archway, to get smacked in the face with a disturbingly pleasant surprise.
La Bruja, if that was who he was smiling down on as she reclined on a chaise in an outfit of black Spanish lace over velvet, was a breathtaking brunette of indeterminate age and likely pure Spanish ancestry. Her skin was even paler than that ivory shade high-toned Spanish ladies strove for, to show off darker aristocratic blood in their veins. She didn't look sick, but poor young Lenore Colbert hadn't looked that pale the other night slaughtered and drained.
The beautiful but mighty spooky lady waved Longarm to a hassock on his side of a low-slung coffee table, and said coffee and cakes were on their way. As he removed his hat and took his seat Longarm reconsidered calling her a lady. For the hassock was doubtless low-slung on purpose, to make the average guest look up to La Bruja as she held court atop that higher chaise. Longarm was a lot taller than average, and she still managed to sort of look down on him even while she was half reclining on one shapely side.
But Longarm had been sent to see the C.O. a lot in his army days, and he knew the way you got back at them for playing such games was to pay no mind.
So he just sat there, a politely questioning smile on his face, until La Bruja said, 'Perhaps I should get right to the point in your own Yanqui manner, El Brazo Largo. I understand we are both on simpatico terms with such leaders of La Revolucien as La Mariposa and El Gato?'
He shrugged. 'Nobody with a lick of sense admires the current Administration of Old Mexico, senorita.'
She sighed and said, 'Senora, porfavor. I am proud of the things my late husband did for the cause of Libre Mexico before los rurales shot him down like a dog against a wall. He and his brave comrades all refused the blindfold and faced their executioners with all of the scorn they deserved!'
Longarm nodded soberly. 'I'm sure your average rurale firing squad deserves all the scorn they can get, senora. But didn't you say something before about getting to the point of this visit?'
She didn't answer as a much darker maid with more Indian features came in with a real silver salver piled with almond cakes and a fine old silver service. There was some sort of family crest on the coffee urn. Longarm didn't try too hard to make it out. He didn't know too much about such notions to begin with, and family plate had a way of turning up far from its original family down Mexico way.
La Bruja dismissed her chica with a not unpleasant nod, and swung her satin slippers to the rug to sit properly as she poured a cup for Longarm. When he asked where her cup might be, she softly replied she didn't really care for coffee.
He could see she didn't mean to share the almond cakes with him either. So Longarm left both his coffee and cake untasted as well, murmuring something about just coming from the market and repeating his polite request they get to the point.
La Bruja said flatly, 'An Anglo business associate of mine wants you dead. He offered me five hundred Yanqui dollars to have my own muchachos kill you. When I politely declined he raised the offer to a thousand.'
Longarm whistled softly. 'He must really want me dead. I've arrested many a gunslick who'd kill a man for less'n a hundred!'
La Bruja lay back on her chaise as if weary of the whole thing as she replied, 'Not El Brazo Largo. I understand you got one of them on that steamer last night and killed the other one here in Corpus Christi this morning.'
Longarm shook his head. 'A frisky pup of a Ranger put the last fatal round in him. I was out to take him alive. I had an educated hunch they had to be working for somebody higher up, and I'd be much obliged if you'd tell me who that might be, seeing you surely know, senora.'
La Bruja smiled reproachfully and sighed. 'It was very cruel of God to leave us so far from Him and so close to el gringo. As I was just saying to that other one, your people and mine do not speak the same language even when they are speaking the same language. He was under the impression I was a mere criminal because I am required to bend just a few of your Yanqui laws in my efforts to fund political struggles in my own country. When I told him he would have to employ some other means, we parted on mutually agreeable terms. It would be foolish for wolves to fight in a world of sheep, and he knew none of us would betray his identity to anyone. I don't think he expected me to warn you like this, of course. But please do not ask me to tell you any more about him.'
Longarm nodded soberly. 'I'm commencing to follow your drift. You don't aim to have either the local Anglo underworld or my old pal El Gato sore at you. So I'll just thank you for the warning and see what I can work out on my own.'
But as he leaned his weight forward to rise, La Bruja sat up some more and insisted, 'You can't be seen on the streets of Corpus Christi in broad daylight! It's true, as your enemies say, you may be on the alert for typical Anglo riders. But an enemy clever enough to think a chico mejicano might have better luck ought to be able to hire other types you might not take for assassins until too late!'
'The gang's mostly dressed sort of cow, eh?' Longarm mused as he perched undecided on the edge of that low hassock.
To which La Bruja replied with a knowing laugh, 'Do not try to get it out of me with a, how you say, process of elimination. I have been questioned by serious policemen and have the scars to prove it. Nobody gets anything out of me that I do wish them to know.'
Longarm nodded soberly. 'I was sort of wondering about the dim lighting in here, senora. I said I understood the bind you were in. I ain't going to try and beat the identity of that murderous pendejo out of a lady who's offered me food, shelter, and such pleasant company. But I got my own fish to fry, and whether we savvy the same old lingo or not, another lady they shot the other night in my place was pretty as well as innocent. She'd never done them a lick of harm and it's my duty to see they're punished.'
La Bruja insisted, 'But the men who killed her in your stateroom have been punished! You shot them both yourself! The people they might have been working for never ordered them to kill anyone but you. Can't you see that?'
Longarm smiled thinly. 'I see this mastermind told you more than I might have about our earlier transactions. If he wanted me dead before I gunned a couple of his boys, he must have thought I was already after him. So why can't we say who he might be?'
La Bruja laughed lightly, a sort of surprising sound, and archly replied, 'You are as clever as they say you are. But it won't work. I will tell you frankly, it does not matter to me and mine whether you are on one Anglo's trail or another's. I only wish to see you leave Corpus Christi alive and well, should anyone south of the border ever ask. As I said, it is still broad daylight outside. You will stay here until dark. After sundown we can send you on your way to anywhere but the waterfront. They will be waiting for you along the docks, expecting you to try and board that
