Brimstone

5

VIRGIL DIDN’T SAY A WORD from the time I told him we’d found Allie to the moment we stopped outside the rat hole where she worked. I had the eight-gauge with me, simply because I was more comfortable with it than without it, especially when I had no idea of what was going to happen.

Virgil studied the Barbary Coast Café.

“In there,” he said.

“Yes.”

Virgil looked at it some more. Then he nodded once and started forward, and we walked in through the front door. Virgil stopped inside to let his eyes adjust.

“Where is she?” Virgil said.

She was right where she had been. I nodded toward her. Virgil looked at her for a considerable time. Then he nodded again and walked over to her and stood in front of her. She looked up at him, forcing her customer’s smile, started to speak, and stopped. The smile remained in place on her immobilized face. Virgil waited. She stared.

Then she said, “Virgil?”

Virgil nodded.

She said, “Virgil.”

Virgil nodded.

She said, “Oh, sweet Jesus, Virgil, get me out of here.”

“Yes,” he said.

He took her arm and they started toward the door.

“Hey,” the barman said. “Stairs in the back.”

Virgil showed no sign that he’d heard.

“Whores ain’t allowed to leave the premises,” the barman said.

A fat man with a droopy mustache and long, greasy hair came from across the room and stood in the doorway.

“You planning on taking that whore somewhere?” he said.

There was a scar at one corner of his mouth, as if someone had cut him with a knife. He was wearing suspenders and no belt, and he had a Colt stuck in the right-hand pocket of his pants. With fluid economy, Virgil pulled his gun and slammed it against the fat man’s head. The fat man went down. Virgil guided Allie around him and out the front door.

The bartender said, “Hey.”

I looked at him and shook my head. Then, with the eight-gauge leveled at the room, I backed out the front door and started up the street behind Virgil and Allie, keeping an eye over my shoulder at the Barbary Coast Café. Nobody came out.

Off the lobby of the Grande Palace Hotel there was a one-chair barbershop, and in the back of it was a small room, run by two fat old Mexican women, where you could get a bath. Virgil took Allie in there.

“Scrub her,” he said to the two women. “And wash her clothes.”

Allie stood motionless and silent.

“What she wear after?” one of the women said.

“We’ll worry about that,” Virgil said, “when she’s clean.”