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Brimstone

Page 1

by Parker, Robert B.




  Table of Contents

  Title Page

  Copyright Page

  Dedication

  Chapter 1

  Chapter 2

  Chapter 3

  Chapter 4

  Chapter 5

  Chapter 6

  Chapter 7

  Chapter 8

  Chapter 9

  Chapter 10

  Chapter 11

  Chapter 12

  Chapter 13

  Chapter 14

  Chapter 15

  Chapter 16

  Chapter 17

  Chapter 18

  Chapter 19

  Chapter 20

  Chapter 21

  Chapter 22

  Chapter 23

  Chapter 24

  Chapter 25

  Chapter 26

  Chapter 27

  Chapter 28

  Chapter 29

  Chapter 30

  Chapter 31

  Chapter 32

  Chapter 33

  Chapter 34

  Chapter 35

  Chapter 36

  Chapter 37

  Chapter 38

  Chapter 39

  Chapter 40

  Chapter 41

  Chapter 42

  Chapter 43

  Chapter 44

  Chapter 45

  Chapter 46

  Chapter 47

  Chapter 48

  Chapter 49

  Chapter 50

  Chapter 51

  Chapter 52

  Chapter 53

  Chapter 54

  Chapter 55

  Chapter 56

  Chapter 57

  Chapter 58

  Chapter 59

  Chapter 60

  Chapter 61

  Chapter 62

  Chapter 63

  Chapter 64

  Chapter 65

  Chapter 66

  Chapter 67

  Chapter 68

  Chapter 69

  Chapter 70

  Chapter 71

  THE SPENSER NOVELS

  Rough Weather

  Now and Then

  Hundred-Dollar Baby

  School Days

  Cold Service

  Bad Business

  Back Story

  Widow’s Walk

  Potshot

  Hugger Mugger

  Hush Money

  Sudden Mischief

  Small Vices

  Chance

  Thin Air

  Walking Shadow

  Paper Doll

  Double Deuce

  Pastime

  Stardust

  Playmates

  Crimson Joy

  Pale Kings and Princes

  Taming a Sea-Horse

  A Catskill Eagle

  Valediction

  The Widening Gyre

  Ceremony

  A Savage Place

  Early Autumn

  Looking for Rachel Wallace

  The Judas Goat

  Promised Land

  Mortal Stakes

  God Save the Child

  The Godwulf Manuscript

  THE JESSE STONE NOVELS

  Night and Day

  Stranger in Paradise

  High Profile

  Sea Change

  Stone Cold

  Death in Paradise

  Trouble in Paradise

  Night Passage

  THE SUNNY RANDALL NOVELS

  Spare Change

  Blue Screen

  Melancholy Baby

  Shrink Rap

  Perish Twice

  Family Honor

  ALSO BY ROBERT B. PARKER

  Resolution

  Appaloosa

  Double Play

  Gunman’s Rhapsody

  All Our Yesterdays

  A Year at the Races

  (with Joan H. Parker)

  Perchance to Dream

  Poodle Springs

  (with Raymond Chandler)

  Love and Glory

  Wilderness

  Three Weeks in Spring

  (with Joan H. Parker)

  Training with Weights

  (with John R. Marsh)

  PUTMAN

  G. P. PUTNAM’S SONS

  Publishers Since 1838

  Published by the Penguin Group

  Penguin Group (USA) Inc., 375 Hudson Street, New York, New York 10014, USA

  Penguin Group (Canada), 90 Eglinton Avenue East, Suite 700, Toronto, Ontario M4P 2Y3,

  Canada (a division of Pearson Canada Inc.) Penguin Books Ltd, 80 Strand,

  London WC2R 0RL, England Penguin Ireland, 25 St Stephen’s Green, Dublin 2,

  Ireland (a division of Penguin Books Ltd) Penguin Group (Australia),

  250 Camberwell Road, Camberwell, Victoria 3124, Australia (a division of Pearson Australia

  Group Pty Ltd) Penguin Books India Pvt Ltd, 11 Community Centre, Panchsheel

  Park, New Delhi-110 017, India Penguin Group (NZ), 67 Apollo Drive, Rosedale, North

  Shore 0632, New Zealand (a division of Pearson New Zealand Ltd) Penguin Books

  (South Africa) (Pty) Ltd, 24 Sturdee Avenue, Rosebank, Johannesburg 2196, South Africa

  Penguin Books Ltd, Registered Offices: 80 Strand, London WC2R 0RL, England

  Copyright © 2009 by Robert B. Parker

  All rights reserved. No part of this book may be reproduced, scanned,

  or distributed in any printed or electronic form without permission. Please do

  not participate in or encourage piracy of copyrighted materials in violation

  of the author’s rights. Purchase only authorized editions.

  Published simultaneously in Canada

  Library of Congress Cataloging-in-Publication Data

  Parker, Robert B., date.

  Brimstone / Robert B. Parker.

  p. cm.

  eISBN : 978-1-101-04744-6

  This is a work of fiction. Names, characters, places, and incidents either are the product of the author’s imagination or are used fictitiously, and any resemblance to actual persons, living or dead, businesses, companies, events, or locales is entirely coincidental.

  While the author has made every effort to provide accurate telephone numbers and Internet addresses at the time of publication, neither the publisher nor the author assumes any responsibility for errors, or for changes that occur after publication. Further, the publisher does not have any control over and does not assume any responsibility for author or third-party web-sites or their content.

  http://us.penguingroup.com

  For Joan: Well worth the pressure

  1

  IT’S A LONG RIDE SOUTH through New Mexico and Texas, and it seems even longer when you stop in every run-down, aimless little dried-up town, looking for Allie French. By the time we got to Placido, Virgil Cole and I were almost a year out of Resolution.

  It was a barren little place, west of Del Rio, near the Rio Grande, which had a railroad station, and one saloon for every man, woman, and child in town. We went into the grandest of them, a place called Los Lobos, and had a beer.

  Los Lobos was decorated with wolf hides on the wall and a stuffed wolf behind the bar. Several people looked at Virgil when he came in. He wasn’t special-looking. Sort of tall, wearing a black coat and a white shirt and a Colt with a white bone handle. But there was something about the way he walked and the way the gun seemed so natural. People looked at me sometimes, too, but always after they looked at Virgil.

  “Think that wolf might’ve exprised of old age,” Virgil said.

  “A long time ago,” I said.

  “Exprised ain’t right,” Virgil said. “You went to West Point.”

  “Expired,” I said.

  “Means died,” Virgil said.

  “Uh-huh.”


  Virgil believed in self-improvement. He read a lot of books and had a bigger vocabulary than he knew how to use. He sipped his beer.

  “Mexican,” he said. “Mexicans know how to make beer.”

  “How much money you got?” I said.

  “Got a dollar,” Virgil said.

  “More than I got,” I said.

  Virgil nodded.

  “Guess we got to get some,” he said.

  I grinned at him.

  “We got sort of a limited range of know-how,” I said.

  “Least we know it,” Virgil said.

  “Lotta saloons, lotta whores,” I said. “Not much else.”

  “Railroad station,” Cole said.

  “Why?” I said.

  “No idea,” I said.

  A tall, thin young man in an undershirt stood up from a table near us and walked over to us. He wasn’t heeled that I could see.

  “Excuse me, sir,” he said to Virgil. “Boys at my table got a bet. Some say you’re Virgil Cole. Some say you’re not.”

  The young man hadn’t shaved lately, but he was too young to have much of a beard. His two front teeth were missing.

  “I am,” Virgil said.

  The boy looked over his shoulder at the others at his table.

  “See that?” he said. “See what I tole you?”

  Everyone stared at Virgil.

  “Seen you in Ellsworth,” the kid said. “I was ’bout half growed up. Seen you kill two men slick as a whistle.”

  “Slick,” Virgil said.

  The others at his table were all turned toward us.

  “How many men you figure you killed, Mr. Cole?”

  “No need to count,” Virgil said.

  Most of the room was looking at us now, including the bartender. The boy seemed to have run out of things to say. Virgil was silent.

  “Well, uh, it’s been a real pleasure, Mr. Cole, to meet you. Can I shake your hand?”

  “No,” Virgil said.

  The boy looked startled.

  “Virgil don’t shake hands,” I said to the boy. “He don’t see any good coming from letting somebody get hold of him.”

  “Oh,” the boy said. “A’course not. I shoulda known.”

  Virgil didn’t say anything. The boy backed away sort of awkwardly. When he got to his table, his friends gathered in tight and whispered together.

  “No need to be explaining me,” Virgil said to me.

  “Hell there ain’t,” I said.

  Virgil smiled. The kid at the next table got up and went out without looking at Virgil. A fat Mexican girl in a loose flowered dress came to the table.

  “Good time for joo boys?” she said.

  “Sit down,” Virgil said.

  “Buy drink?” she said.

  Virgil shook his head.

  “Nope,” he said. “You know a woman named Allison French?”

  The woman shook her head.

  “Probably calls herself Allie?” Virgil said.

  “No.”

  “Plays the piano?” Virgil said. “Sings?”

  “Don’t know nobody,” the Mexican woman said. “Round the world for a dollar. Joo friend, too.”

  Virgil smiled.

  “No,” he said. “Thanks.”

  “No drink?” she said. “No fuck?”

  “Nope,” Virgil said. “Anybody knows Allison French, though, they get a dollar.”

  The woman stood up and went back to the other girls in the back of the saloon. She was too fat to flounce, but she was trying.

  “Think she gets many dollars?” I said to Virgil.

  “Nope.”

  “Easy to turn down,” I said.

  Virgil shrugged.

  “She probably don’t like it, either,” he said. “Just doing what she gotta.”

  A group of four men came into Los Lobos and stood at the bar and looked at Virgil. Each of them had a whiskey. Pretty soon two more men drifted in, and then three, until the bar was crowded with men.

  “Looks like that kid been spreading the alert,” I said to Virgil.

  “ ’Fraid so,” Virgil said.

  “All of ’em look like town people,” I said. “Don’t see no cowboys.”

  “Nope,” Virgil said.

  “I’m feeling a little left out,” I said. “Nobody’s looking at me.”

  “That’s ’cause you’re ugly,” Virgil said.

  “Wait a minute,” I said. “Señorita offered me round the world for a dollar.”

  “She included you second,” Virgil said.

  “That’s just ’cause I ain’t famous like you,” I said.

  “Also true,” Virgil said, and drank the last of his beer.

  2

  “I GOT ENOUGH CHANGE,” I said, “I can buy two more beers. Save the dollar for a room.”

  “Maybe sleep in the livery stable,” Virgil said. “I’ve slept in worse than a hayloft.”

  “We been sleeping in worse for most of the last year,” I said.

  Virgil nodded. He was looking at the bartender coming toward our table carrying a bottle and three glasses. With him was a short, wiry man. Not thin, exactly, but lean, sort of hard-looking, with a scraggly blond beard.

  “You’re Virgil Cole,” the wiry man said as he reached the table.

  Virgil nodded.

  “Like to buy you a drink, if I can,” the wiry man said.

  “Sure can,” I said, real quick, before Virgil could be unfriendly. You never knew with Virgil.

  I gestured at an empty chair, and the wiry man sat down. The bartender put three glasses on the table and poured a useful amount of whiskey in each one.

  “Name’s Cates,” the wiry man said. “Everybody calls me Cates.”

  Virgil nodded and sipped his whiskey.

  “Whiskey clears the throat,” Virgil said. “Considerable better than beer.”

  “It does,” Cates said. “You boys been traveling?”

  Virgil nodded.

  “This here’s Everett Hitch,” he said.

  “By God,” Cates said. “I heard a you, too.”

  “See that,” I said to Virgil.

  “You been with Mr. Cole for some time,” Cates said.

  “I have,” I said.

  Virgil grinned.

  “Well,” Cates said. “I’m proud to meet both you boys. Especially you, Mr. Cole.”

  “ ’ Specially,” Virgil murmured to me.

  “The great Virgil Cole,” Cates said happily, “right here, in my saloon.”

  Virgil looked at me without expression.

  “With his friend,” Virgil said.

  “Of course,” Cates said. “With his friend, Mr. Hitch.”

  “Everett,” I said. “And he won’t mind you call him Virgil.”

  Virgil nodded. Cates nodded. And we all drank. Cates picked up the bottle and poured us all some more. Cates looked around the room.

  “Look at the crowd,” he said. “Got to say you’re a big attraction, Virgil.”

  “Like a geek show,” Virgil said.

  “No,” Cates said. “God, no. It’s respect. It’s like a hero has come to town.”

  Virgil looked at me.

  “Hero,” he said.

  “That’d be you,” I said.

  “Maybe you boys don’t take it serious, but I’m here to tell you that we do.”

  “ ‘ We’?” Virgil said.

  “Everybody,” Cates said. “I got a proposal for you.”

  Virgil didn’t say anything. If Cates minded that, it didn’t show.

  “My shotgun lookout works ’bout twelve hours a day,” Cates said. “He needs a break.”

  “Any law in town?” Virgil said.

  “Never needed none,” Cates said.

  Virgil nodded.

  “Like to hire you to sit shotgun,” Cates said. “Couple hours a day is all, start of the evenin’.”

  “Draw a crowd?” I said.

  “Sure would,” Cates said. “The great Virgil Cole? Sitting s
hotgun in Los Lobos? Good gracious. It would put this whole damned town on the map.”

  “And make you some money,” I said.

  “Sure would; why I want to do it. But what’s good for me is good for the town, and the other way around as well.”

  “How much,” Virgil said.

  “Give you a dollar a day,” Cates said.

  “Each,” Virgil said.

  “You and Everett?” Cates said.

  “Uh-huh.”

  Cates looked at the bar, which was two deep now with people drinking and watching Virgil. He looked at me and back at Virgil. Then he nodded.

  “Done,” he said.

  He went into his pocket and took out two silver dollars and put them on the table.

  “First day in advance,” he said.

  Virgil picked up the coins and gave one to me.

  “Don’t know how long I’ll be in town,” he said.

  “Long as you’re here, the deal stands,” Cates said.

  “I’m looking for a woman,” Virgil said.

  Cates grinned and waved his hand toward the back of the saloon.

  “Take your pick,” he said.

  “Woman named Allison French,” Virgil said.

  “Can’t say I know her,” Cates said.

  “Sings,” Virgil said. “Plays the piano.”

  “In saloons?” Cates said.

  “Yep.”

  “Lotta saloons in town,” Cates said. “I can ask around.”

  “Do,” Cole said.

  3

  WE TOOK A ROOM in the Grande Palace Hotel, which was not accurately named, and agreed to live on Virgil’s dollar a day and save mine for when we moved on. During Virgil’s shift on lookout, I sat around Los Lobos and observed. During the day we strolled around the ugly little bare-board town and asked about Allie.

  “When’s the last time you did a lookout job?” I said to Virgil after the first night.

  “Sorta helped you out a year ago up in Resolution,” he said.

  “But when did you actually earn money at it?” I said.

  “ ’Fore I met you,” Virgil said.

  “Close to twenty years,” I said.

  “Yep.”

  “How’s it feel?” I said.

  “People come here to look at me, Virgil Cole, the famous shooter. I feel like I’m in a circus.”

  “But . . .” I said.

  “Need the money,” he said.

  “And we can’t steal it,” I said.

  “Can’t do that,” Virgil said.

  We were having breakfast in a cook tent that had no name, only a sign outside that said EAT. Virgil put down his coffee cup and looked at me.

 

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