Chester for attempted rape.”
Longarm started to say Maureen had said she’d been willing. But instead he washed down some chop suey with tea, which always tasted a lot better when a Chinaman or Irish woman brewed it, and said, “I’ve been studying on Uncle Chester and your notion that Medusa Le Mat could be a lesbian.”
Pat shook her head and said, “The same thought crossed my mind. It wouldn’t be the first time I made a complicated case out of two simple ones. I took Maureen over to my place and sat her down with some cookies and buttermilk for some private talk. She caught her missing mother going at it with her mystery lover more than once. A half-wit could be confused about half-naked flesh at some distance. But while he was feeling Maureen up those other times, she got a good look at his ring dang doo, as she puts it for some reason.”
Longarm said, “I know the reason. There’s this dirty cowboy song about a dirty gal with a ring dang doo. I reckon Maureen’s heard it more than once. I’ve been told Uncle Chester ain’t the first man who ever noticed she was pretty.”
Pat grimaced and murmured, “Maybe it’s a good thing I let you play with my ring dang doo before you rode out yonder. Sometimes I think you men would screw a snake if only you could get somebody to hold its head.”
He chuckled sheepishly and confessed, “I know the feeling. But I reckon I’d mess with a sheep before I’d abuse a helpless half-wit.”
He chewed some more, then frowned and said, “Now that’s sure odd, as soon as you study on it.”
She asked what was odd. He explained, “That song somebody sang to a half-wit about her ring dang doo. It starts out, ‘When I was young and in my teens, I met this gal from New Orleans. And she was young and pretty too, and had what they call a ring dang doo.’”
Pat sniffed and said, “That’s lovely. What does the girl with a ring dang doo from New Orleans have to do with us, Custis?”
He said, “Mayhaps nothing. Mayhaps something. When last heard tell of, Doc Le Mat was down in New Orleans, inventing guns Miss Medusa seems to favor.”
Chapter 12
They went back to Longarm’s hotel to settle their meals dog-style. They knew nobody would suspect an official visit in broad daylight. For as any whorehouse proprietor could tell you, nobody ever did. Prim and proper folks thought you had to have the lights out to get really depraved.
She commented on a couple of his scars she’d missed the night before as they lazed atop the bedding naked as jays. The afternoon sun was painting tiger stripes of shadow and light through the window shutters while she tried to blow a smoke ring around the dong she was holding fondly.
She said she could spend perhaps an hour up there with him on her investigation, seeing that he’d been shot at twice in the same day. So a good time was had by all, and they even got to talking some more about his main mission after he’d allowed her to try something she’d always wanted to had her late husband been up to it by the time she’d read that book on Oriental notions.
Once they’d tried, and wound up finishing more naturally, she said some Oriental notions on food tended to be more peculiar than really tasty, and asked how folks who’d come up with fried rice and such swell noodles might have invented tasteless bird’s nest soup and that slimy custard that tasted the way library paste smelled.
He massaged a firm nipple between thumb and forefinger, seeing she liked that, as he said he thought shark fin soup tasted like fish glue, come to think of it. He added, “Regular folks eat regular grub meant for regular pallets no matter where you go. Regular folks don’t eat regular enough to lose their appetites for regular grub. The odd luxuries of any style of cooking are meant for the odd appetites of the idle rich, who’ve never known what it feels like to get really hungry.”
He took the cheroot back to blow smoke at her mature but still mighty tempting flesh as he thought back to some odd dishes he’d been served in fancy homes. “Strawberries out of season don’t taste any better. Or even as good as ripe apples right off the tree. But that wouldn’t be showing off. I reckon it costs a heap more to serve your guests shark fins than fresh-plucked chicken or that sweet and sour pork the more common folks eat. I wonder how come Uncle Chester wanted to feel up a half-witted kid when he could have her mother French-style and naked all he wanted.”
The naked undersheriff suggested, “Rose Cassidy’s a handsome woman, as I recall. They do say variety is the spice of life, but Rose and her dim daughter didn’t look all that different.”
She began to stroke his limp virile member thoughtfully as she went on. “At least we know for certain that Uncle Chester has one of these. I’m not about to ask Maureen to judge which one of you has the best to offer. So there goes your notion that a saddle tramp who sings dirty songs about New Orleans has to be Miss Medusa Le Mat. Why would she have to know anything about New Orleans or the real Le Mat to begin with? Can’t you buy one of Doctor Le Mat’s wicked weapons most anywhere in this land of opportunity?”
Longarm put a hand to her wrist to encourage faster stroking as he decided, “You’re likely right. It’s as easy to figure I’ve been seeing tigers in the roses as it is to make any of these scattered bits and pieces fit.”
Since she was interested in law enforcement and aware of her own limitations too, Pat stopped jerking him off to ask him what in blue blazes he was talking about.
She said, “Medusa Le Mat and Uncle Chester are confounding enough! What tigers in what roses are we talking about?”
He rolled her on her back and kissed that nipple before he told her, “Us law folks usually get there long after the fact and have to piece things together from the evidence, which, as you know, comes in all sizes and shapes, scattered hither and yon.”
He ran his free hand down her tiger-striped belly, admiring the play of light as he played with her, saying, “You’ve doubtless noticed how much pure distraction is mixed in with hard facts you’re trying to nail down. If you put fact and fancy together wrong, you can get a convincing wrong picture. Little kids are always seeing tigers, scary faces, and such in the floral patterns of bedroom wallpaper designed by the artist to just look like roses. Some see a man in the moon, and the Indians are just as sure it’s a rabbit, sitting up on its hind end. Nothing ever made those hills and valleys up on the moon with either a face or a rabbit in mind. Folks see them because they can’t just see patterns that make no sense at all.”
She spread her thighs languidly as she purred, “I don’t see why a female bank robber and a finger-fucking saddle tramp have to come from New Orleans either. But keep doing what you’re doing with that finger and we’ll worry about it later, dear!”
