“Step along, friend,” Baldwin urged. “There's others waiting behind you.”
“Right with you.” Longarm laid the newspaper aside. There was nothing in the news of particular interest, but its editorial page offered a small tribute to Norm Wold's past services to the people of Hirt County and hoped the Crow's Point marshal would be found innocent of the charges now pending against him. Longarm removed his coat to hang on the rack under his hat. Then he took his place in the comfort of the barber chair. “Shave and a trim, please. Someone said your name is Baldwin?”
“That's right.” The barber draped a clean cloth over Longarm and tucked it tight around his neck, then said, “I know who you are, of course. Everybody in town does, I suppose.”
“Notorious, am I?”
Baldwin smiled and shook his head. “Nothing like that. We're all wishing you well. Which reminds me, I hope you don't think the whole town is against you. We all feel real bad about what that crazy boy Dinky tried to do.” He selected a razor from among an ivory-handled line of them laid neatly on a fresh towel, then began stropping it, his hand moving with the deft swiftness of long practice.
“I felt bad about it my own self,” Longarm said. “Got any idea why he might've done that?”
“Not me,” Baldwin said.
“You knew him, of course.”
“Sure. In a town like this everybody knows everybody. But I didn't like him much. I expect I'm about the only man around who would say that, but I can't see any reason to think the boy's death is a big loss just because he's gone now. I didn't like him much when he was alive, and like him even less now that he went and tried to kill someone.”
“I thought everybody here liked him.”
“Not everybody,” Baldwin said.
“Any particular reason?”
The barber grunted, decided his razor was sharp enough, and began whipping a fresh lather onto the soap in its mug. “You never know what a half-wit is gonna do, Marshal. Can't be trusted is what I've always felt. Besides, somebody soft in the head like that”âhe shudderedâ“ gives me the creeps. Not natural, being off in the mind like he was. Not healthy. You know?”
“Dinky wasn't a friend of yours then?”
“No, sir, I wouldn't claim that he was.”
“He didn't do odd jobs for you or come to you for handouts like he did everybody else?”
“Not me. He learned a long time ago it wouldn't do him any good to come begging to me for anything. It don't take me but a minute to sweep this place out come night. I never needed him nor anybody else to do that for me, and I wasn't about to encourage him to hang around here. I wouldn't have stood for that the way some did. No, that boy gave me the willies sure enough. I didn't like having him around. He never came to me for anything. Hadn't come around me for years. He was loony, see, but he was able to learn that much after a while. Whatever he asked for, I always told him to go away, that I wasn't no charity and he wasn't getting nothing here. Once he got it through his head that I wasn't giving in like the others, he never come around any more.”
“So you didn't know him all that well,” Longarm said.
“Nope. Didn't want to neither. I got troubles enough without taking in crazy people.”
“You didn't give him food or presents or anything?”
“I thought I said that already,” Luke Baldwin declared in a testy tone of voice, sounding more than a little peeved at having to repeat his denial.
“Sorry,” Longarm said.
Baldwin spread lather over Longarm's face, the smell of it pleasant, and leaned down to use a thumb to smooth away the soap and stretch Longarm's cheek taut for the razor.
The man had a feather touch with the blade, Longarm could say that for him. Longarm was quiet throughout the rest of the shave. It didn't do to piss off a man who already had a razor edge at one's throat.
Chapter 21
“Luke Baldwin? Of course I know him. Luke's been giving me my shaves ever since I came to Crow's Point,” Norm said from the other side of the bars. Norm looked comfortable enough. He had a rocking chair in the cell with him, and was sitting in it now with his feetâin socks and a ratty old pair of carpet slippers; he had no need for boots at this particular momentâpropped up on the edge of his bunk. “What do you want to know about Luke?”
“How friendly was he with Dinky Dinklemann?” Longarm asked.
Norm's gaze drifted up toward the ceiling while he thought that over. After a few moments he shrugged. “About the same as everybody else, I'd guess. Why?”
Longarm didn't answer immediately. Instead he tried to prod Norm's memory again. “Did you see Dinky in the barbershop often?”
“Hell, Longarm, I don't know. I mean, who pays attention. You know? And how much does it take to make something often?”
“Okay then, Norm, let me put it this way. Did you ever see Dinky Dinkelmann in the barbershop? Doing odd jobs there or getting a haircut or for any reason? Any reason at all?”
This time Norm cocked his head to one side and gave Longarm a speculative look before he answered. “This is going someplace in particular, isn't it? Do you have a scent to follow about Luke and Dinky?”
“I don't know yet, Norm, but I need to find out.”
“Then let me make sure I answer you as best I can,” Norm said. “I can't honestly recall any particular time I've noticed Dinky in Luke's shop. But then like I said before, it isn't the sort of thing that anyone in this town would notice. You know? Dinky was just kind of ... everywhere. He'd show up all the time, with anybody, and no one ever thought a thing about it. So, no, I guess I couldn't go under oath and testify that I ever saw Dinky getting his hair cut. But then there's probably two hundred men in Hirt County that I've never watched get their hair cut.”
“Ever see Dinky sweep up for Luke Baldwin? Anything like that?” Longarm persisted.
Norm pondered the question for a moment, then shrugged again and shook his head. “Not that I especially recall. Which doesn't mean it didn't happen. Hell, I generally only went to Luke's shop myself on Wednesday afternoons. I might have stopped in at other times or on other days once in a while over the years, but usually my schedule was for a trim after lunch on Wednesdays. For all I know Dinky could have worked for Luke every Monday evening and every Friday morning since he was big enough to push a broom. I just wouldn't know.”
“Let's try it this way. Did you ever pay particular note about Dinky
not
hanging around the barbershop?” The question sounded stupid even to him, and Longarm regretted asking it practically before the words slipped off his tongue.
Norm laughed. “That's like asking me do I find anything strange about walking into a room and not finding Ulysses S. Grant there. Of course not. A man pays attention to what he does see, not usually to something that he doesn't. Unless there is some special reason, that is. I mean, I might look for the general if I was at a reunion of the GAR or something. But I wouldn't expect to see him at the bank in town here, and wouldn't think anything odd about not finding him there if I can ever walk in there again. I wouldn't expect, or not expect, to see Dinky anyplace in particular either.”
“But you might reasonably expect to see him anywhere,” Longarm said.
Norm held his hands palm up and hiked his shoulders. “What is this about, Longarm? Can you tell me?”
“I just... it's possible that Luke Baldwin could be the man who aimed Dinky at me.”
Norm frowned. “Why?”
“I was hoping you could tell me.”
“Lordy, I wish I could.” He shook his head. “For the life of me, Longarm, I can't think of any reason why Luke would want harm done to you.”
“But would he have anything against you, Norm? Is it possible he doesn't want me finding evidence that would clear you of the charges against you? Any reason why he would want you behind bars?”
The aging town marshal thought about that for a considerable piece of time before he finally answered. “If there is a reason, Longarm, my friend, I don't know what it might be. Luke and I have always got along just fine. Never been close particularly, but we've never had hard words. Never fought or gambled or anything like that. Hell, he's shaved me time to time. And taken a razor to the back of my neck every week for years. The man has never been in any kind of trouble with the law, not that I know of.”
“Could he have been the one who set the courthouse fires?” Longarm asked.
“Anybody in the county might have done that, I suppose, but I can't think of any reason why Luke would want those records burned. Certainly there's no reason to put him higher on a list of suspects than anybody else. And plenty of reason to think of others ahead of him as suspects, like anyone in tax trouble or ... I don't know. No, no reason that I know of why Luke would want Dinky to kill you, and none that makes me think Luke would have started the fires.”
“This morning Luke told me he didn't like Dinky and never let him come around,” Longarm confided.
“He could've been telling you the truth, Longarm. There's no reason I would have noticed that in particular.”
“But do you know of anything to confirm that claim?” Norm reflected on the question briefly, then shook his head. “No. Sorry. I've never heard any comment aye or nay about that. Not from Luke or Dinky or anybody else for that matter. If Luke didn't care for the boy, he never made any big thing of it. But then, it isn't likely that he would have, considering the way most folks regarded Dinky like a household pet or something. Anyone who didn't like the boy might have kept quiet about it so as not to upset everyone else. Dinky wasn't smart, Longarm, but he was plenty popular in his own way.”
Longarm sighed. He felt exasperated. And of course Norm was right. Luke Baldwin might have been lying through his teeth this morning in order to cover up complicity in the attempt on Longarm's life ... or he could in complete innocence have been telling the plain truth. “I was hoping you'd know something that would clear this up for me,” Longarm said. “Getting it from anybody else might not be easy.”
“Are people trying to keep things from you?” Norm asked.
Longarm snorted. “That's one of the things that's driving me crazy, Norm. Closed mouths is something I always expect. Hell, you know how it is trying to get folks to open up and tell secrets to a stranger. Or just trying to get them to tell perfectly ordinary things. Most men, once they know it's a lawman they're talking to, they turn secretive. Don't want their own sins exposed, and hope their neighbors will be as closemouthed as they are when the time comes to talk.”
“Oh, indeed I do know,” Norm commiserated.
“Well, here, dammit, all I get is smiles and cheery assistance. Or so they're claiming. The thing is, can I believe all this cooperation, or are they just trying to blow smoke up my ass and hope I'll go away soon?”
“They're good people here,” Norm said, “and that's a fact.”
“All of them?” Longarm challenged.
Norm gave him a small, sly grin. “Real close to it, but maybe not precisely all,” he said.
“Yeah,” Longarm grumbled, “but how do I shake out the not-precisely crowd from the rest of the herd?”
Norm Wold barked out a very slightly bitter laugh and responded with the old-time frontier lawman's time-honored credo: “Kill âem all, Longarm, and let God sort 'em out.”
“I'll keep that in mind,” Longarm said with mock seriousness. He stood, the cartilage in his knees popping, and said, “Get you anything before I leave? Coffee? Anything at all?”
“I'm fine, Longarm, really. Jeremy takes good care of me.” He laughed again. “And Jonas is a soft touch at the chessboard. He never has learned how to defend an attack by my knights. Confuses him every time, thank goodness, although if he ever works that out he might give me some trouble. Will you come back and have lunch with us later?”
Longarm nodded. “Sure, Norm. I'd like that. You'll be here when I get back, will you?”
“If I'm not, just have a seat and wait. I won't be long.
Just run down to Mexico and pick up a few things, you know?”
Longarm chuckled, and went to retrieve his Stetson from the rack on his way downstairs.
He still didn't know what the hell to think about Luke Baldwin. Was the man trying to cover something up? Or had he honestly not remembered encountering Dinky in the alley where Eleanor had seen them the other day? She herself had admitted she was not certain about what Baldwin handed to the boy that day. It was conceivable that the exchange was as innocent as Baldwin noticing that Dinky had dropped something and returning it to him. That sort of thing could well go unremarked and unremembered by a man who had nothing to hide. And yet ... Eleanor had said she thought the bundle had had the approximate size and shape of a revolver.
Longarm's question now was whether he should return to his dreary examination of undamaged and reconstructed records downstairs in the clerk's office, or whether he should concentrate, at least for the moment, on learning more about the Crow's Point barber and any reason the man might have for wanting either Custis Long dead orâA slightly different way of looking at it struck Longarm like a bolt of lightning.
What if it wasn't Custis Long whose death was wanted? By Luke Baldwin or by some other unknown party?
What if it was Dinky Dinklemann who was a threat to someone?
What if it was Dinky they wanted dead?
If the unknown party was clever enough, dammit, they could have aimed the half-wit boy at an infinitely superior target and, in effect,
used Longarm as their murder weapon
to eliminate Dinky as a threat.