Torture Town

by William W. Johnstone

  “You make damn sure that nobody ever sees this,” Draco said as he began writing.

  “You got ’ny idea how to find him?”

  “It won’t be hard,” Draco said. “Like as not, he’ll be comin’ through here, lookin’ for me. I would suggest you just wait for him.” Draco handed Fox the IOU.

  “Where’s my hunnert dollars?”

  Draco stuck his hand in his pocket and pulled out five twenty-dollar gold coins. “Will this do?” he asked.

  Fox grinned broadly. “Damn, I ain’t seen this much money in more ’n a year. Yeah, this’ll do. This’ll do just real good.”

  “After it’s done, I’ll look you up,” Draco said.

  “No need, I’ll look you up,” Fox said.

  Draco shook his head. “If things are goin’ as I plan, you won’t be able to find me. I’ll have to find you.”

  When Matt Jensen arrived in Santa Domingo the next day, he kept a close watch on the corners and rooftops of buildings, checking doorways and kiosks . . . anyplace that might provide concealment for a would-be shooter. On the one hand, he was considerably south of his normal wandering, so it was less likely that anyone down here would have heard of him and be anxious to make a name for themselves. On the other hand, he was after Rufus Draco, and the fact that someone had taken a shot at him a couple of weeks ago indicated to him that Draco was well aware of him . . . and would kill him if he had the opportunity.

  There were two saloons in town, the Horse Shoe, which looked as if a good puff of wind could blow it down, and the Double Down, which was considerably more substantial looking. Matt pulled up in front of the Double Down Saloon, dismounted, and went inside. He slapped a silver coin down on the bar.

  The sound of the coin made the saloon keeper look around.

  “Damn, if it ain’t Matt Jensen,” the bartender said, smiling at him.

  Matt was startled to hear his name spoken, especially since he had just been thinking that he could travel around down here in relative anonymity.

  “I haven’t see you since . . . when? Colorado Springs, two years ago?” the bartender asked. “What are you doin’ down in this neck of the woods?”

  “Hello, Clyde,” Matt said, dredging up the barkeep’s name from somewhere deep in the recesses of his mind. The reference to Colorado Springs helped. “I’m just wandering around.”

  The broadening smile on the bartender’s face showed how pleased he was to be remembered by this man. Clyde poured the drink, then shoved the coin back to Jensen. “First one is on me, Matt. Old friends who drop by always get the first one free.”

  “Thanks,” Matt said.

  “I was up in Colorado visiting family a couple of weeks ago, and I heard what happened to Jim Lewis and his wife and daughter,” Clyde said. “And I know that Jim was a good friend of yours.”

  “Yes, he was,” Matt replied without elaboration.

  “They ain’t caught up with the sons of bitches that killed them yet, have they? Who was it? Draco, Ferguson, and Hightower, I heard. They say all three of ’em got away.”

  “Not Ferguson and Hightower,” Matt said.

  “Yeah, I heard they got away too.”

  Matt tossed the drink down before he repeated, “Not Ferguson and Hightower.”

  For a second Clyde looked as if he might argue with him. Then he knew exactly what Matt was saying.

  “I’ll be damn. You got Ferguson and Hightower, didn’t you?”

  “Yeah.”

  “I shoulda knowed that. There ain’t nobody goin’ to do somethin’ like that to any of your friends, ’n’ get away with it. So, Draco is still on the loose, is he?”

  Matt pushed his glass across the bar, indicating that he wanted a refill. He pushed a coin along with it, and this time Clyde took the money.

  “For the time being.”

  “I know what you’re doin’ now. You’re lookin’ for him.”

  “Yes. Tell me, Clyde, do you know Rufus Draco? Would you recognize him if you saw him?”

  “I can’t rightly say as I would, Matt,” Clyde said. “I’ve sure heard of him, but I don’t think I’ve ever seen him. What does he look like?”

  “He’s a big man, no neck, a nose that’s been mashed flat against his face, and a bald head that looks like a cannon ball with red whiskers.”

  Clyde shook his head. “I can’t say as I’ve seen anyone like that. You think maybe he come this way?”

  “I think he has.”

  “You think he’s in town?”

  “I don’t know, but I’m going to hang around town for a few days just to make sure. I noticed there were two hotels. Which one would you suggest?”

  “Oh, I’d say the Carson Hotel,” Clyde said. “It’s the closest, it has a dining room, and they change the sheets on the beds at least once a week.”

  Matt finished his drink, wiped his mouth with the back of his hand, and started toward the door. “Thanks, Clyde,” he called back.

  “I hope you find the son of a bitch, Matt,” Clyde replied.

  “I’ll find him,” Matt replied confidently.

  Chapter Seven

  Standing at the far end of the bar, but close enough to have heard every word that was exchanged, was a man named Norman Fox. Fox had correctly guessed that if Matt Jensen came through town, he was unlikely to stop at the Horse Shoe, but would choose the nicer of the two saloons.

  Fox watched Jensen walk out the door; then he finished the rest of his drink and left the saloon as well. Standing out on the boardwalk in front of the saloon, he saw Jensen go into the Carson Hotel. Jensen had been less than ten feet away from him, but had given him no notice at all.

  Fox smiled. Jensen didn’t know him, and perceived no danger from him. Killing Jensen was going to be the easiest five hundred dollars Fox had ever earned.

  Tumbling P Ranch

  Somewhere in the predawn darkness a calf bawled anxiously and its mother answered. In the distance, a coyote sent up its long, lonesome wail, while out in the pond, frogs thrummed their night song. The moon was a thin sliver of silver, but the night was alive with stars . . . from the very bright, shining lights, all the way down to those stars that weren’t visible as individual bodies at all, but whose glow added to the luminous powder that dusted the distant sky.

  Around the milling shapes of shadows that made up the small herd rode three cowboys. One was much younger than the other two. Known as “nighthawks,” their job was to keep watch over the herd during the night.

  The night had been long, and in order to stay awake, the three young men were engaged in conversation.

  “What do you mean? Are you trying to tell me you’ve never even had yourself a woman?” one of the older cowboys asked the youngest of the three.

  Jimmy Patterson cleared his throat in embarrassment. “I told Mr. Mathis and Mr. Poindexter that I was sixteen, but truth is, I’m only fourteen. I ain’t never give it that much thought.”

  “Why, boy, it’s never too early to start. Don’t you know you can never be a man until you go upstairs at Diamond Dina’s Pleasure Palace?”‘

  “With Diamond Dina,” the other added.

  “With . . . with Diamond Dina?” Jimmy asked in a plaintive voice that was decidedly devoid of any enthusiasm over the prospect.

  “Hell yes, with Diamond Dina. Diamond Dina owns the place. That means ever’body who comes in there has to go with her first.”

  “I’ve seen Diamond Dina. She’s a very big woman,” Jimmy said. “She’d make two of me.”

  “Oh, don’t let that worry you, Jimmy. Big women is the best. Ain’t they, Jake?”

  “Damn right they are,” Jake said. “And here’s the thing, Jimmy. First time with Diamond Dina is free. She loves breakin’ ’em in. What’s that she’s always sayin’, Roy?”

  “She says, ‘give me a boy, and I’ll give you back a man,’” Roy said.

  “Tell you what,” Jake said. “Why don’t we ride into Thirty Four Corners first thing after we get off wor
k in the mornin’? It’ll be daytime and there won’t hardly be nobody else there, so we can have our pick.”

  “All except Jimmy,” Roy insisted. “He don’t get a pick. He has to go upstairs with Diamond Dina.”

  “Well, yeah, but then after that, he can go with anyone he wants to,” Jake said.

  “’Cept whoever me ’n’ you has already took for our ownselves.”

  The calf’s call for his mother came again, this time with more insistence. The mother’s answer had a degree of anxiousness to it.

  “Sounds like one of ’em’s wandered off,” Jimmy said. “Maybe I’d better go find it.”

  “Hell, why bother? It’ll find its own way back.”

  “I don’t mind,” Jimmy said, slapping his legs against the side of his horse and riding off, disappearing in the darkness.

  Roy laughed, a low, knowing, laugh. “If you ask me, Jimmy’s just anxious to get away from us before we talk him into actually going upstairs with Dina.”

  “Who knows?” Jake teased. “Maybe we can convince him she is just what he needs.”

  “I’d hate to see the fella that really needs Diamond Dina,” Roy said. Both cowboys laughed at their joke.

  “Say, Roy, maybe we’d better ride out there with him,” Jake suggested.

  “Why is that?”

  “What if it’s some BR men?”

  “BR men? What would they be doin’ over here?”

  “Well, there ain’t nobody that don’t know we’ve hired him on. I wouldn’t put it past a bunch of those yahoos to come over here and pull something on him,” Jake said.

  “You mean like settin’ him up with Diamond Dina?” Roy replied with a chuckle.

  “Now, come on, you know we’re just bringin’ the boy on, makin’ a man out of him,” Jake said. “Come thirty or forty years from now, why, he’ll be tellin’ that story to anyone who will listen.”

  “I reckon he will, at that. And you’re right, I don’t feel all that good about Jimmy bein’ out there all by hisself.”

  “Let’s go find him,” Jake said.

  “Jimmy?” Roy called. “Jimmy, are you out there?”

  “Yeah?” Jimmy answered, the sound of his voice coming back through the night. “What do you want?”

  “Diamond Dina is here, Jimmy. She said she’d do you for free, right here, if you’ll let us watch,” Jake called.

  “What?” Jimmy replied, his voice going up two octaves.

  Jake and Roy laughed out loud.

  Santa Domingo

  When Matt reached his room, he lit a lantern, then had a look around. The room had one high-sprung, cast-iron bed, a chest, and a small table with a pitcher and basin. On the wall was a neatly lettered sign that read: DO NOT SPIT ON THE FLOOR. GENTLEMEN, PLEASE REMOVE SPURS WHILE IN BED.

  Matt opened the window and saw that his room looked out over the street. He heard the train whistle blow and looked down toward the depot just in time to see a train pulling away.

  It was a busy night. In addition to the clanging bell and puffing steam of the departing locomotive, there was a full cacophony of sound emanating from the street below. The voices of scores of animated conversations spilled out through the open windows and doors of the town’s buildings and somewhere someone was singing. He heard a gunshot, but knew, instinctively, that it wasn’t a shot fired in anger. That was borne out by the fact that the shot was followed by a woman’s high-pitched scream, not of fear, but of excitement, then a man’s deep-voiced laughter.

  Matt blew out his lantern and went to bed.

  “Where are you tonight, Rufus Draco?” Matt asked, saying the words aloud, but very quietly.

  At one o’clock in the morning, Fox walked into the lobby of the Carson Hotel. As he’d expected, there was nobody sitting in the lobby at this hour. And as he had hoped, the night clerk at the front desk was sitting in a chair with his arms folded across his chest, and the chair tipped back against the wall. His eyes were closed and, though he wasn’t snoring, he was breathing loudly, and rhythmically, with his lips flapping as he exhaled.

  Fox turned the registration book around and ran his finger down the list of guests until he found the name he was looking for.

  M. Jensen . . . . . Room 14

  There was a board hanging on the wall just behind the desk. There were eighteen nails on the wall, commensurate with the number of rooms in the hotel, and just above each nail was a number. Keys were hanging from the nails, two keys from the rooms that were unoccupied, and one key, the house key, from those rooms that were occupied.

  Stretching across the counter, Fox removed the house key from the nail that was numbered fourteen.

  Taking one last look across the desk to make certain the clerk was still asleep, Fox started toward the stairs.

  The second-floor corridor was long and narrow, and as he set foot on the red carpet runner, he could hear the quiet hiss of the gas lanterns, two on either side of the hallway. Room fourteen was the third room down, on the right. Pulling his pistol, he started toward it.

  Matt was sound asleep, enjoying his second night in an actual bed in the last week. Then, in some way, an awareness that he was in danger cut through the layers of slumber as quickly as a knife through butter. If anyone had asked him how he knew he was in peril Matt would not be able to answer, but he knew, with every fiber of his being, that he was in jeopardy.

  This preternatural cognizance caused the sleep to fall away and Matt, with reflexes born of years of living on the edge, rolled off the bed just as a gun boomed in the doorway of his room. The bullet slammed into the headboard of the bed where, but a second earlier, Matt had been sleeping.

  Even as Matt was rolling off the bed, he was reaching for the pistol under his pillow. Now the advantage was his. The man who had attempted to kill him was temporarily blinded by the muzzle flash of his own shot and he could see nothing in the darkness of Matt’s room. That same muzzle flash, however, had illuminated the assailant for Matt and he quickly aimed his pistol at the dark hulk in the doorway, closed his eyes against his own muzzle flash, and squeezed the trigger. The gun bucked in his hand as the roar filled the room.

  In Santa Domingo, as in all the other Western towns of similar social structure, drunken patrons of the saloons often gave vent to high-spirited emotions with a celebratory and mostly harmless discharge of pistols. As a result of such a practice, the citizens of such towns had learned to recognize the difference in sound between shots fired in play and shots that were fired in anger.

  The sound of these two shots, right on top of each other as they were, left no doubt in anyone’s mind as to their character. Everyone within hearing distance knew that these were shots fired in anger. Some were curious, some were frightened, but all knew the likely outcome of the encounter, and a few of the more pious breathed little prayers as they realized that someone had just died.

  Matt heard a groaning sound, then the heavy thump of a falling body.

  “What is it? What’s happening?” a voice called. All up and down the hallway of the hotel, doors opened as patrons, dressed in nightgowns and pajamas, peered out of their rooms in curiosity, their faces glowing in the greenish tint of the light of the hissing gas lamps.

  Several of them, seeing a man lying on the floor, ventured toward him so that by the time Matt had pulled on his trousers and stepped into the door of his room, there were four of five gathered around the body.

  “What were you two fighting about?” one of the hotel guests asked.

  “Your guess is as good as mine,” Matt said. “I’ve never seen him before.”

  “You’ve never seen him before, but you killed him?” another asked.

  “What the hell, mister?” another guest said. “What was he supposed to do? This feller stepped up to his door and started shootin’.”

  “You saw it?” Matt asked.

  “I did. I was just about to leave my room when I seen this feller standin’ just outside your room with a gun in his hand. I stepped back
into my room, but I kept the door open a crack so’s I could see. I seen the whole thing.”

  “You’ll be willing to tell the sheriff that?”

  “Yes, sir, I’ll tell him that,” the man said.

  “Does anyone know him?” Matt asked.

  “You mean you don’t?”

  “I’ve never seen him before,” Matt replied, but even as he responded to the question, he had a sudden memory of where he had seen him. He had seen him standing at the other end of the bar in the Double Down Saloon.

  “His name is Fox,” someone said. “Norman Fox. Does that ring a bell with you?”

  Matt shook his head. “Nope.”

  “Well then, what for did he come for you like he done?”

  “I don’t have the slightest idea.”

  “What are you going to do about him now?” the hotel patron asked.

  “What do you mean what am I going to do about him?” Matt asked. “I don’t plan to do anything about him.”

  “Well, good lord, man, you don’t plan to just leave him lying out here in the hall, do you?”

  “I don’t see as how his lying out here in the hall can be a problem to anyone. He’s dead,” Matt said.

  “That’s just it. He’s dead. Nobody is goin’ to be able to sleep with a dead man lyin’ out here in the hall.”

  “If you want him out of here, take him out of here,” Matt suggested.

  “The hell you say. I didn’t kill him.”

  “He’s got a point there, mister,” one of the others said. “You killed him. The least you can do is get rid of him.”

  “I didn’t invite him up here.”

  “Nevertheless, he’s here, and he’s dead. And since you are the one who killed him, it would seem to me that’s also your responsibility to get rid of him.”

  “All right, if it means that much to you,” Matt said. Leaning down, he picked the body up, and threw it over his shoulder.