“Doc, if you don’t mind me asking, how much did that diamond of yours cost?”
“I haven’t the slightest idea.” Doc’s fingers went to the stickpin he always wore. “It was a gift from someone dear to me. I will die before I part with it,” he said. “But I take your meanin’. Sheriff Masterson appears to be prosperin’ in public service. You hear he just bought a half interest in the Lone Star Dance Hall? Now, what do you suppose that must have cost?”
For a time, Wyatt stood silently, watching Bat. “Thanks, Doc,” he said before walking on. “I’ll stop by after work, like you said.”
Kate came outside, her scowl aimed at Wyatt’s broad back. “I don’t trust him,” she said. She was making a cigarette: licking the edge of the tissue paper, sealing the tobacco in. “He don’t drink. He goes to church! Never trust a lawman who goes to church.”
“Why, Miss Kate, you are philosophical this evenin’.”
Doc scratched a match against the rough wood of a hitching rail and lit her cigarette. Kate inhaled deeply and blew out a plume of smoke.
“You shouldn’t trust him neither, Doc. He’s no good.”
“I believe you have misjudged the gentleman, but I shall certainly take your opinion under consideration.”
“Buy me a drink, Doc. I need a drink.”
“My pleasure, darlin’.”
She took the cigarette out of her mouth and reached up, placing it between Doc’s lips, her eyes on his, with the flat, challenging stare he was coming to appreciate. He drew in carefully, but still choked slightly on the smoke.
“Where’s the money tonight?” he asked.
“The Saratoga,” she said as they strolled down Front, arm in arm, the boardwalk hollow-sounding beneath their feet. “You feeling lucky, Doc?”
“Always, darlin’, when you are at my side.”
He rarely heard from Martha Anne these days, and Georgia was very far away.
Reform, he thought, just might be overrated.
“So Raskolnikoff was planning to kill that old lady all along?” Morgan asked. “He planned it up ahead of time, like it was a bank robbery?”
“That is my readin’ of the affair, yes,” Doc said.
Morgan shook his head. In his experience, killings were the result of momentary fury, or drunken foolishness, or plain clumsiness even. Thinking a murder through was so cold-blooded … “Must be like hanging a man,” he mused. “That’s awful.”
Doc was measuring the gap where Wyatt’s front teeth would have been, if Morgan had done as he was told and picked those berries instead of sneaking up to the barn with a book.
“That’s all I need from you, Wyatt,” Doc said after he wrote the numbers down and made some notes to himself. “I’ll get the rest from Morgan.”
“And you think somebody planned up killing Johnnie like that?” Morgan asked, swapping places with his brother in Doc’s barber chair.
“Well, now, it might not have been so thought out. More a matter of a sore loser decidin’ to get his money back, I imagine.”
“Get him into the barn for some reason, then bash him,” Wyatt said.
“Set fire to the barn,” Morg said. “Make it look like an accident.”
“That is my guess,” Doc confirmed. “Open.”
For a while, Doc poked around, measuring things. When he had what he needed, he sat at the desk and began to sketch Morg’s front teeth. The drawing was remarkable, down to tiny little bumps along the bottom edge of the teeth that Morgan had never noticed.
“Mamelons,” Doc told him. “From the Greek: small rounded mounds. Same root as ‘mammary,’ ” he said, cupping his hands in front of his chest.
Morgan laughed. Then it struck him. “Is that where ‘mamma’ comes from?”
“Or vice versa … The dental structures wear to a straight edge as you age. Yours are still visible. I expect Wyatt’s would be as well. I am requestin’ replacements that match.”
Wyatt asked, “When can we get started?”
“Gettin’ eager? I can begin the repair work tomorrow.” Doc added the diagram to an envelope addressed to Robert Holliday, D.D.S., and handed it to Morgan. “Mail this for me, son.”
Morg got a kick out of how Doc called him son even though Morg was actually a few months older.
“Heat taking the starch out of you, old man?” Morg asked him.
“Morgan, I am flourishin’,” Doc said, but the dentist looked pasty this morning. It was pretty close in the office, and Doc went to stand by the window, leaning his bony hips against the sill and resting one hand high on the frame. “How does that horse of yours run in this weather, Wyatt?”
The Fourth of July race was coming up. Everybody was handicapping the entries.
“He’ll do,” Wyatt said. “Nothing seems to bother Dick.”
Morgan snickered.
“Always rises to the occasion,” Doc suggested, slate-blue eyes angelic.
Wyatt frowned, suspicious. “What’s funny?”
Morgan glanced at Doc and started to laugh. “Dick Nail ’Er,” he said, sniggering. “Jesus, Wyatt, don’t you—?”
“Hush up, Morgan,” Doc said severely. He lifted his chin and added piously, “Your brother is a pure soul.”
Morgan crinkled up laughing like he used to when he was a kid, and all the brothers were crammed into an attic bedroom, and Virgil farted loud enough to wake Warren up.
“Pay that pup no mind, Wyatt.” Doc remained straight-faced, but he was struggling now. “It’s a fine name,” he said. “For a stallion.”
“You plan to stud Dick out?” Morgan asked, sobering momentarily.
Doc started to choke. Morgan broke up again. Pretty soon, the pair of them were giggling like eight-year-olds. Wyatt felt like the only grownup in the room.
Then he got it.
“Wait …” he said, his face going slack. “No!” he protested, mortified. “That’s not what—Oh, hell. He was named when I got him!”
Morgan wailed, and Doc was headed into a serious coughing fit.
“Anyways, I thought it was N-A-Y-L—” Wyatt started, but somehow bringing spelling into the matter just made things funnier. “Go on,” he told them, annoyed. “Enjoy yourselves, youngsters. Just don’t bet against him on the Fourth.”
By then Doc was laughing and coughing so hard, he couldn’t stand on his own anymore, and Morg was trying to hold him up but not very well. When Wyatt finally gave in and started to laugh, he didn’t even bother putting a hand over his mouth, and once he joined them, the other two were helpless. Doc’s knees gave out, and Morg dropped him. Before long, all three of them were breathless and exhausted, and Doc wasn’t the only one wiping tears from his eyes, which is why it took Morg so long to ask, “Jeez, Doc! Are you—?”
Doc nodded, grinning through the pain. “I’m all right,” he insisted, and his eyes were shining, but he was wet-faced and white, sitting on the floor of his office, pushing against his chest with both hands. “I cannot remember the last time I laughed like that,” he moaned. “Now I remember why. Oh, Christ, that hurts!”
Hand on the doorknob, Wyatt asked, “Should I get Doc McCarty?”
The dentist shook his head but gestured toward the bottle of bourbon he kept on his desk. Morgan poured him a drink. Doc tossed it back, closed his eyes against the burn, and held up the glass again. It felt like a long time before he wiped his face on a sleeve and let Morgan help him to his feet. Wyatt pulled the desk chair out. Doc sat for a time, elbows on the table, head in his hands.
“You sure about McCarty?” Wyatt asked. “What’s wrong, Doc?”
“Nothin’. Adhesions tearin’.”
Wyatt looked at Morg, who shrugged. Doc didn’t seem alarmed, so they just waited until he sat back in the chair.
“Morgan,” he said, “I haven’t seen a look like that since Cousin George came to visit me in Texas! You are very kind to be so concerned.” His voice was hoarse but cheerful enough, and his color was better. “Healthy lungs move smoothly, like this,” he told them, sliding one palm over the other. “Mine are stuck to the chest cavity. Fibrous bands form, like ropes.” He interlaced his fingers. “When I cough or laugh or—God help me, when I sneeze—the fibers rip.” He jerked his fingers apart. “It’s like breathin’ razor blades.”