The irate Emma Gould scowled and said, “Nolan suggested I get in touch with you when I allowed I knew you as well. He seems to think you’re good too, Custis.”
Longarm protested, “Hold on! I ride for Marshal Vail and a federal district court, Madame Emma. I don’t have jurisdiction over a local whorehouse killing, no offense. If I did, I fail to see what I could do any better than your local copper badges. They arrested the both of them when only one threw that gal out the window, right?”
Emma Gould sighed and softly replied, “I wish you wouldn’t try to bullshit an old whore who’s been lied to by slick-talking men all her misspent life! Carbonate Ned is backing Gordon’s tale that neither one of them had anything to do with the demise of some drunken doxie. They’re willing to swear in court that they’d both enjoyed the dubious charms of two other drunks and were fixing to leave when, for whatever reason of her own, Baltimore Barbara just decided she was a real dove with the wings to fly her up to the statehouse and once around the dome. When Sergeant Nolan asked Cartier why he didn’t try to stop her, the sarcastic bastard just laughed and said they were all so drunk he’d thought she might make it.”
Longarm snorted smoke out both nostrils and asked what the other white gal recalled of the ugly scene.
Emma Gould shrugged and replied, “Not a thing. Frenching Ann has to get good and drunk before she’ll go down on a man without crying. She says it makes her feel homesick.”
Longarm thought and murmured, “In sum, it’s the word of your young lady of color against that of two upstanding pillars of the boys-will-be-boys community.”
It had been a statement rather than a question. The unhappy Emma Gould still replied, “Exactly. Sergeant Nolan says as soon as he has to let them send for their high-priced and well-connected lawyers come morning, they’ll surely walk out the front door on writs, and if the case ever comes to trial their lawyers will make browned hash out of poor Willow. She’s a smart little thing, and as honest as anyone working in a whorehouse could be expected to be, but just the same, the only witness for the prosecution, should anyone in the district attorney’s office feel that silly, would still strike the jury as a colored girl who works in a whorehouse!”
Longarm rose to his considerable height as he sighed and told the visibly pessimistic old bawd, “You and Nolan are both right. Before we go down to the county jail we’d best pick up another old pal from that flea circus and museum of natural wonders on Larimer Street. He owes me. So I’m sure he’ll be proud to gather up some tools of his trade and tag along to the morgue with us.”
Emma Gould reached for a shawl to wrap around her plump bare shoulders as she looked bewildered. “We’re taking a sideshow man to the county morgue with us? Whatever for, Custis? They say there’s no mystery about poor Baltimore Barbara’s death. Cartier threw her out the window and she broke her neck. Willow saw it happen!”
Longarm nodded and said, “We’re all agreed on what happened. But we need more witnesses to prove it. So we’d best go scout some up.”
Chapter 2
Spending the night in jail gets to be less fun after midnight. So by three A.M. the older, less guilty, and scared- sober Telluride Tommy Gordon was pacing the cement floor at the far end of the cell block. The younger but more grizzled Carbonate Ned Cartier reclined on a hardwood bunk as if he thought he’d been asked to pose for a painting of Queen Cleopatra. Both prisoners, as befitted their new-found fortunes, were dressed in rumpled but still mighty expensive duds, although their diamond studs and such now resided for safekeeping up front.
From the bunk the beetle-browed Cartier growled, “Will you for Pete’s sake simmer down, old son? If I’ve told you once I’ve told you a hundred times that I’ll buy you a swell breakfast at that all-night restaurant at Union Station. There’s just no way you can hold a man with a good lawyer during business hours, and by this time or way earlier tomorrow, we’ll look back on all this shit and laugh.”
His more worried companion replied, “The hell you say! You killed that gal dead as a turd in a milk bucket, and I’ve heard tell old Madame Emma has her own fancy lawyers on retainer!”
The bearish mine owner who’d thrown Baltimore Barbara out that window naked as a jay shrugged a massive shoulder. “Was old Emma Gould up yonder with us? The only one in this world who saw me teaching that whore to fly was another whore, and a nigger besides. I’d have never told you what I’d just done if you hadn’t come tearing in before I’d had time to gather my wits. I told you true when I told you I’d been aiming her at the wall across the room, the more fool 1. But by that time the nigger wench had run off screaming, and she never heard us working out a more gentle way to explain that dumb cunt’s suicide.”
“I must have been out of my mind as well as drunk!” moaned Gordon. “I never had to get my ass in this sling to begin with! I could have just said I was messing with another drunk next door and didn’t know nothing. But no, I had to lie like a rug to the police when they showed up, and now I’m in the same fool boat with you!”
“See that you remember that!” Cartier warned as a disturbance down at the far end of the long corridor caught Gordon’s attention.
Most of the usual Saturday night crowd had been bailed out by now. But there were still enough drunks closer to the front to supply some catcalls and whistles as what seemed like a cluster of six or eight newcomers moved slowly along the dimly lit corridor.
By this time Cartier had noticed the changes in the air as well, and rolled off the hard bunk to join Gordon at the bars across the front of their cell. He was the one who suggested that maybe someone had gotten to at least one of their lawyers.
Gordon wasn’t as rosy as he peered through the gloom to make out one taller cuss with his Stetson crushed North Range style, a trio of somewhat shorter men in blue uniforms, and what seemed to be at least three women. It was tough to be certain. One of the skirted figures seemed to be having trouble walking. So the others with her had to bunch close to help her along.
As if impatient, the tall man in the Stetson and low-heeled army boots, separated by a three-piece suit, forged forward with a more familiar, shorter, and huskier-looking Sergeant Nolan of the Denver P.D.
As the two of them passed a coal oil wall lamp Gordon moaned, “Oh, Jesus, it’s that deputy marshal they keep writing about in the Rocky Mountain News! They call him Longarm and they say he’s good!”
Cartier snorted, “It can’t be him. He’s a federal man and killing whores ain’t no federal offense.”
As the two lawmen drew even nearer, the beetle-browed killer took a deep breath, let half of it out so his voice wouldn’t crack, and softly added, “Even if it’s him, just remember they haven’t got anything on us as long as we stick together, pard!”
