Hell's Half Acre Read online

  This raised cheers and the crowd’s mood swung from hostile to happy. The big bruiser called Andy stabbed a thick finger at Jess and said, “I’ll remember this.”

  But the moment was past. Andy knew it and so did Jess. The sound of hammers started again and the crowd drifted away.

  “Kemp,” Jess said, holstering his gun. “Go away.”

  “Go where?” Kemp said.

  “Anywhere I don’t have to see you.”

  “You’ll regret this, Sheriff,” Kemp said. But he skedaddled, constantly looking over his shoulder.

  * * *

  To Jess Casey’s surprise, the Green Buddha was closed and padlocked. A note pinned to the door read:

  OUT OF BUSINESS

  —BY ORDER OF SHERIFF

  Jess was puzzled. Had Kurt Koenig got religion or was he avoiding a confrontation? Neither seemed likely.

  Simon Hall tapped his ball-peen hammer on the horny palm of his hand. “You still want it boarded up, Sheriff?” he said.

  “Huh?” Jess said. He’d been lost in thought.

  “Do we board up the doors and windows?”

  “No, leave it,” Jess said. He smiled at Hall. “Thank you for your help. Send your bill to City Hall.”

  “It will be a big one,” Hall said. “I’m adding hazard pay.”

  Jess nodded. “You should. For a while back there things got tense.”

  Hall, a dour man, managed a smile. “That’s one way of saying it. I reckon it got downright dangerous.”

  “If you still want it, I’ll have more work for you soon,” Jess said.

  “You know where to find me,” Hall said. “Working for you, Sheriff, is an adventure.”

  CHAPTER THIRTY-FOUR

  “I’m not catching your drift,” Kurt Koenig said. “I didn’t shut down the Green Buddha.”

  “Then I withdraw my thanks,” Jess Casey said. “But shut down it is.”

  “What the hell?” Koenig said. He was genuinely confused. “Who did that?”

  “Me, if the sign on the door is to be believed,” Jess said. “The place is padlocked.”

  “But you’d nothing to do with it?” Koenig said.

  Jess smiled. “Not a thing. Somebody beat me to it. I planned to board up the dive, had a carpenter standing by and everything.”

  Koenig pushed his coffee cup away from him as though he’d suddenly lost the taste for it. “This is a declaration of war,” he said.

  “Seems like,” Jess said, enjoying this.

  Koenig got to his feet and his eye rested on a man who was trundling a beer barrel behind the bar. “Sikes!”

  “Yeah, boss?”

  “Call a meeting of the Panther City Boys. I want them here at seven tonight. I don’t care what you have to do to get them here, but I want all of them, present and correct and armed.”

  “Sure thing, boss,” Sikes said. He wore an eye patch made from a piece of rawhide.

  Koenig said, “Leave the beer barrel. Let the bartender do that. Go round up the boys and tell them we’re at war.”

  “Sure thing, boss,” Sikes said, calmly, as though a gang war was declared every day.

  “I think it’s high time I visited the Green Buddha,” Koenig said.

  “I’m coming with you,” Jess said. Then, “You know your friend Luke Short tried to kill me last night?”

  Koenig brushed it off as though it was a matter of no account. “Luke was drunk. He does silly things in drink.”

  “I could charge him with attempted murder,” Jess said.

  “No need for that. I’ll talk to him.”

  For the moment, Jess decided not to push the matter. Solving the mystery of the Green Buddha had to come first. The last thing he needed in the Half Acre was a full-scale gang war.

  * * *

  When he reached the Green Buddha the first thing Kurt Koenig did was tear the note off the door, the second was to turn the air blue with curses. “The low-down rats used my own padlock,” he said. “That adds to the insult.”

  Privately Jess didn’t quite see why, but he kept quiet as the big man fished in his pants pocket and came up with a bunch of keys. “Rats,” he said. “Dirty rat scum, motherless riffraff, every last one of them.”

  “Who do you think did it, Kurt?” Jess said.

  “How the hell should I know?” Koenig said.

  He opened the door and stepped inside. The place had been trashed. Everything that could be broken was broken, everything that could be torn was torn and black paint had been splashed over the walls.

  But there was worse . . . much worse.

  Jess found the first body, a small Chinese woman dressed in a dragon robe. She’d been shot in the forehead at close range, the skin around the wound blackened by powder. Koenig said she was one of his helpers. The rectangle of daylight that shafted through the open door revealed seven more bodies, five men and two women. Lillian Burke was not one of them.

  Soothed by the opiate, the smokers had died without fuss. Shot in the head, several still had the pipe in their mouths and one woman’s dream smile was frozen on her lips. The place was silent and still, the dead making no sound, no stir.

  Like Jess, Kurt Koenig was horrified. He looked around him at the carnage, then stared at Jess, his face unbelieving. “Who . . .”

  “I don’t know, Kurt,” Jess said. “I wish I did.”

  Koenig brushed past Jess and stepped outside. Gun in hand his eyes searched the wasteland around him. He was looking for a target, anyone or anything that could be connected with the attack on his place. He saw nothing but bunchgrass, cactus and a few struggling wildflowers. He heard the hum of busy Main Street and the rush of the wind and felt the thump-thump of his racing heart beating.

  Reluctantly he pushed back his frock coat and holstered his Colt.

  “Wilson J. Tucker works like that,” he said. “Fast kills. No fuss.”

  “If it was Tucker, somebody ordered him to do it,” Jess said.

  “Yeah, somebody gave the order,” Koenig said. “A somebody who wants to put me out of business.”

  Jess thought for a few moments then said, “He’s clearing the way for something. Maybe that new drug we heard about.”

  “Or he wants to take over the Half Acre and I’m in the way.”

  “Apart from Tucker, is there anybody new in town, Kurt?” Jess said. “Somebody with money, talking big.”

  Koenig said, with a slight smile, “Only you, Jess. You talk big. But you don’t have any money so that lets you out.”

  “Have you heard of anybody else?” Jess said, refusing to be baited.

  “No. People move in and out of Fort Worth all the time. Who can keep track of them? That Doc Holliday feller was in town for a month before I found out about it.”

  “Then it could be some ranny who’s already here,” Jess said.

  “Yeah, a man who talks big and has a lot of money,” Koenig said. “You know how many men there are in this town who fit those shoes? I could sit down here and name a hundred right off.”

  “Don’t reopen this place, Kurt,” Jess said. “Raze it to the ground.”

  “Playing sheriff again, Jess?”

  “That’s about the size of it, I guess.”

  “Now the Green Buddha is a damned tomb,” Koenig said. “Do what you want with it.”

  CHAPTER THIRTY-FIVE

  “When I drink I get mad at people and when I get mad at people bad things happen,” Luke Short said. “I didn’t mean you any harm, not really.”

  “Four bullets in my roof and walls and two in my chair say otherwise,” Jess said. Short said nothing and Jess said, “I could hang you, Luke, or see you sent to Leavenworth for thirty years.”

  Short groaned and ran his fingers through his thinning hair. “I told you I was drunk. A drunk is not responsible for his actions. I’m more to be pitied than sanctioned.” Another groan, then, “I think I’m going to die anyway. So there’s not much more you can do to me.”

  “How much whisk
ey did you drink last night?” Jess said.

  “Too much.”

  “Drunk or not, when a man tries to kill me I take it real seriously, Luke,” Jess said.

  The White Elephant bartender clinked a glass and the little gambler yelled, “Quit that racket!” He held his head in his hands. “Ooooh . . . I shouldn’t have done that.”

  “Did you hear what I said, Luke?”

  “Yeah, I heard.” Short shoved out his wrists. “Put the chains on me and then hang me, Sheriff. I don’t give a damn.”

  Jess sat back in his chair. “I’m not going to hang you, Luke. I call it doing you a favor.”

  “Sure, sure,” Luke said.

  “Do you owe me a favor, Luke? Look at me and tell me if you do or you don’t.”

  “I owe you a favor,” Luke said.

  “I’m going to call it in.”

  “When? Now?”

  “No, sometime soon. Anytime I feel like it.”

  Jess took Luke’s Colt from his waistband and shoved it across the table. “I’m giving you your gun back, Luke. You didn’t do too good with the one you had last night.”

  “What kind of favor?” Luke said. He reached out his hand to take the revolver but Jess clamped it down with his hand.

  “Does it matter? A favor is a favor.”

  “All right, you got it, Sheriff. I’m a man of my word.”

  Jess lifted his hand from the Colt. “And so am I. Renege on your word and I’ll have you in the hoosegow so fast you won’t know what hit you.”

  “You’re a hard man, Casey,” Luke said. “I never thought that about you before, but I think it now. I won’t go back on my word. In the West or anywhere else it’s the most valuable thing a man possesses.”

  “Did you hear about the Green Buddha?” Jess said.

  Luke shook his head, then winced.

  Mindful of Luke’s delicate condition, in as few words as possible Jess told him about the murders. “Any idea who would do a thing like that?” he said.

  “Kill eight people, three of them women?”

  Luke said, “Yeah, Kurt Koenig, but he wouldn’t do it to his own place.”

  “Anybody else in town that’d kill like that?”

  Luke rested his thumping head on the palm of his hand. “I only know it wasn’t me.”

  Jess got to his feet. “You should go see Doc Sun. He’ll give you something to make you feel better.”

  “A bullet in my brainpan is the only thing that will help,” Luke said.

  “When I call in the favor you owe me, you may get your wish,” Jess said.

  * * *

  Jess left the White Elephant and made his way to the Feeney cabin through the early-afternoon crowds. The door hung open and whatever mean possessions the man had were looted.

  “You’re back again, lawman, huh?”

  The old bottle lady stood watching Jess after she gave him a bad start. “You surprised me,” he said. “I didn’t hear you.”

  “I surprise a lot of people,” the woman said. “Maybe I’ll surprise you, lawman.”

  “You live around here?” Jess said.

  The woman turned her upper body and pointed to a cabin that looked even worse than the Feeney hovel. “That’s my house. That’s what you call these mansions, ain’t it? You call them houses.”

  “I’d like to talk to you, ma’am” Jess said. “I’m Sheriff Jess Casey.”

  “I know who you are, sonny. Death stands at your right shoulder. Did you know that? He’s a terrible sight. As cold as ice, that one.”

  Jess felt a shiver but resisted the urge to turn his head and look.

  “But maybe he doesn’t want you,” the woman said. “He knows that you bring death to others and he stands patiently, like a dog waiting for scraps to fall from your dinner table.”

  Jess glanced at the blue sky and enjoyed the warmth of the sun. “Can we talk in your . . . cabin?” he said.

  “What about?” the woman said. Her eyes slanted and looked sly.

  “Just a few questions,” Jess said.

  “No,” the woman said. “We’ll talk here. Death will follow you and I don’t want him to cross my threshold.”

  “Well, then we’ll do it out here,” he said. He took the makings from his shirt pocket. “May I beg your indulgence, ma’am?”

  “Please do. I have always been partial to the smell of a gentleman’s tobacco.”

  Jess heard a distant echo of what this woman once was, an upper-class young lady schooled in the proper etiquette of the Southern belle. “May I ask your name?” Jess said.

  “I have no name,” the old woman said. “I had a name once, but in these many years I’ve heard it so seldom I forget what it was. But you may call me Dixie if that pleases you, or nothing at all, if that pleases you more.”

  “I’ll call you Dixie,” Jess said. He lit his cigarette then said, “Larry Kemp—”

  “That damnable piece of white trash.”

  “Larry Kemp said you sometimes picked up money from him to pay for the opium he used in his saloon.”

  “The Alamo,” Dixie said. “Yes, I did. But not often.”

  “Who hired you to do that?”

  “A man who wished to keep his identity secret. He’d give me five dollars and then wait here until I brought Kemp’s money to him. He did it only when his regular courier was sick, or so he told me.”

  “Can you describe this man, Dixie?” Jess said.

  “Fairly tall but not as tall as you. He was a pale, pasty-faced gent who dressed quite well. I always took him for a clerk of some kind.”

  “Did he ever give you his name?”

  Dixie stared at Jess. Waiting.

  “Will five dollars jog your memory?”

  “It might. It very well might.”

  Jess reached into his pocket . . .

  And then Dixie’s head exploded.

  CHAPTER THIRTY-SIX

  Blood, bone and brain splattered scarlet across Jess Casey’s face, followed an instant later by the flat report of a high-powered rifle.

  For a moment Jess stood there stunned, frozen in place. Then as Dixie dropped at his feet he dived for the ground, his Colt in his hand. He saw nothing. If there had been a drift of smoke the gusting wind had taken it away.

  Slowly, his gaze probing into the distance, Jess rose to his feet, his gun up and ready. But there was no second shot. A heavy bullet had done terrible things to Dixie’s head and the old woman had been dead before she hit the ground. The rifleman, whoever he was, had accomplished his task. Like Dave Feeney before her, Dixie had been silenced.

  Wilson J. Tucker was the proud owner of a fine Holland and Holland elephant gun. He’d told Kurt Koenig that he hadn’t brought it with him to Fort Worth, but English rifles were easily taken apart and could be stored in a relatively small case that Tucker could have hidden in his bedroll. And the gunman was skilled enough to make an accurate head shot at distance.

  There was no doubt in Jess’s mind that Tucker was the killer.

  Hell’s Half Acre was a town used to the sound of gunfire and no one came running to see what had happened. Suddenly ashamed that he had brought about Dixie’s death, Jess picked her up in his arms and carried her to the cabin. There was a cot, a collection of bottles on the floor, and one other thing—yellowed with age, but lovingly preserved, a lacy, white parasol stood in a corner, the relic of a bygone age when Dixie had been young and beautiful.

  Deeply touched, Jess laid the old woman on the couch and covered her with a sheet. At least when Big Sal came for her it would look as though another human being had cared enough to lay her out as a Southern belle of good family deserved.

  * * *

  “I hope you stay around, Sheriff,” Big Sal said. “You’re good for business.” The huge, masculine woman seemed to fill Jess’s small office.

  “You took care of Dixie?” Jess said.

  Big Sal nodded and then said, “The rumor going around about Dixie was that she was born to a rich plan
tation family in Alabama. The war ruined them and they fell into poverty.”

  “It’s as good a story as any, I guess,” Jess said. “She had a parasol in her cabin.”

  “Yeah, I know,” Big Sal said. “I’ll bury her with it.”

  “Thanks,” Jess said.

  The woman was silent for a few moments, then said, “Big story doing the rounds, Sheriff. Seems there’s a new opium drug that somebody wants to push in the Half Acre.”

  “I heard that myself,” Jess said. “I reckon it’s true.”

  “If it’s as popular as some folks think it might be, somebody could make millions selling it.”

  “What else have you heard, Sal?” Jess said.

  “That’s about it. What about that Lillian Burke gal? She show up yet?”

  “No, not yet.”

  “She’s real sassy, ain’t she?” Big Sal said. “A pretty bird to keep in a gilded cage.”

  “You think somebody kidnapped her?” Jess said.

  The woman smiled. “Hell no, Sheriff. Little Miss Lillian is playing dollhouse with some rich man. You can bet your bottom dollar on it.”

  “I hope that’s the case,” Jess said.

  Sal gave Jess a wave and stepped to the door. But she turned and said, “I heard Luke Short cut loose on you with a .45.”

  “He was drunk,” Jess said.

  “Ah, then that explains it,” Big Sal said.

  CHAPTER THIRTY-SEVEN

  Hell’s Half Acre was the most claustrophobic town in the West, more like the slums of Calcutta than part of a booming frontier town.

  Jess Casey patrolled the streets and alleys as part of his duties and the rickety buildings along Main, Houston and Rusk Streets seemed to close in on him, threatening to crush the life out of him. At night the darkness was kept at bay by the blaze of gas and oil lamps, and the throngs of people on the boardwalks continually drifted from light to shade and back again.

  On the evening of the day he saw Dixie buried he was on the corner of Rusk and 12th investigating the report of a cutting in the Nance Hotel and Saloon. It was a modest establishment and its only claim to fame was that Long-Haired Jim Courtright had dropped in every now and then for a hot gin punch.