The Crack in the Lens

by Steve Hockensmith

  Our second stop in town would be the Golden Eagle. The whorehouse.

  The plan: ease in, find a few familiar faces, finagle what clues we could, then ease out again, all on the q.t. My brother didn’t come right out and say it, but it would be best to avoid the management.

  The management of such places is always best to avoid.

  Old Red led the way with his usual quick, purposeful stride, and as we walked through San Marcos we passed a sampling of the local citizenry: shopkeepers sweeping their front steps, workmen stringing up telephone lines, ladies pushing prams or toting home groceries, men in sharply tailored suits on their way to or from the county courthouse in the town square. This may have been a young Texas cow town, yet it felt as comfy-cozy as any burg you’d find back east.

  Oddly enough, it was I, who’d never been within a hundred miles of the place, who got whatever smiles and nods were to be had as we went striding along the tidy sidewalks. Gustav might as well have been a dog I was walking for all the notice he received.

  “Say, Brother…you notice how everybody’s only bein’ neighborly to—?”

  “It’s your duds,” Old Red said.

  “My duds?” I looked down at my San Francisco–bought suit. “Ahhh. Yours, too, I reckon.”

  With his scuffed boots, sweat-ringed Stetson, and weathered work clothes, Gustav looked like what he’d oh-so-recently been: a down-on-his-crappy-luck cowhand. I, on the other hand, had taken to dressing city style, in sack coat and brogans and black bowler.

  From the look of the two of us together, I could have been a business-minded swell fixing to swindle some penny-ante rancher out of his hard-earned cash. Which would make me the respectable one among folks who fancy themselves “forward-looking.”

  “Well, that’s what you get for dressin’ like a saddle bum even when we finally got dollars in our pockets,” I said. “Has it occurred to you that we mighta landed us real detectivin’ jobs by now if you’d just wear a suit and tie from time to time?”

  Old Red shrugged. “I ain’t a suit-and-tie man.”

  “You ain’t a chaps-and-spurs man anymore, neither,” I said. “That cowboy you keep dressin’ like—that was you. Not who you are now. Not who you could be.”

  “We’ll see about that.”

  Whereupon my brother employed one of his favorite conversation killers: He sped up and left me behind.

  I let him go. Folks aren’t always in the mood for wit, charm, and truth, and I find it so darned difficult to dam up the stream.

  Gustav disappeared around a corner a half block ahead. When I followed I found him stopped cold, glowering hatefully at, of all things, a wallpaper store.

  “Something wrong?”

  “There sure as hell is.” Old Red jerked his chin toward the store. “The Golden Eagle.”

  “Oh,” I said. Then, since “Oh” didn’t seem to quite cover it, “Shit.”

  What little trail we had to follow had already come to an end.

  The whorehouse was gone.

  “You sure that’s where it was?” I asked. “Five years is a long—”

  “Of course I’m sure! I ain’t gonna forget a thing like that!”

  I studied the building across the street.

  You’ll find many a “front” for brothels—boardinghouses, gentlemen’s clubs, dance halls, melodeons, saloons—but a wallpaper shop…with samples in the window and everything?

  Next door was a shoe store. On the other side was a dentist’s office. Up the street I could see a drugstore, a bakery, and even, way off at the end of the block, what was either a massive, gleaming new church or the White House recently relocated from Washington, D.C.

  “Looks like this part of town’s come up in the world since you left,” I said. “Still…we oughta do us a little wallpaper shoppin’ all the same. Just to see what we can wheedle out about the Eagle without rufflin’ any feathers.”

  Gustav nodded glumly. “I suppose you’re right.”

  “It has been known to happen. And here’s something else I can tell you: You should let me do the talkin’.”

  “And why is that?”

  “Well, Tex,” I said, and I gave my brother’s cowpuncher clothes a haughty-faced up-down, “when was the last time you saw a bunkhouse papered with anything but the Monkey Ward catalog?”

  With this he could not argue: I made a much more convincing wallpaper purchaser than he. So when we went inside, I took to looking over the sample books, all the while blathering at “Tex” about the paste he should use to put up the paper and how long it would take him and whether he should next move on to grease the wheels of my surrey or clean out my gutters.

  For his part, Tex responded with a series of curt “Yessirs” that sounded quite convincingly surly.

  The audience for our act was a small one: a single frock-coated, bald-pated little clerk. He watched us from behind a long, sample-strewn counter (undoubtedly the bar back when this had been a showroom for a different kind of merchandise), his smile growing brighter the more my tone with Tex grew stern. He even gave me an approving nod when I warned Tex not to try watering down the paste and spending the savings on drink.

  “Gotta watch him every minute,” I said, waggling a thumb at my glowering handyman.

  The salesman nodded again knowingly. “I understand, sir.”

  “This one, he’s like a stage magician. First chance he gets—poof. He disappears in a puff of smoke…only to rematerialize inside the nearest saloon.”

  The salesman frowned at Tex. “Shameful.”

  “That it is.” I gave my brother the long-faced look of perpetual-disappointment-unto-hopelessness he’s perfected over the years on me. “That…it…is.”

  Tex shot back a look of such naked aggravation I could’ve sacked him on the spot.

  “Speakin’ of shameful,” I said, turning back to my new chum the clerk, “you should’ve seen this street not all that long ago. I’ve been gone a few years—followed some business up to Houston for a spell—and it is a wonderment to me how this part of town has turned around. Why, sir, do you know what sort of low-down place once occupied this very spot?”

  The salesman’s hands gripped the edge of the counter. “You won’t find such things in San Marcos anymore.”

  “Well, I’m glad to hear it. I just wish more towns knew how to sweep out the riff raff like that! How’d it come about here, exactly?”

  “Oh, goodness, really…you don’t want to hear about all that,” the clerk spluttered. The truth obviously being that he didn’t want to talk about it. “Have you found a pattern you like? We have a wide variety of—”

  “Come now, friend,” I cut in. “Don’t let propriety stand in the way. It’s just us three gents here.” I eyed my underling with disdain. “Or two gents and a Tex, anyways, and you could no more scandalize him than you could a wild boar.”

  Tex looked like he was about to tender his resignation—with a swift swat to the side of his employer’s head.

  “If you please,” the salesman said softly, “I’d rather not discuss it.” There was a sample book on the counter nearby, and he flipped it open to a random pattern. “Art papers like these are all the rage, and we have several rolls on hand for less than fifty—”

  “I guess I am just one of those insufferable people,” I said. “The more someone tries to steer me off a subject, the more I gotta stick to it. So I ain’t steppin’ off this one till you break down and tell me: What happened to that brothel?”

  “Please,” the clerk said, and his beseeching eyes flicked, for just an instant, to the right—toward a big staircase at the back of the store. “Could we just talk about wallpaper?”

  “Sons of bitches,” Gustav hissed, face flushing red. He turned and started stomping toward the stairs. “It’s them, ain’t it? They’re here.”

  “Stop,” the salesman called after him halfheartedly. “You’re not allowed up there.”

  My brother stopped at the foot of the stairs, but not because
he’d been asked to. He wanted to make someone come to him.

  “Ragsdale! Bock! You up there?”

  “Please, sir!” the clerk begged me. “Tell your man not to do that.”

  “Sorry,” I said with a shrug. “What Tex does during his time off is no business of mine.”

  “Come out and face me, dammit!” Old Red roared. “Ragsdale!”

  Sounds from upstairs finally silenced him.

  Footsteps. The creak of a door. Then more footsteps, clunking down the stairs.

  Gustav backed toward me, right hand drawing in close to his side, fingers brushing the leather strapped against his thigh.

  He was dressed like a cowboy, alright—all the way down to the Colt slung from his gun belt.

  Me, I wasn’t packing at all. I hadn’t seen the need—and what’s more, a holster would’ve wrinkled my trousers. If there was going to be any gunplay, I’d be useless to my brother as anything but breastworks.

  When I caught sight of the men coming down the stairs, I was relieved to see they weren’t heeled themselves—not in plain sight, anyway. Nor did they appear to be toughs of the sort who might pull knives or knucks on us. They were, in fact, dressed as businessmen, albeit rather clownishly so, like kids done up for a masquerade dance.

  One was tall and fair and lean, the other short and swarthy and stout, but their attire was identical: dark frock coats, checked trousers, oversized ties, and, though we were indoors, silky-shiny top hats. The tall one’s pant legs didn’t come within half a foot of his ankles. The short one’s coat was so long it almost swept the floor.

  Their appearance would’ve been outright comical if not for the expressions on their faces, which could’ve killed any smile within a five-mile radius. The one with all the height kept his head tilted back at an angle so that he literally looked down his beakish nose (and past his puckered, sneering lips) on everything. Contempt flowed from him like water over the Niagara.

  The one with all the girth was actually more disturbing to look upon, however, for his face betrayed not only no emotion but no sign that it—or its owner—was capable of registering human feeling at all. It was a dead face, immobile, lacking even the phony spark of life you might see shining in a stuffed crow’s black marble eyes.

  “Alright, here we are,” the tall one said. He and his pudgy partner stopped at the bottom of the stairs side by side. “Who the fudge are you?”

  (A quick word here about fudge. In truth, I am fudging what was actually said in the interest of shielding delicate sensibilities. More worldly readers can, most likely, imagine what word it is I have chosen to omit…and omit and omit and omit.)

  “Answer the man, motherfudger,” the squat fellow said to Old Red, his words coming out slow and sleepy. “Whadaya fudgin’ want?”

  “I want answers,” Gustav growled. “About what happened to Gertrude Eichelberger.”

  “Who the fudge is Gertrude Eichelberger?” the blond one scoffed.

  “No, I don’t guess you’d remember her real name, would you? How could you keep track of all the gals you’ve ruined?”

  My brother turned his head and spat on the floor.

  “Listen, fudgehead,” the fat man said, his tone still so flat and listless he seemed on the verge of slipping straight into snores, “this is a legitimate fudgin’ place of fudgin’ business, and we don’t fudgin’ tolerate any fudgin’—”

  “Y’all called her Adeline,” Old Red said.

  Skinny and Stout both scowled. Though they said nothing for a moment, I could hear what was echoing in their heads like a roll of distant thunder.

  Fuuuuuuuuudge.

  “Brother,” I said under my breath, “you can’t mean them two was—?”

  “Oh, they surely was.” Gustav nodded first at the beanpole, then at the pumpkin-gut beside him. “Allow me to introduce Pete Ragsdale and Gil Bock…Adeline’s pimps.”

  Bock shifted his dead-eyed gaze over to the clerk, who stood frozen behind his counter looking like he wanted to blend into the very wallpaper he made his living selling.

  “Mr. Coggins, would you kindly fudgin’ fetch Mr. fudgin’ Bales?”

  Coggins bolted for the door so fast he was already on the sidewalk by the time he finished his “Yes, sir.”

  The lean, mean-faced fellow—the one Gustav had called Ragsdale—jutted his chin whiskers at us. “Do we know these stupid fudgers?”

  Bock’s eyes met mine, and I could’ve sworn the temperature dropped forty degrees.

  “Never saw the big fudge before,” Bock said, “but the little loudmouth’s Gloomy fudgin’ Gus. Adeline’s fudgin’ boyfriend.”

  “Oh. Fudge, yeah. I see it now,” Ragsdale said, nodding. “Didn’t fudgin’ recognize him underneath that mustache. Looks like he’s got half a fudgin’ fox stuck up his fudgin’ nose.”

  The two men looked at each other, carrying on their conversation without words.

  I tried to hold the same kind of talk with my brother, clearing my throat and throwing my eyebrows up high. What in the world do you think you’re doing? I was trying to say. Getting into pissing matches with pimps was nowhere on the docket.

  “Gloomy Gus” ignored me.

  “There ain’t a pocket picked or a throat slit in this town you two don’t have a hand in one way or another,” he said. “So you can’t stand there and tell me you don’t know who done Adeline in.”

  “We sure as fudge can and we sure as fudge did,” Ragsdale sneered. “Five fudgin’ years ago. Or were you too fudgin’ drunk to fudgin’ hear us?”

  My brother’s face went even redder—which was truly something, as there isn’t anything redder than crimson.

  “Anyway,” Bock said tonelessly, “we don’t fudgin’ talk about such fudgin’ things here. So unless you wanna buy some fudgin’ wallpaper, you’d better get your fudgin’ ass out the fudgin’ door.”

  “You wanna talk wallpaper?” Old Red took a step toward Ragsdale and Bock—neither of whom backed up an inch. “Well, then, howzabout I paper these here walls with your greasy guts unless you—”

  “What’s going on here?”

  The voice told me lawman before I even turned around. It had that blunt, heavy, hammer-hitting-anvil sound to it. You could hear the impatience, the sourness, the assumption that someone needed his ass kicked, and hard.

  I turned and there he was, a badge on his chest and a frown on his face. Aside from the Colt Lightning on his hip, though, the rest of him hardly seemed lawman material. He wore spectacles, for one thing, and the eyes behind them lacked the flinty-hard coldness sheriffs, marshals, and constables work so hard to cultivate. And there was a softness to the rest of him, too. Not just that he was plump—though he did spill out over his gun belt a bit—but while he was older than my brother and myself, somewhere on the north side of thirty, there was a boyishness to him, a green streak even his don’t-give-me-shit squint couldn’t quite hide.

  “My God—if it ain’t Milford Bales!” Old Red said, and the malice poured out of him like beer from an upturned bottle. He almost even smiled, which would have been the eighth wonder of the world, sure to attract awestruck gawkers from far and wide had it lasted longer than a split second.

  This Bales was a friend, it appeared. An ally. A decent man in a position to help us—or so I assumed until the man’s scowl deepened, and all the softness I’d seen in him hardened to steel.

  “Gustav Amlingmeyer,” he said slowly, every syllable dripping with disgust. “What the fudge are you doing here?”

  3

  The Speech

  Or, The Long Arm of the Law Reaches Out to Give Us a Slap

  The little salesclerk, Coggins, peeked out from behind the fellow with the badge—the man my brother had called Milford Bales.

  “That’s him, Marshal,” Coggins said, lifting a trembling finger to point at Old Red. “He’s the one.”

  Gustav was still agape, obviously shocked by the spite with which the scowling lawman had greeted him. Which left it to m
e to mount his defense.

  “He’s the one what?” I said. “The one been makin’ conversation? Askin’ a few questions? Well, alright, then—he is the one. What’s wrong with that? There some law against talkin’ in this town?”

  “No,” Bales said. He’d stopped outside the store, just beyond the door, as if the threshold was some line he couldn’t cross. “But there is a law against causing a disturbance in a legitimate place of business.”

  That snapped Old Red out of his stupor.

  “Legitimate place of business? Feh!”

  “See, Marshal?” Bock waved a languorous hand at my brother. “There you go.”

  “We are fudgin’ respectable, law-abidin’ fudgin’ taxpayers tryin’ to fudgin’ conduct fudgin’ business,” Ragsdale added, squint-sneering at Bales down the double barrels of his long nose. “And we don’t have to fudgin’ put up with that kind of fudgin’ talk in our own fudgin’ store. So do your fudgin’ duty and fudgin’ throw the fudgewit out, would ya?”

  Bales glared at Ragsdale and Bock for a moment, seemingly torn between doing his “fudgin’ duty” and putting bullets betwixt their eyes.

  When he’d made up his mind, he turned to me and Gustav and said one word: “Out.”

  “Now, just one minute, Milford,” my brother began.

  The marshal hit him with the same look he’d just given Ragsdale and Bock. “Out.”

  I wrapped a hand around Old Red’s arm and tugged him toward the door.

  “Time we got goin’ anyhow, Brother. They might not peddle tail in here anymore, but the place still has a scummy kinda feel to it, don’t you think? Like a man could catch the clap just from breathin’ in the air.”

  “Fudge you!” Ragsdale called out as we walked away.

  I waved my free hand over my head without looking back. “Vaya con fudge you, too, amigo!”

  As Old Red and I stepped outside, Bales and Coggins swung from our path like batwing doors. The second we were on the sidewalk, the clerk sidled around us and scampered inside with a cringe so craven it sparked in me the sudden, near-overpowering desire to plant a brogan toe between his butt cheeks. Yet something told me this would be a bad idea—my common sense, perhaps. I can’t be sure, for it and I usually aren’t on speaking terms.