Robert Parker - Ironhorse

“That’s right,” Lassiter said.

“What was in it for you?”

“Mr. Cole,” Lassiter said. “We are not on trial here, and we are as interested as yo—”

“Just answer the question, Mr. Lassiter,” Virgil said politely.

Lassiter shook his head slightly and looked to Hobbs.

“We were just providing the contacts,” Hobbs said. “The governor is our close friend, and this was an opportunity for all of us.”

Virgil took a sip of the cognac and smiled. He puffed on his cigar for a moment while Hobbs and Lassiter just looked at him. Berkeley took a seat across the table from us, between Hobbs and Lassiter.

Virgil looked at his cigar and to Berkeley.

“Got a doctor in this town?” Virgil asked.

“Doctor?” Berkeley said. “Yes, we do. Well, I should say we did, but he has moved out to the camp, the miners’ camp, for the time being. A lot of the men have been sick, so he’s out there for now. There is a dentist here that has been doing doctoring in the interim. Doc Meyer.”

“Where would we find Doc Meyer?”

Berkeley pointed.

“Right across Three Quarter Street here, just up a ways. If he’s not there in his place, he’s most likely at one of the gambling parlors down the street. He gambles a bit... a lot, actually.”

Virgil stood up, and I did the same.

“Are you feeling bad?” Berkeley said.

“’Bout some things,” Virgil said.

“Not the food, I hope?”

“No, food was good. Fact, that’s some of the best food we’ve had in a long time,” Virgil said. “Don’t you think, Everett?”

“I do.”

Berkeley smiled as he scooted back the chair he was sitting in and stood up.

“Well, good, then.”

Berkeley retrieved two keys from his pocket and handed one to me and one to Virgil.

“Got you gents a room here if you want. When you come back, just talk to Burns here at the desk, he can get you some hot water. There is a tub at the end of your hall, second floor.”

“Muchas gracias,” Virgil said.

We crossed the street to the south side and walked east. There was less commotion, fewer folks moving about in the streets than there were when we had entered Hotel Ark.

“You think those lawyers got something to do with this, Virgil?”

Virgil worked on his cigar for a moment, thinking as we walked.

“Don’t know.”

“But maybe?”

“They looked at each other an awful lot,” Virgil said.

“They did.”

“There was some knowing by somebody about something for this ball to drop like it did,” Virgil said.

“Seems probable,” I said.

“More than probable.”

“What are you thinking?”

“Don’t know,” Virgil said. “But Bloody Bob Brandice and that one-arm conductor fellow didn’t stumble into that Pullman car by chance.”

“What about the governor?”

“Hard to say.”

We walked on. I moved up on the boardwalk. Virgil stayed walking in the street.

“Constable Berkeley seems like an okay hand for a whore handler.”

“Big boy,” Virgil said.

“Serves up some good food.”

“Does,” Virgil said.

“His whores are good-looking.”

“They were.”

We walked on a ways farther, looking for Doc Meyer’s office.

“How much do you think it’d cost for that pretty whore with the baking-soda teeth and the flower in her hair?” I said.

“More than you got.”

“Here we go,” I said.

We came to a narrow two-story structure with a Dentist Office sign on the door. Virgil was standing in the street, looking up.

“Lamp burning,” Virgil said.

I knocked on the door. We waited for a moment, but no one stirred. Virgil stepped back into the street a bit more, looking up to the upstairs windows. I knocked again and looked back to Virgil.

He shook his head.

I knocked again, harder this time. I heard some bedsprings squeak, followed by a man’s voice.

“Hold on, just a goddamn minute, hold on...”

Through the wavy sugar-glass window of the door, light and shadow of a lamp coming down the stairs at the back of the office stretched and turned.

A man’s shadow grew huge against the back wall of the stairwell as he descended the steps. After he got to the bottom step he started talking loudly as he approached the door.

“Don’t you got no better sense than to bother me at this time of night! The cost is double this time of night, just so you know, goddamn double!”

He opened the door. He was tall, wearing an old worn-out silk paisley robe and floppy night slippers. He was most likely in his forties, but his slouchy body looked more like sixty. He was unshaven, his hair stuck out in every direction, and he reeked of alcohol.

“What’s the goddamn problem?”

I looked back to Virgil. Virgil stepped up on the boardwalk next to me.

“You Doc Meyer?” Virgil said.

“No,” Doc Meyer said, “I’m the goddamn tooth fairy! What do you want?”

“I’m Marshal Virgil Cole; this is my deputy, Everett Hitch.”

“You got a toothache? You hurt?”

“We are looking for a wounded man,” I said. “We want to know if he came to you tonight, if you’ve seen him, treated him.”

“I treat a lot of people! This here is a community of ignorant goddamn miners getting hurt every day. Now, I was asleep, and if you don’t mind, I’d like to go back to it!”

He started to close the door, but I stopped it with my foot.

“Recently, in the last few hours?” I said. “A bullet might have clipped the side of his head, maybe his ear.”

Doc Meyer looked down at my foot, and his shoulders sagged. He scratched his scalp and yawned with his mouth open wide. He made a high-pitched yawn noise and said, “What’s in it for me?”

“You will have an opportunity to go back to sleep,” I said.

“Otherwise Everett will come in there and have to knock you around a bit,” Virgil said politely. “He don’t want to, but he’ll put a knot in your ass if you don’t cooperate.”

Doc Meyer reacted like a skunk sprayed him in the face. He held up his lantern, looking at Virgil. We could see his face clearer now. His nose and cheeks was a spiderweb of broken blood vessels, and his eyes were bloodshot. He looked Virgil up and down like he was looking at a painting in a museum. He shook his head and opened the door.

“Oh, good goddamn, no rest for the wicked, no goddamn rest... come in, officers, come on in. The only thing worse than card cheats is goddamn lawmen.”

Virgil looked at me and smiled, and we followed him inside. Doc Meyer dragged his slippers across the floor as he ambled back to a cluttered desk next to his dentist chair. He set the lantern on a stack of books and flopped down in his squeaky chair behind his desk. There was a skull sitting on the desk with a silver tooth that caught a piece of light when Doc Meyer turned up the gas on the lantern. He leaned over and opened the bottom desk drawer and pulled out a whiskey bottle. He bit the cork, spit it on the desk, and took a swig. He took a second swig before leaning over and picking up a white piece of cloth from a small trash canister. He unfolded the cloth and laid it on the desk next to the lantern. Inside the cloth were pieces of bloody flesh. For effect, he pointed at the pieces of the flesh with a scalpel. He figured since we were providing him some unpleasantness he would return the favor and give us a bloody little show.

“That’s all that was left of his helix, antihelical fold, and concha.”

Doc Meyer leaned back in his chair, holding the scalpel between the thumb and first finger of his hand, smiling at us with a liquored-up look on his face.