Free Graves' Retreat by Ed Gorman

to feel some urgency about it.
        Wolfs Millinery stood on the corner of Third Street South East.
        
***
        
        At noon time the streets were crowded with downtown workers shopping and with customers from outlying areas coming into town via buggies and the streetcars.
        Les stood in front of the millinery window peeking inside for sight of May Tolan.
        Presently all he could see was the north wall of the place, where large glassed-in cases with sliding doors displayed what seemed like hundreds of large hats with huge (sometimes overwhelming) floral ornaments, of the sort popular this year.
        In front of the cases were mahogany stands where even more hats were shown.
        Ladies in pairs and trios walked up and down the aisles of the place, trying on various hats-some evoking admiring smiles among their friends, some (the gaudier kind) eliciting smiles if not downright smirks, and still a few more puzzlement. There was one hat off which spilled enough grapes to start a vineyard. Who would wear such a thing?
        Finally, still unable to find May anywhere (and then suddenly fearing that she, too, might be on her lunch hour), Les started around to the front of the place.
        And that’s when he saw Neely.
        The big Irishman, looking like a roughneck version of a banker himself in his three-piece suit and string tie, leaned against a shop a hundred feet away smoking his hand-rolled cigarette.
        He walked over to Les with his easy gait, its very easiness suggesting a self-confidence that was really arrogance.
        “You’re following me, aren’t you?” Les said. He had begun to sweat. He was angry. He also felt, as the tightness of his stomach attested, fear. He had known Neely for twenty-five years and had never been able to understand the man. Neely was the sort who got tears in his eyes when little kids hurt themselves by falling down or getting sick. He had a real sympathy for life’s injured and wounded. But he had also seen Neely kick in a man’s ribs until the man started bleeding out of his mouth, nose and ears. Les and T.Z. had had to haul Neely off the man. Neely made no sense to Les and that made him not only inscrutable but totally dangerous, like a weapon that could be set off at any time.
        “Sure. I remember you when you were a little kid,” Neely said. “You liked to wander around-get lost.” He smiled. “I’m just making sure you don’t get lost.”
        “I’m not going to do it, Neely. What you proposed last night.”
        Neely just kept on smiling. “Sure you are.”
        “You can’t force me.”
        “Of course I can.”
        “I don’t give a damn who you tell about my past.”
        Neely’s eyes narrowed. “It isn’t your past you’ve got to worry about now, Les. It’s your brother’s past. Don’t forget that T.Z. is wanted for murder.”
        You could see by Neely’s eyes that he had succeeded in rattling Les.
        “They’d hang him and you know it.”
        “They’d hang you, too.”
        “If they caught me. Remember in the old neighborhood, Les-I always came out on top. T.Z. rarely did."
        Les sighed. “I-I’m trying to start a new life here, Neely. I don’t expect you to understand that. But that’s why I kind of-retreated back here. To start again. And now-”
        Neely took a deep drag on his quirly and tipped his hat with the broad gesture of a gentleman to a pretty bonneted young woman passing by in the fine lovely June sunlight.
        Then Neely turned back to Les. “If you do it just the way we told you, nobody will ever know you had anything to do with it.”
        “But, Neely-”
        “You ever see a man hang, Les? They hung my uncle.”
        “Neely, I know-”
        “My old man never got his brother’s screams out of his head. Even on his deathbed my old man was crying about what it had been