“He was acting a lot tougher last night,” Longarm said.
“I ain’t finished: I said I just went over the report. It’s about a sickly, not-too-bright, lonely boy who read lots of penny dreadfuls until something snapped in his feeble mind. He ain’t never been anywheres near Julesburg, and his family ain’t in any way related to the real Black Jack Slade. That was easy for the Denver police to check out with a couple of night-rate wires to the county clerks involved. But somehow the broodsome loner must have adopted his namesake as a hero As the gent he wished he could be. For if there was one thing the original Jack Slade was not, it was a sickly sissy. The kid no doubt read of the time his hero was hit twice with Pistol rounds and blasted thrice with a sawed-off shotgun in the same fight. It’s a matter of public record that Slade was left for dead, got back up and tracked down the man who’d gunned him to return the favor, slow. Slade winged his man, tied him to a post, and tortured him to death with buckshot rounds from the kneecaps up. Then he cut off his ears and ended the discussion by shoving a gun muzzle down the poor bastard’s throat and pulling the trigger. Can you imagine the effect this tale must have had on an impressionable youth who’d never won a fight in his life?”
Longarm said, “I can. I saw the bodies he left on his sister’s rug. The army must have taught him to handle a gun pretty good in the short time they was graced with his full attention to such matters, and there’s some truth to the old saw about Sam Colt having made all men equal. That’s why you got to let me go after the young lunatic, boss. For I do know, now, just how dangerous he really is and, more important, I know him on sight. One had to be there to get the joke, Billy. He looks harmless as a kid dressed up for Halloween and we’re likely to wind up with a mess of dead lawmen before he runs into one as morose as me.”
Vail shook his head, lit his smoke, and shook out the match before he said, in a tone that sounded final, “It ain’t our case. The killing took place under Denver jurisdiction. The victims rode for another federal department. We got enough of a caseload as it is. We don’t need to go out looking for work, old son.”
He could see how Longarm felt about that. So he added in an almost fatherly tone, “Look, I know you feel responsible but it wasn’t your fault. The Provost Marshal sent two good men to do a job and they muffed it, So it was their fault.”
“I could have taken him, Billy.”
“No you couldn’t have, not knowing what you knew then. I don’t hire trigger-happy deputies and had you blown away a kid just for sassing you in a saloon I’d have had to fire you or worse. We’re all smug as hell after we make a sensible mistake. Half the dam women in the world would die old maids if they gave us the power to read minds, and poker would be no fun at all.”
“I could have told you that. Meanwhile, that deadly dwarf is still running loose out there with two loaded guns!”
Vail shrugged. “We lives in an imperfect world, old son. Our job is to pick up the pests with Justice Department papers out on ‘em. You can only eat an apple a bite at a time. We’ve neither the manpower nor the time to go after every pain in the ass on earth. So don’t be greedy. I got plenty of sinners with plenty of Justice Department arrest warents on ‘em, if you really feel ambitious.”
Longarm didn’t like it, but he knew when Billy Vail meant it, and that would have been the end of it had not Henry come in just then with a telegram to say, “I just signed for this, sir. It’s marked ‘urgent’ and requests a reply.”
Vail frowned. “Well, give it to me, Henry. I can’t hardly reply to it before I read it, can I?”
Longarm leaned back in the leather guest chair and got out a smoke as Vail took the wire and read it, getting redder-faced by the word. Near the end, he was growling like a junkyard dog, deep in his throat.
When he’d finished Vail balled the yellow paper up in a white-knuckled fist and told Henry how to word his reply. The clerk got even paler. “You can’t send words like that by Western Union, Marshal Vail!” he protested.
Vail growled, “Word it your way, then, just as long as you tell ‘em to take a flying fuck at a rolling wagon wheel!”
As Henry left, Longarm chuckled and asked Vail who he wanted to see injured so dreadfully.
“War Department,” Vail said. “Do you remember that prissy Colonel Walthers we had that trouble with down in the coal-mining country a spell back?”
Longarm lit his cheroot. “Who could ever forget him?” he asked. “You were lucky. You only tangled with him a time or two. I’ve had even more trouble with the pompous idjet and his military police. What’s he done now? Anyone can see he’s got you sort of upset.”
“He just warned us the murder of them two army men was the army’s case entire, and it seems he remembers you as well. He just mentioned you by name, warning me he’ll take it personal if you stick your big nose—his words—into his case before he can get here from Fort Collins with his own team of investigators.”
Longarm asked innocently, “Can the army give orders to this here department, boss?”
Vail grinned wolfishly. “They cannot. I thought we had that settled the last time that asshole argued federal jurisdictions with me.”
Longarm, who knew his boss better than the pompous Colonel Walthers must have, was already rising to his feet as Marshal Vail roared, “What are you just sitting there for? Go out and git me that murderous midget maniac before the damned old army trips over him!”
By two in the afternoon Longarm’s stomach was growling and his feet weren’t too happy about all the circles they’d been walking in on the sun-baked streets of Denver. He stopped at a Broadway beanery for some chili con carne and apple pie, washed it down with plenty of black coffee, and found out the handsome waitress was married to the short-order cook in the back.
Feeling better, but no smarter, he consulted the list he’d made before leaving the federal building and decided to check out the scene of the crime again, next. He respected the Denver police and the place had surely been combed over pretty well already. But sometimes things looked a mite different by the light of day.
The whole block looked different as he trudged up the slope with the summer sun agreeing that the suit required for work was a mighty dumb notion. The street was now deserted and it could have used some shade trees as well. He hadn’t noticed the night before that the Banes house was freshly painted a sort of baby blush pink with white trim, or that the modest front yard was mowed neat as a green plush carpet. It took a lot of water and work to have even a little lawn like that in Denver after, say, the end of June. He stepped up on the porch and twisted the doorbell. The wan-looking lady of the house opened it to say, “Oh, you were here with those other lawmen last night, weren’t you?”
She had washed her face and fixed her hair, and she wore a fresh cotton print that harmonized nice with her dark hair and sad blue eyes. He smiled reassuringly down at her and said, “I am Deputy U.S. Marshal Custis Long, Miss Flora. I know I’m intruding and I confess I don’t have a search warrant. If you want to slam your door in my face I won’t be able to do a thing about it.”