Brimstone vcaeh-3

by Robert B. Parker

  “Worked out for you,” Virgil said. “You pretty much got the town now.”

  Pike nodded and leaned back and sipped some coffee.

  “Pretty much,” he said after he swallowed.

  “ ’Cept for me ’n Everett,” Virgil said.

  “ ’Cept for that,” Pike said.

  Virgil smiled. Pike smiled back. Choctaw was trying to keep an eye on me, and one on Virgil, which was hard because we were spread out. Which was why we were spread out.

  “Wasn’t gonna talk with you ’bout that quite so soon,” Pike said. “But since it’s come up…?”

  He shrugged.

  Virgil shrugged back.

  “I like you, Virgil,” Pike said. “I really do.”

  “Everybody does,” Virgil said.

  Pike looked into his coffee cup for a while. Then he raised his eyes and looked at Virgil.

  “I don’t see how it’s gonna work between us here,” Pike said. “I don’t see how you gonna let me run the town the way I want to.”

  “Don’t see that myself,” Virgil said.

  “We ain’t broke no law,” Pike said.

  “Might be able to find one,” Virgil said.

  “There’s two of you,” Pike said. “And there’s twenty-five of us.”

  “ ’Course, none of you is Virgil Cole,” Virgil said. “Or Everett Hitch.”

  “Maybe, maybe not,” Pike said. “But it’s still twenty-five to two. And you got them women to think about.”

  “Good point,” Virgil said. “You got a suggestion?”

  “You could stop being deputies and work for me.”

  “Nope.”

  Pike nodded.

  “Okay,” he said. “I figured that you wouldn’t. But you still got them women to think about. How about I give you some money? Enough to take care of them for a good while? I ain’t even giving it to you. I’m giving it to you for them.”

  “What’s the other option?” Virgil said.

  “We gonna have to kill you and probably them,” Pike said.

  “Or at least try,” Virgil said.

  “I like our odds,” Pike said. “And, God’s honest truth, I think I can beat you.”

  Virgil was quiet, thinking about things. I knew Virgil didn’t care if Pike thought he could beat him. Virgil paid no mind to talk.

  After a time, he said, “Makes sense. I’ll take the money… long as it is commensurate.”

  “And leave town?”

  “And leave town,” Virgil said.

  “Your word?” Pike said.

  “Yep.”

  Pike looked at me.

  “Everett?” he said.

  “I’m with Virgil,” I said.

  “Wait right there,” Pike said.

  He stood and went into the back of the saloon. He was gone for maybe ten minutes, and when he returned he had a leather-bound canvas satchel.

  “One thousand dollars,” he said. “Legal tender notes.”

  “Done,” Virgil said.

  He picked up the satchel and nodded at me, and we walked out of Pike’s Palace.

  63

  “VIRGIL,” I said, as we walked up Arrow Street, “what the fuck are we doing?”

  “We’re being tricky,” Virgil said.

  “We never took a bribe in our life,” I said.

  “Nor run away,” Virgil said.

  “So…?” I said.

  “We ain’t going,” Virgil said.

  “We’re not?”

  “Nope.”

  “We’re going to double-cross Pike?”

  “We are,” Virgil said.

  “What about the bribe?”

  “Laurel needs money,” Virgil said. “Pike don’t.”

  “You think Pike will see it that way?” I said.

  “No.”

  “We gonna pretend to go?” I said.

  “Yep.”

  “What about the women,” I said.

  “It was only Allie,” Virgil said. “Maybe I say she’s a grown woman. She cast her lot with me. She knows what I do… But the kid didn’t get to cast her lot at all. It got cast for her… And she ain’t got no one else.”

  “And Pike would use them against us.”

  “ ’Course he would,” Virgil said. “You heard him.”

  I nodded.

  “As I recall,” I said, “Pike told us, ‘You got them women to worry about.’ ”

  “What I recall, too,” Virgil said. “We stay, we’ll be spending all our time protecting them. He needs to think they gone.”

  “So where we going to hide them,” I said.

  “Ain’t figured that part out yet,” Virgil said.

  “What happens to them if we get killed?” I said.

  “I thought ’bout that,” Virgil said.

  “And?”

  “I can’t worry ’bout that,” he said. “I can’t not be Virgil Cole.”

  “No,” I said. “You can’t.”

  Virgil grinned at me.

  “ ’ Sides, we ain’t never been killed yet,” he said.

  “Commensurate,” I said, “with who we are.”

  “Commensurate,” Virgil said.

  “What about Pony?” I said.

  “I’d guess he’ll be with us,” Virgil said.

  “Maybe he could take the ladies someplace,” I said.

  Virgil nodded. We turned off of Arrow Street and walked toward where we’d been staying. Pony was on a bench on the front porch with Laurel beside him, and Allie was in a rocker, trying to sew a button on one of Virgil’s shirts.

  Virgil set the canvas satchel down and took a seat. I remained standing, leaning against one of the porch pillars. Virgil opened the satchel.

  “Best thing I got to tell you is we got some money,” he said.

  64

  EVERYONE WAS QUIET while Virgil explained the situation.

  When he was through, Allie said, “So why don’t we all go? Find another town? Start over?”

  “Can’t do that,” Virgil said.

  “Why not? Not even you and Everett can fight Pike by yourselves. I mean, my God, he must have fifty men.”

  “Twenty-five,” Virgil said.

  “You want to stay and fight twenty-five men by yourself?”

  “Me and Everett,” Virgil said.

  “Why? I mean, I know that you’re Virgil Cole and all that. But why risk all our lives for it.”

  Virgil shook his head and didn’t say anything.

  “He run away,” Pony said. “He man who run away.”

  Allie frowned, staring at Pony, then at Virgil, as if she were working on a puzzle. Then she nodded slowly.

  “Yes,” she said.

  “Here’s what I been thinking,” Virgil said. “We go down to the station in the morning. The four of us, and get on the train to Del Rio. We get out from town maybe five miles, that straight patch of the river where the train runs right along the bank. Pony’s there with an extra horse. I get the train to stop. Me and Everett get off. Pony gets on. We ride back into town, sorta light-footed. Pony goes on to Del Rio. I’ll write you a letter to give to Dave Morrissey down there, help you get settled. Then me and Everett will take care of business and come on down to join you.”

  “No,” Allie said.

  Virgil looked startled, which was an amazing thing to see, because Virgil never looked startled.

  “No?” he said.

  “Absolutely not,” Allie said. “I won’t leave you, and neither will Laurel.”

  Virgil looked at Laurel.

  Laurel shook her head.

  “Why not?” Virgil said.

  “I won’t,” Allie said.

  “Why not?” Virgil said.

  “I’m a mess,” Allie said. “I been a mess long as you’ve known me. But I got this child to think ’bout now, and I can’t keep being a mess.”

  Virgil looked at her and didn’t answer. Virgil never looked puzzled, any more than he ever looked startled, but if he had he would have looked puzzled now
.

  “What kind of woman would leave her man at a time like this, to go hide, while he risked his life?”

  Virgil shrugged and looked at me. I shrugged.

  “That’s right,” she said, as if we had answered. “And I will not be that kind of woman anymore, not ever, anymore. I cannot be that kind of woman and be with this child… or you.”

  Virgil looked at me again.

  “Sounds right to me,” I said.

  Virgil nodded.

  “And I don’t want Pony taking care of us,” Allie said. “I want Pony to be with you.”

  “Who looks out for you and Laurel?” Virgil said.

  “Me,” Allie said.

  “You?”

  “I have a gun; I know how to shoot,” Allie said. “You taught me.”

  Laurel stepped to Virgil’s chair and whispered to him. He listened. He nodded.

  “Okay,” he said. “We don’t go to Del Rio.”

  “We can pretend to,” I said.

  “And where do Allie and Laurel go?” Virgil said. “Ain’t good tactics to leave them out for Pike.”

  “No,” I said. “We need to hide them.”

  “Where?” Virgil said.

  No one spoke for a moment, and then I said, “Lemme go talk to my friend Frisco.”

  “The whore?”

  “Yes,” I said.

  “In Pike’s Palace?” Virgil said.

  “Where would he be less likely to look?” I said.

  “I’ll be back in an hour or so,” I said.

  “Take you that long?” Virgil said.

  “No,” I said. “But I might have to wait my turn.”

  Allie smiled at me.

  “Not if I was Frisco,” she said.

  I said, “Thank you, Allie.”

  And I stood and walked back up toward Pike’s Palace.

  65

  FRISCO’S ROOM AND PLACE of employment was on the second floor at Pike’s. But I went boldly in. I had till morning to leave town.

  “Come for a good-bye poke,” Frisco said when she let me in.

  “Good-bye?” I said.

  Frisco closed the door and locked it. We sat on her bed together.

  “Heard you was leaving town tomorrow,” she said.

  “Word gets around,” I said.

  “Pike’s telling everybody he run you and Virgil Cole out of town,” she said.

  “Proud of himself,” I said.

  “Yes,” Frisco said.

  She was wearing a short, thin nightgown and not much else.

  “Before we get into farewells,” I said, “I need a favor.”

  “You know me, Everett,” Frisco said. “I only do the regular things. I don’t do no specialties.”

  “None needed,” I said. “I need to hide two women here, in this room, for a few hours tomorrow.”

  “Two women?”

  “Yep.”

  “The ones with you and Virgil?” she said. “Allie and the kid, the one the Indian took?”

  “Yes,” I said.

  I had no problem lying to her, but who else would it be?

  “Her mother, what was her name?”

  “Mary Beth,” I said. “Mary Beth Ostermueller.”

  “Yeah, her,” Frisco said. “Killed herself two rooms down from here. Drunk, put a forty-five in her mouth and blew the top of her head off.”

  “I know,” I said.

  “Awful mess,” Frisco said. “Pike was furious, but she was already dead, you know, so he couldn’t kill her. Took a couple days to get that room cleaned up.”

  “Forty-five can make a big exit hole,” I said.

  “I guess,” Frisco said. “Why’d she do that, anyway?”

  “Life was too hard, I guess.”

  “That hard?”

  “She and her daughter had a bad time of it, ’fore we got them back.”

  “Daughter didn’t kill herself.”

  “No,” I said. “I think having her daughter watch what happened to her, and her having to watch while it happened to her daughter, right in front of her…”

  Frisco nodded.

  “Woman needed to be tougher,” Frisco said.

  “She did,” I said. “And she wasn’t.”

  “I take these two women in here,” Frisco said, “and Pike finds out, what happens?”

  “He’ll kill them,” I said. “And you.”

  “So why should I take the chance?” Frisco said.

  “ ’Cause we plan to kill him,” I said. “ ’Fore he finds out.”

  Frisco nodded.

  “They can stay here; I’ll move down with Big Red,” she said. “You don’t kill him, I’ll claim I don’t know how they got in here, but I come back and found the door locked and figured one of the other girls was using the room for business.”

  “Might work,” I said.

  “When they coming?”

  “Tomorrow morning,” I said. “You know Pony Flores?”

  “No.”

  “Breed,” I said. “Dark, kind of tall, works some for Pike.”

  “Tall as you?”

  “Nope,” I said. “More like Virgil.”

  “High moccasins, knife in the top?” Frisco said.

  “That’s him,” I said. “He’ll bring them in the morning.”

  “Ain’t normally very busy in the morning. They come in; I go out.”

  “Thank you,” I said.

  Frisco leaned her head against my shoulder.

  “I’ll miss you,” she said. “You’re a good guy.”

  “You too,” I said.

  “Want to do it ’fore you go?” she said.

  “I would,” I said.

  Frisco grinned and patted my crotch.

  “I could tell,” she said.

  66

  IN THE MORNING, Virgil and I walked with Allie and Laurel down to the train station and got aboard the nine-o’clock train to Del Rio. Allie carried a carpetbag. Virgil and I just had weapons and ammunition. The train left the station on time, and when we were under way, Virgil got up and spoke with the conductor. The conductor shook his head and Virgil tapped the deputy star on his shirt and spoke again. The conductor looked at us and paused, then nodded, and moved on, toward the front of the train.

  Virgil came back and sat, on the aisle, with his right hand free, where he could look at the door at the front of the car. I sat opposite, with the eight-gauge beside me, where I could look at the back door, same as we always did. We didn’t speak of it, we did it automatically, the way we always spread apart approaching a fight or entering a strange place. We’d been doing what we did for so long that sometimes we seemed to me like two parts of the same apparatus.

  As the train came in close to the river, I could feel it begin to slow, and about a half-mile into the straightaway, it braked and came to a sort of muttering halt the way trains do. We stood and got off the train. Pony was there, with four saddle horses. The horses were grazing comfortably on tether. We walked to the horses, and the train started up and moved south with slowly increasing speed.

  We got the women mounted without saying anything.

  “You know how you’re going to get them into Frisco’s room,” Virgil said.

  Pony nodded.

  “Know all parts of Pike’s Palace,” Pony said.

  “Including the whores’ quarters,” Virgil said.

  “Them ’specially, jefe,” he said.

  “You got the gun I gave you,” Virgil said to Allie.

  “In my bag,” she said.

  “And bullets,” Virgil said.

  Allie nodded and patted the carpetbag that hung on her saddle horn.

  “And you’ll stay in there and be quiet no matter what,” Virgil said.

  “Yes.”

  Pony pulled his horse up next to Laurel. He took a.45 derringer out of his coat pocket, broke it open. Took out the two bullets, closed it again.

  “Chiquita,” Pony said.

  He held the gun out and cocked it.

  �
��Click,” Pony said.

  He pulled the trigger.

  “Bang,” he said.

  He cocked it again and pulled the trigger again.

  “Click,” he said. “Bang.”

  Laurel nodded.

  “Do that?” Pony said, and handed her the gun.

  She cocked it.

  Pony nodded and said, “Click.”

  She pulled the trigger.

  Pony said, “Bang.”

  She nodded and dry-fired it again. Then she gave the gun back to Pony. He loaded it.

  “Now,” Pony said. “Click-bang only when you mean it.”

  He pointed to the middle of his body.

  “Shoot here,” he said.

  Laurel nodded.

  “Shoot only to protect yourself,” I said.

  She nodded and put the gun in her coat pocket.

  Virgil said, “You get them settled, Pony.”

  “Sí.”

  “Nobody sees them.”

  “Sí.”

  “We’ll be along in the afternoon. We see you in the saloon, we know it’s all gone right.”

  Pony nodded and turned his horse and rode a little way toward town, and paused and waited for the women.

  Allie paused and looked at Virgil.

  “I love you,” she said.

  Virgil nodded.

  Laurel pulled her horse close to him and bent down from the saddle and whispered to him.

  He nodded.

  “Me ’n Everett been doing this most of our lives,” Virgil said. “We know how.”

  We all sat silently for a moment.

  “You come back to us,” Allie said.

  “We will,” Virgil said.

  Then he pointed toward Pony and gave Allie’s horse a slap on the flank. The horse moved forward and Laurel’s followed, and they rode away from us, toward town.

  67

  VIRGIL AND I SAT ON the riverbank and waited for Pony to do what he needed to.

  “I don’t know if we’re really smart or really dumb,” I said, “hiding the women upstairs at Pike’s.”

  “Nobody goes up there but whores and customers,” Virgil said. “Pony told me employees ain’t allowed.”

  “Pike sure as hell wouldn’t look for them there.”

  “No,” Virgil said.

  A fish splashed in the river and left a series of concentric ripples. Bass probably, snapping up a dragonfly.