Larson smiled. “Why don’t you ask him that yourself?”
“Just tell me where I can find him.”
“Over at the Roundup. It’s the nicest restaurant in town. They brought the night cook in all the way from Little Rock.”
“Good for them. Where do I find this place?”
Larson said, “You could always ask one of our helpful citizens.”
Fargo was suddenly sick of Larson. “Just tell me where the hell I find this Roundup place. Or you’ll be buying yourself some new teeth pretty soon.”
It was clear that Larson realized that he’d pushed Fargo as far as he could. Now he was on dangerous ground.
“What’s the trouble this time, Fargo?”
“None of your business.”
“Sure, it’s my business. I’m a lawman.”
“Not from what I hear.”
“That supposed to mean something?”
“It means that if you don’t tell me what I want to know, I’m going to come over this desk and do a whole lot of damage to that smug face of yours.”
Larson obviously decided it would be a good idea to tell Fargo what he wanted to know.
Fargo learned that you attracted even more attention when the dead young blonde was slung over your shoulder than when she was slung over your horse. You could get through crowds quick—amazing how fast people stepped away when they saw you were carrying a corpse—but there was more crowd to get through because everybody wanted to gawk.
She was starting to smell a little. He felt sorry for her all over again. This was how everybody ended up eventually but her time should have been a long ways off.
“She dead?” a man asked him.
“Just real tired,” Fargo told him.
A little ways down the street, a woman laughed at him and said, “Bring her to the dance tonight. If you can sober her up in time. You musta given her a snootful.”
“Yeah,” he said, “she’s gonna have some hangover, all right.”
When Fargo arrived at the Roundup, there was a greeter right inside the door, an elderly fellow with a suit that hadn’t fit him in twenty years and a pair of store-boughts that clacked every time he spoke.
“Good afternoon,” the greeter said, trying to sound citified. “Would you like a table, sir?”
“I need to find Sheriff Tillman.”
The man shook his head instantly. “You can’t bring that—body in here. It’ll make people lose their appetites.”
Remembering what Tillman looked like from the photograph in the sheriff’s office, Fargo pushed past the greeter and entered a large room with maybe fifteen tables where very well-dressed men and women dined and chatted and laughed in what appeared to be reasonably civilized circumstances. The flocked wallpaper, the two waiters in monkey suits, and the carpeting impressed Fargo, despite his sour mood.
But he wasn’t here as a restaurant critic.
Tillman wasn’t difficult to pick out. Balding man in a dark, expensive, three-piece suit with a full beard and a squat, but powerful-looking, body. The mayor was a scare-crow in a cheap suit, a brocaded vest, and full head of greasy yellow hair. He looked like a pitifully unsuccessful riverboat gambler.
Everybody was watching Fargo, of course, knowing at first glance what was inside the rolled blanket. He walked directly to Tillman’s table and snapped, “Here you go, Tillman. You’ll have to do a little work for once. Seems I’ve got this dead girl here.”
And with that, he bent over and laid the blanket roll across the table.
Several women started screaming.
He wrapped her back up, slung her over his shoulder again, and said, “I’ll see you in your office this afternoon.”
Then he got the hell out of there.
7
Liz Turner pestered the desk clerk at the Royalton Hotel until he threatened to call Butch, an ex-con who served as both the handyman and a bouncer.
Liz said, “Butch wouldn’t hurt a lady.”
“Who says you’re a lady?”
“Very funny. Where’s the manager?”
“He’s out of town.”
“And he left you in charge?”
“That’s right.”
“I need to talk to that man for sure. He leaves you in charge and somebody gets kidnapped from one of your rooms, in broad daylight, and you say you don’t know anything about it.”
“You’re making this up so you’ll have a good story for your stinking paper.”
“It makes a better story that you don’t even know what’s going on in your own hotel. A kidnapping and you don’t know anything about it. That should make your guests feel real safe. Now take me up to that room.”
Charlie Daly sighed. He was a master sigher. Very dramatic. His sigh told you more than you wanted to know about him—that he was weak, nervous, and easily given to pique, a word Liz had used in a newspaper story once. Only once. Many readers complained that she was “showing off” with words like that. And you know what? Liz decided they were right. It had been a boring story to write and so she’d taken it out on her readers by using a word few of them would know. She’d never used such a word again.
The desk clerk led her up to the room. He sat primly on a straight-backed chair while she prowled the room. She and Charlie got along most of the time. But if Charlie felt that his job was in jeopardy, he’d get his back up and claw at you.
“What exactly are you looking for?” he said, sighing again.
“Don’t go get your cravat in a whirl,” she said. “I want to see if Red told me a whopper.”
“Red? The kid?” He laughed. “My God, Liz, I don’t have much respect for you so-called journalists, but I would’ve thought that you’d be more responsible than to listen to Red.”
“I don’t think Red would lie to me.”
“Oh? Why not?”
She almost said, “Because he’s smitten with me.” Saying it, she’d sound vain and foolish. Was there any reason that Red would fib to her, even though he did have a crush on her? Maybe the fellow who told him was fibbing, just trying to stir up trouble.
She calmed down. “I’m sorry I insulted you.”
“Me, too. For insulting you, I mean.”
“I don’t see much of anything wrong with this room.”
“Nothing broken,” he said.
“No blood,” she said.
“Nothing missing.”
“No notes left behind.”
He sighed again. This time the sigh wasn’t so dramatic. He said, “Believe me, if I heard a story about a kidnapping here, the first person I’d talk to would be you.”
She sat down on the edge of the bed. “You know, this isn’t the first time somebody’s reported a kidnapping
