Longarm allowed himself to be moved down the stairs, but as they descended he still said, "You mean so he says. Billy it's established I was never anywhere near his informative Magda. Meanwhile, have you ever considered how many enemies I may have made packing this badge and my guns for you, or how convenient it might be to offer such a dramatic excuse to a grand jury, should one not make it out of town after gunning a lawman for fun and profit?"
Vail said, "Don't try to teach your granny how to suck eggs. I'll naturally send a heap of wires about two-gun Bohunks as soon as I can make sure you can't gun one another. But there's a hole in the plan you just presented. At the risk of turning your pretty head, you do enjoy a rep for winning gunfights. So one would think a man hired to gun you might not want to warn you in advance that he's out to gun you."
Longarm shook his head. "A hired gun, by definition, is a cuss who thinks he can take all comers, one way or another. His main concern, like I just said, is a good excuse to justify his actions to the folks he ain't been paid to kill. I found a runt in a seersucker suit called Attila amusing too. But who's to say who was bullshitting whom just now?"
Vail said he failed to follow Longarm's drift. So his tall deputy explained. "He might have just been pretending you'd fooled him with that sly introduction. You'd think a man would know who he was gunning for if he rode the D&RG northbound all the way from Trinidad to gun him. So let's say he roared in like a lion, expecting you to get him to leave like a lamb, after stating his intent to demand satisfaction."
"What for?" asked Vail with a puzzled scowl. "Seems to me a man would only make himself look more foolish if he ran all over threatening to kill someone and then... Oh, I do follow your drift!"
Longarm nodded grimly and said, "I'd be as easy to backshoot over in the Parthenon as Hickock was that time in the Number Ten. What got McCall in so much trouble then was that he just up and surprised hell out of everyone in Deadwood. Had he told all the boys in advance how old Wild Bill had been mean to him..."
They were at the bottom of the stairs now. Vail said, "I'll meet you later at my place up on Sherman. By then I'll have had time to wire some old pals in Trinidad and vice versa. Should our mysterious stranger turn out to be a stranger down yonder as well, I can have some of the other boys he can't possibly know pick him up, for some serious conversation. Should he really turn out to be Attila the Hungarian with a ruined marriage to avenge, we got an even more serious situation to converse about. In either case, I want you off the streets and out of sight whilst Henry and me get a better grip on things."
Longarm allowed he'd do as he was told for now. So they parted friendly and Longarm slipped out the basement entrance to the east as Vail climbed back up to his second-story office, muttering about gents who couldn't handle their fool wives.
It wasn't high noon yet, and Longarm knew he'd wind up beating rugs or splitting stove wood if he showed up at the Vail house too early on a workday. The motherly-looking but house-proud old biddy Billy Vail was married up with knew he worked for her man, and held that the devil found work for idle hands. She'd been like that ever since she'd found out about him and that young widow woman down the street from her.
It was too early to eat more chili, and he'd promised he'd get off the downtown streets of Denver. So he ambled on over to that rooming house he'd rustled up for old Lina Marie. He had his own key and the buxom blonde, for all her faults, would be at work until after five.
Meanwhile, he'd never gotten to read those magazines or smoke half the tobacco he'd carried up her stairs, along with the usual flowers, booze, and candy. So this unexpected afternoon off would offer the opportunity to kick off his boots and catch up on some casual smoking and reading, with nobody grabbing at his privates just as he was getting to the end of an article or the solution of a detective story. He liked those English detective stories a lot, even though those fancy English crooks seemed to use more imagination on paper than plain old American crooks did in real life.
A colored maid was dusting in the hallway as he let himself in the unlocked front door. She looked unsettled to see him there at that hour. But he knew she knew who he was and his connection with a paid-up roomer on the top floor. So he just nodded at her and went on up to Lina Marie's garret quarters under the mansard roof.
The hall door was naturally locked. Or so it seemed. He didn't know exactly why Lina Marie had locked it until he unlocked it and stepped inside, expecting to find himself alone up yonder.
He wasn't. The buxom blonde and a total stranger who could have used more fresh air and sunshine were going at it hot and heavy on the brass bedstead against the far wall, naked as a couple jaybirds in a love nest. The jasper on top froze in mid-stroke to stare goggle-eyed as Lina Marie grinned sickly at Longarm and gasped, "Honey! I wasn't expecting you this early!"
Longarm resisted the impulse to dryly observe that seemed mighty obvious. Some kindly old philosopher had once declared, doubtless in French, that nothing a man could say as he made a last exit would be more sophisticated than simply closing the door softly after himself as he left. Gals counted coup on each cussing or slamming from a man.
But Longarm was cussing to himself as he stomped down the stairs and out of the rooming house with that colored maid staring at him.
Striding up the shady side of the street he found himself muttering aloud, "That pasty-faced and pimple-assed son of a bitch must be the boss at work she told us about. Nobody else would be screwing her so freely on company time, and damn it, that was my pussy he was screwing so brassy, in the very quarters I helped her find!"
He paused under a cottonwood to light a cheroot as he told himself to calm down, muttering, "Don't get your bowels in an uproar over old Lina Marie, you idjet! You were looking for a graceful way out of the tedious fix, remember?"
He strode on, puffing smoke like a locomotive hauling its heavy load up a nine-degree grade as he growled, "Whether I wanted old Lina Marie or not is not the point. That pale soft slug couldn't lick old Henry from the office, and there he was on top of the gal I saw first, as if he thought I had nothing to say about it!"
Longarm suddenly laughed in a more boyish tone as his common sense told him, "Asshole! He wasn't thinking about you at all. He was just a poor mortal with a hard-on, and you know you laid Lina Marie the first night you treated her to spaghetti and meatballs with spiked wine!"
But as he strode east toward the somewhat cooler and clearer high ground of Capitol Hill, he found himself grumbling, "Hold on. I asked early on if she was spoken for. She says she told that priss at work she was shacked up with me!"
He decided that was the part that galled him the most. The soft pale shopkeeper should have known you don't help yourself to another man's tobacco or liquor without his permission either, unless you're sure he's too big a sissy to do anything about it. So where had an infernal dry-goods pusher come up with the notion a bigger man in any better shape wouldn't do anything about it?
Longarm suddenly laughed in a world-weary tone as his common sense told him, "From Lina Marie, of course. She'd have likely told him we were through before he carried her home from work early to console her. Forget the poor hard-up cuss. He never spent ten seconds thinking about you or any other man as he lusted after that brassy blonde!"
So Longarm strode on in restored good humor as he considered how everything was working out. But the unexpected ending of his half-ass love affair had given him added insight into what might be eating Attila the Hungarian. For Longarm could see that if he'd had a mite less regard for the written law, or a mite more regard for old Lina Marie, somebody could have been in a whole lot of trouble back there!