No Second Wind (The Sheriff Chick Charleston Mysteries Book 3) Page 8

  “I don’t know.”

  “If I shoot, it will be at one of the bigwigs, you can bet your ass on that. Or maybe at one of those big-shovel jockeys or smart-ass grease monkeys. Jesus Christ, where’s your brains?”

  Charleston answered mildly, “I guess I left them at home. But we have to ask around.”

  “Fart around, then.” Cleaver got up. “Good-bye.”

  He slammed out the door, leaving me, at least, with nothing much to chew on.

  On the way back to town Charleston said, “Well?”

  “He used to have some fun in him.”

  “Not now. He’s on edge.”

  “I guess in his fix anyone would be. You know, strip mining and then us landing on him.”

  Charleston eased the car past a poky truck. “What may a man do, when he feels the sands start slipping under his feet?”

  “I don’t quite get it, but he’s not licked yet.”

  Charleston said, “Not yet,” and fell silent.

  I asked to be let off at the Bar Star.

  He looked at me from the side of his eye, and I said, “Don’t worry. I’ll get a nap.”

  Bob Studebaker had just one customer, a homesteader named Samuelson. I sat at the bar and ordered a drink.

  Pouring it, Studebaker said, “I didn’t hardly recognize you, stranger.”

  “Been busy. How’s Gunnar?”

  “Fine. Best damn dog a man ever had, even if he does eat me out of house and home. Want to see him?”

  “Sure.”

  He went to the back of the place and let the dog in. Samuelson took one look at the dog, gulped his drink and started edging for the door.

  “He won’t hurt you. Be a good dog now, Gunnar.”

  Samuelson took his leave, his eyes on Gunnar until he got to the door. Opened, it let in a puff of white that faded into a draft. I put my hand out for the dog to sniff. He must have remembered me, for he licked my hand with a tongue as big as a steak.

  I asked Studebaker, “Do you know a man by the name of Coletti? Tony Coletti?”

  “He’s been in a few times. You know I don’t cater to them offbeats, but what the hell? This is a public place.”

  “Is he into you for anything?”

  “He’s got a big thirst, but I’ve never seen him what you call drunk.”

  “Is he?”

  “Well, now, just for a couple of bottles. He’ll pay off. He’s done it before. Always made good.”

  “When was the last time he got a bottle?”

  “You’re goddamn curious, Jase, but it was just last night. No, come to think of it, this morning. A man forgets. Don’t you worry. I’ll get my money.”

  He didn’t quite ask me why I was curious, and I didn’t tell him, just saying, “You know your customers.”

  I walked home through the gathering dark, slept for three hours, gobbled my supper under Mother’s anxious eyes and headed for the office.

  “You’re early,” Charleston said after a glance at the wall clock.

  “But fresh as a daisy.”

  “Picked when?” He took a moment to size me up, then went on. “Doolittle’s checking with Ves Eaton before going to bed.”

  “About Coletti? About his credit?”

  “That would seem to be the idea.”

  “You’re awful tired, Mr. Charleston.”

  “Tired and cranky,” he admitted with a small smile. “Something on your chest, Jase?”

  “Coletti owes the Bar Star. Studebaker said for a couple of bottles, but it could be more. He got one this morning. Credit good there, so far.”

  His head made a small up-and-down movement. It wasn’t affirmative. It wasn’t negative. It was brooding. He rose and said, “I’ll relieve you at midnight. Be at ease if you can.”

  Left alone, I shuffled through what facts we had. They were few and led nowhere. We knew a man had been killed by ricochet by another man who had been shooting at lamp bulbs. We knew of the social division between townspeople and newcomers. I knew Coletti had been boozing it up. And where was the hunch in any of that? I drowsed and reflected and reflected and drowsed and came out by the same door as in I went, as old Omar had said. Doolittle wasn’t the only one who could employ classical references.

  At ten-thirty Mrs. Carson called from the switchboard. “There’s a woman wants to talk to you. She sounds hysterical.”

  “Put her on.”

  “Sheriff,” a high voice told me, “please come! Come quick or it’s murder!”

  “Hold on. What’s your name?”

  “Kate Reagan. Mrs. Tim Reagan. I live—”

  “I know where you live. Who’s being threatened?”

  “Threatened? You mean being beat up. Marie Coletti.”

  “I know where she lives. Where’s your husband?”

  “I can’t find him.”

  “Who’s beating her up?”

  “Her husband. That Tony.” The voice rose higher. “Don’t ask questions for God’s sake. Just come!”

  I stopped at the switchboard only long enough to tell Mrs. Carson to roust out Doolittle and tell him to come to the Coletti place. Then I ran out, yanked the cord to the engine heater and burned rubber getting away.

  A woman stood cold and nervous outside the Coletti place. I said, “Mrs. Reagan?”

  “Yes. In there. In there! I was thrown out.”

  The lights were on in the Coletti trailer. I heard a woman crying out. I threw open the door.

  There was Marie, lying slumped on the fold-out bench. There was Coletti standing over her, fist raised. He moved at the sound of my entrance. I could see then that Marie’s face was bruised and bleeding. She had her hands clamped over her stomach.

  Coletti said, “Get out!”

  I took a step forward.

  “Family business. Get out!”

  “No! No!” the girl said between her bleeding lips.

  “You shut up, you bitch!”

  “It’s public business now. Move away from her.”

  Through the open door, from over my shoulder, came a hoarse voice. “Coletti! You bitch-born wop.”

  It was Tim Reagan behind me. He tried to push past. Behind him I caught a glimpse of a police car pulling up. That would be Doolittle.

  “Wop, huh?” Coletti was snarling. “All right, you mick, you two-timer.” He stabbed a finger toward Marie. “You and her both.”

  “Stand back, Reagan,” I told him. “Police business.”

  Turning back, I said, “Come along, Coletti. You’re under arrest.”

  “For man and wife business? Go screw yourself. She’s a born whiner. Two-timer, too. She even talks to pigs, so I’m told. I been teaching her better.”

  I felt Reagan pushing against me. A glance showed me Doolittle and Mrs. Reagan, crowding close.

  “Come along.”

  From the tiny kitchen table Coletti snatched a slicing knife. He pointed it at me. “Sure. Take me. Take me and my knife.”

  In his hard glare, in his sure movements, I saw the hard craze of alcohol and the muscular control it sometimes gives to a man.

  “For Christ’s sake, stand back,” I yelled at those behind me. “Give me room.”

  I had to give Reagan an elbow. He was saying, “I knowed that girl since she was a minnow. Let me take him, goddamnit.”

  “Stand back!”

  I hate men who abuse women. Rage rose in me and came to a boil. Blind rage.

  I moved toward Coletti. He started feinting with the knife, crouching, knife held low in knife-fighter’s fashion.

  I stepped almost into the thrust of the blade and kicked him in the face. He went down. I tramped on his knife hand, sending the knife skittering. He was moaning. I yanked him to his feet. I hit him full in the face with my right. He went down again, not moaning. I yanked at him again and felt a hard hand on my shoulder. Doolittle’s voice said, “That’s enough, Jase. Cool it.”

  “Stay out of this!”

  “You’re an officer, Jase. Remember that
. Don’t louse things up.”

  Rising, I felt the rage seeping out of me. It left entirely when I looked into Doolittle’s eyes. There was troubled concern there.

  “Thanks,” I said. “You got handcuffs?”

  “Right here.”

  “Cuff him behind his back.”

  Coletti didn’t protest. He was only half-conscious.

  “What about Marie?” Reagan wanted to know.

  “I want to go home. Back to Boston,” the girl said in a thin voice.

  “In time,” I told her. “Right now you’re coming home with me.”

  “How’s that?” Reagan asked bristling.

  “No need to worry. I promise that.”

  Doolittle got Coletti to his feet and said to Reagan, “Hold him up, will you?” He stepped over and picked up the knife.

  “Marie, do you want to come home with me? My mother’s there. She’ll take care of you.”

  She swayed to her feet, still clutching her stomach. “Anywhere,” she said, her tone frail. “Anywhere but here.”

  “Ike, take Coletti to the jail. You can handle him?”

  Reagan said, “I’ll go along, just in case.”

  I half-carried Marie to the car. She didn’t weigh much more than a child, and, like a trusting child, she let me seat her.

  I went around to the driver’s side, and there was Reagan again. “She’s not a two-timer, goddamn it,” he said. “Don’t get ideas.”

  Before I closed the door I told him, “Sometime you must meet my mother.”

  I rang the front door of our house, thinking to prepare Mother a little. She opened the door, her eyes big on the picture we made.

  “This girl’s hurt, Mother. Needs care.”

  Her gaze went to Marie. “Oh, you poor dear. Come in out of the cold. In the kitchen. There’s hot water on the stove. Please come in, dear. I can call a doctor.”

  I helped Marie to a chair in the kitchen. One of her eyes was almost closed. There was blood on her chin. I could tell her stomach still hurt. “You’ll be all right now,” I told her.

  Mother answered for her. “Of course you’ll be all right.”

  The girl said, “Please send me home.”

  “I’m off again,” I informed Mother.

  “When you’re better, of course you’ll go home,” Mother was saying.

  I slipped out the door. I didn’t need to give my mother instructions. She would take charge. I knew that and gave thanks.

  Charleston was alone, waiting to relieve me. I started on my story of the night, but he interrupted me. “Doolittle told me. He’s in back with Doc Yak. If you want to add anything, it can wait.”

  “One immediate thing, Mr. Charleston. It may take that girl a week to recover. I wouldn’t want Coletti bothering her or my mother. I hope he’s kept behind bars for a while.”

  He answered, “Don’t worry,” and at the same time the back door of the office opened, letting in Doc Yak and Doolittle.

  Doc Yak glared at me. “I want to make one observation. When you arrest a man, you sure as hell arrest him. Broken nose. Two teeth gone. Face all bunged up. Bump on the head. Do you have to knock the shit out of a man before bringing him in?”

  Doolittle was quick to answer for me. “It was all self-defense. We got witnesses. Pure self-defense. Look at that knife slice in Jase’s coat.” I hadn’t noticed it. Neither had anyone else until he spoke.

  “Doc,” I said, “you’re on your high horse. Please come down. My mother’s got a hurt girl on her hands. She needs you right away.”

  Charleston nodded. “She just called, trying to find you.”

  “Well, now, your mother,” Doc said. “That’s a different story. Fine woman. How she birthed such a brat as you, Jase, I can’t figure. Anyhow, I’m long gone.” He gave me a smile as he left. Doc’s degree of liking showed itself in abuse.

  “One or two things I didn’t get in, chief,” Doolittle said. “Ves Eaton said he didn’t know a thing about Coletti’s credit. Pudge always took care of accounts, mostly keeping them in his head. And I didn’t see any rifle in Coletti’s place. I’ll look more tomorrow.”

  “All right, go, both of you,” Charleston ordered. “Get some sleep.”

  I went home then, stopping just once at the Bar Star for what I told myself was an earned drink.

  Walking on in the still and frozen night, in the ringing bowl of the valley, that night, for the first time, I heard the howling of wolves.

  11

  Over an early dinner I asked Mother, “Where’s Marie? Isn’t she up to a meal?”

  “She’s much better. No internal pain at all. It’s just that she doesn’t want to be seen with her face all discolored. I don’t blame her. She’s a good girl, Jase.”

  “One of the foreigners, just the same.”

  “Don’t frown on her because of that. She can’t help it, and good is where you find it.”

  “Yes, Mother.”

  “Another thing, Jase. She’s worried about her dog.”

  “Dog! Oh, for Lord’s sake, I forgot about it. It wasn’t in sight last night.”

  “She says it always hid during any unpleasantness, under a chair or bed or some place.” She turned to face me, her gaze searching. “You must have run into a lot of unpleasantness last night.”

  “Enough to spook a pup, I suppose.”

  “How did you get that tear in your coat?”

  “What am I, a suspect or something?” I asked. I hated to dodge her honest questions, but if I didn’t she’d worry her head off. “I learned something. Don’t try to crawl through a barbed-wire fence with one of those bulky coats on.”

  She murmured, “Hmm,” only half believing. “Anyhow, it’s mended.”

  “Thanks, Mother. By the way did you happen to hear howling last night?”

  “I didn’t want to mention it because you’d just laugh at me. All right, though. It woke me up. I kept the light on. What was it, Jase?”

  “Just dogs. That stands to reason.”

  “It didn’t sound like dogs to me. More like wild animals.”

  I did laugh then and said, “Scaredy-cat. Hear noises miles away, and you get the wind up.”

  “Just the same, I didn’t like it.”

  She sniffed, dismissing that subject. I refused the offer of more coffee. “Marie wants to go home. Boston, it is,” she said. Her mind was bouncing around like my own. “She says her family will send money if she gets word to them. They never did approve of the marriage.”

  “Tell her to phone them.”

  “It’s so expensive, and she has no money.”

  “Say it’s by courtesy of the sheriff’s office.”

  At the door, after I had bundled up, she said, “If you see Doc Yak, please thank him. He came right away, and he’s such a nice man.”

  I said, “Yes, Mother,” again.

  I had time to drop in at the Bar Star. A half-dozen customers were there, and old Tom Curtis was saying, “They was wolves, all right. Hell, I know wolves. First time in forty-five years I ever heard them howl around here. Scared the bejesus out of my woman.”

  I shook my head when Studebaker asked me, “What’ll you have?”

  Francis Fournier, a half-breed, picked up the subject when Curtis left off. In our town we didn’t have blacks or Mexicans to exercise our superiority on. We had Indians and part-bloods. But Fournier owned a little property and maintained a bank balance and so had the credentials for brotherhood. “From Canada,” he was saying. “That’s where they come from. Starved out up there, and frozen out, and so they come south. Like the big white owl. Arctic, they call them. I seen two yesterday.”

  “Time we organized a wolf hunt,” Bodie Dunn put in. “That’s if the women will let us out at night.”

  “If we could just sic them wolves on the miners and then shoot the wolves, that would be a good cleanup,” Curtis said.

  “Serve ’em right, too,” Dunn added. “Throwin’ them bricks through old Willsie’s window. Tha
t gets me.”

  The talk turned to Pudge Eaton’s death. I had heard enough, and my time was up. I went out and walked to the office.

  At the switchboard Blanche Burton was fixing her face in preparation for going off shift, though I could hardly see why. The present climate was not conducive to socializing. But a lonely woman couldn’t afford to be careless.

  “You have a little visitor, Jase,” she said. She must not have heard last night’s howling.

  “He, she or it?”

  “Go see for yourself.”

  When I opened the inner door, Marie’s little poodle barked and came bouncing. On the floor were a saucer of water and what remained of a meal. Doolittle, seated, smiled and said, “He was crying his head off. Brave officer to the rescue.”

  I patted the poodle, asking, “What’s your name, pup?”

  Doolittle told me, “Bipsie. Hell of a name for a he dog.”

  The dog went to a corner and lay down, exhausted from his show of affection. I asked, “Has Charleston seen it yet?”

  “Not yet. Ought to be back any minute. That’s the word from the board.”

  I called Mother to tell her Marie’s dog was safe and sound.

  While we waited, I asked Doolittle, “How do you like your job?”

  “Fine. Just fine.”

  “Mr. Charleston is satisfied. I guess he told you. And you’re okay by me.”

  Doolittle put a hand to his trim mustache, his eyes on the floor. “Jase, if you asked me what I’d done in my life, I’d have to say damn near everything rough. I’ve run trap lines in Alaska, herded sheep in Nevada, followed the harvest, signed on as a roughneck in the Oklahoma oil fields, worked with cattle and hell knows what else. Once I worked the rodeo circuit until I got too old and those broncs were driving my guts down into my pants. I called any place home. But none of those jobs was permanent and nothing I did important. Wasted time, except that I always read whatever I could lay my hands on. Yep, a wasteland, that was my life. But now—”

  He raised his eyes to me and said almost shyly, “To tell the truth, I’m getting a taste for respectability.”

  Before I could answer, Charleston came in. Bipsie, revived, gave him a welcome. Doolittle told him whose dog it was and explained its presence. “And, chief,” he went on, “there’s no sign of a gun in Coletti’s place. I went through it, top to bottom, side to side and underneath.”