Bloody Season
BLOODY SEASON
By Loren D. Estleman
A Dimension W Western
Dimension W is an imprint of Crossroad Press
Digital Edition published by Crossroad Press
Digital Edition Copyright 2014 by Loren D. Estleman
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Meet the Author
Photo and biographical profile by Deborah Morgan
Since the appearance of his first novel in 1976, Loren D. Estleman has written nearly 70 books and hundreds of short stories and articles. Among those books:
Writing the Popular Novel
, from Writer’s Digest Books; the second in a new series featuring Estleman’s Los Angeles film detective, Valentino (Alone, featuring Greta Garbo, December 2009);
Burning Midnight
(the 22nd Amos Walker novel, June 2012);
Roy & Lillie: A Love Story
(between a reprobate Old West judge and a celebrated British beauty, August 2010);
The Confessions of Al Capone
(his largest project to date, October 2012); and a novel about hanging judge Isaac Parker,
The Branch and the Scaffold
(April 2009). There are several short stories in the hopper, and proposals for future novels in both the mystery and historical western genres. He recently finished writing the 23rd installment in the Amos Walker P.I. series, and is currently working on another standalone novel.
Estleman has received fan letters from such notables as John D. MacDonald, The Amazing Kreskin, Mel Tormé, and Steve Forbes. He has acquired a loyal cult readership across the United States and in Europe, and his work has appeared in 23 languages.
An authority on both criminal history and the American West, Estleman has been called the most critically acclaimed author of his generation. He has been nominated for the National Book Award, and the Mystery Writers of America Edgar Allan Poe Award.
He has received twenty national writing awards: the Owen Wister Award for lifetime achievement from Western Writers of America, The Barry Award from Deadly Pleasures Mystery Magazine, four Shamuses from the Private Eye Writers of America, five Spurs from the Western Writers of America, two American Mystery Awards from Mystery Scene Magazine, Outstanding Western Writer, 1985, from Popular Fiction Monthly, two Stirrup Awards for outstanding articles in the Western Writers of America magazine, The Roundup, and three Western Heritage Awards from the National Cowboy Hall of Fame. In 1987, the Michigan Foundation of the Arts presented him with its award for literature. In 1997, the Michigan Library Association named him the recipient of the Michigan Author’s Award. In 2007, Nicotine Kiss was named a Notable Book by the Library of Michigan.
In 1993, Estleman was Guest of Honor at the Southwest Mystery Convention in Austin, Texas. He was Honored Guest at Eyecon ‘99 (Private Eye Writers of America Convention), held in St. Louis in July of that year. In June 2001, he was Guest of Honor (the first American chosen) at the Bloody Words Convention in Toronto, Canada.
He has been a judge for many literary honors, including the prestigious Hopwood Award given by the University of Michigan. He has written book reviews for many newspapers, including
The New York Times
and
The Washington Post
, and in 1988 he covered the filming of
Lonesome Dove
for
TV Guide
.
He’s worked hard to get where he is, beginning in the unheated upstairs of the 1867 Michigan farmhouse where he was raised. His fondest childhood memory is that of curling up in his robe with a mug of hot chocolate in front of the television to enjoy such grand western series as
Maverick
and
Gunsmoke
.
When he was fifteen years old, he sent out his first short story for publication. Over the next eight years, he collected 160 rejections. He attributes his tenacity to ego, and he’s earned that, too. He and his brown-bag lunch commuted to Eastern Michigan University to cut expenses after his father was disabled and his mother went to work to support the family.
Estleman often says he’s not a fast writer. He is, however, consistent, spending an average of six hours a day at his typewriter. He polishes as he goes, consuming a prodigious amount of cheap typing paper; a process he refers to as “writing for the wastebasket.”
His favorite writers — and those who have inspired his work — include Jack London, Edgar Allan Poe, W. Somerset Maugham, Ernest Hemingway, Raymond Chandler, and Edith Wharton.
A sought-after speaker and a veteran journalist of police-beat news, Estleman graduated from Eastern Michigan University in 1974 with a Bachelor of Arts degree in English Literature and Journalism. On April 27, 2002, EMU presented him with an honorary doctorate in letters. He left the job market in 1980 to write full time. He lives in Michigan.
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To Dick Wheeler, who helped me buck the tiger.
No weather will be found in this book. This is an attempt to pull a book through without weather.
—Mark Twain
Remember to get the weather in your god damned book—weather is very important.
—Ernest Hemingway
BLOODY SEASON
PART ONE
FLY’S ALLEY
As a general thing—as far as I could make out—these murderous adventures were not forays undertaken to avenge injuries, nor to settle old disputes or sudden failings out; no, as a rule they were simply duels between strangers—duels between people who had never even been introduced to each other, and between whom existed no cause of offence whatever.
—Mark Twain,
A Connecticut Yankee in King Arthur’s Court
, 1889
Chapter One
H
e was dying faster than usual that morning, striping the sides of the dry sink with bloody sputum and shreds of shattered lung. His ears rang and his head felt hollow.
When the first seizure of the day had passed he remained leaning on his palms on the maple washstand, shoulders gathered into a tent behind his lowered head, the stench of evaporated night-sweat stale in his nostrils. On such mornings his senses were painfully acute and he could not stand to be around himself. He poured blood-tinted liquid into a thick, smeared glass tumbler on the stand, set down the bottle, and drank, not lowering the tumbler until it was as empty as his head. The alcohol spread inside him, burning as it went, cauterizing. He replenished the contents of the glass and drank it more slowly. The sharp barley fumes flushed his own stink from his olfactory system.
A harsh gust skidded around the corner of the frame building and clattered the panes in the window overlooking the narrow lot next door. The room was cold, as it always was in late October when the wind blew mornings, and mornings the wind was always blowing. He filled the basin from the flowered pitcher, stripped off his nightshirt, the cotton peeling away from his armpits with a sucking sound, and stood naked and shivering, blue-white flesh stretched over rib cage, genitals shriveled and plum-colored, while he bathed his chest and crotch and under his arms with icy water. He worked up a pathetic lather from the yellow soap Fly’s wife provided the boarders and rinsed himself off. He dressed, ignoring the cross-hatching of old dirt on his long johns, sat down on the edge of the mattress to pull on the trousers of his gray suit, and had to haul himself up with the aid of the brass bedstead to stamp his stockinged feet into black half-boots with lampblack on the toes. The whiskey was echoing in his head now, as hollow and weightless as one of those paste-paper animals the greaser kids in the Mexican quarter busted at Christmastime to get at the candy and trinkets inside. If they busted his head, he reflected, they’d get only bits of a dry-husk brain tobacco-cured and pickled in alcohol. A few memories, orange and wrinkled like tintype, and not one of them worth the breath it took to swing a stick.
He shaved with his braces dangling, supporting himself with one hand on the washstand and working the razor over his scooped-out cheeks and round chin and flicking the lather into the sink. Then he wet his ivory comb, swept his hair into a wave and a curl, smoothed the flowing moustaches. Belatedly he remembered his swollen bladder and emptied it into the chamber pot beside the bed. His urine steamed in the cold room but the smell was not half as offensive to him as that of his sweat. It lacked corruption.
Buttoning his fly, he hawked and spat and contemplated the fresh dark red worm floating in the yellow. Another piece gone.
By the time Kate came in he had found his hickory cane to lean on and was shaking the wrinkles out of a pale green shirt he had taken from a drawer. She saw the high flame on his cheeks and, when he turned at her entrance drawing the pearl-handled knife from the lanyard around his neck, the luminosity in his gray eyes, and knew that his morning had been no better than the night before. At such times he was hellish handsome, with his ash-blond hair shining wet and his slightly darker moustaches lying flat and feline and his complexion all roses and milk like a girl’s. When he saw it was she, he resheathed the knife.