Robert B. Parker's Blackjack (2 page)

T
he tall gambling man that Roger had come searching for in Appaloosa was right here in front of him now. He was a strong, handsome-looking man with silver-streaked black hair and a black-as-coal mustache.

At the moment he had a huge smile on his face as he walked down the steps with his hand extended toward the portly man in the street. The two men with him stayed back behind him a few steps. They both wore dark suits, but they weren’t refined in any way, not like Boston Bill.

Roger could certainly determine that detail about the
two men. It was part of his job to
quickly assess people and he was good at assessing. He
figured if it wasn’t for their long, dirty hair, they
might pass for guardsmen, like Dickerson men or Pinkertons or
Denver police, even. But hell, they were nothing, no-accounts. One
of them was blond and pretty like a woman, Roger
thought. The other had deep-set eyes with a scraggly beard.
He was skinny and younger than the blond man and a little smaller.

They both were heeled and looked like capable customers to Roger, but he was unconcerned with them. It was the tall man, it was Boston Bill, that Roger was interested in.

Roger knew how to do his job. He’d been at it for a long while, and even
though this time the job was personal, he still operated as he had always operated, with ease and friendliness. No need to get all rigged up or emotionally boiling.

“Mr. Pritchard,” Boston Bill said. “Good to see you. How was your trip?”

Before Mr. Pritchard could answer, Roger moved out of the narrow alley and spoke with some volume.

“Mr. Black.”

Roger stepped off the boardwalk and took a few steps into the street. He took a step back and waited as a horse and buggy passed, then continued to walk toward Boston Bill.
It’s okay,
Roger thought.
It is okay.

“I’d like to have a word or two with you,” Roger said. “Just a moment of your time.”

Roger always worked like this. He was as smooth as butter, everyone would say. Boston Bill glanced back at his two seconds, then looked back at Roger. Roger had to slow up again as a horse and rider hurried by.

“I’m sorry,” Boston Bill said. “If you are looking for work, I’m afraid there are no positions available at this time.”

“Oh, no, no,” he said. “Not looking for any position.”

“Well, what can I help you with, then?”

Roger thought to himself,
Just keep it simple; just keep it calm.
Roger had done this sort of thing at least one hundred times. And like mother always said, “An ounce of kindness Roger, an ounce of kindness is worth, worth . . . something about gold . . . the weight in gold?”

“Just a little business matter,” Roger said.

Boston Bill’s second, the one with the blond hair, stepped forward with a stance that suggested to Roger he thought he was much tougher than he looked.

“That’s far enough,” the blond man said.

Roger smiled.

“There’s no need to concern yourself, young man. This isn’t any of your business.”

The other of Boston Bill’s seconds, the smaller man with the dark beard,
took a stance and spoke up with speech that seemed to Roger to be impaired by what looked to be a swollen jaw.

“It is our business,” the man with the dark beard said, and then spit in the street.

Most of the workers stopped what they were doing and turned their attention to Roger.

Boston Bill looked to Mr. Pritchard and nodded toward the entrance of the building.

“Let’s step inside,” he said. “After you, Mr. Pritchard.”

“Just hold on,” Roger said. “Just a moment, I have something you need to see.”

Roger put his hand into his knapsack, and when he did the blond man quickly pulled a butt-forward Colt.

“No,” Roger said. “Just . . .”

Roger had underestimated the essence of the men. He did not expect this, not at all.

There were two quick shots. Gun smoke kicked from the barrel of the blond man’s Colt. Roger was stunned. He stood looking at the smoke that hung almost motionless in the stillness of the late morning.

One of the shots went through the side of Roger’s jacket, missing his torso, but one shot hit him dead center in his midsection. Roger looked down to where the bullet had entered. His hand came out of the knapsack clenching a scrolled paper.

“Oh, lordy,” Roger said.

Roger staggered, falling on his backside on the hard packed dirt, and when he did his jacket opened up to reveal a shiny silver star pinned just over his heart on his gingham vest.

Somebody shouted, “He’s a lawman.”

“Goddamn it,” Roger said. “Can’t anybody do anything right?”

Roger managed to get back up on his feet, but he did not go for his pistol. He turned away and stepped up onto the boardwalk.

“You have gone and done it now,” Roger said. “And here I was trying to be proper and trying to keep this very . . .”

Roger took a few steps and thought about the fact that besides that damn can of beans he’d eaten earlier, he had not consumed much of anything substantial in the last few days, nothing at all. Then he thought maybe he should have gone about this little matter of business involving Boston Bill Black in a different way.

He took a few more steps. They were wobbly and awkward. Then he stumbled a bit and fell headfirst through a window of the upholstery shop.

V
irgil bought Allie a new Chickering and Sons piano for Christmas, and she played it most every evening after dinner and sometimes after lunch, as she was doing this particular afternoon. Virgil and I both thought it curious that she wasn’t getting any better, but she was trying and practicing and we were always offering our appreciation, encouragement, and support.

Currently Allie was playing a waltz and it was fairly smooth, but it wasn’t helping Virgil’s concentration. We were sitting on the back porch playing a game of chess, and Virgil had been taking his sweet time contemplating his next move.

It was a beautiful day in Appaloosa and there was not a cloud in the sky. The air was warm and there was just enough of a gentle breeze coming out of the north to keep the temperature from climbing up to discomfort. When Allie finished the tune, Virgil moved his rook and then sat back with some relief and a hint of strategic pride.

I studied the board and was waiting for another selection from Allie, but there was a knock at the front door instead.

“Oh, hey, there, Skinny Jack,” we heard Allie say.

I leaned back in my chair and could see through the open rear door to the open front door, where Deputy Skinny Jack stood with his well-worn derby in his hand.

“Afternoon, Mrs. French. Sorry to interrupt. I’m looking for Marshal Cole and—”

“Not at all, come in, come in, they’re out back.”

“Thank you, ma’am.”

“Good to see you,” she said.

Allie put her hand on his shoulder and they walked down the hall toward the back porch.

“You have been on my mind,” she said. “I think about your mother often . . . How have you been getting by?”

“Doing pretty okay,” he said. “Coming up on the one-year anniversary of Mom’s passing.”

“My God, really?” Allie said. “Seems like yesterday. I sure miss her.”

“Thank you, Mrs. French,” he said. “Me, too . . . I appreciate your thoughts.”

“Company,” Allie said as they arrived at the back door.

Allie normally wore her long auburn hair up, but at the moment it was down. It was parted in the middle and fell well past her breasts and was pulled back behind one ear. She had on a light blue cotton dress that was loose and open around her neck, and her walnut tan skin made her blue eyes seem even bluer. She stood to the side, next to the doorjamb, with her shoulders back so Skinny Jack could step out onto the porch.

“Howdy, Marshal,” he said. “Everett.”

“Hey, Skinny Jack,” I said.

Then I moved my bishop. Virgil met my eye with a tinge of dislike regarding my strategy. I smiled and leaned back, looking up at the young deputy.

“What is it, Jack?” I said.

He glanced at Allie, then back to me.

“Sheriff wanted me to fetch y’all.”

Virgil looked from the board to Skinny Jack.

“For?” I said.

Skinny Jack pulled at the whiskers of his scruffy goatee as he smiled at Allie a little.

“Oh,” she said, smiling back at Skinny Jack. “Excuse me, I’ve got dishes to wash anyway.”

Virgil grinned at Allie.

“What?” Allie said.

“Nothing, Allie.”

“Oh, Virgil,” she said.

Skinny Jack watched as Allie walked off down the hall, then looked to Virgil.

“Been a shooting,” Skinny Jack said.

“Who?” Virgil said.

“A policeman.”

“Policeman?” I said.

“None of us,” Skinny Jack said. “Thank God.”

“What policeman?” Virgil said.

“He’s from Denver.”

“A Denver policeman shot here in Appaloosa?” I said.

“Seems so.”

“Dead?” Virgil said.

“Not at the moment. Don’t know if he’ll make it, though.”

“Who did it?” Virgil said.

“Truitt Shirley.”

Virgil’s eyes narrowed.

“You remember him?” I said.

Virgil held his squint a bit.

“Do,” he said. “Bad seed.”

I nodded.

“We had a run-in with him and some of his toughs,” Virgil said.

“We did. You convinced him, the lot of ’em, to sleep it off.”

“How do you know it was Truitt that did the shooting?” Virgil said.

“Witnesses,” Skinny Jack said.

“Truitt been arrested?” I said.

“No.”

“What’s a Denver policeman doing here?” I said. “And why has he been shot by Truitt?”

“We don’t know all the particulars,” Skinny Jack said. “Know his name is Roger Messenger.”

“Messenger?” Virgil said.

“You know him?” I said.

Virgil thought for a moment, then shook his head.

“Name is familiar,” he said.

“He had a knapsack with a ticket receipt of travel from Denver and we found his name in his pocketbook. He showed up here in Appaloosa on the morning train. That’s what we know about him.”

“Have you wired the Denver authorities?” I said.

“No, sir. Sheriff wanted y’all to know.”

“When was this?”

“’Bout an hour ago,” Skinny Jack said.

“Where is the Denver fella now?” I said.

“Hospital. Doc said besides his condition being not so good, said he was drunk as hell, too. He had an empty bottle of rye in his knapsack.”

“Where was this?” Virgil said

“In front of the new gambling-parlor building. But that’s not all. This here is the reason Sheriff especially wanted me to find you two.”

Skinny Jack pulled a rolled-up paper from his coat pocket and laid it on the table in front of us.

“This Roger fella had this here warrant for the gambling man, Boston Bill Black, in his possession. Matter of detail, he had it in his hand when he was shot.”

I read it and then handed it to Virgil.

Virgil read it. Stared at it some.

“I’ll be damn,” he said.

“You called it,” I said.

“Suspected it,” he said.

“I was not far off your mark, Virgil.”

Virgil nodded a little.

“Boston Bill Black wanted for murder,” I said. “Ever since he showed up, acting special . . . you damn sure called it.”

“Where is Sheriff Chastain?” Virgil said.

“Book, the sheriff, and the other deputies are out looking for Truitt and Bill Black.”

Virgil turned to the open, curtain-covered window to his left.

“You hear everything okay, Allie?” he said.

Allie spoke from behind the curtains.

“Don’t mean it’s true.”

“No, Allie, it don’t, but there is this warrant here.”

“Just a piece of paper,” she said.

“No,” Virgil said. “It’s not just a piece of paper. A warrant is issued when there is proof and evidence.”

Allie pulled back the curtains.

“Well, I don’t believe it, Virgil.”

Virgil turned to me then back to Allie.

“What?” he said with a shake of his head. “Why?”

“Not one word of it.”

“Well, why would you not, Allie?”

“He’s a fine upstanding gentleman.”

Virgil rested both of his hands on the table, cocked his head, looking at Allie, then narrowed his brow.

“How would you know?”

“I just do,” she said. “Call it woman’s intuition.”

Virgil smiled at me and shook his head a little, then looked back to Allie.

“Woman’s intuition?” he said.

“Yes.”

Virgil shook his head again.

“The man has been in town here for a short while and you’re vouching for him.”

“I’m not vouching for him, Virgil. I just heard from some of the ladies that he was a good fella.”

“That so?”

“Yes,” she said.

“Some of the ladies?”

“Yes,” she said. “I even said hello to him at the town hall, and he was perfectly nice and upstanding.”

“Well, hell,” Virgil said. “That’d be for the judge to decide.”

I
had first laid eyes on Boston Bill Black on a dark rainy night not long after he showed up in Appaloosa. I’d heard about his arrival and I knew he was an imposing character. His reputation as a gun hand, rounder, and raconteur preceded him, too, but then again, there are always two sides to a coin.

It was late in the evening when I stopped in for a whiskey at the Boston House that I saw the big man. I thought it was amusing or half interesting that a man named Boston Bill Black was in the Boston House Hotel Saloon. There he was, bigger than life, dealing cards in the gambling parlor just off the main barroom. He was seated at a corner table with three other fellas, dapper mining executives. I could tell by the stacks of the chips they were playing a high-stakes game of ventiuna; that was the common name for the game in the southwestern parts of the country. Some people called it twenty-one. Others . . . most . . . called it blackjack.

Boston Bill was an impressive-looking gent, no doubt. He was as big and strong as any man I ever saw. His neck, forearms, and wrists pushed outward on the fine fabric of his long jacket like the
cylinders that drove and powered the wheels of a locomotive. I got myself a whiskey and took a seat at the end of the bar next to Pearl, a half-Cherokee, half-black whore from the Indian Territory. We had a connection, Pearl and me. Her father was a marshal, killed in the line of duty when he was working for hanging Judge Isaac Parker. Pearl was good at her profession and very nice to look at in her silky dresses that always exposed her strong, bare shoulders, but she was also unusual for a working woman. She was college-educated, smooth with conversation, political, and unafraid to speak her mind. She lived with another woman named Bernice and had only one main interest in men, and that was their money. Pearl was a friend, and as friends often do, she felt inclined to fill me in on some details she’d personally gathered regarding Boston Bill Black and his proclivities.

She glanced back over her brown shoulder at him sitting at the table, telling tall tales to his flip-card partners, and told me she had given him a ride two nights previous. She said that besides the fact he liked to gab a bit and was full of shit, he was rough with her.

“How so?” I said.

“Oh, he needed to turn me every which way,” she said. “Like a damn origami or some such, Everett. Like he was trying to fix me into something I wasn’t, and in the process he needed to whip me, spank me, like a cow . . . I didn’t mind it, though. Some men are that way. Not you, of course, Everett, you are a gentleman. I believe it has to do with them being pulled from the teat too soon. Malnourishment obviously does not always have an effect on physical growth, but it most certainly affects the brain. The premature lack of nutrition causes them to feel the need to take out their aggression on the weaker sex, a manifestation of their need to be dominant though they are really just lacking in solid character. . . . Something you know nothing about, Everett.”

She laughed, looked back at him, and studied him for a moment.

“Boston goddamn Bill,” she said, shaking her head as she turned back to me. “I don’t think that is where he is from, either, Boston. I think he is from the West, someplace.”

Pearl smiled at Wallis as he strolled up behind the bar, cleaning a glass with a cotton towel.

“Wallis, my dear,” Pearl said, “may I have some of that fine brandy?”

“You know it,” Wallis said as he picked up a fancy bottle that was displayed in front of the silver-backed mirror behind the bar.

“I’m telling Everett about the molehill that comes in the form of a mountain.”

Wallis smiled and set the clean glass in front of Pearl and poured her a shot of brandy, then rested both his hands out wide on the bar, facing Pearl and me.

“I told Boston Bill,” she said, “that he reminded me of an Oregon man and it made him mad . . . I kind of knew it would make him mad, but I don’t really care.”

She laughed and spoke as if she were imitating him. “I am not from softwood country, you should know that, be able to tell that about me, darlin’. I’m from eastern, hardwood country, east of the mighty Mississippi, where hickories, gums, maples, oaks, and walnuts grow, and not from the western softwood country of cedars, hemlocks, pines, spruces, and firs.”

She shook her head.

“Pat Cromwell said he’s known him for a long time,” Wallis said. “Pat said he put eight notches on the handle of his Colt while he worked the big boats up and down the Missouri, Ohio, Arkansas, and Mississippi.”

“Well,” I said, “I’ve not had the pleasure.”

An older gentlemanly-looking man in a natty gray suit came in from the hotel and peered into the bar. Wallis nodded to Pearl; she turned, seeing him at the same time he saw her. She turned back to Wallis and me, then slipped off the stool.

“Time for a bedtime story,” she said, and moved away to greet him.

I looked back to Boston Bill, whose chips appeared to be growing.

“Dyes the gray out of that mustache,” Wallis said, eyeing Boston Bill.

“No doubt,” I said.

Virgil had seen Boston Bill up close when he purchased a big buckskin geld from Salt at the livery. He introduced himself to Virgil, and it was then that Virgil grew suspicious and cautious of him. Virgil said Black proudly opened his long jacket to show he was not heeled. Said he was no longer a man that carried a gun. Said he’d been on both sides of the law and shot a good number of men in his time, but that those days were behind him now.

Regardless of who Boston Bill Black was or was not or where he was from or where he currently was located, he was now in our jurisdiction and was most assuredly wanted for murder.