Wilde West Part 19

As the barkeep poured their drinks, Oscar said to him, "I understand that some poor young woman was killed near here."

The barkeep nodded. "Molly Woods. Hooker worked down the road a piece. Got diced up like stew meat, they say." From his bored monotone, this might have been an everyday event. He leaned on the bar and said, with the seriousness of a Harley Street physician, "You been havin' these fits for a long time?"

"Since infancy. You knew her? Molly Woods?"

The barkeep shrugged. "Everybody did. It's kind of like that epilectics?"

Oscar shook his head. "The medical term for it is pique. Did she have any particular friends? Someone with whom I might be able to speak?"

"What for?"

"Well, you see, I dabble a bit as a writer, and I'm doing a small monograph on the subject."

The barkeep seemed puzzled.

"An essay," Oscar said. "An article. On the subject of murder."

"Yeah?" said the barkeep. "A writer, huh? Any money in that?" He asked this like someone who had lately been mulling over a change of career.

"Not really," Oscar told him.

The barkeep nodded sadly, as though his hopes, presumably never very high, had nonetheless been dashed. "Same thing everywhere, I guess." He shrugged. "Talk to old Larson over there. He knew her. He's the one found the body. Biggest thing ever happened to him."

"Splendid. Give us another bottle, would you? And another gla.s.s." These the bartender produced; Oscar took them. "Thanks very much. Come along, Henry."

Old Larson was old indeed, a small wizened man whose long white hair hung, limp and yellowish, from a freckled pink bald spot and snaked over the frayed collar of a ruined overcoat several sizes too large. Beneath the overcoat he wore two more coats and a number of sweaters, creating a bulky ma.s.s from which his scrawny neck poked at an angle, like a turtle's. He sat curled around an empty gla.s.s, holding it in a pair of hands ropy with veins and ligaments.

"Excuse me," Oscar said. "Would you mind terribly if we joined you?"

The man's head lifted and his eyes blinked, focusing. He looked from Oscar to Henry to Oscar again, and then to the bottle of whiskey. He sat upright. "You buyin?" he said, addressing the bottle.

"It would be my pleasure," said Oscar.

"Grab yourselves some seats then, boys." He licked his lips. Like the two at the bar, he was toothless. "Always happy to chew the fat."

Oscar and Henry sat, and Oscar placed the new gla.s.s in front of Larson and filled it. "The name is Wilde," he said. "This is my friend Henry."

The old man nodded, grinning. "Howdy, boys. Carl Larson. Pleased to make your acquaintance." He held up his shot gla.s.s. "Here's to gals with loose morals and tight privates."

"Yes," said Oscar, raising his gla.s.s. "Absolutely." Henry raised his as well, and the three of them drank. When they set the drinks down on the table, Oscar noted that the level of whiskey in Henry's gla.s.s remained the same. Larson's was empty.

"Mr. Larson," Oscar began.

"Carl," said the old man. "Mr. Larson, that was my pa. Dead these thirty years. And good riddance, too. Stubborn as a mule and twice as dumb. What you say your monicker was, son?"

"My monicker?"

"Your handle."

Oscar looked at Henry. Henry said, "Your name, Mistuh Oscar."

"Ah. Oscar. Oscar Wilde."

Larson considered for a moment and finally shrugged. "Well, a fella's gotta take what his folks pa.s.s along, I reckon. Where you hail from, Oscar?"

"Ireland. Mr. Larson-"

"That a fact? We got a lot of Irish hereabouts. Good people, the Irish. Got nothing against 'em. Nigras, neither," he a.s.sured Henry. "Me, now, I'm from Arkansas. G.o.d's country, son. The sun hangs up in the sky twelve months at a shot and sometimes it don't come down till leap year's. Lakes're so deep that every now and then we get a Chinaman floatin' in one. Say now. That's some mighty fine whiskey you got there." He nodded to the bottle. "First one went down real good, I got to admit."

Oscar filled the man's gla.s.s. "Mr. Larson, I understand that you knew Molly Woods."

The old man tossed back his drink, grimaced, and shook his head. "Terrible. Plumb terrible what happened to that poor gal. I been all over the country, Oswald, been up and down the Mighty Mississippi on keelboats, rode with Quantrill, lived in the mountains with the Cheyenne and the Arapaho. I seen my share of killin' and blood-lettin', Lord knows, but I never seen nothin' like what happened to that poor gal. Seen a fella been half et by a grizzly once, and that was apple pie compared to what happened to poor Molly. It was me what found her, ya know." He sat back and nodded once, a quick, self-important nod. "Yes sir. I was bringin' her a pint of milk like I always do, she had a hankerin' for her milk of a mornin', Molly did, and she don't answer like she always does. So I commence to open the door just a mite to see is she okay, and there she is-"

He grimaced again, lifted his gla.s.s, saw that it was empty, and glanced slyly toward the bottle.

Oscar lifted the bottle and filled the gla.s.s. He said, "What sort of woman was she, Mr. Larson?"

"All spread out on the bed. Chunks of her all over the room, blood ever'where-"

"Mr. Larson," Oscar said quickly, "I'm more interested, really, in what sort of woman she was."

Larson frowned in disappointment. He tossed back his whiskey and shrugged. "Well, son, she had a heart o' gold. Yes sir. That's the way I'd tally it up. A heart o' gold. Tell you one thing, Waldo. I ever find out who did her in, I'll shoot down the yellow-bellied varmint myself, right where he stands, and that's a bra.s.s-bound fact. An eye for an eye, the good book says. Exodus, chapter twenty-one, verse twenty-four. You know the good book, Waldo?"

"I draw succor from it often." Oscar refilled the man's gla.s.s. "How old a woman was she, Mr. Larson?"

Larson shrugged. "Middlin', I reckon."

"In her twenties, do you mean? In her thirties?"

Larson c.o.c.ked his head and looked at Oscar curiously. "You know somethin', Waldo? You don't talk like no Irishman I ever heard before."

"I hail from the southern part of the country," Oscar said. "How old was she, Mr. Larson?"

Larson shrugged. "Pushin' forty, I reckon." He lifted his gla.s.s and drank down the whiskey.

"And what did she look like?"

Larson leaned toward Oscar. "Like I said, son, it was terrible. No face left a-tall, just this white ole skull a-grinnin' at me from the bed, and then chunks of her-"

"No, no," said Oscar quickly, holding out his hand. "I meant before the tragedy." He swallowed. "What did she look like then?"

"Oh," said Larson, frowning again. "Well, she was a right handsome piece of woman, son. Pushin' forty, like I say, but still a handsome piece of woman. Still had all her equipment." He frowned and shook his head. "A terrible waste. What kinda dirty, lily-livered, dung-suckin' polecat would do a thing like that, anyhow? I ever find out, that varmint is dead where he stands." He looked round the room with a determined glare, as though daring the killer to step forth and identify himself.

"Was she tall?" Oscar asked him.

Larson looked back at him, thought about this, finally said, "Middlin', I reckon."

"Was she heavyset? Slender?"

Larson thought about this. "Middlin', I reckon." He leaned toward Oscar. "Say now-" His face went momentarily slack, and then he frowned. "What was the name again?"

"Waldo."

"-Waldo. How come you wanna know so much about ole Molly?"

"I'm a writer for the Times of London, and I'm doing an article on murder in the American West."

Larson grinned happily. "That a fact? Well, Waldo, you came to the right man, you surely did. Why, in my time I seen just about every form of killin' that one varmint can create upon another. You name it and I seen it. Murder by gunshot and murder by knife, murder by rope and fire and dynamite. 'Their feet run to evil, and they make haste to shed innocent blood.' Know where that's from?"

"The good book," Oscar hazarded.

"Sure it is, course it is, but where in the good book?"

"I'm afraid I can't recall. But Mr. Larson-"

Larson turned to Henry. "How 'bout you, boy? You know?"

Henry nodded. "Yes suh. Isaiah, chapter fifty-nine, verse seven."

Larson's lower lip buckled, his eyes narrowed. "Now how'd you know that?"

"My father, suh, he was a minister."

Larson nodded and relaxed back into his chair. "Reckon that's all right then." He turned back to Oscar, expansive once again. "So what you want to know, Waldo? You want to know about killers? I seen 'em all. Rode with some of 'em. The James Boys. The Youngers. Doc Holliday. John Wesley Hardin. Billy Bonney."

"What I'd like to know, Mr. Larson, is whether Molly Woods preferred any particular sort of customer."

"Yessir, she surely did," said Larson, and grinned. "She took a real fancy to the ones what had cash money a-jinglin' in their pockets."

Oscar sighed. This was beginning to seem hopeless. Larson was more colorful than informative, and rather more fatiguing than colorful. "Was there anything about the woman, Mr. Larson, anything at all, that distinguished her? Any particular trait that would have enabled her to stand out?"

"Sure, like I tole ya. She had a heart o' gold."

"I was thinking, you see, more along the lines of some physical trait."

Larson shook his head. "Nope. 'Less you count her hair. Real proud of her hair, Molly was. It was red, and she had a mess of it."

"I don't drink in no saloon as got n.i.g.g.e.rs in it."

Oscar turned and looked up.

Two men stood there. One was short and dark, with a lean wedge-shaped face in which a prominent b.u.mpy nose jutted over a pair of narrow lips and a thin, receding chin. His beard, a few optimistic strands of brown hair curling along his narrow jaw, accentuated rather than concealed the pockmarks on his skin. He wore a black hat with a rounded brim, and a gray canvas duster, stained and battered, that reached from his narrow shoulders to the ankles of his mud-caked leather boots. His eyes were small and brown, like a stoat's, and they kept sliding left and right, quickly, excitedly, as though they knew that something wonderful was about to happen and didn't want to miss a single moment of it.

The other man was enormous, a giant. Towering over the table in a long opened coat of dark, heavy fur streaked with grease, he stood with his thick arms akimbo and his big booted feet apart, his hard round belly ballooned against the soiled red plaid flannel of his shirt. A revolver was jammed into the top of his denim trousers. Below a matted thatch of brown hair, his head was globular, the ma.s.sive forehead looming over the tiny, deeply set gray eyes and the hard, rounded ridges of cheekbone. His nose had been flattened back against his face, as though by a hammer, and two broad nostrils, bristling with black hairs, peered down at Oscar from above a wide fleshy mouth. He looked like the sort of person who would kill without a moment's thought. He looked like the sort of person who would do everything without a moment's thought.

"Say now, Biff," said Larson. "Leave it be, this boy's all right, his pa was a minister. And this here's Waldo, Biff, he's from Ireland. Biff here hunts buff, and he's from-where was it you was from, Biff?"

The old man was chattering, obviously trying to entangle the giant in a rush of words.

Without looking at him, his eyes and his nostrils still staring down at Oscar, the giant growled from the corner of his mouth, "Shut your hole." To Oscar, he said, "I said I don't drink in no saloon as got n.i.g.g.e.rs in it."

Very much to his own surprise, Oscar felt a sudden bolt of fury go surging through him, as cold and as clear and as bracing as a mountain stream. Perhaps its source lay in the recent past, back in the confrontation with Vail, when he had (regrettably) refrained from hurling the business manager out the window. Wherever it had come from, it was definitely here now, a tumbling flood of it; and, with an eerie, cool detachment, he found himself sitting back comfortably in his chair, smiling blandly, and saying, "Well then. Why don't you just trot along and find another saloon."

From his previous experiences with bullies, at public school and at Oxford, Oscar expected a more or less prolonged exchange of incivilities-dull and ba.n.a.l on the part of his hulking adversary, witty and scathing on his own-which gradually grew more heated until at last the two of them squared off and Oscar, much to his opponent's astonishment, beat him to a pulp. Things here proceeded rather differently.

Later, he worked out what must have happened. The giant, moving with a sudden easy violence, and much more swiftly than Oscar would have thought possible, snapped his booted foot forward and smashed it into the rung of Oscar's chair.

At the time, however, all Oscar understood was that abruptly he was airborne and the room was spinning about him in a startling fashion. He crashed, chest down, into the sawdust.

He pushed himself quickly to his feet (speed-as he recalled from his previous encounters-being of the essence in these affairs). But when he wheeled around, bringing up his fists, he saw that someone else had entered the tableau.

Between Oscar and the other two, his back to Oscar, stood a third man dressed in a well-cut frock coat that seemed vaguely familiar. For some reason, the man had drawn the right side of the coat behind him, and this he held lightly with the fingers of his left hand, while his right hand hung down loosely alongside his hip and a large holstered pistol.

Oscar brushed sawdust from the velvet of his topcoat. Vexed by the interruption, and curious as to who had effected it, he stalked around the man, and heard him say to the giant, in an uncanny whisper, "Make your move, friend."

All at once Oscar recognized the whisper, and the handlebar mustache and the elegant nose and the dark wavy hair. Today the man was dressed almost entirely in black-shirt, tie, boots-the black nicely set off by a waistcoat of brilliant scarlet silk.

The giant laughed loudly. "And just who're you, little man?"

"The name is Holliday," the gunfighter whispered. For an instant, that chill ghost of a smile flickered beneath the mustache. "Folks call me Doc."

Slowly, as though a pale curtain were being drawn from his forehead down to his jaw, color left the big man's face. His hands, slung down at his sides like lumps of meat, opened and closed.

No one spoke. Oscar, although not really certain what exactly was happening (not a gunfight, surely?), judged that discretion, just then, was the better part of ignorance. Into the silence, from overhead, came a low m.u.f.fled patter; and distantly he realized that the rain had begun.

The big man took a step backward. "Hold on there," he said. "I got no quarrel with you."

Holliday's chill smile flickered once more. "Wrong."

The giant's beady gray eyes darted back and forth as he looked around the room. For an escape. For a.s.sistance.

Neither was provided. Even his friend, the man with the eyes of a stoat, stepped to the side, moving out of the scene and into the audience.

The giant lifted his big hands and held them away from his body, showing Holliday that they were empty. "I ain't no gunman, Doc."

Holliday nodded. "I am."

The giant glanced desperately around again.

"Maybe," Holliday whispered, "if you apologized to Mr. Wilde here." He jerked his head very slightly to the side.

Oscar understood that Holliday, without once turning, had known precisely where he was standing. Extraordinary.

"Sure, sure," said the giant. His smile looked sickly. "Sorry, fella, sorry," he said quickly to Oscar. "Didn' mean no harm." He looked back at Holliday, his small eyes opened wide.

Oscar discovered, with a start, that he was embarra.s.sed for the man.

How on earth was it possible to feel sorry for a murderous oaf? Probably because, in an instant, he had revealed the simple terror that lay beneath his bulk, beneath his violence and anger. And sometimes, perhaps, even a monster should be permitted his mask.