Longarm gave him a sour look. He said, "I don't mind the work, Billy, but it appears to me that you're sending me off on a wild-goose chase. I'm the senior deputy here. Why don't you send one of these kids?"
Billy sat up in his chair. He said, "Oh, you think the job ain't big enough for you?"
"No, I don't."
Billy Vail had given Longarm his cat-and-mouse smile. He said, "You ever heard of the Whiskey Rebellion, Custis?"
Longarm thought a moment. "No, can't say that I have."
The chief marshal said, "Then I reckon that I'm going to have to add to your education. The Whiskey Rebellion took place in 1794 in Pennsylvania. There was a bunch of moonshiners up in the Allegheny Mountains that didn't want to pay the tax on the whiskey they were making. So Alexander Hamilton sent some militiamen up to put a stop to what they were getting away with. Before it was all over, he had to send fifteen thousand men in to do the job. Now, look at the compliment I'm paying you. It took fifteen thousand men in Pennsylvania; hell, I ain't sending but one man."
Longarm gave his boss another sour smile. He said, "Billy, that old dog ain't going to hunt. I'll go because you ordered me to go and because I don't have a choice, but I'm going to guarantee you one thing: I ain't going to enjoy myself, I ain't going to have a good time, and I'm going to think bad thoughts about you the whole time I'm gone."
Billy Vail said, "Then this job won't be no different than the rest, right?"
Now Longarm sat in his hotel room and wondered exactly how to attack the problem. He had little enough information to go on. It was thought that the big transactions were handled in the Little Rock area. No one was certain where the majority of the moonshining business went on. It was generally guessed that a good deal of it went on about fifty miles northeast of Little Rock in Yale County, which was peopled by a fierce and ingrown set of clans that didn't like strangers and didn't even much like each other. Longarm had decided that the best way to approach the situation was to pick up a thread in Little Rock where the money and whiskey were changing hands and then follow it backward to its source. He had no earthly idea how he was going to do such a thing.
Billy Vail had specifically warned him about going into the back country and nesting around the suspicious backwoodsmen who were more than likely the original source for the whiskey. He had said, "Custis, I know that country. There's little hollers and cutbacks and groves and valleys back there in those Ozark Mountains where you can be right square in the middle of an anthill full of people before you know it and they ain't going to be the least damn bit friendly. Your job is to find out how the transactions are taking place, how that raw moonshine is getting shipped north in those ten-gallon demijohns. You ain't supposed to be trying to run this thing completely into the ground."
But Longarm didn't think that plan was completely sound. Little Rock was nestled in a broad valley on the south end of the craggy Ozark Mountains. He'd stood in the street that very day and stared off into the distance into the rough, wild, forbidding country that he could see from there. He knew the people were hostile to strangers. He knew that the wrong questions asked in the wrong place could bring a bullet quicker than a hiccup, but he had to cast about for some way to put the whole package together. He didn't care to go by halves. He didn't want to just unearth the money and whiskey transactions as Billy Vail called them. He wanted to wrap up the whole package and not hand it over half-done to some Treasury official who hadn't gotten out from behind his desk in six months.
Billy Vail's idea had been to go down to Little Rock and start throwing money around. He said, "Hell, start acting like a big butter-and-egg man from the West who has decided to be a big butter-and-egg-and-whiskey man from the West. Go down there and flash a little green and gold in front of them. Before you know it, somebody will be coming up offering to sell you some wagon-loads of raw moonshine."
The only problem with the idea was that Billy Vail's idea of moving money around was to move a silver dollar from his left hand to his right. When Longarm had asked him where he was supposed to get this money to throw around, Billy Vail had graciously offered to allow Longarm to draw a couple hundred dollars in advance. Longarm just stared at him. He said, "Hell, Billy, I've got more than that in my hip pocket right now."
Billy said, "That's real good. You can use your own money for a change and quit taking advantage of the government."
For no good reason, Longarm was intrigued by Frank Carson. He had nothing concrete to connect the man to the illegal whiskey trade except a hunch and his lawman instinct. The man had told an unnecessary lie and Longarm couldn't figure out why. He had said that he was just passing through, but he had also said that he would see that Morton Colton would never play poker in that town again. Carson had tried to laugh it off, but it still stuck in Longarm's mind. To keep a man from playing poker in a town meant that you had to have some influence in that town and someone just passing through didn't have that kind of influence. But if you happened to be one of the movers and shakers in the whiskey trade, even though you didn't live in Little Rock and only came down to transact some business from time to time, you would have the kind of power that could keep a man from playing poker in the town ever again.
Strangely enough, he had no feelings one way or another about Morton Colton. He had just seemed like a damned fool that had gotten in over his head trying to cheat the wrong kind of folks. Maybe he did have connections with the sheriff and maybe he did run with a rough group. That didn't necessarily put him in the whiskey business. But if it did, Longarm had an idea that he wasn't very high up in any organization selling bootleg moonshine in big quantities.
No, of all the leads he had seen thus far, Frank Carson wouldn't leave his mind.
It had been a long day and he was just starting the job, and he wasn't going to be any farther along if he sat up in his room all night long than he would if he went ahead and had a good night's rest. He smoked one more cigarillo, downed one more drink of his good Maryland whiskey, and then blew out the lamp and climbed under the covers with thoughts of several delectable ladies he'd been pleasured to know in the past going through his mind. But he was too tired for such thoughts and it wasn't long before he fell asleep.
CHAPTER 3
Longarm was staying at the Albert Pike Hotel, which was grandly and oddly in contrast to the rest of the small, shabby city. The Albert Pike was a four-story brick affair with a big marble lobby and indoor plumbing. Some of the rooms even had built-in bathtubs. Longarm had been told that the place had been modeled by the builder and owner after the Grand Hotel in Saint Louis. He was glad of the comfort, but he thought it looked a little strange in the shoddy city. Fortunately, it boasted a good dining room and a bar that was quiet and had good brands of whiskey, even the special Maryland blend that he preferred.
He was up early the next morning, dressed and shaved and ready to go about finding a door that would open into the illegal whiskey business.
He sauntered through the resplendent lobby, his boots echoing off the marble floor. There were throw rugs here and there and big overstuffed chairs occupied by men in business suits who were reading newspapers and dropping cigar ashes down their fronts. He found the dining room and went in to the pleasant smell of ham and eggs and baking-soda biscuits. As he stood in the door, he spotted a man from the poker game of the previous day, the one who had been sitting to the left of Morton Colton and who had dealt the hand from the cold deck. Longarm stood a moment, glancing toward the man. He was middle-aged, with a pleasant face, and was wearing a pinched-back suit coat and a white shirt and collar with a foulard tie. On a whim, Longarm decided to walk over and say hello. The man glanced up as he neared and nodded in a friendly way. Longarm came up to his table and stopped. He said, "Well, look here. It seems we meet again."