Brimstone vcaeh-3

by Robert B. Parker

  4

  I LEFT THE EIGHT-GAUGE with the bartender and went out into the darkening street. The dust was nearly ankle-deep on top of the hard-baked dirt beneath it. I walked toward the river. If I hadn’t known where it was, I could have followed the smell of it. Around Los Lobos, among the saloons and bordellos, there were a few commercial enterprises that sold cloth and feed and nails. As I got closer to the river the shops disappeared and there were only saloons and whorehouses. The Barbary Coast Café was the last place on the street. It stood right up against the mudflat that bordered the depleted river. This time of year the Rio wasn’t very grand. In spring the mudflats would be covered with water. But now there was mostly mud, with just enough water running down the center to remind us it was a river.

  The Barbary Coast was where it belonged. It was a two-story building made of whatever they had available, some warped lumber that hadn’t cured when they put it up and was now warped and split from the drying process. Some of the roof was tin, some was Mexican tile. Most of the windows had no glass and were covered with something that might have been flour sacks. The front door, which stood open and looked like it wouldn’t close, appeared to have been rendered from a wagon gate.

  I went in. It was dark and smelled of coal oil and smoke, full spittoons and sweat, cigar smoke and booze. It wasn’t crowded. There were men lining the bar, which was two planks on a couple of fifty-gallon kegs. There were some cards being played by candlelight at a few unmatched tables around the room. Half the tables were empty. And along the wall past the bar was a small flock of desperate-looking whores. The pickings looked slim. But repulsive. I pulled my hat down over my eyes and went to the bar, squeezed in among the other men, for concealment, and ordered a beer.

  “No beer,” the barman said.

  “Gimme what you got,” I said.

  The barman poured something from a jug into a dirty glass. I sniffed it and put it down.

  “Frenchie around?” I said.

  “Her?” the barman said.

  “Her,” I said.

  The barman shrugged.

  “Over there with the rest of ’em,” he said. “Pink dress.”

  I looked at the whores. It was hard in the dim light, and I almost missed her. The pink dress was dirty. Her hair was ratty. She was a lot thinner than she had been, and the body that had once so proudly pushed at the confines of her dress now seemed shrunken inside her clothes. I studied her over the right shoulder of the fat man next to me. A lot less than she had been, but it was Allie. I watched her for a moment as she scanned the room, looking for prospects. Then I put a dime down beside my drink and moved away from the bar, not looking at Allie. The barman picked up my dime and then carefully poured the undrunk whiskey back into the jug.

  I went back into the despondent street feeling tired and tight across my shoulders. So we’d found her. I didn’t want Virgil to see her in this setting. But it wasn’t for me to decide. It was the only setting she was in, and we’d spent a year looking for her. I started back up the street toward Los Lobos. For maybe the first time since I’d known Virgil, I didn’t know what he would do.

  5

  VIRGIL DIDN’T SAY A WORD from the time I told him we’d found Allie to the moment we stopped outside the rat hole where she worked. I had the eight-gauge with me, simply because I was more comfortable with it than without it, especially when I had no idea of what was going to happen.

  Virgil studied the Barbary Coast Café.

  “In there,” he said.

  “Yes.”

  Virgil looked at it some more. Then he nodded once and started forward, and we walked in through the front door. Virgil stopped inside to let his eyes adjust.

  “Where is she?” Virgil said.

  She was right where she had been. I nodded toward her. Virgil looked at her for a considerable time. Then he nodded again and walked over to her and stood in front of her. She looked up at him, forcing her customer’s smile, started to speak, and stopped. The smile remained in place on her immobilized face. Virgil waited. She stared.

  Then she said, “Virgil?”

  Virgil nodded.

  She said, “Virgil.”

  Virgil nodded.

  She said, “Oh, sweet Jesus, Virgil, get me out of here.”

  “Yes,” he said.

  He took her arm and they started toward the door.

  “Hey,” the barman said. “Stairs in the back.”

  Virgil showed no sign that he’d heard.

  “Whores ain’t allowed to leave the premises,” the barman said.

  A fat man with a droopy mustache and long, greasy hair came from across the room and stood in the doorway.

  “You planning on taking that whore somewhere?” he said.

  There was a scar at one corner of his mouth, as if someone had cut him with a knife. He was wearing suspenders and no belt, and he had a Colt stuck in the right-hand pocket of his pants. With fluid economy, Virgil pulled his gun and slammed it against the fat man’s head. The fat man went down. Virgil guided Allie around him and out the front door.

  The bartender said, “Hey.”

  I looked at him and shook my head. Then, with the eight-gauge leveled at the room, I backed out the front door and started up the street behind Virgil and Allie, keeping an eye over my shoulder at the Barbary Coast Café. Nobody came out.

  Off the lobby of the Grande Palace Hotel there was a one-chair barbershop, and in the back of it was a small room, run by two fat old Mexican women, where you could get a bath. Virgil took Allie in there.

  “Scrub her,” he said to the two women. “And wash her clothes.”

  Allie stood motionless and silent.

  “What she wear after?” one of the women said.

  “We’ll worry about that,” Virgil said, “when she’s clean.”

  6

  ALLIE LOOKED LIKE A KID. Her hair was clean and straight. She wore no makeup, and she sat barefoot and cross-legged on the bed, wearing one of my clean shirts, like a dress, with the sleeves rolled.

  “I could step out for a while,” I said. “Get me a drink. Let you folks talk.”

  Virgil shook his head. So I sat on a chair in the corner of the room and was quiet.

  “You run off,” Virgil said to Allie.

  “I was ashamed,” she said.

  “You sick at all?”

  “No, honest to God, Virgil,” she said. “I haven’t got nothing.”

  “All this time you been whoring?” Virgil said.

  “I know, but I been lucky. I haven’t caught nothing.”

  Virgil nodded.

  “You been whoring since you left.”

  Allie nodded slowly.

  “Mostly,” she said. “I had to live, Virgil.”

  Virgil nodded.

  “You did,” he said.

  There was nothing in Virgil’s voice. The single oil lamp next to the bed lit Allie pretty good, but it left most of the room sorta dark. The silence that hung between them seemed heavy.

  “I was ashamed,” Allie said. “And after Everett shot Bragg, I was scared.”

  “Of what?” Virgil asked.

  “You,” she said. “That you’d find out about me. Me, maybe, maybe I was scared of what I was.”

  “What were you?” Virgil said.

  “I was an awful woman, I wanted everything, and being a woman, alone, out here in this country with no rules…”

  “I had rules,” Virgil said.

  “And I was breaking them, Virgil. Only way I knew to get what I wanted, feel like I wanted to feel, be how I wanted, only way for me was to fuck somebody.”

  “Fucked a considerable number of somebodys,” Virgil said.

  “Yes,” Allie said.

  It was a child’s voice, piping out from the fresh-scrubbed child’s face. Virgil was silent. His face was in shadow. I was nearly invisible sitting away from the light in the corner.

  “I shoulda stayed with you, Virgil.”

  “Yes,” Virgil said.
“You should have.”

  “But I was bad, just bad, all I can say. I run off and I tried but I could never find a decent man, never nobody like you, Virgil. And they passed me around and I kept going down, down, and down, and…” She stopped talking and took in a deep breath, and let it out very slow. She did it again.

  Then she said, “I had to do some awful things, Virgil… awful things with awful men.”

  Virgil was silent. Allie looked down at her hands folded in her lap.

  “Awful,” she said.

  Virgil stood suddenly and walked to the window and looked down through the darkness at the ugly street.

  “And now?” he said.

  “I guess I’m awful,” she said. “I look awful. I feel awful. I ain’t worth no man’s attention. I ain’t worth anything.”

  “You changed any?” Virgil said.

  “I don’t know,” Allie said. “I’m at the bottom, Virgil. I can’t go down no further.”

  “Think you could change?”

  “I’d like to. I can’t stand this no more. I’d surely try.”

  “What you think we should do?” Virgil said.

  He was still looking down into the street.

  “I don’t know,” Allie said in a really small voice. “I might just die.”

  Virgil didn’t move from the window.

  Still looking down into the street, he said, “Sooner or later. Everett, you got a thought?”

  “I don’t, Virgil. I don’t believe it’s mine to think about.”

  “You believe her?” Virgil said.

  “I believe what’s happened to her,” I said.

  “Think she can change?” Virgil said.

  “Believe she wants to,” I said.

  “Think she can?”

  “Don’t know, Virgil.”

  Virgil turned slowly from the window and looked at me in the near darkness.

  “Everett,” Virgil said. “You killed a man for her and me. I want to know where you stand.”

  “You know where I stand, Virgil,” I said. “Been with you near twenty years. Plan to be with you as far as we go.”

  “Think I should take her back?” Virgil said.

  “Don’t recall that she asked you to,” I said.

  “You think I should?” Virgil said. “I need to know what you think.”

  “We don’t have to leave her here,” I said. “We can take her someplace where she gets a decent chance.”

  “But you don’t think I should take her back.”

  “She is what she is,” I said. “Been what she is for a long time.”

  “And you don’t think she’ll change,” Virgil said.

  “Don’t think she’s got anything to change to,” I said.

  “You don’t think I should take her back,” Virgil said.

  “No,” I said. “I don’t.”

  Allie’s breathing was shallow in the silence. She seemed like an injured sparrow, sitting cross-legged on the bed in a shirt much too big for her, staring at her hands.

  “No,” Virgil said. His voice sounded hoarse. “I don’t think so, either… but I got to do it.”

  I stood.

  “It’s yours to say,” I told Virgil. “I’m going to bunk in the livery stable tonight.”

  Neither Virgil nor Allie said anything. Neither one moved as I left the room and closed the door behind me.

  7

  WE TOOK ALLIE TO BREAKFAST in the cook tent. With her dress washed and her hair combed, she looked a little better than she had when we dragged her out of the Barbary Coast Café. But she didn’t look good.

  “I got to get some new clothes, Virgil,” she said.

  “Next town,” Virgil said.

  “We leavin’ this one?”

  “Yep,” Virgil said. “Can’t make a livin’ here.”

  “Virgil,” Allie said, “I don’t even have any underwear.”

  “Next town,” Virgil said.

  His eyes moved slightly and stopped. Then moved again. I was used to Virgil looking at things. If it was worth mentioning, he’d mention it.

  “We need money,” he said.

  “Sell the horses?”

  “Yes, livery stable will probably buy them. Take what you can get; I don’t want to wait around here.”

  “Saddles? bridles?”

  “All of it,” Virgil said. “And don’t waste time. Want to catch today’s train.”

  Virgil had seen something.

  “On my way,” I said.

  Man doesn’t sell his horse if he don’t have to. The livery-man knew he had me in a box and got the horses and gear for a lot less than they were worth. Still, it would cover us for a bit. With the money in my pocket, I walked back up past the cook tent. Virgil and Allie weren’t there. I went on to the hotel. When I got there they were packed, my stuff and Virgil’s. Allie didn’t have any. There wasn’t much. Just the clothes would fit in a saddlebag. Virgil didn’t run, so it must have to do with Allie. It was one of the many things I didn’t like about Allie. I was used to Virgil being Virgil. He was always Virgil. But with Allie he was different. I didn’t like different.

  We went downstairs and walked to Los Lobos, where Virgil gave notice and shook hands with Cates. Then we went back out to the street and started toward the railroad station. Across the street a group of men watched us come out. And, when we started down the street they walked along with us on the other side. One of them was the fat man with the scar and the long hair that Virgil had buffaloed when we’d taken Allie out of the Barbary Coast Café.

  Virgil paid them no mind as we walked.

  “I count six,” Virgil said to me softly. “Anything develops, I’ll take the first man. You take the last, and we’ll work our way to the middle.”

  I nodded. At this range, with the eight-gauge, I might get two at a time.

  “Virgil,” Allie said. “What is it.”

  “Nothing to worry about,” Virgil said.

  Allie looked for the first time at the men across the street.

  “Oh my God, Virgil, it’s Pig.”

  “That his name?” Virgil said.

  “Don’t let him take me back.”

  “Nope,” Virgil said.

  “Everett…”

  “We’re fine, Allie,” I said. “We’re fine.”

  Pig was carrying a big old Navy Colt in a gun belt that sagged under his belly. There was dried blood on his shirt. It appeared that he hadn’t changed it since Virgil hit him. The left side of Pig’s face was swollen and dark, with a long scab where Virgil’s front sight had dragged across the cheekbone. The five men with him were all carrying. I thumbed back both hammers on the eight-gauge.

  We kept walking our parallel walk. Allie held tight to Virgil’s left arm. At the end of the street was the Barbary Coast Café, and across the street from that the railroad station, and beyond that the river. And nothing else. It was obvious where we were going.

  “I need you to let go of my arm now, Allie,” Virgil said.

  His voice was quiet. He could have been asking her to pass him the sugar. He was Virgil Cole again. Even with the stakes as high as they would ever get for him, he was now Virgil Cole. It was a relief. At the end of the street we stopped and the six men stopped across from us. The railroad station was on their side. We looked at one another. Pig was at the far left end of the line that now faced us.

  “Hey, Whoreman,” Pig shouted. “Whatcha gonna do now?”

  “Same deal,” Virgil said to me. “Pig goes first. You start at the right end.”

  “Yep.”

  “Allie,” Virgil said. “Any shooting, you lie flat down in the street, you unnerstand?”

  “Virgil…”

  “Unnerstand?” Virgil said again.

  His voice was still calm, but it had flattened a little.

  “Yes,” Allie said in a small voice.

  “Okay,” Virgil said, and stepped off the boardwalk and into the street.

  Allie moved behind me. She was mumbling so
ftly to herself, and after a moment I realized she was praying. Virgil walked straight across the street toward the six men, and specifically toward Pig.

  I knew what he was doing. Never let it be you and them, Virgil always said. Always make it between you and some of them.

  “I want my whore back,” Pig said.

  Virgil kept walking. Pig hadn’t expected it. He wasn’t quite sure what he should do.

  “You think you gonna hit me again when I ain’t ready?” Pig said.

  “I’m gonna kill you,” Virgil said.

  Virgil didn’t speak very loudly, but all of us heard him, and his voice made Pig flinch back a half step. I brought the eight-gauge up to a kind of parade rest position. The men to Pig’s left moved a little away. Virgil was close now. If Pig was going to make his move he’d need to do it now, before Virgil was on top of him. He knew it, and tried to draw his gun. Virgil shot him before Pig got his hand on the butt. Without any pause Virgil shot the man next to him. I picked off the two at the other end of the line. The remaining two didn’t know whether to shoot at me or Virgil and ended up running away.

  Time slows down in a gunfight. Even so, including Virgil’s walk across the street it had lasted less than a minute. Virgil reloaded and went to each of the down men to be sure they were dead. Then he holstered his gun and walked back.

  “Train comes at noon,” Virgil said.

  And we walked on to the station.

  8

  WE SAT IN THE BACK of the train, on the left side, Virgil on the aisle. Virgil always sat on the left on the aisle so that his gun hand was unencumbered. Allie sat next to him. I sat across from them, facing the rear. Since people could board from either end, it was nice to watch both doors. The train bumped along. Virgil had his feet up and his hat tipped down. Allie sat erect beside him with her hands folded in her lap, looking out the window at the west Texas countryside. Occasionally, we passed cattle. Otherwise, there was nothing much to see but grassland.

  “You ever pray, Everett?” Allie said.

  “Not much,” I said.

  “Ever think about it?”

  “Praying?”