Relentless

by Ed Gorman

  “I was saying to the conductor as we were pulling in, ‘I believe this is the prettiest town in the whole state,’ and he said ‘Yessir, I believe it is.’ ”

  Raptured applause.

  “And I’ll tell you something else your beautiful town is and that’s lucky-lucky to have two men as devoted to Skylar as they are to their own families. And I’m talking about the men on either side of me at this very moment.” He introduced them. They looked like children who’d just been given a gold eagle to spend on candy.

  “And something else that conductor told me. He said that my friends here-these very two men next to me-were the only ones brave enough to stand up to a town marshal whose wife may or may not have something to do with a very unseemly murder. The conductor told me that not everybody was happy When these two gentlemen forced him to resign-but that they stood their ground and are now in the process of finding his wife.”

  The applause wasn’t rapturous this time, but it was solid. And it inspired a hundred arrow-perfect glances back at me where I stood near the rear of the depot.

  “You know what we call that kind of courage in the state capitol, don’t you? We call it leadership. The courage to do the right thing even when it’s not always popular. The courage to stand up-even if you have to stand up alone- and say that what’s right is right and what’s wrong is wrong. That’s leadership, as I say.

  “And I say one more thing. Your district will have two open seats in the state legislature next session. And I can’t think of two more qualified public servants than these two gentlemen to fill those seats!”

  The band conductor-who had no doubt been silently cued from the caboose platform by Grice or Toomey - broke into another patriotic medley. There was confetti. There was rapturous applause again. I’d been expecting the political push for Grice and Toomey to come later. But he’d probably been asked by Grice and Toomey to make it right away before the crowd started getting tired of the heat and began drifting away.

  And then I saw them.

  They drove the fanciest surrey of all. And came late, as always. Lateness signified their importance. Courtesy wasn’t necessary when you were among the elite. You ran on your schedule, not anybody else’s.

  Laura Webley, in a summery yellow frock with a vast straw picture hat tied under her chin with a matching yellow ribbon, stepped down from the surrey with storybook grace. Any number of men in the crowd, much to the displeasure of frowning wives, turned to where the surrey had parked very near the tracks-nobody else had been allowed to park this close-and where Laura was making her first public appearance of the day.

  Paul helped her down, of course. He looked shrunken and gray standing next to the fully bloomed and life-pulsing wife of his.

  “Ah!” Fuller said. “And here come two more very good friends of mine now. Do you mind if I tell you how beautiful Laura looks today, Paul?” The first hint of the lecher in the grandfatherly visage.

  Paul pointed gallantly to his wife the way an impresario points to his diva, letting everybody drink in the elixir of her beauty.

  Fuller had misstepped, and from the look on the faces of

  Grice and Toomey, they knew instantly that he had. In a town like Skylar, a powerful man like Paul is feared and catered to. But he’s never liked or admired. Quiet and modest as he could sometimes be, Webley constantly flaunted his most valued treasure-his wife. And she was the embodiment of all that the town resented about Webley. She was too beautiful, too well-bred, too pampered. Only a rich man could catch a woman like Laura-if he wasn’t rich, she would’ve laughed at him the first time he approached her and flounced away. So it was not wise for an invited guest to dote on this woman, nor the man who kept her in his eye.

  He’d misstepped but he was good, Fuller was, and realized his error instantly. The faces of the hardworking citizens of Skylar weren’t all that hard to read.

  He changed subjects deftly. “And let’s not forget that beauty comes in many forms. From here I can see all the new buildings in the business area that my friends Toomey and Grice helped build. You Skylar folks should be very proud of your town.”

  Now what kind of crowd wouldn’t applaud a line like that? The Webleys were all but forgotten as Fuller picked up the pace of this speech he’d given so many times, substituting only the name of the town. Even in a hellhole like Leadville, an ugly scourge of mining and anti-union violence, Fuller would be fully capable of talking about “beauty” and civic pride.

  Eventually, people quit staring back at me. Picnic tables had been set up in the park, food of every sort filling them. The band led a march to the park, a good portion of the crowd following it merrily along. It was a day for kids, dogs, young lovers - and local political powers who had their eyes on the state legislature.

  There was one man I wanted to see before I looked up Adams. There was a problem, however. Paul was surrounded by a gaggle of toadies in fine summer clothes. Getting to him wouldn’t be easy.

  But then the lovely Laura helped me out by breaking away from the crowd and walking over to where Fuller stood, shaking hands with another group of toadies. The common folk had done the sensible thing. They’d headed over to the food and the beer. Who wanted to stand before would-be greatness and have to genuflect in this punishing heat?

  Laura knew better than to force her way up to Fuller. She stood in line. But not for long. I went over to her and took her arm and tugged her away.

  “Paul’s not going to like this,” she said. “He’s watching us right now.”

  “That’s the idea. I want him to come over here.”

  Fear filled her eyes. “What’re you going to do, Marshal?”

  “Ask him a few questions.”

  “You’re not going to tell him about Stanton and me, are you?”

  I started to answer her, but it was already too late. Paul already stood next to us. “Well, Lane, I’m a little hurt you didn’t invite me to this little palaver. Being’s as how I’m Laura’s husband and all. And I don’t appreciate you taking her out of a receiving line against her will.”

  “You sure it was against her will?”

  “Of course it was against my will,” she said.

  “I guess that settles it, Marshal,” Webley said. “Now, if you don’t mind, Laura and I have some other things to do.” He took her arm and started away.

  I said, “About half an hour ago I wired the state attorney general and told him that you tried to blackmail me into dropping charges against Trent.”

  Maybe it was just the heat, maybe it was just the fact that he’d always found me a nuisance, maybe he was just showing off for his wife, demonstrating that he didn’t have to abide people like me.

  He spit in my face. The spittle burned unnaturally. It was the humiliation, of course. My instinct was to smash his face in. But I had too much to do to risk going to jail. And Webley had the wherewithal to put me there if he wanted to. If Tom Ryan wouldn’t do it, Webley would simply buy himself a lawman who would.

  The remnants of the crowd had been idly watching us, waiting their turn to shake Fuller’s hand. They were well aware that Webley and I were old foes, so keeping an eye on us might have its rewards.

  They gaped, they gawked, they smirked, they simpered. We’d given them-or Webley had anyway-a nice, nasty little’ story to recite and contemplate for the rest of the day. They were too far away to know why he’d spit in my face- which would just make all their speculation that much more fun.

  Hey did you hear about Webley and Morgan getting into it at the train depot? Man, I thought Morgan might draw down on him for a minute there-

  I reached in my back pocket and took out my handkerchief and wiped the spittle away. And then, with a hand I couldn’t control, I slapped him with enough force to knock him into Laura.

  Now the onlookers would really have something to talk about. The only thing better than a slap was an outright gun battle.

  The crowd was ready for a few of his boys-who always hovered within eas
y distance of him-to move in on me. This was the stuff of local legend. Somebody slapping Paul. When the story was told-and it would be told and retold as long as Paul was alive, and maybe even longer than that-the fact that he’d earned my slap by spitting on me would be forgotten. All that would be remembered was my slap. And what a brave man I’d been. That’s the trouble with legend. It always forgets to include the important details. I hadn’t slapped him because I was brave. I slapped him because he’d pissed me off and for a moment my temper overruled my good sense.

  So what was it to be? His boys moving in on me now or later?

  Certainly, Paul couldn’t accept the public embarrassment of being slapped by a defrocked town marshal, could he?

  But he surprised me-and I’m sure the onlookers-by quietly saying, “I’m sorry, Morgan. I shouldn’t have spit on you.” He touched the cheek I’d slapped. “I had that coming.”

  He took Laura’s arm again and led her away. Both of them kept their heads down, not wanting to meet the eyes of the gawkers.

  Then Toomey was there. “I suppose you’re proud of yourself.”

  “I’m not ready for any of your bullshit, Toomey. It’s too hot.”

  But he wasn’t finished scolding me. “We invite the lieutenant governor of the state-one of the most important men in the entire West, a very good personal friend of the president of the United States if I need to remind you-we invite him here and what do you do? You start an argument with one of his very best friends, Paul. You know what he said? He said he wasn’t surprised that you were the town marshal who’s hiding his wife from everybody. He said that the West is changing and that there’s no room for corrupt peace officers like you anymore. And you know what, Morgan? He’s exactly right. Exactly right. You know and I know that that wife of yours killed David Stanton. And you’d damned well be ready to turn her over. Because we’re going to double our reward after your disgraceful run-in with Paul this afternoon. We’re not going to let you get away with anything, mister. Not one damned thing.”

  The male schoolmarm had just upbraided me in the harshest way possible. I was going to have to stay after school every day for the next six years, probably, the kind of trouble I was in now.

  I was done with him. He might not be done with me. But I was done with him. He started yammering again, but I just turned to my left and walked away. He even shouted at me, but I didn’t care about that either. Just headed toward the business district, where I definitely had some business.

  ***

  Sometime in the middle of the night-one of those nights when you sit on the edge of your bed in your underwear and keep rolling cigarettes-you remember something that strikes you, in the early morning darkness, as something you should’ve followed up on long before now.

  The time was nearing four o’clock.

  The night shift would be starting at the hotel.

  There was a man there who might just know who’d killed David Stanton.

  NINETEEN

  In the hotel where he worked as night clerk. I knew this because I’d been called to his room one night to break up a poker game that had turned into a fistfight. One of the losing players - a hotel guest-had accused Gunderson of cheating. One of Gunderson’s friends had held the man while Gunderson started to work him over. What Gunderson hadn’t known was that the man was a former boxer. He beat up Gunderson and his friends pretty badly, destroying the room and waking up half the hotel’s guests in the process.

  AVMOND GUNDERSON LIVED on the first floor of

  I waited in the alley behind the hotel until I saw it was four o’clock. I went in the back door, went down a long, narrow, shadowy hall that opened on the lobby. Gunderson was just getting set up for his four-to-midnight shift. He was studying the guest register and spritzing the air with some kind of flowery-smelling water. As usual, he managed to look both prissy and sinister, no small accomplishment.

  I didn’t let him see me. I walked back to his room.

  A couple of new guests were just coming in the back door, toting heavy boxes. Drummers bringing in some of their wares from a wagon in back. Breathless, sweaty, they still had their dead bright smiles in place as soon as they saw me lingering in the hall. They’d be smiling those empty smiles when they were six feet under.

  The third skeleton key worked and I was inside.

  I hadn’t known that Gunderson had been married or that he’d had a daughter. He had photographs of his wife and child everywhere. I didn’t like that. It made him human to me, and that’s never a good thing when you’re about to rattle a man for information.

  The room had that lonely air particular to rooms of men without women. The years pass and all they have to show for it are a few extra dollars from poker, bad lungs and bad heart from too much liquor and tobacco, and the silent regrets seen on the faces of loved ones they deserted long ago and far away. When they’re buried, these men, their funerals are attended only by other unmarried men like them. And probably even before the last shovel full of dirt thrums against the lid of the pine coffin, a new unmarried man will have moved into the dead man’s room, with his own set of photographs of the family he left behind, and his own air of just marking time before a bullet or the cancer or some odd freak accident claims his body and his soul.

  I wondered if I’d end up in a room like this some day, marking my own time.

  I went to work. It didn’t take all that long. I looked in all the obvious places - dresser, closet, under the mattress, under the bed-and then I noticed the expensive pair of riding boots stuck in the comer by the chamber pot. I figured maybe it would be in the boots, but when I picked them up to look inside, I nudged the pot and noticed that it didn’t rock back and forth the way such a light piece of metal normally would.

  Despite its odor, I picked it up. Slid my hand along its bottom, which was made of felt and was far thicker than I was used to seeing.

  I took my pocketknife out and jimmied the felt free from the bottom of the pot itself. Five hundred dollars fluttered to the floor. Pretty decent pay for a night clerk.

  I stuck the money in my pocket and left the room.

  ***

  I sat in the lobby for the next half hour. Reading magazines. Rolling cigarettes. I was tempted to head into the taproom for a beer, but then I might miss my chance. I needed a few minutes when Gunderson was free, no guests around at all.

  When the time came, I was on my feet in seconds, headed directly to the desk.

  Gunderson eyed me scornfully and said, “I’m told you made a fool of yourself at the depot this afternoon.”

  “That’s one thing you should know about, Gunderson, making a fool of yourself. You do it all day long.”

  He sighed. “What can I do for you,-Morgan? I’m busy.” I had no proof of what I was about to say, but I had a pretty solid sense I was right. “You a good friend of Webley’s, are you?”

  “Is that supposed to mean something to me? Of course I’m friendly with Webley. In case you hadn’t noticed, Morgan, the man you slapped this afternoon runs this town.”

  “It’s funny. When I picked up your chamber pot this afternoon, five hundred dollars fell out. Only man I know who could put out that kind of money would be Webley.”

  He leaned forward so he could hiss at me. “What the hell were you doing in my room?”

  “I just wanted to see how much he paid you to keep his little secret.”

  He leaned back, righted his posture. “I’m sure I don’t know what you’re talking about.” But he was sweating suddenly, and I didn’t think it was the heat. He took his handkerchief from his sleeve and began daubing his face with it.

  I took the money from my pocket and showed it to him. “I thought I’d let you know I have your money. In case you want to report it stolen, I mean.”

  His eyes flicked around the lobby. He was obviously afraid somebody might hear us.

  “That’s my money, Morgan.”

  “Not anymore, it’s not.”

  “I need it, you b
astard. I’ve got some bills I need to take care of.”

  I smiled. “You’re a lousy gambler, Gunderson. You should’ve quit a long time ago.” I thought of the pictures in his room. “Or stayed with your family. Your wife looks very nice and smart.”

  “I want my money.” He put his hand out, palm up.

  “He snuck up the back way, didn’t he? And you saw him. And he knew you saw him. And later he came down and told you not to tell anybody you’d seen him go up to Stanton’s room. That’s why he paid you the five hundred dollars. Or maybe it was more. Maybe you’ve already spent part of it. Keeping the gamblers off your back. Before one of them shoves a knife in that back because you owe him so much money.”

  “You don’t have to worry about that,” he said. And for the first time, I saw sorrow in his face-middle-aged sorrow, lonely-room sorrow. Scared and confused. And then I felt the same as I had when I saw his family pictures. I didn’t want to see his sorrow. I didn’t want anything to make him human. I had a sense now of why he’d left that nice little family of his. Not a woman. Not the promise of gold. Not an idle dream of power.

  No, he’d left because something happened to him when he gambled. Some rush of excitement, some thrill even more powerful than money itself. Gambling had an almost sexual grip on him.

  “He’s going to kill you, you know,” I said.

  He leaned forward, spoke in a low voice. “You don’t understand, Morgan. That isn’t why he paid me. He came here-snuck in-to get his wife. He paid me to keep quiet about her, not him. He didn’t have much luck. He almost ran into Tom Ryan, who was looking for that con artist who’d been in town. Conroy. You know the one. Webley had to hide in an empty room. Then he went in and got her and got out of here fast. I went up there and looked in Stanton’s room and- He was dead.”

  “You think she killed him?”