“I recall reading something about the case in the Post, but I’d have paid more attention if I’d known you expected me to kiss the son of a bitch good-bye. How come they call him the Great Costello, anyway? It sounds more like what a vaudeville performer would call himself than the name of a train robber.”
“That’s on account of him being both,” Vail replied. “The Great Costello and his act was enjoying a slow season up in Leadville when they took it in their fool heads to finance further travels by knocking off a silver shipment destined for the Denver Mint.”
“I knew why it was a federal case. Killing that federal guard was not the sort of move a man might have wanted to make unless he enjoyed the feel of federal hemp around his neck. But hell, Billy, they picked up the silly son of a bitch within days and-“
“He escaped,” Vail cut in. “That wasn’t in the Post because they caught him again within hours. Then he escaped again. Plural. Twice in the same damned day. Don’t ask me how—they’re still working on it. As an outlaw he’s a pathetic greenhorn, but as an escape artist he’s a whirling wonder. That’s what he was on the vaudeville stage, an escape artist. His boast was that there wasn’t a rope, a chain, or a set of shackles as could hold him.”
Vail took another drag on his cigar and continued with a weary sigh, “He wasn’t just whistling Dixie. He’d been amusing the boys down to the House of Detention by letting ‘em put him in cuffs and leg irons, just so they could watch him bust loose.”
Longarm frowned thoughtfully and growled, “Hold on, are we talking about our own government issue restraints, not tricky cuffs and such from a magic shop?”
Vail nodded his head and said, “I told you we were working on how he does it. It’s sort of discouraging to watch a man slip off cold steel the taxpayers of these United States paid good money for. He can’t get out of his patent cell, though. At least, not while an armed guard is posted just outside the bars twenty-four hours a day. But he’s still made ‘em nervous enough to request our extra help in getting him from the cell to the gallows out back.”
Longarm snorted in disgust. “Oh, for God’s sake, it ain’t that far.”
“That’s why I’m likely to cloud up and rain all over you and Guilfoyle if the Great Costello don’t make such a modest trip, Longarm. The prisoner is a killer, but gutless enough to act docile with a gun trained on him from close range. They’ll have his hands cuffed behind him before he leaves the cell, of course, but knowing him, that may not make much difference. You have our permit to blow his spine in two if he makes even one suspicious move on his way out and up. That’s why you’re it—you know damned well what Dutch or even Smiley would make of such orders if the poor cuss even farted on his way to the gallows.”
“I wish I wasn’t so damned reliable. I never signed up with the Justice Department to be a hangman, damn it.
Vail said, soothingly, “They got ‘em a volunteer for that job. Your job is over the moment you deliver the cuss to the tender mercies of the executioner and his crew, on the platform. If the Great Costello makes one of his great escapes once they have the hood and rope on him, it ain’t our necks we have to worry about.”
Longarm blew smoke from both nostrils like an angry bull and said, “I still don’t like it. I don’t mind killing in the line of duty, but no matter what you say about my rough approach to justice from time to time, I’ll thank you to recall that I’ve seldom so much as wounded a gent who wasn’t in a position to do me just as dirty. The notion of prodding a helpless man to his death with my gun leaves a mighty bad taste in my mouth, even before I’ve done it.”
“The federal employee Costello killed can’t taste nothing, right now,” Vail said. “They’re fixing to hang him at Six A.M. sharp. That means we want you and Guilfoyle down there no later than four in the morning. If I was you, I’d turn in early and set my alarm for, oh, say three?”
Longarm got back to his feet as he replied, “You ain’t me, and I’d rather stay up all night than wake up at three in the damned morning to go to a hanging.”
Vail shrugged and said, “What you do on your own time between now and then is up to you and her. But make sure she lets you out of bed in time to give the boys a hand. I mean that, old son. If you mess up you can commend your soul to Jesus, for your ass will belong to me.”
Chapter 2
Despite Billy Vail’s unseemly suggestion, Longarm did not head on down Sherman Avenue to the residence of a certain widow woman—one who would have been more than willing to help him kill the rest of the night. Longarm was too fond of her to subject her to a three A.M. wake-up call after she’d acted so fond of him. Aside from that, he was feeling more morose than horny, even this early. He knew he’d be feeling worse before the long night’s vigil was over.
He’d lied to Billy Vail about having eaten earlier. Now he wished he had, so he stopped at a beanery on Larimer Street to put some lining in his stomach. They’d always made chili con carne hot enough for him before, but this evening it tasted like spitballs in library paste. The black coffee he washed it down with tasted weak and watery as well, but he drank a couple of extra cups anyway; he knew what a long night he was facing.
As he strolled on toward the federal lockup further downtown, Longarm tried to tell himself this wasn’t really the way it had been facing a predawn assault as a teen-aged soldier. It wasn’t him, this time, wondering if the next sunrise he would see might be his last. It was the cuss in the death cell, yonder, who should be thinking thoughts like that. Where in the constitution did it say a man who was only stuck with watching a man die was supposed to feel like he was dying too?
It was darker but still too early to suit Longarm when he got to the Federal House of Detention near the Burlington yards. A long freight was pulling out, moaning wistfully about faraway places. Longarm knew the condemned man inside could hear it as well. It was a sound that made a man feel like traveling even when he had no desperate need to be elsewhere.
A seedy little yellow-brick hotel stood across the street from the lockup. Longarm recalled the taproom opening off the lobby. Right now he needed a drink more than he needed a gander at a man with less than twelve hours to live, so that’s where he headed.
Once in the dimly lit lobby, Longarm discovered other minds seemed to be running in the same channels. Reporter Crawford of the Post was seated in one corner with a schooner of beer and a handsome redhead. He was wearing a checked suit and silly straw hat. The gal’s summer-weight suit was a more sensible beige, but her straw boater was even sillier, and she had a press pass stuck in the brim, with a dead hummingbird sort of peeking over the cardboard.
A couple of other local reporters Longarm knew well enough to howdy had taken up other positions under the potted paper palms. But none of them were handsome redheads, so Longarm ambled over to his pal from the
