Longarm and the Unwritten Law (38 page)

Longarm said, "He told me he wanted the man who diddled his woman dead. I know Attila Homagy. You say they're holding him over at your county jail? That'd be ahind your courthouse, right?"

The county man nodded and moved off to shoo some kids. So Longarm got back to his tethered livery pony, mounted up, and circled to the nearby Courthouse Square. He'd been warning others not to leap to easy conclusions. So he paid his first visit to the county morgue. A cheerful coroner's helper assured him they had Zoltan Kun on ice, but suggested Longarm shouldn't look at him unless he really had to.

Longarm said he had to. So they slid the remains out of their glorified icebox, and the morgue man had been right. A man got torn up considerably when you blew him through a roof.

The morgue man explained, "The blast damaged the rooms below and to either side, even though the roof was built lighter. It was lucky the dynamite went off fairly early on a Saturday night after payday. None of the other guests were in when the lath and plaster went to flying."

Longarm stared down thoughtfully at the naked, shredded cadaver. He finally decided, "That much body hair usually goes with receding hairlines and a bald spot. Hair's the right color too, and you can still see he was bigger than average. You say they're holding the man who did this to him?"

The morgue man nodded and said, "Jail's right across the square. Little Bohunk in a seersucker suit came in before they found this body on the roof. Said he'd blown the cuss up for screwing his wife. Ain't that a bitch?"

They shook on it and Longarm crossed over to the jail behind the courthouse, where another small crowd had gathered out front. Longarm bulled through with the help of his badge.

Inside, he found a portly gray gent with a gilt sheriffs badge jawing with the desk deputy. Longarm identified himself and told the sheriff what he wanted. The older lawman shrugged and said, "Come on back if you want to talk to him. I don't see it as a federal crime, no offense, and I doubt we'll be able to hold him past Monday."

As they moved back toward the patent cells Longarm said, "I just heard he was pleading the unwritten law. But don't damaging property still count?"

The sheriff said, "The hotel can sue him, for all our prosecuting attorney is going to care. It's an election year, some of the Bohunks are commencing to vote, and the late Zoltan Kun was popular as smallpox. I have it on good authority that Magda Homagy wasn't the only greenhorn gal the bully had his own way with." They found Attila Homagy alone in his cell reading the Good Book. He rose with a sheepish little smile to come over to the bars, saying, "I'm sorry about accusing your fellow deputy Longarm."

Longarm said, "I wish you'd quit shitting me, Homagy. You never chased me all over the far away Indian Territory without finding out who I was. You tracked me all the way back here. Told a room clerk how you meant to meet my train, and then blew up Zoltan Kun instead. What makes you act so odd, Attila?"

The older man said simply, "I found out I'd been fooled by a false-hearted woman. My Madga told me the man she'd been seen with while I was out of town was a famous American lawman. You know how I felt about that. I'm glad I never killed you before I learned the truth."

Longarm said, "So am I. I know Zoltan Kun screwed your wife. He bragged he had, to me. How did you find out?"

Homagy looked pained and replied, "The same way. I was not fooled by the false name you registered under. I took a room later, meaning to kill you when you got in. I met Zoltan Kun at sunset as he was going out, through the lobby. He recognized me. He asked if I was after him. He laughed when I said I was after the man who stole my Magda. He said he didn't know who she'd run away with, but agreed she'd been a grand bus. He said this with neither shame nor worry, as if I was not man enough to do anything about it."

The erstwhile blaster smiled smugly and added, "I did something about it. He came back earlier than I'd expected. I didn't have time to pick his lock and plant my charges as I'd planned to put them in your room, Longarm. But as you all see, a bundle of forty-percent Hercules will do the job if it goes off anywhere near a home-wrecking bastard!"

Longarm asked where he'd bought the dynamite. Homagy said he'd stolen it from the mine and packed it all over creation with him.

The sheriff sighed and said, "He's admitting premeditation. That ain't the problem. Getting a jury of his peers to convict him is the problem. Zoltan Kun had a revolting rep, even amongst our own kind. One of my boys tells me he's been screwing a little twelve-year-old out to Bohunk Hill!"

Longarm grimaced and said, "Fifteen-year-old, but he was still a shit and nobody can deny this world was well rid of him."

The two lawmen headed back for the front as the sheriff decided, "There you go then. There's no sense putting the county to the time and expense of a murder trial when the accused is likely to be acclaimed a public benefactor!"

Longarm nodded soberly and replied, "That's doubtless why he don't look worried. But have you ever had the feeling someone was trying to bullshit you beyond endurance?"

The sheriff said, "All the time. It goes with the job. What do you suggest we do about it, pard?"

So Longarm told him. The sheriff grinned like a mean little kid and said, "Worth a try. I sure admire a lawman who can think crooked as you, Longarm!"

CHAPTER 24

The Sabbath dawn was breaking over a mine site quiet as a tomb when Longarm dismounted near the empty foreman's shack and tethered a blue roan livery mount, He saw he'd beaten everyone else out to the Black Diamond. So he was sitting on the steps, smoking a cheroot, as a dray pulled into the site, stopped and discharged three county deputies with a half-dozen leashed bloodhounds.

Longarm told his fellow lawmen the suspect's buggy hadn't shown up yet. The dog handler protested, "You should have let me search Homagy's hotel room like I asked last night. Must have been at least some dirty sock for my dogs to sniff."

Longarm shook his head wearily and said, "I told you then, the suspect worked in yonder mine. Bloodhounds would naturally be able to pick out his scent from others after no more than a few weeks. But Homagy had license to wander all through the diggings, and I was assured that mountain's been riddled like Swiss cheese."

The four of them heard a distant yell. Longarm got to his feet to reach inside his frock coat as a sleepy-eyed but husky-looking cuss with a Greener Ten-Gauge came across the wide dusty expanse to tell them they were on company property, damn their souls.

Longarm got out the search warrant signed by a J.P. in town the night before and said, "We're the law. This here's our hunting permit, and how come it took you so long to notice we might be trespassers?"

The watchman looked sheepish and replied, "Who'd expect kids or lumber thieves at this ungodly hour? It gets mighty calm out here once the last Saturday shift knocks off around sundown. But I heard you messing about over here after a while, didn't I?"

Longarm said, "You surely did, and if you'd care to help us conduct a murder investigation, I'd be proud to write you up in my official report."

The watchman said he'd do anything sensible to help them, and asked who'd been murdered.

Before Longarm had to explain, a dusty black buggy drove in behind a span of mules. As the deputy driving it braked to a stop nearby he called out, "They assured me at the livery that this is the suspect's very own buggy. He had it shipped by flatcar with him from Texas and stored it right off in their carriage house. But there's nothing hidden in it, Longarm. We searched it high and we searched it low for evidence of anything. But Homagy had all the baggage in the back carried over to that hotel he blew up."

Longarm nodded, turned to the dog handler, and suggested, "She'd have wound up on the floor mats up front or in back, whether bleeding or just oozing the way they do."

The dog handler asked him not to teach his granny to suck eggs. He picked up his bloodhounds in turn to let them slobber and sniff around in the dusty buggy. Then he put them back on the ground and said, "If they have her scent they have her scent. Where do we try for her trail?"

Longarm pointed at the mine adit with his stubbled jaw, saying, "All roads lead to Rome. He carried her in through that one rabbit hole if she's in there at all."

She was. The hounds hesitated at first, confounded by the many scents of both the day and night shifts. Then, when Longarm suggested one side drift, and that didn't work, the dog handler paused near a partly boarded-over opening, posted with a warning to keep out, and the bloodhounds tried to drag him in there on his face.

They didn't, of course. But as he leaned back against the leashes with his heels dug into the black grit, he chortled, "They're on her trail. Ain't seen 'em this sure since a Mex full of mescal and chili busted away from the road gang on us!"

it was more complicated than that. The played-out drift they were following ran a furlong into the mountain to end in a sooty slope of shattered shale. The bloodhounds seemed as confounded by this as the rest of them. Longarm turned to the mine watchman, who'd followed along, to ask if it was possible a longer tunnel had been partly caved in.

The coal-mining man shone his carbide lamp on the rock ceiling and said, "Never caved in. Someone brought it down. See them sort of belly buttons in the shale, there, there, and yonder? That's what you see in the new facing after a blast's been mucked away. Somebody with a star drill stuck just enough dynamite in that ceiling to bring some of it down!"

Once that much had been explained, you didn't have to be a mining engineer to see about how much shale there was to dig through. So they rustled up some loose boards, the mining tools having been put away for the Sabbath, and got to work.

The bloodhounds started going loco before the duller human noses with them noticed. Then one of the deputies working closer gagged and said, "Oh, Lord, something's died around here!"

Longarm sniffed and said, "Not something, somebody. Once you've been through a war, you never forget that lovely aroma. I doubt anyone died here in the mine. Neighbors saw a covered buggy leaving Homagy's house around midnight of a Saturday. He's likely got rid of the snap-on leather covers since. Folks who knew Magda Homagy's rep naturally never expected her to sneak out in the dead of night with her husband. I doubt she'd have gone with him on such a peculiar ride of her own free will. So let's say he knocked her out or killed her right in the house, snuck her out to his parked buggy, and sort of eloped with his own wife in the dark. I keep warning others not to leap to conclusions but I keep doing it myself. So you can't blame the neighborhood gossips all that much."

The same deputy gagged again and said, "We're through. I sure wish we weren't. Kee-rist, that smells awful!"

Longarm borrowed the carbide lamp as he hunkered down to shine the beam through, saying, "Bohunks eat all that paprika goulash, and she seems to be laying in a mud puddle, naked as a jay, save for her high-button shoes. Them shoes and that blond hair are all the coroner's jury will have going for 'em now. She's in what the undertakers call a state of full decay. Mostly bones and mush held together by skin as dark and wrinkled as prunes."

One of the other county lawmen grimaced and observed, "Going to be a bitch to say how she ever died then. Don't you have to prove someone was murdered to charge even her husband with murdering her?"

Longarm sighed and said, "Yep, and old Attila is a liar above and beyond the call to duty too. I'd best go have another word with him. If I were you gents, I'd let the coroner worry about how they'll get her out of there and over to the morgue in one piece!"

He didn't have to argue with them to get them out of that fetid drift. As all but the watchman headed back to town, Longarm split off at a cinder path leading up through the warren of Bohunk Hill.

This time he insisted on sensible directions, and seeing it was the Sabbath, he found Bela Nagy and his family at home in their tar-paper shack.

The gnomish Nagy looked more like a white man on his one day off. He introduced Longarm, sort of, to his bigger and fatter wife. She didn't speak English. Longarm had to take her husband's word she was honored, wanted to feed him some grape pie, and knew he hadn't been the American who'd messed with that horrid Magda Homagy up the way.

Nagy said their daughter, Eva, was in the back, feeling poorly because she'd just heard a friend had died.

Longarm gently but firmly declared, "I'd like to meet your Eva, Mister Nagy."

Nagy protested. "She is not dressed. Even if she was, she no speak English. Why you want to see Magyar girl who can only weep right now?"

Longarm said, "You can trot her out here or I can come back with a search warrant. It's up to you.

So Nagy swore in his own lingo, went in the back, and returned with a willowy young blonde wearing a flannel chemise and a black eye. Nagy said defiantly, "Here she is. You still think we did something bad to her?"

Longarm smiled thinly and decided "Nothing she might not have had coming. You all heard about Zoltan Kun, eh?"

Eva Nagy savvied enough English to cover her face with her hands and bawl. Her mother smacked her again and chased her into the back.

Longarm smiled thinly and asked, "Did you put your foot down before or after you heard about her balding admirer getting blown through the roof?"