On an impulse driven by mild curiosity he took a detour on his way out, going downstairs by first going upstairs—in search of the room the desk clerk had intended him to take. He grinned when he found it. Room 32 was large enough to house an alley cat. So long as she didn’t have a litter of kittens with her. As a hotel room, the facility would have made a right fair custodial closet. And in fact may well have been intended for precisely that use—until incipient greed ruled otherwise.
Longarm found himself more amused than annoyed by the clerk’s attempt at one-upmanship. Chuckling silently to himself he nipped the end off a cheroot and spat the fleck of tobacco out, then lighted his smoke and headed downstairs again in search of the town marshal. Chief of police—not anything so old-fashioned and primitive as a town marshal here, thank you—J. Michael Bender was on duty at the small jail-cum-police station on the third floor of City Hall, which was one of several municipal buildings facing Addington’s town square. City Hall and its lawn occupied half of the block lying immediately east of the square. Behind it a hundred yards or so lay the willow-shaded banks of the Neches River. Massive oak trees and some flowering bushes were dotted here and there on the expanse of grass, presumably a public park, between the three-story city building and the river. It was a handsome scene when viewed from the heights of the police chief’s window, and Longarm said SO.
“I see,” Chief Bender mused. “You’ve come here at considerable trouble and expense to tell me you like the view from my office, is that it, Deputy?”
Longarm gave the local a tolerant smile. “Chief, what I came here to do is t’ look into the murder of an employee of the United States of America. Makin’ that murder a federal offense an’ putting it under my jurisdiction. I didn’t come here t’ step on anybody’s toes, least of all yours.”
“You said your name is Long?”
“I did.”
“Then let me tell you something, Deputy Long. You can stand there smug and smiling all day long while you tell me you don’t wish to step on my toes. The fact remains, this is my jurisdiction. Not yours. And I resent your presence here. The mere fact of you being here implies that I cannot be trusted to solve a serious crime. It implies …”
“But I-“
“Dammit, sir, you will not interrupt me when I’m speaking. Do you hear me?”
Longarm grunted. But did not speak. Lordy, no. If he said anything he’d no doubt be accused of interrupting again. Which of course he had done if the man wanted to get real technical about it. Which apparently he did.
One thing about Police Chief Bender, Longarm thought. The man couldn’t be accused of being too shy to speak his mind on things. Not damn likely.
“Now. As I was saying, or attempting to say … your presence is as good as a slap in my face. An implication that the damn-yankee politicians in Washington oppose me. And as I am quite sure both you and they are well aware, sir, we have county elections scheduled in five weeks’ time. I take this to be the first salvo of opposition to me and to my fellow party members. Well, sir, I, that is to say we, are not likely to accept this meekly. We will fight you to the last breath and to the last ballot. I can assure you of that much, deputy. Count on it.”
Bender looked about as belligerent as a bantam rooster strutting through a hen house. Cocky, full of himself, and damned well on the prod for any challenge that might come into view.
And to give the man his due, it could sure as hell look like what the police chief thought—if somebody didn’t know the truth and was so full of politics that he couldn’t see simple answers when the mind was so capable of conjuring up complications.
“Chief, I sure as hell would like t’ make a peace truce with you right here an’ now. I got no use for politics m’self. And I haven’t been told t’ mix into whatever you folks got going on down here. I didn’t know an’ frankly don’t care that you got your county races coming up. I got no idea how good a police chief you are nor what party you an’ your friends belong to an’ given the choice would rather not know. Me, I stay outa all that. All I want, Chief, is t’ do my job. An’ my job is just as simple as simple can be. I wanta find the man that murdered Postmaster Norman Colton. Quick as I got that man, or men, in custody, chief, I’ll be outa your jurisdiction an’ on my way home. An’ that is damn sure the only thing I’m s’posed t’ do here. I mean that. The only thing.”
Bender gave him a look of blunt skepticism, then cleared his throat and looked away.
“T’ help get me outa your hair just as quick as possible, Chief, would you be willing to show me whatever files or records you got relating t’ the death of Postmaster Colton?”
What the hell, Longarm thought. If you couldn’t expect cheerful cooperation, why not look for whatever sort you could get?
Chapter 5
It was just purely amazing, Longarm thought, how in a town no bigger than Addington, Texas, something as unusual as a murder could take place—well, he assumed it was unusual for there to be a murder here although he supposed that was not necessarily true—and yet nobody in town seemed to know a damn thing about it. Even more incredible, nobody in the whole town seemed so much as curious about it.
Nobody made any guesses as to who it was that shot the postmaster. None of the Addington’s citizens seemed inclined even to talk about the murder.
Hell, there was one sawed-off little runt of a fellow who looked Longarm square in the eyes and swore he hadn’t been aware that the postmaster was killed. Incredible!
After a couple hours spent walking through the business district of Addington, Longarm hadn’t managed to find a solitary soul who was willing to talk to him about the murder of a fellow citizen. A man as prominent as the postmaster, at that. Why, a coincidence like that was damn near enough to make Longarm think folks here didn’t want an outsider messing about in their business. Or something.
Still, he had an ace in the hole, a tried-and-true, never-fail method for extracting information—or at the very least some good ol’ rumors—when all else failed. He headed for the nearest barbershop and asked for a shave and a trim. He hadn’t yet met the barber who wasn’t anxious to spill everything he knew to every customer whose butt hit his chair.
“Trim those nose hairs for you, mister?” the barber offered.
“Yes, thanks.” Longarm closed his eyes and let the barber take control, the sound of clattering scissors a pleasant, rather soothing undertone.
“I don’t believe you’ve been in before today, have you?”
“No, sir. New in town.”
“Uh huh.” The barber’s shears clicked and rattled as the man began trimming the back of Longarm’s neck. “Figure to stay a while?”
“Likely not. I have to take care of a little business here, then I’ll have to move along.”
“Uh-huh.” The barber switched to a different set of clippers, the blade chill on Longarm’s skin, and snipped away.
“Somebody on the stagecoach said you had some excitement here a while back,” Longarm ventured.
“Is that so? He must have meant the county fair. You missed that by a couple weeks. Pity too. There was a tent show where if you paid an extra dime you could go into the little tent out back of the big one. They had them some dancing girls there whee-oow, mister, you should of seen them. Took off every stitch, I’m telling you. Every stitch. One of them women, mister, had her pussy hair shaved into the shape of a heart. Now I been a barber going on thirty years and I never seen a thing like that before, let me tell you. And her titties, they were hanging right out, bouncing and jiggling and flopping all over. Yes sir, that was some excitement, all right.” The clippers nipped and rattled as the barber deftly, rapidly squeezed them.