Wilde West (17 page)

“She's in room 211. He's in room 210.”

Grigsby nodded. “Who else?”

“O'Conner. David O'Conner. A reporter for the
New York Sun.
”

“Joined up in New York?”

“San Francisco. He's covering the tour for his newspaper.”

“Room number?”

“207, I believe.”

“Who else?”

“Wilbur Ruddick. A poet from San Francisco. But really, the idea of young Ruddick doing anything so dreadful is completely absurd.”

Grigsby nodded. “Room number.”

Oscar sighed, resigned. “Room 208.”

“Who else?”

“No one.”

“You said a valet. A servant.”

“Henry? But Henry's been with me since New York. Henry Villiers. He's a dear, sweet man.”

Grigsby nodded. “Which room?”

“214. But really, Marshal—”

“That it? Nobody else?”

Oscar sat back. “No one else.”

Grigsby nodded. “You givin' another talk tonight?”

“Yes.”

“Tomorrow?”

“Tomorrow we go to Manitou Springs. I give a lecture at some private mansion there.”

“The Bell mansion?”

“Yes. And from there, the next day, we go on to Leadville.”

“Train or stage?”

“Pardon?”

“To Manitou Springs. You takin' the train or the stage coach?”

“The train.”

“Noon train?”

“Yes.”

Grigsby nodded. “You got a list of the places where you gave talks? Since you started?”

“Why? Oh. Of course.” He frowned. “To determine whether there were any more of these killings. No, I haven't. Vail does. I can obtain it from him, if you like.”

Grigsby made a slight negative motion with his head. “Get it myself.”

“You'll be talking to these people? All of them?”

Grigsby nodded.

“They'll all be very disturbed by this,” Oscar said.

“Not as disturbed as Molly Woods.”

Oscar frowned. “Yes, of course. Of course. But at the risk of repeating myself, I'd like to say that not one of them could have been responsible for any of this. I should be happy to swear to that. I've been traveling with all of them for weeks now. I know them. I've eaten with them.”

Grigsby shrugged. “Even a crazy person's gotta eat.”

“But it's
impossible
.”

Grigsby said, “One of them didn't do it, then you did.”

Oscar raised his eyebrows. “Marshal—”

“You listen to me,” Grigsby said. “Someone killed those hookers. Way I figure it, the bastard's got to be one of you people. One of the seven. Now maybe it wasn't you. And then again maybe it was. You know your presidents, maybe, but that story about the streets, Washington and Lincoln, that story is bullshit. So I want to tell you this. I'm gonna be all over you and your people like ugly on a hog. You take a drink, any one of you, and I'm gonna swallow. You fart, and I'm gonna smell it. If it was you who did it, I'm gonna find out. We clear on that?”

“Yes, certainly, but—”

“Good.” He stalked to the door, opened it, and strode out, pulling it shut behind him.

C
RIGSBY STOOD FOR A MOMENT
outside Wilde's door. His hip was throbbing—all that standing—and he was still shaky from pulling the gun. He had moved reflexively, without thinking—the moment Wilde reached into his pocket, Grigsby's hand had jumped to the Colt, surprising him as much as it had Wilde.

Jesus, he hadn't drawn down on anyone for years. No call for it. Now, alone in the hotel corridor, he could feel the tension percolating from his body. He'd held it in, ignored it, while he talked to Wilde. But now it was trickling away like sap from a tree, leaving him limp and weak.

He took a breath, let it out.

He smiled. One thing, though—he was still pretty goddamn fast. Not as fast as he used to be, naturally. Not after all the years, all the wear and tear, all the booze. But still pretty goddamn fast.

He adjusted his gunbelt with a self-satisfied tug.

Not bad for an old man.

By god, that deserved a drink.

Sitting in the empty bar downstairs, staring at his glass of bourbon, Grigsby frowned.

Could Wilde have done it? Killed and cut up Molly Woods and the others?

He was a nance. Looked like one. Acted like one. All soft and fluttery, talking through his nose with that airy-fairy accent. Grigsby was convinced that Englishmen—he had met a few—only talked that way out of spite. If you woke them up in the middle of the night, caught them off guard, they'd talk like normal people.

Now nances, it was a well-known fact, didn't like women. Hated them. Jealousy.

But you wouldn't think that a nance would have the balls to cut a woman up like that.

But you wouldn't think that a nance would have the balls to light up a cigarette, bold as brass, while someone was holding a loaded Colt to his forehead, either.

Grigsby had seen the faint shaking of Wilde's hand as he held out the cigarette case. It hadn't lessened his respect for the gesture. Anyone who didn't get a bit edgy when someone pointed a gun at him wasn't right in the head.

No, Wilde had some balls, all right. For a nance.

Well now. Be fair. Lot of normal men wouldn't have the balls to light up a cigarette with the barrel of a .45 looking up their nose.

But did Wilde have balls enough to commit four cold-blooded murders?

That wasn't balls. That was craziness, pure and simple.

Wilde had seemed surprised when he heard about Molly Woods. Surprised, hell, he nearly shit in his pants.

But that could've been playacting. Nances were good at playacting. Lot of stage actors were nances. Came from playing at being women, maybe. Or playing at being normal. And Wilde was smart enough to pull it off—look at the way he'd come up with that story about the streets. Smooth as a snake oil salesman.

But the corner of Lincoln and Washington was a good two miles from Molly Woods's shack. So why the story?

A boyfriend? He met up, maybe, with another nance?

It was smart, too, for Wilde to ask about killings in places where he hadn't given one of his talks. Got to check on that.

First, though, talk to the valet. The servant. When you want to know about the boss, you ask the hired hand.

“No suh,” said Henry Villiers. “I never heard no prostitutes got kilt in those cities.”

Grigsby sat in one of the two unsteady chairs in the valet's tiny room. He was sitting down because his hip still ached, and because the ceiling was so low it bumped against his hat. The room had probably been a storage space, maybe even a broom closet, before the Laidlaw brothers, the owners of the hotel, got greedy and crammed the bed and the chairs in here. The only other furniture was a small pinewood dresser. There was no window. The wallpaper, muddy green, trembled in the pale yellow glow of a small oil lamp.

“Where were you at last night, Henry?” Grigsby asked.

“With Mr. Oscar. At the Opera House.”

“Until when?”

“Until after the lecture.”

“And when was that?”

“'Bout ten o'clock.”

“Where'd you go afterwards?”

“Went for a drink.”

“Where?”

“The Red Eagle Saloon.”

Grigsby nodded. The Red Eagle was one of the few downtown saloons that served coloreds. The Red Eagle served everyone. Except for the Chinese, naturally. No one served the Chinese.

“What time you get back to the hotel?”

“'Bout twelve.”

“Anyone see you? Clerk at the front desk?”

Henry shrugged. “Don' know. Maybe.”

He was a small slender black man, fifty or so years old, with white hair and a long narrow face. He wore a neat black suit, a white shirt, a black bow tie. His features were even and regular, and so far they had been completely without expression, revealing nothing at all of what went on behind them.

“How you gettin' along with Mr. Oscar, Henry?”

“Jus' fine.”

“You figure he's a little strange, maybe?”

“Strange how?” The features didn't change.

Grigsby grinned, man to man. “C'mon now, Henry. You know what I mean.”

Henry shook his head. “No suh.”

Grigsby generally liked colored people—their good humor, their innocence, the easy unthinking rhythm of their simple lives—and although occasionally, like now, they were a little slow on the uptake, generally he got along just fine with them all. Some of them were shiftless, sure—but, hell, when you came right down to it, so were some of the whites. Most of them were hard workers, good providers, men who knew their place in the scheme of things, and stayed in it. There weren't a whole lot of uppity coloreds here in Denver—one way or the other, uppity coloreds didn't last long.

And all the coloreds in town knew that Grigsby might be hard, but he was straight. He gave a man a fair shake, black or white.

If only he could get Henry here to see all this.

Grigsby said, “You married, Henry?”

“No suh.”

Grigsby nodded. “So I guess maybe, being a normal kind of fella, every so often you get yourself a hankerin' for a woman.” Grinning again, Grigsby winked. “Know what I mean?”

Henry shook his head. “No suh. Don' really have no time for the women.”

“Well, sure, Henry. You got responsibilities. But I mean, if you had the time, you'd probably get yourself a woman every now and then, right?”

Henry shrugged. “Yes suh. Prob'ly.”

“Sure you would. And all I'm askin' is, you figure that Mr. Oscar does that? Get himself a woman now and then?” Or a nancy boy, maybe?

Henry shook his head. “Wouldn' know 'bout that.”

“Yeah, but Henry, you see him every day. You'd know if he was out tomcatting, am I right?”

Henry shrugged. “See him in the morning. See him at the lecture. Don' see him at night, mostly.”

Try something else, Grigsby told himself.

“Who takes care of Mr. Oscar's clothes, Henry? Gets 'em to the laundry and all?”

“I do.”

“You ever noticed anything strange about Mr. Oscar's clothes?”

“He got a lot of them,” Henry said. “Lot of different colors.”

They were like children. You had to lead them along, step by step. “No, Henry,” Grigsby said patiently, “what I mean is, you ever noticed bloodstains or anything on Mr. Oscar's clothes? Or maybe they were damp, like he'd tried to wash 'em off himself?”

Henry shook his head. “No suh.”

“You see what I'm getting at, Henry?”

“No suh.”

Grigsby sat back. He plucked the sack of tobacco from his vest pocket, opened it. You just had to be patient, was all. “You smoke, Henry?”

“No suh.”

Didn't use tobacco. Didn't use women. Maybe Henry was a nance himself. Nances were popping up all over the place.

Grigsby poured tobacco into the curled sheet of paper, rolled the paper, licked it, stuck the cigarette between his lips. He struck a match with his thumbnail, lit the cigarette. Exhaling, he said, “He hired you, Henry? Mr. Oscar?” He stuck the tobacco pouch back in his pocket.