by Robert Knott
THE SPENSER NOVELS
Robert B. Parker’s Kickback
(by Ace Atkins)
Robert B. Parker’s Cheap Shot
(by Ace Atkins)
Silent Night
(with Helen Brann)
Robert B. Parker’s Wonderland
(by Ace Atkins)
Robert B. Parker’s Lullaby
(by Ace Atkins)
Sixkill
Painted Ladies
The Professional
Rough Weather
Now & Then
Hundred-Dollar Baby
School Days
Cold Service
Bad Business
Back Story
Widow’s Walk
Potshot
Hugger Mugger
Hush Money
Sudden Mischief
Small Vices
Chance
Thin Air
Walking Shadow
Paper Doll
Double Deuce
Pastime
Stardust
Playmates
Crimson Joy
Pale Kings and Princes
Taming a Sea-Horse
A Catskill Eagle
Valediction
The Widening Gyre
Ceremony
A Savage Place
Early Autumn
Looking for Rachel Wallace
The Judas Goat
Promised Land
Mortal Stakes
God Save the Child
The Godwulf Manuscript
THE JESSE STONE NOVELS
Robert B. Parker’s The Devil Wins
(by Reed Farrel Coleman)
Robert B. Parker’s Blind Spot
(by Reed Farrel Coleman)
Robert B. Parker’s Damned If You Do
(by Michael Brandman)
Robert B. Parker’s Fool Me Twice
(by Michael Brandman)
Robert B. Parker’s Killing the Blues
(by Michael Brandman)
Split Image
Night and Day
Stranger in Paradise
High Profile
Sea Change
Stone Cold
Death in Paradise
Trouble in Paradise
Night Passage
THE SUNNY RANDALL NOVELS
Spare Change
Blue Screen
Melancholy Baby
Shrink Rap
Perish Twice
Family Honor
THE COLE/HITCH WESTERNS
Robert B. Parker’s The Bridge
(by Robert Knott)
Robert B. Parker’s Bull River
(by Robert Knott)
Robert B. Parker’s Ironhorse
(by Robert Knott)
Blue-Eyed Devil
Brimstone
Resolution
Appaloosa
ALSO BY ROBERT B. PARKER
Double Play
Gunman’s Rhapsody
All Our Yesterdays
A Year at the Races
(with Joan H. Parker)
Perchance to Dream
Poodle Springs
(with Raymond Chandler)
Love and Glory
Wilderness
Three Weeks in Spring
(with Joan H. Parker)
Training with Weights
(with John R. Marsh)
G. P. PUTNAM’S SONS
Publishers Since 1838
An imprint of Penguin Random House LLC
375 Hudson Street
New York, New York 10014
Copyright © 2016 by The Estate of Robert B. Parker
Penguin supports copyright. Copyright fuels creativity, encourages diverse voices, promotes free speech, and creates a vibrant culture. Thank you for buying an authorized edition of this book and for complying with copyright laws by not reproducing, scanning, or distributing any part of it in any form without permission. You are supporting writers and allowing Penguin to continue to publish books for every reader.
eBook ISBN 978-1-101-98254-9
This is a work of fiction. Names, characters, places, and incidents either are the product of the author’s imagination or are used fictitiously, and any resemblance to actual persons, living or dead, businesses, companies, events, or locales is entirely coincidental.
Version_1
CONTENTS
Other Robert B. Parker Novels
Title Page
Copyright
Dedication
Chapter 1
Chapter 2
Chapter 3
Chapter 4
Chapter 5
Chapter 6
Chapter 7
Chapter 8
Chapter 9
Chapter 10
Chapter 11
Chapter 12
Chapter 13
Chapter 14
Chapter 15
Chapter 16
Chapter 17
Chapter 18
Chapter 19
Chapter 20
Chapter 21
Chapter 22
Chapter 23
Chapter 24
Chapter 25
Chapter 26
Chapter 27
Chapter 28
Chapter 29
Chapter 30
Chapter 31
Chapter 32
Chapter 33
Chapter 34
Chapter 35
Chapter 36
Chapter 37
Chapter 38
Chapter 39
Chapter 40
Chapter 41
Chapter 42
Chapter 43
Chapter 44
Chapter 45
Chapter 46
Chapter 47
Chapter 48
Chapter 49
Chapter 50
Chapter 51
Chapter 52
Chapter 53
Chapter 54
Chapter 55
Chapter 56
Chapter 57
Chapter 58
Chapter 59
Chapter 60
Chapter 61
Chapter 62
Chapter 63
Chapter 64
Chapter 65
Chapter 66
Chapter 67
Chapter 68
Chapter 69
Chapter 70
Chapter 71
Chapter 72
Chapter 73
Chapter 74
Chapter 75
Chapter 76
Acknowledgments
For Julie
1.
Ruth Ann was running now, moving as fast as she could through the dense forest. The Comanche moon hanging directly above dimly lit her way through thick timber of pine, blackjack, birch, and maple.
There were no shoes on her bloody feet and what was left of her dress was ripped, soiled, and hanging off her bare shoulders. She was dirty, with leaves and sticks tangled in her auburn hair. She glanced back as she ran. She was terrified, her face tearstained, scratched, and bleeding, and her eyes were wide with fear and . . . then he awoke. It was not the first time Roger W
ayne Messenger awoke from this vision, this nightmare of Ruth Ann running through the woods, and he was fairly certain it would not be his last.
Roger sat up a little and worked the ache from his back. His mouth was dry and his head was pounding. With the exception of the dampness he found in the corners of his eyes, the rye whiskey he consumed on the journey sucked his body of all its moisture. His mouth was so parched his lips were stuck together. He sat up and looked around at the dark landscape passing by. All of the other passengers were asleep. He wished he, too, was asleep, but sleep was something he had not been accustomed to for some time. He dug into his knapsack and found his canteen and drank and drank.
Roger was a big, lean, and strong man with thick, dark hair that was three inches long on the top and cropped tight to the sides of his head. He was normally clean-shaven around his sweeping thick mustache, but at the moment he was sporting three days of whiskers. He wore a brown herringbone suit that was usually pressed over a starched white shirt, but currently his attire was crumpled from days of neglect.
When Roger stepped off the morning train in Appaloosa, he snugged his brown wide-brim with rolled edges over his square forehead and walked into town. He stopped at S. Q. Johnson’s Grocery and bought a can of beans. He sat under the shade of the store’s overhang, opened the can with his army knife, and ate the beans using the blade. When he finished he went about the task he’d come to Appaloosa to accomplish.
He poked his head in the door of Cheever’s Saddle shop and asked the old-timer tanning a large hide for directions to his destination. Then he walked seven blocks, turned south on Main Street, and went two more blocks to the construction site.
It was an impressive building. Three stories tall and at least seventy-five feet wide, with a second-story covered porch that had five sets of glassed double doors across the balcony. To Roger’s untrained eye the structure appeared to be nearly complete, but the building was busy with construction workers.
Roger thought about just walking into the place, but decided he would watch for a while, watch and wait. He was good at watching and waiting; it was part of his job, and now that he was here, he was not in any hurry. Better to be patient. Better to wait.
He stood across the street, watching all the laborers going about their business. There were painters on scaffoldings painting a second coat of white and carpenters on the boardwalk, assembling wood pieces and going about other various tasks of measuring and sawing, remeasuring and resawing.
A team of mules pulling a flatbed stopped in front of the stairs leading up to the entrance with a load of hardwood. Roger rolled and lit a cigarette as he watched a few of the teamsters unload the flatbed and stack the shiny planks neatly on the boardwalk under a wide leaded-glass window.
He thought about the amount of money it must take for an impressive undertaking such as this. He had no idea, but then again, this line of business was something that Roger was just not all that familiar with.
Roger watched and waited. He moved off the boardwalk and found a comfortable spot in the narrow alley between an upholstery shop and a dry-goods store, where he had a good view of the goings-on across the street. His head was still throbbing and he felt a little dozy, but he remained alert by nipping on the second bottle of rye he had in his knapsack and rolling and smoking cigarettes. He had plenty of both.
At nearly ten-thirty a slender sorrel pulling a two-seater buggy with a covered backseat rounded the corner and stopped in front of the building. An older, portly man with bushy white muttonchops and wearing a flattop brushed beaver hat sat in the backseat. Next to him was an attractive young woman wearing a plum-colored dress with a high collar.
They remained under the shaded cover, looking at the building for a long while. Then the man worked his way butt first out of the buggy’s backseat.
Roger smiled to himself as he watched the round man struggle to get his chubby frame out of the backseat. When he was out of the buggy and standing, supporting his stance with the aid of a polished black cane, he removed his hat and wiped sweat from his forehead with a handkerchief. The young woman remained in the buggy. She leaned out and her eyes caught a little sunlight before she sat back in the shade of the buggy.
“Come back, pick me up by two o’clock,” he said to the driver, “two o’clock sharp.”
“Sir,” the driver said with a tip of his brim, and then clucked the sorrel and moved off down the street, with the young woman still aboard and leaving the portly man looking up to the building. He turned, walked a few steps toward the middle of the wide street, stopped, then turned and looked back up at the building.
It was obvious to Roger the man wanted to have a full view of the building, wanted to take in all its grandness. The way the man moved and held his chin high reminded Roger of his own grandfather’s survey after a day of stacking hay in the barn. But this man was no farmer. Roger thought by the way he stood with his fists on his hips holding back the sides of his coat, watching the workers with an appraising eye, that he must be the man with the money, the man in charge or the banker that loaned the business the money.
Then Roger saw him, the man that he had traveled two days on the train to locate. The man known in gambling parlors from New Orleans to San Francisco as Boston Bill Black.
Boston Bill came walking out of the building flanked by two smaller men. It’s not that the men by his side were in any way short or even below average in size, it was simply that Boston Bill was unusually tall. Not unlike Roger—Roger was tall, too—but he was a good hand shorter than Boston Bill. Boston Bill’s head barely cleared the top of the door as he walked out. He was wearing a fancy suit with a green vest that was adorned with a draping gold watch fob.
2.
The tall gambling man that Roger had come searching for in Appaloosa was right here in front of him now. He was a strong, handsome-looking man with silver-streaked black hair and a black-as-coal mustache.
At the moment he had a huge smile on his face as he walked down the steps with his hand extended toward the portly man in the street. The two men with him stayed back behind him a few steps. They both wore dark suits, but they weren’t refined in any way, not like Boston Bill.
Roger could certainly determine that detail about the two men. It was part of his job to quickly assess people and he was good at assessing. He figured if it wasn’t for their long, dirty hair, they might pass for guardsmen, like Dickerson men or Pinkertons or Denver police, even. But hell, they were nothing, no-accounts. One of them was blond and pretty like a woman, Roger thought. The other had deep-set eyes with a scraggly beard. He was skinny and younger than the blond man and a little smaller.
They both were heeled and looked like capable customers to Roger, but he was unconcerned with them. It was the tall man, it was Boston Bill, that Roger was interested in.
Roger knew how to do his job. He’d been at it for a long while, and even though this time the job was personal, he still operated as he had always operated, with ease and friendliness. No need to get all rigged up or emotionally boiling.
“Mr. Pritchard,” Boston Bill said. “Good to see you. How was your trip?”
Before Mr. Pritchard could answer, Roger moved out of the narrow alley and spoke with some volume.
“Mr. Black.”
Roger stepped off the boardwalk and took a few steps into the street. He took a step back and waited as a horse and buggy passed, then continued to walk toward Boston Bill. It’s okay, Roger thought. It is okay.
“I’d like to have a word or two with you,” Roger said. “Just a moment of your time.”
Roger always worked like this. He was as smooth as butter, everyone would say. Boston Bill glanced back at his two seconds, then looked back at Roger. Roger had to slow up again as a horse and rider hurried by.
“I’m sorry,” Boston Bill said. “If you are looking for work, I’m afraid there are no positions available at
this time.”
“Oh, no, no,” he said. “Not looking for any position.”
“Well, what can I help you with, then?”
Roger thought to himself, Just keep it simple; just keep it calm. Roger had done this sort of thing at least one hundred times. And like mother always said, “An ounce of kindness Roger, an ounce of kindness is worth, worth . . . something about gold . . . the weight in gold?”
“Just a little business matter,” Roger said.
Boston Bill’s second, the one with the blond hair, stepped forward with a stance that suggested to Roger he thought he was much tougher than he looked.
“That’s far enough,” the blond man said.
Roger smiled.
“There’s no need to concern yourself, young man. This isn’t any of your business.”
The other of Boston Bill’s seconds, the smaller man with the dark beard, took a stance and spoke up with speech that seemed to Roger to be impaired by what looked to be a swollen jaw.
“It is our business,” the man with the dark beard said, and then spit in the street.
Most of the workers stopped what they were doing and turned their attention to Roger.
Boston Bill looked to Mr. Pritchard and nodded toward the entrance of the building.
“Let’s step inside,” he said. “After you, Mr. Pritchard.”
“Just hold on,” Roger said. “Just a moment, I have something you need to see.”
Roger put his hand into his knapsack, and when he did the blond man quickly pulled a butt-forward Colt.
“No,” Roger said. “Just . . .”
Roger had underestimated the essence of the men. He did not expect this, not at all.
There were two quick shots. Gun smoke kicked from the barrel of the blond man’s Colt. Roger was stunned. He stood looking at the smoke that hung almost motionless in the stillness of the late morning.
One of the shots went through the side of Roger’s jacket, missing his torso, but one shot hit him dead center in his midsection. Roger looked down to where the bullet had entered. His hand came out of the knapsack clenching a scrolled paper.
“Oh, lordy,” Roger said.
Roger staggered, falling on his backside on the hard packed dirt, and when he did his jacket opened up to reveal a shiny silver star pinned just over his heart on his gingham vest.
Somebody shouted, “He’s a lawman.”
