The Accomplice (3 page)

“Then you’d probably be better off going to a dentist. A doctor’d bandage up them cuts and maybe give you some tonic, but you’ll need something more than that unless you fancy losing more’n the glass from that jaw of yours. Trust me,” the old man added, leaning forward as if to draw more attention to his crooked smile. “I know what I’m talking about.”

“A dentist,” Caleb moaned. “This just keeps getting better.” Before he could protest more vehemently, Caleb realized his face was already swelling, and it was getting more difficult to form his words. “Where th dentis?” he asked, finding that it hurt a bit less if he kept his jaw still.

Hank walked behind Caleb to make sure he got around the bar and to the door. “There’s a few places I know of, but the closest one is on Elm Street between Market and Austin.”

“Wha his name?”

“It’d be Doctor Seegar you’re after. My aunt had to go to him a while back to get some teeth pulled, and he did a fine job. She’s been back to him since to get some false teeth made, and he did a fine job there, too.”

“I’ll be bag,” Caleb mumbled.

Hank nodded at first, then furrowed his brow and then finally asked, “Huh?”

“I’ll . . . be . . . back,” Caleb repeated, this time pronouncing each word painfully.

Nodding furiously, Hank all but pushed Caleb through the front door. “Take your time, take your time. I’ll make sure the Flush is here when you get back.”

As he stepped outside, Caleb took a moment to clear his head and pull in as much fresh air as he could comfortably manage. Even on the days when he didn’t get smashed in the face with a bottle, staying inside the saloon had a way of making him dizzy. Perhaps it was the combined scents of cigar smoke and liquor that sent his head to spinning. Then again, there was also the fact that when he looked at all those dented tables, battered chairs, chipped glasses, and rotting floorboards, he saw a pile of money that he would never get back again.

When he started thinking along those lines, it made the knock from the bottle a lot less painful.

As he started walking down the street, Caleb did his best to get his mind off the fact that his face looked like a porcupine’s backside. His mouth hung open a bit and he had to suck in the occasional strand of bloody saliva dangling from his lip. Even so, he still managed to try to nod at the people he passed along the way.

Dallas was a good place to be for someone like Caleb. It was also a good place to be for someone like Mike Abel or the gambler who’d hung him out to dry the night before. There were plenty of people who wanted to make fortunes and plenty more willing to take them.

For Caleb, Dallas had been one opportunity after another. It was the place he’d wanted to go ever since he was old enough to realize that the world stretched beyond the boundaries of his father’s ranch. It was the first place he’d gone when what had seemed like a small fortune had been dumped into his lap after a fever had culled some of the members of his family.

Dallas was alive and breathing. It teemed with folks who moved along its streets like blood pumping through a giant’s body. It had noises and sights all its own. But as much as Caleb loved it there, he wondered if there wasn’t even more that he was allowing to pass him by.

He got that way when the receipts for his saloon didn’t come out right or if a liquor salesman gouged him in a particularly creative way. Thoughts of selling the Busted Flush to the highest bidder or just burning it to the ground had entered his mind more than once. But thoughts like that came to any businessman every now and then, so Caleb just put his nose right back against the grindstone and kept pushing forward.

After all, he was a businessman now.

Right and proper.

Straight and narrow.

His father was proud of him, and the rest of his family loved to puff out their chests when they talked about how Caleb had made a name for himself as a prosperous businessman in the wilds of Dallas.

Then again, proper businessmen didn’t normally get their faces split apart and punctured by a liquor bottle.

It wasn’t a long walk to Elm Street. The journey took him into a busier section of town where it was easy to just keep his head down and blend into the churning crowd. There were folks of all shapes and sizes going about their business. Most of them seemed to be making a lot of noise as they haggled over the price of salt or made predictions for the date of the next thunderstorm.

Before too long, Caleb found himself staggering up to a narrow building that was just tall enough to blend in with most of its neighbors. The lower portion of it was marked as A. M. Cochrane’s Drug Store. Caleb walked around to a set of stairs leading to the upper floor marked by a simple painted sign that read J. A. Seegar and J. H. Holliday. Dentists. Satisfaction Guaranteed.

The door at the top of those stairs opened into a small yet comfortable waiting area. At the moment, however, the only place he truly would have been comfortable was somewhere about a hundred miles from the spot he was in.

“Can I help you?” asked a girl who was only slightly younger than Caleb. “Do you have an appointment?”

Before Caleb could make a noise or even attempt to put an answer together, he saw the girl’s eyes become wide as saucers as she covered her mouth with one hand.

“Oh my goodness,” she said. “Of course you don’t have an appointment. Did you fall down?”

“No. I wa hi.” Even though it hadn’t been long since the last time he’d tried to speak out loud, Caleb felt as if his jaw had rusted shut. He winced partially from the pain and partially from the knowledge that he was going to have to repeat himself at least one more time.

“You were hit?” the girl asked. “That’s terrible. Is your jaw broken?”

Still a little stunned that he’d been understood at all, Caleb shook his head. “No. There jus the glass in—”

The girl stopped him with a quickly raised hand. “That’s good enough. You probably shouldn’t try talking any more.”

“Id Docto Seegar in?” Caleb asked against the girl’s orders.

“Dr. Seegar is with a patient right now and he’ll probably be busy for a while. His partner is available, though.”

Caleb’s eyes wandered over to a nameplate propped up on the edge of the desk in the reception area. The words on it were the same as the ones painted upon the shingle hanging outside the office.

The girl stood up as one of the doors leading farther into the office was pulled open. “Dr. Holliday,” she said, “there’s someone here who needs to see you.”

Caleb leaned back in a chair that allowed him to stretch out as though he was meant to take a nap. His feet were propped up off the floor, while his upper body leaned back far enough for the inside of his mouth to be examined by the slender man who sat beside him.

Actually
slender
wasn’t exactly a proper word to describe Dr. Holliday. He was so thin that his skin hung on him like a sheet draped over a skeleton. His cheeks were pale and sunken, but his eyes glimmered with an inner light. Even with all of this, Holliday still kept from looking weak. It was a hell of a feat, but he pulled it off all the same.

The dentist sat on a stool next to Caleb’s chair and was just finishing up his preparations when he looked over and gave his patient a personable smile. “Not exactly the most comfortable accommodations,” he said in a smooth, southern drawl. “But considering the scrape you got yourself into, I doubt a feather mattress would make much difference.”

Caleb nodded, knowing better than to try to speak unless it was absolutely necessary.

“I assume it’s safe to say this wasn’t self-inflicted?” Holliday asked.

After waiting long enough to see that the dentist was truly expecting a response, Caleb shook his head. “I go hi wi a bo—le.”

“A bottle? I usually prefer to keep the bottle on the outside and the liquor in, wouldn’t you agree?”

Caleb couldn’t help but smirk at Holliday’s easy manner.

Reaching out with both hands, Holliday eased open Caleb’s mouth and leaned forward for a better look inside. Short, blond hair was parted evenly upon the dentist’s head. A thin mustache covered most of his upper lip, and the closer he got, the more gaunt he looked. His skin was pasty, yet his hands were strong and unwavering. As he leaned in to examine Caleb’s jaw, a subtle wheeze could be heard under every one of Holliday’s breaths.

“I do believe I’ve seen you before,” Holliday said while he reached for a pair of pliers and began tugging at the shards of glass embedded in Caleb’s jaw.

Although Caleb couldn’t respond, the questioning look in his eyes was picked up immediately by Holliday.

“You run the Busted Flush, don’t you?”

The moment Caleb’s expression shifted, Holliday plucked one of the glass pieces from where it had been lodged. The pain came in a sharp jolt but faded quickly since the glass had only been wedged into skin rather than bone.

The sound of glass clattering against the inside of a tin cup rattled through the small room, followed by the sound of Holliday coughing twice into the back of his hand.

“One down,” Holliday said. “Halfa bottle to go. Normally, that statement makes me so much happier. Of course, I’m usually referring to emptying the bottle glass by glass.” His thick southern accent colored every word, lending to his speech a smooth, rounded texture.

Sitting in that chair, Caleb did everything he could to get his mind away from what was being done. That left only the dentist himself to occupy his thoughts, since that pale, sunken face was practically the only thing he could see. Fortunately, Holliday seemed more than happy to fill the air with the sound of his own voice.

“I’ve been to the Flush more than once,” Holliday continued as another chunk of glass was plucked free and dropped into the cup. “Rough place. There are some good games held there, though.”

Pain stabbed close to Caleb’s chin.

Next came the light rattle of glass against tin.

“I enjoy a good game or two, myself, now and then.”

Not much pain this time. Caleb’s face was starting to numb.

Another chip of glass fell on top of the bigger pieces.

“From what I’ve heard, most of your games are fair enough.”

A bit of pain that felt like a small insect bite.

Another chip fell into the cup.

“I’m sure you’re aware,” Holliday added, “that you’ve got a few cheaters in the mix.”

Caleb reflexively turned to look directly into the dentist’s eyes. He was stopped by a firm hand that came up quickly to clamp onto Caleb’s chin.

“Wha?” Caleb asked.

Still holding onto Caleb’s jaw with his fingers splayed so as not to disturb any of the remaining glass shards, Holliday nodded and kept talking. “Oh, it’s true. I know at least one of them well enough. I was even tossing around the notion of trying to cut myself in on his action, but since you came to me first . . .”

Trailing off, Holliday pulled at one more piece of glass. This time, the pain that shot through Caleb’s face was like a spike being twisted through the bottom half of his skull. The glass didn’t come free, since it was wedged into the jawbone itself rather than the flesh surrounding it.

Holliday patted Caleb on the chest as he leaned back to reach for his rack of instruments. When he leaned forward again, Holliday smiled reassuringly down at Caleb. “Now don’t you move,” he said, holding up a pair of larger metal tongs, “or this might sting. The good news is that I should be able to work around the teeth you’ve got left. You do a fine job of maintaining them, by the way.”

Before Caleb could say anything, he felt the dentist’s grip tighten on his head and then heard the distinct sound of metal clamping around glass. There was a crunch, which filled his head like a shotgun blast as the shard was pulled free.

Caleb squirmed in the chair. His hands gripped onto the wooden arms, and his eyes became so wide that he could barely even see through them anymore. There was some pressure, a tug, and then the warm flow of blood. The sensation that followed was warm as well and would have been agonizing if it hadn’t already been eclipsed by the pain that soaked through every inch of his skull.

When he was a kid, Caleb had loved to climb fence posts and walk along the rails surrounding his father’s land. One time, he’d slipped from the fence and landed the wrong way upon his left leg. The moment he hit the ground, he knew his leg was misaligned. When he reached down, he felt the bones in his knee poking out at odd angles.

A doctor had tugged on his leg to set the bones right again. Any other time, and the thought of wrenching his knee like that would have seemed awful. Compared to the way it had felt when they were misaligned, however, that lesser pain was a blessing. At least things were being set right again in the process.

Sitting in that uncomfortable chair with Holliday wrenching the glass out of his jaw, Caleb felt that same kind of pain. It hurt, but it hurt a whole lot less than how it had been hurting before. And when it was over, at least he would be set right again.

Another glass shard dropped into a cup that was so full, the glass no longer rattled inside of it.

“All right, then,” Holliday said. “Unless my eyes are failing me, I’d say that about does it. All you need is some glue, and you might be able to put that bottle back together again. Ever hear of Humpty Dumpty?”

Caleb’s vision was blurred, and he felt like he was falling through murky water. All of that made Holliday’s comments seem even more ludicrous. “Wha?” he asked. It didn’t hurt so much to talk anymore. “What?”

Just as his fingertips grazed against his jaw, Caleb felt that steady, almost skeletal hand reach out to stop him.

“Leave it be,” Holliday said. “For now, anyway. It needs time to heal, but you should be right as rain before too long.”

Sitting up, Caleb pulled in a few breaths to clear his head. Moving his jaw didn’t exactly feel good, but the pain was nothing compared to how it had been not too long ago.