The Reluctant Pinkerton by Robert J. Randisi

better if I grabbed you?” he asked with a leer.
    “I might,” she said, “but I don’t think you would. You look like a man with class who’s slummin’.”
    “Don’t you have some work to do?” he asked. “Somebody’s lap to sit in?”
    She grinned and said, “Yeah, I do, but I ain’t done with you.” She closed one eye. “My name’s Nancy. I’ll figure out your game. You wait and see.”
    He watched her walk away and changed his plans for the night.
    From observing the men for three days, he had made his choice. There was a big, loud fella who sat with the stockyard crew who always looked ready for a fight. He drank a lot, grabbed at the girls, and wasn’t very smart. He figured picking a fight with this guy would make an impression on the stockyard crew. But now that Nancy was keeping an eye on him, he figured he better put it off for another night.
    He finished his beer, paid his bill, and left the saloon, deciding to call it a night.
    *   *   *
    He’d gotten himself a room in a dive near the stockyards, close enough to be able to smell the manure. As he walked from the saloon to his hotel, he became aware that somebody was following him.
    He wasn’t happy with the thought that somebody might have picked him out already. It was bad enough that the saloon girl, Nancy, had a feeling about him. But what elsecould it be? He certainly did not look like somebody who would be worth robbing.
    He had already checked out the area around his hotel, the saloon, and in Hell’s Half Acre in general, so he knew there were some streets that would be pretty well deserted this time of the evening. He turned down one of those streets, mindful of the sound of footsteps behind him.
    Fort Worth had not yet gone to concrete sidewalks, so the footsteps echoed nicely on the boardwalk. From the sound, Roper deduced that the person following him was slight, with short strides.
    Eventually, he rounded a corner and came to an alley he could step into. The footsteps came closer and closer, rushing just a bit as the person came to the corner. As they came around, Roper stepped out, sneaked his arm around the person’s neck. As he’d suspected, they were short and slight and didn’t offer much in the way of resistance beyond some feeble struggling. Roper dragged them farther into the alley.
    “Just relax,” Roper said, “and tell me why you’re following me.”
    The person gurgled a bit, as Roper’s forearm was pressing against their windpipe. Abruptly, their hat fell off and Roper found his nose in a tangle of fragrant hair. It was then he also noticed some lumps that would be odd for a man to have.
    He released the person and turned them around. The alley was dark, but he was fairly certain he was looking into the red and mottled face of Dol Bennett.
    “What the hell—” he said.
    “You almost choked me to death,” she complained.
    “Dol,” he said, “I could’ve killed you.”
    “It feels like you tried!”
    “What the hell are you doing here?”
    “Can we go someplace and talk?” she asked. “And where I can get some water?”
    “Damn it—” he said. “All right. This alley leads to theback of my hotel. We’ll go to my room so nobody sees us together.”
    “As long as you act like a perfect gentleman,” she said.
    “What the—”
    “That means no choking.”
    He glared at her, then said, “I don’t think I can promise that.”

10
    Once they were in his room with the lamp turned high, Roper could see that Dol was dressed much as he was so that, when she was wearing her hat, she looked like a short, disheveled man. With the hat off, he could see her feminine features clearly beneath the soot that covered her face.
    The room had the bare minimum, a bed that was too small for Roper with a thin mattress, a flimsy chest with one drawer broken and hanging out, threadbare curtains on the single window, which had so much dirt on the glass it was almost opaque. The walls were so thin he could hear