by Tony Masero
‘Oh, dear God!’ sighed Kirby as his thoughts filled with their past. ‘Belle Slaughter.’
‘Sure, she’s still around,’ said Lomas his eyes quartering the street outside as they backed away from The Angel.
‘So much has happened, Lomas,’ sighed Kirby.
‘Damn right. Best take a moment to catch your breath, then you can tell me all.’
Chapter Nine
Buster Larne was breathing heavily.
The room was dimly lit with the gas brackets turned low and a bowl of a sweet smelling opiate burning in one corner that allowed a miasmic cloud of drug inducing vapors to creep across the carpeted floor and inveigle its way into Buster’s already liquor-dulled brain.
He knew Molly was teasing him as she twirled seductively around the bedpost in nothing but her corset, hose and pantaloons. From where he lay fully clothed on the four-poster bed he watched and listened with half a mind whilst drunken rowdies downstairs began cheering loudly as the ‘Circus’ got under way.
Molly finally let up on her introductory provocation and sat on the edge of the bed next to the prone figure. She undid the ribbons holding her pantaloons below the knee and slid off her garters and tossed them at him with a cheeky smile, she began to unroll her stockings, taking her time and watching his excitement grow as the soft flesh of her thighs was exposed in the dim light. She crossed her legs as she did so, knowing the press and slide of her shadowed skin would engender an unavoidable reaction in her mark.
Buster was a skinny young clerk at the war department and low on the rungs of the Knights of the Golden Circle. He was a small cog in a very large wheel but he heard things and being close to Xavier Bond meant he knew the outline of some of the Circle’s plans. And that was why Belle allowed him first choice with the well endowed Molly.
Molly was a chubby, cheerful little creature with all the appearance of virginal qualities. Her shiny blond hair was set in ringlets and there was always a ready smile on her round and welcoming face. She was young enough to carry her propensity for adolescent fat well and was the kind of woman that the scrawny figure of Buster just adored. He loved her broad behind, sturdy body and plump arms and as she leaned across where he lay on the bed his eyes drank in the pendulous blossom of blooming breasts that swelled out voluptuously from the low neckline of her corset.
She was a pink skinned creature with sweet red lips and flushed cheeks and Buster was totally devoted to her. So much so, that he craved her constant attention and had proposed marriage on more than one occasion.
‘Oh, Buster,’ pouted Molly, as she climbed up on the bed beside him and began to unbutton his shirt. ‘It’s been a while, you must have been very busy to stay away from me for so long.’
Buster felt her fingertips, light as butterfly wings as they traced a line on his thin hairless chest. He swallowed hard. ‘Why, yes. You know I would not be away from you if it was not important,’ he panted.
Molly suddenly cupped his rising erection through his trousers, ‘Buster, you are always so eager,’ she said, with an exaggerated gasp of surprise. ‘Did you miss me that much?’
‘You know I love you, Molly. I would do anything for you,’ said Buster, his voice rasping in his throat as she eased the shirttails from his pants top.
‘So what was it that kept you from me?’ breathed Molly, blowing cool breath on the skin of his trembling stomach and stiffening his hardness to bursting point.
Buster mumbled something inaudible as he watched her spilling breasts ease their way up his body.
‘What was that, darlin’?’ whispered Molly, her lips close to his ear. ‘I couldn’t hear.’
‘A shipment,’ he gulped. ‘I had to arrange a shipment.’
‘Is that all?’ asked Molly, snuggling her cheek next to his. ‘A mean old transport.’
Her perfume was in his nostrils, the scent of her hot body worming over him engulfed Buster and he was transported to a level of passion that left him almost speechless. He desired Molly more than anything and was caught and held firmly in the web of her touch.
‘Oh, it was a big shipment. A special. A lot of money involved.’
‘Really? That has to be a very important task to arrange. You must be so important in your office duties to be responsible for such a thing. It makes me quiver to be near to so highly placed a man. When I think of the power you must hold, I am so lucky you want to be with me.’
‘I’m not so important really,’ he said shyly but pleased she thought of him as such.
‘Look at you,’ she said, unbuckling his belt and sliding her hand under the waistband of his pants top. ‘So big, so proud. No one else comes close in size. Every time you are near me I’m afraid, afraid I cannot manage so monumental a vessel.’
Buster squirmed at her touch, his hot flesh shivering and his heart pounding in response. He could hear it beating inside his head and he tilted his hips in desire for more.
‘So just how much is actually involved in this great transport?’
‘Seven hundred thousand dollars,’ he breathed quickly.
Molly kissed him, her lips sucking at his lower lip and the tip of her tongue playing along the line of his mouth.
‘Ah, Molly,’ he groaned.
‘It must take a lot of mules to carry such a load.’
‘No, no… ah, yes…. there. No, it goes by ship.’
Her tongue was licking around his contracted nipples whilst her hand kneaded his crotch.
‘A ship!’ she squeaked. ‘A sailing ship, you know I’ve always wanted a sea voyage. It is a sea voyage, is it? To some exotic land no doubt. If only we could sail away like that, Buster. You and me, in a cabin alone with nothing to do all day but play like this.’
‘How I wish we could,’ he panted, the urgency evident in his voice. ‘Yes, yes I would like nothing more. Can we do that thing now, Molly? You know, that thing I like.’
‘Of course we can. You know I love to do that for you. It gives me as much pleasure as it does you.’
She slid down the bed until she knelt between his spread legs and then began to undo his buttons, taking her time and easing out each button slowly so that the agony was prolonged for him. ‘There,’ she said with a smile, as she held him throbbing in her hand. ‘You are like a great mast on a sailing ship. What shall we call this boat? Eh, Buster, what is the ship called?’
‘The Phantom,’ he sighed. ‘Oh, God, yes. The Phantom. Do it, Molly. Do it now.’
Molly did as he asked. She did it for a long time until Buster could hold himself no longer and finally burst out in sobbing cries.
‘There,’ she confessed, gazing up at him adoringly. ‘Dear Buster, you are so prolific I am all at sea. Why, I do believe I can almost taste the foam of an ocean wave.’
Clara was equally engaged.
She leaned over the shoulder of General Romulus Spinks her lips close to his ear. Anyone near might overhear and be amazed by the string of invectives and curse words issuing from the soft lips. Words so foul and crude that they seemed an insult to the beauty of the woman that offered them. But Clara did her work well; she managed to make each obscenity seem like a gentle invocation of melodic poetry.
The General’s attention was fixed on the figures set on the raised dais in front of him. Around its base were gathered the members of his entourage, all of them young men under his command and all drunk and raucous in their lascivious enjoyment as they watched the well-endowed fellow on the stage service the two girls on a wide king-sized bed.
Clara was keeping up a running commentary. It was not that the General was short-sighted, it was just that he preferred to hear a woman whisper to him in the basest of terms the actions that were unfolding before his eyes.
The General was a stern, stolid and often silent figure in his early sixties. A bewhiskered man whom, although a recognized war hero, when it came to the bedroom battleground he was more for watching than for any action. He sat in a straight-backed chair, his upright body stiff and dressed
in full military uniform with both hands placed on the metal scabbard of the saber across his knees before him.
From the rear of the room, Belle took one last look to ensure all was going well, then left to sit in her office until word percolated back to her and she could form a comprehensive picture of all that her girls learnt. It would form the basis of the report she would send on to Pinkerton and it was her place to assess the value of the information and rearrange it in context where possible.
Belle poured herself a small sherry and sipped the drink as she waited. As she sat alone in the room her mind slipped unwarranted again to that empty place in her heart. The hollow place that realized too late what a person meant to it. She had struggled for so many years now to understand why she had rejected Kirby when he was alive and why now he was gone she so sorely missed him.
She justified her reaction on the grounds that she had been a young girl on her way up and had not wanted to commit herself to any home and hearth with the prospect of a distracting family life. But now there was an ache evident in her. Not for children but for company. An understanding companion with who words were not always necessary and with whom she might share a common goal. She had enjoyed the company of many men, first when she spied in Richmond amongst the officers of the Confederate army and latterly in the power corridors of Washington. None though, amongst her many lovers had stayed longer in her mind than the brief passage of their visitation upon her body.
Belle recognized that there was a certain harshness in her demeanor now, not toughness; she knew she had already inherited that capacity from her early days in Appalachia. No, it was an evolution encouraged by the undercover work she was engaged in. It had come to a head when she had shot the Confederate General Lamb, shot and killed him dead, for he had never recovered from his wound despite her kept promise to seek him aid. Her bullet had been well placed and she felt no remorse about that.
No, it was only Kirby that she felt any remorse for. Kirby, with his many ardent attentions that she had so callously rejected. What a boy he had been. She smiled at the memory. Wild and reckless, yet always there when she needed him. She suspected his myth had grown over time and although he held a hero image in her mind now, she realized that perhaps the truth had been a little different and that he had probably been no more than a brave and adequate cowboy gunman in reality.
They had kissed but once. It had not stayed in her mind, that kiss. She knew he had stolen it one day but had no recall of how it felt. It had been just before Lomas was shot and when she had experienced the first rising of anger in her body against those that had destroyed her place and her friends. Those early stirrings that had now grown and accreted with the cruel choices she had needed to make across time. She shook her head with the understanding that these were the things a Pinkerton agent must suffer. Her boss was right, there was only one remedy and that was to concentrate on work. Her task was to excise Xavier Bond and his perverse brigade that threatened to rot in the underbelly of the Union and bring about its demise.
Still though, she thought as she drained the glass, these were considerations she would have liked to share and discuss with Kirby Langstrom. For, she wondered guiltily, was her engaging with the work merely a way of disguising the inadequacies that lurked below the surface. A distraction to avoid facing the real truth and that awful truth might be that although her stunning beauty promised more, she herself was not capable of feeling an emotion as powerful as love.
There was a knock on the door and Molly poked her head inside.
‘Anything?’ Belle asked with a smile. ‘Did you bust poor Buster down to size?’
Molly laughed at the analogy and came in closing the door behind her.
‘It seems they have at least planned how to move the gold out of the country after its taken from the train,’ she said.
Belle took out a paper and dipped her pen in the ink well.
‘Good work, Molly. Tell me all.’
She scratched away studiously as Molly recounted all she had learnt, only stopping to ask how Clara was doing.
Molly snorted a laugh, ‘She’s still bleating swear words into the General’s ear.’
‘Let’s hope she hears something more valuable in return from that bleak old statue.’
‘Clara can milk a stone, don’t worry.’
‘Go see if one of his troop can come up with more. I think his adjutant is down there and by now they will all be hot and bothered and eager enough to promise the earth for some time on the pillow.’
‘Would that be the handsome captain with the brave mustache?’ asked Molly.
‘That would be him,’ agreed Belle.
‘Then the task shall not be all that tiresome I think,’ grinned Molly.
It was in the early hours near dawn when Belle had finally received all there was to know.
They had the transport plans if the gold raid came off and all that Pinkerton would need to do was to discover where this ship ‘The Phantom’ was moored. Then, if all else failed, an intervention could be made before the ship sailed.
Additionally, with Clara and Molly’s report, it seemed that General Spink and his review board had discovered certain anomalies in Virginia at a place called Columbine. The government had originally set aside three hundred and fifty thousand dollars for the success of the Freedmen’s Bureau but only thirty five thousand had been taken up and questions had been raised as to the failure to make the most of the funds available. Yet despite this lack of uptake word had reached the committee that the agent in Columbine had prospered beyond the means available and it had given cause for concern.
A whisper had occurred during Molly’s assignation with the adjutant that tied the two names together. There was no direct link mentioned but the occurrence in the same sentence of both Bond and the agent Sweet Dean Pye gave cause for concern.
This was war department business as the Bureau fell under its aegis and Belle suspected that Xavier Bond might well be taking a hand in the excess of funds left over from the original allowance. There was three hundred and fifteen thousand dollars going begging and Belle could not imagine Bond missing such an opportunity. She wondered just what part the agent in Columbine might be playing in this.
It seemed to her that a field trip might be a useful undertaking. Perhaps she would take the girls on a brief vacation. Yes, it was time to breath some fresh country air away from the city. It also occurred to her that perhaps in new surroundings she might escape the insistent thoughts of Kirby Langstrom that plagued her and subdue her feelings of guilt about his absence.
Chapter Ten
‘That’s the whole story?’ Lomas asked Kirby in disbelief.
‘That’s it,’ agreed Kirby. ‘I lost my way for a while back there and when I woke up I found I liked where I was. Lizbette is one hell of a woman and I love her dear.’ He reached across and took her hand in his. ‘She not only saved my life, I reckon she saved my soul as well.’
Lomas looked across at Lizbette and she gave him a coy self-effacing little smile in return but he recognized the intelligence in her eyes and he knew she was made of sterner stuff than that smile allowed, he found he liked that.
‘What about Belle?’ Lomas whispered.
‘Belle Slaughter always looked the other way,’ Kirby said. ‘You can’t miss what you ain’t never had. I left all that behind me, Lomas. This is my reality now, here with Lizbette.’
The three of them were seated on the quay where Kirby had introduced Lomas to Lizbette. There were fishermen busy on the quay, repairing their nets and working on their vessels. It was a pleasant and peaceful picture under the sunny day and Lomas tried to absorb Kirby’s story as he looked out over the bay, his gaze finally fixing on The Phantom resting at anchor in the swell.
‘That why you’re here?’ asked Kirby, jutting his chin in the direction of the ship. ‘Pinkerton got something on that vessel?’
‘Not quite,’ allowed Lomas. ‘I’m not with Pinkerton any more. No, this is per
sonal.’ He turned to Lizbette, not wanting to get into it just then. ‘You got to excuse us, Miss Lizbette. I’m still getting over finding your man here alive.’
Lizbette shook her head, ‘Not to worry,’ she said. ‘I’m as amazed as you. I had no idea that Kirby had such a colorful past.’
Lomas instinctively liked the woman, her quiet calmness appealed to him and he felt that she too approved of him.
‘You’d best tell me about problem you’ve got, Lomas. We’ve got a wedding to go to shortly and I’m in dire need of a best man. So your arrival is fitting and right on cue.’
‘Who, me? You want me standing by your side?’
‘Not just that, partner. You’re going to have to double up. We need someone to give the bride away as well as a body to pass me the ring.’
‘Hell, Kirby! I never done something like that before.’
‘Now’s your chance to expand your experience then.’
‘Shoot!’ said Lomas, looking at the hazy horizon across the water in confusion. ‘That’s one hell of a thing.’
‘It ain’t so hard,’ grinned Kirby.
‘We’d be pleased, Mister Bell,’ said Lizbette. ‘I think it’s real nice that Kirby’s found an old friend at such a time and its right and fitting you should stand by his side.’
‘Why thank you, ma’am. And it’s Lomas if you please. Well, I appreciate the honor and I’ll be only too glad to oblige. But its best you know one thing. I’m here on a mission that may well go south on me, there could be some hurt involved.’
‘Spit it out, Lomas. What is this you’ve gotten into?’
‘It’s my sister,’ said Lomas and he let them have the whole story.
Wayland was not pleased. An angry grimace spread across his face as he looked down at the remains laid out before him on the blood soaked grass.
What was left of Cable Corinth was propped against the tree he had clung to in his final moments. The desecration of his body had been complete and the message written large for all to see.