“Don’t you worry about what you asked me to do, sir. I won’t let you down. I promise that I won’t.”
“Why, I trust you to that, son, or I wouldn’t have asked you t’ begin with.”
Jerry beamed with joy and pride. He practically floated down the staircase to the dining room below. Longarm clumped along at a considerably more sedate pace.
The whole team was gathered there for a meal that was long on starches and gravy but short when it came to actual meat. Still, it was hot and filling and there was plenty of it. Afterward most of the men drifted into the parlor where they broke up into small groups, most of them centered around nucleuses of cards and coins.
Longarm got into a penny ante game of stud with the pitching staff.
He had no idea what Nat Lewis and Jerry were up to and took some care not to go looking around for either one of them.
Chapter 45
“Psst! Sir. Mr. Short.”
Longarm looked up to see Jerry standing at the sliding double doors that led out to the entry hall and vestibule. The boy was hissing and beckoning for all he was worth. He might as well have waved a signal lantern and fired off some flares, but what the hell. Nobody cared anyway.
“I’m out. Do me a favor, Dennis?”
“Sure.”
“Cash these out for me, please. I got an urgent call o’ nature to see to.”
“Sure, whatever you say.” The young pitcher pulled Longarm’s pile of pennies in front of him and grinned. “Now I can really run the pots up on these guys.”
Longarm left the table and grabbed his Stetson off the elk horn rack on his way out to join Jerry.
“It’s Nat Lewis, sir. He went out back like he was going to the shitter but he never. Instead he looked around … I was real careful that he couldn’t see me watching after him … and took off into town. I didn’t know what I should do then, sir. I mean, should I run back in to tell you and miss seeing where Nat went or should I follow after him. I decided to follow and see where he was going then come back for you. Is that all right, sir? Did I do good?”
“You did just fine, Jerry.”
The boy beamed and led the way outside and down the street in the direction of downtown Jonesboro, Longarm having to shorten his strides to keep from overrunning the hippety-hop gait of the youngster with the clubfoot.
“Back in there it is, sir,” he said once they were on Main next to Berman’s Pharmacy. “He went down this alley here and knocked on a door. I waited long enough to overhear that much, then I hurried on back to get you.”
“You did fine, Jerry. Couldn’t have been any better.”
“Thanks.”
“Wait for me here on the street now.”
“You don’t want me to come with you, sir?”
Longarm didn’t want Jerry getting in the way in a dark alley. Didn’t particularly want to hurt his feelings either. “What I need is for you to stay here so no one can sneak up behind me. I’ll feel better if I know there’s someone watching my back, see.”
“Oh. Right.” Jerry grinned, obviously pleased to have such an important part in the continuation of this mission. “I won’t let anybody come up behind you.”
“If anything happens, son, don’t try and fight. Just call out the warning and scoot out of sight.”
“But you …”
“I’ll be fine. Really. You ready now?”
“Yes, sir. I’m behind you. You can count on me, sir.”
“Okay, but remember to keep your eyes on the street, not down the alley here. You won’t be able to help if you’re watching me instead of what’s going on around us.”
“I never thought of that.” Jerry turned his back—reluctantly—on the alley and gave his attention to the completely empty city street.
For his part, Longarm simply sauntered down the middle of the alley. He could see lamp light in a window toward the back of the pharmacy and suspected that was where he would find Nat Lewis.
Longarm reached the window and had to go on tiptoes to see through the dirt-grimed panes of old, inferior glass. The poor quality of glass made everything inside appear wavy and slightly out of true, as if trying to look at something on the bed of a fast-moving stream, but the light inside was good and the visibility sufficient for Longarm’s purposes.
Lewis was in there all right, along with a young man Longarm had never seen before. The local fellow wore a white linen smock and white cotton gloves, sleeve garters and an eye shade. He was bent over a small table doing something that Longarm could not see while Nat Lewis paced back and forth nearby.
Whatever arrangement was being made here it wasn’t quite yet concluded, that was obvious.
After a minute or so the man in white stood, leaning backward and pressing a hand into the small of his back as if to try and alleviate a pain there. He said something to Lewis and picked up the thing he’d been working with, which turned out to be a small mortar and pestle. Longarm could see them clearly now that the man—pharmacist? likely—was out of the way.
Lewis bobbed his head in response to whatever it was the local said, then reached into his pants pocket. He
