As he entered the lobby of the Elk Rack, the night clerk called him to the desk, waving a folded slip of paper as he explained how Ruby, the colored waitress at the beanery across from the jail, had left it for him around eight that evening.
Longarm reflected he’d have been up at Widow Farnsworth’s around then as he took the message with a nod of thanks. He saw it was in pencil on the back of an order form from the beanery. It read:
Dear Sir:
Thank yew for sending this girl to take my supper order. I had already hurd yew were firm but fare and I have had about enuff of this dum game. Nobody sed nothin about nobody getting kilt. Sew if yew cum too see me rite away I will tell all.
Sincere as Hell
Tess Jennings my reel name
Longarm whistled softly and confided to the night clerk, “Had not I been supping with another lady when this arrived, I might’ve been there when somebody meaner came calling on the late … whoever! You ain’t the one and original Mister Cooper in charge of this hotel, are you?”
The night clerk laughed and replied, “I’d be home in bed like him if I was. Why do you ask?”
Longarm said, “Let’s try it this way. In all your born days at that desk have you ever laid eyes on Bunny McNee, the kid who stayed here without paying, in broad daylight?”
The night clerk shook his graying head and answered, “Only seen him once, fleeting, in any sort of light. He checked in one noon when Mister Cooper was standing behind this desk. The hotel help says he never went out much. Even had his meals upstairs in his room and added to his bill. That’s another reason he ran up such a bodacious bill. Like I said, I saw him that one time, around four or five in the morn when I was half asleep. I wondered what he might be up to at that hour. I didn’t know till later he was skipping out on us. Is it true he was really a she? Just heard some others talking about it when I was sipping black coffee in the kitchen.”
Longarm allowed he found a heap of things about his dead federal want confusing as hell. Then he headed next door to their dining room.
Matilda Waller was seated alone at a corner table, going over her waitress tabs while there was nobody in the place to serve. As she looked up at Longarm with an uncertain smile he nodded curtly and told her, “I have got to talk to another waitress. If I ain’t back by the time you’re fixing to leave, don’t leave. We might have a lot to talk about!”
As he strode out the far door to the street the waitress gasped, “After you’ve asked some other waitress first? I should think not, no matter how long Peony said it was!”
Longarm never heard that. He was moving fast in his low-heeled cavalry stovepipes. He wore boots suited to riding or walking with the weary legwork of a lawman in mind. He was starting to know the center of John Bull better than he’d ever wanted to, running around it like a confounded errand boy! Thanks to the crowded street out front, the beanery across from the jail was still doing business. He asked the manager which of his two colored gals might be Ruby. He didn’t get much cooperation until he flashed his badge and repeated his request in a firmer tone. Ruby turned out to be the older and more motherly-looking one. She verified what the night clerk at his hotel had said about her delivering that message from the late Tess Jennings, also known as Bunny McNee. Ruby said, “It was slow, just after most of our regulars had finished their suppers. So Mister Bob, the gent you were just fussing at, said it was all right if I ran that white gal’s note over to the law. You had to feel sorry for the chile. She’d cried herself all red-eyed in that jail cell, and when she asked me to help her I couldn’t say no.”
Longarm nodded soberly and said, “I can see you have a kindly way about you, Miss Ruby. I’m sorry I wasn’t there when you delivered her message. Did she tell you any more than what was on the paper, by the way?”
The motherly waitress smiled sheepishly and confessed, “Of course I read it. It wasn’t sealed up and why did you think I took time off from my counter tips to run it over to you? Mister Bob said it sounded important too.”
“The two of you discussed her message out loud behind a beanery counter, no offense?” he asked as an alarming picture formed in his already puzzled mind. When she confirmed his fear that any number of casual eaters could have heard, and repeated, the contents of the dead gal’s plea, he could only sigh and say, “I understand you carried earlier meals over to the jailhouse for her?”
Ruby nodded. “I thought she was a he until this evening. You could have knocked me over with a feather when she told me she was another gal, and in a fearful fix besides!”
Longarm explained, “We thought she was a he until last night. The reason I’m pressing you about this is to make sure we weren’t slipped a ringer! You’re certain the gal who gave you that message to me was the same person they arrested last week as a boy?”
Ruby laughed. “Now how would they ever switch any he with a she, or even a he with a he, with poor Constable Amos and his own boys watching?”
it was a good question. He said, “Let’s buy them arresting what they took for a pretty deadbeat at the depot and having the same one in a windowless patent cell all this time. That’s still not saying the one sneaking out of a hotel bill he just couldn’t pay was the same one they arrested later, wearing the same outfit and bland baby face!”
The waitress seemed to find that an awful lot of trouble to put some innocent gal through. Longarm thanked her and headed back to the Elk Rack, a half-dozen notions juggled by his brain at once.
When he caught up with Matilda Waller again in her own less-busy dining room, he glanced at the wall clock and said, “Let’s scout up your boss and see if he won’t let you off early. What I want with you is way more important!”
She blinked in mingled desire and dismay, then replied, “I like a man who knows what he wants and goes right after it. But Lord have mercy if this don’t seem a little sudden!”
Longarm paid her no mind as he pushed through the swinging doors to the kitchen. So she followed, timidly, as he found the night manager jawing over coffee with the cook and his swamper.
Longarm flashed his badge at the three of them and explained he needed their waitress to identify a dead body for the law. The gal they were talking about looked more surprised as her boss allowed he could serve any late customer they might have before closing time.
When she complained that the summer night was outside, he went on up with her to fetch her shawl. Like other hotel help who didn’t have a good reason to rent outside quarters, Matilda Waller had a garret room up behind the false front of the Elk Rack. Longarm waited in the hall while she ducked in to fetch her plaid shawl. For some fool reason this seemed to confuse her. As they were going back down the stairs she marveled, “Do you really want me to go with you to some funeral parlor?”
He answered, “Nope. Widow Farnsworth sent that dead Englishman on his way embalmed in a handsome lead-lined coffin. Constable Payne and Deputy Keen will be getting tidied up for their own funerals, even as we speak. But dead riffraff due for potter’s field only get to relax in a root cellar until somebody claims ‘em or they start to go bad, whichever comes first.”
Outside the drably pretty waitress took the arm he offered her, but protested that this was hardly her idea of an evening outing with a gentleman caller as he led her along the moonlit street. He said soothingly, “I’d be proud to buy you some ice cream afterwards, Miss Matilda. I had to dragoon you for this distasteful chore because nobody else who knew Bunny McNee as a male hotel guest was handy at this hour. I was told you carried his hotel meals up to his room. So he must have had to sign for them in front of you, in broad daylight, way more than once, right?”