What man, woman, or child could resist watching a man on horseback bringing a dead woman into town? He had her covered from midnose down to dangling feet. But the blond hair and shapely ankles revealed that she’d been an attractive young woman.
He had to stop at several points so the crowd could part and let him pass through. Some people were offended, of course. A few others laughed, thinking this was part of some show. Dead young blondes apparently made for great comedy material. The kids, inevitably, were both scared and spellbound. They watched with solemn little eyes. For some, it was an introduction to death. Ducks died and cows died and horses died. But they’d never before seen a dead person. And for other kids, the dead blonde was a reminder of death they knew only too well—Mom dead of bad milk or Dad dead of a horse that fell on him, or a wee one dead of diphtheria.
He rode right up to the sheriff’s office, swung down and went inside.
Larson was in the front office alone sipping a cup of coffee and smoking a cigarette. “Where’s Tillman?”
“What’re you so hot about?”
“You heard me.”
“He’s having lunch with the mayor.”
“Does he ever do any actual work?”
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 during the Fourth of July celebration.”
“It isn’t?”
“I went back through ten years of newspapers. This was way before we got here. Three times somebody came to the paper to report that somebody they knew had gone missing. They were sure it was foul play. You know, that the person hadn’t just wandered away. The paper always ran the items in the ‘Odds’N’Ends’ column.”
“Why not in the ‘Law News’ section?”
“I’m not sure. But it was strange.”
Charlie thought a moment. “You know, before young Tom became sheriff and you folks took over the newspaper, Tillman decided what got in the paper and what didn’t. Fellow that owned the newspaper was scared to death of making old Tillman mad at him.”
“That makes me curious.”
“Yeah? About what?”
“Well,” she said, “if old man Tillman didn’t want the full story in the paper, maybe he had something to do with those disappearances himself.”
Fargo wanted to clean up and put on some fresh clothes. Hauling a dead person around left its traces on a fella.
He was just about to enter his room when he heard a quiet voice behind him say, “I was just about to clean up your room. My name is Maria Veldez.”
The Mexican chambermaid he’d seen earlier. Couldn’t have been more than five foot three, couldn’t have weighed more than one hundred pounds, but her body was full and well-rounded and her face was beautiful.
“Well, don’t let me stop you,” Fargo said.
He used his key, opened the door, and allowed her to enter first.
“I was just going to change clothes,” he said. He’d become almost painfully aware of her charms, couldn’t think of much else, in fact. “You turn around and do your work. And I’ll grab me a fresh shirt and pants.”
She smiled. “This hotel is full of old men. I see them half-naked all the time. Big bellies and breasts like women and chins that nearly touch their chests.” She sent him an openly admiring glance. “I wish I could see men like you walking around half-naked.” She giggled sweetly. “Then I would have a good reason to come to work every day.”
Fargo might not have been a deep thinker or particularly learned man but he sure as hell knew when a lady was expressing interest in his body.
He walked over to her and slid his arms over her shoulders and brought her to him. “I’ll take my shirt off if you’ll do the same.”
She made a cute little face. Put a finger to her chin as if she were pondering philosophical problems. “Let me see. I’ll have to think about that.” Then she slid her arms around his waist and said, “OK, you talked me into it.”
They were on the bed less than a minute later, as he teased the both of them by rubbing his rod against the soft sweet entrance to her sex. In moments they were both jerking and bucking, eager to get past this first stage. She eased him over on his back and licked her lips to the tip of his rigid manhood, flicking the head with her tongue, and then seeming to take the enormity of it completely inside her mouth.
He wondered if he could hold out. She was bringing him the sort of pleasure that blinded a man, made him one big erection, his entire body, his entire mind. Her tongue wrapped itself around his rod until—just at the moment he thought he could hold out no longer—she rolled over and guided him inside her.
The passion was reckless, two people flinging themselves at each other in a kind of carnal madness, him thrusting faster and deeper, faster and deeper, his hands clenching on her buttocks making her cry out each time he did so. Her breasts were wonderfully swollen with his tongue and her own desire.
“Now, Fargo! Now!” she whispered.
And he was glad to comply, sending his searing semen rich and deep into her.
Spent, they lay in each other’s arms in the drifting ecstasy that always follows a good round of sex. Finally, he said, “Now, that’s what I call getting my room cleaned.”
“Yes,” she smiled, “I’ll have to remember your room number next time I’m in the mood to do a little cleaning myself.”
Fargo was in need of a drink so he pushed through the bat-wings of a place called Curly’s.
He wasn’t surprised to find Deputy Sheriff Larson sitting at a table by himself with a fifth of whiskey in front of him. Fargo ordered a beer at the bar, and when he turned to look for somewhere to sit—not hard since the place was empty except for three old guys playing a card game Fargo had never heard of—Larson waved him over.
What the hell, Fargo thought.
The old farts gave him the once-over. One of them apparently knew who he was because he whispered through a set of store-boughts the word “Fargo.” Notoriety, he thought. All he wanted was a fishing pole, a fishing hole, and some sleep.
“I thought we might as well be friendly,” Larson said when Fargo reached his table.
“Now why would you think a thing like that?”
Larson shrugged bony shoulders. Fargo had the impression that Larson was probably one of those bony gents who could be pretty tough when he needed to be.
“We’re both working for the same thing, Mr. Fargo.”
“Oh? What would that be?” Fargo had yet to sit down. He glanced around the saloon. It was new enough that the long pine bar still smelled of sawn lumber. The floor was dirt. But at least Curly’s didn’t smell of the usual vomit, blood, beer, and urine. But give it a year. It would have a scent like an old latrine.
Larson smiled. “Why, law and order, Mr. Fargo, law and order.”
“Would that be law and order or Noah Tillman’s law and order?”
This time, Larson laughed. “They couldn’t be the same thing?”
“Probably not.”
He flipped a chair around and sat with its back facing Larson.
“Tell me about Skeleton Key.”
Larson shook his head as if he’d just heard a very sad tale. “So they’ve already gotten to you, huh, Mr. Fargo?”
“Who’s ‘they?’ ”
“ ‘They’ are the ones who practice granny medicine and believe that half the women in town are secret witches.”
“So there’s nothing to it?”
“Is there anything to a witch on a broomstick flying across the moon?”