Black Falcon 2 part 1 the man who liked women

 

2 The man who liked women

 

Part 1

 

Luke disliked cities, but occasionally he found himself passing through places which were definitely larger than small towns for more specialist supplies – the centrefire cartridges for his Winchester were not common enough to be available in every general store – and to replace the black clothing he favoured over the usual garb of levis, flannel shirts, and leather vests.

Fully tooled up, clean from a long hot soak which was a luxury, and, which pleased him mightily, some black levis to combine hard-wearing with Luke’s sartorial tastes, and he felt good.

He stalked down the street with his predator’s tread, and found a poster pasted up outside the stage coach office. He studied it.

The man depicted was handsome in a florid sort of way; the sort of coarsely-handsome man some women find irresistible. Luke thought he looked an ugly customer. His name was Dan ‘Fillies’ Mikkeljon, and he was worth $1,250 alive, $500 dead.

That meant he had a stash they wanted to get their hands on.

The stash was probably worth finding.

The small print declared that Fillies had acquired his nickname by his habit of making up to women who had connections to wealth, and using inside knowledge to crack safes, or dig up hidden monies, and was to be considered dangerous. Luke recalled reading of his last theft in a paper left in the train when he freighted into town with his horse. An unhappy wife with a miser of a husband had been seduced, and agreed to flee with Fillies, along with her husband’s stash. Having helped him dig the hole to uncover it – a matter deduced by the local sheriff, who had to be smarter than many, who figured this out by the blisters on her hands – Fillies had then shot her, and left her in the hole as her grave.

Luke disapproved strongly of men who killed women.

He pulled down the poster, ignoring the startled protest of the man at the ticket office, and headed off to the marshal’s office.

“What’s the reward on this hombre’s stash?” he asked.

“What, a boy like you, after Fillies Mikkeljohn? Go back to school,” jeered the marshal.

“My boyish beauty is against me,” sighed Luke. “Just because I have the body of an angel, everyone assumes I’m an innocent. What’s the reward on his stash?”

“Ten percent,” said the marshal, unwillingly. “He lifted fifty thousand in gold.”

“How the hell did he transport it?” asked Luke.

“He took the whole train, uncoupled the caboose with the gold in, and unloaded it at his leisure,” said the marshal.

Luke whistled.

“He ain’t short of gall, is he?” he said.

“Nope,” said the marshal. “Torpedos[1] on the line, the train stopped, he uncoupled the caboose, cool as you please, shot the guard, and draped him over the buffers of the last carriage. Train driver swears he knows where he stopped, but by jingo, there was no caboose there when anyone went back for it, and no gold neither.”

“Huh,” said Luke. “Map?”

The marshal shrugged.

“If you got any ideas,...”

“Ideas I got in plenty, sir, but ideas aren’t proof, and if I’m wrong and drag out a posse, my reputation will be mud,” said Luke.

“You talk like an Easterner.”

“I talk like the schoolmarm’s son,” said Luke. “My mother came out from England.”

“I don’t suppose it makes you friends.”

Luke smiled at him. His smile was singularly sweet, and his lips, delicately coloured and curved, almost effeminate. The hint of mischief in his eyes was not, however, warm.

“I don’t need friends who judge me on how I speak,” he said.

“Well, it’s no skin off my nose,” said the marshal. “Here’s the map.”

Luke studied it.

“Where’s he struck?” he asked. The marshal marked half a dozen places with pins.

Luke considered; then he nodded.

“That shouldn’t be a problem,” he said.  “What’s his lower limit?”

“He’s never stolen a prize worth less than fifteen thousand.”

Luke nodded.

“How do you plan to find him?” asked the marshal.

Luke smiled again. The hint of mischief was stronger and his eyes glinted and a dimple made its appearance on his cheek.

“I’m not going to bother. He’s going to find me,” he said.

 

oOoOo

 

An hour later, Luke walked into a ladies’ outfitters.

“I’m shopping for m’sister,” he told the young shopkeeper. “She’s happy with readymades until she can get fabric and shop. She needs mourning, and she took it into her head that she needs all new undergarments as well.”

“What, and you’ve got to pay? Sisters, eh!” said the young man, sympathetically.

“Oh, she gave me the dough,” said Luke, easily. “She may not be wealthy yet, but she can afford to make a bit of a splash; seemingly her husband turned up his toes long enough after his own brother for her to inherit her brother-in-law’s fortune. Fellow was a gold miner, and hoarded every nugget and poke of dust. The lawyer said she’s worth twenty thousand, maybe more, if the mine ain’t worked out.”

“Dadburn it! That sure is a sizeable heritance,” said the young man.

“Yes, and she’s all rarin’ to take off for some place called Pendleton,” said Luke. “Won’t wait for me, of course; just like a woman.”

“You didn’t ought to talk about that, really, sir,” said the salesman. “People talk...” he made a small movement with his head towards a middle-aged lady, being attended to by another young man. She was listening avidly.

She was also the wife of the editor of the local paper, and Luke had picked his moment with care.

The helpful young man turned back to business.

“What size is your sister?” he asked.

“Oh, she’s about my height; a tall lass.  O’ course, she’s a shadow of her old self; been nursing her old man.  I don’t suppose you do them patent corsets which are...  you know, a bit exaggerated? She used to be...” he made graphic hand movements in the neighbourhood of his chest. “She don’t want to turn up at her in-laws looking like she should be the one being buried.”      

“Of course, sir,” said the helpful young man. “You want a Watkiss Patent shapely corset.”

Luke smiled in content as the helpful young man produced a corset which was well-padded in the right area.

“Perfect,” he murmured. He paid for his purchases and walked away with a complete set of female garb.

 

Back in his hotel, Luke crooked a finger to the proprietor’s youthful son, Tommy, who was boy of all work, and about fourteen years old, with red hair, buck teeth, and a taste for lurid fiction in dime novels, on which much of his pocket money was squandered.

“You know I’m a bounty killer, don’t you, Tommy?” he said. “They call me the Black Falcon.”

“Y’are? Wow!” said Tommy. “That’ll explain your guns.”

“Exactly,” said Luke. “Now, I’m after a villain who kills women; and I need your help, and your silence. And there’s five dollars in it for you if you can help me.”

“For sure!” breathed Tommy, his eyes shining.

“Come up to my room,” said Luke.

Tommy trotted behind the tall, dangerous man who was his new hero, surpassing all heroic marshals, Pinkerton’s detectives, and dashing cavalry officers.

 

“Right,” said Luke. “You any good at shaving?”

“Uh... no,” said Tommy. “Never had to do it.”

“Well, I should think I can give myself a close enough shave,” said Luke who had also been to a drugstore asking about cosmetics to hide his sister’s tear-streaked face when travelling. “You unpack all them female doo-dads for me, and we’ll see if we can figure out how to dress me up. Durned if women’s clothing didn’t ought to come with an instruction manual; it isn’t as easy to figure out as stripping and cleaning a gun.”

Tommy giggled a little self-consciously as he handled garments he had never even imagined touching.

“It’s all right if you get a thrill, son, as long as it’s the thoughts of a lady in it, not me,” said Luke, who had stripped to his long underwear to shave.

“Something’s wrong with the, um.... the underthings,” said Tommy, holding up two separate frill-bedecked legs.

“Well, I’m damned!” said Luke. “It’s all sewn up and finished proper; I guess that’s the way ladies do things. How do they stop the draft getting up their nethers?”

Tommy sniggered.

“Perhaps they don’t,” he said. “After all, ladies gotta go same as men, and all them skirts....”

“Good point, Tommy-boy,” said Luke. He carefully removed every last speck of hair on his face, and turned to the clothing. “I’m wearing those over my own underwear,” he said. “And my own riding boots under them at that. I can’t afford to have my feet let me down.”

He got dressed with Tommy’s help as far as the skirt, cursing about the corset.

“Women need medals of honour for surviving these,” he said. It was fortunate that his waist was slender; the bulk of the petticoat and skirt would hide that his hips were, too.

“I wouldn’t be a woman for a hundred thousand dollars,” opined Tommy.

“I need slits in this to reach for my guns,” Luke said. “You’ll have to hold things flat for me so I can fix it so it ain’t immediately apparent. I am glad my mother taught me to sew, so I can fettle my own duds at need.”

Tommy, who had been resisting such domestic lessons from his own mother, promptly swore he would learn how to sew if a dangerous man like this could admit to sewing and seemed to think it a virtue.

It did not take much for Luke to work out that all he had to do was to open up the pockets thoughtfully provided in the skirt. Then he put on his gun belt, and put the skirt over, checking that he could draw smoothly.

Then he went to work on his face with the cosmetics.  A bonnet with a short veil, concealing how firm his eyebrows were, and he turned to Tommy, and batted his eyebrows.

“Will I do, young sir?” he asked.

“Cuh, Mr. Falcon, sir, you’re kinda real purty!” said Tommy, in profound shock.

Luke winked at him.

“Now, do you think I’d fool your old man, if you told him that I’d given my room to my sister?”

“Yes, sir!” said Tommy.

“Well, lad, now you get to help me take it all off. No point me leaving until the gossip columns have talked about a rich widow,” said Luke. “Can you arrange me meals in my room for a couple of days?”

“Yes, sir!” said Tommy, pocketting further largessse. “I’ll get you the paper, too.”

“Invaluable boy,” said Luke. “Now, I wait for the news to hit, and then I get me a stage coach to Pendleton.”

“It’s days and days to Pendleton, sir,” said Tommy.

“Yes, quite,” said Luke. “And I need to give that consarned owlhoot time to find out about me, and get sorted out onto the stage.”

Tommy sighed.

“And then you gun him down?” he said.

“Hell, no,” said Luke. “First, I separate him off from the crowd, then I capture him – he’s worth more alive than dead – and then I threaten unspeakable torture until he reveals where his stash is hidden. I want that ten percent.”

 

 

In due course, the newspaper gossip column spoke coyly of how it had come to their notice that a young and lovely widow had come into a fortune by way of compensation for losing her husband, in terms of gold by the truck full.

Luke, meanwhile, had sat for a photograph in his trappings as a woman.

“Tommy, my lad,” he said, “Nip to the newspaper offices and ask them what they’d pay you for the chance to copy a photograph of the beautiful and wealthy widow, Jane Brandon.”

Tommy sniggered as Luke handed him a copy.

“Coo, Mr. Falcon, that makes you into a real looker,” he said. “Are you sure it ain’t your sister?”

“Oh, my sisters would, any one of them, be up for playing bait,” said Luke. “But I’m not sure I fancy the idea.”

“Your sisters sound swell!” said Tommy. “Catch my sister being bait! She’d set up such a screech the owlhoots’d die of fright.”

“Ah, well, she’s a city girl,” said Luke. “My sisters were raised as warriors, like me, with added nursing skills.”  He handed Tommy a package. “And while you’re out, if you can drop that into the post office first, I’ll be obliged; it’s a copy of the picture which you ‘borrowed’ off the dressing table of the lady’s brother, and a letter to my parents.  I don’t intend for anything to go wrong, but I want my parents to know in case anyone finds themselves burying me in women’s duds.”

Tommy sniggered.

“You’re too good to let any consarned owlhoot take you down,” he said.

“Your faith in my efficiency is heartening,” said Luke.

 

Luke was killing time watching ladies out of the window of his room, and copying their mannerisms to give the time for the story to circulate. No point going all that way in uncomfortable clothing, bounced like corn in a corn popper in a stage coach if the prey for which he was bait had had no sniff at him.

And then, he fluttered downstairs to pay the bill.

“Durned if I seen you before, ma’am,” said the proprietor, scratching the fringe of hair he still possessed at the back of his neck.

“Oh! It’s my dear brother... he gave up his room for me... so kind!  I really couldn’t have a kinder... and himself having to look for somewhere to stay, and still getting me tickets... such a pity he can’t accompany me... I believe I owe you his bill as well, he left money to settle... so do I have to sign your register too?” he fluttered his hands delicately as he lost himself in a series of half-sentences about his so-kind brother, and fluttered across to the stage coach depot to pick up the coach to Pendleton. The fare averaged out at around twenty cents a mile; or a dollar per ten miles. It was an outlay, spending almost fifty dollars to travel as bait, but it would net a goodly amount. And Luke needed to get closer to where he was certain Fillies’s hidden store of gold was stored.

 

---

[1] Detonators to warn of trouble ahead

Black Falcon 1, Marshal for two days

 

1. Marshal for two days

 

It was raining when he rode into town for provisions; the sort of unrelenting rain that made its way inside clothes, down collars, into boots, and anywhere else rain has no business to go, even bypassing the long black leather duster, and black Stetson.

The livery stable saw to the discomfort of his horse. He nodded to the hand who saw to the horses and tossed him a silver dollar.

“Give him a good currying, please,” he said. His voice was unexpectedly soft.

The stablehand noted, however, that his Smith and Wesson Schofield revolvers were tied down, a sure sign of a gunslinger. It was well-known that anyone who toted two guns was either a show-off blowhard, or a very dangerous fellow indeed.

The stablehand assessed the newcomer as a very dangerous fellow indeed.

Luke Sokolov, for such was his real name, nodded, and toted his saddlebags and his Winchester 73 with him. 

Many gunslingers used the Colt opentop revolver with the older version of the Winchester built in 1866, as both used the same ammunition, useful for someone on the road a lot. Luke, however, took his ability as a sharpshooter seriously, and his Winchester sported the latest in telescopic sights. Luke could do things with that Winchester that most sharpshooters only dreamed of.  And since he needed separate cartridges to the heavy centrefire cartridges of the 73 Winchester, he picked his revolvers for their speed in reloading, and the heavy 0.44 calibre.

 

Next was the saloon, and he took his saddle and saddlebags with him, shouldering aside the batwings to go in.

“A cup of tea,” said Luke.

“Tea?” the barkeep queried.

“Tea.  By the pint. I’ll switch to whisky when I’ve warmed up,” said Luke. “Make it strong and sweet.”

“Only if you buy a bottle to go with it,” said the barkeep.

Luke shrugged.

“Make it a Dewar’s; I’m not touching any home-brewed rot-gut.”

“You think a lot of yourself.”

“Yes. And if you can’t get me Dewar’s, or Jameson’s Irish at a pinch, I’ll stick to tea,” said Luke.

Grumbling, the barkeep fetched up a dusty bottle of Dewar’s Scotch Whisky. Luke examined the seal, and nodded, to pronounce himself satisfied.

“Mister, I ain’t about to give counterfeit whisky to a man who wears two holsters tied,” said the Barkeep. “What do they call you?”

Luke considered.

“Most people call me ‘the Black Falcon,’” he said. “It does as well as any name.”

“Part Injun?”

“Not that I’d noticed,” said Luke. He was tanned with hawk-like features, but his eyes were blue green, and as warm as ice. His hair was dark, untidy, and collar length where it curled, as did the tips of his moustaches when he failed to cut them close. His long sooty lashes were the envy of many a woman, and his delicate features would be called effeminate on a man less confident of his manhood. 

A throat was delicately cleared at Luke’s elbow, and he turned to fix his seagreen eyes on a plump little man whom Luke labelled in his own mind as a tinhorn. His head was bald, pink, and shiny.

“Mister Falcon,” said the man, “I heard of you; you’ve collected bounties on some owlhoots, I hear.”

“It’s a job,” said Luke. “And I don’t aim to leave town without warming up and getting me some provisions.”

“Oh, absolutely, absolutely... but you see, we need a marshal real bad... the Bar TZ ranch has Texan hands, and they’ve been running beeves to the railhead... and they’re due back in town any day now, and they like to hit the saloon and make whoopee... and our marshal has fled, account of how they said they’d beat him so bad next time he tried to stop them that he’d never walk again.”

“And what do you want me for?” asked Luke. “Run down your errant marshal, and bring him back?”

“No, we want you to be our marshal,” said the little man.  “I’m Erasmus Bobbin, the banker here... and the amount of damage they do... I’ve the backing of the shopkeepers.”

He pushed a star at Luke.

Luke raised an eyebrow.

“You want me to stop these rowdy Texans from making a nuisance of themselves,” he said.

“Yes,” said Bobbin.

Luke regarded the six-pointed tin badge with the word ‘Sheriff’ hammered onto it, rather crudely.

“What’s the pay?” he asked.

“We pay thirty dollars the month, a dollar a day,” said Bobbin, nervously.

“You’re keeping me from earning bounties,” said Luke. “You pay me five dollars a day while I’m here, and ten dollars for the day these proddy waddies come by.”

“That’s outrageous!” gasped Bobbin,

“That’s my offer,” said Luke. “And consider how much repairing damage would cost.”

Bobbin mopped his shiny brow, considered, swallowed hard, making his string tie bob, and nodded.

“Very well,” he said.

“I’ll be eating now,” said Luke. “You can bring me the keys to the marshal’s office while I’m eating; I might as well stay there as anywhere.”

It would not be the first time he had slept in a jailhouse bunk; some law officers disliked bounty hunters to the point of pinning a technical crime on them. It amused Luke to pin on the badge, and to prepare to sleep in what was, for the next few days at least, his own jail.

Once he had eaten an indifferent beef stew with floury bullets alleged to be dumplings, he toted his bags and rifle over to the jailhouse, noted that there was paperwork left undone, and sorted that out before turning in.

 

oOoOo

 

Luke’s first day as marshal was fairly quiet. He spent some time patrolling his new patch with as much easy grace walking as he had in the saddle, stalking like some wild beast. The townsfolk watched him with a mix of approval that their new marshal looked dangerous, and trepidation, that their new marshal looked dangerous.  Luke discovered that, as he had expected,  Bobbinsville was a small, no-account place with one each of the usual appurtenances of civilised life; one saloon, which had rooms upstairs, one bank, one store, one livery stable, one church, one graveyard, one carpenter who also made coffins, one school, or at least a shack and half a school,  a proper schoolhouse being built to replace the shack currently in use; and one doctor, whose office was opposite the marshal’s office. There were board sidewalks between the buildings, to keep the skirts of ladies out of the dust or mud – the mud from the previous day’s rain, however, quickly dried out into dust – and give some appearance of civilisation. The store sold everything, and Luke, not anticipating being long in town, left a list there, and an order to pack it in saddlebags.

He left the whisky in a saddlebag too; a lawman should be stone cold sober at all times, at least in Luke’s book.

Consequently, he continued drinking tea in the saloon as he observed its habitués.

Only one man took it into his head to make an issue of the boy marshal drinking tea.

“Am I making you drink tea?” asked Luke.

“A real man drinks whisky,” growled the half drunken local.

“A real marshal stays stone cold sober when he’s on duty,” said Luke. “You want a marshal? You get me unlikkered up.”

The drinker swung for Luke of course,

He went down, as Luke blocked effortlessly, and let fly with one of his own fists.

Luke picked him up by the scruff of the neck and the seat of his pants, walked out through the batwings, and dropped him on the sidewalk.

“If the trash isn’t cleared up by the time I finish my tea, he’ll be in jail,” he said.

There was no pugnacious drunken bum to be found when he emerged.

There was very little more trouble for Luke.

 

 

He toted a sleeping drunk off the street to sober up in the other cell, and gave a small boy a few sharp whacks where it would do most good for letting off a firecracker when folks were already on edge.

“My ma’ll be by to see you,” yammered the youth.

“She’ll be out of luck. I don’t spank females,” said Luke.

He did not receive a visit from the boy’s starchy mother, a widow who taught school.  It was all she could do to live down the suggestion that she would go to complain to the new marshal in order to get a spanking from the extremely handsome young man.

If looks could have killed, however, Luke would have been a smoking pile of ashes.  However, many of the townsfolk nodded to him happily; the schoolmarm’s son was a small demon of mischief which his mother could not be brought to realise.

 

oOoOo

 

The sounds of the hoofs could be felt before they were heard the next day; and then the sound was like thunder with the added screams ‘Yee haw!’ and whooping as the eight cow pokes rode into the town, firing into the air.

Luke strolled out.

Such high spirits were acceptable. He was there to see it went no further.

The hard-looking men dismounted, slinging reins over the hitching post outside the saloon, and one of their number caught sight of Mr. Bobbin, an elderly lady on his arm.

“Hey, Bobbin, have you learned to dance yet?” one of the men fired in the ground near Bobbin’s feet, and he jumped nervously.

“You can stop that,” said Luke, in his low, but carrying voice. “What’s more, I think I’ll have all your gun belts until you’re ready to leave town if you can’t behave better than a bunch of first grade farm boys with a stolen bird gun.”

“And who’s going to make us?” said the leader, derisively.

“I am,” said Luke. “Quick or dead; makes no difference to me.”

The man must be the ramrod; the others murmured, and looked to him.

“I ain’t handin’ over my gun to some consarned  schoolboy like you, whatever tin badge you tote,” said the ramrod. “And I ain’t over making Bobbin dance.”

“Fire again, and I fire back,” warned Luke.

The Ramrod laughed, and fanned his revolver in fire about Bobbin’s feet. The fat little man stumbled back; the elderly lady fell, and screamed as a ricochet hit her face.

Nobody later could say they even saw the movement in which Luke’s Smith & Wesson cleared his holster; but the ramrod went down.

“Get out of town,” said Luke to the other seven.

They drew on him.

This was a fatal error.

The gun in Luke’s right hand spoke four more times; the one in his left spoke three.

The cowpokes would be proddy no more.

Luke reloaded, and went over to the old lady.

She was sobbing in pain and terror, and Luke picked her up, ignoring the fact that she had lost control of her bladder, and carried her into the doctor’s office.

“I don’t think she’s hurt mortally badly,” he said, in the correct English he had learned at his mother’s knee, quaint to many in the west. “But I think she may have broken her leg as well as having taken a bullet. And see here, doc,” he added, “It was a ricochet, so you clean it well with whisky, make sure no lockjaw gets in.”

“I know my job... Marshal,” said the doctor.

“Good,” said Luke.

He went back into the street.

Men were clearing up the bodies.

Bobbin shook his head gloomily.

“You shouldn’t have killed them all, marshal,” he said.

“I didn’t touch them until actual bodily harm was committed on the lady you were with,” said Luke, frowning.

“My mother; she’s not too steady on her pins,” said Bobbin.

“And if she broke her hip she won’t ever walk again, and might die of it,” said Luke. “I told them to stop, I warned them. And the ramrod shot, and caused your mother harm. So I shot him. I told the others to get out of town. They chose to commit suicide instead.”

“We’ll have trouble from the Bar TZ now!” panicked Bobbin.

“You want me to deal with any of them who make trouble?” said Luke.

“No; I want you out of town,” said Bobbin. “Please hand in your badge.”

“My fifteen dollars?” said Luke.

“I... you did not fulfil the contract properly,” said Bobbin.

“I can unfulfil it even more by making more mess than they could,” said Luke. “I did what you told me. Pay up.”

Trembling, the banker got out his wallet, and handed the bills to Luke, who pocketed them. Then he took off his badge.

“Have a six-pointed enema,” he said.

“Wh... what?” said Bobbin.

“I said, ram it up your arse,” said Luke.

 

It had been interesting while it had lasted.

 

bonus post, short story in Cobra's universe.

 sparked by a picture on Night Cafe; I couldn't resist putting a short story as a comment, for Johnny Fish [the artist]

https://creator.nightcafe.studio/creation/OtSMzBAjFaJ5yHgicDLq?ru=CardinalBiggles

The quick and the dead

 

I knew he was trouble the moment he came in the door.

One of the reasons was, that he was dead when he fell in.

There was a knife in his side.

It was my knife.

And I could hear the sirens.

It was going to be one of those days.

I was wearing gloves; I hadn’t touched anything without them. And since getting here, all I’d touched was the door when someone knocked.

The same someone who had shoved Jimmy the Sneak in through the door at my feet with such alacrity and malice aforethought.  I pulled the knife out of the wound, and dropped it in an evidence bag; no point letting the cops know whose knife it was. Not until I could clear myself.

I made my way out of the back door of the riverside shack, and slid back into my boat, thankful that I had rowed upstream rather than driving to the dive which the tipoff had sent me to.

The tipoff was now looking good for being involved in Jimmy’s murder. Yeah, no shit, Sherlock. And I had been fooled; the voice had sounded enough like Jimmy’s that I had thought it was him. But the body... the arm was stiff when I pulled out the knife, and that meant that Jimmy was already dead when I got the tipoff.

Jimmy is one of my noses.  Was, I should say. He had been looking into some smuggling for me; there was a good reward for whoever managed to get it stopped. Presumably the poor little sod was getting too close. 

I should never have loaned him my knife with the lockpick attachments.

I got back to the office, and changed out of the boilersuit I had used for the meet.  I knew Inspector Dangerfield would be down on me soon, like a ton of bricks. The old fart hates my guts because I’ve interrupted too many of his cases because he hasn’t the imagination I have.

I wasn’t disappointed.

He crashed through the door like a herd of rhinoceruses. Funnily enough, the collective noun for rhinoceruses is ‘a crash.’ It suited Dangerfield as his donut-belly preceded him by several minutes and carrying its own momentum with it, as it wobbled in outrage against my desk.

“You’ve really done it this time!” he growled, rudely.

“And good evening to you, too, Inspector,” I said, politely.

His pink, sweating face sweated more pinkly.

“Mayhew, I knew when I got the report that you must have done it,” he said.

“Marlowe,” I corrected him. Philip Marlowe is my professional name; nobody gets the reference to the oldstyle private eye any more, except a buddy of mine, who goes by the soubriquet of ‘The Cobra.’ He’s a killer for hire; an odd sort of buddy to have, but he’s helped me out more than once, and I’ve done research for him.  And to be fair, he only kills the sort of scum who deserve it.  In my business, you make some odd friends. Dangerfield deliberately miscalls me to annoy me; it doesn’t, particularly. One day he’ll do it on a charge sheet when I need an out.

“What am I supposed to have done now?” I asked, mildly.

The pink went via magenta to purple.

“Careful,” I said. “You’re becoming colouric...eh, choleric.”

The purple assumed a shade of puce which had to be seriously unhealthy.

“You rifled through Senator Carstairs’ office – or got your nose to do it,’ he said.

He was worrying about that when he had me bang to rights for murder? A murder I hadn’t committed, but he wouldn’t care.

Maybe I’d got out in time.

I leaned forward and poked his wobbling tummy.

“Inspector,” I said, “I don’t know if you’ve heard of this; but in this country and in this state, when you accuse someone of something, you have to have something called ‘ev-i-dence,’” I said the word slowly, and clearly, as if to a slow child. “And without this, the presumption of ‘inn-o-cence’ is considered inviolable. That means....”

“I know what it means!” he yelped. “But I do have evidence!”

“Since I wasn’t there, I fail to see how you can,” I said, relaxing.

If his evidence was incontrovertible, I’d be down at the precinct talking to him, not in my office.

“You left your business card!” he said, triumphantly.

I blinked.

“Is that the best you can manufacture?” I said. “That you swipe a few of my cards when in my office, and then drop one somewhere you want me to have been?”

I ran out of descriptors for his colour; it had a blue tinge to the purple which was really quite worrying.

“I do not manufacture evidence!” he screamed.

“Well, if you didn’t, who did?” I asked. “I don’t think any jury in the world, seeing your evident animosity towards me, would believe for one moment that you hadn’t left it there yourself. And that would be your career over, wouldn’t it?  Now shall I dial 911? You don’t look well.”

He collapsed into my client chair, panting, and all the colour draining out of him.

And there was a lot of colour to drain.

“I did find your card,” he said.

I shrugged.

“So what?” I said. “I have them on my desk for clients to take because, believe it or not, that’s what business cards are for. Maybe the senator sent someone to pick up my card because he needs a gumshoe. Maybe someone who works in his office did. Or someone who passed through. Or, whoever – how did you put it? Rifled through his office.”

“Someone you paid to go through it,” said Dangerfield.

“I have never said to anyone, ‘go and search Senator Carstairs’s office,” I said. “And I can swear to that with a clean conscience. Now, if one of my noses came up with the idea, I don’t deny some of them are a little rough around the edges; but I can’t be blamed for that. They are supposed to come back to me with leads for further instructions.”

I make a point of telling them this, as any one of them could testify. Not that they take any notice, and nor do I expect them to do so, but that’s not the same.  As the Japanese say, ‘there is a difference between what is said, and what is done.’

“Which noses have you got on a job at the moment?” he growled.

I frowned.

“You know I don’t give up my sources,” I said. I chewed my lip, looking, I hoped, convincingly worried. “I tell you what, though, I’m  expecting a report from one who said he had a lead. And he hasn’t called in. Now, if I was in your shoes, Amos Bellamy Cedric...” he hates me toting out his given names far more than I mind him getting my name wrong, “... Not that my feet would fit such outsize things, but if I were in your shoes, I’d wonder what Ji... what my nose had found out that he felt a need to rifle through a senator’s office rather than just come back to me.”

He glared at me, but his body appeared to have run out of enough pigment for another display.

“And what are you working on?” he demanded.

“The smuggling problem,” I told him.

He stared in consternation.

“Don’t leave town,” he warned, getting up too quickly, in my opinion, for a man of his constitution, and leaving my office.

I released a sigh of relief when he was gone,

Senator Carstairs! Our upright ‘taxes are the responsibility of all’ senator!

Or, I reminded myself, someone in his office. It had to be him, or someone close to him. I wondered what poor Jimmy had discovered.

When his body was discovered officially, as it should have been by now, I would pay for a decent funeral for him. I would also take on the mutt he loved like a child.

I waited for the phone call.

It came after about twenty-five minutes, enough time for Dangerfield to get back to the office.

“Marlowe? Come to the morgue. We’ve someone there we think you can identify.”

“Oh, shit; yes, I’ll be right there,” I said.

 

 

“It’s Jimmy,” I said. “I think his surname was Woodfield, but I wouldn’t swear to it. I need to go over to his place; there’s a dog he cares for. He’d want me to see to it.”

“It’ll do,” said Dangerfield. “I think you actually care.”

“I do,” I said. “I take it very personally when any of my noses are attacked.”

“If I hear of Senator Carstairs having so much as a hangnail, I’ll know where to come,” he warned. 

“You’d be wrong,” I said. “I want to see the bastard responsible in an orange suit on the Friday special spaceplane to the penal colony on the moon.”

For smuggling, this was a distinct possibility.

“What do you suppose Jimmy was doing in a shack on the banks of the Hudson?” Dangerfield asked me.

“Looking for clues to riverine smuggling?” I suggested. “Or, something as mundane as looking for somewhere to flit to, if he figured he’d been snooping on someone dangerous. His own place is none so salubrious, that somewhere you describe as a ‘shack’ could be considered much worse.”

“Yes, concrete of old docks right to the waterside, no chance of finding footprints,” he said, bitterly.

“Something Jimmy would have considered an advantage,” I nodded. “I think from that much, I can guess the area,” I added.

He glared.

“Don’t you go poking your nose into an official investigation!” he said.

“Perish the thought,” I said. “I won’t do more than poke my nose in to a dead friend’s business.”

 

 

I went to Jimmy’s place first.

It had been ransacked, and the dog had gone. Dangerfield got there just after I did.

“Don’t look at me,” I said, as we regarded the mayhem. “I have an alibi; I was at the morgue.”

He didn’t even query that one.

“Well, he must have had evidence which drove him to investigate further,” I said. “Unless he came up with a good place to hide it, it’s gone.”

“What do you know?” he yapped.

“Know? Nothing,” said. “But there’s a longshot that he mailed it to me before he headed off on his own.”

“You turn over anything to me if he did,” demanded Dangerfield.

“Of course,” I said.

As soon as I had xeroxed it, anyway.

Meanwhile, I went looking for the dog.

Jimmy had a kennel outside for the pup, for when he was off on a job. Mopsy was inside, cowering.  I irritated the cops in getting underfoot to open a can of pooch meat and put it out; but they caved when I threatened to report them to Animal Services.

I put down food, and went to load the rest into my car.

Then I went back to the kennel.

Mopsy knew me; or she wouldn’t have eaten. I’ve fed her before when Jimmy was in hospital.

In the end, I picked up the kennel and all, and put it in the back of my car. I have a biggish SUV; if you’re not using the grid to get about, you need an off-road vehicle, as nowadays most of New York’s roads that are off the grid count as offroad.

I took Mopsy back to the office.

I also decided to sleep there; I have a camp bed for such occasions.

Mopsy emerged and joined me on the bed, which was damnably uncomfortable, but also, somehow, comforting.

When I got up, she snuggled back down. It has to have been more comfortable than the kennel.

The kennel!

I abandoned the notion of the first coffee of the day, and went over the kennel with a fine tooth comb.

The roof had a hidden catch, and lifted to reveal a space inside where Jimmy kept important documents. I transferred them to my safe.

Then I sent out for coffee and breakfast, fed Mopsy, refilled her water bowl, and with coffee, eggs, bacon, fried mushrooms, fried bread, hash browns, baked beans and tomatoes, I got out Jimmy’s documents to peruse.

Most of it was his personal life, birth certificate, school record – such as it was – and Mopsy’s prize certificates for cleverest dog in the show.

And there was the envelope marked ‘for Philip Marlowe.’

It was all in there.

Enough to make the senator a person of interest, anyway; and all on real film, which can’t be doctored in any way.  If it wasn’t him, it was someone wearing his face with illegal nanotractors under the skin, possible, but not very likely. Those things are not easy to come by.

So, I called Dangerfield.

And made it clear to him that he could have everything as long as I was in for my reward from the IRS.

I got the reward; and Jimmy had a respectable burial.

Poor Jimmy.

This was one situation in which he would have been better to have come to me, not risking breaking into the senator’s office whilst the senator was on the wharf.

But that was why Jimmy was a bum who took jobs from others.

He didn’t know when to cash in the chips.

I kept the kennel.

It’s a good hiding place, and Mopsy has a new bed inside it, for if I leave her in my office.

Generally, however, her preferred sleeping place is over my ankles.