“So tell me-“
“Three things, Marshal. First you must promise absolute secrecy. No one must know from whom you obtain this information. You do promise?”
“I reckon. I’ll keep your name outa it so far as I can.” He smiled. “Which oughta be pretty easy since I have no idea what your name is or what you look like.”
If she smiled back at him he couldn’t tell it because of the thick veil that shielded her features from view.
“The next thing, Marshal, is that your government must agree to pay me for this information. Twenty—no, we make it twenty-five thousand dollar. Is this agreed?”
“Ma’am, I don’t know what it is you expect from me, but I’m just a deputy marshal. I got no authority to commit the government to payin’ rewards or anything like that.”
“But you will agree to tell your government what I ask? You will do that much?”
“I reckon I can promise that. I’ll bring it up if I think your information warrants it. I just won’t make you no promises that I can’t be sure will be kept.”
“Yes, that is honest. I respect this. It is good enough, I think.”
“And the third thing?” Longarm asked.
“This is the third request, it is a matter of some delicacy. Very personal. This I do not want to talk about until everything is done.”
“I can’t very well make you promises without knowin’ what it is you want.”
“I will trust your integrity, Marshal.”
He shrugged. “If you’re willin’, ma’am, I reckon I am too. So, uh, what is it you want t’ tell me?”
She leaned forward, glancing over her shoulder as if to see there was no one eavesdropping even though the two of them were standing belly to belly inside a one-holer with barely room enough to turn around. And then only if the other was careful to stand clear.
The woman in blue put her mouth close to Longarm’s ear. He could feel the brush of rough mesh against his flesh and the heat of her breath coming through the veil.
She whispered hoarsely. Longarm blanched a pale, shocked white.
Without thinking of what he was doing he balled his right hand into a fist and sent it wrist-deep into the veiled woman’s gut.
As she doubled over in agony he shoved her down onto the toilet seat so as to get her the hell out of his way and bulled past her into the clean air outside.
The door hadn’t more than had time to slap shut behind him when he heard the woman begin to laugh, the sound of it like a donkey’s braying in the morning stillness.
“You’re sick. You know that? Sick,” he threw over his shoulder as he stormed out of the shitter.
He turned, intending to say more to the stupid cunt in blue, but was rudely interrupted by the sharp bark of a small-bore gunshot and the virtually simultaneous slap of a bullet striking the left side of his chest.
Longarm reeled back against the outhouse door.
Chapter 32
Slumped against the door to a women’s crapper was not his idea of a properly dignified place for a man to die. If, that is, any place could be so considered. But even so … He frowned. Dignified or not, if he was standing here dying why was it taking so long? And for that matter, why didn’t it hurt where he’d been shot?
After all, he had been known to take lead before. And it sure hadn’t felt like this ever before.
Was that because this wound was mortal and those others had been picayune in comparison?
That could be, he supposed, but shit, this time it didn’t even hurt.
Oh, he’d felt it, all right. But the poke hadn’t been very hard. Something on the order of a playful jab. Or the tap of a kid playing tag. But nothing serious.
Yet a gunshot in the chest, that was just about as serious as things got. Wasn’t it?
Longarm straightened, abandoning the support of the outhouse door he’d been leaning against, and stood upright. He slid a hand inside his coat and felt for the warm, sticky wetness of fresh blood. Or for the pain of an entry wound. Or … something.
All he found inside his coat was his shirt. No longer fresh, but dry and apparently unperforated.
He frowned a little more, this time in puzzlement, however, and not with any trace of disappointment. It came as something of a surprise to him—but definitely not a disagreeable one—to discover that the gunshot seemed to have done no damage.
He felt around a little more and then, comprehension commencing to dawn, pulled his wallet out.
There was a small hole in the front of his coat and a corresponding hole in the leather of his wallet. But no holes through the inside liner of the coat nor, most importantly, through Longarm himself.
When he opened the wallet it was to disclose his badge, the shape of the metal slightly altered from behind, a small bulge as it were. And when he unpinned the badge from the leather flap inside his wallet, a small, flattened lead projectile dropped into his palm.
Sheeit, he mumbled softly to himself. And then, aloud, he said, “Stay inside there, lady. Don’t come out.”
“Are you all right, Marshal? Did I hear-?”
