His Ragged Company

by Rance Denton

  I tapped my glass against Levinworth’s and all but ignored Cicero, who sat on the examination table like a slouching child. The doctor had done him some tiny favors: stitched up a gash above his brow, lathered some ointment on his swollen face. Jolly’s beating would fade with time, but the scars to pride? Those would linger. “Did Everett try to come in here?” I asked. “I saw him storm out earlier.”

  “I caught him at the door,” Levinworth said. “I only let in who I want to let in.”

  “He did me that favor,” Cicero admitted.

  “You only get one of those, Cicero,” I said. “Levinworth’s ain’t no hotel, and you have to pay the piper soon enough. Harboring thieves isn’t a habit I pick up lightly. I don’t plan to start it with you.”

  Levinworth finished up his gin, and without a word, he drifted back out of the room. It wasn’t so much a kindness as it was professionalism: what he knew was about to go on was marshaling business, and though it might not have been as ugly as bullet-holes or busted boils, his discretion meant he wasn’t responsible.

  So Cicero and I sat quietly, drinking gin, because why have words when you can have gin.

  When I realized he was content to just sit there and say nothing at all, I said, “You scared of him?”

  He scraped a bandaged hand over his shorn skull.

  “I need an answer,” I said. “It comes down to my choice, Cicero: I can deal accordingly with a thief whose actions were both felonious and self-confessed. Or—” I emptied my gin and stood up to stand in front of him like a parent in front of a willful child, “—I can offer temporary asylum to a man who feels his life may be forfeit to someone with poor intentions. One’s good for me, and the other’s good for you.”

  The veil briefly fell. Cicero set down his glass and rubbed his palms down his face. “Keswick Everett has been on my heels for two states, nipping like a goddamn dog.”

  “How much did you take from him?”

  His nostrils flared, big as two saucers. “Nearly nine hundred bucks. Don’t look at me like that. That turd deserved it. He choked a whole damn village for protection money until they were just about starved and spent, and folks aren’t known in his parts for their remarkable amount of brain capacity or frugality. First chance he gets, the minute everyone’s back is turned, he’ll put a bullet through my temple and not think twice about it. I’m not an easy fellow to scare, Marshal Faust, but that prick’s an ice king. When I lodged at Crown Rock for a rest and got word he was on my tail, I came here. Forty miles. Two days. No sleep.”

  Grady Cicero’s bare feet told no lie: outside of his boots, his gnarled toes and heels gleamed with a vineyard of broken blisters and stubbed-in toenails.

  Desperate men don’t stop to wrap their feet in moleskin.

  Cicero told me what he deemed necessary: he’d followed the trade-routes from Crown Rock through the brushlands and over sun-dried hills until Blackpeak emerged on the horizon. Miss Garland’s Café had proved the perfect temporary distraction, a busy snake’s nest that Everett wouldn’t dare to toss bullets into.

  These were Grady Cicero’s last slivers of hope this side of Mexico, weaving in and out of crowds and hiding himself behind circumstance. Truth was, I could give him up. This was Pickens business. Private matters between two men. Outside my self-imposed jurisdiction.

  Squeezing the bridge of my nose didn’t kill my throbbing headache. “You want this cleared up, we do this on my terms. The only way I can ensure your safety is to have you under my eye on a constant basis until Everett leaves.”

  “You going to make him leave?”

  “I’ll find ways,” I said.

  “Awful nice,” he said.

  “Balance, Cicero. Sometimes things are about right and wrong. Sometimes things are about balance. I’ll cool off Everett as best I can, but the minute this is done, I’m sending a courier up to Crown Rock for a federal judge to sort this matter out. I can guarantee your life, but not necessarily your freedom.”

  It was a lot of money. We both knew that. I could harp on Cicero about thieving from a thief, but I wasn’t paid this staggeringly handsome salary to moralize at immoral folk. To officialize our little agreement, I thrust out a hand to him. Shake was as good as words, after all.

  A small span of hesitation didn’t keep his beefy palm from clapping into mine. ‘Course, he didn’t expect me to pull him close enough so I could jamb a thumb down into the sutures on his brow.

  “Sss - hach!” he barked. “Son of a bitch, you lunatic!” When he said it, all the Englishman faded away. All that was left was a hoarse, simpering American in his voice as he soothed the blossoming pain on his brow with a few brushes of his fingers. He spat, “You want to tell me next time you’re planning on putting me in agony? I’m in a fragile state over here.”

  “Couldn’t just pick you up by the ankles and shake the rest of the lies out of you, could I,” I said.

  I wrote a small note to Miss Lachrimé Garland and asked a boy to deliver it. ​I escorted Cicero to the lone holding cell in my office, where he seemed at once both secure and perturbed. Then I went back to the Horseshoe Junction Inn. Aremeda De Santos said to me, “He’s with Nabby Lawson,” and escorted me like a special guest to a row of dark rooms up on the second floor.

  Being nice gets you favors.

  Being town marshal gets you everywhere.

  I thumped my knuckles on the door and said, “Keswick Everett,” but got no answer.

  De Santos, who was thick and powerful and broad as an ox, removed a dull skeleton key from the cavernous split in her bodice. “Nabby’s a handful for any man.”

  Hearing nothing, I knocked again. “Mr. Everett.”

  “Nabby might’a broke him in two.”

  “That’d solve my problems,” I said under my breath, then took the key from her.

  When I opened the door Keswick Everett's face was the most fetching shade of plum, and if he looked any more swollen, you’d have thought he’d pop like a bubble. A neckerchief in his mouth dripped with foaming saliva. A leather strap bit into the column of his neck so tight that I thought I could see his pulse throbbing underneath it. Behind him, half-dressed, stood Nabby Lawson, whose crooked teeth might as well have been the pieces of a jigsaw puzzle.

  She loosened her grip on the strap. Keswick’s tongue wagged out for air. He collapsed on the rumpled bed. “’Scuse me,” she barked, and tapped the ash of a cigarette on Keswick’s sweat-lathered back. “You got business, Marshal, or you just watchin’?”

  His naked ass arching up like a newly-discovered land-mass, Keswick Everett peeled the wet kerchief from his lips and said, “Look who it is.”

  Nabby’s nose wrinkled up. Perfect imitation of a raisin. “You watchin’, Marshal?”

  “Nope.”

  “Because if you’re watchin’, I damned well better get paid.”

  “Yes ma’am,” I said. “Keswick?”

  “Uh-huh.”

  “Tomorrow evening. Eight o’clock. Downstairs. All involved parties.”

  Nabby squeaked. “That include me?”

  “Shut up,” Keswick said.

  I closed the door.

  I held the key up between me and Aremeda De Santos, examined all its very tiny etchings and curves, and offered it back to her. “That,” I warned her, “is the most dangerous object in the world.”

  “You asked,” she said.

  8

  During the day, Lady De Santos’s charming little whorehouse – excuse me, dainty-room – served all manners of fine teas and coffees and sweet cakes to any man or woman hankering for sugar and spice. Sometimes it was a two-fer: the same rustling lasses serving little platters of scones and tarts were the same ones that’d stick their fingers up your ass later that night for dessert.

  Aremeda was only too happy to allow us her warmth, courtesy, and space for our business meeting. She busted out the silk tablecloth and lace doilies. Lit some fine candles. One of her girls offered us four glasses of cheap red wine,
because as she put it, “Mr. Sloman’s holding out on our shipment order, the fucker,” and swirled away.

  Grady Cicero, whose wrist was shackled to the leg of our table, said, “I’d quite like one of those apple things,” before arching his head back to call out, “Miss, if you don’t mind, I’d be obliged for one of those apple things.”

  When it came it clattered to his tiny plate like a rock.

  “Thank God for teeth,” he said.

  Ignoring the curling wallpaper and the brown smears of old cigarette smoke on the plaster ceiling, the Horseshoe Junction’s party-room was quite a sight. Queen Victoria herself, rumor held, had a visit once and had shit royal finery all over the walls and furniture: ornate upholstery covered the chairs, a hundred gold-trimmed candles sagged in their pewter holders, and decorative plates pocked the walls. A rainy Thursday night, and handfuls of Blackpeak’s menfolk were in here, bow-tied and mostly washed, milling about and considering which ladies would lie to them about loving them for an hour or two. They drank coffee and wine, waiting patiently, pants all-abulge.

  To my right, Miss Lachrimé Garland sat stiff in her chair. “I dislike being drawn into matters like this, Marshal. You know it,” and then to Cicero, “and now you know it. And I won’t forget it.”

  “I would have far preferred more amenable circumstances,” Cicero said. “Be that as it may, it was a pleasure getting my ass beat by your resident muscle.”

  “I think he could have done a far better job.”

  Cicero tried to touch his brow. The table thumped. He sniffed through the swollen bridge of his nose. “You bring the money, Miss Garland?”

  “My money. All four-hundred-and-twenty-one dollars of it.”

  "Consider it a date and I’ll let you pay for my pastry.” He knocked his sweetroll on the side of the table. “They got a name for this damn thing?”

  “Fat Bastard,” Miss Garland and I said in unison. Then she continued: “Hard on the outside and moist pretty much everywhere else.”

  Just then, both their eyes lifted up and someone kicked the back of my chair. That crowding stink of oil and a little bit of minty lather. Keswick Everett stood behind me and clapped my shoulder, giving it a hearty school-boy squeeze. I wasn’t his point of attention; I was just his prop. “Cicero,” he grunted.

  For a long breath there was relative silence. Rain drummed outside the nearby window.

  “Keswick,” Cicero said.

  Keswick knocked a knuckle on the empty side of the table to my left. “This seat reserved?”

  Then he sat just the same. Weasel that he was, Keswick Everett had at least understood the unspoken rules of a fair parley. His linen jacket hung loose around him, completely unhindered. He’d left his gun-belt upstairs, a detail that Grady Cicero immediately noticed, because he had color again. “It’s a good thing the tail between your legs didn’t screw none with your sense of direction, Cicero. If you hadn’t happened into the arms of your knight errant here, I’d have gotten you before long. That’s luck, I ‘spose. And you, Miss Garland. Looks like they let your kind handle all sorts of responsibility ‘round here.”

  Miss Garland flashed a smile at him that could have burned him in his seat. “That mouth, darling, ought to catch itself before it runs too far amok. I’m an interested party now privy to business that, as of this morning, involves one of my fighters. You will speak to me, not down to me.”

  I cleared my throat. “Now that we’re clear, you all drink your wine,” which Cicero did, in two long gulps, “and let’s take care of the business at hand. First thing’s first: Keswick, my town, my rules.”

  "Uh-huh.”

  “Until such a time as I say otherwise, you won’t throw hands or bullets in Grady Cicero’s direction within Blackpeak’s limits. We clear?”

  “Enough.”

  “This is a talking establishment. No rowdiness, no loud voices, nothing but soft streams and babbling brooks from all of you.”

  “So happens this thief gets him a gun or two,” Keswick said. "What’s the rules on him coming for me?”

  “You scared? What a compliment,” Cicero said.

  “As of last night, Grady Cicero’s my prisoner. He’s jailed under a charge to be later determined by a judge on account of a confession of thievery. I give you my personal guarantee that for the duration of your stay in my town, Cicero’s no danger to you.”

  Keswick nodded. “So that mean I get my money?”

  “Wasn’t your goddamn money in the first place, Everett, and you know as much,” came Cicero’s response through teeth still stained with blood. “Those Pickens folks, you bled them for every cent in their pockets. By the time I passed through, that little town you lorded over couldn’t piss without paying you a penny for the privilege.”

  Everett’s rugged face crumpled like paper. “He held me at gunpoint in my home, stole money from me earned legally through my own private endeavors. Who’s this prick think he is, fuckin’ Robin Hood? I want what’s owed to me.”

  Miss Garland took up her wine, letting the bell of the glass almost float on the edge of her pointed fingers. “As of yesterday afternoon, that money changed hands. It belongs to me, fairly won under the proposition of a social clause.”

  “The hell’s that mean?”

  “Texas law. Money won in the course of social and private bets remains the property of the bet’s victor. You witnessed the exchange yourself.” Miss Garland’s voice drew a sharp line, her consonants icy. “You made no dispute, even as the self-proclaimed legal owner of the tender in question, thereby solidifying the legitimacy of the bet.”

  “You call me here to pull one over on me?”

  “For not speaking up,” she said, “you gave permission for Grady Cicero to bet that money.”

  “Won’t put a dent in your pocket, Miss Business Lady, to give me back what belongs to me. Every cent of it.”

  “But I won’t,” she said.

  “And why not?”

  I drummed a fingertip on the side of my wine glass. “Because you don’t possess any claim to that money other than your word, Everett. Just as fair it could be yours as it could be Cicero’s over there. How much was originally taken?”

  “Nearly a thousand bucks.”

  “Pickens business is Pickens business,” I said. “I can only determine what I see happen here. Miss Garland, how much was the amount exchanged?”

  “Four-hundred twenty-one dollars.”

  “Hardly sounds like a thousand,” I reasoned. “I imagine you got some kind of proof of ownership of such a precipitous amount of money, Everett.”

  The mustache twitched. “Uh-huh. I got my word.”

  “So does Cicero.”

  Keswick leaned over the table and prodded a finger the color of a sun-dried tomato at me. “He had a fine time with that money, pleasurin’ himself a wild streak from Alabama into Texas. You planning to take the word of this sharp-speaking vagabond over mine, Marshal Faust, you and I are going to hatch ourselves a bigger problem.”

  “He’s got no need to take his word,” came Miss Garland’s response. “He’s taking my word instead.”

  The murmuring in the parlor might obscured most tiny sounds like shuffling feet and rustling skirts, but when I heard the clockwork-like click of an iron hammer underneath the table, it wrenched me right back to the situation at hand.

  I think before any of us, Miss Garland already had some sense of the stalemate hovering in the air over the table. The issue of who the money belonged to blew like dust into the air. It was stolen money. Lawless money. Anybody’s money. Especially now that Miss Anybody had her hand half-crammed in a skirt-pocket, pointing her just-in-case at the crotch of one very displeased Keswick Everett.

  The oil-lamps and candles were kind to Miss Garland: not a bead of sweat gleamed on her forehead. “When a man all but puts a half-grand in my pocket, you can be sure I won’t give it up just to satisfy some sneering pig’s sense of entitlement. Legal exchange, legal right.” Her voice swe
pt low, humming with steel. “That money you’re aching for? It’s now the property of Miss Lachrimé Garland, so if you want it, I suggest you move quickly and surely to kill the bitch, Mr. Everett, because at this range, she don’t need to aim. She just needs to flinch.”

  Then, like a traveling magician, Cicero withdrew from the sleeve of his shackled wrist-cuff a wrinkled lady’s kerchief, its lilies violet, stark, and royal. His subtle smile was too.

  Whether they’d somehow conferred or just come together in the moment, I didn’t know, but my hackles shot up against my collar and my guts went cold. “Miss Garland,” I said.

  “Not now, Marshal.”

  Breathe. “The last thing Lady De Santos wants in this place is a dead body and the stink of burnt powder and blood stuck to the plaster,” I said. Nailed to Keswick Everett, her eyes never moved, never blinked.

  “You’d really kill me for it,” Keswick said.

  “A woman has to take risks to rise up.”

  “I’ll crush your windpipe,” he said, “and be happy to do it.”

  “Don’t,” I said to him, and then to her: “Please.”

  But nobody was of a mind to listen. Because Everett tilted his head, said, “Uh-huh,” and then lunged—

  There’s that kind of moment that rings through the air before a glass slides off the edge of a table, like a bell-toll echoing in your brain and body. Whole world floats. Time stops. Wakes up an instinct-deep warning that screams move! and you move, not because you want to, but because you have to, because there’s no room in the world for the alternative.

  Grady Cicero and I? I think we both felt the floor drop out from under us at the same time.

  He reacted. So did I.

  Keswick Everett’s ass didn’t get but a hair’s width off the chair before I had his right wrist, and with his free hand, Cicero snared the dip of his blunted elbow.

  We rocked him back into his chair.

  The gun never fired.

  The Horseshoe Junction Inn, surrounding our volatile little parley, maintained its perfume-scented ignorance. I heard a woman purr, “Hello, handsome,” and heard a man go, “Urp,” and scramble for his billfold. Business as usual.