50
He opened the door. He was tall, wearing an old worn-out silk paisley robe and floppy night slippers. He was most likely in his forties, but his slouchy body looked more like sixty. He was unshaven, his hair stuck out in every direction, and he reeked of alcohol.
“What’s the goddamn problem?”
I looked back to Virgil. Virgil stepped up on the boardwalk next to me.
“You Doc Meyer?” Virgil said.
“No,” Doc Meyer said, “I’m the goddamn tooth fairy! What do you want?”
“I’m Marshal Virgil Cole; this is my deputy, Everett Hitch.”
“You got a toothache? You hurt?”
“We are looking for a wounded man,” I said. “We want to know if he came to you tonight, if you’ve seen him, treated him.”
“I treat a lot of people! This here is a community of ignorant goddamn miners getting hurt every day. Now, I was asleep, and if you don’t mind, I’d like to go back to it!”
He started to close the door, but I stopped it with my foot.
“Recently, in the last few hours?” I said. “A bullet might have clipped the side of his head, maybe his ear.”
Doc Meyer looked down at my foot, and his shoulders sagged. He scratched his scalp and yawned with his mouth open wide. He made a high-pitched yawn noise and said, “What’s in it for me?”
“You will have an opportunity to go back to sleep,” I said.
“Otherwise Everett will come in there and have to knock you around a bit,” Virgil said politely. “He don’t want to, but he’ll put a knot in your ass if you don’t cooperate.”
Doc Meyer reacted like a skunk sprayed him in the face. He held up his lantern, looking at Virgil. We could see his face clearer now. His nose and cheeks was a spiderweb of broken blood vessels, and his eyes were bloodshot. He looked Virgil up and down like he was looking at a painting in a museum. He shook his head and opened the door.
“Oh, good goddamn, no rest for the wicked, no goddamn rest... come in, officers, come on in. The only thing worse than card cheats is goddamn lawmen.”
Virgil looked at me and smiled, and we followed him inside. Doc Meyer dragged his slippers across the floor as he ambled back to a cluttered desk next to his dentist chair. He set the lantern on a stack of books and flopped down in his squeaky chair behind his desk. There was a skull sitting on the desk with a silver tooth that caught a piece of light when Doc Meyer turned up the gas on the lantern. He leaned over and opened the bottom desk drawer and pulled out a whiskey bottle. He bit the cork, spit it on the desk, and took a swig. He took a second swig before leaning over and picking up a white piece of cloth from a small trash canister. He unfolded the cloth and laid it on the desk next to the lantern. Inside the cloth were pieces of bloody flesh. For effect, he pointed at the pieces of the flesh with a scalpel. He figured since we were providing him some unpleasantness he would return the favor and give us a bloody little show.
“That’s all that was left of his helix, antihelical fold, and concha.”
Doc Meyer leaned back in his chair, holding the scalpel between the thumb and first finger of his hand, smiling at us with a liquored-up look on his face.
“The bottom part, the external auditory meatus, antitragus, and lobe, he got to keep, though I’m certain his hearing will be impaired in that ear. Something tells me, though, his well-being is of no goddamn concern of yours.”
“How long ago was he here?” I said.
“Two hours,” Doc Meyer said, “give or take.”
“Do you know if he is still here,” I said, “in Half Moon?”
“I have no idea.”
“Who was he with?” Virgil said.
Doc Meyer took another swig off the whiskey bottle. He belched and swiveled the palm of his hand over the bottle top to remove his saliva and offered us a pull. We declined.
“There were three other miscreants with him,” Doc Meyer said. “I was walking up to my office here when they arrived. They were kind of like the two of you, rather obnoxious and demanding.”
“Mounted?” Virgil said.
Doc Meyer shook his head.
“I did not see any horses, no.”
Doc Meyer folded the ear pieces back up in the cloth and held it above the trash canister.
“Shall I dispose of these pieces, or were you thinking souvenir?”
“We appreciate your time,” I said.
Doc Meyer leaned to his side slightly and released gas as he opened his hand and let the cloth drop to the trash.
“Good of you to stop by,” he said as I followed Virgil out the door.
51
We stood on the boardwalk in front of Doc Meyer’s office. Virgil puffed on his cigar, thinking. A buckboard came around the corner from the east and stopped. Two tired-looking miners jumped from the bed, grabbed their gear, and entered a boardinghouse. The buckboard moved on west and turned north at the corner of Full Moon Street.
“What do you allow, Everett?”
“Vince and the others did not stable the horses with the livery, that much we know... could be long gone.”
Virgil glanced back through the office window as Doc Meyer turned out his desk lamp and we started up the boardwalk toward Hotel Ark.
“But,” I said, “they don’t feel any threat from this town.”
“No, don’t think they do.”
“And on pure speculation, I don’t think they hightailed it out tonight, either.”
“Don’t?”
“I don’t.”
“You wouldn’t?”
“Nope. Don’t think I would, considering the circumstances.”
“Circumstances being?”
“First circumstance being they lost some of their hands tonight. That being the case, fellows of this ilk got no way of dealing with those kinds of feelings, other than drinking and busting a nut.”
“That’s right.”
“Next circumstance, they would not be expecting us here in Half Moon Junction, so they won’t be skittish.”
“No, they won’t,” Virgil said.
“Far as they know, we are near a hundred miles from here.”
“That’s right.”
“Don’t think they would have the gall or stupidity to check in to a hotel, though.”
“But maybe,” Virgil said.
“Next circumstance is, they got money.”
“They do.”
“If they stayed,” I said, “I think bedding down with whores would be their most astute move.”
“Seems prospect,” Virgil said.
“Don’t you imagine?”
“I do,” Virgil said. “That’d be my summation as well, considering the circumstances.”
A mangy cur stepped out of the shadows from between two buildings in front of us and stopped. He looked at us for a moment and moved on slowly across the street. He sniffed at something, then disappeared behind a rotted section of siding on a blacksmith’s shop. We continued walking until we got to the corner of Full and Three Quarter Moon and stopped.
“They might have picketed the horses outside of town, hidden in a stand of trees or someplace,” I said, “and come back in on foot.”
“Sounds right,” Virgil said. “Come back, gamble a bit, buy a piece for the evening.”
“Probably too lazy, though, considering,” I said. “Been a wearying day for those boys, with all the commotion they’ve had to go through. First, the expectant excitement of the robbery, followed by the shooting and friends dying off. Vince having his helix and concha pieces wrapped in a napkin and sitting at the bottom of a trash bucket in the drunk dentist’s office. They’re going to be in need of some comfort, some mothering, a basic hankering for food, drink, and women. Plus, they got dollars and dimes they stole from the people on the train burning a hole in the bottom of their pocket.”
Bugs were circling the gas lantern again near where we stood across from Hotel Ark on the southeast corner of Full and Three Quarter Moon Streets. Virgil stood with his thumbs in his vest pockets puffing on his cigar, thinking. He pulled out his pocket watch and looked at the time. He looked back to the south and to the north.