Kathleen Kent - The Outcasts

He removed his hat, and a shadowed motion caused Nate to turn. A tall black man had come to stand at one shoulder, but before Nate could take a step back, the man placed a restraining hand on Nate’s right arm. The man’s other hand was hidden under his long coat, gripping what Nate was certain was a knife concealed in the waistband of his trousers.

He said, “No guns allowed, sir.”

The man relinquished his hold on Nate’s arm, and Nate handed him the Dance. The man pointed up the stairs. “Miss Hattie will see you directly.”

Nate walked across the parlor, his boots striking loudly on the marble floor, conscious of the women and their customers watching him with hooded eyes. Before he had stepped onto the first riser, a woman joined him and led him up to the second floor. Her dress, what there was of it, was nearly transparent and cinched broadly with a corset of scarlet whalebone, the back laces falling between the curved, swaying cheeks of her backside. Nate took a steadying intake of air, breathing in the musk of her body, and he let her gain a few steps before following after her again. She led him to a door, opened it, and gestured for him to go in alone.

He walked into a spacious room, heated with an elaborately painted corner stove, and saw a large rawboned woman smoking a small cigar seated at a man’s desk, both her feet propped up on a tufted stool. She rested her elbow on the desk, and gestured for him to sit in a chair facing her.

She looked him over and tipped the ashes of the cigar into a crystal bowl. She said, “Sam has asked me to help you find someone.”

She squinted at him for a minute through the smoke and Nate heard the door open and close behind him, and he sensed, without seeing, that the tall black man had stepped softly into the room.

“What will you do when you find him?” she asked.

“I’m going to kill him,” he said. “Given the chance.”

She ducked her mule’s jaw into her neck and smiled at him in a way that might at one time have been considered coy. “What makes you think Bill hasn’t offered me a lot of money to keep that from happening?”

For the first time, Nate saw a Colt on the desk within arm’s reach, and he calculated the likelihood of his reaching the gun before the madam could. She was as big as a man, and from the size of her thighs and shoulders, he guessed her reflexes might be as quick as a man’s as well. Nate listened for movement from behind but heard nothing.

“He has, you know,” she said, brushing more ashes into the bowl. “Offered me money to be his eyes and ears. Quite a bit of money.” She drew on the cigar and waited.

Nate reached into the pocket of his jacket and tossed a coin onto the desk as he stood up, saying, “You might as well go ahead and take all your clothes off. A whore is usually naked when she’s diddling with a man.”

He heard the rushing footfalls of the black man approaching, but Hattie yelped with laughter and held up one hand to stay him. She waved Nate down again and wiped at her streaming eyes with the back of one hand. She said, “When you get to my age and stage in life, you can’t put a price on peace of mind. I want William McGill gone. He’s bad for business. He scares the customers. And he ruins my girls.”

Nate said, “And he scares you as well, doesn’t he? Which I’m guessing is not easy to do.”

Hattie’s mouth tightened, and Nate jerked a thumb over one shoulder. “Why don’t you send your man to do the job?”

“I need Lucius here. He never leaves this place.” She said it with her chin raised, as though Nate would challenge her.

“Then it’s on me.” Nate stood up again. “You know where McGill is?”

“I know where he’s going to be. McGill’s girl is setting up a client to be robbed tonight. I’ll tell you where the client is, but I want something in return for it. Or, rather, I want something returned to me that’s mine. Lucinda has a contract to fulfill.”

“A contract,” Nate said.

Hattie stood up and came around the desk to face him. “I invest quite a bit in my working girls, Mr. Cannon. I want her brought back here afterwards.”

“She’s going back with me to Texas.”

She shook her head. “It never fails: a man with a stiff prick always wants to rescue a whore.”

“I’ve never even met the woman.”

She crossed her arms, propping one meaty thigh on the corner of the desk. “Goddamn me,” she muttered. She cut her eyes to Lucius and then back to Nate, as though making a decision. “My loss, then. The client’s house is on First Street. Number twenty-three.”

Nate put on his hat and turned to face Lucius, who stood barring the door.

Hattie waved the black man away. “Mr. Cannon,” she said. “One last thing. The client requested another of my girls earlier today. She should have returned by now. I’d go in wary if I was you.”

Lucius followed Nate down the stairs and across the grand parlor, the big man making no more noise on the marble floor than a woman in evening slippers. He opened the front door, his face as expressionless and smooth as the statues fronting the entranceway. He handed Nate his pistol and closed the weighted door.

Lucinda was alone with the man in the bed, which was massive and ornate, like the rest of the furniture in the room. A fine sheen of sweat covered his naked pale body. He was blindfolded with a silk handkerchief, his hands tied to the elaborate headboard with soft leather straps. He told her to stand closer and described how he wanted her to touch him. He began his customary rhythmic grunting as she stroked him, muttering for her to slow down or speed up or grasp him more firmly.

She turned her head towards the door, looking for Tartine to return. As much as she hated the woman, her presence made the time spent with the fish less frightening, less repugnant. What she had experienced in the past few hours was something she could never have imagined in even her most depraved moments. She thought of his flesh under her hands and envisioned gouging the skin with her nails the way her own flesh had been peeled away by the leather straps.

It could not be much longer before Bill would slip into the house and take his pick of the rare, jeweled objects that lay scattered about, the money carelessly piled on the man’s desk, and then she could put on her clothes and leave.

The man shifted impatiently under her touch and she worked her hands more forcefully and he exhaled with pleasure.

She pulled her thoughts away from the room and thought of Bill and his erratic treatment of her the past few days. She had known for some time that he was a killer but had willed herself to believe that it had always been in self-defense. Just as she had willed her mind to separate his charm from his character, his facile warmth from his cold efficiency, his ready passions from his utter incapability to feel love or even liking for another.

But he had cared for her, had promised her that he always would—until her disobedience regarding May, and his discovery that there was no gold in Middle Bayou. His coldness and threats had worsened ever since. Even her recent illness had made him impatient and distant. Her constant need for reassurances was weakening her and pushing him farther away.

She again looked impatiently towards the door and saw a form in the doorway that was not Tartine. It was a man lingering in the half-light of the hallway. At first she thought it was one of the servants loitering, spying on them, but the man stepped into the room and she saw it was Bill.

He quickly put a finger to his lips and she continued stroking the man on the bed, but she was suddenly acutely aware of her own dirty, matted hair, the film of old sweat on her face and body, the scratches on her arms with their ugly crisscrossing patterns. Bill watched her at work, his eyes as steady and emotionless as a serpent’s, and then the features of his face changed. A look of distaste, even disgust, shadowed his mouth, and in that moment she knew he was going to leave her.