by Ed Gorman
“Envelopes,” Wayland said. “More of a waste of time. Now will you answer my question, Marshal? When can we leave town?”
I said, “Fairbain sent James four of these. James’s wife claims that James knew something and that’s why Fairbain sent him cashier’s checks.”
They managed to look conspicuously innocent.
“That’s between Fairbain and James,” Wayland said.
“And you of course wouldn’t know anything about it, either, I suppose?” I said to Brinkley.
“Hell, no, I don’t. The only time I ever saw Fairbain was when we were together in town here. Otherwise we didn’t keep any contact. I had no idea what he did.”
I slid all four of the envelopes into my pocket. “I’ll bet you’ve heard the word ‘blackmail’ before.”
“What’s that supposed to mean?” Wayland said.
“Somebody was blackmailing Fairbain,” I said.
“So?”
“So, Wayland, maybe you knew why he was being blackmailed. Or maybe the same blackmailer was getting money from you.”
“Hardly. And as Brinkley said, I didn’t know anything about Fairbain except what he told us when we were together in town here.”
“Spenser must have known,” I said. “He was killed, too.”
“I still don’t see what that has to do with us,” Wayland said.
I smiled at Wickham. “Have you ever seen such a pair of innocents?”
“Not since I made my First Communion,” he said. “The gun they were after gets stolen, two of their cohorts get killed, and at least one of their group looks like he was paying blackmail money. And these two don’t know anything about any of it.”
“They must sleep a lot,” I said.
“An awful lot,” Wickham said.
“This is all very funny,” Brinkley said, “but it’s also a waste of time.” He stood up. “Unless you’re arresting me, Marshal, I plan to walk out of that door over there right now.”
“And the same goes for me,” Wayland said. He stood up, too.
“You’re not being very smart,” Wickham said. “Looks like somebody is after you, but you won’t take any help.”
“The only help I want is to get on that train and get out of here,” Wayland said.
“You could probably sneak on a train or a stage,” Wickham said, “and I wouldn’t be able to stop you. But once I found out you were gone, I’d put out an arrest warrant on you. I know a lot about you by now. No matter where you went, I’d find a way to serve that warrant.”
“Arrest us for what?” Brinkley said.
I said, “Maybe you two knew something that Fairbain and Spenser did. Maybe you’re the blackmailers.”
“This is getting stupider by the minute,” Brinkley said.
“Is it? I’m sure the marshal will be happy to help me search your rooms. Maybe we’ll find something there that’ll clear this whole thing up.”
I was congratulating myself on how deftly I’d bluffed them when Brinkley said, “I can’t speak for Wayland here, but feel free to check my room. In fact, you can go up there now and go through it. Tear it apart for all I care. I’ll even wait right here for you to come back and stammer your way through a few excuses for not finding anything.”
“Same for me,” Wayland said. “You check out my room and I’ll sit here and wait for you.”
See, it’s not supposed to work that way. You’re supposed to bluff them and they’re supposed to get all nervous and sweaty and give you all kinds of legal reasons why you can’t search their rooms and you’d better damned not try.
I’d forgotten that it works the other way sometimes. The bluffer can get outbluffed, too.
“You want to go check out my room or not?” Brinkley said.
I shrugged. “Maybe later.”
He smirked. “Your little bluff didn’t work so well, did it, Federal man?”
“I guess I’ll have to work on it a little more.”
“‘Work on it a little more,’” Brinkley sneered.
They sneered at both Wickham and me, in fact, and then left.
You knew the town had come of age when you saw the tiny window bearing the words REAL ESTATE OFFICE. They were repeated on the glass of the door, in case you missed them on the window.
The interior was short and narrow. One wall had framed lithographs of the president, the territorial governor, and a cranky-looking old bastard who probably founded the town. There was a law about that. All town founders had to look like mountain men and look cranky as hell. Of course most town-founder stories are bullshit. But that’s the law, too. Who wants to hear the truth when you can hear the myth. Maybe he didn’t really hold off six hundred Injuns by himself. But it was better than the truth, hearing that one day he had the trots real bad, stopped off by the river down here, and decided to stay a while. Bloodthirtsy Injuns make for a much better tale.
There were two desks. One was occupied by a gray-haired woman in a blue dress with a high, frilly, white collar. Several of her fingers, working blur fast, inflicted pain on typewriter keys. The keys striking the platen seemed as long as pellet shots in the sun-streaming silence.
The other desk, behind hers, was empty. Behind that desk were three wooden three-door filing cabinets and a large map of the county.
She didn’t look up. She didn’t even stop assaulting the typewriter. She said, “May I help you?”
“Are you the realtor?”
“I am the realtor’s secretary.”
“Well, maybe you could help me.”
Still typing away.
“Are you looking for land, sir?”
“No. Some information on who owns a certain cabin.”
She stopped typing, turned around with great efficiency in her swivel chair. She had a sweet-ugly face, just now showing the loose flesh of age. “Then you would want Mr. Benson.”
“Mr. Benson?”
“Mr. Richard Benson. Sole owner and proprietor of Benson Realty.”
“Benson Realty. I see. It just says Real Estate on the window.”
“Mr. Benson thought of naming the company after himself but he decided it would look vain.”
“A humble realtor. I see.”
“A humble and successful realtor. There are three realtors in the county. We outsold them four to one last year.”
“Maybe he’ll have to reconsider putting his name on the door.”
She caught the sarcasm. “I’m very busy. And Mr. Benson isn’t here and won’t be back until tomorrow. He’s on a train coming back from Denver.”
“And you’re sure you can’t help me?”
“I’d prefer not to. I told somebody something once that I shouldn’t have. It gave another realtor an edge in a deal Mr. Benson was trying to close. Mr. Benson was nice enough not to fire me. But now I’m strictly a secretary. Mr. Benson handles everything else.”
“Like your job, huh?” I looked around. It was an orderly place—I suspected this was due to her—with modern office furnishings and a couple of leather-bound books that no doubt contained photos of everything Benson was selling. Plus there was the sweet scent of furniture polish on the air. This was a place where you could relax and think. You didn’t have all the traffic of a retail store to keep you on edge with insincere goodwill and people trying to haggle you out of your profit.
“Do you see this?” she was saying.
“The typewriter?”
“Only one of three in the entire county.”
“Impressive.”
“And the blond filing cabinets? Only First Montana Bank has filing cabinets as modern as these.”
I nodded. “Nice.”
“And Mr. Benson says that we’ll have the first telephone in town. They’re putting up the poles and lines now.”
She had an owner’s pride. She also suddenly had a child’s enthusiasm. Her face in that moment was not only sweet-ugly. It was also downright cute.
“I’m sorry I can’t help you.”
�
�Oh, that’s all right. I don’t want to get either one of you in trouble.”
She’d been eyeing me closely for the last couple of minutes. Now came the revelation. “You’re David’s brother.”
“That I am.”
“He sure was a charmer.” Then, not wanting to appear foolish: “And quite the businessman. He got Mr. Benson to drop his price considerably for that ranch. He made a lot of inquiries before he came here and when Mr. Benson told him the rental price, your brother said he’d pay so much and nothing more. Mr. Benson isn’t used to that kind of customer. When I was going to get married again—I’m a widow—I had my eye on a nice little house and even for me Mr. Benson would only go so low.”
“So you didn’t buy the house?”
“No, and as it turned out we wouldn’t have needed it anyway. The marshal found another woman.”
“Marshal Wickham?”
She smiled and shook her head. “Don’t look so surprised. Old folks have romances, too. He just found somebody else.” She looked down at her typewriter and then back at me. “I got over it.” But the confidence of the voice didn’t match the wistfulness of the gaze.
I waited for Jane in the room where everybody took their breaks. I waited nearly half an hour. When she came in, she looked tired. She picked up the half-empty coffeepot and waggled it at me. I shook my head and slapped my hand over my empty cup; she filled her cup and came over and sat down. We didn’t say anything. She blew upward on a stray piece of hair lying across her forehead. That didn’t work, so she carefully lifted up the piece of hair and smoothed it back into the rest of her hair.
She started to take a sip of coffee, then stopped. Too hot apparently. She blew on the surface of the black, steaming coffee.
“You all right?”
“Long day. We lost Mr. Hendricks. One of my favorite old men.”
“I’m sorry.”
“You shouldn’t get as attached as I do.”
“Better than not getting attached. People generally know when you’re concerned for them.”
She didn’t say anything. Went back to her coffee.
“I came here to ask you a couple of questions.”
“The Army investigator.”
“That’s right.”
“I hope my head is clear enough to answer. I need a lot of sleep.”
“Hard to sleep?”
“I just lie there and think about your brother.”
Pretty damned unseemly when you come right down to it. How I felt hurt every time she mentioned David romantically. She’d been his woman—one of them, anyway—and I sure didn’t have any claim on her. But every time she mentioned him I felt like a spurned lover.
Then I brought up the island, which I’d been thinking about more and more.
“He ever say anything about maybe hiding the gun on Parson’s Cairn?”
“Not to me, he didn’t. But the more I think about the island, the more I remember him talking about it. He liked it over there. Said he could sit there and finally get some thinking done.”
“He mention what he was thinking about?”
A half-laugh. “I always wanted him to say that he was thinking about me. About us. But he never did.”
“He ever take you there?”
“Huh-uh. I was kind of a stick-in-the-mud, I’m afraid. I wasn’t all that keen on going to the island. All those bugs and quicksand.”
“He ever talk about the hunting cabin there?”
“Oh, yes. Talked it up quite a bit. How comfortable I’d be in it.”
“He ever mention any trouble in the cabin?”
“Trouble?” She watched my face. “I’m not sure what you mean.”
She wanted any scrap of information I could find about him. The more information, the more alive he was in her mind. I told her about the cabin and the blood on the floor.
“Did it look like fresh blood?”
“I don’t think so. Pretty old, in fact.”
“He never mentioned having any trouble there. A lot of different people rented it out for hunting.”
“Yeah, I want to talk to this realtor about the renter list.”
“Dick Benson?”
“Uh-huh.”
She laughed cordially. “He’s actually a very charitable man. But he’d double-charge his own mother for a pup tent. He’s like a drummer in that respect, I suppose. He hates to leave without selling you something—and just about anything’ll do.”
The wall clock fixed her attention. “I’ve got an hour to go on my shift. I need to start working again.”
Sitting there in the sunlight, worn out from work and missing my brother, I knew he would have moved on to another woman soon enough. When you looked at her closely, you saw signs of the worst disease of all—at least to David it had been the worst disease—getting older. I’d figured out long ago that men who constantly need to be around younger and younger women are around them in hopes of denying their own impending old age. How old can I be if I still attract young women? They can get away with it for a time, but then they start looking foolish; and ultimately they look sort of sinister.
I wanted to touch her hand, and for once not out of some stupid sense of romance. She’d be a long time getting over David and by then I’d be long gone. I just wanted the touch to say that she was a good woman and that I felt bad about her grief but that her goodness would get her through it.
But I didn’t touch her hand, of course. She would’ve taken it the wrong way and things were complicated enough.
She walked me to the corridor and then down to the front door. “Just be careful,” she said lightly. “Dick Benson’s got these old monstrosities he’s been trying to unload for years. Everybody who lives here just walks away when he starts his spiel. But he considers strangers prime targets.”
“I’ll be careful. After I get the information I’ll gag him.”
“It’s about time somebody did.”
I drank three cups of coffee and then went for a walk along the river, through the small town park, and then stopped in at the café for some eggs and flapjacks. Nothing tastes better than an afternoon breakfast.
I was just finishing up when Wayland came through the door. He was still wearing that big, new, stupid hat of his. His gaze searched for something, and when it lit on me, he made one of those big surprised looks that stage actors favor.
He came over and sat himself down.
“Did you know that James’s wife Gwen has a lover?”
Every once in a while you get shocked. It doesn’t even have to be true, what somebody tells you. Just the idea of it—even if you scorn it later on as bullshit—just the idea of something your mind finds offensive can shock you. And even the most cynical person in this old vale of tears can be told something that absolutely stuns him.
“Yeah, and General Grant could fly.”
“You don’t understand what I’m saying here.”
“Sure, I do. And that’s why I know it’s bullshit.”
“You’re seeing her as you want to see her. The sweet, faithful wife.”
“Is this supposed to have some bearing on the murders and the gun?”
“It will once I tell you who her lover is.”
“Do I win anything if I guess right?”
“Frank Clarion’s been slipping it to her for more than a year.”
“The deputy? Wickham’s nephew?”
“The one and only. So think about it. James tells his good and faithful wife that he and Tib are going to the ranch to help you bring your brother in. But Frank goes out there first, kills your brother, and then guns down James and Tib.”
“So why would he kill Fairbain and Spenser?”
“You’re not as smart as I thought you were, Ford.” He said this smugly. “You should be way ahead of me on this. He goes to Fairbain and offers him the gun. But Fairbain won’t meet the price. So now he has to kill Fairbain because Fairbain can fink him out. Then he goes to Spenser. Same thing. He wants too much mon
ey and Spenser says no. He kills Spenser. He has to. But who would suspect him? Everybody sees him as this good man doing his job. But just wait about six months or so when this thing’s blown over. His wife’s going to have a little accident. Maybe drowning. Or maybe a fire. Hell, maybe it’ll be his wife and kid. Man kills as easily as he has, he could kill his own kid, too. I’m told killing gets into your blood. But then you’d know all about that, wouldn’t you, Ford? You killed quite a few Rebs during the war. And my understanding is that you still kill people when old Uncle Sam deems it necessary.” He paused. Took a drink of water. “So now Clarion and James’s widow are in the clear. They court for a while and then decide to leave town. By this time, Clarion has sold the gun and has plenty of cash for settling down somewhere else. And nobody around here thinks anything more about it. Everybody’s moved on mentally—there’s plenty of things to worry about besides some murder in the past.”
“That’s quite a story.” By now, it was pretty clear what he was doing—giving me something so I’d give him something.
“If you won’t go after him, I will.”
I ordered a fresh cup of coffee and while I waited for it I rolled a cigarette. After I got my coffee, I said, “Where’d you get all this information?”
“Tib’s wife.”
“Why’d she talk to you?”
“She didn’t want to. Not at first. But then I told her about Tib coming to see me.”
“When was this?”
“Three, four hours before he left for the ranch with you. He asked me how much I’d pay if he double-crossed you and James and got the gun.”
“How was he going to get us out of the way?”
“Kill you. Then blame it on the crossfire. He probably could’ve pulled it off, too.”
“And Tib’s wife told you about Clarion and Gwen Andrews, too?”
“Sure. Tib told her all about it—about them carrying on together with James not knowing anything about it.”
I had to let it settle inside me. That’s the trouble with gossip. You might say bullshit right off the top—and it might indeed be bullshit—but it takes root inside you. Even if it’s proved false to your satisfaction later on, it’s there, in you, in the air. A lot of reputations have been destroyed that way, false rumors; and a lot more will be.
