Morning Herald and the Evening Herald—the only two newspapers in the city.He has more or less shares in all important enterprises.In addition to these assets, he also manipulates a U.S. senator, several representatives, the governor, the mayor, and most of the state assembly.In the past, Elihu Wilson was the city of Bosheng, and almost the entire state. Back in the days of the war, the Industrial Workers of the World was in full swing and then expanded westward.It mobilizes members to help employees of Bosheng Mining Co., Ltd.The workers, who had never been pampered before, used this new power to demand what they wanted.Old Elihu took all the orders and waited for the opportunity. In 1921, the opportunity finally came.The business was terrible, and Elder Elihu took the risk that the company would be closed for a while, arbitrarily tearing up the agreement with his workers and kicking them back to the pre-war situation. Naturally, the workers began to turn to workers' organizations for help.Bill Quint was therefore sent by the World Trade Organization from its headquarters in Chicago.He opposed strikes and public demonstrations, and instead urged the old troublemakers to keep working and sabotage from within.But this move was not accepted by members of Bosheng City, who felt that it was not positive enough; they wanted to jump on the stage and make labor history. They are on strike. The strike lasted eight months, with heavy losses on both sides.WWW members had to fight in person, but old Elihu hired gunmen, scabs, National Guardsmen, and even parts of the regular army to bleed for him.Until the last skull was broken and the last rib was kicked off, the labor organization in Bosheng City finally turned into a pile of broken firecrackers. But, Bill Quint said, old Elihu didn't know anything about the Italian Mafia.The old guy won the strike but lost control of the city and the entire state.In order to defeat the miners, he had to let the hired thugs do whatever they wanted until the end of the strike.He gave them the city, only to be powerless to take it back.They took a fancy to Bosheng City and were very happy to take charge of it.They helped him win that strike, and the city became their prize.He couldn't openly break with them, because they had too much power in their hands, and he was responsible for everything they did during the strike. By the time we get to this point, Bill Quint and I are a little drunk.He drank the wine in the glass again, brushed away the hair that blocked his eyes, and began to talk about the follow-up development of this old past today. "Probably the strongest of them all right now is Finn Pete, who owns the thing we're drinking right now. Then there's Lou Yard, who owns a lending firm on Park Street and does a lot of bail bond business. , dealing with the hottest things in town. They also told me he was very close to Police Chief Noonan. Then there was a kid named Max Thaler - nicknamed The Whisperer - who had a lot of friends. A swarthy A sleek little guy with a bad throat who can't speak well and does some speculation. All three, plus Noonan, are helping Elihu run the city—even more than he wants. So he You have to play along with them, or—” "That guy who got killed tonight—Elihu's son—what did he do?" I asked. "He will do whatever his father asks him to do. The place where he is lying now is also his father's order for him to go." "You mean, it was his father who put him—" "Maybe. But I don't think so. The prince just came home and runs the newspaper business for me. It's not like the old devil, and although he's almost in his grave, he's not going to let someone else take him from him." He had to watch out for those guys. He brought his son and his French daughter-in-law back from Paris and used him like a monkey—a beautiful father-son scene. The prince wanted to start a war through the newspaper Reformation, clean up the city of evil and corruption - which means, if it's clean enough, it's Pete and Lu and the Whisperers. Get it? The old man is using his son to get rid of them, I guess they're getting annoyed." "That guesswork doesn't seem quite right," I said. "There's more than one thing going wrong in this awful city. Have you heard enough of the stories?" I said enough had been heard, and we went downstairs into the street.Bill Quint told me he was staying at the Miners Hotel on Forest Street and that he would pass my hotel on the way back, so we walked together.On the curb in front of my hotel, there was a muscular guy and what looked like a plainclothes cop talking to someone in a Stutz station wagon. "Whisperers were in the car," Bill Quint told me. I looked over the muscular man to Thaler's profile.A young, dark-skinned little man, with handsome, regular features that seemed to have been carved out of a mould. "He's cute." I said. "Well," the man in gray agreed, "it's also very dangerous."
Notes: