“Oh, that was Carlos I was talking about. Carlos is fifteen. Horny little bugger like all kids are at that age. He thinks he’s in love with one of the girls at Belinda Joy Love’s place, and he’d do anything to spend a little time there. Which his pa thinks is about the funniest thing he’s ever heard of. The whole family teases the poor kid, though sometimes I think it’d be better to take him over there and let him try it on for size one time.”
Longarm finished his cheroot and flipped the butt out into the yard.
“Let’s go do some work, old pard. You remember who you are?”
“Hell, yes,” Longarm said. “You and me rode together down Bexar way. For a fella name of Dad Waters on the Rafter D.”
“Bueno. Let’s go catch us some bad guys, eh?” Crockett took a final deep puff on his cigar and tossed it away into the gathering dusk. “Just follow me, old friend, and agree with whatever I say.” He winked. “Especially if I need you to pay my gambling debts.”
Longarm laughed and followed Crockett off the porch and back in the direction of the town center.
Chapter 29
“Dammit, Boone, you ain’t gonna take him away from the table now, are you? Your friend’s the big winner. It ain’t right for you to take away our chance to get even.”
Crockett shrugged but didn’t change his mind, and Longarm began scooping up the loose change piled in front of him. He and four other townsmen, all friends of the local law to one degree or another, had been marking time by playing penny-ante poker. And Longarm hoped the protest from the player to his left wasn’t serious or the poor fellow had no business sitting in at even a low stakes contest like this one. Longarm’s “big” winnings didn’t amount to much more than a dollar, he was sure, and that was after an hour and a half of desultory play.
Apparently, though, it was late enough now that Longarm and Crockett could go on over to the whorehouse for that little talk with Crockett’s source of information there.
Longarm hoped that visit was more productive than the town saloons had turned out to be. The only drinkers and card players to be found this evening were local or near-local men, farmers, and a very few stockmen, who either lived in town or close enough to ride in for the baseball game that would be played tomorrow.
No strangers had shown themselves so far, suspicious or otherwise.
“After you, Chet,” Crockett said, gesturing toward the door.
Longarm nodded to the fellows he’d been playing against and ambled out, a cheroot clamped in his jaw.
“Still no word about anyone you don’t know?” Longarm asked.
“Not a soul. But if there is anyone new in town, Belinda Joy will know about it,” Crockett promised.
The town marshal led the way to a low, sprawling building that looked more like a warehouse than a whorehouse. Despite the late hour, however, a lamp burned at the entry, and there were half a dozen horses and driving rigs waiting in the shadows. Considering the likely number of walk-up customers, it seemed Miss Love did a thriving trade.
“Popular,” Longarm observed.
“The only place in the whole county where a man can be sure of getting his ashes hauled instead of having his face slapped,” Crockett said.
“Licensed?”
“Hell, no. County commission wouldn’t stand for any such a notion. They’d be thrown out of office before the ink was dry on any ordinance that would approve this debauchery and degradation. And the town council stays out of it altogether. They don’t want the aggravation.”
“I see,” Longarm said, suspecting that indeed he did.
“Illegal as anything can be. Belinda Joy is arrested … so to speak … and pays fines on Monday mornings, regular as clockwork. Twenty dollars for the house and four dollars for each girl.”
Crockett smiled. “Belinda Joy is very civic-minded. She keeps our taxes down to an affordable level, and the decent ladies have the satisfaction of knowing that their morals are protected by force of law.”
“Everyone is happy,” Longarm said.
“Let’s hope so.” Crockett tapped lightly on the door to Belinda Joy Love’s house of happiness.
Belinda Joy Love would have needed high heels, and maybe have to go up on her tiptoes as well, to make it to five feet of altitude. She was a tiny wee china doll of a woman. With perhaps a few age cracks in the porcelain. Heavy makeup was not enough to cover the wrinkles that the years had bred around her mouth and eyes nor diminish the wattles that formed beneath her chin.
Even so one could see what a fine figure of a little woman she must have been twenty, thirty years ago.
Her natural hair color by now must surely be white, but that fact was rather artlessly concealed with hennaed red. Her eyes were bright blue, though, and that was certainly natural enough. She smiled when she saw Boone Crockett and welcomed him and his friend Chet inside.
“So nice to see you, dear.” She pulled Crockett’s face down to see-level so she could give him a kiss on the cheek, then extended a soft hand and a seemingly genuine greeting to Longarm as well. “It is a pleasure to meet you, dearie. You know the old saying, Any friend of Boone’s is … you know the rest, of course.”
“Yes, ma’am.” The “ma’am” part of that came out unexpected. He just couldn’t help himself. There was something about this aging bawd that Longarm found he just plain liked. She smiled, exposing a set of choppers so white and perfect they had to be false, and reached up to pat Longarm lightly on the cheek. He couldn’t believe she did that. It made him feel about twelve years old. “My pleasure, ma’am.” And he meant it.
“Chester Short, is it? Is that what you said, Boone dear?”
“That’s right, Belinda Joy. Chet and I rode together down in Texas a few years back. You remember. I’ve told you all about that.”
