“Now,” Longarm said. “Let’s you and me do some serious talking …”
Chapter 27
“Well, one thing’s for sure,” Crockett said. “Tonight we got to go to the cathouse.”
“Pardon me?”
“Cathouse. Means whorehouse. Same thing.”
“Hell, Boone, I know that, but …”
“Now I don’t know how it is where you come from, Longarm, but around here we don’t have much in the way of amusements for strangers to enjoy. Two saloons and one cathouse, that’s all we got.”
“I still don’t see …”
“Been my experience, Longarm, that in a small town like this one here, anything a lawman wants to know about strangers passing through, he’ll find it best in one of those two saloons or, more likely, in Belinda Joy Love’s cathouse.”
“Belinda Joy Love?”
“Oh, it ain’t her real name, of course. I happen to know that that’s Hilary Jean Thurmond. That’s the way she’s listed on the county tax rolls. I mean, everybody thinks she’s just hired on by some man to run the cathouse for him, but the fact is she owns the property outright. She even talks about this made-up boss whenever she wants to duck the blame for some unpopular policy or whatever. But I know different.” Crockett closed his eyes while he took another drag on the cigar Longarm had given him, then said, “We ought to drop by there about ten thirty—eleven o’clock.”
“And you think she will cooperate?” Longarm asked.
Crockett opened his eyes and smiled. “I can pretty much guarantee it, my friend. Belinda Joy Love and me got what you might call an understanding.”
“Whorehouses, cathouses that is, being in violation of the law hereabouts,” Longarm suggested. It wasn’t all that wild a guess.
“There’s a county ordinance to that effect, yes,” Crockett said cheerfully. “But no town statute, you see.”
“An interesting distinction.”
“Useful.” Crockett looked close to swooning with the pleasure of his cigar. He blew smoke rings into the air, a dozen or more of them that hung over his head like so many errant halos drifting on the still air inside the marshal’s office.
“You’ll recall that I don’t want anyone to know that I work for Marshal Vail,” Longarm said. “Far as the civilians, or even your officers, are concerned I’d prefer to be thought of as just another one of the ball players from Texas.”
“I thought of that, but you and me aren’t so far apart in age. And I’ve spent some time in Texas, too, which folks here know about but have mostly forgiven me for. I intend to introduce you as an old friend from Bexar, which is where I used to work back before I learned that a man can sometimes make more by sitting on his ass than he can by letting a string of bad horses pound it or a herd of mossy-horn cows try and puncture it.” He grinned. “You know something, Longarm? I haven’t thrown a rope nor wrestled a calf since the day I figured that out. Ever been to Bexar?”
Longarm nodded. “Enough to tell a convincing lie if anybody questions me on it.”
“That’s who you are then. What’s the name you said you’re using with those overgrown children in tight pants?”
“Chester Short. But my friends call me Chet.”
“Right. Chet it is, old pard. You and me rode together for Dad Waters at the Rafter D.”
“I remember it well,” Longarm said.
“Good. That settles that.” Crockett pulled an onion-shaped watch from his pocket and consulted it. “We got a mite of time to kill,” he said. “Tell you what. We’ll have supper at my place. My old woman always cooks enough that there’s extra in case company comes by. Then later on we’ll stop in the saloons and have a beer or something at each one. To see if there’s any new faces there. If there are I’ll put one of my boys to keeping an eye on them. Once it’s late enough then we’ll go have that little talk with Belinda Joy Love and find out for certain if there’s a bunch of strangers in town and if they are, what they’re up to.”
“Or what they claim to be up to anyhow,” Longarm said.
“Which sometimes is good enough,” Crockett said. “Sometimes you can learn about as much from a man’s lies as you can from his truths, just so you know when it is that he’s lying to you. You know what I mean?”
Longarm nodded.
“You hungry, friend Chet?”
“I feel about as empty as a bee tree with the hive smoked out of it.”
Crockett stood and reached for his hat. “Let’s go see what my old lady has on the stove, Chet.”
Chapter 28
Boone Crockett’s old woman was enough to melt a man into a puddle of steaming sweat. Or at least she made Custis Long feel like that.
He guessed her age at seventeen or thereabouts, a Mexican girl with a somewhat selectively slim body. Slim, that is, in selected portions. And anything but small in others. She had a chest that would have served admirably for any smith’s furnace bellows and a round and pretty butt that looked stony cold perfect for the birthing of babies.
