Longarm said quickly, “You just never mind about my teeth. I asked you about the customs people. What do they get for their work?”
Ignoring the question, Davis said, “Ain’t nothing more bothersome than a toothache. Man can’t concentrate on his work. We gonna have to get you to a dentist first thing we get to Laredo. That whiskey trick won’t work long enough for the water to get hot. I know, I’ve tried it.”
“Listen,” Longarm said with heat, “I ain’t going to say this but once more. You forget all about my teeth. And I ain’t going to no dentist! Now, tell me about the customs inspector.”
“Just trying to help,” Davis said, looking put off. He thought a moment. “Caster ain’t really got a set price. It depends on how many cattle you got and how fast you want them through. I’ve heard if you’ve got a thousand head and you want them straight on through—that takes about a week—the going price is about three dollars a head. If you can afford to feed them for a couple or three weeks, he’ll come down to two dollars. Less chance of him getting caught that way. If you only want to halve the ninety days, he’ll accommodate you for as little as a dollar and a half a head. That is if you got enough cattle.”
Longarm cocked his head and whistled. “That ain’t bad pickings.”
“Especially if you reckon on how many cattle pass through there a month. Caster ain’t getting it all, but I roughed it out at about a minimum of five thousand dollars a month. That kind of money would make a judge turn crooked.”
Longarm looked out the window. “I arrested a judge once,” he said.
“Yeah?”
“But he was just a county judge, so that didn’t amount to anything.” He paused and then shook his head slowly. “But once I arrested a federal bank examiner.” He let out a sigh and shook his head again.
Austin Davis waited a moment, and when Longarm didn’t go on, he said impatiently, “Yeah, so you arrested a federal bank examiner. What about it?”
Longarm lounged back in his seat. “I’d rather have gone up against a barrel of wildcats wearing barbed-wire britches than got involved in that mess.” He let out a breath. “Hell, before it was over I wasn’t sure who was going to jail, me or him.”
Davis wrinkled his brow. “Didn’t you catch him clean? Wasn’t he guilty?”
“Hell yes, he was guilty, guilty as sin. The man had left a trail of thievery a mile long by the time I put the cuffs on him. Every time he went into a bank to examine it there was always less money in the vault than when he came. After a while that kind of thing starts to get noticed. Of course you couldn’t tell it from the books—he had them well doctored. I followed him around for two months after we got called into the matter, and couldn’t get within a day’s ride of him. Finally I just arrested him as he was departing a bank one day and confiscated his little leather satchel where he kept all his papers and whatnot. Found five thousand dollars all done up neat in the bank’s wrappers. Them little bands that banks mark packets of money with. As it turned out, after the bank counted up that was exactly the amount they were short.”
“Well, hell,” Davis said, “you had him dead to rights.”
Longarm nodded. “Yeah,” he said with a trace of bitterness. “You’d think so, wouldn’t you? But I got some news for you, young Mister Davis, dealing with folks like that ain’t like catching bank robbers or road agents.”
“How so?”
Longarm looked weary, thinking back over the incident. “First of all, they got their ways that we don’t know nothing about. He was a bank examiner. What the hell do I know about that? Maybe he was taking that money out of the bank just to test their safeguards. That’s what he claimed. Second, they work for a bureau of the government, and if there’s anything that protects their own it’s bureaucracy. They pack up worse than wolves. I think they operate on the theory that if one gets caught they might all get caught.”
“But you caught him with the damn money!”
Longarm shook his head. “Don’t mean a damn thing. I had to be able to get at least two more federal bank examiners to swear that what the crook done wasn’t proper and part of procedure, and that took some little doing. Billy Vail said that at best I could be out of a job and at worst might go to prison for drawing a gun on a high government official. I tell you, it was nip and tuck there for a while.”
“How’d you finally get him?” Austin Davis was looking puzzled and worried.
Longarm shrugged. “Well, it took a little bit of luck. A bunch of bankers who’d lost money every time the examiner paid them a visit come forward and helped out. But the biggest help was the man’s wife. She got spiteful because she was pretty sure he was running around on her, and she come forward and told us where we could find an account he had hidden that had better than a hundred thousand dollars in it.” Longarm gave Davis a look. “Bank examiners don’t make that kind of money.”
Davis said, “Yeah, but wait a minute. Hell, we are a branch of the government. Why the hell should a bank examiner carry more clout than a deputy marshal?”
Longarm explained. “Because we’re on the rough side of the bench. We carry guns. Some folks ain’t sure we’re the law or outlaws. We are supposed to be willing to risk our lives for poor pay and no credit and be damn grateful and damn quiet about it.”
Davis was riled. “Why, that is a hell of a note.”
“Ain’t it? Listen, to have any whack in the government you need a desk and a couple of clerks to write outraged letters for you. I tell you, before that deal was over with the bank examiner had the Federal Reserve system down on us and the Treasury department and I don’t know who all. All Billy Vail done for about a month was answer letters and telegrams that would burn your hand you picked one up. Didn’t make me any too popular with him.”
“But he knowed you done right, didn’t he?”
Longarm sighed and shook his head. “Austin, that part don’t make a damn. I put my boss to considerable trouble. Right or wrong, he didn’t care for it. He told me—and I ain’t too sure he was kidding—that next time he’d appreciate it if I’d just shoot the sonofabitch and not bring him in.”
Davis suddenly cocked his head and stared at Longarm. “Would you be telling me this story for a reason?” he asked.
“I might.”
“Would this have anything to do with the customs people?”
Longarm shrugged. “I don’t know. I would reckon, at a guess, that they are a close-knit bunch. I reckon they wouldn’t want it getting around that any of them are crooked, if you take my meaning.”
Davis looked angry. “Are you telling me that if we catch that sonofabitch Caster, and any other fish we can get in the net, we are going to have political pressure put on us? Are you telling me that because they belong to a big outfit like Customs, we are going to get some grief?”
Longarm held his hands out, palm upwards. “They is a bunch of them. They got a strong union. They collect a lot of tariffs. Bring in a lot of money. What do you want me to say?”
Davis was outraged. “I think it’s a damn sin, is what I think!” He leaned forward, jabbing his forefinger. “Listen, Longarm, I got two months in, working on this job. I put in some piss-poor days scouting the back country of Mexico and, believe me, that ain’t no church social. I put in enough time hanging around cattlemen’s saloons to be a drunk. I’ve took more than my fair share of chances. That sonofabitch is guilty. And so is his boss in Brownsville! And I can prove it. And now you come along and tell me we might not can make it stick? Hell!”
Longarm lifted his hands. “Wasn’t it you that said we jerk on the rope down here when we arrest Caster, they’ll feel the tug in Washington? I ain’t got no friends in Washington, D.C. Do you?”
“Hell!” Davis said again. He sat back in his seat and folded his arms. “This makes me mad as hell.” Then he glanced at Longarm, a glint of suspicion in his eye. “You ain’t playing me for the greenhorn, are you? This ain’t another one of your tall tales just to tie a can to my tail?”