Free What the Dead Men Say by Ed Gorman Page B

said.
        Next to him in the darkness, coming awake, too, the girl said, “I don’t know. I never heard no gunshot in here before. Something terrible must have happened.”
        Outside the door you could hear heavy boots clomping on the wooden floor; men cursing and pulling on their clothes; women saying over and over, “What happened? What happened?” as they came out of their rooms. It was like a fire drill.
        James pulled on his own clothes. As he started to leave, the girl grabbed him by the wrist. “You be careful out there.”
        “I will.”
        There in the moonlight, she smiled. She sure wasn’t pretty but he sure did like her. “I’m glad it was with me, the first time.”
        “So am I,” James said, and squeezed her hand.
        The hallway and the staircase were packed with retreating men. Obviously, nobody who had to make any pretense of being respectable wanted to be caught in a whorehouse. The notion now was to get the hell out of there.
        On the way down the stairs, jostled in among other men, James was gawked at, pointed at, and smirked at. Old men with white hair and old men with muttonchops and old men with gold teeth peered at him wondering what the hell a fresh kid like him was doing there.
        All James was concerned about was Uncle Septemus. Where was he and was he all right?
        But even being pushed and shoved down the stairs by the crowd, even worried about what was going on, even sort of hungover from the alcohol… James was still smilingly aware of tonight’s significance. It wasn’t that he felt like a man exactly, it was more that he felt as if he’d learned something, that women, even ones who had to earn their living pleasing men, were every bit as real and complicated as he himself was. He’d actually liked the girl upstairs and that to him was more amazing than making love, which was wonderful and something he sure wanted to do again, but was not quite the heady mystical experience he’d assumed it would be after years of building up fantasies about it. He knew he’d never forget the girl, and not just because of the physical experience, either, but because of her rough intelligence and kindness in the face of his fears and patience in the face of his inexperience.
        At the bottom of the stairs, he found his uncle.
        Septemus sat in a straight-backed chair, so drunk he couldn’t hold up his head, his six-shooter lying on the floor. You could smell the gun smoke, acrid even above the whiskey and perfume. The player piano was just now being turned off. Men were piling out front, side, and back doors.
        The madame, a wiry little woman in a fancy blue silk dress and a hat that looked like a squatting porcupine, glared down at Uncle Septemus and said, “Who knows this sonofabitch anyway?”
        “I do.”
        She whirled around to James.
        “What'd he do, ma’m?”
        “What’d he do? Why the sonofabitch started talking about some little girl gettin’ killed or some god damn thing and he went crazy. Started tearin’ up the room and callin’ out her name and then he started firin’ his gun!”
        “He didn’t hurt the lady, though?”
        “The lady?”
        “The girl he was with.”
        She smirked. “Ain’t used to hearin’ ’em called ladies.” Several of the girls standing around laughed about this. “No, he didn’t hurt the girl.” She shook her head. Her anger went abruptly, and something like pity came into her voice. “Poor god damn bastard. Was it his daughter got killed?”
        “Yes, ma’m?”
        “She young?”
        “Thirteen.”
        “Poor god damn bastard.”
        “Somebody shot her.”
        She shook her head and sighed. “Get him out of here, kid. The gunshots’ll bring the sheriff and you don’t want to answer a lot of questions to that sonofabitch.”
        James went over and got