this business weren’t being squandered on luxury appointments for the madam.
“You want a drink, Marshal?”
“No, thanks.” He would have liked a rye whiskey well enough, but this was not a person he wanted to be beholden to. Not even in the smallest of ways. “Mind if I smoke?” he asked.
“Go ahead.”
Longarm was busy trimming, warming, and lighting a slim, dark cheroot when there was a soft tap at the door and one of the huge bouncers—Longarm was not sure which this one was, but then they seemed pretty much interchangeable—stuck his head inside. “I thought you’d want to know, ma’am. I threw that fella out like you said an’ tossed his clothes after him. He might could squawk when he warms up.” The big man grinned. “I made him take his money out and count it before he got dressed. Just so’s he’d know we don’t put up with thieving here. He admitted to me that all his money was where it should be, an’ there was a couple local gents handy to witness what the man said.”
“Thank you, Jason. Close the door behind you now and pass the word. I don’t want to be disturbed while the marshal is here with me.”
“Yes, ma’am.” Jason withdrew obediently, and once again Longarm had the impression that this was a very tightly run ship indeed. Whatever else Norma Brantley lacked—beauty, social graces, stuff like that—she damn sure seemed to understand the value of discipline. “Now, Marshal. Where were we?”
“I think we were about to discuss a dead girl,” Longarm told her.
Which, interestingly enough, drew no visible reaction whatsoever.
But then maybe for someone in Norma Brantley’s position, the death of a young woman was not an especially remarkable event.
Chapter 12
“That would be the one who called herself Nancy,” Norma Brantley said in response to Longarm’s description. “Got herself killed, you say?”
“That’s right.”
Brantley grunted and scratched her pendulous left tit. She didn’t bother trying to hide the act. “I thought she’d gone and run off. They do that sometimes, you know. Stupid cunts. They think they’re in love, so they up and run off with some randy cowboy who just wants free pussy instead of having to pay for it all the time. But the cowboys convince the girls that it’s true, true love and away they go. Lasts all of several weeks sometimes.” The woman shook her head.
“You say her name was Nancy?” Longarm asked.
“What I said was that she called herself Nancy. God knows what her true name was. I never heard anything but Nancy.”
“You don’t ask the girls what their names are?”
“What for? To begin with, I don’t care. And even if I did, they wouldn’t tell me the truth. God, mister, don’t you ever think a whore is telling you the truth. They’re stupid and they’re venal and they lie like hell. If one of these girls tells you it’s daytime, you’d best light a lamp before you step outside.”
“Fond of them, aren’t you?”
“Is a pig farmer fond of his sows?” Brantley said. “About that same amount, I’d say.” She swiveled her chair around and fetched a goblet and decanter of something, a wine or liqueur most likely. She poured a generous measure for herself, but did not bother offering Longarm any after his earlier refusal.
“Do you know where the girl was from?” he asked.
“I know as much about that as I do her name.”
“Or how old she was?”
“You saw her, and your guess would be as good as mine,” Brantley countered.
“When I saw her she’d been beaten to death and was frozen solid.”
“All right. Call it … fifteen. I’ve heard her tell the rubes as old as twenty-one and as young as thirteen. She could pass for either of those. What she told them all depended on what she thought they wanted to hear. An old fart with bad breath and a wheeze, he’d likely want a girl as young as he could get, so Nancy’d say she was thirteen, fourteen, something on that order. A cowboy drunk enough to think he was falling in love, she might be eighteen or twenty depending on how old he looked. The idea with that kind is for the cunt to claim she’s just a year or so younger than her mark for the night. You know?”
“It’s a real romantic business you’re in,” Longarm observed.
“Sure. So is packing salt pork into barrels. If you like your work, that is.”
“You like your work, Miz Brantley?”
The woman ignored the question and took a deep swig of her tawny tipple.
“You say you’d guess she was fifteen?” Longarm asked, returning to something that at least had a prayer of being productive. Trading verbal blows with Norma Brantley surely would not be. “It’s only a guess, but yeah. About that.”
“Any idea how I might find out who she was and where she came from?”
“Not really.”
“Did she have any friends? Among the other girls, I mean.”
Brantley shrugged, frowned, appeared to think that over. After a moment she said, “There was another girl here. That one called herself Dawn. Her and that Nancy girl used to jabber at each other and laugh and carry on together when there was no business to take care of.”
