Hell's Half Acre

by William W. Johnstone

  But Jess was already moving.

  He threw himself onto the wagon bed and as Lurker’s bullet cut the air a foot above his head, he raised his Colt in both hands, got a quick sight picture and fired.

  This time Tom Lurker was hit hard and his face was frozen into a grimace of hate and shock. He staggered a little but managed to bring the rifle up and Jess heard the report as the man fired.

  But Jess was firing steadily. He got off the last three rounds in the Colt and each one of them hit Lurker . . . in the right wrist, his left knee and a killing shot that hit the man dead center in the chest.

  As a final gesture of defiance Lurker tried to throw down on Jess one last time, but the Winchester dropped from his grasp and he fell on his face. The uncaring wind tore the hat from Lurker’s head and sent it tumbling along the ground and the thin hair danced on his scalp.

  Jess stared down at the bullet-torn body. Koenig had been right. He surely did want to be a lawman. But the cost of his baptism by fire was proving way too high.

  CHAPTER TWENTY-SIX

  It was fixing to be a bad morning for Sheriff Jess Casey.

  His gunfight with Tom Lurker had drained him emotionally and physically. Stiff, achy all over, his dicey knees throbbing, it took him several minutes to get out of his cot and shuffle to the stove.

  The little calico cat that had decided to adopt him, stared at Jess with accusing eyes.

  “Kept you awake all night, huh?” he said. “Well, I was hurting last night. Maybe something to do with the weather.”

  As a breed, cats do not accept apologies gracefully. The calico walked to the front door and scratched to be let out.

  “Right,” Jess said. “Go catch a mouse for breakfast and catch one for me while you’re at it.”

  Disdainfully the cat stepped through the door and merged with the early morning hubbub on Main Street.

  Jess made up the fire, set the coffee on to heat, made a short toilet and dressed. He was sitting behind his desk, drinking coffee and smoking his first cigarette of the day when the door opened and a large man in a loud checked suit and red vest stepped inside.

  “Are you the new law?” the man said. He had great bushy sideburns, a florid face and an abrupt manner. He might have been a jolly man but he wasn’t that morning.

  “Sheriff Jess Casey. “What can I do for you?”

  “You are a son of Erin?” the big man said.

  “Way back, I guess.”

  “Good. Then that is a point in your favor.”

  Jess tried again. “You have a problem . . . Mister . . . ah . . .”

  “Burke’s the name. Patrick Burke. Burke by name, Burke by nature, my late wife always said.”

  “Are you Lillian Burke’s father?” Jess said, surprised.

  “I am. And that is why I’ve come to see you.”

  “Coffee?” Jess said.

  Burke stepped to the stove, picked up the coffeepot in a speckled hand the size of a ham, lifted the lid and sniffed. He made a face and said, “No, thank you.”

  “Then please take a seat,” Jess said.

  “I will stand on my own two feet,” the big brewer said. “What I have to say will not take long. My daughter has disappeared.”

  Alarmed, Jess sat forward in his chair. “When?”

  “Two nights ago. Lillian left to visit a girlfriend and never came back.”

  “Who is her friend?”

  “It doesn’t matter. I spoke to the girl, she’s of a respectable family, and she told me she hasn’t seen my daughter in at least a week.”

  “Is there anyone else she might have visited?” Jess said.

  “No one that I know of,” Burke said.

  Jess fought a mental battle with himself and decided to keep quiet for now about Lillian’s opium addiction. A man like Burke could go off half-cocked and cause more harm than good.

  “I’ll look into it,” Jess said.

  “Sheriff, since her mother died, Lillian is all I’ve got,” Burke said, shedding his brusque manner like a suit of armor. His voice breaking, he said, “If anything has happened to her . . . I . . .”

  “I’ll find her, Mr. Burke,” Jess said.

  “And may Jesus, Mary and Joseph and all the saints in heaven aid you in your endeavors,” Burke said. “Sheriff Casey, bring my child home to me.”

  The big man’s pride would not let Jess see tears in his eyes. He turned away quickly and rushed out the door.

  Jess rose to his feet. He sniffed the coffeepot as Burke had done, shrugged and poured himself another cup. His first stop that morning would be the opium den off Rusk Street. It was entirely possible that Lillian Burke was still there.

  * * *

  Even early in the morning there were several addicts dreaming opium dreams, but Jess Casey found no trace of Lillian Burke and his questions about the girl’s whereabouts were met with empty faces and blank stares. He left the den, crossed the waste ground and headed to Dr. Sun’s house.

  The harsh morning light was not kind to Mei-Xing. When she opened the door the network of scars across her face stood out in stark relief. As she opened the door and allowed Jess inside, he smiled at her and she shyly smiled back.

  “I have not seen Lillian Burke since the night we visited the opium den,” Dr. Sun said. “Could there be a lover involved?”

  “Possibly,” Jess said. “She had a young man with her the night I first met her.”

  “Do you know him?” the physician said.

  Jess shook his head. “He looked to be like a clerk of some kind. I doubt I’d even recognize him if I saw him again.”

  Dr. Sun said, “Zeus a captive, Miss Burke missing, strange things are happening in Fort Worth, are they not?”

  “Could Kurt Koenig have anything to do with Lillian’s disappearance?” Jess said. “He deals in women.”

  “Women of a sort, Jess. I doubt he grabs young girls off the street and forces them into prostitution.”

  “I think he’s capable of anything,” Jess said.

  “Yes, but kidnapping the daughter of the Half Acre’s only brewer would hardly be good for his saloon business.”

  Jess nodded. “I guess you’re right about that. Then where is she?”

  “I don’t know the answer to that,” Dr. Sun said. “But there are forces at work in this town I don’t understand. Yet I fear them.”

  “Doc, have you ever heard the name Wilson J. Tucker?”

  “No, I can’t say I have.”

  “He’s a contract killer, a fast gun for hire. Somebody in this town sent for him. The money must be big because Koenig says Tucker never leaves the Pecos River country.”

  “I have no idea, Jess,” Dr. Sun said. “Gunmen come and go all the time in this town.”

  “Not gunmen like Wilson Tucker,” Jess said.

  * * *

  On his way out Mei-Xing laid her tiny hand on Jess’s arm and whispered, “Opium costs money and so do diamond brooches, Sheriff. Yet Lillian told me her father is an old skinflint.”

  “But—”

  The door closed on him and Jess stood on the step, pondering what the girl had just told him. The brooch was expensive, he was sure of that. The diamond was huge. To his surprise he recalled the words on it, as though the violent events of that night were seared into his consciousness. Toi et Nul Autre. What the hell did that mean? Jess had some book learning but he figured at the time they were just fancy words he didn’t know. He thought about knocking on the door again to ask Dr. Sun, but decided against it. He didn’t want to get Mei-Xing in any trouble for telling tales behind his back.

  But maybe the brooch was a clue to Lillian’s disappearance.

  Fighting down his distaste, he knew that the one man in town who might know was Kurt Koenig. He would ask him.

  * * *

  As it happened, Jess had to send someone to roust Koenig out of bed. He kept a room at the Silver Garter where he slept most nights.

  “What the hell time is it?” Koenig said. H
e looked rumpled and out of sorts. His cotton nightgown reached to his hairy ankles.

  “Nearly seven,” Jess said. “I have a question to ask you.”

  “Damn you, Jess, you don’t ask a man questions at seven in the morning,” Koenig said. “Don’t you ever sleep?”

  “It’s about a brooch,” Jess said.

  “About a what?”

  “A brooch. It’s got words on it and I need you to tell me what they mean.”

  Koenig was stunned. He tried to talk a few times and when he finally found his tongue he said, “Jess, I said I liked you, but this time you’ve gone too far. You’d better get out of here before I shoot you.”

  “I wrote the words down just as I remembered them,” Jess said. He tore a page out of the tally book he always carried and showed it to Koenig. “What does that mean?”

  “I’m gonna shoot you, Jess. By God, I mean it.”

  “What do the words mean, Kurt?”

  Koenig sighed and glanced at the slip of paper. “Despite your large, illiterate scrawl, I can read them,” he said. “It’s a French saying and it means ‘you and no other.’ Now get the hell out of here.”

  “One more question, Kurt.”

  “You’re killing me here, Jess.”

  “How much would a brooch with a diamond the size of a five-dollar gold piece and those words in emerald stones cost?”

  “More than a lawman will earn in a lifetime,” Koenig said. “Now get the hell away from me.”

  Koenig turned on his heel, threw some choice cuss words over his shoulder and tramped back upstairs to his room.

  Jess stood in the middle of the empty saloon, his head bowed in thought. If Lillian’s father was a tightwad would he spend a small fortune on a diamond brooch? But perhaps it was her mother’s and Lillian had inherited it. There was only one way to find out. He’d have to speak to Patrick Burke again.

  CHAPTER TWENTY-SEVEN

  Patrick Burke’s office was directly above the brewery and was redolent with the rich, malty smell of beer. The walls of his office were decorated with animal heads and a thick Persian rug lay on the floor.

  “You have news for me?” Burke said, his face hopeful.

  “Only questions, I’m afraid,” Jess Casey said.

  “What kind of questions?” Burke said.

  “Did Lillian own an expensive diamond brooch?”

  “Not that I know of.”

  “You didn’t buy a brooch for her or give her one that was left by her mother?”

  “What tomfoolery is this?” Burke said. “I brew beer. Do you know what my profit margin is? Damned little. I don’t have the money to buy my daughter diamonds or her mother before her, either.”

  “Was Lillian walking out with any rich men friends?”

  “No. The only man she brought home regularly was some accounting clerk who writes poetry on the side. He’s as poor as a church mouse.”

  “Do you recall his name?”

  “Of course. His name is Lester Ward and he works for the Chartered Exchange on 10th Street. Does he have anything to do with my daughter’s disappearance?”

  “I don’t think so, but I’m following every lead I can get, Mr. Burke.”

  “Then go follow them, Sheriff,” Burke said. “Find my daughter.”

  * * *

  In the aftermath of the sandstorm, the sky bore the promise of a bright day as Jess rode north along Main Street, a favor to his horse, who hated to be cooped up in his stall all day. To his surprise, people began to acknowledge him. Men touched their hat brims and ladies smiled and fluttered their eyelashes. Jess was not one to cut a dash and he assumed the Half Acre had begun to accept him as its peace officer. If that was the case, it was indeed a gratifying thought.

  The Chartered Exchange was a grim building of gray brick with a myriad of small, dusty windows that looked onto 10th Street.

  When he asked to speak to Lester Ward, the young man was called from a room full of pale, bent-backed clerks and Jess was told by some kind of fussy manager that he could interview Ward in the hallway but to be quick about it since clerks worked from only seven in the morning to seven at night and as it was “there were just not enough hours in the day to get the work done.”

  Ward was a personable young man and it seemed he had nothing to hide. He said he and Lillian walked out together now and again, but she showed little interest in him as a possible husband.

  When Jess asked him if he’d given Lillian Burke the diamond brooch he said, “Sheriff, I could never afford jewelry like that on a clerk’s salary. But I did ask her who gave it to her and all she’d say was, ‘It’s a gift from a secret admirer.’”

  “Have you any idea who that might be?”

  Ward shook his head. “No, I haven’t.”

  “Did you know that Lillian Burke was an opium fiend?” Jess said.

  “Yes, and she used morphine,” said Ward. He shook his head and frowned. “I tried to warn her away from it, but she wouldn’t listen. Recently another drug made from opium has made its way into Hell’s Half Acre. I don’t know if Lillian was using that or not.”

  “Where would she get the money to spend on drugs?” Jess said.

  “Not from her father, I can tell you that. He keeps Lillian on a very strict budget. I’ve done his books a few times and Mr. Burke is quite wealthy, but he pleads poverty all the time.”

  “Have you any idea where Lillian could be?” Jess said.

  The young man shook his head again. “None. But I’m worried sick. In many ways she’s a very vulnerable young lady. She was only twelve when her mother died quite horribly of cancer and I don’t think she ever got over it. She’s not a stable person, Sheriff.”

  The prissy manager showed up in a state of high agitation and Jess thanked Ward for his help and left.

  As he rode back to his office all Jess had determined was that Lillian Burke had a rich secret admirer and that she was sinking deeper into her drug addiction. He was willing to bet the farm that it was Kurt Koenig who’d introduced it into the Half Acre.

  * * *

  As nightfall came to Fort Worth Jess Casey decided his investigation could wait until tomorrow. For some reason the post of sheriff generated a lot of paperwork, most of it dealing with routine stuff like the amount of fines to be levied on the owners of loose dogs and a five-page memo from Mayor Stout on how vagrants, boxcar hobos and dance hall loungers were to be treated.

  Such low persons must be taken to the city limits and warned to stay out of Fort Worth. Any reoccurrence of their offense must be dealt with harshly by a sentence of ten days in the city jail on bread and water. Where possible, such vagabonds must be put to work to pay for their food and accommodation. {See addendums IV, VII, X, XII, and XV listed below.}

  Jess sighed and bent to his task, plowing through a ream of paperwork created by City Hall clerks with nothing better to do.

  CHAPTER TWENTY-EIGHT

  As Jess Casey signed endless memos with a sputtering steel pen, across town Wilson J. Tucker killed a man.

  It was a two-bit shakedown that had gone wrong and it cost the lives of a tinhorn gambler who went by the name of Frank Poteet and his six-foot-tall lady friend, an actress and sometime hooker the sporting crowd called High Timber Tess.

  The rules of the shakedown were simple and Poteet and Tess had played the game many times. But that night they tried it on the wrong man. Wilson J. Tucker didn’t play by the rules.

  The Alamo Saloon and Sporting House was a two-story dive on Houston Street next to Battles Cotton Yard. Everything about the place was third-rate. The booze was watered, the whores one cut above those found on a hog farm and the nightly entertainment was provided by a drunken fiddler who played fast and loose with the music.

  Tucker didn’t just wander into the place. He’d been sent to find out why opium and morphine had been duly delivered to the Alamo but no monies were forthcoming in return.

  The proprietor of the place, Larry Kemp, a swarthy, greasy-lookin
g man, apologized profusely and vowed that, pending a good Friday and Saturday night, he would gladly pay what was owed.

  “Even if you have a bad Friday and Saturday night, you’ll pay up,” Tucker said. “Otherwise you’ll be in real danger of trying to get around on two broken knees.” The gunman smiled. “Is there anything about what I just said you don’t understand?”

  Tucker stood under a gas lamp and his hard eyes were in shadow. Kemp blinked and said, “I understand. Good or bad, I’ll have the money come Sunday morning.” And then, the devil in him, he said, “You can pick it up on your way to church.”

  Tucker liked that, a man with spunk. He’d been thinking that he might leave Kemp with a reminder, a broken wrist maybe or a cut, but he decided against it.

  “Good idea, Kemp,” he said. “I’ll stop by Sunday and read to you from the book.”

  “A drink, mister, on the house?” Kemp said. He was relieved that the tall hard case had not taken umbrage at his remark.

  “Yeah. And get the bottle from under the bar.”

  Tucker, his eyes on the proprietor, making sure he got a bottle with a label on it, didn’t see the exchange between a seedy-looking gambler and the woman who stood watching him.

  Almost imperceptibly, Frank Poteet nodded his head in Tucker’s direction and the woman smiled. High Timber Tess could lay no claim to beauty, but she had large, well-shaped breasts just visible under the filmy stuff of her camisole and a wide, expressive mouth, painted bright scarlet. In all, she was a desirable woman to a man just off the trail.

  Tess waited until Tucker got his whiskey, then she pushed her breasts against him and said, “In the mood for some company tonight, honey?”

  “I don’t pay for it,” Tucker said. “I’ve never paid what you got to offer, girlie.”

  At first Tess was frightened by the man’s eyes, ice blue, cold, merciless, the eyes of a killer. She turned and glanced at Poteet, but he nodded in Tucker’s direction, irritably this time. The woman was experienced, had entertained hundreds of men and she overcame her revulsion.

  “Honey child, what I got to give, all of it, is free for a big, strong man like you,” she said. “Come upstairs and go exploring in the high timber country.”