Robert B. Parker's Blackjack

by Robert Knott

  I returned between the buildings and walked back to Virgil and Skinny Jack. I picked up my eight-gauge and cradled it in the crook of my arm.

  “There are two horses in front of the saloon here,” I said. “But that is it. Don’t see any other watering holes or anybody about. Across the road, down that way, there’s a whoring joint with couple of gals sitting on the porch out of work, but no horses.”

  Virgil nodded a little, looking at the backside of the hotel saloon.

  “Reckon we get in there and see what is what?” I said.

  Virgil nodded.

  “Why don’t Skinny Jack and me come in the back here,” he said. “We’ll give you a minute, Everett. Come in from the front.”

  I cocked my eight-gauge and started off.

  “See you in a minute,” I said.

  12.

  I walked around to the entrance. The horses out front were working cow ponies with well-used ropes and weathered saddles.

  A sign above the door said Hotel Revelation and Saloon. I entered just as Virgil and Skinny Jack walked in from the back. We had our guns raised.

  The bottom floor had a bar on my left, and at the far end of the room, a staircase. There were three men in the room, but they were not the three men we were looking for, and there was one woman. All of them turned to look at us. They first saw Virgil and Skinny Jack, and then me. One was clearly the bartender, a short fellow wearing a clean white shirt and standing behind the bar. He had his hands raised in the air and backed up until his butt hit the backside of the bar, making bottles rattle.

  The woman looked to be about forty. She was attractive for her age, and though she was sitting down she looked to be very tall. She had broad shoulders, blue eyes, high cheekbones, and silver-blond hair. She wore a black dress and was sitting in a corner between the bar and the staircase, with a collection of books and papers stacked in front of her. She was reading a newspaper that she lowered and peered over the top of when we walked in. The other two men were young, skinny cowhands that hadn’t yet had the opportunity or necessity to put a razor to their face. They were playing cards at a table up against the wall opposite the bar.

  The woman calmly lowered the newspaper on the table and looked back and forth between Virgil and me.

  “I’d say come on in and relax,” she said, “but I have a feeling that you gentlemen have something else on your minds.”

  I was pretty sure her accent was German. There was a precise manner of her chosen words that suggested she was most likely an educated woman.

  The bartender looked back and forth among Virgil, Skinny Jack, and me.

  Virgil moved his lapel to the side.

  “I’m Marshal Virgil Cole. These men here with me are also lawmen.”

  “Well, if it is not my fortunate day,” she said. “There is nothing about the law that I do not appreciate, Marshal Cole.”

  She swiveled in her chair, looking Virgil up and down, then turned her attention to me.

  “He has already unfortunately left,” she said.

  “Ma’am?” I said.

  “There is no need to stand on ceremony here, gentlemen,” she said.

  I didn’t say anything.

  She stood slowly, then took a step to get a better look at us.

  “The man you are looking for, of course,” she said. “He has unfortunately left.”

  “When?”

  She walked slowly around the table. Her tall figure was slender and her demeanor was elegant as she moved to the center of the room between Virgil and me.

  “He has been gone for a while,” she said.

  Virgil looked to the bartender.

  “You,” he said.

  “Marshal, sir?” he said.

  “What do you know?”

  The bartender looked to the woman, and she nodded, as if giving him permission to speak.

  “There were three fellas here last night for a bit, but far as I know, they are long gone.”

  The woman smiled and looked back and forth between Virgil and me.

  “With that being said, what can I do for you gentlemen?” she said, directing the question to me. “If you are weary and in need of rest we have rooms, drinks, and food available.”

  “How long has he been gone?” Virgil said.

  She turned and looked to Virgil and crossed her arms.

  “How long,” he said, “and where to?”

  “No need to be insensitive, Marshal.”

  Virgil moved a step but didn’t say anything. He looked to the two young cowboys sitting at the table by the wall.

  “We ain’t seen nobody, don’t know nothin’,” one of the boys said, shaking his head. “We just got here, sir, Marshal, sir. We just come over after work for a drink or two.”

  Virgil looked back to the woman.

  “Where is he?” Virgil said.

  She shook her head.

  “You have plenty of time. He has a good day on you. So. Take a moment, why don’t you,” the woman said. “Please, and I will tell you what else comes to my mind. Some of which may surprise you.”

  She looked to me, smiled, then looked back to Virgil. She was poised and gentle for such a tall woman.

  “Perhaps have a drink or two yourself, why don’t you?” she said. “On me. I do not normally drink, especially in the transition of day to night, but today I have been rather fraught for one reason or another, so I will even join you.”

  Virgil looked to me. He released the hammer on his Winchester and took a step into the room.

  “I will tell you everything you want to know and then some,” she said. “I am in the mood, so you should take my offer before I decide to keep my thoughts to myself.”

  Virgil looked around the room for a moment, then nodded slightly.

  “Grand,” she said, then looked to the bartender. “Set them up, Timothy.”

  “You bet,” he said. “Whiskey?”

  Virgil nodded and moved toward the bar.

  Skinny Jack followed him and I did the same.

  Timothy got a bottle and four glasses and poured. The woman moved to the bar between Virgil and me. She turned around, facing away from the bar, and leaned back a little on the counter; the move made her seem even taller than she was.

  Virgil handed one of the whiskeys to the woman.

  “What’s your name?” Virgil said.

  “Mike,” she said. “The proprietress.”

  Virgil glanced to me, then looked at her, but said nothing.

  “You own the place?” I said.

  “As a matter of fact I do,” she said. “Lovely, don’t you think, Revelation Hotel?”

  She held out her whiskey to toast. We toasted and she took a small sip.

  “What can you tell us, Mike?” he said.

  “I am not certain he killed her,” she said.

  13.

  He may have,” she said. “I know he is capable.”

  “Who are you talking about?” Virgil said.

  “I thought it important to impart this to you before you unscrupulously hunt him down,” she said. “And unceremoniously kill him. But then again, he may have done it, he might deserve the medicine, I don’t know.”

  “Who?” I said.

  She looked back to me, then to Virgil.

  “Bill, of course,” she said. “Boston Bill Black. The man you are looking for.”

  “Who did he or didn’t he kill?” Virgil said.

  “The woman in Denver,” she said.

  Virgil looked to me, then back to her.

  “What woman in Denver?” Virgil said.

  “I didn’t get her name,” she said.

  “No?” I said.

  “No.”

  She looked me in the eye, then looked to the two cowboys that were gawking up at her
like kids mesmerized watching a puppet show.

  “You two,” she said. “Leave.”

  The two cowhands looked at each other, wondering what they did wrong.

  “Now,” she said, and clapped her hands. “Before I come over there and drag you out by your ears.”

  They got up and walked out like they actually did do something wrong.

  “Why don’t you tell us what you know,” Virgil said.

  She looked back to Timothy and tipped her head to the door.

  “You, too,” she said.

  “Oh, you bet, Mike,” Timothy said.

  Timothy moved from behind the bar and hurried out the front door. Then she took the bottle from the bar and moved to a close-by table.

  “Please,” she said.

  We sat with her at the table.

  She looked back and forth between Virgil and me for a moment, never looking at Skinny Jack. He scooted away from the table a bit and slumped in his chair, doing his best to act like he wasn’t there.

  “You may wonder what a woman of my stature is doing in a place like this,” she said.

  Virgil solemnly gazed at her with his hands resting on the table.

  “I am no whore,” she said.

  “Didn’t say you were,” Virgil said.

  “No, but you were thinking it.”

  “Just tell us what you know.”

  “You do not think he showed up here in beautiful Benson City by choice, do you?”

  “You know him?” Virgil said.

  She nodded. Virgil looked to me, then back to her.

  “How?” Virgil said.

  “He knew my husband . . .” she said. “And he . . . knew me, too, I suppose you can say.”

  She looked at Virgil for a long moment, then nodded toward the front window.

  “Out there, just over that rise beyond that noisy windmill,” she said. “There is a grave. And in the grave there is a man that at one point in time was my husband. Two winters ago, we came this way from Santa Fe, heading for Yaqui, where we were planning to catch the train that was meant to take us all the way to Philadelphia, where my husband, George, was hired as an engineer for a new steam company. He was determined to work hard and change his ways and I believed him, but he was shot and killed.”

  She pointed to a spot on the floor.

  “Shot and killed right here in this very saloon. He died right over there. That is what is left of him, his dried blood there. I keep thinking that one day, after enough traffic from sodbusters, drifters, cowboys, drunks, and weary travelers moves across that stain, that it will eventually disappear and I will forget about him. But of course forgetting is hard and, well, memory can sometimes be tricky business.”

  “Was it Black?” Virgil said. “Black shoot him?”

  She shook her head.

  “No,” she said.

  “Who?”

  “It does not matter,” she said.

  “No?” I said.

  She shook her head.

  “No,” she said. “Not anymore. It does not.”

  “And you stayed here?” I said.

  She nodded.

  “The stage that brought me here left that day without me.”

  14.

  I buried my husband and have been in this place ever since. I don’t completely remember just why I stayed really, I just had no place to go. Two years now. I bought this saloon with the last money we had, and currently I just watch all the travelers come and go with their dreams. I think of this place as somewhere between Heaven and Hell, a halfway stop of sorts. A reckoning happens here, it’s a way station of Revelation.”

  She smiled a wistful, reflective smile.

  “I’m a midwife, you could say. Truths are conveyed here and I know whose dreams will come true and whose won’t. I know what truths travelers carry with them . . . One day, when the blood is gone, I will move on.”

  “It wasn’t Black who killed your husband?” Virgil said.

  “I told you he did not.”

  “You telling the truth?” Virgil said.

  She looked at Virgil without blinking . . .

  “No.”

  “So he did?” Virgil said.

  “My husband had it coming,” she said. “He pulled on him.”

  “You also told us memory can be tricky business,” Virgil said. “So what is the real story?”

  “Bill Black’s horse went lame. He shot his horse and he got on the same stage I was on with George. They became quick friends, and to my disliking, they gambled together on the trip. My husband liked to gamble. For the most part he was good at it, unless he was gambling against Bill. He found that out rather fast.”

  “And the two of you?” I said. “Bill and you?”

  “What about us?”

  She looked at me for a steady moment, then smiled some and nodded.

  “Yes . . . as I mentioned, I knew him, too, you see. I got to know him, too . . . and I liked him, very much . . .”

  She paused, looked away, then said, “He is a dangerous sort.”

  Virgil looked at me.

  “Since he has been near here, over in Appaloosa, he has been here to see me on occasion. More than once . . . always thrilling, we have a special friendship.”

  She took a drink of whiskey, set the glass back on the table, and glided her finger around the rim.

  “I sleep with who or whom I want to sleep with, when I want to sleep with them,” she said.

  She looked up and smiled at Virgil.

  “But of course him coming here this time was very different,” she said.

  “Different how?” Virgil said.

  “Well, that is obvious, is it not, Marshal?” she said. “He showed up here with other men, some no-good men, and with you after him, hunting him down to kill him.”

  “Not hunting him down to kill him,” I said.

  “He know we are after him?” Virgil said.

  “Suspected,” she said with a nod.

  Skinny Jack looked up at me a little, then lowered his eyes.

  “And I personally abide by that impression as to why he was here for such a short while,” she said with a smile. “I would hate to think I was the reason for him moving on in haste . . . I would say it concerns me that he is on the run, but frankly nothing truly concerns me anymore. I will also say, since he was in Appaloosa, so near, I was hopeful that he might come back over here someday and perhaps stay awhile. Or take me away, save me, and help me to forget. But that is, or was, wishful thinking, and now there is every reason to believe he will die. Just like my husband. He will be killed.”

  “When the time comes he will have a choice,” Virgil said.

  “Providing he makes the right choice?” she said.

  “Where is he?” Virgil said.

  She looked down to her hands resting on the table. She smiled a little and then looked back up at Virgil’s eyes.

  “I’ve told you,” she said. “Gone, just gone.”

  “And the other two,” I said. “What about them?”

  She shook her head.

  “I do not know about them. Gone, too, I assume,” she said. “I saw them for a brief time. Bill told them to leave here and he would collect them when he was ready to leave. They went over to the girls across the way and thankfully stayed there . . . I assume.”

  “When did Bill leave?” I said.

  “Early this morning. I awoke and he was gone.”

  Virgil nodded and flatly stared at her for a long moment, then shifted in his chair and placed his elbow on the table and leveled his eyes at her.

  “He didn’t mention the Denver woman’s name to you?”

  “No.”

  “What else can you tell us?” Virgil said.

  She shook her head.

&nbs
p; “Nothing,” she said.

  “I don’t suppose you’d be too inclined to share where he might be headed?”

  “Inclination aside,” she said, “I have no idea, Marshal.”

  Virgil looked at her, steady.

  She looked back at him, a little steadier.

  “What, and why did he mention anything to you about a woman in Denver at all?” he said.

  She shrugged.

  “I don’t know.”

  “Why do you think?” I said.

  “I don’t think and I don’t know.”

  “You have to have some kind of idea?” I said.

  “No,” she said, “I don’t . . . He is an anomaly. In actuality, he functions pretty much like a hole card.”

  “How so?” Virgil said.

  She shrugged a little.

  “He keeps himself facedown, never obliged to reveal what he’s about until it is time for the showdown.”

  Virgil looked at her for an extended moment, then looked to me.

  “Do you think he killed her?” I said.

  “Perhaps his reasoning for bringing up this business of murdering the woman in Denver was an attempt to simply madden me, to put me in my place. Then again, perhaps it was his celestial epitaph of finality. Regardless, as I told you, this is a place of reckoning. And Boston Bill Black was . . . is no fool, but he is also no exception.”

  15.

  When we left Mike in her saloon it was good and dark out. The night air was pleasant and the wind had died down to a gentle breeze.

  “Tangled goddamn web,” I said.

  “Is,” Virgil said.

  “I’ll say,” Skinny Jack said. “She’s . . . well, I don’t know, strange, I guess.”

  We got our horses and rode off down the street to pay the whores a visit. We wanted to see if they might be able to offer up any news regarding the intended whereabouts of Truitt Shirley, his buddy, and Boston Bill.

  The working girls were sitting on the porch in two weathered armchairs when we rode up. A lamp hung from a rope draped over the porch’s eave beam made it possible to see them clearly. One of the women lifted out of her chair when we came to a stop.

  “Good evening, gentlemen,” she said. “Welcome. I am Irena.”