The Reluctant Pinkerton Read online

  “Yeah?”

  “Watch the bar for a minute.”

  “Really?” Willie asked, excited.

  “Yeah.”

  “Can I have a drink?” Willie asked, moving around behind the bar.

  “Yeah,” the bartender said, “one.”

  He walked to the back of the room to his boss’s office and knocked.

  * * *

  “What the hell do you think you’re doin’?” Nancy demanded.

  “We have to have a talk.”

  “I thought we agreed to leave each other alone.”

  “That was when you thought my name was Andy Blake,” he said.

  “And your name’s not Andy Blake?”

  “No.”

  “Okay,” she said, “okay, I’ll bite…what is your name?”

  “Talbot Roper.”

  She stared at him, waiting for more, and when it didn’t come, she said, “So? Who’s Talbot Roper?”

  “A private detective.”

  “A what?”

  “Pinkerton.”

  That word she knew.

  “What are you talkin’ about?” she demanded. “You’re a goddamned Pinkerton?”

  “I’m working with the Pinkertons,” he corrected her.

  “What’s the difference?”

  “Probably none to you,” he said.

  “What do you want?”

  “I’m in Fort Worth on a job, and I’m just about to wrap it up,” Roper said. “When I do, a lot of arrests are going to be made.” He pointed at her. “You’re one of them.”

  “Me?” she said. “Why would I be arrested? What for?”

  “Sabotage, arson,” Roper said, “maybe murder.”

  “Murder?” Her eyes widened. “I never murdered anybody.”

  “No?” he said. “So what have you been doing?”

  “All I do is set men up to be rolled,” she said. “Like I tried to do with you.”

  “And those two would’ve killed me,” he said. “That would’ve made you guilty of murder.”

  “That’s crazy.”

  “Besides,” he said, “that’s not even what I’m talking about. That’s your sideline, just a little something to make some extra money.”

  “So?”

  “So you’re up to something else, Nancy,” he said. “We both know that.”

  “I don’t know what you’re talkin’—”

  “Why are you sleeping with Pete Orton?”

  Her eyes widened again, and her nostrils flared.

  “Wh-What? How do you know—”

  “Somebody told you to sleep with him, didn’t they?” Roper asked. “You’re not the boss, Nancy.”

  “I’m—I’m nobody’s boss,” she said.

  “I know,” he said. “What I need to know is, who is your boss?”

  She stood there staring at him, several times looking as if she was going to say something, but every time stopping.

  “Come on, Nancy,” he said. “You help me put away the brains of this operation, and I’ll put in a good word for you with the law when they bring you to trial.”

  “To trial?”

  “Or maybe you won’t even have to go to trial. What do you think?”

  “I can’t…I need time.”

  “Don’t take too long,” he said. “Leave a message for me with the doorman at the Cattleman’s Club.” He hoped that if and when she did that, the doorman would be Lester.

  She was staring at him and opened her mouth to say something when the door slammed open. A man in a suit entered, his hands empty. But his demeanor was of a man with a gun in his hand.

  “What’s going on, Nancy?” he asked. “Are you entertaining men in your room now?”

  “No, Aaron,” she said. “He was just leaving—”

  Aaron Bonner held his hand out to silence her. Roper could see he had a gun under his jacket in a shoulder rig.

  This was the guy. This was Nancy’s boss.

  “You the owner of this armpit?” Roper asked.

  “I own the Bullshead,” Bonner said. “What about it?”

  “Your customers are getting rolled,” Roper said. “You better do something about it or you’re going to be out of business.” Roper turned and looked at Nancy. “Remember what I told you. Keep your boys away from me. I don’t roll easy.”

  “Yeah,” she said, “okay.”

  Roper looked at Bonner.

  “I don’t know if you’ve got a piece of this or not,” Roper said. “Either way, I’d clean house if I was you.”

  “Who are you?” Bonner demanded.

  “Like I said,” Roper answered, “a guy who doesn’t roll easily.”

  He walked past Bonner and out of Nancy’s room, hoping he hadn’t made a mistake about her.

  59

  Bonner closed the door after Roper left, then faced Nancy.

  “What was that about?”

  “Like he said,” she replied. “I gave him to Eddie, and Eddie had the wrong two guys try to roll him. It didn’t work.”

  “Who was he?”

  “Just some guy,” she said. “He was flashing a roll in here the other night, so I gave him to Eddie.”

  Bonner studied her, then nodded.

  “Look,” he said, “I told you to forget about that stuff, didn’t I?”

  “Yes, but—”

  “Tell Eddie you’re done,” he instructed her, “and if he doesn’t like it, he can take it up with me. Or with Hoke Jessup.”

  At the mention of Jessup’s name, Nancy went cold. Jessup was Bonner’s pet killer. He was like a weapon that Bonner pointed, and when he pulled the trigger, somebody died.

  “Y-Yes,” she said, “okay.”

  “When are you seeing Orton again?”

  “Um, tomorrow night.”

  He pointed his finger at her.

  “You tell me every word he tells you, you hear?” Bonner said. “Don’t go soft on me, Nancy. The money from this is going to set me up in a good place, and I’ll take you with me.”

  “I ain’t soft, Aaron,” she said. “If you know anythin’, you know that.”

  “Yeah,” he said, “yeah, I know that.”

  He turned to walk to the door, stopped next to a sofa with a bunch of throw pillows on it. He picked up a pillow, took out this gun, and turned to face her.

  “Aaron, no.”

  “Sorry, Nance,” he said, “I can’t take the chance.” He held the pillow in front of his .32. It would muffle the shot enough so that it wouldn’t be heard downstairs.

  “B-But…why?” she asked.

  “That was Roper who just walked out of here,” he said, “and you never said a word.”

  He pulled the trigger once. Goose down floated into the air.

  * * *

  Downstairs nobody heard a thing. The music was playing loud. Badly, but loud.

  Roper reached the saloon floor and started across the room. All around him men were drinking and laughing, grabbing at the girls going by, or hugging the ones sitting in their laps.

  He was walking past one table when the girl, laughing loudly, turned her head and looked at him.

  He recognized her right away. Even beneath all the paint she had on her face, her small breasts spilling out the top of her dress as the man holding her hugged her around the waist. And she recognized him, too, although she didn’t show it.

  “Goddamnit!” he said. He reached out and grabbed her arm, pulled her from the man’s grasp.

  “Hey, friend,” the man yelled. “Get your own girl.”

  Another girl went by at that moment, so Roper grabbed her with his other hand, swung her into the man’s lap.

  “Have a ball!” he said.

  He dragged Dol Bennett out the front door.

  60

  He slammed the door of his room and said, “Scrub that stuff off your face.”

  He had dragged her out of the Bullshead, into a cab, and all the way to his hotel. The clerk and several others watched him drag her across th
e lobby floor and up the stairs.

  All the way she was sputtering, trying to talk, trying to explain, but he wouldn’t listen. He was too angry.

  She landed on the bed when he pushed her in, and now she stared at him. He grabbed a towel and tossed it to her.

  “Wipe your face,” he told her again.

  “What’s wrong with you, Roper?” she asked. “You blew my cover. Why would you do that? I never blew your cover, did I?”

  “I told you to go home,” he said, “not to get a job in a nest of vipers.”

  She wiped her face with the towel and said, “Don’t be so dramatic, Roper.”

  Roper took off his hat and his jacket, set them aside, then rolled up his sleeves. He sat down in a wooden chair and stared at her.

  “How long have you been working there?”

  “Weeks,” she said. “Since I walked away from you that night. You didn’t see me the other times you were in there, but I saw you. And I respected your cover.”

  “What have you been doing, Dol?”

  “Me? I’ve been watching, and listening, and learning,” she said.

  “And what have you learned from all that watching and listening?”

  “You want me to tell you the results of my investigation?” she asked. “Because if I do, I think it might help you with yours. But…”

  “But what?”

  “But what if we worked together?” she went on. “I tell you what I know, and you tell me what you know. I bet with an exchange of information like that, we could close this whole mess out.”

  He stared at her while she finished cleaning her face and then tossed aside the now multicolored towel.

  “What do you say?” she asked.

  “What have you heard?” he asked.

  “Are we agreed?” she asked.

  “We are, but you go first.”

  “I’m going to take you at your word.”

  She stood up and adjusted her dress, which had become twisted by his dragging of her. Without her makeup, she looked like a little girl, which made the dress look ridiculous, especially the way it revealed her small breasts. But he supposed there were men who would find her appealing, particularly in a saloon.

  “I was hired by Mr. Bonner himself,” she said as if reading his mind. “He found me ‘cute,’ said I’d appeal to lots of his customers. He had Nancy dress me, and do my face until I learned to do it myself.”

  “I need something a little less personal, Dol.”

  “I heard enough to know that Mr. Bonner has a lot of other things going on in town, other than the Bullshead.”

  “Is he involved in Nancy’s sidelines of rolling customers?”

  “No,” she said. “In fact, he told her to stop doing that, but she didn’t listen. He wanted her to concentrate on something else.”

  “Sleeping with Pete Orton.”

  “So you know about that,” she said. “I shoulda guessed. Yes, he wanted that to be her only concern.”

  “So he’s involved in the sabotage of the stockyards.”

  “Yes.”

  “But he’s not the boss.”

  “No,” she said, “but he thinks he is.”

  “How do you know that?”

  “Nancy,” Dol said. “She doesn’t know who the boss is, but she said once that Bonner’s not, he only thinks he is.”

  “So you’ve never seen Bonner with anybody else, maybe discussing the stockyards?”

  “Yes, but only Jessup.”

  “Jessup?”

  “Hoke Jessup,” she said. “He’s Bonner’s thug, does all his dirty work for him.”

  “Including murder?”

  “I wouldn’t be surprised, but I don’t know for sure that Jessup ever killed anybody.”

  “Did you ever hear the name ‘Henderson’ mentioned?”

  “He’s the man who was killed in the pens? Yes, I heard him mentioned, but only in passing.”

  “He was another detective, Dol, hired before the Pinkertons.”

  “Oh,” she said, “I’m sorry to hear that.”

  “Is that all you have?”

  “Isn’t that enough?”

  “I knew most of that.”

  “You didn’t know about Jessup.”

  “Men like Bonner always have a Jessup,” he pointed out. “I need something concrete to lead me to the man in charge.”

  “Well, what do you have?”

  “I’ve already told you Henderson was a detective, you know that Nancy was sleeping with Orton to get information…seems you know most of what I know, too.”

  She frowned. “That’s not fair! You’re not telling me anything.”

  “There’s nothing to tell.”

  “Who are we working for?” she asked.

  “We?”

  “I’m still a Pinkerton.”

  “I thought you were fired.”

  “Well…they’ll take me back after they learn how I helped you.”

  “Maybe,” he said.

  “Come on,” she said, “you’ve got to tell me something I don’t know.”

  “I’m working for the Cattleman’s Club.”

  “That’s vague. Exactly who?”

  “Even if you were my partner, Dol,” he said, “that’s not something you need to know. That’s between him and me.”

  She put her fists on her hips, looking for all the world like a little girl who had gotten into her mother’s dressing room.

  “So what do we do now?” she demanded.

  “Nothing,” he said. “You do nothing. Go back to your hotel.”

  “I have to go back to work.”

  “No, you don’t.”

  “I’ll get fired!”

  “You’re probably already fired for leaving.”

  “But the job is not done.”

  “Look,” he said, “I’ve planted a seed there that I hope will bear fruit.”

  “What seed?”

  “Nancy,” Roper said. “I’m hoping she’ll come to me with the information I need.”

  “She doesn’t know anything.”

  “No,” Roper said, “she’s too smart not to know anything. She’s got something. She’s a woman who looks out for herself.”

  “How will she know where to contact you?” she asked. “I could go back and tell her we’re working together—”

  “You’ll get yourself killed if you go back there!” he said. “I told her to leave me a message at the Cattleman’s Club, with the doorman.”

  “Are you sure the message will get to you?”

  “I hope it will,” he said. He realized in that moment that Lester the doorman might be working for Brewster. And if Brewster was the man he was looking for, the man in charge…

  “Okay,” he said, “I may have made a mistake.”

  “You?” she asked, making her eyes wide. “The great Talbot Roper made a mistake?”

  “Look,” he said, “all I’m saying is maybe you should go back, just to give Nancy a message, and then get out.”

  She touched her face and said, “I’ll have to do my makeup again.”

  “Listen to me,” he said. He went to her and took her by the shoulders. “I just want you to go back there and tell Nancy what hotel I’m in, so she can send me a message here instead of the Club.”

  “And what if she sends somebody to kill you instead?” Dol asked. “What if she tells Mr. Bonner, and he sends Jessup?”

  “If that happens,” he said, “I’ll be ready.”

  61

  Bonner sat at his desk, waiting. When the door opened and Jessup walked in, he said, “It’s about time!”

  “I just got your message.” Jessup was a tall, rangy man with an easy way of moving that men who were comfortable with themselves had. The thing Bonner liked about him was that he was unflappable in the face of any task.

  “I’ve got a job for you.”

  “That’s what I’m here for,” Jessup said. “What job?”

  “You’ve got to get rid of a body.” />
  “Whose body?”

  “Nancy.”

  “Nancy’s dead?” Jessup asked with only mild interest. “That’s too bad. I was hoping someday she and I…oh well, who killed her?”

  “I did.”

  Jessup chuckled. “Couldn’t you just have fired her?”

  “Shut up,” Bonner said. “She’s in her room. Get rid of her.”

  “Anyplace in particular?”

  “Someplace she won’t be found.”

  Jessup shrugged and said, “You’re the boss.”

  “That’s right,” Bonner said. “I am.” He waved. “Go. And after that, I’ll have another job for you, one that’s more up your alley.”

  Jessup gave Bonner a cocky little salute and left the office.

  The boss, Bonner thought. He wasn’t the boss, not yet. But he would be. Oh yes, he would be, and soon.

  * * *

  Jessup strolled through the casino and up the stairs. He entered Nancy’s room and stared down at her body. He’d thought one day he’d get her into bed, that she’d eventually stop rejecting him.

  “Too bad,” he said to the dead woman. He knelt down next to her, touched the skin of her shoulder, the upper slopes of her breasts. He’d always wanted to see her naked. Maybe, since he was alone with her, just a peek…

  * * *

  Dol reentered the saloon, hoping that no one had missed her. She’d tried to fix her hair and straighten her dress, had been unable to redo her makeup, but hoped nobody would notice.

  She worked her way through the crowd, avoiding the groping hands, and went up the stairs. She made her way to Nancy’s door, thought about knocking, then simply turned the doorknob and entered.

  She stopped short when she saw Jessup leaning over Nancy, who was lying on the floor, bloody, with the top of her dress pulled down to her waist. Jessup’s hands were on her breasts as he turned his head and looked up at Dol.

  “Hello, Dol,” he said.

  * * *

  By the next morning Roper still had not heard back from Dol on whether or not she’d delivered her message. Worried, he went down to the lobby.

  “Any messages for me?” he asked the clerk.

  “No, sir.”

  Damn, he thought. He never should have sent Dol back in there, but she’d been there for weeks. Maybe he just never gave her enough credit.

  He took a few steps away from the front desk, trying to decide on his next move, when he saw Detectives Carradine and Cole enter the lobby.