The Rogues’ Game
(St. Martin’s Press, 2005)
Chapter One
It was a small city in Texas. The name doesn’t matter. It’s enough for you to know that it was west of the Brazos River and east of the Pecos, and if this description doesn’t tell you anything, buy a map. The population hovered around fifty thousand for the first half of the century, but the war brought an airbase and the number soared while the local economy boomed. I’d been there for a week back in the fall of 1942 on assignment with the Office of Strategic Services, and I’d disliked the place enough that I’d intended to go back someday. There were complications for me when the war ended, and it was the spring of ’47 before I could get my affairs in order and return. We traveled at night. It was late April, and already the thermometer was climbing into the high eighties in the daytime, but the nights were cool and the wind coming in through the open window of the car had a tart edge to it. Outside I could smell the mesquite and the sagebrush, and whenever we crossed one of the many little wet-weather creeks that cut up the land I caught the fine night odor of damp earth that means so much in that dry country…
In the eight-odd years since its founding, the town had grown until now it lay sprawled on both sides of the river, its two halves connected by a half dozen viaducts. The main drag was called Roosevelt Avenue. Before the war it was known as Texas Street, but the local boosters had rechristened it in a fit of gratitude for RDR for the airbase. Its eastern extremity had always been the saloon and red-light district. Called Buckshot Row after the favorite peacekeeping tool of a legendary frontier sheriff, it amounted to a handful of hot-pillow hotels and a dozen or so nightclubs. The clubs were gaudy, jerry-built places where soldiers and cowboys drank beer and danced and sometimes fought for the attentions of local girls and hookers alike. During the war when the base was swelled to capacity each of these dives had a back room where a couple of dice tables and a roulette wheel could be found. Back then the money was rolling in, and every street corner on the Row held a few whores and at least one skinny, rat-eyed pimp from Fort Worth or Dallas or Houston. Those days were long over now, and most of the joints were struggling to survive against rumors that the base wouldn’t make the latest round of War Department budget cuts.
I drove on sedately through town. Traffic was light and the few cars abroad that time of night were clustered around a couple of cafés and the old Weilbach Hotel. The ancient, flickering streetlights had been erected when the first power plant was built not long after the turn of the century, and their feeble glow left the downtown shrouded in shadows. In the center of the city loomed the county courthouse, a grim neo-Gothic castle of native sandstone, complete with gargoyles, iron-barred windows and a roof of tarnished copper plating. Beyond the courthouse the business district soon gave way to eight or ten blocks of fine homes, most of them dating back to the late Victorian era when the place had been a prosperous shipping center for the cattle industry. The majority were in good repair, but several were beginning to show the effects of time and age and the town’s ebbing fortunes. Surrounded by stunted oaks and cottonwoods, they still thrust their high-pitched roofs and prim cupolas into the inhospitable West Texas sky like a gaggle of old maids flaunting their outworn virginity.
I passed them with hardly a glance, then crossed the Roosevelt Avenue Viaduct that spanned the Diablo’s floodplain. So far it had been a dry spring, and the river itself was but a narrow, placid ribbon shimmering in the moonlight. On the west side of town I stopped at a liquor store and bought two-fifths of White Horse scotch and several bottles of club soda. A mile farther I found a tourist court that advertised water fans and free ice. It was a semicircle of small stucco cabins nestled in a grove of cottonwood trees, each with a carport and a covered portico.
“If the office is clean, the rooms will be too,” Della said. She came in with me, looked carefully around, and then gave the place her nod of approval. When I paid for two weeks’ lodging, the night clerk grabbed the cash like a drowning man grabs a life preserver.
“No refunds,” he said. “Please understand that. No refund if you leave early.”
“Don’t worry,” I told him. “We may even be here longer than two weeks.”
He went somewhere in the back and filled a thermos jug with ice for me, then handed it over with my key and receipt.
Besides a bathroom and a roomy bedroom with a sofa and an armchair, the cabin had a kitchenette off to one side in an alcove. I piled our luggage beside the bed and went to the sink and made us each a tall drink. I handed one to Della as she headed to the bathroom to soak, then stretched out on the sofa and took a long pull from the other, savoring the smoky taste of the whiskey.
I had no doubt that the payment of two weeks’ rent would soon bring a visit from the cops. That’s the way it worked back then in towns of that size. A man with a nice car and plenty of cash and a blonde with no wedding ring checked into a hotel or tourist court planning to be in town a while, and the clerk would call to report him as soon as he was out the office door. I didn’t mind, though; I wanted a visit from the law because I knew just what kind of guy they’d send: the local bagman. But I was no stranger to dealing with crooked cops. Nor with criminals either, for that matter. After all, hadn’t I come to town to meet a pair of old-time hoods named Icepick Willie and Chicken Little?