Longarm on the Fever Coast (23 page)

Vail shrugged and blew more pungent cigar smoke back as he pointed out, "They were moving many a side of beef, and with the profits slit less than a score of ways betwixt the crooked shippers and packers, with the help of just one key Coast Guardsman, we're still talking way more money than anyone was making at their more honest jobs. That's if you're certain how many all told were in on it."

Longarm said, "Damn it, I included a carbon of Flynn's signed confession, Boss. As I elaborated more in my official report, it only took a few dedicated bastards. Neither the crews of that steam line nor of that one Coast Guard cutter were in position to question the orders of those few key superiors. It's only up to the skipper and the supercargo where a vessel might or might not put in to load or off-load any damned cargo at any damned time day or night. I put down there how I had to arrest Lieutenant Flynn in front of his first officer to get anyone to question where in thunder Flynn was taking us on a pointless patrol."

Longarm glanced about for an ashtray, saw Vail had ignored his many helpful suggestions as to office furnishings, and calmly fed some tobacco ash to any rug mites by his own big leather chair. Then he continued. "I wasn't bluffing totally. I'd really narrowed down my list of suspects pretty good before Flynn gave his play away. Once I knew what Pryce & Doyle had been up to, I saw right off they'd have never been able to smuggle so brazenly, in bulk, without the help of at least some customs agents."

He took another drag on his smoke, sighed it out, and soberly admitted, "I just wasn't sure who it was at first. You see, Flynn seemed such an asshole I had to consider a junior officer or even a noncom flim-flamming him as well as the rest of us."

Vail nodded. "I follow your drift about the crooks being worried when they saw you headed their way. Thanks to all that shit about you in the Denver Post, it's an established fact You know your military organization as well as beef, from both sides of the border."

Longarm said modestly, "Anyone who's ever served as an enlisted man knows how often things are really run by the noncoms whilst the officers enjoy their privileges and one another's wives. But I knew fairly soon that Flynn was a petty tyrant who ran things his own way and couldn't abide suggestions. I suspected him seriously after he'd as much as executed Doyle before I could get him to talk. But I didn't know for certain till he had me, Gilbert, and our prisoner on board for an otherwise pointless ride to the Rio Grande." Longarm flicked more ash and said flatly, "He'd trained his men not to question his whimsical orders. But I had the advantage of being allowed to consider him an asshole, and mayhaps a better grasp of conflicting jurisdictions in my head. I knew the Coast Guard had the mouth of the Rio Grande covered, by others at least as high-ranking as Flynn. So I knew he had no real call to carry me and my own party down the coast that far, unless it was to get us as far as possible from his pals around Corpus Christi Pass."

Marshal Vail scanned something Henry had retyped for Longarm as he nodded his bullet head. "Right, a steamer swinging south from the passage from the open sea would naturally be left to Flynn's station for, what, occasional boarding?"

Longarm nodded and said, "That's about the size of it. Our thin-spread Revenue Service ain't got time to check every known vessel of a familiar line flying the Stars and Stripes. Nobody aboard either ship passing each other in the night would have call to question it when a familiar supercargo told a familiar Coast Guard skipper there was nothing being imported from anywhere in that refrigerated hold. When Flynn agreed there was no need to spill all that artificial cooling out into the balmy gulf air, who was likely to argue? It's all there in one paragraph or another, Boss. Like you said, I'd have never suspected anything myself if they hadn't started acting so suspicious!"

Vail chuckled. "Oh, I don't know about that. Seems I can hardly send you down to the corner for a bucket of beer without you uncovering a gang of bank robbers. But you done us proud this time, old son. Rod Gilbert's on his way to full recovery and Clay Baldwin's on his way to the gallows, whether he gets better or not."

Vail snubbed out his own cigar in the big copper ashtray he kept handy for himself, and set the report aside as he chuckled fondly. "It's still a good thing for you that Coast Guard officer never learned to play cards on an army blanket. He's naturally changed his story a dozen times since you arrested him, and he almost had some higher-ups convinced that you were making up mean things about him. So it's just as well he told that whopper about you before you arrested him instead of after."

Longarm shot his superior a sincerely puzzled frown and asked what they were talking about. So Vail chortled, "O he wired me as well as the Surgeon General's office some cock-and-bull story about you and some government nurse carrying on disgracefully in the officers' quarters down there. Even if a thing like that was true, it surely shows how Flynn had it in for you. He must have known you were closing in on him, right?"

To which Longarm could only reply, "I reckon the poor bastard must have been desperate, making up a whopper like that one!"

The End