“Anything to help,” the bartender offered. “Where d’you want to go?”
“A place run by a woman name of Norma Brantley,” Longarm said.
The barman frowned.
“I know Miss Forsyth has her own, uh, competing business to think about,” Longarm said. “But it isn’t a roll in the hay that I’m looking for. Just information.”
The bartender’s expression softened. A little anyway. “I don’t know that she’ll be open for business this early.”
“I told you, friend, it isn’t business that I have in mind. Not that sort anyhow.”
“Yeah, well, all right then.” The barman used his fingertip dipped in some recently spilled liquor to sketch a crude map on the bar surface. “You can’t miss it,” he concluded, prompting Longarm to wonder if there was some rule written down somewhere that required all persons engaged in giving directions to conclude with that oh-so-inaccurate assurance.
“Thanks,” Longarm said. “You been a big help.”
“Any time.”
Longarm turned and touched the front of his cap first to Miss Forsyth, who was seated demurely at a table in a far corner, and again to the friendly cowboys he’d played poker with earlier. Come evening, he thought, he just might have to return for that glass of rye and another round of cards.
Longarm had a bit of trouble locating Norma Brantley’s whorehouse from the Old Heidelberg bartender’s directions, but he chalked that up to the low visibility rather than to any chance that he could somehow “miss it.” After all, it wouldn’t have been possible for him to miss it. He had that on reliable authority.
As it was, he crossed the tracks just east of the railroad depot, skirted the fringes of the livestock loading chutes and acres of holding pens, picked his way through a warren of frigid, litter-strewn alleys, and found his way eventually to what was essentially a collection of tumbledown shacks tied more or less together beneath a common roof. Miz Brantley’s hog ranch seemed not to have been planned but just sort of to have grown. Like a rather noxious mushroom.
Longarm investigated several of the niches and crannies along the front of the place until he decided on one that looked like an entryway. As he came nearer he could hear the bright, brittle tinkle of a cheap piano leaking through the walls. Apparently the barman had been wrong about one thing. Probably because of the storm keeping everyone indoors and mostly bored, the refuge of soiled doves was not only open, it was doing a land-rush business.
Longarm didn’t bother knocking. Hell, he wouldn’t have been heard over all that din going on inside anyhow. He found the latch and let himself in, stepping out of the sting of the wind and into the steamy, perfume-saturated heat of a very crowded parlor.
“Welcome, friend,” a painted and grinning whore screamed in the general direction of his ear. “Take a number, mister, the wait won’t be very long. Drinks over there. Billiards down that way. Relax and enjoy yourself. Your number will be called just as soon as there’s a room and a girl available for your pleasure.”
Take a number and wait in line. Romantic as all billy hell, Longarm figured.
But time-consuming.
He pulled out his wallet—“No, put that away, friend. You don’t need to pay till you get to the room.”—and flipped it open to expose his badge. “I’d like to have a visit with Miz Brantley, miss.”
The girl—woman, actually; she was a decade or more past being called a girl even by charitable souls—went a little wide in the eyes and pale in the cheeks and began to stammer something incomprehensible.
“It’s all right, miss. I’m not here to cause any trouble. I just wanta talk to Miz Brantley.”
“Wait right here, sir. I won’t be but five seconds. I promise.” And she fled like a young doe getting the hell out of the cornfield once the farmers commenced shooting.
Chapter 10
The girl wasn’t all that far off in her time estimate. More than five seconds, it was true, but not by so much that Longarm could find serious fault with her. Especially since when she did come back she brought in tow a matron who must surely be the inestimable proprietress of the establishment.
Norma Brantley moved through the crowd with all the steady aplomb of a sternwheeler making passage on the Mississippi. This was one big woman. Damned near as tall as Deputy United States Marshal Custis Long. And outweighed him by, he guessed, a solid eighty or more pounds.
She looked fit to wrestle a bear or fistfight a lumberjack. And had the mustache to lend credence to that image. It was not, however, as handsome a one as Longarm’s. He definitely gave himself the edge in that category.
She had hair the color of bright polished steel plating, applied her powder and rouge with a trowel, and had a jaw so massive she was probably capable of biting railroad spikes in two whenever she felt the yen for a toothpick. Beautiful this woman was not. But formidable? Damn, he reckoned so.
Ever mindful of etiquette, Longarm swept his hat off and made a small bow to the, um, lady. “Miz Brantley, allow me to introduce myself. I’m-“
“Damn it!” The voice, decidedly masculine, was somewhere between a bellow and a roar. It came from down one of the several hallways that branched off the central foyer where Longarm was trying to make himself known to Norma Brantley.
“Bitch!” the voice roared again. Immediately following that pronouncement there was the sharp crack of an open hand striking flesh and a piercing, and this time feminine, shriek.
The Brantley woman’s attention was distracted by the interruption. Understandably.
She turned, and no doubt would have set sail in that direction except there was no need. A man appeared at the entry to the hall, clad only in a shirt, gartered stockings, and shoes. Longarm could not decide if that was an oversight, forgotten in the heat of the moment, or if the fellow simply didn’t give a damn who was treated to the sight of his privates. But then maybe he thought the vision was one of inspiration, Longarm realized half a second later upon recognizing the chap. It was George of the loud mouth and ready complaint, the same sweet soul who thought himself a gift to all the world and to its womenfolk in particular.
“Are you the madam here? Well, don’t just stand there. Are you? Of course you are. Do you want to beat this useless bitch or do I have to do it for you? Don’t you teach these whores anything? Mind your manners, woman, or I shall have the law after you. Taking money under false pretenses. That’s robbery, you know.”
“Lissa robbed you, mister?” Brantley asked as soon as she could get a word in.
“As good as. Miserable little bitch won’t do what I paid her for.”
“Ma’am, that isn’t so, ma’am, I swear. He only paid me two dollars, then when I got my bloomers down he said he wanted to put it up my bum. I don’t do that, ma’am. That hurts terrible. Not for no lousy two dollars I don’t take it in me backside, no, ma’am.”
“The regular price oughta be but a dollar. Anywhere in this country a man can get laid for a dollar,” good old George grumbled. “Two is twice what it ought to be to begin with. For that much I’m entitled to stick it wherever I damn please.”
“I think, mister, you’ve already had all the fun your two dollars is going to buy you. Get out of my place. Right now.”
“The hell I will.” George stormed forward in the direction of the madam. The whore he’d been with grabbed for his arm, which only earned her a backhanded swat that split her lower lip and sent a spill of bright blood streaming off her chin and down her scrawny neck.
George, in the meantime, seemed fully determined to whack Brantley next. He pulled a fist back and set himself to launch it.
To Longarm that seemed rather rude behavior for a guest, Never mind that they happened to be in a whorehouse. George was nonetheless a guest. And was acting like something of an ass, which seemed to be his own unique personal style.