Louisiana Laydown

“Were any of them shooting at you, too?” Fargo said, slowing the horse as they found the lane that led back to the city.

She giggled. “No. Why would anyone shoot at me? I ain’t nothing but a whore. Not worth the cost of a bullet.”

Fargo laughed deeply. “You’re mistaken,” he said. “I suspect there are plenty of men in the world who would willingly spend the cost of a whole lot of bullets for your company.”

“I don’t know nothing about that,” she said. “Miz Hamilton saves my money for me.”

He pulled the horse up sharply, felt her weight lean into him, warm and small. “She what?” he asked.

“Miz Hamilton,” the girl repeated. “She saves my money for me. She does for all the girls. We just get ourselves an ‘allowance.’ ”

“How much?” Fargo asked.

“A dollar a week,” the girl said, her voice filled with pride. “I save as much as I can.”

A normal working girl got a dollar a turn. A beauty like this, maybe as much as ten, Fargo thought. He sincerely doubted Miss Hamilton was saving these girls’ earnings. Most likely, she was pocketing the money herself. “I see,” he said, his voice tight. “What’s your name?”

“Fleur,” she said. “I guess it means ‘flower.’ That’s what Miz Hamilton says.”

Fargo shook his head, half turning in the saddle so he could make eye contact. “No,” he said. “What’s your real name?”

“Ain’t nobody called me that since my mama died,” she said. “But my folks named me Mary.”

“All right,” he said. “Mary it is, then. At least as far as I’m concerned.”

He got the Ovaro moving again, keeping his thoughts to himself. Obviously Parker and Hattie had themselves quite a business going. He wondered about this other fellow, Beares, and thought that looking him up before the big poker game would be a good idea.

Whenever he was in strange country—and there was no doubt that New Orleans was such a place—Fargo liked to know the truth of the land and the people in it. There were always good people in such a place, and bad ones, too. The only question in his mind was who was who, and how to protect himself and those who couldn’t protect themselves.

Feeling the warm embrace of Mary in the saddle behind him, Fargo wondered how long she’d been working for Hattie Hamilton and how many other secrets were being kept behind the walls of the Blue Emporium.

If he were to make a guess, Fargo knew the answer would be a whole lot.

And where there was money and power and secrets, there was always death coming.

In his world, no matter where he was, it just worked out that way.

4

They reached the outskirts of the city and Mary insisted that he let her walk the rest of the way, so he pulled the Ovaro to a halt and gently let her down. Along the way, she’d given him good instructions for reaching both the Blue Emporium and the Bayou Hotel, plus a good livery where he could put his horse and tack at a reasonable price.

“Tell the man that Fleur sent you,” she said. “He will take good care of you and your horse. He’ll treat you like family.”

“And you’re sure you’ll be all right?” Fargo asked, eyeing the rough-looking surge of humanity that crowded the streets.

“I’ll be fine,” she said. “Thank you for letting me ride. I won’t be forgetting it anytime soon.”

“Just keep yourself safe,” Fargo said. He tipped his hat to her and rode in the direction she’d told him, feeling like a damn fool. What kind of a man left a beautiful woman like that—even if she was a whore—to walk alone in a city like this? Still, there was nowhere he could really take her, even if she wanted to go.

Despite his misgivings about Hattie and Parker, Mary said that the madam took decent care of the girls. They were fed well, and each had a private room to themselves, and two bathrooms they shared. The customers were usually nice and the Blue Emporium employed several very large, tough men to keep anyone who got rowdy in line. “I got to earn a living somehow,” she’d said. “Not too many folks in this city will give work to a girl like me, less it be on her back.”

Knowing she spoke the truth didn’t make it sting any less. A beautiful woman like that should be cared for, not doing God knows what for a lousy dollar a week. Fargo sighed to himself. If half his instincts about Parker turned out to be true, Mary could prove to be an even more dangerous distraction than Hattie Hamilton.

A woman who knew her own sexual prowess was attractive to a man like him, but there was something even more beguiling in the somehow preserved innocence of a girl like Mary. She’d warned him to pretend he’d never met her if he happened to see her at the Blue Emporium. If it meant keeping her safe, then he’d play along.

The livery she’d sent him to was several blocks from the bordello and the hotel, and as he turned down the street it was on, he saw a large crowd gathered. Everyone was shouting and yelling, and money was changing hands as people bet on whatever event was going on. He urged the Ovaro through the crowd, stepping him up onto a muddied boardwalk at one point, to try to make his way past the mob.

When the crowd finally parted enough to let him through, Fargo pulled up the horse in surprise. Three men were brawling in the middle of the street, though what it really looked like was two men beating the living hell out of one. The two men were older than the third, and each outweighed the younger man by a solid fifty pounds. Given that there was betting going on, he wondered how the young man—really no more than a kid—had gotten himself into this mess.

He leaned down and tapped one of the spectators, a gray-bearded man with a top hat, on the shoulder. “Excuse me,” he said, trying to make himself heard. “What’s going on here?”

“That young feller is Tommy Anderson Jr. His old man is Tom Anderson—the mayor of Storyville. He comes over this way now and again, has a few beers, talks with folks. A good kid.” The man shook his head. “Guess today those two roughing him up kept pushing him, mouthing off about his dad, till the boy couldn’t take it no more. It all wound up out here with this crowd betting on the outcome.”

The boy, Fargo saw, was giving a pretty good accounting for himself, but for every punch he threw, the other two men landed three or four. It wouldn’t be long until they’d pounded him senseless, maybe even killed him. Believing that coincidences happened for a reason, Fargo made a quick decision. “Hey, mister, ” he said, swinging down out of the saddle. “Hold my horse for five dollars?”

“Sure,” the man said, watching with interest as Fargo unbuckled his gunbelt and put it in a saddlebag. “Just be careful in there. Those two men beating on Tommy have got friends in the crowd and none of them play by the rules.”

Fargo grinned. “Neither do I,” he said.

He started shoving people out of the way, breaking through the crowd just as Tommy went down to his knees. One of the men was shouting at him. “Get up, boy. You ain’t gotten half the ass beating you’re due.”

Stepping into the circle, Fargo said, “I think he’s probably had enough, mister. Why don’t you and your partner there just move along now?”

“Who the hell are you?” one of the men demanded. “We got us a fight going here.”

Fargo chuckled. “This isn’t a fight. Two against one and you men outweigh him by a good fifty pounds each. That’s not a fight.” He let the grin slide off his face, and his eyes turned serious. “On the other hand, if you don’t end this right now, you will have a fight. The boy has had enough. It’s over.”

“Go to hell, mister,” the man said. He was heavyset and dark haired, with about three or four days of dark stubble on his cheeks. Other than a swelling beneath one eye, he didn’t look too much the worse for wear. “Mind your own damn business or we’ll give you a taste of the same.”

“I was hoping you’d say that,” Fargo said, striding forward. “It makes everything a lot easier to explain.”

The other one—a blond-haired, broad-shouldered man missing one of his front teeth—didn’t bother talking. He simply lunged forward, attempting to take Fargo off guard.

Stepping sideways, Fargo brought up his boot and caught the man square in the stomach. The air went out of him with a heavy whomp. As he started to go down, Fargo spun and planted a heavy punch right behind the man’s ear. He dropped like a sack of oats and didn’t get up again.