it seemed, would miss the old man.
Rather than join the sedate crowd in paying his respects, Deegan remained where he was. Norton’s funeral had dampened his normally high spirits, something very few things had managed to do in his thirty-one years. If he crossed the thoroughfare to the funeral parlor, his spirits would no doubt sink to such a level he would end the day trying to recover his savoir faire at the mercy of a local barkeeper’s tap.
“ ’Scuse me,” a man mumbled as he sidestepped a fresh batch of mourners and brushed against Deegan.
Although he hadn’t felt the lift, Deegan knew from experience that his wallet had been eased from his jacket. Surreptitiously he checked his vest pocket. Sure enough, his watch was missing as well.
The lifter was a small fellow who was dressed quietly, his dark suit and starched collar not so ill fitting as to make him noticeable, his bowler set straight rather than cocked over his thinning hair. Although Deegan hadn’t seen Charlie Wooton in nearly fifteen years, he found the pickpocket little changed.
A reckless smile curved the corners of Deegan’s mouth. It seemed that salvation, in the form of Wooton, had come to him. Rather than cry thief, Deegan eased into the crowd, doggedly following the pickpocket as the man maneuvered profitably through the mass of mourners.
Wooton put a number of city blocks between himself and his unknowing victims before entering a corner grocer’s shop and, with a brief nod to the proprietor, slid among the shoppers to the curtained-off back room. Deegan closed the distance between them until he was nearly on his old friend’s heels when the man brushed the curtain aside.
“I thought there was honor among thieves,” he murmured, catching Wooton’s arm, detaining him.
The pickpocket turned as if honestly puzzled to be so accosted. His stance was deceptive, his calm facade masking the fact that he was coiled for action, whether verbal or physical. “Beg yer pard—” he began, then broke off, a wide smile of recognition stretching his mobile face. “Damn! If it ain’t Digger O’Rourke. What in blazes ’er you doin’ in this neighborhood?”
Deegan didn’t relax his hold on Wooton’s arm or mention that he answered to a different name now. “Following you, my lad,” he answered smoothly, his voice colored with the hint of an Irish brogue.
“Me?” The pickpocket’s brow furrowed. “What the hell for?”
“The same reason anyone would follow you, Charlie. I want my wallet back. And my watch,” Deegan added.
Wooton’s face assumed an expression of innocence. “Lost ’em? Damn, Dig, that’s too bad.”
Rather than be offended by his old friend’s act, Deegan grinned and brushed at the lapels of Wooton’s suit jacket. “A real shame,” he admitted, helping himself to the contents of the man’s inner pocket. He flashed a particularly fat wallet before the thief’s eyes. “Hmm. Quite a haul today.”
Wooton tried to snatch the wallet from Deegan’s hand.
Galloway held it just out of the smaller man’s reach. “My goods, if you please, b’hoy,” he said.
The pickpocket glanced quickly around the grocer’s to see if they were being observed. “All right,” he snarled, “but in private. Not out here where a copper might see.”
Wooton pushed the curtain aside. Deegan gestured for him to enter first, using the wallet to give the direction. Once the curtain had swished back in place behind them, Wooton began emptying his pockets on the top of a rickety-looking table. Soon he had created a pile of wallets and watches.
“Help yourself,” he urged as he slumped sullenly in a straight-backed chair.
Deegan tossed him the hefty wallet and reclaimed his own possessions from the horde. “You know, if you’d look a mark in the face occasionally you wouldn’t make the mistake of lifting from an old friend.”
Wooton shook his head. “Hell, you know that makes ’em too aware of you, Dig. Trusty and me taught you that when you were nothin’ but a slick fingered kid. Damned if I would have recognized you with those side-whiskers if you hadn’t said something to me.”
It was a lie, but one Deegan was willing to overlook. Even with his lush, tawny sideburns and luxuriant mustache serving as camouflage, he was little changed from the boy he’d been. Taller and more hardened, but still cursed with features that were far too memorable for a man following Wooton’s profession. Which was part of the reason Deegan had given up lifting wallets for a living. At least it was the reason he’d given his old associates.
And speaking of old associates…
“Have you seen Hannah lately?” Deegan asked.
Busy emptying the contents of the various wallets into his own pockets, Wooton didn’t look up. “Not in a while. Did you know she got out of the mattress trade? Claims she managed to save up enough to retire, but there ain’t a whore alive can manage that unless it’s one of the madams. I think Hannah’s found some mark to keep her. But she ain’t moved outta the Coast.”
Which she could with the money he’d sent her, Deegan knew.
“Maybe old Trusty left her something,” Wooton said. “He was always sweet on her.”
Deegan’s jaw stiffened. Trusty O’Rourke, the man who had been his mentor, the man who had passed as his “da.” Deegan remembered only too well that Trusty had drunk away every dollar either Hannah or he had managed to make.
Wooton clicked open one particularly ornate pocket watch and grinned. “Would you look at this,” he said with appreciation. “You never know what kind of trinkets you’ll cull in a proper, God-fearing crowd.” He reset the timepiece so that the tiny tin cutout couple went into randy mechanical action.
As Wooton gloated over the erotic toy, Deegan strolled over to the grimy window and flicked the faded gingham curtain aside to peer out, before glancing back at the pickpocket. “Is she still in the same rooms?” he asked.
“Who? Oh, Hannah? Sure.” His peep show over, Wooton snapped the watch closed and slipped the timepiece into his vest pocket, obviously intending to keep this bit of booty for himself rather than turn it over to his fence. “Not many of the old gang around anymore,” Wooton mused. “Those a bullet or the coppers ain’t got, the crimpers swept up. Did a hitch to Honolulu meself when things got hot after Trusty kicked it. You weren’t around then, were you, Dig?”
Deegan turned back to the window. “No.” Although Wooton’s tone clearly indicated he was curious about the intervening years, Deegan wasn’t about to satisfy that curiosity.
“Hannah’d like to see you, I’ll bet,” Wooton said. “Looks like you did all right for yourself. She’d be proud.”
Would she be? Deegan wondered. More likely she’d be angry with him for disappearing, for sending her money when he had it but never letting her know how he was or where he was. She’d be particularly furious to learn he had spent considerable time in San Francisco over the past year without bothering to contact her.
He doubted Hannah would understand just how much he wished to forget his early years and everyone connected with them. Everyone, that is, except her.
Perhaps running into Wooton when he
