Longarm and the Whiskey Woman (3 page)

Longarm had looked at him suspiciously. He knew that particular tactic because Billy Vail had used it enough times already. He said, "Oh, Billy. I'm sure you can think of somebody else. I don't know what the job is, but I can tell you right now, I don't want it, and I'm willing to let another man have the honor of the thing."

Billy was shaking his head. He said, "Nope. Ain't nobody else I can trust with this one. Custis, it's got to be you. As much as I'd like to see you get some rest and put a smile on your different girlfriends' faces, I'm going to have to send you."

Longarm leaned forward in his chair, alert. He said, "All right, Billy. What two-bit, no-good, low-down disgusting trick are you fixing to play on me this time?"

Billy gave him an innocent look. "Why, how you talk. What a thing to say to the very man who has helped make you famous throughout the annals of law enforcement. Who gave you that name, Longarm? Who gave you the jobs that had let you earn it?"

Longarm gave Billy a disgusted look. "Billy, let's quit dancing around the mulberry tree. Get on with this. What kind of raw trick are you fixing to play on me now?"

Billy maintained his innocent look. "Now, wouldn't you agree with me that you probably know as much about whiskey as any man under my command?"

Longarm was not willing to concede a single point to his boss. He said, "I don't know about that."

"Ain't it you that has to have that imported, twelve-year-old Maryland whiskey? Local stuff just ain't good enough for you. Ain't that a fact?"

There had been little enough that Longarm could reply to that charge, mainly because it was true. He said, "I don't see what that has to do with anything."

"It's got everything to do with it," said Billy Vail, nodding his head vigorously. "The business I'm sending you on is whiskey."

"Whiskey?"

"Yep, whiskey, and the government is getting cheated on it. The Treasury Department wants us to take a hand in a matter they don't have the manpower to handle. They need a good, tough hombre that can go into a bad situation and help straighten it out and they have appealed to us for help. Naturally, you were at the top of my list."

Longarm looked at him and said dryly, "Billy, someday I would like to see that list that you're always talking about that I'm always at the top of, because I have a good idea that there's not but one name on that list, and it's mine."

Billy said, "Tut, tut, tut, Custis. How you talk. My goodness, you'd think you were mistreated the way you carry on so. Why, I let you get away with more than any chief marshal has ever let any other deputy get away with in the history of the Marshal Service. I'd like to know how many horses you've bought off somewhere because they were cheap, and then shipped them back up here to sell for a healthy profit. Not to mention those odd items that keep cropping up on your expense vouchers. I've never seen so much money laid out for cartridges and extra firearms and bribes." Billy whistled low and shook his head. "It's just been my word alone and my goodwill that has kept you out from the middle of a serious investigation."

Longarm flopped resignedly back onto his chair. "All right, what the hell is the job?"

Billy Vail hunched forward, his elbows on his desk. He said, "Now you're talking. It seems that there's a bunch of folks up in northern Arkansas making moonshine whiskey and ain't paying no federal taxes on it. I want you to go up there and get the lowdown on the situation and come back here and we'll give the Treasury Department a report on it."

Longarm stared at his boss. He said, "Moonshine? Whiskey? You want me to go up to Arkansas and bust some bootleggers' stills? Bill, don't you think that's a little heavy work for some lightweight like me?"

Billy Vail put his hand up. "Now, hold on here, my friend. This ain't as easy as you may think it is. There's considerable money changing hands over this matter, and the government is taking a right smart interest in it. They don't know for certain, but they've calculated that there is more than several million dollars in federal taxes not being paid on this whiskey that's being made up there."

Longarm looked disgusted. "And I'm supposed to go up there and stop some bunch of old boys back in the hills from running a little whiskey here and there?"

Billy Vail shook his head slowly from side to side. "I wouldn't take this one lightly if I were you, Custis. We're talking about thousands and thousands of gallons. We don't know exactly how it works, but they are making it there in Arkansas and then somehow it is getting into brand-name bottles that have federal stamps on them and those are showing up in a lot of northern cities. It's estimated that there is a bunch of it being shipped right out of Arkansas. The reason I'm sending you is because they don't know a whole hell of a lot about it. That's what you're going to do. You're going to find out how the operation works."

Longarm frowned. "Billy, moonshine is clear. It looks like water. Good whiskey is caramel color; it's dark."

"Yes, and how come good whiskey is dark-colored?"

"Because it's aged in wooden barrels that are laid down for ten or twelve years. It mellows and takes on the color of the wood."

Billy said, "That's where the profits are in it. They're not bothering with the aging, which costs quite a bit of money to do. No, they're putting some kind of coloring into it and then putting it into bottles and selling it for the real stuff. They're getting away with it. It costs them about fifty cents a gallon to make the whiskey and they're selling it, making about a couple thousand percent profit."

"Well, if they would just put federal stamps across the top, then the stamp would be broken when they broke the seal and they wouldn't have this foolishness."

"In the meantime, why don't you just go up there and do your job and let the government worry about how they want to do their seals," Billy said.

"I thought this stuff was supposed to be bottled in a certain place where they could make sure it got those federal stamps on it."

Billy nodded. He said, "That's why they call it bottled in bond. It's bottled in a bonded warehouse where it is guaranteed to pick up a federal tax stamp. Aged in the wood and bottled in bond. Well, unfortunately, this whiskey is being aged in the woods and being bottled in the barn."

Longarm said, "Well, it still seems like a hell of a lot of ruckus to send a man in desperate need of rest out on."

Billy Vail seemed unconcerned. "Oh, I reckon you'll find some woman up there that will give you the rest you need. I've never known you to go very long without getting more rest than you really need."

Longarm gave him a sour look. He said, "I don't mind the work, Billy, but it appears to me that you're sending me off on a wild-goose chase. I'm the senior deputy here. Why don't you send one of these kids?"

Billy sat up in his chair. He said, "Oh, you think the job ain't big enough for you?"

"No, I don't."

Billy Vail had given Longarm his cat-and-mouse smile. He said, "You ever heard of the Whiskey Rebellion, Custis?"

Longarm thought a moment. "No, can't say that I have."

The chief marshal said, "Then I reckon that I'm going to have to add to your education. The Whiskey Rebellion took place in 1794 in Pennsylvania. There was a bunch of moonshiners up in the Allegheny Mountains that didn't want to pay the tax on the whiskey they were making. So Alexander Hamilton sent some militiamen up to put a stop to what they were getting away with. Before it was all over, he had to send fifteen thousand men in to do the job. Now, look at the compliment I'm paying you. It took fifteen thousand men in Pennsylvania; hell, I ain't sending but one man."

Longarm gave his boss another sour smile. He said, "Billy, that old dog ain't going to hunt. I'll go because you ordered me to go and because I don't have a choice, but I'm going to guarantee you one thing: I ain't going to enjoy myself, I ain't going to have a good time, and I'm going to think bad thoughts about you the whole time I'm gone."

Billy Vail said, "Then this job won't be no different than the rest, right?"

Now Longarm sat in his hotel room and wondered exactly how to attack the problem. He had little enough information to go on. It was thought that the big transactions were handled in the Little Rock area. No one was certain where the majority of the moonshining business went on. It was generally guessed that a good deal of it went on about fifty miles northeast of Little Rock in Yale County, which was peopled by a fierce and ingrown set of clans that didn't like strangers and didn't even much like each other. Longarm had decided that the best way to approach the situation was to pick up a thread in Little Rock where the money and whiskey were changing hands and then follow it backward to its source. He had no earthly idea how he was going to do such a thing.

Billy Vail had specifically warned him about going into the back country and nesting around the suspicious backwoodsmen who were more than likely the original source for the whiskey. He had said, "Custis, I know that country. There's little hollers and cutbacks and groves and valleys back there in those Ozark Mountains where you can be right square in the middle of an anthill full of people before you know it and they ain't going to be the least damn bit friendly. Your job is to find out how the transactions are taking place, how that raw moonshine is getting shipped north in those ten-gallon demijohns. You ain't supposed to be trying to run this thing completely into the ground."

But Longarm didn't think that plan was completely sound. Little Rock was nestled in a broad valley on the south end of the craggy Ozark Mountains. He'd stood in the street that very day and stared off into the distance into the rough, wild, forbidding country that he could see from there. He knew the people were hostile to strangers. He knew that the wrong questions asked in the wrong place could bring a bullet quicker than a hiccup, but he had to cast about for some way to put the whole package together. He didn't care to go by halves. He didn't want to just unearth the money and whiskey transactions as Billy Vail called them. He wanted to wrap up the whole package and not hand it over half-done to some Treasury official who hadn't gotten out from behind his desk in six months.

Billy Vail's idea had been to go down to Little Rock and start throwing money around. He said, "Hell, start acting like a big butter-and-egg man from the West who has decided to be a big butter-and-egg-and-whiskey man from the West. Go down there and flash a little green and gold in front of them. Before you know it, somebody will be coming up offering to sell you some wagon-loads of raw moonshine."

The only problem with the idea was that Billy Vail's idea of moving money around was to move a silver dollar from his left hand to his right. When Longarm had asked him where he was supposed to get this money to throw around, Billy Vail had graciously offered to allow Longarm to draw a couple hundred dollars in advance. Longarm just stared at him. He said, "Hell, Billy, I've got more than that in my hip pocket right now."

Billy said, "That's real good. You can use your own money for a change and quit taking advantage of the government."

For no good reason, Longarm was intrigued by Frank Carson. He had nothing concrete to connect the man to the illegal whiskey trade except a hunch and his lawman instinct. The man had told an unnecessary lie and Longarm couldn't figure out why. He had said that he was just passing through, but he had also said that he would see that Morton Colton would never play poker in that town again. Carson had tried to laugh it off, but it still stuck in Longarm's mind. To keep a man from playing poker in a town meant that you had to have some influence in that town and someone just passing through didn't have that kind of influence. But if you happened to be one of the movers and shakers in the whiskey trade, even though you didn't live in Little Rock and only came down to transact some business from time to time, you would have the kind of power that could keep a man from playing poker in the town ever again.

Strangely enough, he had no feelings one way or another about Morton Colton. He had just seemed like a damned fool that had gotten in over his head trying to cheat the wrong kind of folks. Maybe he did have connections with the sheriff and maybe he did run with a rough group. That didn't necessarily put him in the whiskey business. But if it did, Longarm had an idea that he wasn't very high up in any organization selling bootleg moonshine in big quantities.

No, of all the leads he had seen thus far, Frank Carson wouldn't leave his mind.

It had been a long day and he was just starting the job, and he wasn't going to be any farther along if he sat up in his room all night long than he would if he went ahead and had a good night's rest. He smoked one more cigarillo, downed one more drink of his good Maryland whiskey, and then blew out the lamp and climbed under the covers with thoughts of several delectable ladies he'd been pleasured to know in the past going through his mind. But he was too tired for such thoughts and it wasn't long before he fell asleep.

CHAPTER 3

Longarm was staying at the Albert Pike Hotel, which was grandly and oddly in contrast to the rest of the small, shabby city. The Albert Pike was a four-story brick affair with a big marble lobby and indoor plumbing. Some of the rooms even had built-in bathtubs. Longarm had been told that the place had been modeled by the builder and owner after the Grand Hotel in Saint Louis. He was glad of the comfort, but he thought it looked a little strange in the shoddy city. Fortunately, it boasted a good dining room and a bar that was quiet and had good brands of whiskey, even the special Maryland blend that he preferred.