Read Graves' Retreat for Free Online

tavern was a tribute to cheap pine, a long slab of which formed the bar behind which ran a mirror that had been cracked many times by hurled mugs and was presently held together by long strips of tape. It put you in mind of a badly wounded soldier. You could not say much more for the rest of the place, it being largely comprised of odors-cigar and cigarette smoke, urine from the outhouses, and sweat from the day’s work. The biggest amenity was a fat Bohemian piano player with a farmer’s red face and almost no skill at all on the keys. There were wobbly pine tables where some played cards but more spent time in pointless talk about baseball, and a few argued politics. There was a pool table which seemed to attract the serious attention of the few sober souls in the place.
        And there were the women.
        There was something about working-class girls that had always troubled Neely. He felt paternal toward them-wanted to say wash the rouge off your face and wear modest clothes and get yourself back to your pa’s place-but his paternalism was a burden because he had learned a long time ago that he was not going to change the world.
        Like T.Z., Neely had grown up in a poor German section of Chicago, where half the infants died before six months and where the cops were crooked and where a brutal army of thugs owned by a man named Allan Pinkerton broke the skull and spirit of any man who dared speak up for better living and working conditions.
        There had been a time when Neely considered himself a radical- he remembered what the radical T. Lizius, publisher of a Chicago anarchist newspaper, said about Alfred Nobel’s discovery of dynamite: “In giving dynamite to the downtrodden millions of the globe, science has done its best work. The dear stuff can be carried around in the pocket without danger, while it is a formidable weapon against any force of militia, police or detectives that may want to stifle the cry for justice that goes forth from the plundered slaves”-but that was before the Halstead street riots, where Neely had seen the pointlessness of being a radical (just as he had come to see the pointlessness of believing in the God of his youth). An army with rifles had opened fire on a mob of unarmed railroad workers, who had only been asking that the railroad (the impossibly rich railroad) not roll back wages any more.
        No, there was no point in it, and soon after Neely and T.Z. had drifted into robbery as a means of supporting themselves. All you could worry about in this universe was yourself and let the scabrous parade of history, good and bad alike, pass by.
        “Your friend’s going to get his face smashed in if he keeps it up,” said a voice to Neely’s left.
        Neely turned around and looked at a middle-aged worker with a grimy face and dead right eye.
        Amused, Neely said, “You don’t imagine it would be the first time, do you?”
        “I s’pose not.”
        Neely followed the man’s gaze to the back of the place where T.Z., who was dressed in his usual riverboat gambler attire (ruffled shirt, string tie, colorful red silk vest, severely cut black coat), sat wooing a working girl who looked just like all the working girls T.Z. usually wooed-pretty and troubled. But then that could describe T.Z., too. Because, despite a small scar beneath his right eye, he had the sort of handsomeness that was almost beauty. And he certainly was troubled.
        As he watched T.Z., Neely thought that when the time came to kill him, he might actually be doing T.Z. a favor. For one thing, the man's consumption was getting worse (he’d seen a doctor just last week), and for another, his addiction to the bottle had robbed him of what little common sense he’d had to begin with.
        No, Neely needed T.Z. for only one more job, this one. And then…
        “She’s Mike Dougherty’s girl.”
        “Who’s Mike?” asked