Wilde West

by Walter Satterthwait

  Or had he worn it today, in the rain?

  Grigsby walked over to the closet and opened the door.

  Arranged neatly along the floor were more shoes than he had ever seen together at one time, in any one place outside a shoe store. Beneath him they gleamed and glimmered in the flickering lamplight, boots and brogues and some dainty, delicate things that looked like slippers for a fairy godmother.

  But she would have been a fairly hefty fairy godmother. The slippers were dainty only in construction. In size they were larger than Grigsby’s boots.

  No one could call those feet average. Except maybe an elephant.

  So. The shoes cleared Wilde.

  In a way—and it surprised him—he was glad to learn it. He didn’t much care for nances, but Wilde, at least, had some style. Some balls, too.

  He looked around the closet. Suits, jackets, topcoats, trousers, enough fancy-dan clothes for a regiment of lulu-belles. Pushed against the wall was a large metal steamer trunk, its hasp unlocked. For a moment Grigsby considered opening it. But Wilde’s shoes had proved him innocent of the murders, and anything he happened to be toting along on his travels was none of Grigsby’s business.

  O’Conner’s feet were average, and Grigsby spent some time going through the reporter’s things.

  He found three full bottles of liquor hidden around the room, one under the bed, one in the otherwise empty suitcase in the closet, and one in the bottom drawer of the dresser. This made sense—if you were a drinking man, you made a point of keeping some spare bottles handy.

  There was also a half-filled bottle of liquor on the table by the bed, and Grigsby, being a drinking man, drank some.

  In the top drawer of the dresser he found a cheap cardboard notebook. Opening it, he discovered that only the first page of it had been written upon.

  In cramped, scratchy handwriting, it read:

  O. Wilde.

  Oscar Wilde.

  Oscar Fingal O’Flahertie Wills Wilde.

  That was all.

  What kind of garbage was that? Where were his notes, where were the articles he was supposed to be writing?

  Grigsby flipped through the notebook again. Empty.

  He went back to searching. He found no single-edge knife with a seven-inch blade, and he found no mementos of Molly Woods.

  Like O’Conner’s, Ruddick’s feet were average, and Grigsby spent a fair amount of time searching through the boy’s room. In the closet, as he riffled the pockets of the suitcoats and jackets, the smell of lilacs was so strong that his eyes began to water.

  On the top of the dresser, beside the empty water basin, he found a small painting in a gilt frame that showed a sleek young man, his hands tied above his head, who was naked except for a pair of diapers, and who seemed pretty indifferent to, or maybe even pleased with, all the arrows sprouting from his muscular arms and chest, and the blood trickling elegantly down his oiled flanks. Clara, raised by nuns, had owned a book of Saints; and, from the arrows, Grigsby recognized the young man as St. Sebastian. The patron saint of lulu-belles?

  Inside the dresser, in the top drawer, he found a notebook. He opened it, flipped through pages filled with a rolling ornate handwriting. Scratched-out words and phrases made a scattered pattern like buckshot wounds amid the lines. Poetry, it looked like.

  He read one.

  Beloved, when I, beside your silken skin,

  Trapped in the longitude and latitude

  Of passion, consider that our attitude

  And history are nothing like akin,

  I fear that one day our deepest mood

  Will differ, and you, brood-

  Ing, will see crime where there is only sin.

  Crime? Sin?

  Was he maybe talking about murder?

  Or maybe just about cornholing?

  It occurred to Grigsby that the poem might have been written about Dell Jameson, or someone like him, and he felt suddenly a bit queasy, as though he were holding a piece of dirty underwear. He closed the notebook and returned it to the drawer.

  He searched some more, but he found no knife, and no organs belonging to Molly Woods.

  Von Hesse’s feet were average, too, and Grigsby went over his room carefully. In the closet, a suitcase filled with books, all of them in German. Clothes hanging neatly on their hangers.

  More clothes, more neatness, in the dresser. Two small perfectly rectangular stacks of shirts, each perfectly folded shirt perfectly aligned atop the perfectly folded one beneath.

  Grigsby glanced around the room. It was immaculate, nothing out of place, not a speck of dust anywhere.

  Wilde’s room, clean as it was, hadn’t been this spotless. Neither had O’Conner’s. Von Hesse could’ve had a different hotel maid, but Grigsby doubted it. And the maid hadn’t arranged the shirts.

  Clara hadn’t kept their own house neater than von Hesse kept his room. Maybe Grigsby should hire the German to help him shovel out the place.

  Grigsby searched. No knife, no bits and pieces of Molly Woods.

  Henry’s tiny cubicle of a room was even neater. It was empty. No shoes, no clothes, no suitcase, nothing.

  Had the valet moved to another room? And if he had, why?

  Find out from Winters at the front desk.

  Grigsby pulled shut the door to Henry’s room, locked it and started down the empty hallway.

  When he came to 211, the Countess’s room, he paused.

  She’s not for you, Bob.

  But maybe she remembered something. She’s had all day to think about it. She told me to come back.

  Bullshit. You just want to see her.

  She told me to come back.

  What was that you said today to Wally, the day clerk? No fool like an old fool?

  Grigsby rubbed the toe of his right boot against the back of his left trouser leg, then the toe of his left boot against the back of his right trouser leg. He took off his hat and knocked on the door.

  O FF TO THE WEST, immense even at this distance, the big bold pyramid of Pike’s Peak shouldered aside the lesser mountains as it bullied itself toward the sky. Beyond the dusky pines that fringed the folds of foothills, it lurched up against the milky blue of early morning, the bright snowfield along its flank glazed golden by the light of the rising sun.

  Shifting in the saddle against the slow rhythm of his horse, Grigsby winced. He’d come a mile since leaving Colorado Springs and already his hip was aching.

  The road was empty. The only sound was the dull steady clop of the horse’s hooves against the dirt. To the right, a pine forest still held, between tall straight trunks, below stacked green parasols of needled branch, the dark cool shadows of night. To the left, a hundred yards away, thin sunlight angled along the railroad tracks that ribboned over the rolling green prairie, heading west to Manitou Springs, and then up into the mountains, and over them, to Leadville.

  The air was clear and clean, strung with the scents of pine and grass and reawakening earth. To Grigsby it was nearly as sweet, and nearly as intoxicating, as bourbon whiskey. He hadn’t been out of Denver for weeks, hadn’t been into the mountains for months; and, despite the pain gnawing at his hip, he was glad he had decided to hire a horse for this part of the trip.

  If only his hip wasn’t bothering him.

  But the horse and the saddle weren’t responsible for all the aches and pains. A large part of them had been caused by his time last night with Mathilde de la Môle.

  She had answered the door wearing another long silk robe, this one pink and belted at the waist. (Altogether, these people were carting around enough duds to dress up a good-sized town.)

  She smiled when she saw him. “Marshal Greegsby. What a lovely surprise. Do come in.” Peeking from below the robe, at its front, was a slim black blade of delicate lace gown.

  “Howdy, ma’am,” said Grigsby. “You sure I’m not intrudin’?”

  “Not at all. Please come in.”

  Grigsby shuffled into the room. She shut the do
or, turned to him, and, still smiling, she cocked her head and held out her hand. “May I take the famous hat?”

  Grigsby surrendered the Stetson. Tonight her hair was piled up, blond and shiny, on the top of her head. A few loose strands arched down along her elegant neck.

  “Please,” she said, and waved an arm toward the chair. “Sit.”

  He crossed the room and sat in the same chair he had used that afternoon, and immediately he discovered, once again, that his hands were big lumpy things at the ends of arms a couple of yards too long. Once again, he crossed the arms over his chest. His right hand, the one he’d used to punch out Greaves, was still throbbing.

  “Would you care for a drink?” she asked him. “I have a Calvados which is rather nice, I think.”

  Grigsby didn’t know what a Calvados was, but if it was alcoholic, he was ready for it. A full day of drinking, a nip here, a nip there, another nip here, and yet now that he was alone in the room with this woman he felt, all at once, stone cold sober. “Yes ma’am. Thank you.”

  She smiled again. “Good.” She turned and went to the dresser, her robe whispering softly. Along the curve of her hip, the swell of her buttocks, the lamplight rippled like sunshine on creekwater. Grigsby could see no indentations in the smooth flesh, no sign of confining corset or girdle.

  Underneath that thin silk robe, that wispy black gown, she was bareass naked.

  It was at her ass that Grigsby realized he was staring, like a stooped old man sitting outside a saloon, gaping at the passing ankles. And, trapped in this patch of sobriety that had some how sprouted in the middle of his familiar, friendly, whiskey fog, he suddenly felt like an old man. Old and spent and drained. Washed up, like Greaves had said.

  He didn’t belong here.

  She laid the Stetson down on the dresser, opened the top drawer, took out a leather box that was maybe a foot high and a foot wide, and placed it beside the hat. She opened the box. Inside it was a flat green bottle and, set back in red velvet compartments on either side of it, four balloon-shaped glasses. She removed two of these, put them on the dresser, removed the bottle, uncorked it, and poured a pale brown liquid into each glass. She stood the bottle on the dresser, carried the glasses over to the chairs, and handed one to Grigsby, who took it between fingers that were swollen and stiff. She sat down. She smiled again and raised her glass. “Cheers,” she said.

  “Right,” Grigsby said. He was trying to decide what to do with his left hand, which at the moment was lying on his thigh like a large dead squirrel.

  Coming here had been a mistake. Like going to Hanrahan’s had probably been a mistake. Like hitting Greaves had probably been a mistake.

  He was making a lot of mistakes lately.

  He took a sip of the drink. It went down almost like water, but when it hit his stomach it expanded with a comforting, familiar, potent glow. The taste, too, was familiar, but it was one that Grigsby had never before associated with liquor.

  He smiled at her, surprised and pleased. “Apples,” he said.

  She smiled back. “Apple brandy, yes. Do you like it?”

  “Yes ma’am. Real nice. Real smooth.”

  She bobbed her head once. “Good. Now, please, you must tell me to what I owe this pleasure.”

  Grigsby crossed his long legs and pain flamed down his thigh. “Well, ma’am. I just came by to find out if maybe you remembered anything. About the trip and all. What we talked about before.”

  She frowned sadly. “Ah, but no, alas. I have racked my brain all through the day, and I can remember nothing that would help. I am so terribly sorry.”

  “Well, ma’am. No call for you to be sorry. I’m obliged to you for tryin’.”

  She cocked her head. “Marshal Greegsby—” She smiled suddenly. “But I cannot call you this. Your given name is Bohb?”

  “Bob. Yes ma’am. Short for Robert.”

  Another smile. “Ah. Robair. I once had a very good friend with this name. But you know, I think I prefer the other. Bohb. Yes. I like very much the sound of this. It suits you somehow, I think.” She leaned forward and lightly touched his knee. “And you must call me Mathilde.”

  Grigsby knew that a week from now he would still be able to locate the exact spot on his knee where she had touched him.

  Suddenly, from out in the hallway, Grigsby heard a loud urgent banging—slam slam—and then a muffled clatter as someone went clomping down the stairwell.

  Ned Winters, the desk clerk, warning him that one of the others had returned to the hotel. Wilde or Vail or O’Conner. Or Henry. (And just where was Henry staying, anyway?)

  Winters would get nervous if Grigsby didn’t show up soon. Start seeing Grigsby cramped up in some closet or hunkered between the dust balls underneath some bed.

  Good. Maybe if Winters was sweating some, he wouldn’t fall asleep on the job.

  The woman was smiling. “This is not the most quiet of hotels,” she said. “This morning, do you know, I actually heard a gunshot.”

  “Yes ma’am,” said Grigsby, who had fired that particular shot. “It can be a pretty rowdy place sometimes.”

  “No, no, no,” she said, waving a slender finger, playacting at being cross. “No more of this mayam. You make me feel one hundred years old. You must say it. Mathilde.”

  “Mahteeld,” Grigsby said. Damn. He was blushing like some dumb farmboy with straw growing in his ears.

  Annoyed with himself, he gulped down some apple brandy. What the hell was he hanging around here for? Finish up the drink and go.

  “Thank you,” she said, cocking her head once more, serious again. “Now,” she said, “Bohb. Have you learned anything thus far?”

  “Well,” Grigsby said, “looks like it’s a pretty safe bet that whoever this fella is, he ain’t your friend Mr. Wilde.”

  She cocked her head and smiled. “But this is wonderful, no? You are making progress. And I am so very glad to hear of it. I have a great fondness for Oscair. However did you learn this?”

  Grigsby shrugged. “Pokin’ around,” he said. Poking around in closets, looking at shoes. The irresistible juggernaut of Scientific police work.

  “Tell me something, Bohb. Are you a married man?”

  Grigsby nodded. “Me and my wife are separated.”

  “She is where?”

  “San Francisco.”

  She raised an eyebrow. “That is quite a separation.”

  Grigsby nodded again. “Yeah.”

  “You have children?”

  “Two of ’em. Boy and a girl. They’re with her.”

  She sighed and smiled sadly. “Love, eh? It seems such a simple thing, and yet for all of us it creates such complications.”

  “Yeah.” Grigsby didn’t want to talk about this. He uncrossed his legs, recrossed them, and again the flame flared down his thigh.

  She leaned slightly forward. “What is it, Bohb? You were in pain this afternoon as well.”

  Grigsby shook his head. “Just a touch of rheumatism.”

  “Would you like a massage?”

  She asked this with the same matter-of-fact politeness that she’d shown when she asked him whether he wanted a drink.

  “You mean like a back rub?” Grigsby asked her, uncertain.

  “Yes,” she said, and smiled. “This.”

  Grigsby discovered, once again, that the skin of his face was hot and tight. Goddammit, she was only a woman. How could she keep making him feel like some bumpkin who’d just arrived in town inside a suit three sizes too small? “No, ma’am,” he said. “No thank you. It’s right kind of you, though.”

  “But no,” she said. “I insist.” She placed her drink on the table and stood. “I am very good with this. Come. You must remove your shirt.”

  Grigsby surprised himself—amazed himself—by grinning. Maybe he’d gone so far into embarrassment that he’d come out the other side of it. Maybe he’d just given up. And then, before he could stop them, the words came tumbling from his mouth: “You gonna take off your
s, too?”

  And instead of smacking him across the face, or leaping to her feet, or simply fainting dead away, the Countess Mathilde de la Môle suddenly smiled widely, her brown eyes flashing as she showed all her bright white teeth, and she said, “But of course.”

  Sitting with his back braced against a ponderosa pine, his knees drawn up, Grigsby rolled himself a cigarette. His right hand still hurt, the fingers were still stiff and clumsy. Across the small brown sunswept pasture, just where the pine forest painted dark shadows at its edge, old man Jenner’s small herd of goats nibbled at some stubbly weeds.

  Pretty soon Jenner would have to fence them off. He’d need that barbed wire they were using down in Texas—nothing else would hold in goats—and he’d need a lot of it. Grigsby didn’t envy him the job of stringing that prickly, twitchy stuff around his land.

  The old man had been living alone up here for at least twenty years, just him and his goats, and for all that time he’d let them roam wild. But more settlers were moving in, trying to scrape a living off rocky scraps of property that had been ignored till now. And no farmer wanted a pack of goats grazing near his crops. They could strip a field cleaner than a flock of locusts.

  The country was changing. It was crowding up. The West was disappearing. Cowboys and Indians and wide open prairies—all of that was dying out. But maybe it had begun to die the moment it was born. As soon as you got some people standing around and admiring the wide open spaces, the spaces weren’t so wide open any more.

  Maybe none of it had never really existed after all, not as a real place. Maybe, all the time, it had only been an idea, something that people moved toward but never actually arrived at, like the line of the horizon.

  Grigsby lit the cigarette, inhaled the smoke, blew it out. Too nice a day to worry on it.

  The goats, ten of them, maybe sixty feet away, hadn’t moved when he swung down from his horse and ambled over to the shade of the ponderosa. But they’d been watching him ever since, each of them chewing with one eye cocked in Grigsby’s direction. Now one of them—curious, maybe—began to wander toward him across the field.