The Cutthroat

Cox tossed back his whiskey and juggled the glass in his hand as if weighing the wisdom of a refill. “I’ve been asking myself the same question. So far, all shouting’s gotten me is arrested and thrown in the bughouse.”

“Then what were you doing hanging around the theater tonight?”

“Just calming down… trying to figure things out… planning on how to get the credit I deserve.” Cox glanced outside the windows where crowds of people were suddenly sweeping along the sidewalk toward the train station. Curtains had descended and theatergoers were hurrying home to the suburbs. Something caught Cox’s eye and riveted his attention.

“I have to go. Meet me here tomorrow for lunch. Thanks for the drink.”

“You paid,” said Dashwood. “Thank you.”

“Lunch! Tomorrow.”

Cox pushed through the swinging doors. Dashwood lost sight of him in the crowd.

* * *

“Sleep tight,” said Isaac Bell’s conductor, which struck Bell as an unusually personal remark coming from the taciturn old geezer.

“Good night, Kux.”

He showered in the marble bathroom, poured two fingers of Bushmills, and carried the whiskey into the owner’s stateroom at the back of the car. The lights were low, the bed had been turned down, and his heart soared.

“Don’t be frightened. It’s only me.”

“Marion!” Bell scooped her into his arms. “Where did you come from?”

“New York.”

“This is wonderful. Why didn’t you tell me you were coming?”

“I had a business meeting. If it didn’t go well, I might have wanted to slink off by myself.”

“I’m glad it went well.”

“It went very well. Isabella Cook agreed to be in my movie.”

Bell let go of her. “Which movie?”

“What I told you: Dr. Jekyll and Mr. Hyde.”

“No,” said Bell.

“No? Why not?”

“It’s too dangerous. Fifty-fifty odds one of The Boys is the Cutthroat. If not, he could be their stage manager. I don’t want you anywhere near the Jekyll and Hyde company until we have him in chains.”

“Isaac, if I can make this movie, I can tell Preston Whiteway and Picture World to go jump in a lake.”

“I thought you told him that when you made The Iron Horse.”

“I didn’t burn that bridge, and I’m glad I didn’t. I’ve had no luck putting a four-reeler together on my own. Jekyll and Hyde is the best shot I’ve had since.”

“I won’t put you in danger.”

“I won’t let go of this opportunity. I’m sure nothing will happen to me.”

“I’m sorry. That’s not good enough.”

“But I know, I just can’t put it in words.”

Bell said, “Why don’t we sleep on it? Talk it over in the morning.”

“I’m not tired.”

“You’re not? Neither am I.”

* * *

Reckless? the Cutthroat asked again.

The theater train, a limited-stops express that ran on the suburban commuter line, pulled out of Union Station at ten minutes to midnight. Forty minutes to Tuxedo Park. Forty minutes to decide.

Reckless?

Maybe I was in my younger years.

Undisciplined?

Do you take me for a fool? Discipline is second nature now, my sturdy watchman, ever-vigilant, acutely observant.

He had sharpened the instincts he had been born with. He had grown so sharp at gauging menace, so skilled at covering his tracks, that the odds of getting captured had long ago shifted in his favor.

Reckless? It would be impossible to be reckless. And he had the advantage tonight of operating on familiar territory, for to his eye the Midwestern cities were all similar, with the theaters short train rides from the wealthy suburbs. Cincinnati was the first place he settled after sailing from England on an ancient “half clipper” cotton ship. It was returning empty to New Orleans. The other passengers joked that they were carried as ballast, but her captain was pocketing the ticket money and could care less about his name or whether he owned a passport or landed in New Orleans disguised as a sailor.

A showboat — a theater on a Mississippi River barge — brought him to Cincinnati, where he met a woman with money. After she died, the yellow cottage on the river had been his to visit intermittently for nearly twenty years.

He knew the territory. The theater train carried a gay crowd of mostly younger people who could afford to sleep late the next morning. That they all knew each other — Tuxedo Park being a town of prosperous businesses that benefitted from proximity to its powerhouse neighbor on the Mississippi River — made it even riskier as he would have to pry her loose from the clods vying for her attention.

I know the risk.

He took a seat at the back of the car a couple of rows behind her and imagined the opening sequences of the drama. It started with a curtain-raiser on a quiet suburban pavement that was darkened by the spring-budding trees filtering the streetlamps. She would say something like, “You look familiar.”

And they would start to walk down tree-lined streets that grow increasingly dim and narrow.

“Would you tell me your name, miss?”

They were turning into a lane when the curtain crashed down.

The imagined encounter evaporated. A man, who had entered the car from the vestibule behind him, leaned close and whispered,