“What’s this us shit?” Gordon muttered in a barely audible voice.
But as Longarm and Nolan bellied up to the far side of the bars and Nolan asked if anyone would like to change their story, Gordon shook his head just as hard as his guilty pal did.
Longarm smiled wolfishly through the bars. “It sure warms my heart to get two for the price of one,” he said. “I’ve yet to see a rich man hang. So what the hell. It sounds almost as good to nail both you chumps on attempted murder as just one of you for manslaughter or, in this case, gal-slaughter.”
Cartier snorted, “Dream on, cowboy! We’re both saying she jumped! It’s our word against a nigger whore who tried to shake us down for more than her backing was worth, see?”
Longarm just laughed sort of dirty. Sergeant Nolan half turned to call back down the corridor, “Why don’t you boys just pick the poor gal up and carry her?”
Emma Gould shouted back, “They tried. She says it hurts. I swear I don’t see why you couldn’t leave her in County General where such a dreadfully injured girl belongs!”
As the madam shouted her reply, the bunch with her was passing a wall fixture. So there was no mistaking the pale but gamely smiling face of that one gal on crutches as Madame Emma and Willow, the colored maid, braced her from either side with copper badges front and rear.
Telluride Tommy Gordon sobbed, “Jesus H. Christ! You told me you’d killed her, you loco bastard!”
Cartier snapped, “Shut up! It’s some trick!”
But his older and smaller cellmate whined on. “They’re right about both of us going to state prison if they can prove we’ve been fibbing, and I never laid a hand on the bitch!”
He didn’t get to say more than that as Cartier threw a roundhouse that sat him in a far corner with a fat bloody lip. Nolan shoved a key in the lock with a curse. “You hit that poor old man again and the two of us are going to have it out, me darling bully boy!”
Cartier stayed put, gripping a bar with each fist as he glared through the bars at the approaching procession. “I aimed you at the durned wall, Baltimore Barbara!” he snarled. “You tell em I was only out to jar some sense into you when you took it into your own head to dive out the durned window instead!”
The pallid gal on crutches stopped a few yards off in the gloom, as if to gather strength for a final charge, as meanwhile Longarm jeered, “I’m sure both the judge and the jury will buy a gal you can screw for a dollar diving headfirst out a second-story window as an added thrill. What did she do to get you so riled, laugh at the size of your dick?”
Carbonate Ned Cartier drew himself grandly erect to protest, “Ain’t nothing wrong with this child’s dick! Ask Baltimore Barbara yonder if it wasn’t herself who said I was hung too heroic for her to take me Greek style!”
Nolan quietly asked, “Is that why you got sore at her?”
Cartier shrugged and sheepishly replied, “Wouldn’t you? I’d paid the house three dollars for three ways and she’d only taken me two. When I told her it was hardly fair to charge a man for three ways, then only take him two, she laughed and said there was nothing in any contract calling for either party to accomplish the impossible.”
Longarm noticed the older man in the corner seemed to be trying to get back up while drooling blood. He saw Nolan had noticed the same and finished unlocking the cell door. So all Longarm said was, “Let’s see if we can get this straight. Was it her refusal to do it or her laughing about it that inspired you to toss her out the window?”
Cartier was too smart to answer. But the battered Telluride Tommy blubbered from his far corner, “He said it was the names she called him from the Good Book!”
Cartier snapped, “Shut up, you stupid old fart!”
But the erstwhile pal he’d injured snapped back, “I’ll show you who’s stupid! She was citing Genesis Nineteen, in which the Lord God rains down fire and brimstone on the men of Sodom for trying to corn-hole some angels he’d sent to visit with Abraham and his nephew Lot. Don’t you remember telling me the only thing that riled you more than a cheating whore was a bible-thumping whore, Ned?”
Cartier told him to do a dreadful thing to his poor old mother. Longarm asked Nolan, “You reckon that’ll do it?”
The burly sergeant called back, “Have you got it all on paper for the D.A., Wojensky?”
The police stenographer waved his shorthand pad under a nearby wall lamp and cheerfully called back, “Every word, Sarge.”
So Nolan turned back to the men inside the bars. We won’t bother you gents any more for now, unless either one of you has more to say.”
Telluride Tommy shouted, “Let me out of here and get me away from this mad dog and I’ll have plenty to say! I was only trying to back a pal to begin with, and you just saw how he treats everybody he can git at, the crazy-mean son of a bitch!”
So Nolan hauled him out into the corridor before Cartier could hit him again, then slammed and locked the door again and suggested the remaining prisoner try to get some rest, seeing he’d be facing a long day come sunrise. As Nolan and Longarm walked the bloody but unbowed older man back to the others, Telluride Tommy nodded to the wan-looking figure on crutches and said softly, “You know I had nothing to do with hurting you, and I’m glad you didn’t die after all, Miss Barbara.”
Then he took a second look, stepped closer, and exclaimed, “What in blue blazes?”
So Longarm told him, not unkindly, “That bad-tempered pal you just parted company with was right to begin with. It was all a trick.”
Chapter 3
Everyone needed at least a little sleep. So it was a tad late the next morning when Longarm strode innocently into the office of Marshal William Vail of the Denver District court and was told with a knowing smile by young Henry, the squirt who played the typewriter out front, that this time he was really going to get it.
Longarm shrugged, lit his own cheroot in self-defense, and went on back to the oak-paneled inner office of their boss, the stubby and crusty old Billy Vail. Longarm had skimmed the morning edition of the Denver Post while
