by Erik Carter
I lit the cigarette.
A voice came from behind. “Barney.” There she was, standing at the doors.
“May I not stand outside your club?”
“Listen …” she said. She sighed and looked away. After a moment she said, “Road’s End Saloon. You’ll find Jimmy Blue Eyes there.”
I smiled at her. “Thanks, babe.”
She shook her head, clearly disappointed in herself, and went back inside.
Good ol’ Fannie. I could always count on her.
Chapter Five
I looked at the address I’d written on the back of my hand. I was in search of one Jimmy Blue Eyes, and, thanks to Fannie’s tip, I was headed to Road’s End Saloon. I’d never heard of the place prior to Fannie mentioning it last night, but then there was plenty of Desecho I hadn’t seen. Some might have thought I was a crotchety old fart, but I was always up for a fresh experience. Especially when it was a bar.
It sat at the end of a little dead-end side street. It was a dirty hole in the wall, the kind of place a smuggler would turn his nose up to. I could smell it half a block away. Smelled wretched.
I made a mental note. Visit Road’s End Saloon again when not working.
After hitching Bob up, I went in, finding a quite predictable interior. There was the quintessential mustachioed bartender tending some bottles. A few poker tables. A scattering of mid afternoon drunks.
No Blue Eyes, though.
Then I noticed a man in the back. If it was who I thought it was, this man was infinitely more interesting than all the Jimmy Blue Eyeses of the world. And more dangerous.
His hat was tipped down, and I couldn’t see his face. But he wore all black clothes, which certainly fit the bill. He had that slouch, too, that careless slouch. It could be him.
I began to walk toward him. He was fiddling with a poker chip. Two shiny revolvers hung from his belt. His foot tapped slowly.
Presently he stopped playing with the poker chip. He’d heard me. He looked up, slowly. The brim of his hat gradually revealed his face, that smirking, sneering face.
It was him. Moriortus Kline. He spoke. “Howdy, Barn.”
Mory was one of the infinite Desecho outlaws—but one of only a few black men. That said, he worked hard to be the meanest, most cunning son of a gun he could—so people would have real reasons to fear him.
He had a keen appearance. If he wasn’t such a bastard, you might’ve even said he was handsome. He kept some well-groomed hair on his chin and a neat little mustache. That mouth. When it wasn’t smirking at you, which it was most often, it was still pulled to the side, like he was having a constant laugh at the world around him.
I approached him. Like I said, as a detective you gotta seek out old friends. But at times you also gotta talk to your enemies. In this case my worst enemy.
Mory had foiled me more times than I could count. You’d probably think that would bother me—and you’d be right, but not for the reasons you might think. See, I wasn’t a lawman. I was a private eye. I didn’t go to bed fuming at night knowing that Mory was out on the streets, a threat to the fine citizens of Desecho. It didn’t bother me one way or the other.
You might think that my ego was bruised, that I couldn’t take a knock on my reputation. Nope. That didn’t bother me either. I wasn’t … well, I wasn’t the most vain guy in the world, we’ll put it that way.
No, Mory got to me because he wore me down, he ate at me, got under my skin. And it was all part of his design. He liked doing it. Maybe he did it because I wasn’t a lawman, realizing we weren’t on opposite ends of the law but, rather, opposite ends of a paycheck.
I looked him over. “Mory,” I said. I sat in the chair opposite him.
“Surprised to see you out of your office this time of day, Barn. Shouldn’t you be drunk, passed out on your desk?”
“Workin’ a case.”
“Well, good for you.”
He smiled.
“Jimmy Blue Eyes. You seen him around here?”
“This is something new,” Mory said. “You asking me for help.”
“I know a man in your position has information. Can’t hurt to be amiable with you.”
“I see. So you think that since you can never manage to pin me to anything, we might as well be buddies.” He looked at me, trying to bore into me. That little smirk of his. It wasn’t going to work. He walked the poker chip down his fingers. “No,” he said after a moment passed. “I haven’t seen Jimmy around.”
“Okay, perhaps a change of questioning.”
Mory waved his hand with a flourish. “Oh, by all means, fine sir.”
“There’s some stolen property I’m trying to track, an artifact. It’s a kettle. Know anything about it?”
“Should I?”
“The item was originally owned by slaves down south.”
“I see. No, I don’t know anything about your artifact. I must have missed the Black Guy Newsletter this month.”
Very witty, Mory. Very witty indeed. “I thought maybe the most influential black man in town might know something about it.”
“Flattery will get you nowhere, Mr. Wilcox,” he said. “Tell you the truth, I’m astounded you’ve taken the case. Given what you’ve done in the past. Sergeant.”
A battlefield. Night. Soldiers charge a hill. Bullets rip into them. They pile up. Screams.
Hmm. Nice try.
He was right, though. I’d initially had reservations about taking the case. Mory was nothing if not perceptive.
“Incidentally,” he continued, “I’m not the most influential black man in town.”
“No?”
“Jacob Adamson.”
“Jake?” I said. “The banker?” Jake was a stuffy little guy who worked over at the Desecho Bank and Trust. Not the kind of guy I would have expected to be considered “influential.”
“He’s more than just a banker. But then, you wouldn’t know that, of course,” Mory said. He then pointed across the room. “There’s your guy.”
I turned. Jimmy Blue Eyes was entering the saloon.
Jimmy got the nickname, not surprisingly, for his blazing blue eyes. He was a tall fella with a shock of blond hair. He must have had a rough morning that day—he was covered in trail dust. He stomped over to the bar.
I turned back to Mory. “If you’ll excuse me.”
“Certainly.”
I walked over to the bar and stood beside Jimmy. He slammed an empty shot glass down. “Another!” he barked at the bartender.
The bartender was a proud looking man, but you could tell he was nervous. He jumped a little when Jimmy yelled. He poured some whiskey into the glass and gave it back to Jimmy. Jimmy yanked it from him and threw it back.
“I’ll have the same,” I said to the bartender in the biggest cheeseball voice I could muster.
He poured me a shot.
Jimmy turned to me. I smiled at him obnoxiously. “Jimmy Blue Eyes, right?”
The blue globes scanned me. “Yeah, that’s right. Haven’t I met you somewhere before?”
“Very well might have,” I said. I smiled at him again.
“So what the hell you want?” he snapped.
“Oh, what does anybody want? A good night’s sleep, a cool breeze on the face.” Charm is something I have in spades, but I can also hold my own in the area of obnoxiousness. Interestingly enough, the two aren’t all that different.
Jimmy grabbed me by the shirt and yanked me in close. “I said, what do you want?”
“A kettle would be nice. Got any kettles, Jimmy?”
The blue eyes burned. He yanked me up farther. I was on my tip-toes.
Now, maybe I seem like a real pussy willow at this point. But just wait. I have my methods.
“What did you just say?” Jimmy growled.
“You asked me what I wanted from you, and I said, ‘A kettle.’”
Jimmy was stunned. “I don’t know nothin’ about no kettle.”
“Oh, Jimmy. There’s
no need for these formalities,” I said. “You have the kettle. I need it. Now how are we going to reach an agreement?”
“Like this!” Jimmy socked me a good one, right on the schnoz, and I fell to the floor. Across the room, a man laughed.
As I fell, I reached out to Jimmy. He didn’t feel it, didn’t notice it at all. He just stormed out of the bar.
The bartender called after him, “Jimmy, you need to pay for—”
“Piss off.”
Jimmy Blue Eyes was gone.
Every private eye is an amalgamation of hundreds of traits and skills. You never know when some small trick you pick up along the way is going to come in handy. Four years ago, there was this kid. A little swindler. I could’ve taken him in, and believe me, I wanted to. But he had a skill I needed—and there was no bounty on his head. When we parted ways, we both gained something. He got some good advice from an old salt that hopefully set him on a better path, and I had learned the art of pick pocketing.
Jimmy had had a small ledger sticking out of his back pocket. I saw it as I first approached him. Now it was resting in my hand.
I stood up and gingerly touched my bloodied nose. The batwing doors were swinging. The man across the bar was still laughing. I turned. It was Mory.
“That didn’t go too well for ya, did it, Barn?” he yelled out.
I held the ledger up for him to see. “You tell me.”
I tipped my hat to Mory, tossed a coin to the bartender, and walked outside.
It was bright and sunny. I leafed through the ledger. Notes, dates, names with cash amounts. Someone had taught Jimmy his letters at some point. Surprising.
He’d written everything in this ledger. It was Jimmy Blue Eyes’ financial life in writing. I coulda locked him up for half the things I was finding in there. But that wasn’t what I was looking for.
One of the notes read, Mory Kline, $100. Hmm, he even did business with Mory. Why was I not surprised?
But the name that kept appearing the most was Connor Macintosh. It looked as though the Blue Eagles were Macintosh’s personal gang. He paid them three hundred here, a thousand there.
Connor Macintosh? Why did that name sound familiar?
Right! He was the museum guy from Tucson that Cosgrove’s butler had mentioned. Pattison had said that Macintosh and Cosgrove were good friends. So, Cosgrove’s friend—who himself was a collector of artifacts—happened to be the principle employer of the gang that nabbed the ransom item that was to save Cosgrove’s life.
Curious.
Presently, a trip to Tucson seemed in order.
Time would be tight, though. If I traveled all the way out there tomorrow, that would leave only Sunday remaining for investigating. With a midnight deadline.
What’s this? Another note read, Madame Fannie’s Funhouse. Minus $200, Monday 6 June.
Fannie’s? He spent two hundred bucks there. That’s a lotta debauchery. That had been just a few days ago.
But Fannie had told me he didn’t go to the Funhouse. This note said otherwise. She’d lied to me. Maybe the old girl was trying to mess with me. It wouldn’t be the first time.
A lie from Fannie. It burned a little. No bother, though. Despite my self-imposed challenge of sharing some personal time with her by the investigation’s end, I had a different gal to warm my thoughts—my client, the slinky and vivacious Lilly Cosgrove.
I scrunched my face to the side to test the nose. It was still sore. Very, very sore. I could feel it swelling.
As I walked away from the Road’s End Saloon, I stole a look inside, past the doors. I saw Mory sitting in his chair, one leg propped up on the table in front of him, aimlessly shuffling a deck of cards.
He had called me Sergeant. It was one of his more powerful manipulations, but one that he seldom used. He dusted it off at choice moments, recognizing its might.
It was times like these when I came closest to losing my cool with Mory. I could usually maintain my composure when he did those things. I held out longer than most folks. But there were times when he pushed me to the edge, and I’d realize that he’d gotten to me just like he got to everyone else. Then I would know that I wasn’t as mentally tough as I thought—that I was weak. Mory loved to show me that I was weak.
And the amazing thing was, he hadn’t said much at all. Just one word. Sergeant.
I had been a sergeant. At one time.
Chapter Six
I craned up to look at the looming Desecho Bank and Trust building. This made my nose even sorer. I touched it gingerly. The bastard had nearly broken it.
When I’d asked dear Mory about the kettle, he hadn’t given me any information about the object in question, but he had mentioned the person he felt to be the most important black man in town—Jake Adamson. Mory had a surprisingly genuine look to him when he mentioned Jake. It was worth following up on.
It was still early in the investigation, a point at which I would follow any trail. I was in search of a slave kettle, and I knew that Jake’s father had been a slave for a time. There could be some information to be had. Rather simplistic thinking on my part, I knew, but this was how it went in the early stages of a case.
As I preferred to keep my cash in a box under my desk, I’d never been to the Bank and Trust. In fact, I’d never given it so much as a second look in all the times I’d ridden past. As I looked at it now, I saw it to be a clean and orderly building, much tidier than the typical ramshackle structures clinging to life in this town. At three stories tall, it was not only one of the stateliest buildings in Desecho but also one of the tallest.
When I stepped inside I was greeted by a marble floor and columns. It was a little bit of the grandiose right there in Desecho. Cute. There was a cluster of desks in the back, each with its own oily banker. I peered over to see which one of the desks might belong to Jake, when a woman rushed over to me.
“Oh, you poor thing,” she said. She was a chunky woman. Middle-aged. Billowy blue dress. Ruddy cheeks.
“Beg your pardon?”
“You’re bleeding!”
I delicately touched the sore flesh under my nose. There was blood on my finger. Well, I’ll be damned. A nice place like this, and I come in with blood on my face. Talk about making a first impression.
“I apologize,” I said and turned for the door. “I’ll just go take care of this and be right—”
“Nonsense,” the woman said. She pulled a handkerchief from her pocket. “Here.”
I hesitated before accepting it. The thought of rubbing someone else’s snot into my nose was strange in many ways.
“Much obliged.” I scanned the handkerchief askance. Looked clean. I put it to my nose.
“Haven’t seen you in here before, hun,” the woman said. “You wanting to open a new account?”
“No, actually I’m here to see Jacob Adamson.”
She paused. “Jake, yes, he’s a good fella. Works up on the third floor. Let’s take you up there.”
We took the stairs. It was stifling hot on the third floor. The poor folks working up there trudged about with gaping mouths and rolled sleeves. My companion took me to the doorway of a small office in the back corner. I smiled and thanked her. She left.
I waited by the door. Inside the office, Jake Adamson was talking with another black man. They were standing to the side of his desk having a rather urgent conversation. Jake was a poised and well-groomed man and wore a smart suit. The other man was in ratty farmer’s clothes and very dirty. He was several inches taller than Jake and talking with big animated gestures, clearly very upset. Jake was trying to calm him.
I’d never met Jake, though I knew of him. From what I understood, he was in his early twenties and was born free. He’d come to Arizona as a child with his parents. His father had been a janitor at the bank before working his way up to a teller position shortly before he died. Jake had taken over from there.
He was lean, kind of short. There was an air of intelligence about him. He looked like a librarian
or a … well, a banker. His office was a tiny little box. They sure crammed him away up there. He kept it clean and tidy, though.
Jake’s conversation with the other man wrapped up, and they headed toward the door.
As they approached, I saw that Jake bore a strong resemblance to someone I’d met in the past. A boyishness to the face. Round, puffy cheeks. Big, clear eyes. The similarity was haunting. But who was I thinking of?
“Hello,” he said. “Jake Adamson.”
We shook hands. “Barnaby Wilcox.”
Jake’s companion eyed me nervously then quickly looked away. He was in his twenties, maybe early thirties. Tall, about my height, and layered with sculpted muscle. His face was grimy and unshaven, but you could tell the fella was a looker when he cleaned himself up. Probably quite the lady’s man on a good day, which certainly wasn’t today—he reeked like a mule.
I extended my hand to the man. “Howdy. Barnaby Wilcox.”
The man looked up at me and quickly looked back to the floor. He shook my hand. “Kurt … Kurt Leonard,” he said, not looking up. His voice was deep and strong, but he fought off an edgy stutter.
Kurt turned back to Jake. “Jake, I … I’ll be seeing you again soon.”
Jake put his hand on Kurt’s shoulder. “You sure will, my friend.”
Kurt turned, his eyes flicking back to me momentarily, and rushed toward the stairwell.
I turned to Jake.
“What’s that guy’s problem?” I said.
“You’ll have to forgive Kurt. He’s having a family issue. I’m helping him out the best I can.”
“A jumpier man I’ve never seen.”
“He’s a recent transplant. He’s had a hard time fitting in here in Desecho. I run a service for individuals like Kurt. I do my best to help the black man with his struggles in the white world of the Wild West.”
“The black man? How about the black woman?” I said. Always good to play Devil’s advocate.
Jake just ignored me though. “I see you met Glenda,” he said, pointing at the handkerchief I was holding to my nose.