Free the Moonshine War (1969) by Elmore Leonard

shake his head at the woman's testimony. His counsel did not put him on the witness stand, so the court did not hear from Dr. Taulbee. Though they did hear two additional women patients testify: one, that he had acted strangely and had touched her--held her arm or shoulder and had asked her if she was by any chance menstruating, because if she was the anesthetic might have an adverse effect on her. The other testified that upon leaving Taulbee's office after having had gas for an extraction, she felt her clothes disarranged, as if she had been sleeping in them or as if someone else had dressed her. Dr. Taulbee's license to practice was revoked and he was sentenced to one to three years in the State Penitentiary at Eddyville. While he was there his wife of twenty years divorced him.
    Prison, Frank Long decided, was what changed the man's life. He met bootleggers and whiskey runners and evidently something about their business appealed to him. Dr. Taulbee was released after a year and was a good boy during the two years of his probation. Since then--during the past six years--Taulbee had been arrested four times for the possession of illegal alcohol, but had not been convicted even once. He was making money and sure had better lawyers than the one he had at the assault trial. Taulbee was a businessman with a working force and a good profitable operation that reached from Kentucky up into Ohio and over into Indian a a nd he would be just the one for a deal like this one. Hell, Taulbee was the only one Long knew of who could handle a hundred thousand dollars worth of grade-one whiskey.
    He had met Taulbee twice, both times after raids on Taulbee's warehouses. The last time they had sat around the police station questioning Taulbee and waiting for his lawyer to come and Frank Long had got along pretty well with him. Taulbee didn't seem to be worried; he told some pretty good jokes and grinned when everybody laughed. Long liked a man who didn't let anything bother him. Sitting around there Taulbee gave everybody a cigar and said, well, now if somebody else could supply the whiskey and the girls, he'd as soon come to this jail as most of the speaks he did business with. He was honest, right out in the open, and they said he sure liked girls.
    Long did not make a judgment about Dr. Taulbee's assault on the women. If he liked to do it to them while they were sleeping, that was his business, but Jesus, it was sure better when they were squirming around. It didn't seem enough to send a man to prison for. Those women had probably been asking for it anyway.
    The more Long thought about it, the bette r i t looked to him. Long and Taulbee, partners.
    One job, that was all. He wasn't about t o t urn criminal for life. One job and he'd tak e h is cut and go to California or somewhere. Jus t o ne job and not do anything wrong ever again.
    Before the phone rang Long picked up th e r eceiver and waited and then said to the operator, "Listen, never mind that call to Frankfort. I got a number in Louisville I want you to get me."

    Chapter Five.
    Dual Meaders told the filling station man ten gallons of ethyl and sat to wait, his elbow pointing out the window and his pale-looking eyes gazing straight ahead, half closed in the afternoon glare.
    Behind him, in the back seat, Dr. Taulbee said, "Ask him where's a good place to eat."
    The girl sitting with Dr. Taulbee, Miley Mitchell, a good looking eighteen-year-old girl with brown hair and nice dimples, said, "God, around here?"
    "Ask him," Dr. Taulbee said.
    Dual Meaders got out of the La Salle; he walked back to where the filling station man was holding the nozzle in the gas tank opening and asked where was a good place to eat.
    "Right in front of your nose," the filling station man said, nodding across the highway to the white frame house with the FOUR STAR CAFE sign on a pole in front.
    Dual Meaders didn't like the man's answer. If the man had been close enough to see Dual's light-colored eyes, he