Longarm and the Unwritten Law Page 2

  Fortunately, the head matron at the Arvada Orphan Asylum hadn't heard about him having spaghetti at Romano's with any blond hussy, and so Longarm got to work a tad later than usual the next morning with a crick in his back. He'd forgotten how athletic little Morgana could be after she hadn't been getting any for a time.

  As he entered the marshal's office in the Denver Federal Building, young Henry, the clerk who played the typewriter out front, told him their boss, Marshal Billy Vail, had Attila the Hun in the back.

  Longarm doubted that, but said nothing as he sat down on a bench and picked up a back-dated copy of Godey's Lady's Book, the marshal's wife saving her subscription periodicals for the office. Longarm had no call to sew a hem or bake a cake. But some of the pictures were interesting.

  He looked up to exchange glances with Henry when they both heard loud cussing coming from Billy Vail's office. When mention was made of blowing someone's balls off, Longarm rose to his considerable height and ambled back to see who the visitor had in mind, his own.44-40 drawn but pointed down along the seam of his pants.

  As he entered Billy Vail's oak-paneled inner office without knocking, he saw his stocky, bulldog-faced superior's visitor was a wiry gnome wearing a summer-weight seersucker suit with a brace of six-guns under his unbuttoned jacket. As they both turned to regard him, old Billy Vail called out from behind his cluttered desk, "Morning, Deputy Smiley! Has that slug-a-bed Deputy Long shown up yet? Mr. Homagy here has some serious charges he means to make to the rascal's face!"

  Longarm knew how little he resembled the hatchet-faced quarter-Pawnee Deputy Smiley. So he figured his boss had to be as drunk as a lord or trying to slicker the scowling Homagy. So he just went on aiming at the rug in the uncertain light as he calmly replied, "Long was having breakfast in that chili parlor near the corner just a few minutes ago."

  This was true. As soon as you studied on it. The wild-eyed cuss in the seersucker suit and six-guns didn't take much time to study on it. He said he knew the place and was already on his way, with a set jaw and a glare of grim determination as Longarm stepped aside to let him stride through the door as well as he was able.

  Turning back to Vail with a bemused smile, Longarm asked what on earth might be going on. Vail was already up from behind his desk, and stumped over on his own short legs to snap, "Tell you along the way!" as he grabbed Longarm's left elbow to steer him out of the office and through the maze of connecting rooms and passages, adding, "That was Attila Homagy. Don't laugh. He's one of them Bohunk coal miners from the Austro-Hungarian Empire, and they must teach history different."

  Longarm mildly replied, "Henry said Attila the Hun had come to call on us. I thought he was joshing. You said the jasper wanted to bring some sort of charges against this child, Boss?"

  Vail soberly replied, "I just said that to keep the conversation polite. His exact words were that he means to blow your balls off, stomp your head flat, and then kill you."

  Longarm whistled softly as they came to a last side door out to the softly lit marble corridor. Vail told Longarm to let him scout ahead. So Longarm stood there trying in vain to remember that funny-looking older man with the distinctive name until Vail said, "Coast seems clear. But it won't take him long to get up to that chili parlor and back. So let's move it on out. I want you to use those janitorial stairs at the far end to slip down and out the basement entrance. He might know about your hired rooms on the far side of Cherry Creek. So you'd best go on up to my house and tell my old woman to hide you out till I get there."

  They were moving in step along the otherwise deserted corridor as Vail issued these grotesque instructions. But Longarm shook his head and said, "You're not making any sense, no offense. I had the drop on that bragging banty rooster just now, and you just saw that despite all his bragging he failed to recognize me on sight. So why am I supposed to act as if he was the one and original Attila at the head of all his Huns?"

  Vail popped open what might have seemed a broom closet to the visiting eye, and hauled Longarm into the grimy cement stairwell before he explained, "You can't fight him. You'd lose no matter who won. Homagy claims that during the merry month of May, whilst he was attending a convention of the Knights of Labor, you were down in the Trinity coal camp playing slap and tickle with his young bride, name of Magda Homagy nee Kadar. She's from the same old country too. But none of that's as important as the spot it puts you in with a jealous husband out to avenge his honor as per the unwritten law!"

  Longarm scowled in the gloom and growled, "There seems to be a lot of that going around this summer. I was nowhere near Trinidad in any part of this year's greenup. Don't you remember putting me on court duty right after I came in with that prisoner in the first week of May?"

  Vail grumbled, "Of course I do. I told him that, just now. That was when he raised his voice to me. He said it was natural for a man's pals to lie for him. But that his Madga had confessed to him, in Bohunk, that she'd been led down the primrose path by a slicker with a badge who'd implied they'd all wind up back in that empire they never wanted to see again if she didn't surrender her reluctant ass to him. She says you made her suck it at the point of a gun when she allowed she'd as soon be deported. I suspicion that's the part he feels most upset about."

  Longarm allowed himself to be moved down the stairs, but as they descended he still said, "You mean so he says. Billy it's established I was never anywhere near his informative Magda. Meanwhile, have you ever considered how many enemies I may have made packing this badge and my guns for you, or how convenient it might be to offer such a dramatic excuse to a grand jury, should one not make it out of town after gunning a lawman for fun and profit?"

  Vail said, "Don't try to teach your granny how to suck eggs. I'll naturally send a heap of wires about two-gun Bohunks as soon as I can make sure you can't gun one another. But there's a hole in the plan you just presented. At the risk of turning your pretty head, you do enjoy a rep for winning gunfights. So one would think a man hired to gun you might not want to warn you in advance that he's out to gun you."

  Longarm shook his head. "A hired gun, by definition, is a cuss who thinks he can take all comers, one way or another. His main concern, like I just said, is a good excuse to justify his actions to the folks he ain't been paid to kill. I found a runt in a seersucker suit called Attila amusing too. But who's to say who was bullshitting whom just now?"

  Vail said he failed to follow Longarm's drift. So his tall deputy explained. "He might have just been pretending you'd fooled him with that sly introduction. You'd think a man would know who he was gunning for if he rode the D&RG northbound all the way from Trinidad to gun him. So let's say he roared in like a lion, expecting you to get him to leave like a lamb, after stating his intent to demand satisfaction."

  "What for?" asked Vail with a puzzled scowl. "Seems to me a man would only make himself look more foolish if he ran all over threatening to kill someone and then... Oh, I do follow your drift!"

  Longarm nodded grimly and said, "I'd be as easy to backshoot over in the Parthenon as Hickock was that time in the Number Ten. What got McCall in so much trouble then was that he just up and surprised hell out of everyone in Deadwood. Had he told all the boys in advance how old Wild Bill had been mean to him..."

  They were at the bottom of the stairs now. Vail said, "I'll meet you later at my place up on Sherman. By then I'll have had time to wire some old pals in Trinidad and vice versa. Should our mysterious stranger turn out to be a stranger down yonder as well, I can have some of the other boys he can't possibly know pick him up, for some serious conversation. Should he really turn out to be Attila the Hungarian with a ruined marriage to avenge, we got an even more serious situation to converse about. In either case, I want you off the streets and out of sight whilst Henry and me get a better grip on things."

  Longarm allowed he'd do as he was told for now. So they parted friendly and Longarm slipped out the basement entrance to the east as Vail climbed back up to his second-story office, mutt
ering about gents who couldn't handle their fool wives.

  It wasn't high noon yet, and Longarm knew he'd wind up beating rugs or splitting stove wood if he showed up at the Vail house too early on a workday. The motherly-looking but house-proud old biddy Billy Vail was married up with knew he worked for her man, and held that the devil found work for idle hands. She'd been like that ever since she'd found out about him and that young widow woman down the street from her.

  It was too early to eat more chili, and he'd promised he'd get off the downtown streets of Denver. So he ambled on over to that rooming house he'd rustled up for old Lina Marie. He had his own key and the buxom blonde, for all her faults, would be at work until after five.

  Meanwhile, he'd never gotten to read those magazines or smoke half the tobacco he'd carried up her stairs, along with the usual flowers, booze, and candy. So this unexpected afternoon off would offer the opportunity to kick off his boots and catch up on some casual smoking and reading, with nobody grabbing at his privates just as he was getting to the end of an article or the solution of a detective story. He liked those English detective stories a lot, even though those fancy English crooks seemed to use more imagination on paper than plain old American crooks did in real life.

  A colored maid was dusting in the hallway as he let himself in the unlocked front door. She looked unsettled to see him there at that hour. But he knew she knew who he was and his connection with a paid-up roomer on the top floor. So he just nodded at her and went on up to Lina Marie's garret quarters under the mansard roof.

  The hall door was naturally locked. Or so it seemed. He didn't know exactly why Lina Marie had locked it until he unlocked it and stepped inside, expecting to find himself alone up yonder.

  He wasn't. The buxom blonde and a total stranger who could have used more fresh air and sunshine were going at it hot and heavy on the brass bedstead against the far wall, naked as a couple jaybirds in a love nest. The jasper on top froze in mid-stroke to stare goggle-eyed as Lina Marie grinned sickly at Longarm and gasped, "Honey! I wasn't expecting you this early!"

  Longarm resisted the impulse to dryly observe that seemed mighty obvious. Some kindly old philosopher had once declared, doubtless in French, that nothing a man could say as he made a last exit would be more sophisticated than simply closing the door softly after himself as he left. Gals counted coup on each cussing or slamming from a man.

  But Longarm was cussing to himself as he stomped down the stairs and out of the rooming house with that colored maid staring at him.

  Striding up the shady side of the street he found himself muttering aloud, "That pasty-faced and pimple-assed son of a bitch must be the boss at work she told us about. Nobody else would be screwing her so freely on company time, and damn it, that was my pussy he was screwing so brassy, in the very quarters I helped her find!"

  He paused under a cottonwood to light a cheroot as he told himself to calm down, muttering, "Don't get your bowels in an uproar over old Lina Marie, you idjet! You were looking for a graceful way out of the tedious fix, remember?"

  He strode on, puffing smoke like a locomotive hauling its heavy load up a nine-degree grade as he growled, "Whether I wanted old Lina Marie or not is not the point. That pale soft slug couldn't lick old Henry from the office, and there he was on top of the gal I saw first, as if he thought I had nothing to say about it!"

  Longarm suddenly laughed in a more boyish tone as his common sense told him, "Asshole! He wasn't thinking about you at all. He was just a poor mortal with a hard-on, and you know you laid Lina Marie the first night you treated her to spaghetti and meatballs with spiked wine!"

  But as he strode east toward the somewhat cooler and clearer high ground of Capitol Hill, he found himself grumbling, "Hold on. I asked early on if she was spoken for. She says she told that priss at work she was shacked up with me!"

  He decided that was the part that galled him the most. The soft pale shopkeeper should have known you don't help yourself to another man's tobacco or liquor without his permission either, unless you're sure he's too big a sissy to do anything about it. So where had an infernal dry-goods pusher come up with the notion a bigger man in any better shape wouldn't do anything about it?

  Longarm suddenly laughed in a world-weary tone as his common sense told him, "From Lina Marie, of course. She'd have likely told him we were through before he carried her home from work early to console her. Forget the poor hard-up cuss. He never spent ten seconds thinking about you or any other man as he lusted after that brassy blonde!"

  So Longarm strode on in restored good humor as he considered how everything was working out. But the unexpected ending of his half-ass love affair had given him added insight into what might be eating Attila the Hungarian. For Longarm could see that if he'd had a mite less regard for the written law, or a mite more regard for old Lina Marie, somebody could have been in a whole lot of trouble back there!

  By the time he walked to Broadway and Colfax at the foot of the long gentle rise to the flat top of Capitol Hill, a street clock told him he'd at least burned up some time with all that nonsense. So he cut north along Broadway to where a man could part some swinging doors and see what sort of free lunch they were offering over this way.

  There was no such thing as a free lunch, of course, but he still saw they'd set out some devilish eggs and pickled pig's feet, both a mite salty. So he ordered a scuttle of their draft to wash some of their free lunch down.

  The nibbles weren't quite as good, but the beer was cheaper than it cost at the Parthenon Saloon near the Federal Building. Longarm had remembered that when he'd paused down the way to consider how to put off beating rugs for Mrs. Vail. He knew better than to show up really late, or walking funny, so he was nursing his beer with salty grub when a blue-uniformed Denver copper badge passed by the swinging doors of the entrance, broke stride, and came inside with a weary shake of his peaked cap, wistfully declaring, "I know I can't order another lawman, Deputy Long. But I purely wish you'd take it off my particular beat!"

  Longarm smiled uncertainly and asked, "Take what off your beat, Roundsman Callahan? I was under the impression I was just in here killing time with some suds and these salty nibbles."

  Callahan sighed and said, "Judge not, lest ye be judged, and I've been in a strange town with a hard-on as well. But that Bohunk gal in Trinidad was married up with a mighty wild-eyed cuss! He's been asking all over town for you. We run him in this morning as a cataclysm fixing to occur. But the desk said threats against his wife's lover don't count unless he's within pistol range."

  Longarm swore softly and declared, "I wouldn't know the fool's wife from Mother Eve if I did wake up in bed with her! Lord knows how Homagy ever got the notion I'd been anywhere near her!"

  Callahan shrugged and replied, "That's easy. She told him it was you, according to him, and I don't think I want you trying to deny it on my beat to a crazy Bohunk packing two Schofield.45s! He's already been told how many professional gunslicks you've beaten to the draw. But he just don't seem to be a man you can talk sense to."

  Callahan glanced out the doorway, as if expecting trouble at any time, as he added, "I don't want to tidy up after either one of you. We both know what a pain in the ass it is to write up all them reports in triplicate and then have the district attorney cuss you for sticking him with a can of worms. There's no way in hell we'd ever convict him, whilst charging a lawman with murder makes us all look bad!"

  Longarm sighed and said, "I wish I could at least try for a plea of self-defense, should push really come to shove."

  To which Callahan replied in a surprisingly cheerful tone, "You can't. But I'd sure hate to get stuck with the chore of arresting a man with your rep. So I sure wish you'd fight him somewheres else!"

  CHAPTER 3

  Longarm dawdled up Colfax Avenue to the statehouse, went inside and sat up in the visitors' gallery, and listened to some grouchy old birds argue about the gold-to-silver ratio until he decided he might as well go on over to the Va
il house and split cordwood out back.

  But even though he got there before mid-afternoon, he didn't wind up doing any of Billy Vail's chores. For the marshal was there in the flesh, dancing about on his dusty brown lawn like a Cheyenne with a vision, or a kid with worms, until Longarm got within hearing range so Billy could shout, "Where in thunder have you been? I sent Smiley and Dutch over to your quarters to gather up your Winchester and McClellan for you. I hope you've got the usual change of socks and some iron rations in your saddlebags."

  As Longarm joined his shorter superior on the summer-dry stubble, he replied with an uncertain frown, "Always keep my gear handy for a sudden leap into the great unknown. But where might I be leaping in such a hurry? Did we get another tip on Frank, Jesse, or The Kid?"

  Vail glanced uneasily up and down the tree-lined street atop the rise and told Longarm, "We'll talk about it inside. I had Henry type up some travel orders before I left the office just now. But I reckon I'd best fill you in a mite, and your next train out don't leave this side of four-thirty."

  Longarm had left the Denver Union Depot often enough to consult his mental timetable and decide, "That would be the UP eastbound you'd want me to catch. Who are we after in Kansas, Boss?"

  As Vail led him around to the kitchen entrance Longarm was told, "You're getting off at Kansas City to cut backwards to Fort Sill, betwixt the Washita and Red River of the South."

  Longarm blinked and said, "I know where Fort Sill is. But getting there by way of K.C. makes no sense. What's wrong with my catching the D&RG down to Amarillo and changing to most any eastbound for a way shorter ride?"

  Vail snapped, "Trinidad. Henry was the one who pointed out there's no sensible way to get to Amarillo without passing through Trinidad, and if there's one place other than Denver I don't want you for the next few days, Trinidad, Colorado, has to be it!"