Five Belles to Hell

by Tony Masero

  ‘What do you think, Belle?’ asked the elegant Clara, as she swirled before Belle, showing off her latest choice of revealing French lingerie.

  They were stunning girls, each of them chosen personally by Belle. Clara, was her top hand, a tall statuesque beauty. Then came the effervescent Molly and the curly headed but quieter Maggie, the diminutive Kate, and the Chinese girl they had called Lulu, as her real name was unpronounceable.

  Even though they were a parade of beauty, Belle still managed to outshine them all. With long honey-gold hair and electric blue eyes that radiated out from her perfectly formed features, she stunned all who came across her. She dressed well, as she always had, in the best of latest fashion and her dresses only went to enhance her long limbed and fulsome figure. Many of the men that came calling would have been glad to spend a small fortune to spend one night with her but Belle avoided them all. It was true she took an occasional lover for company’s sake but mainly she remained aloof from her clients and kept solely to her overriding mission and that was the destruction of the Knights of the Golden Circle.

  Belle raised her glass in an appreciative salute for her number one girl, ‘You look swell, Clara.’

  There were usually between ten and twenty girls in the house but these five were the elite, for it was they that Belle had trained herself and she had to admit they had taken to the nature of espionage better than she would ever have imagined.

  ‘What program we do tonight, Belle?’ lisped Lulu, her expressionless eyes glittering in the small china-doll face. Lulu was their ‘Specialist’, she dealt with the fetishists and Belle had discovered her in a rundown crib in San Francisco where she had been abducted and imported by the Chinese tongs and forced to work her heart out, earning a miserable eight hundred and fifty dollars a year for her owners. Belle had seen her potential. The spiteful anger that the girl repressed over her enforced lifestyle had made her a perfect addition to her team in the sadomasochistic role she played out so well. Under Belle’s management she was earning her earlier fee in a week rather than a year.

  ‘There’s call for a ‘Circus’ tonight; General Romulus Spinks is in town and footing the bill. After drinks and socializing in the parlor I’ll have some of the other girls get down to business. I want you five paying attention to the big players, only the people we know. Don’t waste your time with out-of-towners unless I give you the word.’

  A ‘Circus’ was an occasional affair in which a live sex act took place in public and Belle would bring in a sturdy well-equipped young stud especially for the performance with one or two of the other girls. It always raised the expectancy of the viewers and was a good money-spinner but she would have to make sure that the General got individual attention.

  ‘Clara, will you look to the General? He is on some special review board concerning the activities of the Bureau of Refugees, Freedmen and Abandoned Lands and I want to know what’s going on there and why they’re reviewing them exactly.’

  ‘Will do, Belle,’ agreed Clara, her fingers toying with the fine lace of her lingerie. She was a statuesquely tall young woman with long black hair, dark seductive eyes and majestic breasts and she smiled confidently, secure in the knowledge that her good looks could winkle out from the General anything she wanted.

  ‘Gentleman here to see you, Miz Belle,’ interrupted the little black maid, Bessie, coming in with her ever-present broad smile.

  ‘Who is it?’ frowned Belle. ‘The place ain’t open yet.’

  ‘Say’s he’s a Senhor Cor de Rosa, Miz Belle. Some Portugee gentleman.’

  Mister Pink! It had to be Pinkerton. She knew his penchant for masquerade and the name was a give-away, Belle wondered how he would appear today.

  ‘I’ll be right there,’ Belle allowed. ‘Show him into the parlor, will you, Bessie?’

  ‘Yessum.’

  Pinkerton had chosen to appear in a hunchback pad that humped his back and he was wearing clip-on spectacles with a long attached chain leading down to his vest. He wore a tall silk top hat; wing collared shirt, a tailed jacket and striped pants. He crouched over a silver topped cane and gave Belle a mischievous grin from amidst his bushy beard as she entered the parlor.

  Belle shook her head in despair, ‘You look like an undertaker.’

  ‘An honorable profession,’ Pinkerton allowed with a proud smile. ‘Never to be shunned by high or low for all must come to that door at some time.’

  His accent was broad and still showed his Glaswegian origins. Allan Pinkerton was in his forty-sixth year, a bearded, brisk and burly fellow and his agency had been a success throughout the war, at first in information gathering and now the peace was signed, reverting to more normal policing activities protecting the expanding railroad system.

  ‘You have something for me?’ Belle asked.

  ‘Aye, I do,’ admitted Pinkerton. ‘There’s word of a raid planned, I have it from our new offices in New York and I suspect our friend Xavier Bond will be making a play.’

  ‘You think so?’ asked Belle eagerly.

  ‘I do. There’s seven hundred thousand dollars being shipped by The Adam’s Express Company and it’s just the sort of sum to attract the Circle. They’re beginning to feel the pinch after throwing in their lot with the South and a great deal of their resources have been lost to them with the surrender.’

  ‘How is it being transported?’

  ‘It’ll be by rail. A special on the New York, New Haven and Hartford Railroad.’

  Belle thought about Xavier Bond and the likelihood of his planning such a raid. Bond was a forty-year-old Republican senator who had made his money in banking and newspapers. His career had mostly been a bland affair with no particularly obvious displays of any note. There had been only one hint of anything troublesome. He had once been threatened with being expelled from office for an eight thousand dollar bribe. But had been found to be innocent once a witness came forward to claim the cash was deemed as a gift in seed money for a new bank.

  He was a man of non-descript looks, clean-shaven and with oiled down dark hair parted efficiently to one side and curling over his ears. There was nothing remarkable about him other than the fact that he was The Grand Knight and committed mastermind behind the Knights of the Golden Circle, a semi-mystical secret organization run on parallel lines to Freemasonry, that at one time wanted to claim Mexico as a sovereign state and had latterly turned to the Confederacy as an ally in that venture.

  They had carried out a duplicitous and lucrative scheme of bounty jumping throughout the war years on both sides of the divide and their uncovering of this plot by Belle and her friends had led to their subsequent failure. Belle had discovered that her ex-husband and several of his cronies had been members of the Circle, Belle had killed the Circle’s southern ringleader and then made a difficult escape with Lomas, whilst Kirby meanwhile carried off other vital secrets they had uncovered and been shot and lost to them in the process.

  ‘I want you and your pretty accomplices here to keep your ear out for anything, Belle. We’re not sure how they intend to go about the robbery. Each express car will be plated with iron sheets over an iron frame and padlocked with guards checking at every stop. It should all be safe enough but then it may well be they will have inside help.’

  ‘I’ll tell the girls,’ Belle agreed.

  Pinkerton cocked his head to one side and peered at her over the top of his clip-on spectacles.

  ‘What’s wrong, Belle? You seem a little unsettled.’

  Belle drew a deep breath, ‘Ah, it’s nothing. Perhaps I am becoming a little tired of running this place, that’s all.’

  ‘You still think of Kirby?’ he asked perceptively.

  Belle looked up quickly, a flush spreading up her cheek. ‘Not so you’d notice,’ she lied, a little too quickly for the sharp-eyed Pinkerton.

  He smiled benignly, ‘It’s alright, Belle. He was a fine fellow, we all miss him.’

  She shook her head dismissively, ‘Just one of many, I guess
. But look,’ she said trying to avoid the issue. ‘Bond has never come in here. It seems he lives an almost monastic life and girls play no part in it. I had hoped The Belle Tower would draw him in at some time or other. Now I must admit to being a little frustrated and that’s what’s getting me down.’

  ‘Don’t despair, my dear. You have brought in much valuable information here, why, without the information gleaned from some of your clients we never would have brought down the scams and schemes by so many villains during the war. My only regret is that we were not allowed protection for Mister Lincoln at the end, I’m convinced that if we had been in control, the assassin would never have reached him and the President would be safe and still with us.’

  ‘That was a sad day,’ Belle agreed.

  ‘Indeed it was,’ Pinkerton went on briskly. ‘But we must move on, Belle. The same goes for you and Kirby, life will not stand still no matter the grievous cost.’

  ‘I know it,’ sighed Belle. ‘But it troubles me that I cannot put him from my mind.’

  ‘Work, my girl. That is the answer, concern yourself with effort. This is how I do it and I’m sure the same method will apply for you.’

  Belle nodded, knowing full well her employer’s keen sense of ethics in that respect and whilst she appreciated his attempts to cheer her along she knew in her heart that his principles would do little to help her shrug off the memory of Kirby Langstrom.

  Chapter Seven

  ‘Can you get me a gun?’ asked Lomas.

  Both Ruby and her father looked at him in disbelief.

  ‘I don’ reckon that will be possible, Master Bell. We ain’t got the possibility,’ admitted old Isaac.

  Lomas had spent ten days hidden away. Ruby had taken him to a secret cavern in the dense woods around Nigger Town. It had been a small narrow entrance in amongst a tumble of rocks and covered with brush that he had struggled to enter on all fours. He found that the tunnel opened out inside into a wider cave with space enough for one or two persons. There he had lain in recovery whilst Ruby brought him food and water and saw to his wounds as best she could.

  She told him that Wayland and his men had searched the countryside, wildly ranging for miles on horseback without success. Reward money was offered but no one had come forward with any information and they had finally concluded there was no catching the escaped Lomas, he was either dead from the beating or long gone and they had given up the chase so that now Lomas was able to leave the cavern and sit with Ruby in her father’s shack.

  ‘You’re not going back there, are you?’ asked Ruby.

  ‘I have to,’ shrugged Lomas. ‘I need some answers about my sister.’

  Ruby dropped her eyes to fix on her hands clenched tightly on the table between them, ‘They took her away that night,’ she told him. ‘They done rape her and beat her bad.’

  ‘Raped her!’ gasped Lomas, his face twisting in anguish.

  ‘Yes sir,’ admitted Ruby, watching Lomas’s face pale as the blood drained from his features. ‘I’m sorry I didn’t like to tell you that before.’

  Lomas’s eyes narrowed and his lips formed a tight thin line, ‘Who did it?’

  ‘The four of them, the one they call Little Wait and them other three, the sergeant, the Irishman and the other one, the one who’s ear you shot off. They beat her bad, Mister Bell. Real bad. Then they got a wagon and they threw her inside like she was no more than a bag of cotton bolls.’

  ‘She still lived then?’

  Ruby nodded, ‘She done made a fair show of it, I can tell you. She stood up to those men but they was too much for her.’

  ‘Did you hear where they were taking her?’

  ‘Wayland said something about his cousin and her getting a breath of sea air, that’s all I heard.’

  ‘Somewhere on the coast, I guess,’ mused Lomas. ‘But it could be anywhere. I’m going to need to get ahold of one of those bastards and sweat it out of him.’

  ‘But how you goin’ to do that, Master Bell?’ asked Isaac. ‘They’s too many of them and you ain’t in no fit state.’

  ‘When do the workers go in to do their garden work?’ asked Lomas.

  Ruby frowned, ‘You thinking what I’m thinking? That’s crazy, Mister Lomas. How you going to manage that?’

  ‘I’ll wear a cape to cover myself and if the men are up to it I’ll hide in their midst until we’re amongst the flower bushes.’

  ‘Then what?’

  ‘Then I’ll play it as it comes.’

  ‘Sounds mighty risky,’ observed Isaac.

  ‘You got a knife here that I can borrow?’

  ‘Sure, I got me a skinning blade, you can have that.’

  ‘Fine. Can you speak to the men for me, do you think they’ll do it?’

  Isaac nodded, ‘They might, they don’ like them fools up at the house no better than you, Master Bell.’

  Lomas stretched decisively, his ribs still ached but the swelling on his face was subsiding and the cuts were healing. His anger was fueling him and he felt able and keen to get on.

  ‘Let’s do this then,’ he said.

  It was early and just passed dawn when Lomas joined the troop of Negroes heading off to work in the Rolfe House gardens. His head and shoulders were draped in a piece of sacking that he wore like a hood and he was sided by the workers carrying hoes and shovels who crowded around him as they all slouched through a low-lying mist up through the gateway to the house.

  The mist hung low in the still air, not more than two feet off the ground but Lomas was glad of the pale veil for it would give him added cover when he left the column. It was Cable Corinth who was waiting to meet the men, slumped on horseback he sat before the house steps, his head swathed in a bandage across his missing ear lobe. He appeared grumpy and obviously did not want to be about at this hour preferring his warm bed and whatever female he had managed to imprison there.

  ‘You boys hurry along,’ he called, shouting down the driveway towards them as they moved in an unhurried column towards him.

  Lomas waited until one of the oaks blocked Corinth from view then he dropped flat and rolled sideways. One of the workers picked up his fallen sacking and pulled it over his own head in case Corinth had noticed a man wearing the cape.

  ‘Get along here,’ growled Corinth. ‘I ain’t up for you fellas dragging your feet. You got work to do and best you get on it.’

  The Negroes formed up in a head-hanging parade before him and Corinth walked his pony along the line.

  ‘Right,’ he said. ‘You got canes to clear and thorny briar to dig out; some of them cut branches needs dragging off and burning. You know what there is to do, so get on with it.’

  The men trooped off and Corinth was about to dismount when Lomas clucked a chicken call from his hiding place.

  ‘What’s that?’ Corinth called, one foot out of the stirrup. ‘One of you assholes funning me?’

  Lomas gave the same cry again. He lay flat in the damp, chill mist a few feet in from the roadside and squawked like a wild turkey in pain. Lomas could smell the wet grass under him and feel its dampness against the palms of his hands but his body was tense and dry as he waited for Corinth to make his move.

  ‘I’ll come down there and whup your ass, you try to make a fool of me,’ warned Corinth.

  ‘Hey, cracker,’ called Lomas. ‘How’s your ear? Can you hear me, you white trash? Or you deaf as well as stupid?’

  ‘Damn you!’ said Corinth angrily urging his pony down the driveway.

  As he came level, Lomas rose up out of the mist, his body wreathed in tendrils of fog as he lunged up and grabbed the pony’s head and twisted the reins, dragging the beast sideways. Corinth’s mouth opened wide in shock and surprise as Lomas let go the horse and grabbed him by the lapels of his jacket.

  With a heave, Lomas pulled the man from the saddle and slammed him down on his back onto the ground. Winded, Corinth had no chance to recover as Lomas slammed his fist down into the gasping face. Lomas hit him repeatedly
until the man lay still, then he unbuckled Corinth’s gun belt and strapped it on his own waist.

  Lomas lifted Corinth and draped him over the saddle before mounting behind himself; with a wave of thanks to the field hands he dug in his heels and urged the beast off at a fast gallop.

  Lomas took Corinth back through Nigger Town and as the jayhawker came back to consciousness he saw they were passing by groups of watching black faces that peered at him with obvious hate. He recognized no friendly welcome there and twisted from where he hung to look up at Lomas.

  ‘What you doing, Bell?’ he snarled. ‘Where you taking me?’

  Lomas gave no answer but hit Corinth a slap across the face with the reins to silence him.

  ‘You can’t do this,’ Corinth was beginning to whine and he looked around fearfully at all the black faces staring at him, their enmity plain to see. ‘It ain’t worth it, mister. Wayland’ll come get you.’

  Lomas rode on silently, passing through the shanties until he reached the forest in the hollow beyond. He continued on deep into the woods until he found a suitable clearing, then he lifted Corinth by the seat of his pants and dumped him unceremoniously on the ground.

  Corinth panted nervously and scrabbled away on all fours as Lomas dismounted. ‘Leave me be,’ he begged. ‘I ain’t done nothing to you. Leave me alone.’ His voice was taking on a begging tone as he looked into Lomas’s impassive face.

  ‘Set still,’ said Lomas. ‘You ain’t going nowhere.’

  ‘Come on, Bell. Don’t be like this.’

  ‘You and me’s going to have some conversation, and you will answer me promptly and truthfully,’ advised Lomas in a flat, hard voice.

  ‘You already done took my ear off, what else you going to do?’ snapped Corinth, his back up against a tree.

  Lomas shrugged, ‘Could take the other ear for starters.’