“Perhaps you shall be assigned to work on my case, Mr. Long,” the lady suggested.
“It’d be a pleasure as well as a duty, ma’am.”
She beamed. “Wonderful.” She turned to Henry and said, “Make a note of that, would you please? Mr. Long is to be my deputy.”
“I’ll, uh, do that, Miss Mayweather,” Henry said. For some reason Henry looked kinda like he was having a gas pain. He coughed and turned away, took his spectacles off, and began polishing the lenses with a handkerchief.
“Thank you. Yes. Thank you very much.” She turned back to Longarm. “Shall we begin, Mr. Long?”
Longarm was going to say something, but damned Henry went and interrupted. “Miss Mayweather.”
“Yes?”
“Deputy Long can’t start work on your case, you understand, until the marshal himself makes the assignment. What you should do, miss, is go home now and wait for the assigned deputy to contact you.”
“Really? But I’ve already told you to write down there that it is Mr. Long that I want. I distinctly specified that, did I not?”
“You did, miss, and I’ve made a note of it, so I have. I will see that your wishes are conveyed to Marshal Vail. But you do understand that Deputy Long cannot begin work on your, um, case until Marshal Vail releases him from his other duties. You do understand that, don’t you?”
“Of course I understand that, but...”
“Please. Trust us, Miss Mayweather. I assure you that Marshal Vail will be informed at the earliest possible opportunity. Just as soon as he returns from Omaha.”
Miss Mayweather made a pouting face toward Henry, then flashed a radiant smile at Longarm. “I look forward to seeing you again, Mr. Long.” She curtsied.
Longarm returned the gesture with another bow, a rather more shallow one this time, and held the door so the pretty lady could make her exit into the hallways of the Federal Building on the fringes of Denver’s downtown district.
Then he turned back to Henry with a frown. “Omaha? When the ...” He turned back and opened the door a crack so he could glance out and make sure Miss Mayweather
wasn’t within hearing any longer. “What the hell is this about Billy going t’ Omaha? He was right here just a little while ago.”
Henry chuckled. The slight clerk hooked the earpieces of his glasses behind one ear and then the other, and returned his handkerchief to a pocket. “You know as well as I do that Billy is in his office, Longarm.”
“Then what... ?”
Henry winked and handed Longarm the form Miss Mayweather had just signed.
Confused, Longarm took the thing and skimmed over
it.
Then he laughed. “Shit. You’re kidding.”
“May be,” Henry said with a grin. “But Miss Mayweather isn't.”
“Shit,” Longarm repeated. He looked down and read the official complaint again. “Shee-double-it,” he said this time when he was done.
Henry laughed.
According to the report, filled out in the lady’s own hand and duly signed with Henry as a witness, she was asking the United States Marshal, First District Court of Colorado, to intercept, apprehend, and prosecute a host of demons who were invading her privacy every night. The demons entered her head, she said, by way of her nose. And they were awfully annoying. She, uh, wanted them arrested.
“Sounds like a job for the sheriff t’ me,” Longarm suggested.
“Oh, she’s tried there already. Also the city police. They sent her here.”
"We’ll have t’ do something nice for them someday. Anybody figure out how we have federal jurisdiction over this?”
“I asked her about that,” Henry admitted. “She thinks the demons might get their orders through the mail. That sounds to me like something Jim Sanders over at the police department might have dreamed up and suggested to her. just to get her off his back and onto ours.”
“Obviously a federal case then,” Longarm agreed dryly. “You still want to ask Billy to assign you to it?” “Mmm, reckon I’d normally want t’ snap this one up. I mean, hell, think of all the glory. It ain’t everybody gets to arrest a whole gang of demons. But now that I think on it, I’m pretty busy. Give this’un to Smiley. You know he’s always game for a good laugh.” Smiley was perhaps the most taciturn and gloomy human being Custis Long had ever met. Smiley would shit little green apples if he was ever handed a “case” like this one.
Henry chuckled again, wadded the official report into a crumpled ball, and deposited it into the file it was best suited for—the one beside his desk whose contents were hauled away and burned each night.
“Seriously, Longarm, if you are quite ready to get back to work now, the marshal wants to see you.”
“I dunno, Henry. I may be missin’ out on the case of my life by not goin’ after Miss May weather. But I expect I’ll risk it.” He laughed and went to tap on Billy Vail’s office door.
Chapter 2
Billy Vail looked up when Longarm came in, grunted once, and gave the paperwork on his desk a frown of concentration as he bent back to it. “Be with you in a second,” he said.
Longarm helped himself to a seat in front of his boss’s desk and pulled out a slim, evil-looking cheroot. He took his time about trimming the twist off the tip, moistening the wrapper leaf on his tongue, and lighting the smoke. Wasn’t no way, he reflected, that he would ever want to swap jobs with Billy. A United States marshal had to be an administrator, a paper-pusher, much more than he was allowed to be a lawman. Custis Long knew he made a fair hand as a lawman, but lacked the patience to be any kind of administrator. In particular he lacked the thick skin that was required when a man had to deal with politicians. Billy Vail didn’t like that part of the job a lick more than his top deputy would have. The difference was that Billy was able to put up with it. Longarm was convinced he never could.
Billy finished the form he was scratching on, put it atop a pile of other papers, dipped his pen nib into the inkwell, and scrawled something onto another sheet and then another. Finally he let out a sigh before bellowing for Henry, who came in and took that stack of papers away. There were plenty more remaining on the desk still to be attended to.
“Deputy Long,” Billy said by way of greeting.
Longarm crossed his legs and grinned at him. “Marshal Vail.”
“You don’t have to look so smug, damn you,” Billy said accusingly.
Longarm’s grin didn’t waver. “I think you need a drink, Boss.”
Billy kneaded his face with the palms of both hands and sighed again. The impromptu massage made his already pink complexion even redder. He ran one hand back over his scalp, a gesture of habit, not necessity. There no longer was hair growing there to be smoothed down.
“What I need,” Billy said, “is a thirty-hour day. Twenty- four just isn’t enough anymore.” He grimaced, then shrugged as if to say what the hell, he hadn’t taken the job in search of a vacation anyway. “What can I do for you, Longarm?”
“Oh, a raise would be nice, I suppose.” Longarm held the cheroot between his teeth and grinned.
“Is that what you came to see me about, dammit? If that’s all it is, well, I have work to do. More important things than to—”
“Billy. Whoa. You sent for me. Remember?”