Heartstone

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With special thanks to Martin Bauer, Jed Mattes, Ned Leavitt, and all the people who helped me with the research and editing for this book. And with additional, and no less special, thanks to Jean Naggar and everyone at her agency and to Irwyn Applebaum, Elisa Petrini, and all the terrific people at Bantam Books, who have been so kind to me and my novels.

It was two days before Christmas and Louis Weaver’s only friend was dying in a dollar-a-night room at the Hotel Cordova. Louis stepped into a doorway to rest. It was hard to breathe the icy air and the whirling snow had made him half blind. He wiped his nose and took a drink of cheap whiskey from the flask that he had jammed into his raincoat pocket before leaving the hotel.

Willie told Louis that he was going to die when they were in Salt Lake City. He made Louis promise that he would take him home to Portsmouth. There was something Willie had to do in Portsmouth so that his immortal soul would be saved. They had stolen aboard a freight train and Louis had spent the hours on a hay pallet in the corner of a boxcar watching his friend decline.

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