Роберт Паркер - Robert B. Parker's Revelation

I nodded.

“Do,” I said. “He’s the older of the two Hal described, I’d say. Looks to be mid-fifties or so.”

“Don’t see any other big-chested fifty-year-old fellas wearing a bowler hat with a feather, do you?”

“Don’t,” I said.

“What about the other fella?” Virgil said. “The young one, real tall, skinny, long hair, scraggly beard?”

“No... don’t see him,” I said. “Just the older one.”

Virgil nodded a little, glancing up to the second floor.

“What’s upstairs?” he said.

“I think Meserole has his office up there, but I don’t know for a fact.”

Virgil nodded a little and glanced around some.

“They ain’t whoring here?” he said.

“No,” I said. “Just saloon girls, flirting and hustling whiskey.”

“We wait?” I said.

Virgil nodded a bit.

A small woman came walking in from a door near the bar and glanced around some, then looked over to me. She nodded a little to me — the friendly “buy me a drink, paying customer” nod. Then she tilted her head and casually meandered her way over and settled between Virgil and me.

“Wet enough for you?” she said.

Virgil turned toward her a little. The move put his back even more to the big-chested guy with the feather in his hat.

“Is,” he said, then smiled.

“How y’all doing this evening?”

“Better ’an most,” I said.

Virgil nodded a bit and looked to me.

“Real good,” I said.

“That’s good,” she said. “That’s good.”

“And you?” I said.

“Peachy.”

She was attractive for a woman who barely filled her dress and shoes. Every part of her was thin: her fingers, her face, her figure, everything.

“What’s your name?” Virgil said.

“Betty,” she said with a smile as she twirled a strand of her hair with her finger.

“Betty,” Virgil said with a nod. “It’s a pleasure.”

“Likewise,” she said as she twirled the strand one way, then twirled it in the other direction.

“You been in here most the evening?” Virgil said.

“I have,” she said. “And I’ve yet to have a single drop, if you can believe that?”

Virgil glanced to me.

“Whiskey,” I said to the bartender.

She looked to me, smiled. “Why, thank you,” she said.

“Got a few questions for you, Betty,” Virgil said.

She smiled and looked down at her skinny body.

“Let me see if I can find the answer you are looking for,” she said, then looked back to Virgil with pouty lips that turned into a coy smile.

“I’m Virgil and this fella here is Everett. Everett and me are here on official business.”

“I’m about as official as they come,” Betty said with a laugh.

Virgil smiled.

“What could be more official than little ol’ me?” she said.

Virgil slyly pulled back his jacket and showed her the star pinned on his vest.

“Right now we have some marshaling business to attend to.”

She looked back and forth between Virgil and me.

“Am I under arrest?”

“No,” Virgil said. “The official business we are here to conduct has to do with two fellas we are searching for.”

Her demeanor changed and she stood a bit taller, as if she were in trouble.

“I want you to smile and enjoy your whiskey,” he said. “There is no reason you need to do otherwise. Don’t want you to draw attention to nothing out of the ordinary, okay?”

She glanced to me then cut her eyes back to Virgil and nodded.

“Okay.”

“Just over my shoulder,” Virgil said. “There is an older fella. He’s a big fella sitting with a couple of gals under that stairway landing.”

She leaned a bit.

“That’s Debbie and Ellen.”

“Just look at me,” Virgil said. “Like I said, I don’t want you to get anyone’s attention.”

She nodded.

“Smile,” he said.

She smiled.

“So, real casual-like,” Virgil said. “You got a good look at the man I’m talking about, sitting with Debbie and Ellen?”

“I do,” she said.

“Do you know him?”

“No.”

“Seen him in here before?”

She nodded.

“I’ve seen him before, yes, but I don’t know him, honest.”

“He have a friend, too?”

“He does.”

“Big, tall young fella with long hair and a scraggly beard.”

“That’s right,” she said.

“Any idea where he is?”

She nodded.

“He’s walking down the stairs as we speak.”

Just as Virgil turned, a shot was fired from someone upstairs and we heard a scream. The shot was a loud shotgun blast and the load hit the tall, skinny man just as he got to the landing. The blast knocked him forward into the railing. He turned in one swift motion with his gun and fired upstairs, then slumped and doubled over on the rail. A moment later a body tumbled down the stairs and slammed into the tall man and the two men busted through the railing and fell onto a table below, which collapsed under their weight.

The whole place erupted in a clamor as everyone moved toward the door.

Virgil and I had our pistols out and moved through the people toward the man with the bowler and the other two men who’d just crashed through the railing.

After people made it by us, trying to get out, we determined that the older fella with the bowler was now nowhere to be seen and the tall, young man with the long hair appeared to be dead, with another man laying facedown on top of him, who, by quick observation, also appeared to be dead.

Just behind the table where the man with the bowler had been sitting was a window in an alcove, and it was open.

“Front,” Virgil said.

I moved quickly and Virgil was right behind me, trying to get through the crowd of people struggling to get out the front door, and just as we made it out, we briefly saw the man with the bowler. He was hightailing it away in the pouring rain and within a moment was around a corner and gone.

“I’ll be goddamn,” I said.

“I’ll deal here,” Virgil said. “See if you can catch the son of a bitch.”

I ran across the street into the alley where our horses were tied, swung up on the bay, and followed in the direction the man rode in hopes I might get lucky. I made the corner he’d turned and rode at a steady clip. The rain was coming down in my face, making it hard to see, and so far I’d seen nothing. I rode till I got to an intersection, and in every direction I looked I saw nothing, no one moving, no one on horseback. I rode on forward for a bit to where the road dead ended at the railroad tracks. I turned and rode up the tracks a bit, then stopped.

I looked around and saw nothing but darkness all around except in the direction of town, where the hazy light from it shimmered in the falling rain. I sat there for a while thinking I just might get a glimpse, but I saw nothing. I rode back through the streets of Appaloosa, turning down one street and then another, and after a half-hour or so I rode back to Meserole’s.

When I got back to the place there was already an ambulance parked out front. Two men who worked for the hospital were loading up one of the men as Doc Burris stood on the porch under the awning, puffing on his pipe.

“Everett,” Doc said.

“What do we got?”

“Two dead men,” he said.

I dismounted and tied the bay to the hitch.

“One was alive for a moment, but no longer.”

“Know who they are?”

Doc nodded.

“One we know is Meserole, the owner of this place,” Doc said. “Shot through the heart. Don’t know who the other man was.”

“He say anything?”

“Not that I know of. Virgil is in there right now trying to figure out who he is and what happened.”