Slocum and the Socorro Saloon Sirens (8 page)

“This gives me the right to throw down on that bastard and lock him up. I could use a thousand dollars about now.”

“If I help, would we split it?”

“Sure, kid. We'd split it. Eighty/twenty.”

“Eight hundred for you, two hundred for me?”

Paddy laughed.

He reached down and opened the cabinet. He pulled out Roger's bundle of clothes, his gun belt and holster.

“Here, get dressed, Roger, and I'll take you to home.”

“I can't wait to put that pistol in my holster and feel its weight on my hip.”

“Don't get in no big rush,” Paddy said. “You got some healin' to do.”

“Yeah. I'll heal real fast. Damn that John Slocum anyway.”

“He shows up in Socorro and I'll clap him in irons,” Paddy said as he watched his brother dress and strap on his gun belt. Just before they left, Roger slid the new Colt into its holster and grinned.

“It's a right good fit, all right, Paddy.”

Paddy said nothing. He was wondering if he should put together a posse and go after John Slocum.

A thousand dollars would buy a passel of drinks at the Socorro Saloon.

Wilbur Scroggs slipped into his gold brocade vest and admired himself in the full-length mirror in his office on the second floor of the Socorro Saloon. The mirror was attached to one door of the wardrobe, and there were two such mirrors attached on the inside of both doors. Scroggs opened both doors and stepped between them. Now he could see his back reflected in one and his front in the other. He turned in a full circle.

“Still too fat,” he decided.

“Just a little at the belt,” a feminine voice replied. “That is a sign of success in Mexico.”

Miranda Echeverria spoke from the sofa, where she reclined like some Mexican statue, her black stockinged legs stretched out, one cocked at an angle so that her short skirt slid down to her hips.

“The paunch?” Scroggs said. “It's a curse. I can't get rid of it. Spoils my profile.”

“You look good, Willie,” Miranda assured him.

She was a black-haired beauty, with dark sloe eyes and a flawless neck encircled by a red velvet choker. She had long black hair and the horse's tail was secured by two tortoiseshell barrettes, polished to a high amber sheen. She spoke with the accent of her native Jalisco, where she was born.

“That gut will go away once I put on my coat,” Scroggs said, more to the mirror than to Miranda.

“You look very splendid, Willie,” Miranda said. “
Muy guapo
.”

“Them Mex words sound like some kind of disease,” he said in a humorless tone.

“They sound very pretty in Spanish.”

There was a knock on the door. Scroggs slipped into his gray coat with velvet trim and continued to admire himself in the twin mirrors.

“See who it is, Miranda,” he said.

She swung her legs off the sofa and walked to the door. A small balding man wearing a string tie and red garters on the sleeves of his white shirt stood at the door.

“The Chinaman's here,” he said.

Miranda turned to Scroggs.

“Willie?”

“Send him up, Freddie,” Scroggs said.

“Yes, sir,” Freddie Wilcox said, and turned on his heel. Miranda left the door open and they both heard Freddie's footsteps thud in an uneven tempo on the carpeted stairs. A few minutes later, a small Chinese man trudged up the stairs with mouse-like furtiveness, his head turning to look down at the saloon floor, his eyes blinking as if they were afflicted with a nervous tic.

“Hello, missy,” Wu Chen Fong said as he reached the door.

“Come in, Wu Chen,” she said. She closed the door as Wu Chen quick-stepped to the table. He was dressed in a tight black pin-striped suit that made him look like a diminutive banker.

“What have you got for me, Wu Chen?” Scroggs said as he stepped away from the mirrors and closed both of the wardrobe doors.

“Oh, very good opium, Mr. Scroggs,” Wu Chen said. “Very good quality.”

“Let's see it,” Scroggs said.

Wu Chen opened the drab carpetbag and began pulling apothecary bottles from its innards. Strands of cotton trailed like smoke wisps from the bottles, indicators of the bedding in which he had placed them. He produced the bottles like a magician pulling objects from a top hat, his eyes animated in his acorn-shaped face with his small derby an almost comical allusion to that image. With delicate fingers, he arranged the bottles in a row like pawns on a chessboard, as if realizing that he was displaying secrets to human consciousness that could only be obtained by a selected few, for a price.

“Ah, you see,” Wu Chen said as he passed a hand over the bottles, “I bring you the essence of the poppies that grew in China only few months ago.”

“Is that all you brought, Wu Chen?” Scroggs asked, as if to deflate Wu Chen's confidence in his product.

“So many customers. Santa Fe. Taos. Albuquerque. Las Cruces. I save best for you, Mistah Scroggs.”

Scroggs reached into his pocket. He withdrew a handful of bills bound together with a gold money clip. He slid the clip off as Wu Chen held out his hand, palm up, like some bellhop awaiting a tip. Scroggs placed one bill on Wu Chen's palm, then another, as Wu Chen's eyes danced like errant marbles in their sockets and his lips moved in a silent count.

“You want all bottles?” Wu Chen asked when Scroggs had stopped placing bills in his palm.

“Yes. All of those and more when you next come this way.”

“Fifty dollah mo,” Wu Chen said.

Scroggs counted out two more twenty-dollar bills and riffled through the folded wad for a ten. He placed that atop the other bills and Wu Chen closed his hand, grasping them as if they were birds' wings that might miraculously fly away. The bills disappeared into a pocket in his vest. He smiled and bowed in thanks, then closed up the carpetbag.

“Two months,” he said as he left the room, opening the closed door with one hand, then whisking out of the room with short brisk steps. He made no sound as he descended the stairs, and Miranda watched him vanish amid patrons crowding the bar below.

“Can I have some, Willie?” Miranda asked as she glided back to the table, her stocking legs flashing in the twin slits of her skirt.

“No,” Scroggs said, “I want you to work, not sleep. Besides, I can get my money back tenfold with this stuff.”

“And use it to unlock secrets,” she said, her eyes glittering like jewels as she looked longingly at the row of bottles filled with dusky powder.

“When necessary.”

“But Swain got away,” she said.

“He'll be back. He has a new master now.” Scroggs pointed to the bottles.

“His daughter will break him of the habit. She's a nurse.”

“I know. But opium is more powerful than a nurse. Swain will be back and I'll find out where his brother is mining all that silver.”

She walked up to Scroggs and entwined her arm in his. She rubbed her leg against him.

“Maybe later, you will let me have some of that sugar,” she purred.

“I'll let you have something, Miranda. Something better than that powder.”

He swatted her on one buttock and she slipped away from him. He watched her walk to the door. He walked over and locked it when she was gone, then went back to the table. He twisted a dial left, then right, then left again, stopping on pertinent numbers, and opened a large safe and placed the bottles inside, next to other bottles, placing the new ones behind the old ones. He knew better than to eat any of the opium himself. He knew what the drug could do to a person.

He closed the safe and spun the dial, tested the handle to assure that it was locked. He went to the door, unlocked it, stepped outside, and locked the door with his key. He heard footsteps on the stairs and turned to see Morgan Sombra bounding up the stairs.

“Before you go down, Willie,” Sombra said, “I got somethin' to tell you.”

“Make it quick, Morg, I'm meeting someone.”

“That hombre what shot Roger and helped Swain and his daughter get back home, he's got a price on his head.”

“Oh?”

“Damned right. Degnan dug out an old dodger in his office, and sure as I'm breathin', that hombre's a wanted man. Murdered a judge down in Georgia.”

“What's his name?” Scroggs asked.

“John Slocum.”

“Degnan going after him?”

“He just got Roger out of the infirmary. I 'spect he'll whump up a posse and clap that rascal in irons come tomorrow.”

“You'd better see that he does. And I want you to bring Jethro Swain back here. I'll break that bastard if it's the last thing I do.”

“What about his daughter, Penelope? She'll sure as hell try to stop me.”

“Shoot her, Morg,” Scroggs said. “Or bring her along with her pa. She might break quicker'n him.”

“That's an idea. I wouldn't mind a taste of that myself.”

“You keep your tongue in your mouth, Morgan. When I'm through with her, I don't care what you do to her.”

“You got a deal, Willie,” Sombra said.

“We'll see if I have a deal or not. Now step aside. I'm meeting somebody and I'm overdue.”

Scroggs walked past Sombra and stepped down the stairs, holding on to the railing to keep himself grandly erect for his entrance. Sombra followed at a discreet distance.

“You little dictator,” Sombra said under his breath.

He went to the bar and ordered a whiskey from one of the barkeeps, Eddie Tobin.

“Did you see where Scroggs went?” he asked as Eddie poured his drink.

“To his usual table. He's meetin' someone there.”

“Yeah, I know. Who's he meetin'?”

“Feller named Hiram Littlepage.”

“Linda's daddy?”

“He's Linda's uncle, I think.”

“What in hell's her uncle doin' meetin' with Willie?” Sombra asked.

“I dunno. Mr. Scroggs doesn't exactly confide in me, Morg.”

“Me neither. Hmm. Linda's uncle. Now, that's very interestin'.”

“Everything's interestin', Morg. You just got to be interested in everything, that's all.”

Eddie left with a smirk on his face. Sombra lifted his glass and paused before he drank, mulling over what Eddie had said. He shook his head and splashed the walls of his mouth with whiskey.

One of the glitter gals, Maria Luisa Echeverria, sidled up to Sombra. She was Miranda's daughter and as pretty as any of the gals in the saloon.

“You drink by yourself, Morgan,” she said. She held a small fan in her left hand. She opened and closed it in front of her face as her eyes peered over its pleated and painted expanse.

“Don't waste your time, Maria,” he said. “There's plenty of pilgrims here tonight.”

“But I like you, Morgan. You are much man.”

“Flattery don't work none on me, gal.”

“I do not flatter you, Morgan. I offer you my love and my heart.”

“I got me a gal, Maria.”

“A
gringa
,” she spat. “She cannot give you what I can give you.”

Morgan laughed.

“Okay,” he said. “I'll invite you up sometime when I'm wrasslin' with her in my bed. I'll compare you both.”

Maria laughed.

“Oh, you make the joke, Morgan.”

“Your mother's comin' this way and she's got fire in her eyes. You better latch on to one of the payin' customers or she'll tan your hide.”

Maria turned and saw her mother sliding through a clutch of men, each one eyeing her as she passed. Maria melted away from him and walked down the length of the bar, swaying and swishing her backside, fluttering her fan at every man who looked her way.

Sombra finished his drink and walked to the batwing doors at the saloon entrance. Men at the bar, the Mexicans, the drifters, the beggars, the thieves, all looked at him with furtive glances. He looked out at the tables. Most were empty at that early hour, but he saw Scroggs sitting at his table at the far corner, with a tall man he took to be Hiram Littlepage. The man sat straight, but he was a foot taller than Scroggs and he had the slick clothes of a gambler or a gunfighter, a wide-brimmed Stetson atop his head, and slender hands that looked as soft and graceful as a piano player's as they plied the air like twin birds performing aerial acrobatics.

There was no sign of Linda, but the other women in the saloon were looking at Littlepage with avaricious eyes, as if they wanted to bed him on one of the tables. The man was handsome, as handsome as Linda was beautiful, but his neatly trimmed sideburns and the starched cuffs of his white shirt tagged him as either a shrewd or a dangerous man. Or maybe both.

Sombra walked out of the saloon into the murky dusk. He headed toward Degnan's house. He knew the sheriff would be at home, probably with Roger, by now, and he wanted to see when he was going after that Slocum hombre and if there was any chance he might consider splitting the reward money with him.

As he walked along the street, some of the shops were still closing up for the night. A Mexican woman, whose husband owned a butcher shop, was throwing fish heads to a swarm of scrawny stray cats. When she had finished, she shook the basket over the cat's heads and he saw the glitter of fish scales falling like snow crystals onto the darkening street.

Slocum saw the shadowy figure of a man leaving the saloon. As they rode closer, past shops closing up for the day, he saw the man disappear in the shadows. Horses and mules stood at the hitch rails in front of the three-storied adobe that was the Socorro Saloon, switching their tails, standing hipshot, tossing their heads. One or two of them whickered as the two men rode to an empty stretch of rail.