The Long Count Read Online Free PDF Page B

door.
    He was greeted by a fan trying to cut through the dampened heat where it perched atop a tired-looking file cabinet. A high deskout front with an overweight man in uniform squatting behind it, a low gate in the fenced-off section where two more cops in light blue shirts and black pants, lounged at a couple of desks. The typewriters looked pre-war, as did the stack of arrest report dockets. A door to his left read Chief , and Quarrie assumed the cells lay beyond the far door where a glass panel offered the glimpse of a corridor. The three cops cast their collective gaze from his pistols to where his tie was fastened with a longhorn pin.
    ‘Evening boys,’ Quarrie said. ‘Sorry it took so long to get here but I had to make a stop on the way.’
    The chief’s door swung open and another man came out wearing the same black trousers and tired-looking shirt. His name tag said he was Billings, and he beckoned Quarrie inside.
    An air-conditioning unit was flattened into the glass of the grimy window, and apart from that there was an ancient wooden desk with a swivel seat as well as an armchair that was moth-eaten and ugly. Behind the desk a rack of rifles was fixed to the wall. Another fan sat on another file cabinet but that looked as though it was broken. The chief indicated the armchair but Quarrie shook his head.
    ‘No, thanks,’ he said. ‘I’m just about seized up right now on account of being set on my butt all the way from Wichita Falls.’
    Approaching fifty, the chief looked like he was carrying a few pounds he didn’t need; his hair greased high on his forehead with a single lock that wanted to droop between his eyes. He looked more than put-upon, as if the mayor had been giving him a real bad time, and seeing as how they had lost a cruiser and had a cop in the hospital, it was a fact he probably had.
    ‘That’s not all we got going on,’ he admitted when Quarrie probed. ‘This used to be a sleepy little spot on the map but I guess it’s not anymore.’
    He nodded to the twin-rig gunbelt Quarrie was wearing. ‘You always port a pair like that? I’ve seen pictures of Rangers from thethirties and forties wearing a two-piece but you rarely get to see it anymore.’
    ‘Well,’ Quarrie said, ‘this is how it was with my godfather, Chief, and this is how it is with me.’
    ‘Your godfather a Ranger too then was he? Would I know him at all?’
    ‘Frank Hamer,’ Quarrie said. ‘He’s dead now but at one time there wasn’t a soul in Texas hadn’t heard of him.’
    ‘That’s a fact. Man who divided opinion for sure.’ Arms across his chest the chief looked a little speculative. ‘So Frank Hamer was your godfather, uh? Him that shot Clyde Barrow and settled the town of Navasota back when there was a shooting on the street every day. That place hasn’t been the same since he left and he left a long time ago.’
    ‘Yes, he did.’
    ‘He wore a twin rig too then? I didn’t know.’
    ‘He did back then, Chief. And I ain’t the only one still packing a pair. There ain’t that many of us and we work alone most always, and a set of twelve at the ready gives a man a little more confidence than six.’ Quarrie sat down in the chair now and the cushion sagged under his weight.
    ‘So anyway,’ the chief said. ‘We called you up on account of we had an officer down and now that officer is dead.’ His expression had grayed a little further. ‘His name was Michaels and he died at two o’clock this afternoon over in the hospital at Queensboro.’ Reaching to his top drawer he took out a bottle of cheap Bourbon. ‘I guess the least we could do is drink to him. You ready for one now that it’s dark out?’
    Taking his cigarettes from his pocket Quarrie shucked one out and offered the crumpled pack. Shaking his head the chief found two dusty-looking glasses, poured the whiskey and passed a glass across.
    ‘The fallen,’ he said.
    Quarrie drank and placed the empty glass on the arm of the chair.