The Whipping Boy (20 page)

The sound of a piano floated through the window, and he set out for the Golden Wall Saloon to find Leonard LaFarge.

Jake knew Leonard pretty well. He'd first met him years ago in a saloon in Fort Smith, where for a while Leonard had set up office for law-related tasks including everything from investigation to courthouse work. At some point, for reasons Jake never fully understood, Leonard left the area and became a traveler—a hobo, he called himself. After he returned to the border country from his wanderings, he and Jake got to be occasional drinking buddies, both in Fort Smith and in Guthrie. They were completely unlike in many ways but somehow enjoyed each other's company. Lately, Jake had decided to try to keep himself a bit more sober in his dignified years, and he'd been seeing less of his old friend. Leonard had the brains to be a good lawyer, but he spent too much time philosophizing in saloons.

He was sitting at a table in a corner of the Golden Wall without a drink, looking forlorn until he saw Jake come through the door. “Why Jake! You've arrived! Buy yourself a drink and get me one while you're at it—tequila—he has a bottle for me.” He was very pleased when Jake returned, holding out the drink with its little worm in the bottom. “
Con gusano, ah! Excelente!
” He lowered his voice dramatically. “Beware the women. They're as starved as wolves for business. One of them approached me this very night, offering her services in exchange for future legal representation. Of course, I told her that I deal strictly in cash.”

“I hear you work for nothing half the time.”

“Only for clients
in extremis
.” Leonard sighed. “Unfortunately, most of the people I know lately are in that condition.”

Jake glanced around at the three women desultorily working the other tables. The Golden Wall was indeed pretty slow tonight. “Well, I can see they're bothering you to death, Leonard.”

“Museum specimens,” Leonard grumbled. “Famine reigns when the whores offer credit: one of the oldest rules of bad times . . . See the old biddy with the six-year-old pinafore and the fifty-year-old face, the one with her eyeballs protruding? She'll be dead within the year. I tell her as much, too, just about every day. She's a snowbird.”

“Too bad,” Jake grunted, hoping not to encourage Leonard to launch into tales of his own years as a wandering hobo and morphine fiend. His stories of that part of his life were entertaining, but Jake always suspected him of inventing half of it. It was one of the rituals of their friendship for Leonard to bring it up and Jake not to act very curious.

“Snow. Cocaine. An inferior drug with superior addictive properties. There is no honor among snowbirds. I've heard it on good authority that their brains turn into a black syrupy mass.” He held up his tequila and peered at it. “Ah, but this gentle fairy, I love her more than all my past mistresses.” He widened his eyes. “A worm is at all their hearts; hers, at least, is visible. But let us not be lugubrious. Let us talk about your would-be executioner.”

“Let's do. What'd you find out?”

“Given more ample time and resources, I could have reconstructed the scoundrel's entire biography, but with only part of a day, I have the following information: He came from Texas. He started to gain his notoriety around Ada, in the Chickasaw Nation.”

“Hell's Fringe,” Jake muttered. “He came after me in that vicinity.”

“It seems that Ada is dominated by three cattle operations—three families who remain in a state of constant warfare with each other.”

“That's been going on a long time. I sold Ada when I had the south route.”

“I happen to know a little about the place, too. There's an attorney down there by the name of Moman Pruitt who's achieved a legal record. He's gotten three hundred men off scot-free of murder charges.”

“Three hundred, huh?”

“That's correct.”

“That's probably only a couple of months' work in Ada.”

“Mr. James Miller, alias the Deacon, got his start in Ada working for one and then the other of these cattle outfits. How he avoided getting himself killed I don't know, but they say that he was regarded as merely an instrument, a professional, someone who did the will of others. Some say that he had an office in town with a sign out front that said ‘Killer for Hire.' One of the men in Marshal Nix's office swears that's true. Anyway, about eight years ago he left Ada and briefly went to work for Pinkerton's Detective Agency, which he quit, the story goes, because they were too slow and scrupulous for him—which is about like saying that General Grant was too concerned about the comfort of his soldiers to conduct warfare. Off and on, he has worked for the Paris Hotel in Fort Smith, that most democratic of whorehouses. He also worked awhile for one of my favorite humanitarian enterprises, the Santa Fe Railroad, doing what sort of iniquity I don't know. So far as I can find out in an afternoon, he's never been tried for murder.”

“Why?”

“Don't know. I guess he plays the borders well.”

“That all you found out?” Jake asked.

Leonard shrugged. “All except that he's apparently a King Lear.”

“A what?”

Leonard raised his expressive eyebrows. “Not a lover of the female gender.”

Jake leaned back, frowning. “So you couldn't find out anything about who he's working for now.”

Leonard shook his head. “Like I say, he's been employed at the Paris. He may bounce the place in exchange for his board. Who else he's working for I don't know. I do hope you're satisfied with my intensive investigation. My bill is your hospitable company, sir.”

The mention of “King” made Jake wonder if by some chance Leonard knew anything about Samantha. “You lived in St. Louis, didn't you?”

Leonard took a sip of tequila and smacked his lips with pleasure. Leonard was a drinker who truly liked his drink. “Lived there? Of course I did. I did my apprenticeship with one of the most distinguished legal minds of St. Louis. Surely I have told you about Colonel Caruthers.”

“Ever hear of a woman named Samantha King?”

“They called the colonel merciless, but a more gentle man never walked the earth. He taught me all that I know . . . King, Samantha, what? No . . .” He frowned. “I do hear a dim chime in the dark abyss of the past, but I can't place it.”

“Was there some prominent family in town called King?” “Unfortunately, I didn't rub shoulders with the prominent.” Leonard stared appraisingly at the worm.

Jake remembered the stationery that Sam had written her list on. “What about this place?” He took it from his pocket and showed it to Leonard, who held it away from his face. At the top of the sheet, a luxurious banner with fancy lettering wrapped around a substantial-sized building.

“The King Hotel! Why of course! The King was one of the more opulent houses in the city. The most opulent, no question of it. Considerably above my means at the time. Why do you ask?” “You mean it was a whorehouse?”

“Oh, I'd hardly use such a crude appellation. A gaming and pleasure palace, it was.” Leonard looked fondly at the stationery. “Marguerite King, impresario of the demimonde. Politicians in her pocket, leaders of the merchant and banking world. The queen of the King. Even Colonel Caruthers spoke admiringly of her, as I recall.” He handed back the paper. “You ask much of me, my friend—to look back three decades and remember such things. This is ancient history.” He took another sip, frowning. “But the King does come back. I recall it all the better because I never went there. I only dreamed about it. I thought it would be heaven to go just for one night. A Circean palace of voluptuaries. Thinly clothed temptresses whirling in torrid pirouettes,
nymphes du pavé
, cloud storms of perfume.” He looked at Jake. “You realize I am only speaking from rumor and youthful imagination. Why are you asking about the King Hotel?”

Jake looked toward the bar. “I've met a woman—”

“Sir! This is desertion! A woman? You are a lifelong member of the honorable fraternity of bachelors.” He rolled the little curl of worm around in the remaining tequila, grinning at Jake through his crooked teeth.

“I wish you'd go ahead and drink that nasty thing,” Jake said. “I can't stand the suspense.”

Leonard obligingly took the rest of it, with the worm, in one mouthful. He scowled as he swallowed it, sniffed once, and looked more serious. “Start from the beginning, Jake. Tell me all. Unburden yourself. A woman? From the King?”

They'd gotten through a second drink before Jake had finished telling about his brief acquaintance with Samantha King. Leonard was intrigued. “Where is she now?”

“She left this morning to go back to St. Louis.”

“So at first you thought she was merely an accident you happened upon, and you discovered by means of this piece of paper in her luggage that she was interested in business, your business—is that the sum of it?”

“Guess so.”

“And you still don't know why she latched on to you?”

Jake stared, shaking his head slightly. “Like I say, she claims to want to go into business out here, and she was thinking I'd make a good partner because I know the territory.”

Leonard was still grinning.

“She's just a kid,” Jake said. “She just doesn't act like somebody with her head set on running a business.”

“How does she act?”

“She goes for whatever she wants, I'll say that much.”

“Jake, you are being circumlocutory. Are you telling me that this woman is decisive? Did she go for you?”

“No, no!” Jake said, feeling his face flush. “Are you crazy? She's twenty-something years old.”

“Your courier?”

Jake looked at him, not denying it.

“Aha! We've finally got it! You repulsive old devil you, you're jealous! And what look is this? What
is
happening with my old dried-up husk of a friend?”

“Good God, Leonard, shut up.”

“I'd say she has good taste. That young man is extraordinary. Is he an Indian?”

“Tom grew up in the orphanage down near Durant. I don't think he knows what he is.”

“Orphan. That explains it. He looks young and old at the same time.” Leonard stared at him a moment, tapping his fingers on the table. “Anyway, she wants to launch this partnership without your contributing any money to it? Wave her golden wand and transform your dull, grinding, limited life from helot to capitalist, while you, being in the habit of thinking small, don't trust this opportunity and naturally suspect her motives. Her being a woman and all. Do I have it right?”

“Shit, Leonard. No. These are bad times. Things are worse than uncertain. The store's about broke. Ernest Dekker's set on turning it into nothing but a holder of mortgages—”

“Whoa. Hold it. Back up. Go slower.”

Jake took a drink and thought about where to start. He pulled one of the mortgage transfer agreements out of his coat pocket and handed it across the table. Leonard squinted at it. “What villainy is this? I can't read fine print in this light.”

Jake told him about the bank's threatened foreclosure at Dekker and his assignment to get owners to sign property mortgages against debt.

Leonard puzzled aloud. “So they want you to collect
land
mortgages against debts?”

Jake sat there for a minute, sipping, thinking. “Tell you what, Leonard. Do you still know people in St. Louis?”

“I do: a man who was a young lawyer when I was. He now has a solid practice, excellent contacts, a sober mind—just my sort. I've been in touch with him recently.”

“How would you like to do some more finding out for me?” Both eyebrows shot up this time, and he grinned. “Do I smell payment for services rendered? I'm all ears, Mr. Jaycox.”

W
HILE JAKE ACTED
confident about Tom's traveling alone with the envelope full of money, he had given him a sudden nervous burst of advice before he stepped onto the train. “If some jaybird asks you what you're doing, let him know he can mind his own business. And don't get in any card games. Sharps ride the trains sometimes. And for pete's sake, don't get tangled up with any ladies. And don't forget to eat some durn food, even if you don't think you're hungry.”

The urge to go to sleep hit Tom as soon as the train got up to speed, but he worked hard to stay awake. He needed to keep his eyes open to protect the packet, which had over three hundred dollars in it. He untied the string, took a cautious peek, and sniffed at the shaggy, folded, greasy bills. The Reverend had often spoken of the filthy stench of money, but he noticed nothing particularly filthy. A couple of signed mortgage papers lay neatly inside the envelope.

It was hard not going to sleep. The ceaseless rocking movement made him drowsy, and he kept slipping off, dropping his head and jerking back awake. He got up and paced the aisle a couple of times, then sat down and tried some of the mental games that he used to play in the classroom to stay awake. Sam and Deacon Miller kept coming into his thoughts, stitching his sleepy head with unconnected images. He fell into a confused, flickering, half-conscious state, and the man across the aisle and the several others in the car were all wearing black suits, but there at the rear of the train stood Sam King, wearing a deeply cut black dress, and she began walking toward him with a wolfish smile. He woke with a little shout.

The man across the aisle, muttonchop-bearded and nothing like the character in his dream, was playing a game of solitaire. He glanced at Tom. “Little nightmare there?” Tom didn't answer him. He blinked his eyes and wiped his face, too dazed to be embarrassed. “Take a bite, settle your stomach.” The man offered a twist of tobacco. Tom reached out and took it, putting some in his mouth without thinking.

The man continued playing cards with himself, chatting in Tom's general direction about bad dreams. “I knew a farmer, claimed he never had em except during the planting season. But now my brother, he was a banker, God rest him, he had bad dreams every night . . .”