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 Vail 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
