William
H. Bonney. Most people know him as Billy the Kid.'
25
Paulina Cole wrote long into the night.
She wrote until the other offices at the Dispatch were dark, until her colleagues had long ago gone home and surrendered to the comfort of a glass of wine and their inviting beds.
She sewed together the interview like a trained surgeon, connecting arteries, nerves and capillaries together to create one body of work that would pump blood and live just the way she wanted it to. Read the way she wanted it to.
She could picture Mya Loverne's face, that poor, destroyed face, the shell of a girl whose life's flame had been snuffed out long before its time. So many factors had driven Mya to the brink. Thanks to her father's chummy relationship with most gossip columnists, the majority of his philandering never made it to the printed page. That didn't mean it didn't ruin many a dinner conversation, estrange a daughter in the midst of the most difficult time of her life. Now it was time to collect on that debt. Mya had suffered terribly. But through pain she would regain her life. She was the victim. And the culprit was not only her lech of a father, but Henry Parker, as well.
Henry had fractured Mya, literally and figuratively. All her troubles since the dissolution of their relationship had applied leverage to that emotional fracture, spreading it until she cracked open fully.
Paulina had dozens of pages scattered about her desk, three empty cups of coffee strewn about. She picked up the pages, plucked a sentence from different ones, felt her collar begin to burn when she read over all the stories about Henry she'd written last year. Henry, who came to New York as Jack O'Donnell and Wallace Langston's golden boy. Who was accused of murder and embarrassed the profession she'd devoted her life to. If payback was a bitch, Paulina was its mother.
And just like Henry struck the flint that burned Mya, this story was the spark that would burn down the New York
Gazette. The kindling was there, David Loverne a juicy log, and she was going to blast that place apart.
Fuck Wallace.
Fuck Harvey Hillerman.
Fuck Jack O'Donnell.
Fuck Henry Parker and everything he was.
But for now, she had to keep working. Soon the paper would be printed. Soon enough, she would burn their whole house to the ground.
Just several blocks away, at a desk cracked and worn with age, an old man sat typing. The desk was covered in coffee stains and pencil markings, its owner never bothering to clean them, believing they added personality. The corkboard above his computer was adorned with pictures, awards, plaques, books with his name printed on the spine, and a life dedicated to his craft. It was here that Jack O'Donnell put the finishing touches on his story for the next day's Gazette.
When the story was done, after he'd saved it on his word processor, made sure he'd written enough inches, and combed through to minimize any errors that would drive his editors crazy, Jack O'Donnell sat back in his chair. He pulled a flask of Jack Daniel's from his leather briefcase and took a sip. It was a good story, one that dropped a potential bombshell on the Paradis investigation. No other paper had this. It was a
Gazette exclusive.
After fifty years in news, his body still tingled at the thrill of a good story.
Before sending it off, Jack put the final touch on the article.
Underneath the byline Jack added: With additional reporting by Henry Parker.
And come morning, the sparks would fly.
26
I stared at the weak metal fence which contained three graves resting side-by-side, one of which belonged to the outlaw known as Billy the Kid. The fence was in the middle of a large patch of dirt, surrounded by piles of flowers, photographs and even bullets. Never had I seen such gestures for such a shoddy excuse for a tomb.
A headstone sat behind the graves, three names engraved on it. The stone looked fairly well-maintained, as opposed to the rest of the mausoleum.
'The headstone's been stolen three times since 1940,' Rex said. 'At some point they figured it cost more to guard the darn thing than it did to throw up a new headstone. That's why you see here a gate my eight-year-old niece could pry apart.'
'Kind of like the security system in your museum,' I said, with more than a hint of sarcasm. Inside the cage were three burial mounds, side by side. At the far end of the enclosure was one large headstone engraved with three epitaphs.
'That's Tom O'Folliard and Charlie Bowdre, on the ends,'
Rex said. 'Friends of the Kid. Billy, he's in the middle grave.'
A marker sat in front of the graves. It was carved in bronze, about two feet tall, with a triangular top. It read:
THE KID
Born Nov. 23, 1860
Killed July 14, 1881
BANDIT KING
HE DIED AS HE HAD LIVED
Quarters were sprinkled atop the earth. 'Tributes,' Rex said. On the headstone was chiseled one word, Pals. Above the headstone was a garish yellow sign that read Replica.
And according to dozens of signs, brochures and tourist bureaus, this was the grave site of Henry McCarty, also known as William Antrim, also known as William H. Bonney, also known as Billy the Kid.
'This grave site's pretty much the only thing keeping old
Fort Sumner alive,' Rex said. 'State legislature made us put that 'replica' sign up there, but once a year or so the cops come out here to arrest some hooligans looking to steal the damn thing. I swear, ain't nothin' sacred anymore, they could buy their own sign for a buck ninety-five.'
'But it wouldn't have been inside Billy the Kid's grave,'
I said. 'There's a mystique to him. Just like to a murderer, there's a mystique to using his gun.'
Rex scratched at his neck. I could tell he'd long ago given in to the lore and myth of this town. I didn't know a whole lot about Billy the Kid, only what movies or books passed down through their own lenses. I knew Billy was a celebrity in the southwest during the late 1800s, had allegedly murdered over twenty people before his twenty-first birthday, and was eventually killed by Pat Garrett, a newly appointed deputy who used to ride with the Kid. I remembered reading somewhere that other than Count Dracula, no
other figure in popular culture had been immortalized so often on page or screen. He was a legend, plain and simple.
'If you used to have Billy the Kid's actual Winchester, the one he used to kill,' I said, 'why wouldn't you advertise the hell out of it? Why display it as a regular Winchester 1873 when it could be the highlight of your museum?'
'We did, for a while,' Rex said. 'Then it got stolen, and we didn't want to take the chance. Nobody knows who the hell John Chisum is, but everyone wants a piece of the Kid.
