Blood Storm

by Bill Brooks

  “She your missus?” the clerk asked, looking at Suzanne and Tess waiting in the lobby. “That your little girl?”

  “Mind your own business, friend,” Cole warned.

  The clerk shifted his gaze back to the money. “Sure, sure. It’s your room. I reckon you can have who you want in it. You can keep an ape in it, you want. It wouldn’t make no difference to me.”

  “See that she gets fresh towels, sheets,” Cole said. “Soap for her and the little girl. Have your boy, Deke, take their clothes down and have them laundered. Have him bring some fresh fruit up to the room.” He laid another $10 down. “Meals as well, in case Miz Smith chooses not to go out.” The clerk looked at Cole who could see what was running through his mind, the name, the questions that came after it. “You make sure Deke takes care of it, OK?”

  “Sure, Mister Cole, anything you want for Miz Smith, I’ll see it gets done.”

  Cole told Suzanne he’d check on her later. Tess held her hand, looked up at him: “Thank you for the flapjacks, mister.” She smiled, showing a missing front tooth.

  Cole went outside, pulled his makings, rolled a shuck, and wondered what the hell he was getting into here. He decided it was time to wire Ike, asking him when he might be coming to Deadwood. There were some things Cole wanted to tell him about—the situation between him and Liddy, for one. He also could use the help, after what’d happened last night in the alley. He needed someone to watch his back. He’d been lucky so far, thanks to Miguel Torres, but how much longer he could stay lucky was another question.

  He started to cross the street when he heard his name called.

  “Cole!”

  He turned to see Johnny Logan coming down the street, a skinny deputy hurrying alongside him. By the way he was walking, in that stiff-legged manner of a man going somewhere, it was plain to see that Johnny wasn’t just out for his morning rounds.

  “I need to talk to you, Cole!”

  Cole turned in his direction. His duster was unbuttoned. Johnny Logan could see the butt of the self cocker. Cole didn’t mind that he could. “What is it?”

  “In private.” Johnny said. “I wanna talk to you in private.”

  Cole looked at the other man.

  “Around here,” Johnny Logan said, thumbing toward the alley.

  “The alley? You’ve got to be kidding.”

  “What the hell’s wrong with a little private conversation in an alley?” he asked. The blood had gathered just under his skin, along the jaw and cheeks and neck, the way a man’s will when he’s angry and heavily built like Johnny Logan was.

  “You first,” Cole said, and waited until he and the other man stepped into the ally. He followed but kept a distance between them. “OK, we’re here, private, like you wanted, Logan,” he said, after Johnny and the other man had gone in a short way and turned around.

  “Tell him, Skinny!” Johnny said to the man.

  “Saw you and that woman over to the café,” the deputy constable said. “The little girl, too. Eating.”

  Cole looked at Logan. “Is there a crime in having breakfast in this town?” He now knew what it was that’d made the blood crawl up into Johnny’s face and turn it plum-colored.

  “You know what this is about!” Johnny said.

  “Don’t tell me,” Cole said. “You’re the jealous type.”

  “I don’t need a reason to kill you, Cole.”

  “Get in line, Constable.”

  Watch the hands, that’s what was going through Cole’s mind. His hand moves, shoot him! The other one, too.

  “Stay away from Suzanne!” Johnny said. “I won’t tell you twice!”

  “What is it with men like you, Logan? You won’t keep to a woman, you won’t let her go.” Cole didn’t mind airing Johnny’s dirty laundry if he didn’t.

  “Get lost, Skinny,” Johnny ordered the deputy.

  “You sure, boss? You sure you ain’t gonna need me in on this?”

  “Get lost!”

  Skinny retreated like a dog that had been kicked by its master, a little at a time.

  “What do you want, Cole? You want to kill me, blow a hole through me with that big Remington? That what you come here for?”

  “You know why I came.”

  “No. I know why you said you came. But ever since you’ve arrived, you’ve done everything you could to test me. Now it’s Suzanne you’re testing me with. I whipped you once. Maybe I should’ve killed you. But I didn’t. I gave you a chance. And look what it’s brought me. You see how that is, me giving you a break, not killing you when I could have? Now Suzanne shows up out of nowhere, and you and her are all of a sudden cozy, sitting down, having breakfast together. Skinny seen you coming out of the hotel with her. That’s how you repay me for not killing you, squiring around my woman?”

  “You left her in Denver. You forget that?”

  “Stay out of it, Cole, that’s between her and me.”

  “No, not any more it isn’t.”

  “Since when?”

  “Since she asked me.”

  Logan walked around in a tight little circle, hands on his hips, bent forward at the waist. Then he stopped walking in the tight little circle. “You don’t know,” he said. “You just don’t know a damn’ thing about anything! You leave Suzanne alone!”

  Cole had grown tired of Johnny Logan’s threats and his bullying. “It’s too late for that.”

  Johnny cocked his head to one side, his face flushed with anger.

  “You want to end it here and now?” Cole asked. “Go ahead, pull your piece. This conversation is getting old.”

  For a long, drawn-out moment, Cole thought Logan might just pull his pistol. He was breathing hard and the sweat was beading on his forehead. Then the air seemed to go out of him. “Why don’t you just climb on the next stage and go back where you came from? Why do you have to try and bring more trouble to this place than what’s already here?”

  Cole felt something had changed in Johnny Logan, the voice, the stance, the eyes. Whatever it was, it had changed him from just two minutes before. He looked suddenly like an old bull all worn out, ready to lie down. “I lost track,” he said. “I lost track of who I was. Lost track of Suzanne and Tess . . . everything. I came here, found it to my liking, married a woman. I figured Suzanne . . . a good-looking woman like her . . . wouldn’t have trouble finding another man. Me, I didn’t consider myself that much of a find. You can understand that, can’t you, Cole? How a man can get like that, start thinking like that?” He looked at Cole, the eyes set close together in that brutal face. “I’d almost forgotten about her. Now she shows up outta the blue. Her and Tess. What’m I supposed to do? Leave the woman I married? Leave Deadwood, my job? Give everything up for a woman I ain’t seen in three years? Someone I’d written off?”

  “Suzanne will take care of herself,” Cole said, “as long as you let her alone.”

  “First you, then her . . .” he said. “Things was going good for me. Now all this has to happen.”

  “It could get worse.”

  “How?” he muttered. His brooding face was full of anguish.

  “I could find out you were involved in the killings of those women.”

  “Liddy Winslow’s girls? You accusing me of being part of that? Who’re you to accuse me of being part of that?” The right hand shifted slightly.

  “Don’t!” Cole warned.

  “You come into my god-damn’ town and accuse me of murdering whores!”

  “I’m not accusing anybody, Constable. Not yet I’m not. But it doesn’t matter to me whether or not you wear that badge if I find out you were involved. I’ll take you to the nearest court and see you hanged.”

  “You’re not just some damn’ bounty hunter, are you?”

  “I didn’t come for the reward, if that’s what you’re asking.”

  “You’re a federal man?”

  “No.”

  “Who sent you, then?”

  “It doesn’t matter.”

&nb
sp; “I didn’t kill those damn’ whores.”

  “If you didn’t, I’m willing to bet you know who did.”

  A muscle in Johnny Logan’s cheek twitched; his hand held steady. He was thinking, wondering if he could pull his piece and fire it into Cole before Cole could pull his and do the same to him. A man can only think about something like that for just so long. If he waits too long, more than a second or two, it’s too late. Anybody that’s ever been there knows that much. Cole could see it in Johnny Logan’s eyes. He recognized that it was too late to threaten Cole any more.

  “If I knew who killed them,” he said, “I’d have arrested them.”

  “I’m not convinced,” Cole said.

  “What, that I didn’t do it, or that I’d have arrested them?”

  “Either one.”

  “Believe what you want,” he said. “But proving it is another matter. You won’t be able to prove anything in this gulch. Hell, there’s not even any law here, other than me. Or did you forget that?”

  “The law is whoever is willing to enforce it,” Cole said. “I don’t think that’s you. You want to tell me anything, now’s the time.”

  “You’re ’way off, Cole. ’Way off.”

  “Jack! God-damn, honey, what’re ya and Johnny doin’ back here, the dosey-do?”

  Calamity Jane came down the alley, swinging her arms in that exaggerated way she had, a half-used whiskey bottle in one hand.

  “We finished here?” Logan asked.

  Jane had been drinking. It was plain from the way she strutted, the way her face was flushed pink. She had a Navy revolver stuck inside her belt.

  “’Mornin’, Johnny,” she hooted, and did a little dance around him.

  “Go to hell, Jane!”

  “Well, ain’t ya just the most gracious thing?” She grinned as he stepped past her. “How’s Lulu Divan? And how’s the wife?”

  Johnny threw her a hard look. Cole could guess what he might have done to her if Cole hadn’t been there.

  “That Johnny’s lost his sense of humor,” Jane said, twisting slowly around in a circle, her arms spread wide, like wings.

  Seeing her again called up the name she’d given Cole the night before—Leo Loop.

  “Good to see ya, Jack! Ya ready for a real woman yet?”

  “Tell me about Leo,” Cole said.

  She didn’t stop twirling, lost in her own revelry. “Leo? Where’d ya hear that name, Jack?”

  “You. Leo Loop. You remember, Jane?”

  She stopped twirling and pulled the cork out of the bottle she held in her hand. Fumbling, the bottle slipped from her hand and the contents leaked out. She fell to her knees, trying to save some of it, the whiskey dribbling through her fingers. “Jeezus, Jack!”

  Cole pulled her to her feet, still clutching the bottle and what was left in it.

  “Who’s Leo Loop, Jane?”

  She looked at Cole with eyes like those of a terrified bird. She felt puny, all bones, her body wasted away from the drink and the life. “I need a drink . . . Jack,” she said, those wild-bird eyes peering down to the bottle in her hands.

  “No, you don’t need a drink, Jane. You’ve had a drink. You don’t need another, not right now.”

  Her mouth drew down. She squeezed her eyes shut like she was about to be hit. Cole eased up on his grip. She shoved the bottle to her lips and drained what she’d saved from spilling into the dirt.

  “Tell me about Leo Loop.”

  “Jeezus, Jack.” Her mouth opened and closed like a fish out of water. “Leo’s ’bout the majorest player in the whole damn’ gulch, that’s all.”

  “Go on.”

  She reeled away, now that Cole let her. “Billy knew Leo. Leo wanted Billy to front fer him. Wanted Billy in his vest pocket ’cause of who Billy was, ’cause of Billy’s rep. But Billy told Leo to kiss his white shiny behind, that he wasn’t no shill fer nobody. Leo told Billy, he di’nt go along with things, Billy wa’n’t goin to be around long in Deadwood.” She paused, put the bottle to her lips, but it was empty. She held it out in front of her, looked at it, then flung it aside. “Damn and hell!”

  “You know for certain this conversation took place between Bill and Leo?” Cole asked.

  She looked at him the same way she looked at the empty bottle, with a lot of disappointment, like both of them were something to be pitied. “Know? Di’nt I tell ya me and Bill was married? Di’nt I tell ya that? Don’t married folks tell one another things at night when they’re laying in bed together? Billy told me all about Leo Loop and his offers to have Bill shill fer him. Bill said it’d be a cold day in hell befer he’d shill fer a pimp like Leo.”

  How much was the truth? From what Cole knew, Jane and Bill were never married. And there was little evidence to prove that they were anything more than casual acquaintances. How much was the truth, and how much had Jane made up in her own besotted mind? “Where can I find this Leo Loop, Jane?”

  She stumbled toward Cole and got close enough for him to have to turn his head to keep from breathing her breath. “Ya don’t want to find him,” she whispered in a voice that was near a growl.

  “Why is that?”

  “’Cause he’ll kill ya, just like he killed my darlin’ Bill.” She let out a groan, caught the brim of her hat in both hands, and danced around in a circle. “’Cause he’ll kill ya just like he did Bill . . . just like Bill.” Her voice had turned sing-song.

  “You’ve never met him, have you, Jane, Leo Loop?”

  She stopped circling long enough to glare at him, squinting her eyes, unsquinting them. “Ya sayin’ I’m a damn’ liar, Jack?”

  “Did you ever meet this man?”

  “Ain’t no one calls Jane Canary a damn’ liar!” She tried jerking the Navy from her belt. Cole grabbed her hand, twisted the gun free, looked at it. It was rusty, pitted, the hammer missing. She couldn’t have shot him with it if he had pulled the trigger for her.

  “Jane, you’re not only drunk, you’re crazy, pulling a busted pistol on a man.”

  She sat right down on the ground and began to bawl. Whether the performance was real or not, Cole couldn’t tell. Whether or not what she’d told him about Leo Loop and his threats toward Bill Hickok was something else he couldn’t be sure of. He waited for a few minutes to see if Jane would come around again, talk a little sense, stop the play-acting, if that was what it was. But when she didn’t, Cole offered her a hand up.

  “Don’t need no dang’ help,” she bawled.

  She was wretched and sad, and who knew exactly what secrets she kept within that frail and fragile heart? Cole pulled her to her feet in spite of her protest.

  “I’m sorry you spilled your bottle,” he said, reaching into his pocket. “Here, buy one on me, for the one you dropped.”

  She blinked, and brushed back the tears that had been forced from her eyes. “I ain’t no charity case, if that’s what yar thinkin’.”

  “Did I say that?”

  She narrowed her eyes. “I ain’t no liar, neither.”

  “No one said you were, Jane.”

  She looked at the money he was holding out to her. “I di’nt mean to pull my Navy on ya, Jack. Ya know I’d never shoot a friend.”

  “I know.”

  “Ya believe me, don’t ya?”

  “I believe you wouldn’t shoot me, Jane.”

  “No, I mean about that other, about what Billy told me about Leo.”

  “I’ll follow it up.”

  A crooked smile eased itself across her mouth and suddenly she was child-like again. That was the best way to describe her at times, child-like. She scratched at her hip. “I could use a loan,” she said. “But it’d be just a loan, ya unnerstand?”

  “Sure. Pay me back when you get it.”

  “Yeah, Jack. Jane don’t welsh on her loans, ya can ask anybody.”

  She took the money carefully from his hand, like it was a fresh bottle of whiskey and she didn’t want to spill any of it. She patted Cole’s hand. �
�Yar all right, Jack.”

  He watched her strut down the alley toward the street. “Jane?”

  She half turned around, nearly fell.

  “Maybe you could use some of that money to buy yourself a meal. It might not hurt you to eat a little something,” he suggested.

  She nodded her head. “Ah, Jack, I’ll consider it. Ya know, I ain’t ever had much of an appertite.”

  Cole made himself a cigarette and smoked it as he headed for the telegraph office. It was time to send that wire to Ike Kelly.

  Chapter Twenty-Two

  John Henry Cole sent the wire to Ike Kelly, told him what he’d learned so far, and urged his presence as soon as he could free himself of his obligations in Cheyenne. He needed to explain some things to him, the part about Liddy, only he didn’t mention any of that in the telegram.

  His next move was to try and locate Leo Loop. He began asking around. It didn’t take him long to learn Leo owned a place called the Lucky Strike Saloon, up the street from Nutall and Mann’s Number Ten. At least he’d learned that Leo Loop actually existed. He had to admit—entering the Lucky Strike—that it was a lot more elegant than anyone would expect in a town like Deadwood.

  Shafts of light filtered in through the front windows and angled across the floorboards coated with sawdust, tobacco plugs, and brass spittoons. Hanging over the backbar was a large painting of reclining nudes, their eyes cast heavenward. The place was quiet at that time of day, except for a back table where four men wearing plug hats were conversing with one another. A swamper was going around, carrying out the spittoons. He limped—another busted-down cowboy doing the only work left to a man whose only education was horses and cows. Two burly bartenders were carrying in barrels from a beer wagon parked out front.

  Cole waited until one of the bartenders took a break, wiped his brow with a kerchief, and said: “Wadda’ll it be?”

  “Coffee, if you’ve got any.”

  The bartender looked perturbed. “Nickel,” he said. “That’s how much a cup of coffee is.” When Cole tossed a nickel on the bar, he said: “Refills are free.” His shirt was soaked with sweat from carrying the barrels. “Anything else?” he asked as he took the nickel off the bar and looked at it like it wasn’t worth his time.