“That other fella’d be his pard Guzman, another bad ‘un. What’d you say to set ‘em off?”
Longarm shook his head. “Wasn’t me. I just stepped in to keep things from getting out of hand.”
“From the looks of it, you’re the one Rodriguez was holdin’ a grudge against,” Bullfincher pointed out.
“It does look that way,” admitted Longarm.
Bullfincher knelt beside the corpse, grunting with the effort of bending his heavyset body. A fast, efficient search of Rodriguez’s pockets turned up a clasp knife, cigarette makin’s, a few pesos—and a roll of twenty-dollar bills. Bullfincher let out a whistle of surprise. “I’ve heard rumors that Rodriguez and Guzman hold up stagecoaches from time to time. Reckon this must be some of the loot from one of those jobs.”
“Can I take a look at those bills?” asked Longarm.
“Sure, I guess so,” Bullfincher replied with a frown. He handed the money to Longarm, who unrolled the bills. There were five of them, all twenties. Longarm looked at them closely, rubbed his fingers lightly over their surface, then passed them back to Bullfincher. “You’re right, Deputy,” he said. “Must be holdup loot.”
Bullfincher tucked the money into his shirt pocket. “I’ll take it over to the Wells Fargo office later and turn it over to the agent. Right now, let’s go upstairs and take a look at your room.”
Longarm didn’t argue the point, though he wasn’t sure what the deputy sheriff was looking for. They climbed the stairs, ignoring the questions flung at them by the curious folks inside the hotel lobby. As their heavy footsteps echoed along the second-floor corridor, the door of Padgett’s room opened a crack and Leon Mercer peered out. Seeing Longarm, Mercer opened the door wider.
“Are you really all right, Marshal?” he asked. “Those shots were so loud, and the senator is quite concerned.”
“Senator?” echoed Bullfincher. “You didn’t say nothin’ about no senator, Marshal.”
“Hadn’t gotten around to it yet,” Longarm said dryly. “Come on, Leon. Bring the senator too.”
Padgett and Mercer emerged into the hallway, and Longarm quickly performed introductions. Deputy Bullfincher seemed more impressed to be meeting a United States senator than he had been by Longarm’s status as a federal lawman. “You can rest easy, Senator,” Bullfincher said. “One of our local badmen tried to settle a score with the marshal here for a run-in in a cantina earlier, but it didn’t have nothin’ to do with you. Normally Tucson’s a nice, quiet little town.”
Longarm knew that was hardly the case, but he didn’t bother contradicting Bullfincher. Padgett didn’t give him a chance to anyway. The senator said, “You’re wrong, Deputy. What happened tonight is my fault. You see, Marshal Long was protecting me when he got in that fight earlier. I provoked it.” He added quickly, “Not intentionally, of course.
Bullfincher’s bushy eyebrows rose in surprise. “You, Senator? Startin’ a fight in a cantina?” His tone made it clear how difficult that was for him to believe.
Padgett winced and said, “Let’s not spread that around, shall we? I never dreamed one of those men would come back and … and try to kill Marshal Long!”
“You hurt a Mex’s pride, he has a hard time gettin’ over it,” said Bullfincher. He pointed a stubby forefinger at the door of Longarm’s room, which still stood open. “Looky there. Rodriguez left you a souvenir, all right.”
A dagger with a long, thin blade was still stuck in the door.
Longarm stepped over to it, took hold of the handle, and wrenched the blade free. He handed the weapon to Bullfincher. “You’d better keep it for evidence. I don’t need it.”
“Yeah, I reckon you’re right. If there’s ever any question about any o’ this, that dagger’s proof Rodriguez tried to kill you. We’ll hold an inquest tomorrow, but there ain’t no doubt in my mind the jury’ll make a findin’ of self-defense.”
“The inquest will have to be tomorrow morning, Deputy,” Padgett said. “There’s a horse race tomorrow afternoon. That’s why we’re all here.”
“Shoot, yeah, we can do it in the mornin’, I reckon. Ten o’clock all right?”
Longarm nodded.
“Well, I better see about havin’ that body hauled off,” Bullfincher said with a sigh. “And you best sleep with one eye open, Marshal Long. If Rodriguez was gunnin’ for you, chances are Guzman is too.”
“We’ll all be careful, Deputy,” Padgett said. “Thank YOU.”
Bullfincher shuffled off. Leon Mercer rubbed a hand over his face and said in a low voice, “Dear Lord, what’s going to happen next?”
“Nothing, I hope,” said Longarm. “I want to get some sleep.”
“But how can you sleep knowing that somewhere out there a man may well want to kill you?”
“Leon, old son, I reckon there hasn’t been a night pass since I pinned on a law badge when somebody, somewhere, hasn’t wanted to see me dead.”
“Well, you can be nonchalant if you like,” Mercer said with a sniff, “but I know that I don’t intend to close my eyes this entire night.”
“Come on, Leon,” Padgett said, putting a hand on his assistant’s shoulder. “I never thought that I’d be the one saying this, but we still have work to do.”
“You’re right, of course, Senator …”
The two of them disappeared back into Padgett’s room. Longarm went into his own room, closing and locking the door behind him. He blew out the lamp so he wouldn’t be silhouetted. Then a quick look out the window told him how Rodriguez had gotten into the room. A knotted lasso hung out there, leading up to the false third floor. Rodriguez had climbed onto the roof, tied the rope onto something, placed it through the window above Longarm’s in the building’s false front, and climbed down hand over hand. Longarm took his own folding knife from his pocket, opened it, and cut the rope as high up as he could reach. Then he closed the window, took off his boots, coat, vest, and tie, and stretched out on the bed. He had seen Janice and Julie Cassidy in the crowd downstairs and had met their eyes long enough to assure them that he was all right. He hoped they wouldn’t wait until later and then show up at his door expecting a few hours of romping. Not that such a prospect wouldn’t be delightful—most of the time. Tonight, though, Longarm wanted to think.
He would have sworn that the bad blood between him and the two Mexicans had been put aside following the fight in the cantina. At least, enough so that Rodriguez shouldn’t have been lurking in his hotel room waiting to ambush him.
But there was nothing saying that Rodriguez couldn’t have had another reason for trying to kill him. An even better reason. A hundred better reasons, come to think of it, because while Longarm was willing to let Deputy Bullfincher believe that the money Rodriguez had been carrying had come from a stagecoach holdup, Longarm didn’t think that was the case at all. It was blood money, paid for his blood. He was certain of it. The bills had told him something else too.
For the first time, he was absolutely sure that his hunch had been correct. He was on the right trail.
And from here on out, it would probably just get more perilous.
As Deputy Bullfincher had predicted, the coroner’s jury found that Longarm had acted in self-defense in the killing of Rodriguez, and they stopped just short of congratulating him for a job well done.
Longarm headed for the racetrack as soon as the inquest was concluded. Senator Padgett was anxious to get out there and see how preparations for the race were going. Cy had put Caesar through some practice runs early that morning, and O’Malley reported that the times had been good. “The track’s fast today, Senator,” the Irishman said. “‘Tis a good feelin’ I be havin’ about this race.”
“I hope you’re right,” Padgett said. “I’m ready to win one for a change.”
Longarm found himself cornered in the paddock by Janice and Julie. “What in the world happened last night?” Janice demanded. “We heard a lot of shooting, and everyone said that you were involved.”