Longarm 243: Longarm and the Debt of Honor

by Evans, Tabor

  Longarm tried to speak. The sound that came out more closely resembled a croak than any identifiable word. He coughed, cleared his throat, and tried again. “Yes, of course.”

  “After you left my store this afternoon, Longarm, I happened to think of something. I don’t know if it will do you any good. Probably not, I suppose. That is, I am sure it was entirely innocent. But, well, I happened to observe something, something involving young Dinky, that was, shall we say, unusual.”

  “Yes, ma’am?” Longarm still had his hard-on. But it wasn’t quite so insistent now. Horniness was important, but an attempt on his life was one of the few things of even greater importance to him. His attention was successfully diverted back onto business now, and the tent pole that had been straining his buttons began now to subside back to the size and consistency of a loosely cased sausage. Better. Much better. If he had to stand up now, he could probably do so without suffering terminal mortification in front of Norm’s woman.

  “Like I say, it is probably nothing at all,” she said. “But you did tell me I should speak with you if I remembered anything, did you not?”

  He couldn’t exactly recall right now if he’d said any such thing to her, but it was the sort of thing one normally said, so he supposed that was accurate enough. He nodded and waited for her to go on, noting as he did so that after she’d returned her empty glass to the tray, she’d turned in the chair a little, and now the dress was not gaping open quite so much. Longarm wasn’t sure if he should be glad about that or not. He supposed that, in fairness to Norm, he ought to be pleased. More or less.

  Mrs. Fitzpatrick frowned, and her eyes focused somewhere off in the distance in deep thought. “This would have been, oh, yesterday afternoon sometime? Yesterday evening? I can’t be sure of the exact time. Is that important?”

  “I can’t say if it is or isn’t,” Longarm told her, not bothering to add that he hadn’t yet the least idea of what she was talking about, so of course he couldn’t know if any of it was significant or not.

  “No, I suppose not,” Mrs. Fitzpatrick agreed. “At any rate, it was some time yesterday, definitely after lunch. I always close my shop between the hours of noon and two P.M. I am certain it was after I re-opened in the afternoon.”

  “Yes, ma’am,” Longarm said patiently.

  “I stepped out back. To take something out to the trash, you see. And I noticed Dinky down the alley. He was talking with someone there. They were nearly a block away, but I think it might have been Luke Baldwin he was talking with. There is nothing unusual about that, of course. Dinky talks—I mean to say talked—with everyone. What I remember noticing, though, is that the person Dinky was speaking with handed him a package. Which is not unusual either. I believe I already told you practically everyone in town has given Dinky castoffs and hand-me-downs of one sort or another. I’ve done that myself many times. But what struck me this afternoon when I got to thinking about yesterday is that this package Dinky received was about the size and shape of a pistol. Except it was wrapped in cloth, of course. I mean, I could not actually see what was in the bundle, if you see what I mean. I certainly could not swear to what the object was. I mean . . . oh dear.” She paused and gave him a wide-eyed look. “Am I making a fool of myself, Marshal?”

  “No, ma’am, you are not.”

  “Good. Because I certainly do not mean to cast any suspicions on Mr. Baldwin. He seems ever so nice a man. It is just, well, you did say I should pass along anything that occurred to me. I thought it might be best if I simply told you and let you decide if it means anything or not.”

  “You did the right thing, Mrs. Fitzpatrick,” Longarm assured her.

  She smiled and said, “Eleanor. Please call me Eleanor, Marshal.”

  “Yes, ma’am.” He noted, rather unhappily, that she’d turned in the chair just a little and now the damned buttons were gaping open again. He could feel a rising interest once more somewhere a little south of his gut.

  Mrs. Fitzpatrick‘s—Eleanor’s—smile brightened. She leaned forward to retrieve her glass and asked, “Could I have another very small one before I have to go, please?”

  Longarm groaned softly under his breath. Just how in hell was he supposed to stand up and walk over there in front of her in this embarrassing state?

  Chapter 20

  Longarm stood and brushed the crumbs off his vest and britches. He tossed his napkin down and added a coin to pay for the meal. “I’ve enjoyed talking with you this morning, gents, but I’d best be on my way now. Been daylight out there long enough without me getting anything done.” He’d been having breakfast with the mayor and several of Crow’s Point’s leading businessmen. As was usual, the tone of the conversation had been that of helpful concern. If there was anything they could do, anything at all ...

  “Remember now,” Mayor Chesman admonished.

  “Yes, sir, I know. I can count on you and the rest of the folks hereabouts. Believe me, I appreciate it,” Longarm said. And indeed he did. He fingered his chin absently, as if only then discovering the beard stubble there, although he’d deliberately neglected to shave when he arose this morning. “One thing you gents could do for me,” he said.

  “Name it,” a smith named Jones offered.

  “You could point me to where I might find a shave and a trim.” His hair could have gone a week longer before it needed cutting, but what the hell.

  “That’s an easy decision. Only one barber in town,” Jones said. “His name is Baldwin. Luke Baldwin. Nice fella too, you’ll like him.”

  Longarm nodded. He wasn’t convinced that he was going to like their Mr. Baldwin, but Longarm was certainly eager to make the gentleman’s acquaintance after what Eleanor Fitzpatrick had said last night.

  One of the other gents at the breakfast table gave Longarm directions to the barbershop. Longarm thanked them all again, and reclaimed his Stetson off the rack by the door on his way out into the bright morning sunshine.

  He felt pretty good, everything considered. Although, after the way he’d been worked up for a while there last night, it was a pure wonder he hadn’t soiled his drawers by squirting off in a wet dream. That Eleanor was a handful. And considerably more than a mouthful. And one of the things that made her so damned desirable was that she didn’t seem to have the least idea that she was so almighty sexy and desirable. That was a rare quality in a handsome woman. Most of them knew it and traded on it, although some were less obvious about it than others.

  Longarm just plain liked Eleanor Fitzpatrick’s style. He surely did. He stood on the sidewalk for a moment to light a cheroot and get his bearings, then headed down the street toward where they’d said he could find Luke Baldwin’s barbershop.

  There were several customers ahead of him, so Longarm deposited his hat on a rack, selected a recent copy of the Hirt County Courier from a pile of reading matter, and settled in to wait his turn in the chair. He was in no hurry at all, and in fact was pleased with an opportunity to bury his nose in the folds of the newspaper while he quite shamelessly eavesdropped on the chatter between the barber and the man he was shaving.

  The talk touched briefly on the subject of poor Dinky Dinklemann—neither Baldwin nor the customer could fathom that one—then turned onto subjects of greater importance. Like the amount of moisture in the fields after the recent hot spell and whether the corn crop would fill out this year. Longarm couldn’t claim to be much interested in that, so he returned his full attention to the newspaper.

  The Courier, it seemed, was published in Jasonville, the farm town that was soon to become county seat. Longarm gathered that either Crow’s Point had no newspaper of its own, or that the Courier used to be based in Crow’s Point, but had already moved along to the new county seat. It was a shame, a town declining like this one was, but that sort of thing happened all the time. And in the mining country, unlike out here on the plains, whole towns could up and disappear practically in the blink of an eye. Crow’s Point had made its run. It really didn’t ha
ve all that much to bitch about now.

  “You’re next, mister.”

  Longarm looked up. The men who’d been ahead of him were all gone, and there were a couple of later arrivals waiting for Baldwin to finish with Longarm. Longarm had been wool-gathering for a bit there. About Eleanor Fitzpatrick, actually. He knew better than that. But he’d done it aplenty last night while he was trying to get to sleep and now found himself doing it again. Damned if he didn’t, kind of envy his old friend Norm. Except for that one small fact about Norm being locked up in the jail, of course. But as for his relationship with Eleanor, well, that was something to make a man puff out his chest and count himself among the downright lucky ones.

  “Step along, friend,” Baldwin urged. “There’s others waiting behind you.”

  “Right with you.” Longarm laid the newspaper aside. There was nothing in the news of particular interest, but its editorial page offered a small tribute to Norm Wold’s past services to the people of Hirt County and hoped the Crow’s Point marshal would be found innocent of the charges now pending against him. Longarm removed his coat to hang on the rack under his hat. Then he took his place in the comfort of the barber chair. “Shave and a trim, please. Someone said your name is Baldwin?”

  “That’s right.” The barber draped a clean cloth over Longarm and tucked it tight around his neck, then said, “I know who you are, of course. Everybody in town does, I suppose.”

  “Notorious, am I?”

  Baldwin smiled and shook his head. “Nothing like that. We’re all wishing you well. Which reminds me, I hope you don’t think the whole town is against you. We all feel real bad about what that crazy boy Dinky tried to do.” He selected a razor from among an ivory-handled line of them laid neatly on a fresh towel, then began stropping it, his hand moving with the deft swiftness of long practice.

  “I felt bad about it my own self,” Longarm said. “Got any idea why he might’ve done that?”

  “Not me,” Baldwin said.

  “You knew him, of course.”

  “Sure. In a town like this everybody knows everybody. But I didn’t like him much. I expect I’m about the only man around who would say that, but I can’t see any reason to think the boy’s death is a big loss just because he’s gone now. I didn’t like him much when he was alive, and like him even less now that he went and tried to kill someone.”

  “I thought everybody here liked him.”

  “Not everybody,” Baldwin said.

  “Any particular reason?”

  The barber grunted, decided his razor was sharp enough, and began whipping a fresh lather onto the soap in its mug. “You never know what a half-wit is gonna do, Marshal. Can’t be trusted is what I’ve always felt. Besides, somebody soft in the head like that”—he shuddered—“ gives me the creeps. Not natural, being off in the mind like he was. Not healthy. You know?”

  “Dinky wasn’t a friend of yours then?”

  “No, sir, I wouldn’t claim that he was.”

  “He didn’t do odd jobs for you or come to you for handouts like he did everybody else?”

  “Not me. He learned a long time ago it wouldn’t do him any good to come begging to me for anything. It don’t take me but a minute to sweep this place out come night. I never needed him nor anybody else to do that for me, and I wasn’t about to encourage him to hang around here. I wouldn’t have stood for that the way some did. No, that boy gave me the willies sure enough. I didn’t like having him around. He never came to me for anything. Hadn’t come around me for years. He was loony, see, but he was able to learn that much after a while. Whatever he asked for, I always told him to go away, that I wasn’t no charity and he wasn’t getting nothing here. Once he got it through his head that I wasn’t giving in like the others, he never come around any more.”

  “So you didn’t know him all that well,” Longarm said.

  “Nope. Didn’t want to neither. I got troubles enough without taking in crazy people.”

  “You didn’t give him food or presents or anything?”

  “I thought I said that already,” Luke Baldwin declared in a testy tone of voice, sounding more than a little peeved at having to repeat his denial.

  “Sorry,” Longarm said.

  Baldwin spread lather over Longarm’s face, the smell of it pleasant, and leaned down to use a thumb to smooth away the soap and stretch Longarm’s cheek taut for the razor.

  The man had a feather touch with the blade, Longarm could say that for him. Longarm was quiet throughout the rest of the shave. It didn’t do to piss off a man who already had a razor edge at one’s throat.

  Chapter 21

  “Luke Baldwin? Of course I know him. Luke’s been giving me my shaves ever since I came to Crow’s Point,” Norm said from the other side of the bars. Norm looked comfortable enough. He had a rocking chair in the cell with him, and was sitting in it now with his feet—in socks and a ratty old pair of carpet slippers; he had no need for boots at this particular moment—propped up on the edge of his bunk. “What do you want to know about Luke?”

  “How friendly was he with Dinky Dinklemann?” Longarm asked.

  Norm’s gaze drifted up toward the ceiling while he thought that over. After a few moments he shrugged. “About the same as everybody else, I’d guess. Why?”

  Longarm didn’t answer immediately. Instead he tried to prod Norm’s memory again. “Did you see Dinky in the barbershop often?”

  “Hell, Longarm, I don’t know. I mean, who pays attention. You know? And how much does it take to make something often?”

  “Okay then, Norm, let me put it this way. Did you ever see Dinky Dinkelmann in the barbershop? Doing odd jobs there or getting a haircut or for any reason? Any reason at all?”

  This time Norm cocked his head to one side and gave Longarm a speculative look before he answered. “This is going someplace in particular, isn’t it? Do you have a scent to follow about Luke and Dinky?”

  “I don’t know yet, Norm, but I need to find out.”

  “Then let me make sure I answer you as best I can,” Norm said. “I can’t honestly recall any particular time I’ve noticed Dinky in Luke’s shop. But then like I said before, it isn’t the sort of thing that anyone in this town would notice. You know? Dinky was just kind of ... everywhere. He’d show up all the time, with anybody, and no one ever thought a thing about it. So, no, I guess I couldn’t go under oath and testify that I ever saw Dinky getting his hair cut. But then there’s probably two hundred men in Hirt County that I’ve never watched get their hair cut.”

  “Ever see Dinky sweep up for Luke Baldwin? Anything like that?” Longarm persisted.

  Norm pondered the question for a moment, then shrugged again and shook his head. “Not that I especially recall. Which doesn’t mean it didn’t happen. Hell, I generally only went to Luke’s shop myself on Wednesday afternoons. I might have stopped in at other times or on other days once in a while over the years, but usually my schedule was for a trim after lunch on Wednesdays. For all I know Dinky could have worked for Luke every Monday evening and every Friday morning since he was big enough to push a broom. I just wouldn’t know.”

  “Let’s try it this way. Did you ever pay particular note about Dinky not hanging around the barbershop?” The question sounded stupid even to him, and Longarm regretted asking it practically before the words slipped off his tongue.

  Norm laughed. “That’s like asking me do I find anything strange about walking into a room and not finding Ulysses S. Grant there. Of course not. A man pays attention to what he does see, not usually to something that he doesn’t. Unless there is some special reason, that is. I mean, I might look for the general if I was at a reunion of the GAR or something. But I wouldn’t expect to see him at the bank in town here, and wouldn’t think anything odd about not finding him there if I can ever walk in there again. I wouldn’t expect, or not expect, to see Dinky anyplace in particular either.”

  “But you might reasonably expect to see him anywhere,” Long
arm said.

  Norm held his hands palm up and hiked his shoulders. “What is this about, Longarm? Can you tell me?”

  “I just... it’s possible that Luke Baldwin could be the man who aimed Dinky at me.”

  Norm frowned. “Why?”

  “I was hoping you could tell me.”

  “Lordy, I wish I could.” He shook his head. “For the life of me, Longarm, I can’t think of any reason why Luke would want harm done to you.”

  “But would he have anything against you, Norm? Is it possible he doesn’t want me finding evidence that would clear you of the charges against you? Any reason why he would want you behind bars?”

  The aging town marshal thought about that for a considerable piece of time before he finally answered. “If there is a reason, Longarm, my friend, I don’t know what it might be. Luke and I have always got along just fine. Never been close particularly, but we’ve never had hard words. Never fought or gambled or anything like that. Hell, he’s shaved me time to time. And taken a razor to the back of my neck every week for years. The man has never been in any kind of trouble with the law, not that I know of.”

  “Could he have been the one who set the courthouse fires?” Longarm asked.

  “Anybody in the county might have done that, I suppose, but I can’t think of any reason why Luke would want those records burned. Certainly there’s no reason to put him higher on a list of suspects than anybody else. And plenty of reason to think of others ahead of him as suspects, like anyone in tax trouble or ... I don’t know. No, no reason that I know of why Luke would want Dinky to kill you, and none that makes me think Luke would have started the fires.”

  “This morning Luke told me he didn’t like Dinky and never let him come around,” Longarm confided.

  “He could’ve been telling you the truth, Longarm. There’s no reason I would have noticed that in particular.”

  “But do you know of anything to confirm that claim?” Norm reflected on the question briefly, then shook his head. “No. Sorry. I’ve never heard any comment aye or nay about that. Not from Luke or Dinky or anybody else for that matter. If Luke didn’t care for the boy, he never made any big thing of it. But then, it isn’t likely that he would have, considering the way most folks regarded Dinky like a household pet or something. Anyone who didn’t like the boy might have kept quiet about it so as not to upset everyone else. Dinky wasn’t smart, Longarm, but he was plenty popular in his own way.”