Longarm 422 (6 page)

“A man needs a place to prop his foot,” Longarm explained to one of his carpenters, “but it doesn't have to be a brass rail. Brass rails cost a bundle. Believe me, I know. I looked into buyin' one. Damn things come dear. So in the Star we'll build a . . . like a step or a little shelf at the front o' the bar, down at floor level, where a man can rest a boot while he's propped himself up on the bar. D'you see what I mean, James?”

“Yes, sir, I do. How high do you want it?”

Longarm pondered that for a moment, thinking back to all the rails he had propped himself up on in one saloon or another. Finally he held his two hands apart and said, “'Bout this tall, James. You measure it out, but make it about so high.”

“Yes, sir.”

“Mister.” A scrawny, rat-faced little man tugged at his sleeve.

“I'm busy,” Longarm snapped. This saloon proprietor shit was already wearing thin. And they were still days, if not weeks, away from opening.

“Yes, and I'm going to dump your barrels of beer in the damn street if you can't take time to tell me where to put them,” the little man snapped right back at him.

“What? Beer? It's here already? I . . . Give me a minute. I have to clear space for them along the wall there.” Raising his voice, he shouted, “Tommy, do you have the cradles ready to take the beer barrels? Get them ready because the beer is here and it has to go somewhere.” Turning back to the little man, he pointed. “Over there.”

The freighter grunted, nodded, and went on his way to get Longarm's beer delivered.

The Star was beginning to smell like sawdust, not a speck of which was being thrown away or burned. It, and more, was needed to cover the floor several inches deep.

And the cuspidors. Where the hell were those cuspidors that he ordered?

The card tables were built and stacked along the side wall to keep them out of the way. And stools. It was cheaper and easier to build stools than chairs, so the Star would be known for its stools.

No mirror on the back wall. Not yet. It remained to be seen what sort of clientele the Star would attract, and a rowdy crowd could become damned expensive if they broke an actual mirror. Longarm settled for polished steel instead of glass. Polished steel and a dartboard shaped like a buxom woman. He could just guess where the majority of the darts would be aimed. Not landed, necessarily, but aimed.

“Where . . . ?”

“Back there,” Longarm answered before the man could finish his sentence. “By the back door. Just stack the crates there for now. I'll break 'em down and put everything away when the bar an' the cabinets are finished.”

“How about . . . ?”

“Over there, I think,” he said, pointing.

“Mister. Hey, mister.”

Longarm turned. Questioned. Directed. Fumed and worried. This shit about being a businessman was no walk in the damn park, he was discovering.

But the place was slowly taking shape.

If they didn't watch out, the Star was going to start looking like a proper saloon.

Longarm paused to reach for a cheroot. Lighted it. He took in a deep breath and slowly let it out.

Helen's money and his time were combining to turn into something here.

But so far there was no indication of the troubles that had been plaguing her and her girls.

“Drink up, boys. First drink is free. But you,” he pointed, smiling, “I seen you take two o' them free ‘first' drinks already. So pay for the next one, will you, or I'll be broke an' out of business in my first week.” Laughing, he raised his voice, “Welcome to the Star, boys. Drink up an' be merry.”

A pair of musicians, a banjo player and a fiddler, twanged away from a makeshift stage constructed of empty packing crates that had once held glass mugs and shot glasses.

The place was packed with a mixture of townspeople and passersby, all attracted by the lure of free beer and cheap whiskey.

For this opening night only, Longarm—or his bartender Robert, to be more accurate—was pouring a decent, but cheap, brand of keg whiskey for a nickel, while the beer was for the most part free.

That was probably not good business, he conceded, but then his purpose with the Star was not to make money but to call Ira Collins's and George Stepanek's hand.

Thinking of whom, he saw Stepanek's hat floating above the crowd as the tall enforcer came into the newly opened saloon.

Longarm pushed his way through the throng until he was facing Stepanek. “Something you want, George? A beer? Would you rather have a whiskey? Bar whiskey here is rye, but I have bourbon, tequila, and brandy if you prefer. What will you have?”

Stepanek glared at him but did not answer. Collins's man looked over the crowd for several long moments, then turned and made his way back outside. Longarm followed him.

He buttonholed Stepanek and took him by the lapel before the man could slither away. Longarm brushed an imaginary speck of lint away but held on to the coat much longer than was necessary, delivering a message of sorts to Stepanek.

“No need for you to check things over, George,” Longarm said. “Besides, I'm sure that accountant who's handling my books is reporting back to Collins quicker'n he tells me anything. So unless you want to put down some money on the bar, from now on you stay the fuck outa my place.” He smiled a crocodile smile. “Or I'll whup your ass again, just like I did that day in Iris's place.”

“You son of a—”

Before Stepanek could get the rest out, Longarm had a powerful grip on the wrist of the man's gun hand with his own left, while his right curled around the Adam's apple in George Stepanek's throat.

“Careful what you do or say, George,” Longarm warned. “I whupped you that first time, I can do it again. Next time I might break something. What good would you be to Collins with the fingers o' your gun hand all busted to shit?”

“You bastard,” Stepanek hissed. “You only beat me that time because you surprised me. I could take you. I will take you. Just as soon as Mr. Collins gives me leave to break you in two.” He took a deep breath. “Something else you should think about. I'm better than you with a gun. I'm the best there is with a pistol. Think about that.”

Longarm laughed. “Could be we'll have to find out about that someday, George. But not tonight, I'm thinking.” He took his hand away from Stepanek's throat and let go of the man's gun hand as well. Longarm stepped back a pace, his right hand fiddling with his belt buckle—conveniently near the butt of his .45.

Stepanek glanced down and gauged the distance between Longarm's fingers and the grips of the Colt. “No. Not tonight,” he said. “But . . . sometime.”

“Sure, George. Sometime. Meanwhile I'll go back inside an' tremble in fear.” Longarm laughed again. That infuriated Stepanek. As it was intended to.

“Bastard.”

“Tell that to Mr. Collins. Meanwhile, stay the fuck away from me or I might forget my manners an' hurt you,” Longarm said.

Deliberately he turned his back on George Stepanek and went back inside the Star.

It was an interesting thing, what liquor did to some men. To the point that Longarm was thinking it was rougher being a saloonkeeper than being a deputy United States marshal.

So far this Saturday evening he had had to break up three fistfights and summon his swamper, old Johnny Mayfield, to clean up two puddles of puke, the second one made all the worse by the huge quantity of Mexican chuck the sickly man had just consumed.

It was rougher, Longarm concluded, and smellier too.

And so far he did not seem to be a whit closer to fixing Helen's problem with Ira Collins.

But he was learning a hell of a lot about the town and its people just by wandering through the saloon during working hours.

 • • • 

“Are you all right, Custis?” Helen asked.

They sat, as usual, in her quarters downstairs in the best among her whorehouses. It was late, and Longarm had turned the place over to Robert Ware, whom he was beginning to think of as his lifeline to sanity. Robert was bartender, assistant boss, and font of knowledge when it came to both the booze and the effects the stuff had on human beings.

The Star would remain open all night tonight. Robert would hand off to the night manager at midnight.

He yawned and scratched his left side. He had not been getting much in the way of sleep since he became an independent businessman. “I'd best be getting back,” he said. “I want to see how well Bucky Doyle can handle things.”

“If Robert says he can do it, then he can do it,” Helen offered.

“Yeah, I know that, but . . .”

“Relax, Custis. If you insist on going back, at least get some rest. You look wound up tight as a nun's twat. Go home. Fuck one of your girls.”

“Your girls, you mean,” Longarm said.

Helen laughed. “They're yours at the moment, dear. I picked good ones, just for you.”

“They seem like good ones,” Longarm said.

“But for Pete's sake, don't spoil them,” Helen said. “You'll ruin them for me if you give them too much of what they make. I heard you were talking about giving them more than the half they're entitled to.” She pointed a plump forefinger at him. “Give a whore more than that and she gets greedy. She'll be expecting that much everywhere she works, and that just isn't going to happen. Keep that up and I'll have to fire girls and buy new ones. That or have them professionally beaten to get them back in line.”

Longarm raised an eyebrow. “Professionally beaten? What the hell is that?”

“Just what I said. It's a beating given by a man who is an expert on the female body and with the infliction of pain. Believe me, a girl who has been worked over by a professional won't want to go through it a second time. It leaves her . . . eager to please, you might say.”

“And you would do that to them?”

“If I must in order to keep them in line. Of course.”

“There are times, Helen, when you really surprise me.”

“Stay in business for a little while, Custis, and you will learn to agree with me. Believe me, being a lawman is nothing compared with being a saloonkeeper.”

“I believe you, darlin',” he said. He wanted Helen to feel that her investment in the Star was in good hands.

When he got back to his saloon a half hour later, he suspected more than ever that what she'd said was right.

A stocky little son of a bitch, whose clothes suggested he was one of the miners, had another man, a cowboy, backed up against the bar with the muzzle of a revolver in his face.

The cowboy had a pistol of his own in a holster dangling from his belt, but a gun wrapped in leather is no match for one in the hand.

The miner's pistol was cocked, Longarm could see.

And the cowboy was so pale with fear that he looked like he was dead already.

“D-d-d-d-don't.” He quivered. “D-don't shoot.”

“And don't you be calling me names,” the miner growled.

“I d-d-didn't mean nothing,” the cowboy insisted.

The miner waved his pistol a few inches from the nose of the offending cowboy. The little man had every appearance of someone who had been pushed just a little too far and was now intent on doing something about it. Something very drastic. Something quite possibly lethal.

“P-p-p-please,” the lanky cowboy moaned.

The fellow might have been tip-top with cows and horses. Longarm had no way to tell that. But he was damn sure no hero when it came to firearms. Longarm could see that in the dark, wet stain that was spreading down his left leg. The man had pissed himself.

Feeling more than a little disgusted, Longarm strode across the saloon floor to the little miner.

“Put it away,” he snarled, his voice cold.

“He called me—”

“I don't give a shit what he called you, mister, but I know I don't want you to shoot the son of a bitch here in my place. Get blood an' brains all over the floor. Run people out o' here when they're in a mood to buy more drinks. You'd cause me to lose business, an' I can't have that. You understand? Now, put the damn gun away.”

Longarm reached out and took hold of the barrel of the miner's pistol. He slipped his little finger in between the hammer and the frame of the revolver so it could not discharge even if the miner was idiot enough to pull the trigger.

Then he twisted, plucking the gun out of the hand of the distraught man.

The cowboy's knees sagged once he was no longer in danger. He collapsed back against the bar behind him and looked like he was close to breaking out in tears.

“Thank . . . thank you.”

“I'm gonna give you some advice, sonny. Take that shooter off your hip. Give it away, sell it, whatever the fuck you like, but get rid of it. You don't have the temperament to wear a gun. It'll just get you in trouble. An' mind your tongue while you're at it. You oughtn't to go around insulting people, or the next man you offend might just go ahead an' shoot.”

“But all I said was—”

“I don't give a fat crap what you said, mister. I don't want to hear it. Now, the both o' you go home. You've had enough to drink.” He turned to the miner. “You. I'm gonna put this gun o' yours behind the bar there. You can get it back tomorrow.”

“I'm not drunk,” the miner insisted.

“No, if you was drunk you probably would've pulled the trigger, an' then you would've been in for hanging. Or thirty years behind bars. Either way you'd've been damn unhappy come morning. Now, get the hell out o' here.”

The cowboy had already skedaddled, slipping out practically at a run while Longarm was busy with the miner.

“Go on now,” Longarm barked.

The little miner got. But slower and with more dignity than the cowboy had displayed.

Longarm sighed. He let the hammer of the miner's pistol down to safe cock, then handed the gun across the bar to Bucky.