Crossfire

by Matt Braun

  “Yes! Oh God, Ash! Deeper!” she moaned, her eyes closed. Her bucking hips began to pound as sensual moaning turned to guttural sounds and she grabbed the vertical bars on the brass bedstead.

  Tallman unleashed a final flurry of thrusts and his seed flooded her insides in decreasing spasms while Vivian made grunting sounds and released waves of her own juice. Their bodies stiffened as they reached the pinnacle and fell into space on the other side.

  TWO

  A high-wheeled coach rattled and jolted through the ruts in the road. The canvas blinds had been lowered part way to block the blistering sun. Nonetheless, the passengers wilted. Only scrub trees and odd-shaped, rust-colored boulders occasionally interrupted the purple-gray monotony of the Arizona desert. In the distance, sun-bleached board-and-batten buildings danced in the shimmering heat waves.

  Red Rock lay near the foot of the mountains, just below Picacho Pass. A white man’s town in a hostile land, its inhabitants were a motley group of down-and-outs and a well-entrenched lower element who provided the amusements. Only twenty-five miles from Tucson, the capital of the Arizona Territory, Red Rock was also a stop-off point for thieves, assorted charlatans, and hard-nosed prospectors who worked the desolate mountains.

  Vivian’s shoulders dropped in relief when the stage rumbled to a stop. Clad in a low-cut red dress that clashed with her overdone auburn hair, she looked like a fallen woman. The heat and the choppy stage ride had put the crowning touch on her disguise. She felt the part. When her feet hit solid ground, she gazed at the dusty main street and the spartan buildings. Across the way she saw a general store flanked by a stable and a ramshackle hotel. Three doors down from the hotel, the Silver Dollar saloon seemed to be the center of activity.

  Vivian left her carpetbag in the stage office and told the driver that she would call for it later. On her way to the Silver Dollar, she passed two idlers. While eyeing the men, she pushed her shoulders back and adjusted her floppy, feather-decked hat. Their interested stares followed her hips. Glancing over her shoulder, she smiled to herself, always amused at the way most men would weaken when tempted by the desires of the flesh. Still smiling, she passed the hotel and continued to the saloon. Pausing at the door, she glanced suggestively in the direction of the loafers. When she came through the batwings, she found an uncrowded long bar made of a large rough-sawn timber. Numerous crude wooden tables and chairs were scattered about the room. A big man with a crooked nose and a roll of flesh hanging over his belt sat at one of the tables with an open ledger.

  “Hi, there,” Vivian said as she approached the man with the ledger. “You own this joint?”

  The mean-faced man leaned back, hooked his thumbs in the pockets of his gold vest, and deliberately focused his eyes on her overflowing bosom.

  “Who’s askin’?”

  “Lizzie Todd.”

  The man held his eyes on her chest and nodded approval.

  “Brought you some business,” she said as she glanced over her shoulder in the direction of the two loafers, who had followed her in. “And I figure I could bring in a few more just like them two.”

  “Name’s Chunk Frazer. This here’s my place,” he answered as he moved his lecherous gaze to her eyes and wiped the corners of his drooping mustache with a large, grubby knuckle. “Lookin’ fer work?”

  Without an invite, Vivian drew out a chair and sat down. She crossed her legs toward the door and the two idlers who were headed to the bar. The pair gawked a moment, then ordered whiskey.

  “Could be,” she said as she placed a red-nailed fingertip to her lips and sensuously touched it with her tongue. “If the work’s right.”

  “What’s right?” Frazer asked as his eyes darted again to the creamy vee at the top of her dress.

  “Most everything . . . except I ain’t in the business of droppin’ my drawers for just any old stink-ass miner or stiff-dicked cowpoke.”

  Frazer slid his chair closer and took hold of her elbow. “Well, I might be able to use a woman who can do most . . . anything.” Then his fingers crawled up her arm.

  “You can see how easy I hustle drinks,” she went on as she eased herself back and nodded again toward the pair she’d led into the Silver Dollar. “Led those boys in here neat as you please.”

  “What else can you do?” he asked. Spittle appeared at the corner of his mouth and his breath reeked of whiskey. “Those old boys hang here all the time anyhow.”

  “The usual. Roll a drunk. Run a scam. Turn a trick. Whatever you need.”

  “What I need is what you got hid down there ’tween your legs,” Frazer said as he released her arm and grabbed her breast with his other hand. He kneaded her flesh forcefully. “You might work out. But old Chunk don’t bring nobody on the payroll ’lessen he’s took a close look-see at the prospective employee.”

  “You’ll get a look-see, but on my terms,” she growled as she held her face in a hard look. “I say who and when. So if you ain’t interested, I seen a couple of waterin’ holes up the street that might want to up their whiskey sales.” She looked down at his grip on her large breast. “Finished yet?”

  “Well, hogshit on my boot! Ain’t we got us a wildcat here. No need to get all hot, lady. You said you’d open them legs for gold. Didn’t see no harm in a free sample. Hell, any good drummer’s got free samples,” Frazer said in a friendly tone as he released her flesh. “No hurry.”

  “Most drummers I know don’t get sick once a month either,” Vivian shot back after erasing her scowl. “You catch my drift.”

  “Ohhh,” Frazer howled, as he slapped both hands on the ledger book, which was opened wide on the crude table. “No wonder she’s so testy.” Frazer acted friendly all of a sudden, her words about heading for another saloon still clear in his mind. Red Rock hadn’t seen the likes of Lizzie Todd in some time, and he intended to keep her for the Silver Dollar. “Go get cleaned up. I’ll have the swamper show you a room out back.”

  “What about terms?” Vivian insisted. “I want to know where I stand . . . up front.”

  “Two dollars a day for the girls on nights, split seventy-five–twenty-five on booze, and fifty-fifty on fuck money,” Frazer said as he hauled a small dirk from his belt and began cleaning his fingernails. “And no workin’ your pussy on the side. That’s one thing that ain’t good for your health, if you get what I’m sayin’?”

  “What about protection for your girls?”

  “I’m my own bouncer,” he said as he flexed his arms. “Ain’t many that cares to tangle with old Chunk.”

  Vivian figured him for a bull who liked bustin’ heads. His bent nose, thick ears, and the layers of scar tissue over his left eye lent credence to the words.

  “Bink!” Frazer yelled toward the back of the saloon. “Git your skinny ass in here.”

  A fourteen-year-old towhead ran from a back room.

  “Watcha wan’, Mr. Frazer?”

  “Bink, show this lady to the empty room,” Frazer said as Vivian got up.

  “Shore thing!”

  Frazer reached up her dress and gently massaged the silky flesh on her inner thigh. The young swamper’s face turned crimson. “I’ll come by later and see you’re settled in. After I do these goddamned accounts,” Frazer said, showing her a toothy smirk that exposed several black teeth and rotting gums that made Vivian’s own teeth ache.

  “I told you, Chunk. It ain’t the right time of the goddamn month,” she said, faking a playful voice.

  “There’s more ’n one way to make the one-eyed monster spit fire,” Frazer said as he grabbed his crotch with his other hand.

  “Come on, Bink,” Vivian said to the swamper as she spun out of Frazer’s lewd grip. “Show me my room before this bull corrupts your ears beyond redemption.”

  Frazer grunted and went back to the ledger.

  A few minutes later Vivian stood looking at her accommodations. Hardly more than a crib in a back-alley whorehouse, she thought. After slumping on the double bed, which occupied more than
half the room, she kicked off her shoes and wiggled her toes. She was pondering her situation and dreading the moment the rotten-mouthed Frazer would demand her flesh. Assured that she’d think of something, she got up and wriggled out of the dusty red dress. She was undoing her corset when she heard a soft rap on the door. Her heart sank as she opened it, expecting to find Chunk Frazer in the hallway.

  Bink, the swamper, stood bug-eyed. She’d forgotten that she’d sent him for the carpetbag.

  “Thanks, Bink,” she said, pointing to the bed. “Put it over there.”

  Struck dumb, the youngster padded across the worn carpet and deposited the valise on the bed, turned, and stopped, staring at exposed flesh as a strawberry glow spread over his cheeks.

  “I’ll give you two bits out of my first pay,” she said, devilishly pondering the possibility that the boy was virgin.

  “Yes’m,” he said as he scampered from the dank room.

  An hour later, she had splash-bathed in the basin on the rickety dresser and she was applying makeup. War paint, she thought to herself. Carefully, she rouged her cheeks and then painted her mouth into a shiny cupid’s bow. As an afterthought, she added a beauty spot at the corner of her left eye. She stood back from the dull mirror and nodded approval. “A real sleaze,” she said out loud.

  Satisfied, she turned to her carpetbag and drew out a frilly wine-colored peek-a-boo dress that was accented with glass gems. After tending to her glossy auburn hair, she slipped the sheer dress over her head, careful not to smudge her gaudy makeup. Once in place, the dress seemed to ripple with a life of its own. She laughed when she saw the outcome of her effort in the chipped mirror. But as she slipped on black stockings, she momentarily wondered why she was there in Red Rock, Arizona. She hooked one stocking to the garter and stopped. “Why?” she asked the wall. She mused that she could be working a con on some rich city slicker who didn’t have rotten teeth and breath like vulture shit. But she recalled the close call she had when Tallman uncovered her game and saved her from a slow death in the New York State Women’s Prison. “Why not!” she said, dismissing her question. Same game, different side of the law, she thought to herself. After she rolled on the other stocking and checked her outfit a final time, she left the room.

  The sun was still above the horizon, but men had already begun to stream into the Silver Dollar. She paused at the door leading from the saloon to the back rooms and straightened her shoulders. Her breasts swelled like ripe melons over her tight decolletage. Her tiny waist accented her hips and produced an hourglass form. When she entered, drop-jawed drinkers eyed her fruit.

  “Hey, honey!” one cowboy, carrying a load of pop-skull, shouted over the clink-clank of an out-of-tune piano. “How’s about you and me go back to your room for a little jig-jig!”

  “Later, big boy,” she answered in a husky voice.

  “That is, if you can keep it stiff after what you’ve put away.”

  The others at his table roared with laughter as the cowboy to his right thumped the loudmouth’s Stetson down to his ears.

  The bartender nodded for Vivian’s help as he loaded a tray for a table of card slicks. Thus she started an evening that merged into endless hours of fending off horny miners, drunken cowhands, and foul-mouthed riffraff. Her bottom was sore from sly pinches and her feet throbbed in the spike-heeled shoes. Eight o’clock turned to nine, and then to ten. She longed for closing time. Yet she continued to smile, kid the loudmouths with sharp backtalk, and hustle drinks.

  Then, near a quarter to eleven, the batwings slammed open and a squint-eyed tough pounded toward the bar, followed by three other hard cases, two older men and a fuzz-faced blond kid who had the devil in his eyes.

  “Hey, Doc,” someone shouted through lips thick with whiskey. “How ya doin’, you goddamned rattlesnake.”

  “Hey, Leroy,” Doc shouted back. “Still fuckin’ your sister?”

  Vivian turned just as the laughter erupted, when she heard someone shout “Doc.”

  “Whiskey for me and the boys,” the man named Doc said to the harried barkeep. “An’ don’t try to pawn off any of that Apache juice on us!”

  After she scanned the room, her eyes locked on the new customer. Oldham’s words flashed in her mind. You’ll spot the mean eyes first. If the whole case goes this good, she thought to herself, we’ll bank a heavy fee and be on our way home inside a week.

  Doc Stroud and his three sidekicks snatched the bottle of whiskey and the glasses from the bar and headed for a table occupied by a lone drunk. As Stroud passed, Vivian got a closer look. The scarfaced man with mean eyes matched Oldham’s description perfectly.

  “Hey, Doc,” the bearded sidekick said. “Looks like Chunk’s hired him a new girl.”

  Doc stopped and turned. “A might easier on the eyes than Ellie and Aggie,” Doc said, referring to the other two women working the floor.

  At the table, he hoisted the drunk out of the chair and threw the limp figure on the floor. Again his trio laughed, a chorus of guttural noises.

  When she saw the passed-out miner go flying like a sack of oats, she was sure that Stroud would cut his mother’s throat for six bits. Nevertheless, she fixed a suggestive look on her face, moistened her lips with a twirl of her tongue, and walked straight toward the four thugs.

  “Can I get you boys anything?” she asked when she got to the table.

  “How about you get another glass and join us,” Stroud commanded in a polite voice. “That’d please me just fine.”

  “Why, thanks,” she said.

  When she returned, she pulled out a chair and slid the glass forward. The blond fuzzface had the bottle but he held it firm and stared into Vivian’s eyes with a kiss-my-ass expression.

  “Chrissake, kid,” Stroud moaned. “Ain’t no call to be a shitass. Pour the lady a drink. No wonder you don’t git no women an’ have to pull your mouse yourself.”

  The kid looked at Doc with murder in his eyes and then turned toward Vivian. After a pause, he slid the bottle toward her. She caught it before it left the table, and poured a drink.

  “Don’t mind him,” Stroud said to Vivian. “Indians killed his folks when he was eight and he’s been fendin’ for hisself ever since.”

  Vivian slugged back the whole shot, looking forward to the glow it might provide.

  “So what’s yer name?” the man with the beard asked.

  “Lizzie Todd.”

  “Right nice to meet you,” Doc said with the grace of a deacon at a church picnic. “This here’s Jake,” he added, pointing to the man with the beard. “Kirk,” he went on as he nodded toward the other older man. “And then we got our kid here. Kriss Kliegle. A pureblood square-head. Folks come right from Holland or some goddamn place. Doin’ all right, too, until the redskins snatched their yellow hair.”

  “Fuck you, Doc,” the kid said as he turned his half-full glass upside down and got up.

  “You oughten be so rough on the kid,” Kirk said from under his dusty, sweat-stained flat-brim Stetson. “Ain’t he had enough bullshit for a lifetime?”

  “Likely to gut you some night while you’re sleepin’,” the bearded Jake warned. “Kid’s bad crazy.”

  Vivian refilled her glass and did likewise for the others.

  “Do you boys come here often?” she asked them. “I’m new in town. Haven’t made any friends yet.”

  “We usually have a look-see in the Silver Dollar every now and then,” Stroud answered.

  “You a real doctor?” she asked Stroud. “I heard ’em call you Doc.”

  The three men laughed, Stroud the loudest.

  “See this scar?” he asked as he ran his finger down the crease in his face. “My own doctorin’. After some Indian cut me right to the bone, I cut his throat and then sewed it up with a needle and the hair from my paint’s tail. All without no mirror or nothin’. Somebody called me Doc and it stuck.”

  “You did a helluva job,” she said as she ran her fingertip slowly over the scar. Her smile wide
ned and she looked right into Doc’s blue eyes. “Gives you character. . . . Damned if it don’t.”

  Kirk grunted at the babble and tossed his whiskey.

  Jake followed suit.

  “You said you was without friends?” Doc asked.

  “My first day in town,” Vivian answered.

  “Well, now, I do believe you just found yourself one.”

  “Jake,” Kirk grunted. “What say we go over to O’Riley’s and find us a card game? Maybe build on our capital stock.”

  “Now you’re thinkin’ like a true businessman. We’ll just leave these two to their love talk.”

  “Guess those boys seen I was makin’ eyes for you and not them,” Vivian said after they left. Then she let her leg rest on Stroud’s Levis. “But it looks to me like you’re runnin’ the show anyhow.”

  “Might say that.”

  “I mean, I couldn’t help notice that people figure you’re somebody. The way they looked when you got here.”

  Stroud straightened in his chair as Vivian continued to carefully pump him up. She asked him questions about his past, his girl friends, and his exploits with the Indians. He belted the whiskey and sang boastful tunes. She’d found the key—his vanity.

  “Hell,” he said finally. “Here I am spoutin’ off, and all I know about you is your name.”

  “Not much to tell. My folks had me all set to marry the pimple-faced son of some preacher. But I had it in my mind to get away from all those stiff-shirts. And here I am, ten years later.”

  “What the hell brought you to Red Rock?”

  “Seemed like as good a place as any to stay shy of the law dogs for a while.”

  “You runnin’?”

  She hung her head.

  Stroud laughed louder than he had all night and poured another glass of rye.

  “Wasn’t no laughin’ matter when we got caught. Expect my partner’s right now on his way to the territorial prison in Santa Fe.”

  “What’d you do?”

  “You won’t think less of me, will you? You bein’ a businessman and all.”