She commented on a couple of his scars she’d missed the night before as they lazed atop the bedding naked as jays. The afternoon sun was painting tiger stripes of shadow and light through the window shutters while she tried to blow a smoke ring around the dong she was holding fondly.
She said she could spend perhaps an hour up there with him on her investigation, seeing that he’d been shot at twice in the same day. So a good time was had by all, and they even got to talking some more about his main mission after he’d allowed her to try something she’d always wanted to had her late husband been up to it by the time she’d read that book on Oriental notions.
Once they’d tried, and wound up finishing more naturally, she said some Oriental notions on food tended to be more peculiar than really tasty, and asked how folks who’d come up with fried rice and such swell noodles might have invented tasteless bird’s nest soup and that slimy custard that tasted the way library paste smelled.
He massaged a firm nipple between thumb and forefinger, seeing she liked that, as he said he thought shark fin soup tasted like fish glue, come to think of it. He added, “Regular folks eat regular grub meant for regular pallets no matter where you go. Regular folks don’t eat regular enough to lose their appetites for regular grub. The odd luxuries of any style of cooking are meant for the odd appetites of the idle rich, who’ve never known what it feels like to get really hungry.”
He took the cheroot back to blow smoke at her mature but still mighty tempting flesh as he thought back to some odd dishes he’d been served in fancy homes. “Strawberries out of season don’t taste any better. Or even as good as ripe apples right off the tree. But that wouldn’t be showing off. I reckon it costs a heap more to serve your guests shark fins than fresh-plucked chicken or that sweet and sour pork the more common folks eat. I wonder how come Uncle Chester wanted to feel up a half-witted kid when he could have her mother French-style and naked all he wanted.”
The naked undersheriff suggested, “Rose Cassidy’s a handsome woman, as I recall. They do say variety is the spice of life, but Rose and her dim daughter didn’t look all that different.”
She began to stroke his limp virile member thoughtfully as she went on. “At least we know for certain that Uncle Chester has one of these. I’m not about to ask Maureen to judge which one of you has the best to offer. So there goes your notion that a saddle tramp who sings dirty songs about New Orleans has to be Miss Medusa Le Mat. Why would she have to know anything about New Orleans or the real Le Mat to begin with? Can’t you buy one of Doctor Le Mat’s wicked weapons most anywhere in this land of opportunity?”
Longarm put a hand to her wrist to encourage faster stroking as he decided, “You’re likely right. It’s as easy to figure I’ve been seeing tigers in the roses as it is to make any of these scattered bits and pieces fit.”
Since she was interested in law enforcement and aware of her own limitations too, Pat stopped jerking him off to ask him what in blue blazes he was talking about.
She said, “Medusa Le Mat and Uncle Chester are confounding enough! What tigers in what roses are we talking about?”
He rolled her on her back and kissed that nipple before he told her, “Us law folks usually get there long after the fact and have to piece things together from the evidence, which, as you know, comes in all sizes and shapes, scattered hither and yon.”
He ran his free hand down her tiger-striped belly, admiring the play of light as he played with her, saying, “You’ve doubtless noticed how much pure distraction is mixed in with hard facts you’re trying to nail down. If you put fact and fancy together wrong, you can get a convincing wrong picture. Little kids are always seeing tigers, scary faces, and such in the floral patterns of bedroom wallpaper designed by the artist to just look like roses. Some see a man in the moon, and the Indians are just as sure it’s a rabbit, sitting up on its hind end. Nothing ever made those hills and valleys up on the moon with either a face or a rabbit in mind. Folks see them because they can’t just see patterns that make no sense at all.”
She spread her thighs languidly as she purred, “I don’t see why a female bank robber and a finger-fucking saddle tramp have to come from New Orleans either. But keep doing what you’re doing with that finger and we’ll worry about it later, dear!”
He commenced to rock the boy in the boat for her as he calmly went on. “If Miss Medusa Le Mat’s in town, she ain’t wearing her usual dress. Maureen Cassidy ought to be able to point out her Uncle Chester if he don’t watch out. You say she’s at your house right now?”
Pat moaned, “Oooh, that feels so lovely! Yes, I’ve left the kid in the care of my housekeeper, with orders she’s not to receive visitors when I’m not home. I didn’t invite you home with me because my housekeeper’s a self-confessed peeper with a dawning interest in these very pleasures. So would you please mount up and pleasure me again?”
Longarm cocked one leg over to massage her moist clit with the head of his semierection, noticing how soon it began to feel like a chore when the gal started giving the damned orders.
He said, “Silent Knight allowed he might have been by to court the gal often enough to get turned down. What do he and Lash Flanders really do, honey?”
She tried, “They’re top hands, riding for the Lazy Eight, and don’t you intend to put it all the way in, you teasing thing?”
To which he replied, “In a minute. I’m distracted. Call me a sissy if you must. But I find it hard to keep it up for a gal who’s telling me big fibs, Pat.”
She thrust her pelvis up to catch another inch of him by surprise as she sobbed, “I don’t know what you’re talking about! I’ve never lied to you about anything! Why should I?”
He rolled dead center and thrust it in as far as he could get it not all the way hard, and just as he’d hoped, she moaned in delight and started moving passionately under him.
But he was a big man, too heavy for her to really bounce in the saddle unless he helped some. So he just lay sort of soggy on top of her, enjoying her efforts a lot, as he calmly told her, “I want you to listen carefully to my proposition before you feed me more white lies.”
She pleaded, “Please, Custis, you have to believe me!”
He kissed her to hush her and insisted, “You ain’t been listening. I savvy machine politics. Neither Denver nor any other town is run on the level. Crooked politician is a redundant term. Honest Abe never got elected without telling many a lie. The voters always have to choose betwixt baby-kissers willing to give them the sort of government you’d expect, and baby kissers who just plain rob them. I know you were appointed undersheriff by the county machine. Nobody else could have offered you the job.”
She said, “Make love to me, damn you! The county board of supervisors are as pure as the driven snow and I’m hot as hell!”
He left it deep and throbbing as he insisted, “I just said I ain’t interested in local graft. I only want to know what Lash Flanders and Silent Knight do for the powers that be.”
Pat gasped, “Don’t tease me like this. They both ride for the Lazy Eight.”
He gave her a few good strokes, then insisted, “No, they don’t. I just met them way off their range on a workday, and Lord knows where they rode from there. When first we met they were clean across their own county line in Florence, arrested on an assault charge. I asked Hard Pan Parsons as I was getting my belongings back. You can hire a top hand for forty a month and found. You don’t have to keep bailing him out of jams he gets into on his own. So who do they get in jams for, Pat?”
She hesitated, then sighed and said, “Cattlemen’s Protective Association, as regulators. Now do it regular, you brute!”