LONGARM AND THE RACY LADIES
By Tabor Evans
Synopsis:
U.S. Deputy Marshall Custis Long is on the trail of a gang of counterfeiters who seem to be tied in with a professional horse-racing circuit. The owners of one of the racehorses are a pair of young, female, identical twins who seem just a little too friendly. But are one or both of them mixed up in the counterfeiting gang? The twins, a U.S. senator, his personal assistant and a surly jockey round out Longarm’s list of suspects. 214th novel in the “Longarm” series, 1996.
Jove Books New York Copyright (C) 1996 by Jove Publications, Inc. All rights reserved.
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ISBN: 0-515-11956-3
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A Jove Book / published by arrangement with the author
Printing history Jove edition / October 1996
PRINTED IN THE UNITED STATES OF AMERICA
If you purchased this book without a cover, you should be aware that this book is stolen property. It was reported as “unsold and destroyed” to the publisher, and neither the author nor the publisher has received any payment for this “stripped book.”
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Chapter 1
Longarm lowered the newspaper to his lap and used the left sleeve of his brown tweed coat to wipe away the fine beads of sweat that had popped out on his forehead. He told himself he was sweating because the lobby of the hotel was hot tonight. It wasn’t quite ten o’clock, and the heat from a summer afternoon in New Mexico wouldn’t completely fade away until after midnight. So it couldn’t be a case of nerves making him sweat. Surely not. The big federal lawman was sitting in the lobby of one of the best hotels in Albuquerque. He had ridden down on the train from Denver earlier in the day and met the man he was supposed to contact this evening. Jim Harrelson was a United States deputy marshal, too. At the moment, Harrelson was sitting on the other side of the lobby, wearing a derby hat and a suit with a loud, garish check. He looked like the whiskey drummer he was pretending to be, right down to the reddish nose of a man who too often sampled the wares he was supposed to be selling. That wasn’t a clever bit of camouflage, Longarm knew; Harrelson really did drink too much. But he had to be a good man; otherwise he wouldn’t have been assigned to this case.
Longarm lifted the newspaper again and rattled it a little as he turned a page. Across the lobby, Harrelson joined in the raucous laughter of the men with him, who actually were traveling salesmen of various stripes.
From the corner of his eye, Longarm looked through the big plate-glass front window of the hotel and saw the two men sitting on the porch. Saw the backs of their heads, actually, since they were facing the street. They looked like drifting cowhands, but in truth they were lawmen too. Longarm knew their names: Bud Seeley and Horace Truelove. Ol’ Horace’s handle had brought a smile to Longarm’s face when Jim Harrelson had pointed them out to him earlier in the evening. There would be time enough later, after the job that had brought them all here was done, for proper introductions.
It was getting on toward time for Nowlan to make his appearance, Longarm thought.
Longarm wasn’t often partnered with other deputies. Chief Marshal Billy Vail knew quite well his top man’s preference for working alone. But in a case like this, Vail hadn’t been willing to take a chance. Uncle Sam had been after Edward Nowlan for more than a year, and after receiving a tip that the master counterfeiter was in Albuquerque, four deputies, including Longarm, had converged on the city at Vail’s orders. The word was that Nowlan had a big operation here in New Mexico.
It was about to be shut down.
Longarm turned another page in the newspaper. He wasn’t reading the words printed there. The paper was just a prop so that folks wouldn’t think there was anything odd about the way he was lingering here in the hotel lobby. Harrelson had ingratiated himself with the drummers for the same reason. Seeley and Truelove could loiter as long as they wanted on the porch, since people did that all the time. All four of them were ready to move at the appropriate moment.
Longarm hoped that would be damned soon. He was getting tired of waiting.
A footstep on the stairs made him glance over the top of the newspaper. A tall, thin man in a town suit was coming down the stairs. Longarm recognized the man’s spindly build, the narrow face, the lank, fair hair under the hat. It was Edward Nowlan, right enough, and from the way he moved briskly across the lobby and out the front door, he was on his way to do some business.
As Nowlan turned right and strode off down the boardwalk, Bud Seeley and Horace Truelove stood up, stretched casually, and sauntered in the same direction. A few moments later, Jim Harrelson made his excuses to his new-found cronies and left the lobby as well, pausing just outside the door of the hotel to light a cigar before moving on. Longarm saw the signal over the top edge of the newspaper.
He waited a couple of minutes, then closed and folded the paper, leaving it on the overstuffed armchair as he stood up and straightened the brim of his snuff-brown Stetson. His hand went underneath his coat to his vest pocket and brought out a slim, black cheroot. Without lighting it, he put the cheroot in his mouth and went over to the desk.
The clerk on duty, a young man with pomaded hair, hadn’t paid any attention to the comings and goings in the lobby. He was absorbed instead in a yellow-backed dime novel, but he looked up when Longarm cleared his throat.
“Where’s the best place to get a drink around here, old son?” asked Longarm.
“Well, the closest place is the Paris Saloon, just down the street,” the desk clerk said.
“I asked for the best place, not the closest.”
“Why, the Paris is just fine, mister. You won’t find colder beer or better whiskey in Albuquerque.”
Longarm wondered just how much the proprietor of the Paris Saloon paid the clerk to steer customers his way. Probably not much, maybe just a free drink now and then. But the question had served its purpose, so Longarm didn’t argue. He just nodded, said, “Thanks,” and left the hotel lobby.
The street outside still had quite a bit of traffic on it despite the late hour. Wagons and buggies rolled along on the paving stones, riders guided their mounts between the vehicles, and pedestrians strolled on the boardwalks. Albuquerque was a bustling place, located as it was not only on the Rio Grande River but also at the intersection of two major trails, one running north and south, the other east and west. The city was ringed with snow-capped mountains on three sides, giving it a picturesque appearance, but the basin in which it lay trapped the heat and made the coolness of the surrounding peaks that much more appealing by contrast. Longarm had been to Albuquerque many times before and liked the town. He wasn’t on a sight-seeing trip tonight, however. He turned to his right, spotted Jim Harrelson loitering underneath a street lamp about four blocks away, and started toward him.
The other deputy must have seen Longarm too, because he resumed his walk along the street. All four of the lawmen were on the trail of Nowlan, one of them sticking close, the other three coming along behind at a distance so they would be less likely to be noticed. A man as cunning as Nowlan might have somebody watching his back.