The three went back to the house they had been to first. The alarms in the front of the house were genuine. But at the back they were fake, all right. The embarrassed owner claimed that after he had installed a proper alarm system, a man had called and offered him the fakes. The owner had bought two to “decorate” the back, so to speak. But there was no doubt he was lying.
Both house owners were insured with the same company.
* * * *
Long after midnight, the three sat in Russell's lounge. Russell was impatient for the morning and the time when people he knew were at their desks to answer the telephone.
"If we ask Mrs. Stammers to put in a proposal for household insurance, with a bit of luck, the salesman of the fake alarms will turn up. He may or may not talk. There is still the inside man in the company.” All this from Russell. “I know ... we have to get at their personnel files and find out who lives hereabouts. The brains of the outfit must be here. Tommy must have got his papers."
"How did they know it was Tommy?” asked Mary.
"Either because he took something that he disposed of through a fence,” said Peter, “and they tracked it back to him. Or they had a duplicate list and they staked out the houses. When Tommy appeared, they followed him and ... These boys are professionals."
There was silence.
As Peter was leaving he said, “If they knew Tommy couldn't read nor write, they'd be after you too, Mary. I think they stole the list while you were at work. They figured, perhaps, if they killed you, we really would start getting suspicious.” He paused for thought. “They really are clever. First, they have a fellow going around selling fake alarms, and every time he sells any, the gang moves in, knowing nobody is going to own up to having been mean and cheated. And if they have an inside man in the insurance company tipping them off with the names of new clients, they send their man with the long ladder to hang a few fake alarms. I have a feeling it's a top man inside."
"You both seem to think that,” said Mary, “just because Tommy did ‘is ‘ouse. What if it's someone like a secretary or just a clerk?"
"No,” said Peter. “I think it's someone higher up. The whole setup shows good organization. For instance, I bet they have a system by which not more than one house at a time gets done in an area. I wonder if it's the man who approves new business?"
"Got it!” said Russell. “It's the man who approves the claims. His job is also to spot patterns in the burglaries. For example, whether they recur in a certain area. In case the thieves ever slip up, he covers for them."
* * * *
Mrs. Stammers put in a proposal for insurance using the Thundackary-Harding name and address. Sure enough, an engaging man in his thirties called to sell a “fun alarm to deter break-in artists,” as he called them. He was picked up, and simultaneously the executive in charge of approving burglary claims was arrested. The two denied knowing each other, but the executive lived in the Hertfordshire countryside in a beautiful house, which he could not possibly afford on his salary. There was a pit at the back of the house for burning rubbish, and in it a zealous constable found the ash remains of a bag, a plastic sheet, and a few burnt last remnants of Tommy. Inside the house there was a list of addresses and dates. It had been stolen from Tommy and had his and Mary's prints still on it. One house was due for treatment that very night, and that was how the gang was picked up.
* * * *
There was only one thing left to look after, the “moral issue,” as Peter Strevens used to tease Russell Davenport. He rang him up and said, “Can you get that devious mind of yours on it, old sport?"
"Ah yes, Peter,” said Russell with mock self-satisfaction. “I didn't tell you because I assumed that you knew. I've spoken to the chairman of the insurance company, who is working on a press statement even now. It should be in the papers tomorrow. As you and I know, ahem, the insurance company was aware all the time that something was up. So, on my recommendation, they employed Tommy. Alas, the villains killed him because he was close on their tracks. But he had left enough information for the police to get onto it and close the case. The insurance company, incidentally, in hiring him, also insured him against death by accident or whatever, and are paying the money to his lawful widow. They are also paying her the reward they secretly offered, and this amount is being put aside in trust for the child."
"Eton, of course,” said Peter, without a trace of sarcasm in his voice.
"I do believe it is a good school. But do let me go on. The company, as you will see from its press statement, is most mindful of its responsibilities to its policyholders and the public at large, all of whom can rest assured that the company's vigilance has never been, is not, and will not ever be impaired one iota. After all, it was they who called in the police, as you may remember,” Russell said cheerfully.
"That is an expensive bit of whitewash,” said Peter.
"Worth every penny. The chairman realized that if anyone dropped a hint to the press that it all started with a couple of fellows being picked up in a pub..."
"Hey, I didn't get picked up,” said Peter. “I have a jealous wife."
"Well, I am sure the public will be relieved to know that a major insurance company was on top of it all,” said Russell.
"And Tommy a reformed burglar,” said Peter.
"Come, come, Peter. Tommy never was a burglar. The chairman of a major insurance company is prepared to swear on a stack of statistics, or whatever they swear by, that friend Tommy was a skilled private investigator. Come to think of it, I think I wrote the reference for him when he applied."
"I'm surprised,” said Peter, “really surprised that you didn't ask for an OBE for him."
"Never thought of it,” Russell said. “Now that would have been something for the offspring to show off at ... what was that school you mentioned? Ah, well, perhaps it'll be a girl. Girls don't care about baubles. Never mind, old son, why don't you come over and help finish the rest of the Finnish beer. Boom! Boom!” As an old East Ender, Russell always accompanied bad puns with “Boom! Boom!"
* * * *
They were lying on the sofa and floor respectively, boyishly tipping beer out of the cans into their mouths, when a taxi discharged Mary at the door with parcels of baby clothes.
Copyright © 2006 Alex Auswaks
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THE COTTONWOODS by David Edgerley Gates
It was windless and still, but the smell of death was unmistakable.
He came on the stand of cottonwoods in late afternoon. The day was still punishingly hot, and he and the claybank mare were alike grateful for the shade and water. Cottonwoods were known for liking their feet wet, so to speak, growing along streambeds. It was early June, and the seedpods had ripened and burst. The earth was feathered with them, soft as air, like snowflakes dusting the ground, too light to settle and melt, the windblown seedlings looking for an opportunity to root.
Moving under the trees, the claybank shied, catching the scent first, and Placido Geist dismounted, knowing the mare had her own queer horse reasons. It was windless and still, but the smell of death was unmistakable, ripe as the seedpods of the cottonwoods. He tied the reins off to a branch and walked down toward the creek bed, gun in hand, cautious of surprise. He was all too aware of what he was likely to find.
He was somewhat startled, just the same. He'd expected a victim, animal or human, a dead deer, a man shot accidentally or by design. Not this.
The hanged man had been there a good two days. His skin was discolored, dark as an eggplant, his flesh swollen, the rope sunk to the spine, his jawline yeasty and putrefied.
Placido Geist cut him down. The old bounty hunter had seen more than his share of dead men, had put more than his share in the ground, had in fact once left a man just like this, bait for ravens and wasps, a host to maggots. It was an uneasy memory.
* * * *
He was something off his graze, this being East Texas, not West. The town he rode into at dusk was called
Dime Box.
It was small and dusty, the main street unmetaled. There were a couple of automobiles parked by the livery, though, when he went to board his horse, and from the lines strung along poles overhead, there appeared to be a local telephone exchange.
He asked directions to the sheriff's office.
The deputy on duty seemed to Placido Geist amiable but dull witted. Not a man to confide his misgivings in. After some desultory conversation, it was discovered the sheriff might himself be found at supper, across the street.
It was styled a delicatessen. An immigrant family, German Jewish, perhaps thought more at home in New York or Chicago, had put down their stake in this hinterland and were enjoying considerable success, from the evidence of a full dining area, a busy kitchen, and boisterous custom. Placido Geist had second thoughts about disturbing the sheriff in these comfortable surroundings, but the man waved him to a seat opposite. Placido Geist ordered sauerbraten and retailed his errand.
"Two, maybe three days dead, you say?” the sheriff asked.
"I'd calculate,” Placido Geist said.
"You buried him.” A statement, not a question.
"I wasn't inclined to ride sidesaddle with a cadaver so far advanced,” Placido Geist said.
"Point taken,” the sheriff said. He was a man not much ahead of middle age, although twenty years younger than the old bounty hunter. He seemed comfortable in his position, not someone to get overinflamed. His name was Duquesne, which he pronounced carefully, doo-KANE. The lawman obviously attached some importance, and a history of irritation, to people not getting it right. “I've heard of you,” he went on. “Probably most people have, this neck of the woods. By all accounts, you're not someone to be shaken off. What's your sense of this, the man in the cottonwoods?"
"Horse thief, a rustler. I couldn't speak to specifics."
"No identification, I'm assuming."
Placido Geist took a small oilskin packet out of his vest.
"His pockets were empty,” he said. “But if they meant him to go to his grave unremarked, they overlooked this."
Duquesne looked at the packet as if it were a tarantula.
"Found it in his boot,” Placido Geist said. “It's a letter he asks be sent to his mother, back in Montrose, Michigan, should he be found in circumstances similar to those I found him in. Name of Beauchamp, it's spelled. BEECH-um, I'd imagine."
The sheriff didn't acknowledge this touch of ridicule. He regarded Placido Geist with hooded eyes. “I'd have to look into it,” he said.
"Can't ask for better than that,” Placido Geist said, and applied himself to dinner. The sauerbraten was excellent, sweet and pungent, just sour enough, the meat fork-tender.
The sheriff excused himself, his meal not yet finished.
* * * *
The hotel was somewhat mean, disheveled if not disreputable. The room was cramped, and the single window faced an alleyway, letting in little light. The bedstead was creaky and the mattress lumpy—the linens threadbare, although clean enough. He went down the hall to draw a bath, and found the hot water to be unreliable. He went without.
Resigned to spending the night dirty, he decided to turn in early. It wasn't half past eight, but he was feeling his time in the saddle. The old bounty hunter was in his sixties. There were days now that seemed longer than others.
He struggled to get his boots off, folded his outergarments carefully, and hung them over the back of a chair.
There was a knock on his door. A little tentative.
Placido Geist called out some excuse while he pulled his pants on again. And took the time to snap open the loading gate of the .45 single action with the three-inch barrel and rotate the cylinder. He tucked the gun in his belt at the small of his back, the butt to the right, so-called Mexican carry.
He opened the door.
The girl looked not above nineteen. Nor was she in any way disheveled, but she was definitely disreputable. Her makeup was too liberally applied for daylight, and her manner of dress showed a good deal more skin than appropriate for a librarian or a maiden schoolmarm.
"No offense, ma'am,” he said to her, “but I've no use for a whore this evening."
"Edgar Beauchamp,” she said. “Known generally as Tip."
Aah, he thought, inviting her in. He didn't think this was a badger game.
Her name was Willie, she told him, and Tip Beauchamp had been swaining her. Not that she imagined he'd take her out of the life, that was an abandoned hope, but he'd treated her with some respect, in itself unusual. She wasn't allowed to pick and choose her custom. She took what came, much of it rough trade.
Placido Geist heard the lineaments of a narrative here, if you could read between the lines.
"Who else?” he asked her. “Or, who else in particular?"
A man named Hagerty, she told him. Derek Hagerty, younger son of Farragut Hagerty, the rancher, and the largest landholder in the area. She was surprised Placido Geist hadn't heard of him. Placido Geist wasn't surprised. Not that he'd not heard of Farragut Hagerty, but that it was such a common story, that a figure of local importance considered himself above the law.
* * * *
"Murder doesn't go unpunished,” Placido Geist said.
"There's no evidence."
"There's what the girl says."
"The word of a trollop."
"I'd take the word of a trollop over that of many a state senator,” the bounty hunter told the sheriff. “Most whores give an honest accounting, in my experience."
"I can't go up against Ratgut Hagerty, not and keep my job. The people in this town vote his proxy."
"You'd countenance a killing his son almost certainly had a part in? Let it come to trial, at least."
"On the testimony of a whore.” The sheriff looked away.
"Everybody knows the story. You know the story. Farragut Hagerty's boy wanted the girl to himself, and this young man Beauchamp got in the way. They had words over it. Words led to blows. Beauchamp got the best of Derek Hagerty in a fair fight and laid him out on a saloon floor. I've asked around, and I'm a stranger. You don't even have to ask. You know full well that Beauchamp kid got strung up in the cottonwoods for crossing Farragut's clan."
"All right. Maybe it was a couple of Farragut's hands who got overly enthusiastic."
"'Who will rid me of this tempestuous priest?’”
Duquesne looked at Placido Geist blankly.
"Farragut Hagerty or his son is responsible for this. If a couple of their cowpokes took matters into their own hands, they have to answer for it. And so do the Hagertys."
"I won't go after father or son. I have to live here."
"I don't,” Placido Geist said. “I answer to my conscience, not to expediency."
The sheriff took a long breath and let it out, keeping his temper. “I don't much like being told I'm a coward,” he said.
"I don't give a damn what you like,” Placido Geist said.
* * * *
The cowboys came into town in a bunch and deployed in front of the hotel. It was eight o'clock in the morning. Most people on the street at that hour found cover, but some stuck around to see the show. They weren't to be disappointed, as the drama was shaping up and a resolution imminent.
Placido Geist had been interrupted at his breakfast. He found this annoying. After achieving a certain age, there are men who choose not to suffer fools gladly. Besides, his eggs were turning gelid. He sent them back to the kitchen. He'd get fresh eggs, or be dead, in which case it made scant difference.
He stepped out onto the porch. He faced a dozen men.
"You've accused my brother of murder,” the tall man sitting on a roan horse said.
"You'd be the eldest Hagerty,” Placido Geist said.
"I'd be Peter,” the tall man admitted.
"And this would be your brother?” Placido Geist asked. He could see a strong family resemblance in the young man who edged his mount up next to Peter Hagerty's.
"Everybody
in town knows who we are."
"They also know your brother to be chickenhearted and a bully, with no stomach for an honest fight, who hides behind his father's hired pistoleros,” Placido Geist said.
The younger man jerked his handgun loose, as Placido Geist had expected, and the bounty hunter shot him out of the saddle with his Colt. The horses shied at the gunfire, and there was a moment of indecision. Derek Hagerty lay dead in the street.
Sheriff Duquesne stepped into the silence, a twelve-gauge shotgun held at port arms but both hammers cocked. “There's no further argument here, Peter,” he said to Derek's brother.
"This isn't over,” Peter Hagerty said.
"Yes it is,” the sheriff said. “Your father has remedy in law, but he no longer makes his own."
Hagerty looked at the bounty hunter. “We'll seek you out,” he said.
"You're welcome to,” Placido Geist told him.
* * * *
"You should be indicted for manslaughter,” Duquesne said.
"I'll surrender myself to the Texas Rangers, and them only. I mean you no offense."
"Old man Hagerty will put a price on your head."
"It won't prove easy money."
The sheriff gazed off into the middle distance. “Hagerty's not a man to forgive,” he said.
"See to the whore, if you can,” Placido Geist said.
"I'd be hard pressed to see to my own benefit. You've made things more difficult than necessary, all around."
"Every choice has consequences,” the bounty hunter said.
* * * *
They tried for him some four miles out of town. Some deadfall had been dragged across the trail where it narrowed. There was higher ground on his right, with scrub for cover, and to his left a streambed, wooded on the far bank. The trail took a sharp dogleg, the streambed falling away, and a recent rockslide hid what was around the corner. Here was where the trail had been blocked. It wasn't artful, but it would do. He didn't hesitate to ride on into the trap. He figured two, three at the most. There'd be one across the stream, in the trees, and one in the scrub above. If there were a third man, he'd be lying in wait past the rockslide, to gun the bounty hunter if he got through the barricade. Placido Geist had his .45-70 Sharps in a saddle scabbard and the little Colt tucked at the small of his back, with a break-top Smith & Wesson .44 featuring a nine-inch barrel in a shoulder holster. Hanging from the saddle horn by a lanyard was a twelve-gauge Parker hammerless side-by-side, the barrels cut down to eighteen inches, the shotshells loaded with .25 caliber nickel-plated ball in a cluster of six, each of them double the weight of buckshot.
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