The Whipping Boy (44 page)

In his tied-up, bepissed, skull-cracked condition, his shoulders seizing up with bruises, Jake almost laughed at Ernest's playing at being magnanimous. But his claim that Dandy was going along with his game did get to him, and caused him to feel sorry for himself, which made him mad, which made him give up all caution. “You're being awful generous toward somebody you think killed your old man.”

“What's done is done. I want to get this finished.”

“Your father was a decent man to work for, Ernest. But he failed you. He should have kicked your butt out of the county ten years ago. Maybe you'd have grown up.”

Ernest put the holder back into his mouth and looked at him a minute, an ash dripping off the end of his cigarette. “Taking the hard line? Well, that's up to you, Mr. Salesman. I'll give you ten minutes to remember where my money is. If you don't, I'll have your whore disposed of first. Then you.”

“Which one of your boys will carry out that brave order?”

Ernest took out a watch and said, “The Deacon likes to handle women like her. He has plenty of experience. And you've got nine minutes and thirty seconds.”

***

Tom waited until the two men in long dark coats walked down the hill, then stepped out and went to the fallen Mr. Haskell. His mind was strangely clear when he knelt beside him. He'd been shot through the heart. Tom touched the old veteran's chest, and he dabbed his blood onto both of his temples. He picked up Mr. Haskell's shotgun, took a handful of shells from his pocket, and walked quickly around the fretting horses toward the back of the big building. Lantern light shone from windows on all three levels. Around the back stood several ramshackle outbuildings and a summer kitchen with a couple of fireplaces.

From against the back wall, he heard something from an upstairs window that sounded familiar, a snapping followed immediately by muffled expulsions. He realized what it was, and his fear walked out of him. He opened the back door and went through a big indoor kitchen into a hallway. In the hallway he saw stairs and went for them. Men were visible through two doorways in a room, where most of them were at the front, looking through windows. When he was halfway up the stairs, Peters, the large salesman, appeared above him on the landing.

Peters looked down at him with alarm. “What are you doing here?”

Tom aimed the shotgun at him. “Go back up and don't talk.”

“What are you doing? You can't come up here.”

Tom cocked one of the hammers on the gun.

“God—” Peters raised his hand and waved it at him as if to say no, erase that word, I didn't say it. Tom herded him down the hall, with him still waving his hand, walking backwards.

“Go in there,” Tom said, waving his gun at a door.

“Look, I can't—”

Tom gave him a look that encouraged him to do as he was told. Peters twisted the knob and backed, stumbling, into a barely lit room where he rammed against a man sitting in a chair.

“
Wha
?” Peters yelled, jumping away from him. “Goddamn!”

It was Jake, with his head bloodied and one of his eyes swollen up. Tom got out the pocketknife that Jake had given him and sawed him loose.

“Sorry, Tom. They tied me up until I had to pee on myself.”

“Don't worry.” Tom picked him up gently and carried him over and set him on a bed.

“Hell, Jake! What's been going on up here?” Peters said with fake-sounding concern.

Tom took a step closer to him and said, “Sit down in that chair.”

“
I
didn't have anything to do with this. I've just been doing what they tell me.”

“Sit down and be quiet. Don't talk, and don't move.” Tom sounded dangerously patient, and the fat salesman sank into the chair.

“Where is she?” Tom asked Jake.

“Other room. I don't know which one, Tom. The Deacon took her. I don't think you should—”

Tom went back to the open door and from there heard steps hurrying around downstairs. He kept an eye on the staircase and walked down the hall, as quietly as possible opening doors. He looked at the crack below for light. None. He checked another—dark again.

He was at the end of the hall, crouched over, when a door exploded open. There was the black-clad Deacon, holding Sam against him, with a handkerchief tight around her mouth, stripped to the waist and with red cuts all over her neck, her shoulders, her breasts. The barrel of the Deacon's pistol tried to find Tom. Having no clear shot, Tom dived to the other side of the hall. Two shots went off, missing him, and at that moment Leonard LaFarge appeared at the top of the stairs and thundered, “
Sir! It's over! Stop
!” and the Deacon turned and shot him. LaFarge fell to one knee, and Sam flopped like a sack of potatoes to the floor in front of the Deacon. Tom raised the shotgun, pulled a trigger, and nothing happened. The Deacon was swinging back to him, and Tom reached the other trigger and the shotgun bucked so hard that it almost flew out of his hand and the Deacon was lifted up and thrown backwards down the hall. He started squirming toward the pistol that he'd dropped, and Tom cocked the other barrel and walked over to him. The Deacon fell over on his side and rolled onto his back, and Tom put the shotgun right above his eyes, which vibrated as the light went out of them.

LaFarge remained on one knee on the landing, and Tom went over to him and helped him up. Tom carried him into the room Jake was in. Peters was still sitting there.

“What did you run into, Jake?” LaFarge asked. “You don't look well.”

Jake was sitting on the edge of the bed. “You don't exactly look like the queen of England yourself. Where'd he get you?”

“Left shoulder. Tom, there are six men downstairs. Some of them will use guns.”

Tom went back out into the hall and put Sam's shirt over her. She had been severely whipped. She looked up at him and smiled, and she said in a confused, longing voice, “Tom . . .” Blood immediately came through the blouse that he laid on her, and Tom was staring at it when someone called nervously up the stairs, “Deacon! Come down here! Deacon! Boss wants to see you!” It was McMurphy, somewhere downstairs, and he sounded afraid.

Tom heard Ernest Dekker whispering, urging him, “Tell him to come down now, goddamnit. What's going on up there?”

Tom had always been physically strong, but his strength had sometimes been obscured by his clumsiness. It did not seem hard now for him to pick up the carcass of Deacon Miller and send it downstairs. He did not think about whether he could do it. He just did it—and the Deacon did not touch the three-and-a-half-foot railing. No part of him touched it. It was as if he flew or was shot out a cannon, into the high common hall, past the dangling rope where a chandelier used to hang, down the fifteen or twenty feet where he made an ugly sound hitting the floor below. Someone—McMurphy, he thought—screamed in unabashed terror. Doors downstairs were opening and slamming, and men were running across the floor.

Without any hesitation, Tom picked up Miller's pistol and held it out to Jake. Jake took it, and Tom then descended the stairs. “Wait a minute, Tom!”

Jake went after him. On the one landing below, Tom turned and said to him plainly, “Stay upstairs.”

Jake followed him nevertheless, holding tight to the railing. McMurphy was standing in the hallway with a rifle, but he didn't so much as raise it. Instead, he turned and joined the men who were making an unceremonious exit out the front door, who included Loop, the secretary, Pete Crapo and Marvin Beele, salesmen, and the two city-dressed men Jake had heard talking in the hall. The sight of the flying corpse of Deacon Miller had knocked off all their feathers, and they were scattering.

Ernest Dekker didn't run. If his expression was any clue, he was frozen with terror. He had a burning cigarette in the black ivory holder in one hand and a pistol in the other. Tom hadn't raised the shotgun, but he reached the bottom of the stairs and walked straight toward Dekker, not caring at the moment whether he lived or died. Tom stopped five feet from Dekker. Jake dragged up beside him.

“What happened to Joel Mayes?” Tom asked.

“What?” Dekker looked stunned.

Dekker's right hand twitched, and Jake said, “Don't raise that pistol, Ernest. You can't get both of us.”

“What happened to Joel?” Tom repeated.

“Who's that?” Dekker said, sticking the cigarette holder between his teeth.

“He worked for you.”

“I had nothing to do with that.”

Tom took a step and tore the cigarette holder out of Dekker's mouth with such viciousness that a large chip of one of his front teeth popped out with it. “You had nothing to do with
what?
” Tom said furiously.

Dekker's eyes got very wide. He put up a hand in front of his mouth. “I didn't tell him to do it. That woman was askin the boy questions about
my
bidness! The boy gave out private information! I'm tellin the truth. I didn't tell him to do it.”

Tom slowly raised the shotgun and aimed it at Dekker's watch chain. Dekker's revolver clattered to the floor, and Tom heard a faint hiss.

“He killed him.
He
did it.” Dekker pointed across the room at Miller's corpse.

“Darn it, Ernest,” Jake said, smiling grimly, “look what you did to your britches.”

J
AKE HAD
a couple of knots on his head, a lot of bruises, and two shiners that made him look like a raccoon. He had a “concussive swelling,” which for a few days caused him to have blackout spells. But soon he emerged from the fog, nourished by Mrs. P's chicken soup. Jake had the impression that Leonard had been running around busy while he was recovering. Tom had stayed nearby, and they'd already talked a little about what had happened. Jake noticed that he wasn't here this morning.

“You among the living, old man?” Leonard asked, sitting beside his bed and looking him over with a gaze so gentle and considerate that it almost worried Jake. Leonard was wearing one arm in a sling, and he had a pocketful of newspapers. Being sober seemed to cause Leonard to get down to the details faster. “Do you want to talk about this? You already know most of it.”

Jake didn't like Leonard's emphasis on “most.”

“Feeling well enough?”

“Yeah,” Jake said warily. “Unless you know something I don't. Where's Tom?”

“You were a little amnesic for a few days, but there's no harm in that. I've been amnesic for several years at a time and look at me now.”

“You risked your hide for Tom, didn't you?”

Leonard shook his head as if to discount it. “I don't know whether you heard, but they're finally bringing Mr. Haskell's body here tomorrow. Mr. Potts says he wants him buried close to the spot where he's going to be buried, so he can keep an eye on him.” With his little squint, he said, “There are a couple of things we need to discuss.” He handed Jake a newspaper article.

Reading it, Jake had a moment of dizziness. “What is this?” The article was about the murder of the principal of Armstrong Academy.

Leonard told Jake the story of the money that had been destined for Federal Judge John Crilley. “The packet didn't get delivered, and it seems that a little visiting committee went down to the Armstrong Academy to repay this man for his kindnesses in the past.”

Jake laid down the newspaper. “Tom?”

Leonard combed his hair with his fingers. “I haven't questioned him in detail, but he had something to do with it. The long and short of it is that if all of this starts untangling, I'm not sure Tom ought to be around here. There's another problem, too. Word's already spreading that Tom is the man who finally broke Deacon Miller's medicine.”

“So?”

“If Tom stays in this neck of the woods, he'll be dragging a pretty big deed behind him. People are calling him a gunfighter.”

“Oh,
bull shit
,” Jake said disgustedly. “Do you listen to that kind of crap?”

“Tom's the one who has to listen to it, not me. He's already had to listen to it. Three or four pimply boys have been hanging around in the street trying to catch glimpses of him.”

“He was with that kid Hack in order to find out about Mr. Dekker. This is my fault for sending that goddamn telegram.”

Leonard shook his head. “I don't think you had that much to do with it. I went to the Paris Hotel and asked some questions. That place has more morphine addicts and happy-dusters and drinkers of Dr. Thompson's Eye Cure than Butte, Montana. The word there was that this kid Hack was a case.”

“Cut that finer,” Jake growled.

“He was a young man with a desperate purpose. Maybe he'd been bullied into the relationship, it's hard to say, but he was living with the Deacon, learning how to swagger, talking a lot about revenge. He seemed to have decided to apprentice himself to the trade.”

Jake was incredulous. “Gunplay?” The idea of a literate young man choosing the low life was beyond him.

Leonard glanced down at the newspaper. “This Reverend Schoot apparently made Christian soldiers of his orphaned savages by whipping them daily. I suppose that could either break you or do a lot to the willpower. Maybe Hack thought he needed to attach himself to somebody who was meaner and bigger and more cold-blooded than the Reverend. I don't know.”

Jake threw back the cover on his bed angrily, knocking the newspaper onto the floor. “The bastard got what he deserved.” Leonard looked worriedly at him. “Do you realize that you are cursing a lot? Is it the head wound—?”

“Get to the point.”

“The point is that I think that Tom was involved in this.” He picked up the newspaper and folded it with his one good hand. “He almost wants to talk about it. Which is another reason why I think he shouldn't stay around here.”

“Where
is
Tom?” Jake started to get up, but a spell of dizziness hit him.