Doom Weapon

by Ed Gorman

  He was shouting again and jabbing the air with his finger. Then he just turned and stalked off toward the courthouse. So much grief and rage in him and it hung on the air for a long time. I just stood there and rolled myself a smoke.

  And then somebody came up and said: “That man’s poison. You’re well shut of him. He’s also dangerous.”

  I turned and there was the one and only Mr. Swarthout, banker and mine owner.

  “Next you’ll tell me he’s a socialist,” I said.

  “Oh, he’s a lot worse than a socialist. He’s an out-and-out communist.”

  He was a dapper one, he was, and the way he spoke you knew he was never challenged. Or, on the odd occasion when he was, he resorted to using that most efficient and legal of weapons, gossip.

  “He says you’ve got a miner on trial for something he didn’t do.”

  “If you mean Sam Wells, Mr. Ford, the men know they are never under any conditions to enter the main office unless they see me or one of my employees in there. I make that clear to every one of them the day they start. And despite what he claims to the contrary, I’m sure he was in there stealing something.”

  “His kid sounds pretty sick.”

  He looked right at me and said, “I’m sorry for that, Mr. Ford. But if I go easy on Sam they’ll start taking advantage of me every chance they get. Rules are rules.”

  Yes, I thought, rules are rules. Unless you’re rich enough to ignore them.

  “Good day, Mr. Ford,” he said and walked off in his expensive city suit.

  I spent the next two hours doing the kind of work the Pinkerton boys and girls do. I went to the post office, I went to a church (Grieves was a Methodist and so a Methodist church it was), I went to all three barbershops, I went to a haberdashery, and I went to the livery.

  I wanted to see if Grieves had established any kind of pattern while living in Junction City. The post office remembered him and said that he got very few letters and that he tended to talk up his role as a federal man. The minister said that he had heard of Grieves but had never met him. The barber in the second shop I visited told me, reluctantly, that Grieves liked to get his hair trimmed every few days and that he always smelled of fresh whiskey when he stopped in. The barber also told me that Grieves spent just about all his time in the chair asking questions about the pretty ladies who passed by the shop window. The barber said that this irked some of his customers because Grieves obviously didn’t care if a woman was married or not, he obviously considered all women fair game. The haberdasher had no problem speaking right up—Grieves was a loud, irritating braggart who had nothing but disdain for this man’s goods. “I buy ’em straight outta Chicago. They’re not good enough straight outta Chicago? He made sure he insulted my little shop every time he came in here.”

  I picked up my only useful piece of information inadvertently in the gunsmith’s shop where a man named Randisi checked the trigger mechanism on my Colt and while doing so said, “You’re the federal man.”

  I said I was.

  “You seem a lot tamer than the other one. That Mr. Grieves.”

  “He come in here, did he?”

  Randisi, a nice-looking gentleman of fifty or so years, smiled and said, “Oh, he came in here, all right. Mostly to tell me that I didn’t know my business and that he couldn’t find a single firearm that he’d be willing to buy, unless I’d take Confederate money.”

  Grieves continued to make friends.

  “But he did buy one .45 from me.”

  “Sounds like he thought he was doing you a favor.”

  Randisi laughed. “It wasn’t for him. He made that very clear. He said that I’d set aside an old Navy Colt for a friend of his and that the friend forgot to pick it up before he left town.”

  “You remember the man’s name?”

  “Sorry. Just his initials. N.D. The man wouldn’t give me his name. Kind of a secretive fella.”

  A gun for a friend. Sounded wrong but I wasn’t sure why.

  “One other thing.”

  “Oh?”

  “He was in a hurry. Said he was on his way out of town.”

  “He wouldn’t have been nice enough to tell you where he was going by any chance, would he?”

  Randisi laughed. “He wasn’t nice about anything, Mr. Ford. Not anything at all.”

  Chapter 7

  Grieves had slept his first two nights in a hotel a block from mine. The price was 40 percent more per room per night and had a much more decorous layout, including a formal dining room where an aggrieved husband had thrown a drink in Grieves’s face one night.

  I learned this by canvassing all four of the town’s hotels. I even spent a few minutes in the YMCA on the off-chance that he’d exercised there. But between the women and the whiskey there probably hadn’t been much time for anything else.

  A fine representative of the federal government. From what I’d known about him, he’d always enjoyed his vices, as most of us do, but he kept them quiet. But for some reason, when he hit Junction City, he’d gone a bit crazy.

  The incident with the angry husband naturally interested me. The so-called concierge—who seemed to double as the desk clerk—was a narrow man with eyes too large for his skeletal face. He wore a dark suit that gave him a funereal touch, even though I was sure he thought he was being awfully Continental.

  “We’re just not used to that sort of thing here at the Imperial,” he said. “We get a much higher order of clientele than the other hotels do and they tend to settle any of their arguments in a gentlemanly fashion.”

  He was as full of shit as a madam on the witness stand but his information was useful. Or at least interesting.

  “I take it the other man was a guest here.”

  “One of our favorite guests. A brother of the territorial governor.”

  “I take it Grieves wasn’t one of your favorites.”

  “He was here for two nights and if he’d tried to make it three, we would have had to ask him to leave.” Then: “And his friend was even more obnoxious.”

  “His friend?”

  “I personally never saw the man. I work strictly days because I’m also the concierge.” He’d mentioned this three times already. “But his friend—and right in the dining room—vomited into a flower pot.”

  I tried not to smile.

  He glared at me.

  “We just don’t tolerate that sort of thing.”

  “Do you have a description of the man?”

  “As I said, I work during the day. Fortunately, I never had to lay eyes on him.”

  “Do you know what the argument was about?”

  He went into a spell of finger-snapping that would make a flamenco dancer proud. A workman pushing a large box on a cart was apparently giving the concierge great and abiding displeasure.

  “You don’t bring anything like that through the front door, young man. What sort of place do you think this is?”

  The man looked eager to tell him exactly what sort of place he thought this was but then he tempered his zeal and said, “Around back?”

  “Of course around back. Good Lord.”

  When the offense went away, I said, “I asked you if you knew what the argument had been about.”

  “Your man Grieves seemed to think he had the right to ask a married woman to accompany him up to his room. Naturally, Mr. Soames took umbrage at that sort of vulgarity. He told Grieves what he thought of him and then sat back down at his table. But Grieves wouldn’t leave him alone. He forgot about the woman and just started in on Mr. Soames. He called him so many vile names and so loudly that some of the older women got up and left. Grieves wasn’t easy to handle. We had all three of our bellhops trying to drag him out of here.”

  “Was his friend still with him?”

  “Of course. Luckily, he was passed out by this time.”

  “How did it end up?”

  He offered me a chilly smile. “Your Mr. Grieves did us the favor of passing out, too. The bellhops carri
ed him out of here as if he was a corpse.”

  “And you think it ended there? Grieves didn’t come after Soames later or vice-versa?”

  “We got Grieves up to his room along with his friend and one of our bellhops stayed outside the room with a handgun. In the morning, both Mr. Soames and Grieves checked out within half an hour of each other. Thank God there wasn’t any more trouble.”

  Grieves had just kept right on making friends.

  Chapter 8

  I was just approaching the sheriff’s office when I heard angry voices coming from the alley ahead.

  The woman’s voice was especially sharp, sad, and angry. I walked to the alley. A rangy man was listening to a small and very pretty woman who was jabbing her finger up at his face, giving him an explosive lecture.

  Then she slapped him. You could see that his instinct was to strike her back. That was the uncivilized man in him. But the civilized man took over. His body slumped a bit. Resignation. Then he noticed me.

  I just passed on and went inside the office.

  I went to the stove and grabbed the coffeepot and poured myself a big hot cup of the stuff.

  “Is Molly Kincaid still here?” I asked the deputy. I showed him my badge. “I’d like to talk to her.”

  “I just shouldn’t let you do that.” This was the kid deputy from the previous night. He looked small behind the large span of front desk in the sheriff’s front office.

  “You don’t have any choice. I’m federal.”

  “Yeah but federal’s Washington, D.C., mister. And to tell you the truth, I couldn’t locate that on a map even if I had an hour. But the sheriff, he’s right here in town, so if I was to let you go back in that cell and talk to that gal—well, my uncle’ll be here a lot sooner than some telegram from Washington tellin’ me I got to do what you say for me to do.”

  That was when the man I’d seen in the alley came in. He was probably in his late twenties with a stern, intelligent face, tall, lean, purposeful inside his jacket woven of Indian-blanket material. His cheeks colored when he saw me.

  “Are you helping this man, Hayden?”

  “Can’t help him, Knut. Don’t have permission to help him.”

  Knut put out his hand. “Knut Jagland. I’m the first deputy. Can I help you with something?”

  I wondered if I’d have gotten the same smooth treatment if I hadn’t witnessed the embarrassing scene in the alley.

  I showed him my badge.

  “You’re the federal man. Sure. How can I help you, Mr. Ford?”

  “Noah’ll do fine. I’d like to see Molly Kincaid, is how you can help me.”

  “Well, of course.” He nodded to Hayden. “Hayden didn’t mean to be unhelpful. He’s a good young man. He just needs to get permission from either the sheriff or me for anything he thinks is important.”

  “That’s all I meant, Mr. Ford,” Hayden said.

  “That’s fine, Hayden. And I’m Noah. To everybody, all right?” There’s enough tension between federal and local that any time you can climb down off your high horse it’s helpful.

  “How come she’s being held here, anyway?”

  Knut shrugged. “Won’t cooperate. Won’t explain a darn thing to the sheriff or me. Says she has her reasons. And so far she won’t budge. She doesn’t seem to mind jail all that much.”

  “She gets good food brung over from the café,” Hayden said. “Meat, potatoes, vegetable, and a slice of pie. Nothin’ wrong with that now, is there?”

  “You hold things down here, Hayden. Noah and I are going back to the cells.”

  “Don’t expect much activity this time of day,” Hayden said.

  “Help yourself to some more coffee, Noah,” Knut said. “I’ll bring a cup for Molly.”

  I looked around the office while I waited for him to get a cup.

  It was more modern than I would have expected. Posters explaining the laws most people were curious about. A four-drawer wooden file cabinet where attorneys-at-law could search for back arrest records. A wall of well-organized WANTED posters divided into violent and nonviolent criminals. And four comfortable-looking chairs for visitors. The floor was clean, the walls had so recently been painted a light blue that the paint smell remained faintly on the air, and there were three spittoons for those so inclined.

  On the way back to the cell, Knut stopped and spoke quickly and softly: “Sorry you had to see that, Noah. Every once in a while I spend a little too much playing poker. I never win. I don’t know why I think I will. But I always go back. This time I lost a lot of money. My wife figured that out when she got up this morning and came down here to tell me about it.” He touched a hand to his right jaw. Forced a smile. “She’s got one hell of a right hand.”

  “It’s your business, Knut. Not mine.” I smiled to put him at ease. “I’ve argued with a few ladies in my time, too.”

  His raw-boned face grinned, making him look five years younger. “That little wife of mine is nobody to mess with, believe me.”

  Molly was sleeping when we got to her cell but she woke up at the sound of the key being inserted in the lock. The beauty was still there but it was blanched. Somebody had contributed a change of clothes—another heavy sweater and a different pair of butternuts, these green—and her blond hair was mussed in most places. Still, when she looked up at me as I came into the cell, the princess shone through it all. Be damned tough to take all her looks away.

  On the floor next to her cot was a Bible that she grabbed after sitting up. She put it on her lap.

  Knut gave her the tin cup of coffee.

  “Coffee,” she said. “I appreciate it.”

  Knut said, “I’ll be leaving you two alone.”

  “You see anything of that attorney man?” she said.

  “Not yet. He should be along. I know he was in court with the sheriff this morning.”

  He nodded to me, stepped out of the cell, locked it up. There were four small cells in a small back room. The floors were clean and for all the closeness the chamber pots didn’t smell much at all. The other cells were empty. There was only one window and it was barred. It sat high up and to the right of the back door.

  Molly took a big drink of coffee and said, “I’ve been in worse places, case that’s what you’re thinking.”

  “I was actually thinking that this isn’t too bad for a jail.”

  “Oh, yes, only the most elite criminals stay here. I believe the queen of England was here not long ago.”

  “Did she bring her maid?”

  Molly smiled. That smile could do permanent damage if you were of a romantic nature.

  “Why, Mr. Ford, don’t be silly. She never goes anywhere without her maid.”

  I sat on a three-legged stool and drank my coffee. “You got yourself a lawyer?”

  “He’s kind of cute in a stupid way.”

  “Well, that’s the first thing you always look for in a lawyer. Cute.”

  “Better than ugly.”

  “You got me there.”

  “I wish everybody was attractive. Wouldn’t that be a sweet world then? Everywhere you look, everybody looks like they just stepped out of a storybook.”

  “He helping you at all? Your lawyer?”

  “He can’t help me.”

  “Why?”

  “Because I won’t let him help me. I don’t want him to help me.”

  “In other words, you’re still not cooperating with the sheriff.”

  “The sheriff has a fancy for me.”

  “I imagine a lot of men have a fancy for you.”

  “How about you? Do you have a fancy for me?”

  “I suspect you know the answer to that already, Molly. It’d be hard not to have a fancy for you.”

  We fell into a silence. Way up front somebody came in the door. A conversation started up.

  “You know you could walk out of here any time you wanted.”

  “I know.”

  “They’re not holding you for any reason except not cooperati
ng.”

  “I don’t plan to cooperate, Noah.”

  “Why not?”

  She leaned back against the cell. The green eyes were elegant in the gritty sconce light of the cell block. The odd thing was that she now looked both younger and older. Just one more puzzling thing about this lost young woman.

  “You know how I said I wish everybody looked like somebody out of a storybook?”

  “Yep. You just said it a couple of minutes ago.”

  “You’re pulling my leg but I’m serious.”

  “So you’re not cooperating because you want everybody to look like somebody out of a storybook?”

  Anger. “You’re such a shit. I shouldn’t even be talking to you.”

  She sat up abruptly, spilling a trace of coffee on her dark sweater. She daubed at it with long slim fingers. “Well, thanks a lot. I wouldn’t have done that if you hadn’t been such a shit.”

  Just then—just a flash—something I could see without quite putting a name to—I saw a hint of her true nature. The one behind the playfulness and the bravado. Rage and a sense of persecution. A sense of deep resentment, so deep that it seemed crazed to me.

  “How old were you when you had sex the first time?” she demanded of me.

  “That’s a hell of a question.”

  “Come on, you shit. Tell me.”

  “Fifteen, I guess.”

  “Well, you want to know how old I was?”

  The rage was escalating fast.

  But I didn’t want to know. Right now it was the last thing I wanted to know.

  “I was eight. Eight years old, goddammit. And he was a minister and I didn’t stop bleeding for days. And he probably would’ve kept on doing it except his wife walked in one time. And you know what she did? She had me put in a home for crazy people. So nobody would believe me if I told them what the minister had done. I stayed there for two years. And you know what, you filthy piece of shit? The man who ran the place did the same thing to me the minister did.”

  There were no tears. Just that anger. At me, at the men who’d violated her, and maybe most especially at herself.