Longarm nodded and explained. 'He'll spend at least the rest of the night in jail. But any stockman who can afford his own lawyer ought to be out on bail by noon.'
'But, Custis, he just killed an unarmed man in cold blood!' she protested.
To which Longarm replied, with a weary sigh, 'That ain't the way his lawyer's going to present it to the grand jury. Maxwell's best bet is to remain silent whilst his lawyer paints the picture of a tormented soul, trying to save his marriage from the machinations of a false-hearted employee who'd led his poor corn-fed Edna Mae down the primrose path with buttered words and doubtless some of them French preeversions.'
Lina Marie reached a tad lower to fondle his limp love tool as she purred, 'Show me what you mean by perverse, you wicked French thing!'
He laughed softly. 'We got all night and there's a whole nickel's worth of tobacco left here. I wasn't offering to go down on you just yet. I was telling you how Maxwell's likely to get off, as provided by the Unwritten Law, or the principal of equity, as it reads in most law books.'
She said neither term made sense to her, and added, 'I thought a law had to be put down on paper and passed by some legislative body before it could be enforced.'
He nodded. 'That's how come they call such fuzzy legal notions unwritten. You see, the laws we have today are based on a swamping heap of earlier ones, going all the way back to Moses by way of ancient Rome. Roman laws were all writ down in Latin, which can still be read by high-priced lawyers, and they tell me Augustus Caesar and his Roman crew wrote mighty sensible and consistent for such olden times. But their punishments were a mite harsh, and since they held Miss Justice had to be blind, there was no way to let any felon off. The law was the law, and if you didn't aim to end up nailed to a cross or worse, you damned well obeyed the law!'
She began to stroke what was no longer quite so limp as he took a deep drag on the cheroot and said, 'You didn't want to hear about equity in any case, right?'
She protested, 'I'm interested in that too. Just let me work this sweet thing up again for the both of us as you tell me why I ought to care about ancient Romans being mean to people.'
He smiled thinly and said, 'There might be time. I want it all the way up, you tight little doll. The blind justice of Roman courts could lead to results so mean that even the Romans were shocked enough to write them down in Latin. That's how later law clerks, trying to work out common law for the Middle Ages, found out about things like poor old crazy ladies or bitty kids getting crucified for showing disrespect to some statue of a naked cuss sporting a fireman's helmet. The tale I find most disgusting was when they came to arrest a Roman politician for abusing his authority. There was no doubt he was guilty, and our own politics might be less corrupt if we got to hang such rascals. But under Roman law they got to execute both him and his whole family. I reckon they figured it would be tough to be a serious crook without your kinfolk knowing about it.'
She was interested enough to slow down, which hardly seemed fair, as she said, 'Well, the Pinkertons did point out the time that they lobbed that bomb through Frank and Jesse's window. But I still think it was mean to kill that half-wit boy and cripple old Mrs. Samuel.'
Longarm said, 'When the Roman lawmen came to arrest this official called Sejanus, they were stuck with the fact that Roman law forbade them to execute a virgin. So they had to rape the man's little girl in public before they could make her pay for her dear old dad's crimes against the state.'
Lina Marie gasped and said, 'That was horrid of them, and I don't care how blind Justice is supposed to be!'
Longarm nodded. 'Law clerks the Romans had down as dumb barbarians agreed with you on that. So they slipped in the sort of fuzzy notion of equity, which had nothing to do with equal justice but held that sometimes Miss Justice had to show some merciful common sense. Mortal folks can be driven over the line by native customs or a notion that they're obeying some older, higher law.'
She nodded in sudden understanding. 'You mean that old-time code of honor calling for a gentleman to defend his womankind and other property to the death?'
He said, 'Something like that. I told you it was fuzzy and never written down on paper. They dasn't make it lawful to gun a man for fooling with your woman, or allow you to pistol-whip every gent who implies you might be fibbing. But just the same, they reduce charges of simple assault to aggravated assault if you can prove the victim called you a son of a bitch before you swung at him. And as for killing a man you just caught in the act with your woman, how many prosecuting attorneys with a lick of sense are likely to haul a poor heartbroken wretch before a judge and jury when they know that should one juror figure the dead Casanova had it coming to him...'
She began to stroke his much firmer erection faster as she said, 'I see why outraged husbands seem to get away with it so often. And speaking of coming, I want to get on top again.'
He snuffed out the cheroot as she cast the bedding aside with a giggle of glee and cocked a lush thigh across him to impale her pretty self on his now fully restored virility.
It felt swell, and he was content to let her do some of the work for a change. He had a job to go to in the cold gray dawn, and at the rate they were going, he doubted he'd catch much sleep before it came time to rise and shine.
He still felt obliged to roll her over and finish in her firm but voluptuous flesh. She took it as a compliment, and said she'd evoke that Unwritten Law and scratch any other gal in town bald-headed if she ever caught her flirting with her long-donging darling.
Longarm had to grin as he pictured Lina Marie fighting it out bare-ass with a certain equally well-proportioned widow woman up on Capitol Hill, or another somewhat more muscular blonde down Texas way. No man with a lick of sense was going to mention marriage certificates at a time like this. So he only said, 'A body can get in trouble counting on unwritten law. There's nothing written down to say they can't punish you for busting a real law. It's up to the lawyers to figure out the fuzzy logic. Many an old boy, or gal, who tried to follow unwritten law wound up in real trouble from the law written down in ink!'
She wrapped her legs around his waist to keep him from rolling off as they let it soak in her some more. Not feeling up to more than that just yet, she allowed that the Unwritten Law sounded almost as mean in its own way as the draconian no-excuses laws it was meant to save poor sinners from.
Longarm moved gently in her to keep their friendship firm as he replied, 'Slick talkers or slow thinkers can ruin the intent of the law no matter how it's been written. Them Romans should have seen it was just dumb to blindfold Miss Justice and leave her armed and dangerous, whilst common sense decrees that ninety-nine times out of a hundred a body who kills another body deserves to die for it. Not as much for doing it as lest somebody else feel the same call. If folks were made to feel you couldn't kill nobody without getting hung, a heap of killings might never
