David Gates - Blood Money

Fifty thousand dollars was a lot of money to turn down.

Colonel Bent found the bounty hunter overscrupulous.

Simple justice, the colonel said. An eye for an eye.

You dont appear to be looking for justice, Placido Geist told him. Youre soliciting murder for hire.

I didnt realize your principles were so inelastic.

My principles are elastic enough, but my neck isnt, the bounty hunter said. What youre asking me to do would get me a brief drop on a short rope.

I want recompense.

You want retribution.

Call it what you will, the colonel said stiffly.

I call it nothing I want a part of.

Are you all that squeamish? Your reputation would suggest otherwise.

My reputation isnt something Im required to inhabit with the understanding that it invites insult, Placido Geist said.

I doubted youd accept the commission, Lockjaw Lamar told him.

And then some, the bounty hunter snorted.

The judge smiled. You dont sound very taken with Colonel Bent.

I understand hes suffered a bitter loss, but the solution is out of line with his injury.

His only son dead and any hope for a grandchild lost?

Youre acting Devils Advocate.

A role that singles me out, often enough.

The bounty hunter smiled as well. The two men had met during a charged political inquiry that resulted in damage to a good many reputations and elevated others less deserving.

The argument, if I might label it so, the judge said, is that Colonel Bent requires a blood price be paid.

Hes not entitled to it.

The man got your back up, I see.

Its one thing to contemplate revenge, Placido Geist said to the judge. I know I have.

The judge had been a party to it too, and chose to let the bounty hunters remark pass.

Its another thing entirely to compass a homicide.

Conspiracy to commit a killing is felony murder. Unless you could contrive to make it appear otherwise, an assassination cloaked as, say, self-defense.

Well, thats what he thought he was paying for. Which, on balance, is why I found him offensive, the bounty hunter said.

That hed hire it done.

And seek to avoid penalty. Its a cowards choice.

You think he should gun the man himself and face whatever consequences afterwards?

It would be a damn sight more honest, and honorable.

Maybe honorable doesnt enter into it, the judge said.

But he wants his name attached to the business, thats the point. Not whispered about. Spoken of. An open secret.

Not probative. A rumor doesnt invite indictment.

No, but it intimidates. Colonel Bent wants his fiat, his whim, made corporal.

To demonstrate his reach.

Id suggest it was a demonstration of his own vanity.

To have this man whats his name, Emory? put down like a dog that kills chickens, simply because he can.

They agreed, then, on the moral point. It was the shoal water of particular incident theyd run aground in. And it was to be admitted that Colonel Bent had in fact suffered an irredeemable injury. It was also pretty much agreed that what had happened was simple bad luck: Nathan Bent, the colonels son and heir, the repository of his dynastic ambitions, had been the unhappy victim of another mans carelessness, or stupidity, but the inquest ruled it accidental death, and no charge of manslaughter was filed. Set at liberty, the man Colonel Bent held responsible promptly departed the immediate environs, sensibly assuming Texas law could be bought, and was reported to be presently at large in the Bootheel of New Mexico.

The facts were these. A woman named Magdalena Benavidez maintained a house of ill repute in Del Valle, just south of the capital. It was much frequented by state legislators, and she enjoyed the protection of both the Austin city police and Travis County sheriffs deputies. On the afternoon in question, the man later identified as Kick Emory was disporting himself in one of the upper front rooms. Kick was an itinerant, not exactly a bum, but someone who put his hand to what he found, whether it were carpentry or cowpunching, and it happened he found himself flush with money that week in Austin. He spent most of the week at Magdalenas cathouse, favoring one girl over the others, a red-headed Anglo who called herself Philadelphia Sinclair and claimed to be from back East. In truth, her name was Jemmie Dart, shed been a whore for all her grown life, and shed never been east of Kansas.

Why, might we ask, did Nathan Bent also happen to be frequenting a whorehouse on the afternoon in dispute? It was a question his father seemed unlikely or unwilling to address. Nathan was recently married; his wife was in fact now pregnant with their first child; he had nothing to answer for and had everything to look forward to. Lets say simply that a man of his background, with his responsibilities and his fathers expectations found it easier, or somehow simpler, to get his pipe smoked without consequences. It was certainly common enough, and Magdalenas was exactly the place youd go, discreet if openly talked of (in male company), flagrant behavior kept private, transactions to be negotiated, anything to be had for a price.

This, then, was the concatenation of circumstance.

Kick Emory caromed off the roof of the veranda in a shower of glass, thrown out the window of Jemmie Darts room by one of Magdalenas bouncers. Violence offered the whore, perhaps, or merely underpayment, but later inquiries made it unclear. He then slid off the roof of the veranda and fell on Nathan Bent.

Kick was unhurt, if bruised and embarrassed. Nathans neck was broken. The coroners jury returned a verdict of death by misadventure; a man in his underclothes wasnt an instrument of murder. The problem was compounded by both the personal and the political: The colonels boy couldnt be dead of stupidity.

There was more than enough blame to go around, and further accident, or unhappiness. The colonels daughter-in-law lost her child, and the colonel was denied the fruit of his sons seed. Magdalena Benavidez and her establishment were too well protected for the colonel to attack in person, but the whore Jemmie Dart disappeared, perhaps returning to the family shed sometimes spoken of. More likely she was sold into the cribs of El Paso, and from there across the river. The bouncer was found dead in an irrigation ditch, drowned in two inches of water and alleged to be drunk at the time.

Such a series of mischance didnt go unnoticed.

Hes stalking them, Placido Geist said.

Anybody involved with his sons death, culpable or no.

Theyre all culpable, in his view.

I take your point, Lamar said. He could see the bounty hunter was wrestling with himself, but the judge wasnt someone whod intrude on another mans internal struggle. He understood well enough how your gut could tighten with anger or guilt.

Damn the man, Placido Geist said. He meant Bent.

Not that Kick Emory was any prize himself. Hed been in and out of scrapes for all his adult life, short though it was to date, and had done time in Kansas for manslaughter. There was, therefore, some logic in the colonels demand that Kick be held accountable, as the world at large might best be rid of him and his skills at courting trouble.

But this was an abstraction and an excuse, Placido Geist argued, not the situation as it obtained on the ground. If there were a greater social good in Kick Emorys demise, Colonel Bent was using it to mask a personal vendetta.

He wouldnt be the first, Lamar said.

No, nor will he be the last, but a better man would own up to the fact that his motives werent pure.

Absolute moral certainty is always suspect, Lamar agreed.

What happened last month over in Dime Box?

Oh, hell, the bounty hunter said, looking awkward. That was a sorry piece of work, Id be the first to admit.