8.

Three days later I had another whore complaint. A customer had tied Short Sally to the bed and left her. One of the other girls had come in to borrow something and found her and cut her loose, and she come running to me.

“Said he wasn’t through with me yet,” she said. “Told me he was going out with his friends and when they came back, all of them would finish me up.”

“He in the room?” I said.

“Finish me up, Everett,” Short Sally went on. “That’s what he said, finish me up.”

“See him in the room?” I said.

Short Sally looked around. She wasn’t scared like Billie had been. She was ripping.

“That’s him, the fucking pig, there playing faro,” she said. “The fat one dressed kinda fancy.”

I said, “Come with me, Sal,” gave the eight-gauge to one of the bartenders, got down from the chair, and walked over to the faro game.

“This one?” I said.

“Him,” she said.

He was wearing a wide-brimmed, low-crowned hat. I took it off his head with my left hand as he started to turn, tossed it on the floor, grabbed a handful of hair with my right hand, and pulled him and the chair over backward.

“Hey,” he said.

I let go of his hair and straightened and kicked him in the stomach. He gasped. I stomped on his crotch. He yowled. I reached down and got hold of his collar and started to drag him toward the door. Short Sally ran along beside us, bending over, calling him a “fat cocksucker.”

When we got to the door, I dragged him to his feet and pushed him against the doorjamb.

“I see you in here again, I’ll kill you,” I said.

He shook his head.

Standing beside me, Short Sally spit in his face. I’m not sure he even knew it. I turned him and pushed him through the doorway, put my foot against his butt, and shoved him face-first out into the street. Then I turned and went back to the lookout chair. Short Sally hurried along behind me.

“You shoulda killed him, Everett, the fat bastard, why didn’t you kill him like you done Koy Wickman?”

“Can’t kill ’em all, Sally.”

“Why not? Why can’t you?”

The bartender handed me the shotgun and I put it across my lap.

“Never actually quite thought about it, Sally. Killing ’em all just don’t seem like a good idea.”

“I think it is,” she said.

“I can see that, Sal,” I said. “But you ain’t the one got to do the killing.”

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