whatever the hell it was.
Whatever, he found nothing of interest. So maybe the intruder found what he came for and was on his way out when Longarm blundered into the middle of things. Dammit.
Eventually concluding that he was accomplishing nothing beyond a waste of time, Longarm called a local cop. He did so by the simple expedient of raising a window sash over the main street and perching on the sill with a cheroot at a jaunty angle until the night-shift officer wandered by. Longarm hailed the fellow from above, startling him only slightly, and that was that.
Or that should have been that.
In retrospect it seemed a helluva lot more bother than it was worth, because for the next two hours he was stuck in Peter Nare’s apartment being grilled by a very unhappy Chief J. Michael Bender.
“Look, dammit, for the … what is this, the sixth time? seventh? however many… I’m telling you I saw a light moving up here an’ remembered hearing that this Nare fella didn’t have any kin. So I got curious. An’ I didn’t want the robber t’ get away. Dammit, man, I am a peace officer my own self, y’know. So I came up for a look-see. An’ then … well, hell, I been through all this so many times b’ now you should have the story memorized.”
“And you say you called my officer immediately afterward?”
“That’s what I told you,” Longarm declared, certain that the only one who was in a position to dispute him would be the robber he’d disturbed in the place. No one else would have any possible way to know when he had entered Nare’s quarters or how long he had stayed.
And, shit, it wasn’t like it was an important lie anyhow. He really hadn’t found anything of interest here.
“You didn’t look around at all?”
“Not more’n to see was anyone still inside. I lit the lamps an’ gave the place a quick look-through, then went an’ set in that window till your man come by. That couldn’t have been more than, oh, a couple—three minutes. Tops.”
“You didn’t take anything while you were waiting?”
“Search me if you want. I said I didn’t.”
The Addington police chief acted like he was giving some serious thought to that offer but in the end stopped short of expressing his hostility quite that openly. Then, dammit, the sawed-off Ranger sergeant George Braxton showed up, and Longarm had to go through the whole story again for his benefit. When Longarm was done reciting, Braxton and Bender went off into a corner to confer. Longarm, under the watchful eye of the night cop, went into a different corner to sulk a mite and to smoke. Or anyway to sulk so far as the young night copper was concerned. What he was actually doing was looking for a spot where sound carried particularly well.
And he found it. Even though Bender and the tame Ranger were whispering softly between themselves, it was no great strain for Longarm to overhear the gist of the conversation.
According to Bender, the drawers to Nare’s desk were unlocked. Hell, Longarm could confirm that. He had checked. But then he also knew there was nothing of any particular interest or importance in any of those desk drawers.
What he hadn’t known—and what Chief Bender was telling the Ranger now—was that there should have been certain articles in those now innocent drawers. Official records and minute books of the local Whig party, for instance.
Longarm remembered now that Peter Nare had been secretary of the party. Now, according to the police chief, all those records were missing. It occurred to Longarm that if the Texas First people wanted to alter the past, this would be a perfect opportunity for them to do so. Because with no records to prove otherwise, the party leadership could claim virtually anything they wanted, right down to new directions as determined by closed caucus vote. Which would pretty much play into the hands of the people Amos and his chief in Austin were worried about.
Interesting, Longarm thought. He stood in his corner quietly puffing on his cheroot and letting his ears flap in the breeze—well, sort of—until Bender and Braxton got done with their own private—or so they thought—little caucus and finally allowed that he could be dismissed.
“Yes, and, um, thank you for, uh, trying to help out,” Bender said without any great amount of graciousness. “Next time, though, you might want to call on my people first. Our jurisdiction, you know. And besides, all of my people are trained officers. None of us would have let the intruder get by.”
Yeah. Right. Longarm didn’t say anything, though. Hell, if the locals wanted to start thinking of him as a blathering idiot, that was just fine by him. After all, no one is afraid of a clown. Let them think whatever they liked.
“G’night, chief Sergeant.” He tipped his hat just polite as pie and got the hell outa there before he went and said something that might tip them that Billy Vail made his appointments on the basis of ability and not politics.
Chapter 24
Longarm was about half-asleep, drowsing on the thin edge of it, when he heard a thin scratching, the sort of sound that might be made by a wire lock-pick.
So much for sleep.
He came fully awake, the familiar heft of the Colt butt in his hand as he sat upright and cocked his head to one side to listen all the more closely.
It wasn’t a lock-pick he could hear scratching at the door but something … a cat maybe? Not the door at all but maybe a mouse in the ceiling or a wall? Or possibly fingernails?
Damned if it didn’t sound like someone scratching on the door, all right.
“Psst!”
Longarm grinned and went barefoot to unbolt, unlock, and unlatch the thing. As a precaution, however, he kept the revolver in his hand. Hey, he’d been wrong that one time way back when he’d thought he had made an error but of course had not. Or so he sometimes liked to claim.
