“By marriage,” the big brunette explained, leading Longarm on through her kitchen instead of sitting him down for coffee and cake as custom called for. As he followed, admiring the view, she explained, “My late husband was the cousin of the poor relation you call Greek Steve. We Hellenes do stick together, and poor Stavros and his problems with the law are why I sent for you.”
He'd expected to wind up in a front parlor if she didn't mean to coffee and cake him in her kitchen. So he was mighty surprised when they wound up in what surely seemed a lady's bed chamber, complete with a four-poster and an end table piled with smokes, tumblers, and a fifth of bourbon.
He gulped and said, “I didn't know your kinsman was in trouble with the law, Miss Irene.”
She shrugged off her kimono to turn and face him bare as a babe, but ten times as tempting, as she demurely replied, “Bullshit. I know for a fact you were seen talking with a Texas Ranger before Stavros came to me for help. I know for a fact you were seen talking to that same Texas Ranger just after Stavros left town. What are you, a bounty hunter or some other sort of lawman in disguise?”
Longarm tried not to stare lower than her firm jawline as he told her she could have his word he wasn't a Texas Ranger.
She lay back on her elbows to part her ivory thighs invitingly as she decided, “You're not bad looking, whatever you are, and they tell me lawmen just hate to arrest girls they've made love to. So what are you waiting for? Don't you want to compare notes with me on Stavros?”
Longarm soberly replied, “I ain't sure. What have you got on Greek Steve, Miss Irene?”
She shook her head and insisted, “First we fuck and then we can talk.”
Chapter 14
It sure beat all how women passed such helpful hints about menfolk around. And some were as dumb as the notions pool-room kids told one one another about women. But the taxpayers had the right to expect a senior deputy to do his duty, no matter how painful. So he put his hat and gun aside and got out of his boots and duds as fast as he was able, with the curvaceous creamy brunette helping him off with his underpants at the last, and grabbing hold of his old organ grinder with a wicked grin as she shoved him flat beside her marvelled, “Good heavens! Is all this meant for little old me!”
He assured her it was and rolled the other way to plant his socks on the rug and hover above her, stiff elbowed, whilst she guided it in for their mutual enjoyment.
From the way she bit her lush lower lip and thrust her generously proportioned pelvis up to meet his, he suspected she might be combining business with pleasure.
He knew he was. So this hardly seemed the time to say that though his boss frowned on the practice and defense lawyers delighted in a lawman getting this familiar with a client before he arrested her, it wasn't as impossible to arrest a lady you'd played slap-and-tickle with as a heap of shemale suspects had been told, Lord love whoever might have told this one! For she was a big strong gal with a heap of spring in her ass and a twat tight enough to service a schoolboy!
So a grand time was had by all and Longarm almost forgot the palmed derringer he'd brought to bed with them until he had to move it again when she begged him to put a second pillow under her frisky pale ass.
She felt it when he came in her, and wrapped her long ivory limbs around his waist to hold him inside her as they both went limp and he kissed her, sincere.
When they came up for air she murmured, “Oh, thank you, Dunk. I'd almost forgotten how good that could feel, with the right man.”
He ground his pubic bone against her own without answering as he digested her use of his made-up name. Any D Bar L rider who'd told her he'd been messing with the rangers could have told her he was a saddle tramp they called Dunk Crawford. If she was buying the name it likely meant nobody had told her he was
El Brazo
Largo. Nobody'd said either one of them were Mexican. She and Greek Steve both talked as natural as any other West Texas folk. Greek Steve had said he'd been born and raised nearby. He decided to let her tell him about herself in her own way in her own good time.
She did as they reluctantly untangled for a drink, a smoke, and their second wind. She made sure he was comfortable with those pillows piled behind his bare shoulders, a drink in his free hand, a good cigar in his mouth, and a big creamy tit in his other hand before she took a deep breath and said, “My late husband left me well provided for with this business in town and some Mexicans herding sheep for me over on the Stockton Plateau. So from time to time I've been able to help poor Stavros a little. He needs a little help because he drinks a lot.”
When a lady told a gent with a tumbler of whiskey in his hand that another gent drank a lot it was safe to say he had a problem. Longarm was suddenly reminded he had both hands occupied with his derringer under the pillow. So he gripped the Havana Claro in his teeth and put the glass aside to thoughtfully roll a nipple betwixt thumb and forefinger as he soberly asked Irene if she ever helped Cousin Stavros out this way.
She gasped,
“Eutheo!
He is family! By marriage at any rate. And one of the reasons his money never lasts until payday is that he spends the little he doesn't spend on liquor at a bordello by the river called Rosalinda's!”
Longarm was inclined to believe her. He'd been to Rosalinda's with Greek Steve and nobody getting what Irene had to offer would spend a day's pay on any whore! Old Irene was as good a lay with twice the class of pretty little Perfidia, and that was saying something indeed.
Longarm took a drag on the Claro, put it aside in a bed-table ashtray, and finished off that whiskey before he suggested mildly, “You said there was something you wanted to talk about, once we'd gotten to know one another this well.”
She snuggled closer and said, “I closed early and it's almost the usual siesta time. You've no idea how
well
I mean to know you, in the biblical sense, and Stavros was what I wanted to talk to you about.”
He shrugged a bare shoulder under her soft cheek and said, “Once you say a man has a drinking problem you've said about all there could be to say about him, right?”
She toyed with the hairs on Longarm's belly as she sighed, “Wrong. He came to me last night for a loan. That's what Stavros calls it when he asks me for money, a loan. He said he needed at least twenty-five dollars. I told him that was a lot of money. He said he needed it to ride far and fast. He said the rangers had been asking you about him.”
“That's what I told Chongo,” Longarm cautiously admitted. That was the plain truth when you studied on it. He thought it safe to add, “I never told Chongo the rangers had accused old Steve of anything. All I told Chongo was that they'd asked if I knew a rider who made that Sign of the Cross backwards, Greek Style.”
The Greek gal in bed with him sniffed and said she'd be the judge of who made the Sign of The Cross the wrong way. She added, “The rest of you have Easter on the wrong day, too, but getting back to Cousin Stavros. He confessed to me that the rangers might be after him because of young David Deveruex, the kid brother of the lady he rides for. The boy's in some sort of trouble. Serious trouble. Stavros said both the rangers and some famous federal lawman are after him and some Irishman.”
Longarm asked, “Are you sure he said the Deveruex boy was riding with an Irishman? I think I heard them rangers say something about an outlaw called Hogan, and I'll allow that sounds like an Irish name, but so does Deveruex and I understand they're half-Mex.”
The Greek-American widow woman said, “Stavros said he hadn't met this wanted man called Hogan. But he seemed to feel he was as dangerous as David Deveruex and we all know him as Devil Dave.”
“I've heard tell he grew up mean in these parts,” said Longarm.
The local gal suppressed a shudder and said, “Crazy-mean. Used to rope outhouses when ladies were using them and it wasn't Halloween. Shot a black trooper in the back one Saturday evening because he declared Our Lord made darkies to fetch and carry, not to be carried around by a superior animal.”
“I heard Devil Dave was like that,” Longarm murmured, adding, “How does Cousin Steve tie in with such a sweet kid?”
She confessed, “I don't know. He wouldn't tell me. I was hoping you could tell me, once I'd heard the rangers had lit out after him a few minutes after one of them had another conversation with you this morning.”
Longarm felt on surer ground as he assured her, truthfully, “The one ranger I spoke to at breakfast time never said they were riding out after old Steve or any other white man. He said Victorio and as many as a hundred Bronco Apache have been raiding too close to Texas for comfort. He asked if I was a war vet who might like to ride along as they scout for the Ninth Cav. When did Steve light out last night? Was it early or late and did he say which way he meant to ride?”
She reached down to fondle his limp shaft as she calmly replied, “I think I'd better compromise you as an arresting officer some more before I say another word about my criminal associates.”
Longarm laughed and asked her who'd told her he was a lawman out to arrest her or anyone in her family. But she just kept stroking it with the skill only a gal who'd been happily married a spell seemed to attain, as many a schoolboy playing stinkfinger in a porch swing had been know to complain. So, seeing it was getting so hard, and not wanting to get her soft palm messy, he set everything but her aside to roll back in the saddle again. But then she said she wanted to get on top. So he let her, and she did that as only a gal who'd had a heap of practice could hope to manage.
Smiling down at him through the soft daylight of her bedroom as she slid up and down his merry-go-round pole Irene asked him why he had his eyes shut. “Don't you like to watch my nipples bounce?” she demanded.
He opened his eyes with a dreamy smile to agree she bounced great, all over, and explained, “I was just now thinking about another widow gal and a conversation we once had about the advantages of doing this with one.”
“Oh?” she replied with a dark brow arched, “Are you suggesting women in my position should be grateful to men for taking pity on our poor lonely twats?”
“Call it a ring-dang-doo,” he soothed. “Twat is a sort of ugly word for such a wonder of nature. I never meant to imply you widow women were more hard-up than say a romantic schoolmarm playing with herself alone in bed. Any bride-groom can tell you a virgin-pure can be a pain in the neck when it comes to slap-and-tickle. It takes practice before anybody gets this right!”
She gyrated her pelvis teasingly as she replied, “Don't I know it! A girl in my position has to be very careful lest she risk her reputation with a handsome lout who comes too soon, or can't get it up at all. You're saying you prefer an experienced slut who's had plenty of practice, eh?”
To which he gallantly replied, “Not hardly. The gals down at that whorehouse you just mentioned have doubtless had more practice than the average happy housewife could abide. But when a man has a romantic nature he feels sort of low-down dumb with a business woman who might not even like him. I know they say money can't buy love, but I'll be switched if I'll pay for
hostility
!”
The once-married Irene bit down skillfully with her innards to ask if that felt friendly enough.
He thrust upwards and replied, “It surely do and the best part about doing this with a married woman who ain't married no more is that nobody is likely to gun you for rutting with their wife whilst, at the same time, you're getting the sort of screwing men kill one another over!”
She laughed like hell and allowed she'd take that as a compliment, if he'd roll her over and finish right.
He was willing, and Irene's notion of a good finishing position was a contortion that could have gotten her a job with P. T. Barnum, had she been able to cross her legs behind her own head like that with a modest costume on. It would have gotten the show raided had she been wearing jeans in that position.
But it sure felt swell, and Irene whipped up some sandwiches and had already iced some coffee to wash them down with as they whiled away one of the nicest siestas Longarm could recall.
When the weren't satisfying their healthy appetites at both ends they took turns trying to pry information out of one another. Longarm found it easy to jaw with the well-endowed young widow as they fondled one another, because his conscience was clear as far as Greek Steve went. He didn't have a thing on the panic-stricken wrangler and the rangers had less, seeing he'd made up all that bull about anyone suspecting Pantages of something vague.
He felt safe asking questions. Irene kept saying she'd been hoping he'd know the answers to the same questions. All that was certain, if she was on the level, was that Greek Steve had darkened her door in a flap with liquor on his breath to plead for her help in getting him clean out of the valley. She said he hadn't been making much sense in either English or the half-remembered Greek he'd lapsed into when he'd told her he'd already done a bad thing and that now they were pressing him to kill somebody with the Texas Rangers reading over his shoulder.
Longarm said, “I think it was one of them rangers who said Devil Dave Deveruex is running low on sidekicks. I had a time convincing 'em I'd never seen that one Mex who must have mistook me for someone else in that churchyard last night. But why would Devil Dave want to recruit a remuda hand off his family spread as a killer? I understood old Steve was born and raised in these parts without any wants posted on his hide. You just now told me he was a sort of shiftless cuss living from one payday to the next. Yet you say Steve confessed he'd already committed one crime and they were pressing him to do worse?”