Showdown by Edward Gorman / Ed Gorman

from Dodge City. You do what he'd done to a proper woman like that, they'd put you in prison for a long, long time. In the wrong town they'd lynch you, even though you hadn't killed her.
    He had no money. He had a Colt. That was it.
    He went all the way to Montana on a succession of stolen horses and meals in churches where they fed the poor.
    He ended up in Butte, which was where he met up with Mac Rooney, which had been his hope. Rooney had never run a scam in Butte. He considered it his "safe" town, where the law regarded him as a good citizen.
    Tolan had tried to live on his own for a year and it hadn't worked. Much as he resented Rooney, he needed to collect himself, eat well, sleep well, start making some money again. He hadn't been able to do any of these things on his own. . . .
    And now he was in a grave, the cold and the smell of the cold spooking him. He had a fascination for stories about being buried alive, which were much in the news.
    He did his rodent search again. He'd smashed a couple of rats with the shovel that lay near the ladder. There was a way you could get them on the head at just the right angle and their brains would explode. It was funny to see. Rooney told him to check each time he came down here. He didn't see any rats today.
    He started toward the ladder, wanting to get out of here. Someday he'd be spending a long, long time in an underground place just like this one. Except it'd be a lot narrower. And there wouldn't be any ladder leading out.
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    "N ope, haven't seen him for three days," the desk clerk at the Empire Hotel said. He had a pencil-thin lady killer mustache, a soiled celluloid collar, and bulging blue eyes. "We've been getting sort of curious ourselves. He seems to be a reliable sort. No women up in the room. A beer or two before bedtime in the saloon over there. Very friendly to everybody. And then, all of a sudden, we just don't see him. And he isn't the type who'd skip out on a bill. I can practically guarantee you that."
    "He make friends with anybody here in particular?"
    "I'm not sure. I do know he was working on that Pentacle fire."
    "Pentacle Mattress Company?"
    "That's right. He mentioned that, and then he mentioned that he was an insurance investigator. So I figured maybe something was funny with the fire."
    "Arson?"
    "Don't see what else it could be, do you? Him being an insurance investigator and all." He nodded to the saloon in the hotel. Here they called it a gentleman's room. Which meant that the drunks didn't puke on the floor, they went outside; and the brawlers tried never to actually kill anybody on the premises. They took that outside, too. "Verne, he's the night man, he usually rolls in here about four o'clock in the afternoon. Verne, he could tell you a lot more about Mr. Woodward than I could."
    "You got a home address for Verne?"
    The desk clerk smiled. The smile was as oily as his hair. "How about you walk up those stairs over there and try Room D-2? He should be gettin' up just about now. It's an awful long way to go. But I think you can make it."
    Prine thanked him for the directions but not the humor.
    There were a thousand thousand Vernes in the New West. Transplanted easterners who'd come west for excitement and ended up tending bar or peddling all kinds of bullshit new products to housewives they daydreamed of humping if the husband wasn't around.
    Verne Jenkins was easy to spot because of the silk robe. Only a man from the East would wear a black silk robe with little yellow dragons stitched into it. Nothing effeminate about it. Just too fancy by half was all. A last vestige of Verne Jenkins's life in the East.
    He invited Prine in. One big room that was half living room, with a horsehair couch, a small bookcase, and a wooden table covered with liquor of various kinds. Framed photographs of New York covered the walls. A messed double bed took up most of the back half of the room. His closet was a piece of clothesline strung from one angle of a wall