“I have seen many brave men in my time and I have seen many cowards,” Dr. Sun said. “Jess, you are neither one nor the other. You’re just a man doing the best job he can.”
“And not doing it very well,” Jess said.
“That remains to be seen,” Dr. Sun said.
* * *
Zeus was buried in the wind-torn Fort Worth cemetery. A parson said the words and Jess, Dr. Sun and an ailing Nate Levy were at the graveside. Big Sal and her assistant hovered close by, waiting to do what had to be done when the praying was over.
To everyone’s surprise Kurt Koenig joined them, wearing a black mourning gown. “Zeus was a fighter,” he said. “I’m here to pay my respects.”
After the praying and the singing of hymns, the preacher left and Koenig took Jess aside. “We have our differences, Jess,” he said, “but Zeus’s murder was none of my doing.”
“I didn’t think it was,” Jess said. “But I aim to find out.”
“Jess, stay away from Luke Short,” Koenig said. “He’s a proud man and you’ve humiliated him twice. There won’t be a third time. Go slower, Jess, go slower.”
“Kurt, I’m shutting down the Alamo and the Green Buddha,” Jess said. “I plan to stop the spread of opium and morphine in this town, and the new drug, if it appears.”
The mourning robe flapped around Koenig in the wind as he said, “I don’t supply the Alamo with opium. I told you that.”
“And I believe you. But I think closing down the Alamo will bring whoever is out from under his rock.” Jess locked eyes with Koenig. “Kurt, you get a cut from every dirty business in town and you run whores and sell bad whiskey in the Silver Garter. You’re already a rich man, so when do you say enough is enough? You don’t need the opium.”
“Leave the Green Buddha alone.”
“I can’t do that.”
“Jess, you’re sheriff for only as long as I say you’re sheriff,” Koenig said.
“You firing me, Kurt?”
“Not quite yet. But I’m thinking about it.”
* * *
The Alamo would have to wait. Jess Casey had more urgent business at City Hall. Nate Levy, who was still weeks away from recovering from the vicious beating he’d taken, insisted on accompanying him. He wore a plug hat and long black coat, a Colt .44-40 self-cocker in the right pocket.
“You any good with that Colt, Nate?” Jess said as they walked along the boardwalk.
“Good, bad, how am I to know? I’ve never shot the thing,” Levy said.
“Perfect,” Jess said. “Just what I wanted to hear.”
The wind remained strong and gusty, coming in from the east, and Jess fancied that it had traveled all the way from the tropics and had smelled of fragrant flowers before it picked up the scent of horse dung and cattle pens.
“Something smells good,” Nate Levy said. Just ahead of them a street vendor sold hot sausages and little meat pies from a handcart. “Let’s stop, Jess,” he said. “I’m hungry.”
“Not the kind of food for an invalid,” Jess said, smiling.
“‘Invalid,’ he says. Says me, I’m starving to death. Broth and boiled eggs isn’t fit food for a sick man. We’ll stop.”
He and Jess each sampled a sausage and a pie and Nate declared it was the best grub he ever ate. But when City Hall came in sight he was already complaining of dyspepsia.
“Sheriff, why did you let me eat that damned greasy sausage?” he said. “You should have told me it was not the kind of fare for an invalid.”
Another stop had to be made while Nate stepped into a candy store where he bought peppermints to settle his stomach. And Jess began to wonder if allowing the little man to tag along was more trouble than it was worth.
* * *
At City Hall Jess learned that the night watchman, a man called Dave Feeney, had already left and would not be back until seven that night. But the clerk at the reception desk said Dave Feeney lived alone in a shack behind the French Hotel on 15th Street.
Nate Levy had not come inside and when Jess joined him again the little man was gazing intently at something in the palm of his hand.
“Catch a bug, Nate?” Jess said, grinning.
Nate shook his head. “No, it’s a little jewel, an emerald by the look of it.”
Jess took Nate’s hand and studied the stone. “Where did you find it?” he said.
“Over there by the doorstep,” Nate said.
Jess said, “I would never have seen that.”
“I’m closer to the ground than you,” the little man said. “I don’t think it’s real. But it looks like it was in a setting.”
“Lillian Burke has a brooch with emeralds like that,” Jess said. “Could it possibly be hers?”
“She’s the brewer’s daughter who’s gone missing?”
“Yes, she is.”
“I don’t think this is a real emerald,” Nate said. “I mean, it could be, but I don’t think so. It’s small so it’s hard to tell.”
“Can you find out?”
“When I get back to the hotel I’ll look at it closer with a magnifier. My father was a jeweler and he taught me how to tell real from fake.”
Jess’s enthusiasm waned. “Probably a lot of women in town have fake emerald jewelry,” he said. “And the stone could have been lost years ago and today it was uncovered by the wind.”
Carefully, Nate Levy put the gem in his pocket. “Well, I’ll take a look and tell you what I think,” he said.
* * *
There were several frame and tar-paper shacks behind the French Hotel, the abodes of some of the city’s poorest. Each had a sagging roof, boarded-up windows and a rusty stovepipe sticking through the wood shingles. The area was covered in empty bottles and other trash, probably the reason all the windows to the rear of the hotel had closed shutters.
A ragged old woman throwing bottles into a sack looked up when she saw Jess and Nate. Her eyes went to the battered star on Jess’s shirt. “Plannin’ to arrest somebody, sonny?” she said.
Jess smiled. “Not today, ma’am. I’m looking for a feller, name’s Dave Feeney.”
“Ha!” The woman grinned, revealing toothless gums. “He’s always one of three ways, drunk, sleeping or working.”
“And what is he today?” Jess said.
“Sleeping probably and you’ll have a hard time waking him. He works nights, you know.”
“Which house is his?” Jess said.
The woman cackled. “House! Is that what you call it?” She assumed a genteel accent. “The Feeney mansion is right in front of you, sonny. Knock and the butler will answer.” Still cackling, she went back to scavenging for bottles, her burlap sack clinking.
Jess rapped on the door and set it rattling on its hinges. “Mr. Feeney, are you to home? It’s Sheriff Casey. I’d like to talk to you.”
Jess got no answer. He waited a while then tried knocking again, louder this time. The shack remained silent.
“Maybe he’s a sound sleeper,” Nate said. “Or drunk.”
“Or he isn’t to home,” Jess said.
He walked around the shack but the boarded windows blocked out any sign of life and there was no sound.
“I guess we try later, Nate,” Jess said.
“This is later enough,” Nate said. He stepped around Jess, lifted his leg and kicked the door open. Then, immediately, “Sheriff, you’d better come see this.”
* * *
There was a sagging beam at the V of the roof and to this was attached a rope. A dangling noose neatly fitted around Feeney’s neck but the man had strangled to death. His bloodshot eyes had popped as large as pool balls and his tongue lolled out of his mouth. An overturned chair lay on the floor.
“Hung himself,” Nate Levy said. He looked around the mean shack. “Poor man didn’t have much, did he?”
Jess said nothing. He quickly searched the cabin and then, holding down his revulsion, checked the dead man’s pockets.
“Where’s the money
?” he said.
Nate’s expression asked a question and Jess said, “Feeney was paid to look the other way when Zeus’s killer came for him. He should have the money. Where is it?”
“I guess he drank it all away,” Nate said.
“He’s had no time to do that,” Jess said. “He should have had some money, but he hasn’t, not a dime.”
Nate said, “Well, he hung himself so we’ll never know.”
Jess smiled. “I wish I had a Pinkerton close by.”
“Why?” Nate said.
“Because I think this man was murdered.”
“Looks to me like he done himself in,” Nate said. “I’m not a Pinkerton but it seems kind of obvious.”
“But why? Feeney had a steady job and was earning money for whiskey. Why would he kill himself?”
“Because he couldn’t live with the shame of betraying my boy Zeus,” Nate said. “I don’t want to talk ill of the dead, but that’s a possibility.”
“I don’t think even you believe that, Nate. A man who would step aside and see another human being slaughtered had no shame.”
Jess opened his Barlow knife, cut the rope, and Feeney’s lifeless body thudded onto the dirt floor.
“No point in keeping him hanging there,” Jess said. “I’m not a detective but I’m sure, like Zeus, he was murdered to silence him.”
“Hell, then who done for him?” Nate Levy said.
Jess shook his head. “I just said I’m not a detective, Nate, so the answer is I don’t know.”
CHAPTER THIRTY-TWO
Nate Levy showed up at the sheriff’s office two hours after Big Sal had taken Feeney’s body away. She told Jess Casey that the man was a well-known drunk but she had nothing else to add.
But Nate brought news of the emerald.
“It’s a high-quality stone,” he said. “It’s small but very finely cut.”
“How much is it worth?” Jess said.
“On its own, not a great deal,” Nate said. “But it would add value to a piece of jewelry. There’s no doubt about that.”
“Like a diamond brooch,” Jess said.
“Exactly,” Nate said. “And one more thing, I don’t think it was in the ground for long. I saw no sand abrasion of any kind through my magnifier.”
Jess sat back in his chair. If Lillian Burke had lost the emerald, what was she doing at City Hall? On an errand for her father perhaps? He was one of the city’s most prominent merchants and would often have business there. And the girl could have lost it days or even weeks before she disappeared.
“I don’t think the emerald tells us much, Nate,” he said. “Except that Lillian Burke was at City Hall sometime—”
“Within the past couple of months or so, no longer,” Nate said.
“Dead end, don’t you think?” Jess said.
Nate Levy had no time to answer that because the unexpected arrival of Luke Short, roaring drunk and ready to burn powder, stopped all conversation.
The little gambler kicked the door open, charged inside and cut loose at Jess with a Colt shopkeeper’s model.
Nate Levy dived for the floor and Jess followed him. Luke’s drunken state and the shortness of the Colt’s barrel combined to make his shooting less than accurate but he put his last two rounds into Jess’s empty chair before he yelled, “You won’t buffalo me again, Casey!” He turned to the cowering Nate and said, “Now you can bury him.”
Luke staggered out the door and Jess rose to his feet.
“Did you get hit?” Nate Levy said.
“Hell, no. He’s as drunk as a skunk.”
Jess ran to the door and saw Short staggering down the boardwalk, his empty gun dangling at his side. There were too many people around to shoot, so he yelled, “Luke Short, get back here, you bushwhacking, low-down son of a bitch!”
But if Luke heard, which was doubtful, he ignored Jess and kept on staggering homeward.
“Go after him,” Nate said. “Put a bullet in him or he’ll give you no peace.”
“He’s drunk,” Jess said. “I’m not going to shoot a man with the devil in him.”
Nate, pale, wizened and worried, said, “Jess, this is Hell’s Half Acre, remember. Saints don’t last long in this place. Now go gun him like I told you before you lose him.”
“I’ll see him tomorrow when he’s sober,” Jess said.
“Well, that’s just crackerjack,” Nate said. “Tomorrow when Luke’s sober he’ll shoot straighter.”
CHAPTER THIRTY-THREE
Luke Short could wait. Jess Casey had more urgent business at hand.
Just after first light he walked to Simon Hall’s carpentry business and lumber yard on 13th Street, where the man was already at work repairing a broken chair.
“I have a job for you,” Jess said, after the customary handshake. “I need a couple of doors and some windows boarded up.”
“I have that capability,” Hall said. “When do you want the work done?”
“Now,” Jess said.
“Well, I’m kind of busy—”
“You bill the city,” Jess said.
Hall’s face lit up. “In that case I’ll get right on it.” Then, “Jack, get out here. We have a job.”
A gangly young man came out of the workshop, and Hall said, “Hitch the mare to the wagon and be quick about it.”
It took just ten minutes to get the horse into the traces and load the wagon with lumber and ladders. When Jess told Hall where they were headed, and why, the man raised an eyebrow but made no comment. He and Jack, a carpenter apprentice, jumped on the back of the wagon and dangled their legs as Hall drove to the Alamo.
Because of what had happened to his bruisers, Larry Kemp made little objection as Jess rousted out the early-morning patrons from the saloon. One rooster, already drunk, swung at Hall, and the robust carpenter laid him out with a neat crack to the jaw.
“Front and back door and all the windows, upstairs and down,” Jess told Hall. Then, to Kemp: “These premises are officially closed until such times as repairs are carried out to the structure. At the moment the Alamo is in dangerous condition and it’s a fire hazard.”
“You’re closing me down because I sell opium here,” Kemp said. “I don’t need your fancy talk about structures and fires.”
“Who supplies you, Kemp?” Jess said.
“Go to hell.”
Jess stood outside the saloon as the sound of hammers echoed throughout the building. Kemp stood watching and seethed with rage. Finally he sidled up to Jess and said, “Sheriff, you’ll hear that sound again when they’re hammering down the lid of your coffin.”
“Who supplies your opium?” Jess said. “And, Kemp, give me some sass and back talk. I need an excuse to shoot you.”
The saloonkeeper read Jess’s eyes and didn’t like what he saw. “I don’t know.”
“Who do you pay for the stuff?”
“Usually a man comes and collects it, occasionally a woman.”
“Kurt Koenig’s woman?”
“Hell, no. Some old hag who always picks up my empty bottles while she’s here.”
Jess remembered the old woman he’d met at Feeney’s place. Was it her? And who did she deliver the proceeds of Kemp’s ill-gotten gains to? He would look for her later. First he had to see the Alamo shuttered . . . and then move on to the Green Buddha.
A few of the patrons and a growing number of passersby expressed their concern that the Alamo pleasure palace was shutting down. Kemp, smiling broadly, reassured them. “I’ll be open for business in a day or two,” he said. “I’ve got powerful friends in this town.”
“Good for you, Larry,” a woman said. She glared at Jess. “And you, for shame, trying to put an honest man out of business.”
That met with growls of approval, and a couple of burly fellows spoke darkly about a certain lawman getting his teeth kicked in. Simon Hall got on with his work, but he looked uneasy. His apprentice, enjoying the spectacle, grinned and pounded harder with his hammer.
The Alamo was located in one of the most dangerous, violent neighborhoods on earth and Jess was aware that things could rapidly get out of hand. The crowd that had gathered was growing increasingly hostile and Kemp stoked their anger. He played the martyr to the hilt and crocodile tears reddened his eyes.
“I was never one to turn a hungry man away from my door or refuse a few dollars to a widow woman or an orphan,” he wailed. “And now I’m being driven out.”
This incensed the crowd, which conveniently forgot that Larry Kemp was never known to give anyone a free drink, let alone feed the hungry and care for orphans.
“You’re a victim, Larry,” a woman yelled. “That’s what you are, a victim of the law.”
Kemp nodded and spread his hands, “Yes, a victim. While villains like Kurt Koenig prosper.”
“The damned sheriff is on Koenig’s payroll, Larry,” one of the burly men said. “That’s the real reason you’re being shut down. Koenig thinks you’re too much competition.”
That last was met with a roar of approval and the burly man said, “Rip the damned timber off those doors! I’m a Panther City Boy! Who’s with me?”
“And free drinks for everybody when it’s done,” Kemp said, in a moment of madness.
The situation was fast getting out of hand and Jess decided to up the ante. He drew his Colt and said, “I’ll kill any man who goes near the doors.”
The burly man and his companions were skull, fist and boot fighters and the gun in the sheriff’s hand gave them pause. Jess took advantage of their hesitation.
“You, Panther City Boy, try to pull the timbers off the door and see what happens,” he said. “Go ahead, we’re all waiting.”
The big man didn’t like that one bit. The slender, hard-eyed sheriff was as significant as a stiletto blade and he saw no back-up in him.
Jess thumbed back the hammer of the Colt. “Damn you! Try it!”
“Don’t, Andy boy,” a woman said to the big man. “He’s crazy.”
“Kemp, if anyone moves toward the door you’ll be the first one I kill,” Jess said.
Kemp swallowed hard, then said, “We’ll let my friends deal with this outrage. I’ll be open for business tomorrow.”
Hell's Half Acre Page 15
