and replied, “I do believe he gave his full name when we first introduced ourselves. I’ve been trying to recall it. It may come to me later. I have never been able to tell Tom or Dick from Harry. All their names sound much the same to me.”
Gomez nodded gravely and said, “I shall have two of my officers escort you back to that posada, senora.”
But Consuela shook her head as she rose, saying, “I do not intend to go back there. As I told you before, we rode in off the desert too tired to seek more proper shelter for our animals and ourselves. Now that I have had time to bathe and dress more properly …”
“I understand,” Gomez said, adding, “In that case my officer shall escort you anywhere you wish for to go, senora.”
As the man led her out of the room, Gomez turned to an older associate to place a finger alongside his nose and confide, “He meant less to her than he might have thought. We know more about her than I was ready to admit just now. She used the big tough gringo for to help her get safely away from a worthless husband. Whether he did anything more for her is unimportant. Any man alone with such a dish would wish for to taste some of it. The question is not what the one who calls himself Crawford has done to a lovely woman. It is who he really might be!”
His aide opined, “I find it hard to believe a woman of good family would lie for a wanted man unless she was most fond of him, Inspector.”
Gomez nodded and replied, “I just said that. I told her we would let one of them go, as soon as we discovered which was El Brazo Largo. So why did she not ask when that might be if she had any intention of waiting for either?”
The aide agreed as, down on the calle, Consuela was getting into a carriage with two officers and a Mona Lisa smile. Was it possible she had actually made love, in the French manner, to a notorious as well as handsome wanted man?
Such an affair would be madness to carry on, of course, but her Custis had saved her life and been a great lay, and she could hardly wait to tell the other girls back home once she got her adventurous culo that far from Carlos and his own friends!
As Inspector Gomez stared wistfully after her from an upstairs window, his aide quietly called out, “They are talking again down below. Each is still insisting the other is El Brazo Largo.”
Gomez yawned and decided, “Why do things the tiresome way when there is the easy way? Is impossible to guess which of them is the real thing or a most determined liar. But we shall have the straight answer soon enough from rurale headquarters. I am already late for my siesta. I suggest you take your own.”
As the aide rose from the listening post, he asked if Gomez wanted anyone to listen in during the coming darkness, observing, “Late at night, when one cannot sleep, one may be inclined to babble, no?”
Gomez said, “No. they are not comrades in arms or even strangers picked up at the same time. They are sworn enemies we arrested as they were enjoying a personal war. But look upon the bright side. I doubt we have any possible fear of them trying to break out together, and should one try it on his own, the other would be likely to sound the alarm.” The aide said, “Nobody but El Brazo Largo for certain would have a serious motive for to take such a risk. The one who is truthful about being someone else already knows he is in no danger of being shot as a menace to Mexico!” Gomez smiled thinly and said, “Let us not get over-sentimental. All such gringo gunfighters are a menace to Mexico. But let us see which one deserves the firing squad with full ceremony and which can simply be disposed of with a bullet in the head before we concern ourselves with such details, eh?”
The aide agreed, and the two of them went home to their individual siestas.
The hot muggy afternoon crept by less enjoyably for Longarm and his fellow prisoner in the waterfront jail. Longarm was out of tobacco and hungry as a bitch wolf by the time they were served a sunset supper of tortillas and frijoles which, without salt or seasoning, could be said to taste like white blotting paper wrapped around red clay.
In the next cell over, Sam Ferris betrayed a certain lack of border lore by demanding, “Jesus H. Christ! Do they expect us to eat shit on unfried flapjacks?”
Longarm soothed, “Frijoles only look like shit. They’re mushed up beans and it’s them, not the tortillas, that get sort of fried in a pan. Are you trying to tell me El Brazo Largo’s never eaten any Mexican food before?”
Ferris almost sobbed, “Aw, cut that out, Longarm. You know we took the stuff they got in yonder desk away from you the other night. I can see what you’re trying to pull. But it ain’t gonna work.”
Longarm moved over to sit on his floor pallet with his back to the stone wall as he slowly ate his tasteless supper, savoring every bite to make it last as the sun went down outside to make his grim cell seem even spookier.
The only light after sunset came from a desk lamp a young kid had brought in and lit for their armed guard, a burly mestizo who’d brought some books to read and didn’t seem sleepy at all.
Longarm didn’t want to attract attention by pacing. He’d already been over every inch of his small simple cell with his thoughtful and experienced eyes. There seemed no way out, whether their night man watched like a hawk or wandered off somewhere to play with himself.
The walls were dense basalt set in cement mortar. The floors were solid concrete slabs. Both the wooden ceiling and tiny barred window were too high to get at with nothing to stand on, and even if there had been something to stand on, those ceiling beans and iron bars looked too solid to gnaw through with one’s teeth in any reasonable time.
Longarm finished the last of his lousy supper, decided against breaking the earthenware cup or saucer to use as a sharp edge for as long as it would take that guard to throw down on him through the front bars, and contented himself with simply sitting there to softly croon:
Away to war, across the water, For seven years of blood and slaughter. When I returned, Dunbarton’s daughter, Though pledged to me, was wed away!
From the next cell, Ferris yelled at him to shut up. So Longarm laughed and, having found something to amuse himself, switched to:
As I sat on Riley’s doorstep, Listening to the tales of slaughter, Came the thought into me mind, Why not shag the Riley’s daughter?
