by Bill Brooks
Cole stopped her. “My name’s John Henry Cole, Miss Winslow. Ike Kelly received your letter and asked me to come in his place, at least until he could come himself.”
She took her gaze off the girl and placed it back on the stranger. Her eyes were the sort of eyes a man could easily fall into and drown. “Ike never replied, saying he was sending someone in his place.”
“He figured it was best to keep whatever business we might have as private as possible.”
“Why didn’t he come himself?”
“He was unable to just at the time.”
There was an instant of doubt, but then the eyes relented. And this time, as she looked at the stranger, she really looked at him. “Ike must trust you a great deal.”
“We go back some.”
She took a breath and let it out again. “Come in, Mister Cole.” She stepped back away from the door while the mulatto girl held it open for Cole. He followed her into a small, well-appointed parlor. A matching pair of green upholstered chairs sat facing each other. Across from them was a serpentine-back sofa with half-lyre-shaped armrests. A light brown Brussels covered the floor. The walls were done in flocked wallpaper; a pair of Currier and Ives prints hung on the east wall. A small tea table stood in the center of the room. Cole had seen one similar to it in a cathouse in Denver.
“Have a seat, Mister Cole.” She was wearing a dark blue sateen dress that caused her skin to seem even more white and unflawed. The dress was clasped at the throat by a cameo brooch and the sleeves were decorated in an arabesque of black beads from wrists to elbows. The light in the room shimmered against the material, seemed almost to swim in it. “Jazzy Sue, bring us some cognac,” she said to the mulatto girl, who turned quickly and wisped away.
The room was warm and comfortable and intimate and held the scent of crushed flowers. She sat across from Cole, her gaze never leaving his face.
“Tell me,” she said, “how is dear Ike?”
“He’s fine.”
“And married?”
“No.”
She smiled, her teeth even and white, her lips curved in a perfect bow around them. “I thought by now . . .” she began. Her voice still held traces of an Eastern accent running through its smokiness. Her hands rested in her lap, the long fingers bone-white against the blue dress.
“I think maybe he’s waiting for the right woman to come along again.”
She tilted her head just very slightly and everything softened in her face. “He’s a fine man,” she said. “I would wish him the best of everything.” There was a tenderness to her words, and Cole felt she meant it.
“I read the letter,” Cole said. “Do you care to tell me about what’s going on?”
He saw the light fade from her eyes, the slight smile disappear. She swallowed, but before she could say anything, the mulatto girl brought in a cut-crystal decanter and glasses on a small silver tray, and set the tray down on the table.
“That’ll be all, Jazzy. You can go on to bed.”
Jazzy Sue said—“Thank you, ma’am.”—twisted her eyes in Cole’s direction, then slipped out of the room again as quietly as a whisper.
Cole waited while Miss Winslow poured them each a glass of the cognac; the amber liquid seemed alive in the soft light of the room. It had a smooth, unfamiliar taste to him, but he liked it. He watched her sip it as though it were something precious, something not to be disturbed in the drinking of it.
Without setting the glass back down on the table, choosing instead to hold it within both her hands, she said: “Someone is killing my girls.”
“Yes, you stated that in your letter.”
“Three so far, Mister Cole, since my arrival here this summer. At first, with Dotty, I thought it was a suicide. A bottle of poison was found by her bedside. Then, a couple of months later, Eva was found with her neck broken. . . .” Something caught in her throat, her gaze shifted to the right, a luster of wetness filled her deep green eyes. “Still, I did not think of a connection between the two,” she continued, touching the tip of a finger to the corner of one eye. She didn’t seem to Cole a woman who would cry easily. “But then about a month ago, another of my girls, Flora, was found stabbed to death. A butcher knife was . . .” She brought the glass up to her mouth again and drank from it, only this time she drank without the same restraint she had earlier. This time she drank like someone who meant to have the liquor take hold of her and tear her loose from soberness.
Cole watched as she refilled her glass and his. “I think it’s a warning to me.”
“What sort of warning?”
“I think someone wants me to leave Deadwood, to close my business.”
“Why would someone want you to do that, Miss Winslow?” Cole asked, feeling the warmth of the cognac course through his blood. “I’d think a town like this would welcome your services.”
Her eyes came to focus on his. He shifted slightly under her gaze. He knew it would be easy to cross over the line, to let the matters at hand become secondary in his thinking. There was something about her beauty, something vulnerable and insurmountable all at the same time, and everything about her seemed to lie just beneath the surface of those alluring eyes that made him want to go over and put his arms around her and kiss the smoothness of her jaw. “Let me make something clear to you, Mister Cole.” The eyes that were drawing his down into them did not waver or blink as they stared into him. “I know what it’s like to be a working girl. I’ve been one. But I was luckier than most . . . luckier or smarter, however you want to look at it. I saved my money and I didn’t marry the first cowboy who came down the pike and asked me, and I raised myself up out of the life. But there aren’t many ways for a woman to be independent on the frontier. And the life never lets you go, not completely it doesn’t. I’ve seen first-hand what happens to most working girls.” She paused, took another drink from the cognac.
She rested her dark fluid eyes on Cole again. “Have you ever been to the bottom of the barrel, Mister Cole? Can you possibly know what it is like to be twenty years old and have to sell your body to a dirty miner for fifty cents, or hope that a pimp likes you well enough not to beat you, or worse, scar your face?” Her eyes smoldered with old angers and hurts. Then she added: “No, how could you possibly know such things?”
“I know where the bottom of the barrel is, Miss Winslow. I’ve been there. Maybe not in the same way as you’ve described, but I’ve been there.”
“I haven’t,” she said, her jaw jutting outward, her look one of self-possessed dignity. “I was lucky, and I was smart, and I was determined. And I never fell to the mercy of but one man, and just one time. But I’ve known lots of girls who weren’t so lucky. By the time I left Dodge, I knew that I’d never again let a man control my life or my future. I came here to Deadwood with the express purpose of running an escort service. I brought with me five young women who wanted the same thing I wanted. I made them a promise that I would take care of them. I do not run crib girls or streetwalkers or women who will drug you and steal your money or have their pimps knock you over the head with a lead sap. A man knows that, if he is with one of my girls, he doesn’t have to worry about such things. And my young women know it as well. That way, everyone is happy.”
“In the end, though, it still boils down to the same thing, doesn’t it?” Cole said. “The ladies still have to sell themselves to the miners, or anybody else who wants them.”
“No, Mister Cole, it is not the same thing. The ladies who work for me have a choice in the matter, and that is the difference. The men who use my service know that they are to treat my girls with respect and charity, that they are not to abuse them. When it comes down to the more intimate details, it is by mutual agreement between the customer and the young woman. In return, the men pay handsomely for the privilege of a first-class escort for the evening.”
“But it doesn’t always work out that way, does it?”
“It had, until the killings began. Now the other girls are afra
id. They want to leave Deadwood. But I have convinced them to stay, even though I’ve temporarily suspended operations.”
“Maybe it’s better they leave than be murdered.”
“You don’t seem very sympathetic to the situation, Mister Cole. Perhaps it is a mistake, your coming here instead of Ike.”
“Don’t misread me, Miss Winslow. I don’t like to see people hurt. If three of your girls have been murdered, I don’t blame the others for wanting to clear out. Whatever life they may return to has to be better than being murdered. Leaving might be something for you to consider as well.”
“I won’t run or be driven out of town,” she said. “Whoever did this needs to be caught!”
“I agree, that’s why I’m here. Tell me of your suspicions.”
She sighed, sipped the cognac, fixed her gaze on him. “As I said, I think someone wants me out of business. I’ve thought about why. The reasons are few, if any. But there may be one or two.”
“Tell me.”
“Well, first, the best girls in Deadwood come to me because they know my policy. The second thing is, once men have been escorted by one of my ladies, they are rarely willing to settle for less the next time out. My girls remind them of the sweethearts and wives they left back home. Money to a miner doesn’t mean a thing if he can’t spend it on his own pleasure. I think whoever is responsible doesn’t like the fact that the miners are spending most of their money on my girls. Maybe it’s a pimp, or a joy house owner . . . I don’t really know.”
“And maybe it’s someone who is killing them for his own strange reasons,” Cole suggested.
She bit her lower lip, her eyes tearing over again. “Maybe it is,” she said, her smoky voice barely audible.
“There is something I am curious about,” Cole said.
Again she swallowed. “What would that be, Mister Cole?”
“How were you able to ensure that your girls were unmolested while escorting their customers?”
She drank the last of the cognac left in her glass and brushed at the corners of her eyes with her fingertips. “I pay a man to watch out for the welfare of my ladies. He is quite notorious. Very much feared.”
“Doc Holliday?”
She looked surprised. “How did you know?”
“I saw him leave just as I came up.”
“I needed someone of well-known reputation. He was in town. I offered him the job. It pays well.”
“Which leads me to another question, then.”
“Which is?”
“Why didn’t you simply have Doc find the man who is killing your ladies, since he’s already on the tab?”
“Obviously you don’t understand,” she said. “I pay Doc for his deadly reputation. He is not a well man. His vice is liquor, his energies limited.”
“There sounds like more to it than that.”
Her green eyes shifted away. “Perhaps there is, Mister Cole.”
“What might that be?”
“I suspect Doc has a personal interest in me . . . one I’d just as soon not encourage.” Her voice trailed off, but Cole knew there was more.
“That sounds like only half the reason. What’s the rest of it?”
She seemed reluctant to speak about it further. But when she saw he wasn’t leaving, she said: “I am not entirely sure that Doc isn’t somehow involved with the killings. After all, his job was to protect the girls and that he failed to do, or so it seems. To be honest with you, I don’t know of anyone here in Deadwood I can trust. It is why I have sought help from the outside.”
“But you did more than that, Miss Winslow.” Cole saw the uncertainty in her velvet eyes. “You advertised in the territorial papers. And now, men like King Fisher and Kip Caine will be coming and you’ll have to deal with them.”
The eyes snapped. “You seem to know a lot about my business.”
“Have you ever dealt with a man like King Fisher?” he asked, and, before she could answer, added: “Do you know what sort of man King Fisher is? Do you know what the others who’ll come for the reward are like?”
She looked at him as though he had thrown her an insult. But Cole felt she needed to know she was playing a dangerous game, if she was playing it with manhunters like King Fisher and the others that would swoop down on Deadwood like turkey buzzards on a dead opossum once they read her advertisement.
She quickly regained her composure. “I won’t stand by and do nothing,” she said. “I’ll do whatever it takes to find the killer.”
“Sometimes the cure is worse than the ailment.”
“Maybe it is. But what choice have I?”
“None now.”
“Are you certain you want to involve yourself in this, Mister Cole?”
“I guess I’m like you, Miss Winslow, I don’t see any choice. I gave Ike my word.” He couldn’t tell if her eyes were grateful or unhappy. “I have one last question for you.”
“What is it?”
“Why, if someone wanted you out of business, wouldn’t they just come after you? Why kill three of your ladies instead?”
She shrugged her shoulders, her lips pursed into a momentary thought, and said: “I honestly don’t know, Mister Cole. Maybe the angels are watching over me, the fallen angels of my girls.”
“Yeah, maybe so.”
“What will you do now?” she asked, as he stood and placed his Stetson back on his head.
“First thing,” he said, “I’ll go and find me a hot bath. I haven’t had one in four days. Then, come tomorrow, I’ll do what I get paid to do . . . I’ll start investigating.”
She stood and extended her hand. Cole took it in his and shook it lightly. Her fingers felt warm and graceful as they closed on his. He could smell the scent of her perfume and it did something to him, something that made him shift his weight and wish that he had found that hot bath earlier and scraped off the stubble from his chin.
“Then you’ll remain in touch, Mister Cole?”
“You can count on it,” he said. Keep it business, he told himself as he released her hand.
She saw him to the door, held it while he stepped out into the night. Cole turned then, looked at her standing there in the lighted doorway, and said: “Do you keep a pistol?”
She smiled and said: “Yes, as a matter of fact, I do. And I know how to use it.”
“Somehow, I’m not surprised,” he said, then bid her good evening.
“Good night, Mister Cole.”
Her words trailed him down the steps. A raw wind had picked its way down through the cañon and blew trash along the street ahead of it. As he neared his hotel, a shot rang out of the darkness and clipped a chunk of wood from a post inches in front of his face. He was thinking about Lydia Winslow, about the way her perfume smelled and the way her hand felt in his, when the bullet whistled through the air and slammed into the post. Instinct put him on the sidewalk, the self-cocker already in his hand.
He had not seen the flash but knew by the sound that it was a pistol shot and not a rifle. The abrupt bang was lost within the din of the night’s revelry. No one bothered to come rushing out into the street to investigate. In towns like Deadwood, pistol shots were as common as hogs at a trough. And by the time he was cocked and ready to defend himself, whoever had taken the shot had disappeared into the cover of night.
He felt the pulse thicken in his wrists and throb against his temples as he slipped the Remington back into the cross-draw holster. A few inches closer and he would have been tomorrow’s gossip, displayed out in front of the local funeral parlor. He remembered on his way to catch the stage in Cheyenne how the undertaker had trussed up Frank Straw with baling wire and propped an empty Winchester through the crooks of his arms so that folks could have their photographs taken with the body for a dime. Death always seemed to magnify a man’s celebrity. It wasn’t the sort of attention Cole wanted.
Chapter Ten
Instead of going to directly back to the hotel room, Cole bought a bath and sank down into the
tub of hot steamy water and paid the kid working the bathhouse $2 to bring him a meal. He wanted something that had beef on the plate and something to wash it down. He gave him two bits more to take his clothes down to a laundry and get them cleaned and wait for them. The steak was two inches thick and covered the entire plate and he ate it down to the bone, then washed it down with beer, and waited for the water to do its magic and the kid to return with his clothes. He thought of Billy Cook, reposing in the crimson water of his bloody bath, his expensive cigar floating on top. One minute you’re alive and the next you’re dead. He thought he could still hear the gunshot ringing in his ears.
He turned his thoughts elsewhere, to something more pleasant. Liddy Winslow’s image filled his brain. He could still smell her perfume. She had stirred something in him that had long lay cold and untouched, something that went beyond the usual desire a man can get for a woman. And yet there had been that air about her that suggested she was a closed door, a door behind which no man was allowed. What really troubled him was that he wanted to be the one to go through that door. He thought of the women who had come along in his life after Zee died: the widows and the whores and the ones in between. It seemed he’d drifted between one and the other, not knowing which he preferred. Part of him wanted what he once had had—a good stable woman and a home where he could hang his hat after a long day—while the other part wanted just the opposite: a woman as wild as the West Texas wind and just as hard to hold, warm nights and tempting smiles and plenty of mescal. He wondered if Juanita Delgado had found herself a new man yet.
Lydia Winslow was another matter altogether. She was neither saint nor sinner, as far as he could judge. She wasn’t needing or wanting. And now she was floating around in his mind in a way that good whiskey will, making him feel slightly off kilter and more pleasant than he had a right to feel.
The door opened with a slight click of the latch. He brought the Remington around from where it had been resting on a chair next to the tub; its action was smoothly mechanical, all its vital functions ready and set as he thumbed back the hammer. The man stood there, staring at him, the light soft in those nearly colorless eyes, eyes that were stern and without humor, the hollow cheeks puffing in and out below the prominent bones of his face. His mouth, partway open under the heavy sand-colored mustaches, showed a set of good teeth. His breathing was raspy and faint. The eyes shifted enough to see the self-cocker in Cole’s hand, then drifted back.