Longarm 243: Longarm and the Debt of Honor (20 page)

“God, there's nothing finer than a big cock. Did you know that, dear? Do you have any idea the effect you have on a poor, innocent girl like me?” Eleanor laughed. As well she might. Longarm had no idea if she was rich or poor. But innocent was not exactly a description he would have applied to her. Not hardly.

She'd led him into the shed and wasted no time at all getting out of her clothes and urging him to hurry the hell up and get out of his.

All Longarm was wearing, for crying out loud, were pants, boots, and drawers. Yet Eleanor was stripped and ready quicker than he was. She was a marvel, this one was.

Lucky Norm.

Longarm gave himself a stern warning to quit thinking about damned Norm, at least for the rest of this night.

Not that Eleanor intended to give him a chance to think about much of anything except her and what she was so very busy doing.

She dropped to her knees to quicken his interest—as if he hadn't been near ready to burst already—then took him by the hand and led him over to the grain bin.

“Here,” she said. “This looks like just the exact height.”

“For what?”

Eleanor laughed again. And showed him what she wanted.

She was right. The top of the grain bin was just right. She dropped onto it on her back, her butt and dripping wet pussy pointed toward the front of the shed. It occurred to Longarm to hope there weren't any late passersby wandering past, but Eleanor never seemed to give that a moment's worry.

She positioned herself with her shoulders jammed against the back wall of the shed and her legs pointing toward the roof.

“Come here, dear. Bring that big, beautiful thing to me.”

Longarm stepped forward and discovered that Eleanor was downright perfectly placed, so he slid into her slick as could be, without having to bend or hardly hunch over.

Eleanor whimpered a little and wriggled her hips as Longarm's cock filled her. “That's what I need, baby. So big. So hard. Fuck me now, baby. And don't hold back. Don't hold anything back. I want you to hammer my ass. You hear me, baby? I want you to drive my butt right through the lid of this thing. Fuck me as hard as you know how, baby.”

Longarm reared back and gave her a few tentative strokes.

“Damn you, baby, harder. Faster. Make me feel it, honey. Hurt me with it. Break me in two, damn you. Give it all to me.”

Well, dammit, if that was what she really wanted ...

He hesitated only a moment longer. She was clutching at his flesh, her hands digging into his sides as she tried to urge him harder and deeper into her body. Eleanor was a big girl, all right. Every part of her. And if she could take it, well, who was he to hold back from what the lady wanted?

Longarm withdrew until only the tip of his flagpole lightly tickled the wet, greedy entrance to her body.

Then, throwing all his weight behind it, Longarm rammed it home. Hard.

“Green River,” he grunted, using the age-old term that meant shoving a knife in to the hilt. Or more accurately, to the British foundry mark GR found on the blades of Hudson's Bay trade knives, a mark that the old-timers used to misinterpret as Green River rather than the George Rex it actually stood for.

Eleanor squealed, quite unmindful of the noise she was making, and urged, “That's it, baby. Harder now. Give me more.”

Longarm did his very best to comply.

And, funny thing, he didn't think about his old friend Norm even once in the next little while.

Longarm was feeling pretty damn good. No, better than merely good. He was feeling sharp as a whole handful of carpet tacks and ready for anything. He had a fresh shave, a full belly, and empty balls, all those little things that added up to put a man on top of the world. And the day hadn't hardly started yet.

He started up the stairs in the courthouse two at a time, grinning the whole way, his boots loud on the bare, hardwood steps.

“Longarm. I was hoping to see you this morning.” It was Schooner, the genial clerk of county court, standing in the doorway to his office on the second-floor landing. “Can you come inside for a minute?”

Longarm thought about the others waiting upstairs for him. Jeremy had already told him the amanuensis was there. But hell, Longarm had just left the mayor still enjoying breakfast with his crowd of regulars at the cafe. It wouldn't hurt to stop here for a minute or two. He smiled and followed Schooner into the office.

“I thought you told me the other evening that you'd be by soon to start looking through those town records, Longarm,” Schooner complained.

“I did, my friend, but I'm sure you heard what happened. Norm will be getting out of jail in another hour or two.” Longarm laughed. “He can come wade through his own damn records. Me, I've had enough of all that for one lifetime. I just want to wrap things up and get on home now.”

Schooner gave him a worried look, which seemed more than a little odd. “I heard about that, of course. But there's something I want to show you.”

The clerk sounded plenty serious. Longarm nodded. “Sure thing.”

“When you said you would be looking into the town's records, you see, I had a little time on my hands so I thought I would lay them out for you. Over here on the desk you were using. See?”

“Yes, I see them.”

“Right, well, while I was at it, I leafed through a few of the books that weren't too badly burned. Like you were doing with the county records before.”

“Uh-huh.”

“I ... this isn't properly my business, you understand. I mean, I work for the county, not the town. And I don't want to cause anyone trouble. But ... I think you should take a look at something here, Longarm. I could be wrong about this. But I don't think I am. I ... want to see what you think.”

Frowning more in response to Schooner's tone of voice than to his words, Longarm followed the friendly fat man across the big room to the all-too-familiar desk where several very badly charred ledger books were stacked, each of them feathered with slips of bright, unburned paper that had been laid into them as bookmarks.

“Here,” Schooner said, opening the topmost ledger.

 

“Aren't you going the wrong way?” Mayor Chesman asked when he encountered Longarm at the bottom of the stairs. Chesman was on his way up to join the sheriff, Norm, and the stenographer for the formal depositions.

“I saw the judge this morning. He said he will be along in a few more minutes. Shouldn't we be getting started?”

“I'll be with you, uh, give me ten minutes, five, there's something I got to do. Tell them I' Il be right up, will you, please?”

The mayor shrugged and went upstairs while Longarm bolted out the courthouse door.

 

“Did you forget something, Marshal?” Luke Baldwin smiled. “I know you aren't here for professional services. I just finished shaving you, what? Forty-five minutes ago?”

“I do need your services, Mr. Baldwin, but not your barbering skills. You act as undertaker hereabouts, don't you?”

Baldwin nodded. “It isn't one of my happier duties, but yes, I do.”

Longarm had expected that answer. Most towns too small to justify having a regular undertaker relied on their local barber for that. And barbers often doubled—tripled, one might say—as physicians as well. Part of their training required that they study a certain amount of medicine. Those few who went to actual barbering schools were issued certificates proclaiming them to be barber-surgeons, in fact.

“I'd like to see John Dinklemann's body if you don't mind.”

Baldwin frowned and laid his scissors aside, patting the gentleman in his chair on the shoulder as if to assure the customer that he was not being forgotten. “I don't know the law on this subject, Marshal, but you might need a court order if you need to do that.”

“You mean you won't let me walk into your back room an' take a look at the body?”

“Oh, good gracious, you are entirely welcome to look at anything of mine that you like. It is just that we buried Dinky yesterday. Under the, um, circumstances I thought it best to make as little of it as possible. Herb Wainwright and I took him out and planted him in a pauper's grave. Herb liked the boy. He donated the coffin, and Sheriff Brown had already told me I could pick out a spot in the county cemetery, seeing as how Dinky was something of a town pet. But now that he is already in the ground, I really don't know about the propriety of digging him up again.”

It was Longarm's turn to frown. “I didn't know that. But, well, maybe you can answer a question for me. I mean, you did look the body over when you were doing whatever it is that you do with them, didn't you?”

“Yes, of course. The boy was not embalmed. There was no one to pay for that service, and the county does not require it. But I did wash him and lay him out as nicely as I could.”

“There's something I got to ask, Mr. Baldwin,” Longarm said.

“All right.”

Longarm hemmed and hawed for a moment, then said, “There ain't any delicate way to put this. Did Dinky Dinklemann have a big cock?”

“I beg your pardon?” Baldwin blurted out.

The man in the chair—Longarm couldn't see who he was because he had a warm towel draped over the lower part of his face—came wide awake at that one, his eyes popping open and cutting swiftly to Longarm.

“Look, I got a reason to ask. Believe me.”

“I should hope so,” Baldwin said.

“Well?” Longarm insisted. “Was Dinky hung like a horse or wasn't he?”

“If you must know, Marshal, I would have to say ... how can I put this ... it is probably a very good thing that the boy was too soft in the head to know anything about sex, because a club like he carried would surely have frightened even hardened prostitutes away.” Baldwin blushed and quickly added, “Not that we have fallen women in Crow's Point, of course. I was, uh, speaking theoretically.”

“Of course,” Longarm said, amused. Baldwin was so quick to claim there weren't any whores here that the choir member almost certainly knew a helluva lot more about the local vices than he wanted to let on.

“Is that all?” Baldwin asked, puzzled.

“Yeah, I think that's everything I need to know,” Longarm told him. “Thanks.” He bowed and tipped his hat in the direction of the gent in the barber chair, then turned and hurried off toward the courthouse.

 

“Well, Norman. I think that takes care of everything,” Sheriff Brown announced. “The charges of arson are of ficially withdrawn. You are a free man again.”

Norm grinned and reached for the gunbelt and badge Jeremy had gotten out of a cabinet for him.

“Sheriff,” Longarm said.

“Yes?”

“I hate to be the one to say this. What I mean is that I don't mind that it has to be done, because it damn sure does, but I wish it was someone else that had to do it. Anyway, I'm afraid you're gonna have to put Norm in cuffs again.”

“But you yourself proved he did not start that fire, Longarm. Surely you are not trying to say now that—”

“The charge ain't arson this time, Sheriff. It's theft. Properly speaking, it'd be embezzlement, I suppose.”

“God!” Norm groaned.

“I'd as soon you didn't pick that gun up, Norm. We've been friends a long time, but you know I'd do what has to be done regardless of that.”

Norm nodded and, shattered stepped carefully back from the desk where his gun and badge had been laid.

“Would you please explain yourself, Longarm?” the sheriff demanded.

“Yes, please do,” the mayor added.

“That arson downstairs,” Longarm said. “It had nothing to do with county politics or moving the county seat over to Jasonville. It wasn't the county's records they wanted burned. It was the town's.”

“You said ‘they'? I don't understand.”

“Norm and his partner. I suppose you'd call it a partnership. Norm and the reason he did what he did.” Longarm looked at his old friend, who all of a sudden could no longer meet his gaze. “That's right, isn't it, Norm? You needed the money for your partner an' that's why you stole?”

Shaken, Town Marshal Norman Wold nodded. He looked about as thoroughly miserable as Longarm had ever seen any man be.

“I don't understand any of this,” Brown said.

“Schooner has the proof downstairs, Sheriff. About the embezzlement, that is. Turns out Norm would make arrests an' collect fines from people, but he wouldn't record what he collected. He'd slip it into his own pocket. What he forgot was that the men who paid those fines had to have receipts issued. Otherwise they would've known right away that something was wrong. One of the receipt books Norm used to write out those slips got misplaced, got put into the town records by mistake. That's why they wanted to destroy those records. To cover Norm's ass and keep the money coming.”

Longarm gave his old friend a look that was more sad than accusing. “You fucked up yesterday, Norm, when you mentioned you had money put away. I know you better than to think you coulda done that on a town marshal's pay. Do you want to know something, though? Your partner was gonna give you the shit end of the stick even after all this. I cottoned on to that just a little while ago. But last night I found her trying to locate your money stash in the ashes at your house, quick before you got out of jail an' could get it your own self.”

Norm's eyes snapped around to meet Longarm's. He looked disbelieving. The others looked even more confused. “You said ‘her'?” Jonas asked.