Bo caught hold of the shoulder of the man who’d come to the office and turned him so that his face was in the light. “Your name wouldn’t happen to be Devery, too, would it?” Bo asked in a hard voice.
“Devery? Hell, no! My name’s Ernie Bond. I drive a freight wagon. I don’t have anything to do with the Deverys, other than the fact that I don’t like ’em much.”
The man seemed to be telling the truth. Bo figured that he and Scratch would have to accept it for now and check out the situation at Bella’s.
“Then lead the way,” Bo ordered.
Ernie Bond gulped and looked like he would have rather done just about anything other than head back to the whorehouse, but he nodded and said, “Sure.” He took off trotting along the boardwalk.
Bo and Scratch followed, their long legs allowing them to keep up with the smaller Ernie without much trouble.
They took the first cross street and cut over to Grand. The word must have gotten around town that there was some sort of trouble developing over at Bella’s, because quite a few men were hurrying in that direction besides Bo, Scratch, and Ernie Bond. The ones who were slower got out of the way of the lawmen.
Ernie had said that Bella’s was the biggest whorehouse in Mankiller. It lived up to that billing, Bo saw as they approached. The building took up half a block. Its windows were covered with thick curtains. The bottom half of the heavy front door featured elaborate woodworking, while the upper half had a pane of leaded glass surrounded by gold trim set into it. Painted on the glass in gold leaf was the simple legend BELLA’S PLACE. That was the only explanation anybody in Mankiller needed. Everybody knew what went on here.
Men clustered on the porch, pressing their faces to the glass as they tried to catch a glimpse through any tiny gaps in the curtains. More men were gathered in front of the door. Bo raised his voice and said, “All right, everybody step back. Let us through.”
Some of the men started guiltily and got out of the way. Others were slower and more sullen about it, but they stepped aside after a moment.
Bo nodded to Ernie Bond and said, “All right, thanks for bringing us here. You don’t have to go in.”
“I won’t, then,” the little townie said. “There’s liable to be bullets flyin’ around in there before it’s over!”
Bo hoped not, but he was prepared for anything as he opened the door and he and Scratch stepped into the whorehouse. They had their hands on their guns as they entered.
They found themselves in a foyer with a polished hardwood floor and fancy wallpaper. An oil lamp in a brass sconce lit the place up, revealing an arched entrance that led into a parlor to the left. A beaded curtain hung over the entrance. Straight ahead was a wide staircase with a carved banister.
Several women were clustered at the bottom of the stairs. The one in front was middle-aged but still quite attractive, with bright red hair piled high on her head in an elaborate arrangement of curls. She wore a sea-green gown cut low enough to reveal the pale swells of her breasts. The women behind her on the stairs were all considerably younger and skimpier dressed, so Bo pegged the redhead as Bella and the others as the soiled doves who worked here.
That thought was all he had time for before a loud crash came from inside the parlor.
“Thank God you’re here!” the redhead exclaimed. She waved a handkerchief that she had clutched in one hand toward the parlor. “They’ve gone loco! They’re going to tear the whole place up!”
“No, ma’am, they won’t,” Bo said. “Not if we can do anything about it. Is that Thad Devery in there?”
“Yes, and his cousins Reuben and Simeon. George tried to settle them down when they got upset, but I’m afraid they’ve killed him!”
That accusation made things even more serious. Bo and Scratch drew their guns as they turned toward the parlor.
“You and your gals better get upstairs, ma’am,” Scratch said.
Bella turned and began shooing the whores up the stairs like a mother hen chasing a bunch of chicks across a barnyard.
“I’m sure smellin’ a trap,” Scratch went on as he and Bo paused at the beaded curtain.
“Me, too,” Bo agreed, “but we’ve got to go in there anyway.” Sounds of destruction continued to come from the parlor.
There was a splintering crash just as the Texans stepped into the room. Bo saw a man holding two of the legs of a chair he had just smashed against the floor. A glance around the room revealed furniture overturned and broken, paintings ripped down from the walls and torn to pieces, and shards of glass scattered across the floor where glasses had been shattered. It looked almost like a cyclone had hit the place.
In addition to the man holding the busted chair, two more men were in the room. They had hold of a piano, and from the looks of it, they were about to try to tip it over. Bo leveled his gun at them while Scratch covered the other man.
“Hold it!” Bo snapped. He recognized one of the men at the piano as Thad Devery. The other two shared a family resemblance. They would be Luke’s brothers Reuben and Simeon.
“Drop those chair legs,” Scratch ordered the man he was covering.
“Go to hell!” the man yelled. “Nobody tells a Devery what to do!”
“You better listen to me, boy,” Scratch warned. “I’ll blow your legs right out from under you if I have to, and you’ll never walk right again.”
Thad took his hands off the piano and stepped back from the instrument. “Do what he says, Sim,” he told his cousin. “That old bastard’s crazy enough to do it.”
Glaring murderously at Scratch, Simeon Devery dropped the chair legs.
“What in blazes is going on here?” Bo asked.
“That’s none of your business,” Thad snapped at him.
“I reckon it is. You fellas are disturbing the peace if I ever saw it. This is wanton destruction of property, too. If you don’t have a mighty good explanation for all this, I’d say you’re facing some serious charges, Thad.”
“We had a right,” Reuben Devery said. “We paid our money, and then the gal said no. A whore can’t say no. It ain’t fittin’.”
“Yeah, it’s Bella you ought be threatenin’ to arrest,” Simeon added. “She tried to cheat us. Said she wasn’t gonna make the gal do what we wanted, and she wasn’t gonna give us our money back, neither!”
“Wait a minute,” Bo said as his eyes narrowed. “Are you talking about one girl?”
“One whore, you mean,” Thad said with his customary sneer that made his almost deformed face even uglier.
“And the three of you…”
“That’s right. You got a problem with that, lawman?”
“I do, you damned degenerate,” Scratch said. “I ought to do the world a favor and just gun down the three of you here and now.”
“Take it easy,” Bo told his old friend. “We’ll do this according to the law.” He motioned with his Colt. “The three of you take out your guns, nice and easy, and put them on the floor. Don’t make any sudden moves, and don’t try anything funny.”
“Reckon they already did that with the whore,” Scratch muttered.
“You got no right,” Thad insisted. “Deverys don’t answer to the law. Deverys are the law.”
“Not anymore,” Bo said. “Not after today.”
A groan came from behind an overturned sofa. A husky figure started to rise into view. Bo glanced in that direction and saw a bald-headed black man with blood dripping down his face from an ugly cut on his forehead. He recalled Bella’s comment about the Deverys killing somebody called George and figured this man was the house’s bouncer and bodyguard. One of the troublemakers must have walloped him and knocked him out, and now he had come to.
Taking his attention off Thad Devery was a mistake. Scratch shouted, “Watch it, Bo!”