The branch manager tried, “Well, they do say the prime suspect is a professional magician, you know.”
Longarm shook his head and said, “Try her this way. They knew McArdle was working alone here, late, after a busy payday week with lots of money orders coming and going. It would have been dumb to rob a post office any other time. While some of the crew staged that street brawl to misdirect any passersby, the others never had to pick no lock. They just knocked on the back door, and when McArdle opened it to see who it was, they pushed in on him, held him at gunpoint, and forced him to give them the combination of that safe.”
The dead man’s boss protested, “But Bob said they shot him as he was trying to protect the money from them.”
Longarm smiled thinly and said, “Dying men have pride, too. He wouldn’t have noticed all that much, lying gut-shot on the floor. He said he’d seen them clean out the safe because he had, standing somewhere between where we sit, now, hoping like hell they might let him live. He was no doubt feeling sort of ashamed of himself even before they shot him. He must have felt dumb and mighty bitter when he found himself shot down like a dog as they was leaving, not busting in. That part about not being able to get to that gun in time was as likely a statement of regret as a statement of fact. I feel somewhat better than he must have, now that I see another magician wasn’t fibbing about a rival out of jealousy. The Great Costello and his gang ain’t such grand wizards, they’re simply a cut above your average crook when it comes to planning.”
The branch manager sighed and said, “More murderous, as well. We all thought poor old Bob was killed in a fair fight with them.”
“I see no call to change his story, official, seeing it was a dying gasp of apology. I’m paid to sniff at dirty linen, and I see no need to wash it in public when I don’t have to, do you?”
The older man stared soberly at him and asked, “Do you mean that? Can we leave it at that, with old Bob dying sort of a hero?”
“We won’t be able to hold the Great Costello to the dying man’s statement, if he chooses to confess the true story. But he might not—he’s never confessed to nothing so far. And they didn’t send me down here to vex an honest man’s kin any more than I have to, so what the hell.”
Chapter 11
Longarm went next to El Paso Police Headquarters. He owed the local law a courtesy call in any case and, for all he knew, they might have noticed something that hadn’t been included in the reports he’d read so far.
They had. Their chief of detectives sat Longarm down, offered him a big cigar he declined and a shot of rye he didn’t, and said, “We’ve been anxious to hand the case over to a man of your rep, Longarm. We got us a case load this summer beyond all common sense, with another revolution fixing to bust loose in Mexico, just outside our city limits.”
He turned to open a sheet-metal file case as Longarm asked, “Do tell? I didn’t know your jurisdiction extended across the river. Every time I try to arrest some rascal down Mexico way the infernal rurales seem to want me on the less comfortable side of a firing squad.”
The detective growled, “We heard how you busted up the Laredo Loop and some rurales as well. We don’t have to ride south of the border to fight Mexican bandits. The damned old Mexican army and rural police keep chasing ‘em up here in droves. You ever hear of a bandit leader called El Gato?”
Longarm looked down at his drink and muttered, “Yep. He says he’s a rebel, not a bandit.”
The El Paso lawman turned around with what looked like a couple of raw flapjacks in his hands as he said, “Whatever El Gato may be in Mexico, he’s considered a bandit by our State Department. I don’t know why Washington can’t see what a dedicated baby-butchering bastard El Presidente Diaz is, but for some reason they can’t. So we have orders to arrest El Gato and turn him over to the Mexican authorities whenever he shows his fool face in El Paso and, since he has at least three girlfriends in the Mexican Quarter, he shows his fool face a lot.”
He placed the two dirty white slabs of dried plaster on the desk between them and continued, “El Gato’s our problem. You can have this as a gift free and simple if it’s any use to you.”
Longarm could see now that someone smart had made casts of two footprints. One was that of a small but normal looking high-heeled boot. The other looked as if it had been made with a kid’s toy flatiron. Longarm nodded and said, “That’s my boy. You’d think a gent who fancies himself a master magician would have thought to drag some sacking behind his fool self as he was on his way along a back alley, even in a hurry.”
The detective said, “They did. But we got lucky. El Paso had a rare but welcome summer shower the day before the robbery. So while the ‘dobe clay behind that post office is usually hard as a brick, it was only crusted dry on the surface and still damp enough under the dust to record the passage of a really heavy bedbug. Like I said, we read signs and found the tied-together tumbleweeds they drug behind ‘em. But you’re right, they left in a hurry and by now they’re learning to like Mexican cooking. You can buy a mess of hot tamales with the amount of cash they got away with.”
Longarm pursed his lips and said, “I’m sort of dubious about ‘em being in Mexico, no offense. Their style is to blend in between jobs, not stand out like sore thumbs. Costello got picked up after that Leadville job because he’s distinctive enough to be recognized from across the street. We don’t have even an educated guess as to what the others look like, or even how many there might be. Tell me about that street brawl they staged to lure a crowd away from the post office the other evening.”
The El Paso lawman grimaced and said, “I wasn’t there. But the beat men who were describe it as a mostly shouting match between a man and a woman. She was doing most of the hitting, with her purse. He seemed content to cuss her and accuse her of all sorts of perversions with some other man. Some of the names he called her was sort of comical, and most of the crowd was laughing, so-“
“Your copper-badges hesitated to move in,” Longarm cut in with a knowing nod. “No lawman with a lick of sense would be about to mix in such a fray unless buckets of blood were splashing. Nine times out of ten the woman refuses to press charges in the end, and many an overzealous hero has been stabbed in the back with a hat-pin or worse by the very maiden in distress he thought he was saving.”
The detective sighed and answered, “Ain’t it the truth. From the advantages of hindsight, it’s easy to see why the gent kept calling her his cheating wife. Our beat men concentrated most on keeping the crowd from taking sides as they warned the noisy man and woman they’d have to arrest the winner if anyone wound up in need of a doc. They was still going at it when the sound of gunshots rang out down the street.”
Longarm said, “Right. By the time anyone thought to ask about the quarreling couple, they were long gone, too?”
