Table of Contents
Title Page
Copyright Page
Dedication
Chapter 1
Chapter 2
Chapter 3
Chapter 4
Chapter 5
Chapter 6
Chapter 7
Chapter 8
Chapter 9
Chapter 10
Chapter 11
Chapter 12
Chapter 13
Chapter 14
Chapter 15
Chapter 16
Chapter 17
Chapter 18
Chapter 19
Chapter 20
Chapter 21
Chapter 22
Chapter 23
Chapter 24
Chapter 25
Chapter 26
Chapter 27
Chapter 28
Chapter 29
Chapter 30
Chapter 31
Chapter 32
Chapter 33
Chapter 34
Chapter 35
Chapter 36
Chapter 37
Chapter 38
Chapter 39
Chapter 40
Chapter 41
Chapter 42
Chapter 43
Chapter 44
Chapter 45
Chapter 46
Chapter 47
Chapter 48
Chapter 49
Chapter 50
Chapter 51
Chapter 52
Chapter 53
Chapter 54
Chapter 55
Chapter 56
Chapter 57
Chapter 58
Chapter 59
Chapter 60
Chapter 61
Chapter 62
Chapter 63
Chapter 64
Chapter 65
Chapter 66
Chapter 67
Chapter 68
Chapter 69
Chapter 70
Chapter 71
THE SPENSER NOVELS
Rough Weather
Now and Then
Hundred-Dollar Baby
School Days
Cold Service
Bad Business
Back Story
Widow’s Walk
Potshot
Hugger Mugger
Hush Money
Sudden Mischief
Small Vices
Chance
Thin Air
Walking Shadow
Paper Doll
Double Deuce
Pastime
Stardust
Playmates
Crimson Joy
Pale Kings and Princes
Taming a Sea-Horse
A Catskill Eagle
Valediction
The Widening Gyre
Ceremony
A Savage Place
Early Autumn
Looking for Rachel Wallace
The Judas Goat
Promised Land
Mortal Stakes
God Save the Child
The Godwulf Manuscript
THE JESSE STONE NOVELS
Night and Day
Stranger in Paradise
High Profile
Sea Change
Stone Cold
Death in Paradise
Trouble in Paradise
Night Passage
THE SUNNY RANDALL NOVELS
Spare Change
Blue Screen
Melancholy Baby
Shrink Rap
Perish Twice
Family Honor
ALSO BY ROBERT B. PARKER
Resolution
Appaloosa
Double Play
Gunman’s Rhapsody
All Our Yesterdays
A Year at the Races
(with Joan H. Parker)
Perchance to Dream
Poodle Springs
(with Raymond Chandler)
Love and Glory
Wilderness
Three Weeks in Spring
(with Joan H. Parker)
Training with Weights
(with John R. Marsh)
PUTMAN
G. P. PUTNAM’S SONS
Publishers Since 1838
Published by the Penguin Group
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Penguin Group (Canada), 90 Eglinton Avenue East, Suite 700, Toronto, Ontario M4P 2Y3,
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Copyright © 2009 by Robert B. Parker
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Published simultaneously in Canada
Library of Congress Cataloging-in-Publication Data
Parker, Robert B., date.
Brimstone / Robert B. Parker.
p. cm.
eISBN : 978-1-101-04744-6
This is a work of fiction. Names, characters, places, and incidents either are the product of the author’s imagination or are used fictitiously, and any resemblance to actual persons, living or dead, businesses, companies, events, or locales is entirely coincidental.
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For Joan: Well worth the pressure
1
IT’S A LONG RIDE SOUTH through New Mexico and Texas, and it seems even longer when you stop in every run-down, aimless little dried-up town, looking for Allie French. By the time we got to Placido, Virgil Cole and I were almost a year out of Resolution.
It was a barren little place, west of Del Rio, near the Rio Grande, which had a railroad station, and one saloon for every man, woman, and child in town. We went into the grandest of them, a place called Los Lobos, and had a beer.
Los Lobos was decorated with wolf hides on the wall and a stuffed wolf behind the bar. Several people looked at Virgil when he came in. He wasn’t special-looking. Sort of tall, wearing a black coat and a white shirt and a Colt with a white bone handle. But there was something about the way he walked and the way the gun seemed so natural. People looked at me sometimes, too, but always after they looked at Virgil.
“Think that wolf might’ve exprised of old age,” Virgil said.
“A long time ago,” I said.
“Exprised ain’t right,” Virgil said. “You went to West Point.”
“Expired,” I said.
“Means died,” Virgil said.
“Uh-huh.”
Virgil believed in self-improvement. He read a lot of books and had a bigger vocabulary than he knew how to use. He sipped his beer.
“Mexican,” he said. “Mexicans know how to make beer.”
“How much money you got?” I said.
“Got a dollar,” Virgil said.
“More than I got,” I said.
Virgil nodded.
“Guess we got to get some,” he said.
I grinned at him.
“We got sort of a limited range of know-how,” I said.
“Least we know it,” Virgil said.
“Lotta saloons, lotta whores,” I said. “Not much else.”
“Railroad station,” Cole said.
“Why?” I said.
“No idea,” I said.
A tall, thin young man in an undershirt stood up from a table near us and walked over to us. He wasn’t heeled that I could see.
“Excuse me, sir,” he said to Virgil. “Boys at my table got a bet. Some say you’re Virgil Cole. Some say you’re not.”
The young man hadn’t shaved lately, but he was too young to have much of a beard. His two front teeth were missing.
“I am,” Virgil said.
The boy looked over his shoulder at the others at his table.
“See that?” he said. “See what I tole you?”
Everyone stared at Virgil.
“Seen you in Ellsworth,” the kid said. “I was ’bout half growed up. Seen you kill two men slick as a whistle.”
“Slick,” Virgil said.
The others at his table were all turned toward us.
“How many men you figure you killed, Mr. Cole?”
“No need to count,” Virgil said.
Most of the room was looking at us now, including the bartender. The boy seemed to have run out of things to say. Virgil was silent.
“Well, uh, it’s been a real pleasure, Mr. Cole, to meet you. Can I shake your hand?”
“No,” Virgil said.
The boy looked startled.
“Virgil don’t shake hands,” I said to the boy. “He don’t see any good coming from letting somebody get hold of him.”
“Oh,” the boy said. “A’course not. I shoulda known.”
Virgil didn’t say anything. The boy backed away sort of awkwardly. When he got to his table, his friends gathered in tight and whispered together.
“No need to be explaining me,” Virgil said to me.
“Hell there ain’t,” I said.
Virgil smiled. The kid at the next table got up and went out without looking at Virgil. A fat Mexican girl in a loose flowered dress came to the table.
“Good time for joo boys?” she said.
“Sit down,” Virgil said.
“Buy drink?” she said.
Virgil shook his head.
“Nope,” he said. “You know a woman named Allison French?”
The woman shook her head.
“Probably calls herself Allie?” Virgil said.
“No.”
“Plays the piano?” Virgil said. “Sings?”
“Don’t know nobody,” the Mexican woman said. “Round the world for a dollar. Joo friend, too.”
Virgil smiled.
“No,” he said. “Thanks.”
“No drink?” she said. “No fuck?”
“Nope,” Virgil said. “Anybody knows Allison French, though, they get a dollar.”
The woman stood up and went back to the other girls in the back of the saloon. She was too fat to flounce, but she was trying.
“Think she gets many dollars?” I said to Virgil.
“Nope.”
“Easy to turn down,” I said.
Virgil shrugged.
“She probably don’t like it, either,” he said. “Just doing what she gotta.”
A group of four men came into Los Lobos and stood at the bar and looked at Virgil. Each of them had a whiskey. Pretty soon two more men drifted in, and then three, until the bar was crowded with men.
“Looks like that kid been spreading the alert,” I said to Virgil.
“ ’Fraid so,” Virgil said.
“All of ’em look like town people,” I said. “Don’t see no cowboys.”
“Nope,” Virgil said.
“I’m feeling a little left out,” I said. “Nobody’s looking at me.”
“That’s ’cause you’re ugly,” Virgil said.
“Wait a minute,” I said. “Señorita offered me round the world for a dollar.”
“She included you second,” Virgil said.
“That’s just ’cause I ain’t famous like you,” I said.
“Also true,” Virgil said, and drank the last of his beer.
2
“I GOT ENOUGH CHANGE,” I said, “I can buy two more beers. Save the dollar for a room.”
“We been sleeping in worse for most of the last year,” I said.
Virgil nodded. He was looking at the bartender coming toward our table carrying a bottle and three glasses. With him was a short, wiry man. Not thin, exactly, but lean, sort of hard-looking, with a scraggly blond beard.
“You’re Virgil Cole,” the wiry man said as he reached the table.
Virgil nodded.
“Like to buy you a drink, if I can,” the wiry man said.
“Sure can,” I said, real quick, before Virgil could be unfriendly. You never knew with Virgil.
I gestured at an empty chair, and the wiry man sat down. The bartender put three glasses on the table and poured a useful amount of whiskey in each one.
“Name’s Cates,” the wiry man said. “Everybody calls me Cates.”
Virgil nodded and sipped his whiskey.
“Whiskey clears the throat,” Virgil said. “Considerable better than beer.”
“It does,” Cates said. “You boys been traveling?”
Virgil nodded.
“This here’s Everett Hitch,” he said.
“By God,” Cates said. “I heard a you, too.”
“See that,” I said to Virgil.
“You been with Mr. Cole for some time,” Cates said.
“I have,” I said.
Virgil grinned.
“Well,” Cates said. “I’m proud to meet both you boys. Especially you, Mr. Cole.”
“ ’ Specially,” Virgil murmured to me.
“The great Virgil Cole,” Cates said happily, “right here, in my saloon.”
Virgil looked at me without expression.
“With his friend,” Virgil said.
“Of course,” Cates said. “With his friend, Mr. Hitch.”
“Everett,” I said. “And he won’t mind you call him Virgil.”
Virgil nodded. Cates nodded. And we all drank. Cates picked up the bottle and poured us all some more. Cates looked around the room.
“Look at the crowd,” he said. “Got to say you’re a big attraction, Virgil.”
“Like a geek show,” Virgil said.
“No,” Cates said. “God, no. It’s respect. It’s like a hero has come to town.”
Virgil looked at me.
“Hero,” he said.
“That’d be you,” I said.
“Maybe you boys don’t take it serious, but I’m here to tell you that we do.”
“ ‘ We’?” Virgil said.
“Everybody,” Cates said. “I got a proposal for you.”
Virgil didn’t say anything. If Cates minded that, it didn’t show.
“My shotgun lookout works ’bout twelve hours a day,” Cates said. “He needs a break.”
“Any law in town?” Virgil said.
“Never needed none,” Cates said.
Virgil nodded.
“Like to hire you to sit shotgun,” Cates said. “Couple hours a day is all, start of the evenin’.”
“Draw a crowd?” I said.
“Sure would,” Cates said. “The great Virgil Cole? Sitting s
hotgun in Los Lobos? Good gracious. It would put this whole damned town on the map.”
“And make you some money,” I said.
“Sure would; why I want to do it. But what’s good for me is good for the town, and the other way around as well.”
“How much,” Virgil said.
“Give you a dollar a day,” Cates said.
“Each,” Virgil said.
“You and Everett?” Cates said.
“Uh-huh.”
Cates looked at the bar, which was two deep now with people drinking and watching Virgil. He looked at me and back at Virgil. Then he nodded.
“Done,” he said.
He went into his pocket and took out two silver dollars and put them on the table.
“First day in advance,” he said.
Virgil picked up the coins and gave one to me.
“Don’t know how long I’ll be in town,” he said.
“Long as you’re here, the deal stands,” Cates said.
“I’m looking for a woman,” Virgil said.
Cates grinned and waved his hand toward the back of the saloon.
“Take your pick,” he said.
“Woman named Allison French,” Virgil said.
“Can’t say I know her,” Cates said.
“Sings,” Virgil said. “Plays the piano.”
“In saloons?” Cates said.
“Yep.”
“Lotta saloons in town,” Cates said. “I can ask around.”
“Do,” Cole said.
3
WE TOOK A ROOM in the Grande Palace Hotel, which was not accurately named, and agreed to live on Virgil’s dollar a day and save mine for when we moved on. During Virgil’s shift on lookout, I sat around Los Lobos and observed. During the day we strolled around the ugly little bare-board town and asked about Allie.
“When’s the last time you did a lookout job?” I said to Virgil after the first night.
“Sorta helped you out a year ago up in Resolution,” he said.
“But when did you actually earn money at it?” I said.
“ ’Fore I met you,” Virgil said.
“Close to twenty years,” I said.
“Yep.”
“How’s it feel?” I said.
“People come here to look at me, Virgil Cole, the famous shooter. I feel like I’m in a circus.”
“But . . .” I said.
“Need the money,” he said.
“And we can’t steal it,” I said.
“Can’t do that,” Virgil said.
We were having breakfast in a cook tent that had no name, only a sign outside that said EAT. Virgil put down his coffee cup and looked at me.