Роберт Паркер - Robert B. Parker’s Blackjack

Virgil grinned at Allie.

“What?” Allie said.

“Nothing, Allie.”

“Oh, Virgil,” she said.

Skinny Jack watched as Allie walked off down the hall, then looked to Virgil.

“Been a shooting,” Skinny Jack said.

“Who?” Virgil said.

“A policeman.”

“Policeman?” I said.

“None of us,” Skinny Jack said. “Thank God.”

“What policeman?” Virgil said.

“He’s from Denver.”

“A Denver policeman shot here in Appaloosa?” I said.

“Seems so.”

“Dead?” Virgil said.

“Not at the moment. Don’t know if he’ll make it, though.”

“Who did it?” Virgil said.

“Truitt Shirley.”

Virgil’s eyes narrowed.

“You remember him?” I said.

Virgil held his squint a bit.

“Do,” he said. “Bad seed.”

I nodded.

“We had a run-in with him and some of his toughs,” Virgil said.

“We did. You convinced him, the lot of ’em, to sleep it off.”

“How do you know it was Truitt that did the shooting?” Virgil said.

“Witnesses,” Skinny Jack said.

“Truitt been arrested?” I said.

“No.”

“What’s a Denver policeman doing here?” I said. “And why has he been shot by Truitt?”

“We don’t know all the particulars,” Skinny Jack said. “Know his name is Roger Messenger.”

“Messenger?” Virgil said.

“You know him?” I said.

Virgil thought for a moment, then shook his head.

“Name is familiar,” he said.

“He had a knapsack with a ticket receipt of travel from Denver and we found his name in his pocketbook. He showed up here in Appaloosa on the morning train. That’s what we know about him.”

“Have you wired the Denver authorities?” I said.

“No, sir. Sheriff wanted y’all to know.”

“When was this?”

“’Bout an hour ago,” Skinny Jack said.

“Where is the Denver fella now?” I said.

“Hospital. Doc said besides his condition being not so good, said he was drunk as hell, too. He had an empty bottle of rye in his knapsack.”

“Where was this?” Virgil said

“In front of the new gambling-parlor building. But that’s not all. This here is the reason Sheriff especially wanted me to find you two.”

Skinny Jack pulled a rolled-up paper from his coat pocket and laid it on the table in front of us.

“This Roger fella had this here warrant for the gambling man, Boston Bill Black, in his possession. Matter of detail, he had it in his hand when he was shot.”

I read it and then handed it to Virgil.

Virgil read it. Stared at it some.

“I’ll be damn,” he said.

“You called it,” I said.

“Suspected it,” he said.

“I was not far off your mark, Virgil.”

Virgil nodded a little.

“Boston Bill Black wanted for murder,” I said. “Ever since he showed up, acting special... you damn sure called it.”

“Where is Sheriff Chastain?” Virgil said.

“Book, the sheriff, and the other deputies are out looking for Truitt and Bill Black.”

Virgil turned to the open, curtain-covered window to his left.

“You hear everything okay, Allie?” he said.

Allie spoke from behind the curtains.

“Don’t mean it’s true.”

“No, Allie, it don’t, but there is this warrant here.”

“Just a piece of paper,” she said.

“No,” Virgil said. “It’s not just a piece of paper. A warrant is issued when there is proof and evidence.”

Allie pulled back the curtains.

“Well, I don’t believe it, Virgil.”

Virgil turned to me then back to Allie.

“What?” he said with a shake of his head. “Why?”

“Not one word of it.”

“Well, why would you not, Allie?”

“He’s a fine upstanding gentleman.”

Virgil rested both of his hands on the table, cocked his head, looking at Allie, then narrowed his brow.

“How would you know?”

“I just do,” she said. “Call it woman’s intuition.”

Virgil smiled at me and shook his head a little, then looked back to Allie.

“Woman’s intuition?” he said.

“Yes.”

Virgil shook his head again.

“The man has been in town here for a short while and you’re vouching for him.”

“I’m not vouching for him, Virgil. I just heard from some of the ladies that he was a good fella.”

“That so?”

“Yes,” she said.

“Some of the ladies?”

“Yes,” she said. “I even said hello to him at the town hall, and he was perfectly nice and upstanding.”

“Well, hell,” Virgil said. “That’d be for the judge to decide.”

I had first laid eyes on Boston Bill Black on a dark rainy night not long after he showed up in Appaloosa. I’d heard about his arrival and I knew he was an imposing character. His reputation as a gun hand, rounder, and raconteur preceded him, too, but then again, there are always two sides to a coin.

It was late in the evening when I stopped in for a whiskey at the Boston House that I saw the big man. I thought it was amusing or half interesting that a man named Boston Bill Black was in the Boston House Hotel Saloon. There he was, bigger than life, dealing cards in the gambling parlor just off the main barroom. He was seated at a corner table with three other fellas, dapper mining executives. I could tell by the stacks of the chips they were playing a high-stakes game of ventiuna; that was the common name for the game in the southwestern parts of the country. Some people called it twenty-one. Others... most... called it blackjack.

Boston Bill was an impressive-looking gent, no doubt. He was as big and strong as any man I ever saw. His neck, forearms, and wrists pushed outward on the fine fabric of his long jacket like the cylinders that drove and powered the wheels of a locomotive. I got myself a whiskey and took a seat at the end of the bar next to Pearl, a half-Cherokee, half-black whore from the Indian Territory. We had a connection, Pearl and me. Her father was a marshal, killed in the line of duty when he was working for hanging Judge Isaac Parker. Pearl was good at her profession and very nice to look at in her silky dresses that always exposed her strong, bare shoulders, but she was also unusual for a working woman. She was college-educated, smooth with conversation, political, and unafraid to speak her mind. She lived with another woman named Bernice and had only one main interest in men, and that was their money. Pearl was a friend, and as friends often do, she felt inclined to fill me in on some details she’d personally gathered regarding Boston Bill Black and his proclivities.

She glanced back over her brown shoulder at him sitting at the table, telling tall tales to his flip-card partners, and told me she had given him a ride two nights previous. She said that besides the fact he liked to gab a bit and was full of shit, he was rough with her.

“How so?” I said.

“Oh, he needed to turn me every which way,” she said. “Like a damn origami or some such, Everett. Like he was trying to fix me into something I wasn’t, and in the process he needed to whip me, spank me, like a cow... I didn’t mind it, though. Some men are that way. Not you, of course, Everett, you are a gentleman. I believe it has to do with them being pulled from the teat too soon. Malnourishment obviously does not always have an effect on physical growth, but it most certainly affects the brain. The premature lack of nutrition causes them to feel the need to take out their aggression on the weaker sex, a manifestation of their need to be dominant though they are really just lacking in solid character... Something you know nothing about, Everett.”

She laughed, looked back at him, and studied him for a moment.