THE UNHIGHLANDER

by Galen Hardesty

Chapter Three

THE BOYS IN THE BACK ROOM

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A bunch of the boys were whooping it up at the Dry Gulch Saloon. Well, not whooping, really, but they were definitely being naughty. They were just doing it quietly, in the back room. And no one was tickling the ivories.

The ones who seemed to be enjoying themselves were seated in a large booth. Other than its size, the booth was distinguished by a small shaded lamp that hung by its cord, casting a pool of light onto the table that, while not bright, was adequate for reading. A whiskey bottle and some shot glasses stood on the booth's table. There were also a couple of manila folders and an ashtray containing several large black cigar butts.

The other, smaller booths in the room were illuminated by much dimmer wall-mounted lights. A long twin-tube fluorescent fixture hung above a pool table in the center of the room, but neither the light nor the table was in use now. What light there was revealed a thick pall of smoke hanging in the air.

Other men sat in other booths or in scattered chairs, some nursing drinks, seldom meeting each others' eyes, waiting. Most of these men had the look of working men about them. They also looked like they would rather not be here.

Back in the far corner, between the last booth and the wall where the darkness was darkest, two eyes glittered dimly, like frozen lakes beneath a cheeserind moon. A black-clad figure crouched there in the blackness, writing in an unseen notebook with an unseen pencil stub. In better light, the figure could have been recognized as Daria Morgendorffer.

Daria recognized the man seated on the left side of the large booth as James "Big Jim" Roach, current mayor of Highland. He was a corpulent man in his mid to late fifties. He had the type of male pattern baldness characterized by a small roundish patch of thick black hair at the top of his forehead, surrounded by near-baldness on the rest of the top of his head. As she watched, Roach drew a long, fat black cigar from a pocket, bit off the end, and lit it from the butt of the one he had been smoking. To his left was a small bespectacled man who was shuffling papers and folders in and out of a file satchel beside him on the seat. He looked just like the picture in the dictionary next to the word "accountant." To the bespectacled man's left were three other men. Daria recognized the one on the far right as councilman "Big Bill" Beauregard. Although she could not name them, Daria knew the other two men were also on the city council. Perhaps they were the Dirk and Slater mentioned by Diane Hunter, the young newswoman.

One by one, the waiting men were summoned to the booth by a crooked finger. Folders were opened, papers were consulted, brief discussions took place, the small bespectacled man made notations in his notebook, federal reserve notes changed hands, and the men usually left singly.

The small man handed Roach a folder. He glanced at it, then looked around the room. His eye lit on a tanned, broad-shouldered young man with sun-bleached sandy hair and rough hands. Roach pointed, then crooked a finger to indicate that the young man should approach the booth, which he did. With a wave of his cigar, Roach indicated a single wooden chair that had been pulled up to the booth's table.

"Sit down, Sandy, good to meetcha. This is for the concrete work on the new firehouse, right? Hmmm, I see you're actually the low bidder on this contract. Excellent. I'm sure you'll do a fine job. The rebate will be two thousand."

"Er, what?" Sandy said uncertainly, looking around the table.Roach lifted the folder before him and seemed to become engrossed in its contents. A cloud of acrid cigar smoke began to rise from behind it.

"Big Bill" Beauregard, at the other side of the booth, leaned toward Sandy and spoke confidingly. "It's to ensure that your bid doesn't get snarled up in technicalities or some such. Standard procedure." He smiled and chucked Sandy on the shoulder in a good-ol'-boys sort of way.

"But- that'll put me in the hole! I'll lose money!" Sandy replied, almost whispering."

Wa-a-all, cain't have that, now, can we?" Big Bill replied with a very good imitation of a friendly smile. "Here, just you raise your bid three thousand. You make a fair profit, your crew's got work, and everybody's happy!" He slid a piece of paper over to the young man and handed him a pen. Sandy lined through a figure and wrote in another above it, and slid it back.

"That's fine," smiled Big Bill. "Now, the two thousand?"

"Oh, yeah," said Sandy. He started to reach for his wallet, then stopped, looking embarrassed. "Do you take checks?"

Big Bill's smile dimmed considerably. "No, Sandy, we don't. Strictly cash on the bar'lhead. But, seein's this is your first contract with the city, you can just bring it to me at Lloyd's barber shop at eleven tomorrow morning. In an envelope. Wrapped in a newspaper. Don't be late now, heah?"

"Yes, sir. I'll be there." said Sandy. Bill waved a dismissal and Sandy rose and walked away. Roach handed the folder to the small man and received another one. He glanced at the name on it, puffed a couple of larger-than-average clouds of smoke, pointed at an older man in an expensive suit, then crooked the finger to summon him. "Evenin', Harry, been a while. Have a seat."

"You're lookin' good, Big Jim! Glad to see ya!" The man called Harry flashed his most sincere smile and held out his hand, but Roach gestured to the chair with his cigar and picked up a folder.

"Umm, yes, the Tumbleweed Trail paving contract." Roach rolled the cigar over to his left cheek and looked from the folder to Harry over steepled fingers. "Now, Harry, that last road you paved didn't even last a year. You laid down less than two inches of asphalt. Quite a few complaints about that."

Harry put on a big, oily smile. "I'm sure sorry to hear that, Big Jim, but the cost of asphalt is just sky-high these days. You know how it is."

Roach cocked an eyebrow. "'Deed I do, Harry, but this here contract calls for five inches of asphalt." He tapped the paper before him with a beefy forefinger. "We goan' need to have at least three inches measurable at all points. Tumbleweed Trail is becomin' quite the upscale bedroom community, y'know. A lot of influential folk live out thataway, and they expect a certain level of services for their tax money an' their um, contributions. They're not as easygoin' as I am." He gave Harry a significant look.

Harry held onto his smile. "Don't you worry about a thing, Big Jim. You can count on me to deliver satisfaction."

"I know I can, Harry. The rebate for this one will be forty thousand."

"What?! Forty thousand? That's er, quite a rebate, Big Jim!"

Roach cracked his knuckles meditatively. "Yeah, well, we incurred some higher-than-expected expenses related to that last job. You know, inspections and such."

Harry's smile was looking a bit strained. "Oh, I see. Sure. Well, um, just let me check those figures one more time, make sure they're correct..." Harry reached out to pull the contract toward him, while pulling a pen out of his shirt pocket.

Roach kept his forefinger on the paper. It didn't move. "I checked 'em, Harry. They're correct." He smiled, a just-sitting-down-to-a-roast-beef-dinner sort of smile.

Harry's smile was breaking up. "Uh, well, I s'pose so... well, nice seein' you, Big Jim." He pulled three bundles of bills from a coat pocket, winced a little, and fished a fourth bundle from an inner pocket.

Still smiling, Roach slid the bills over to one of the other councilmen, who put them away somewhere below the tabletop. "Pleasure doin' business with ya, Harry." He knocked the ash off his cigar with his little finger.

A door opened, and brighter light streamed in from the kitchen. An aproned figure entered carrying a cardboard box which he set on the pool table. He addressed Roach and the others. "You guys about finished? I gotta sweep and set up the craps layout."

Roach levered himself out of the booth. "Okay, Sappy, we're through for tonight. I believe I'll stay for awhile and see if Lady Luck is as good to me as Lady Rebate has been."

"Sounds like fun, Big Jim." Beauregard said. "Believe I'll join ya."

"Not me," said Harry. "I'm all tapped out already, don't need no help from a crap game." He rose and headed for the door, which had shelves mounted on its kitchen side. The few remaining contractors mumbled assent and followed him.

"I think I'll have a burger and a beer before the game starts, Sappy," said Roach.

Sappy looked irritated at having to interrupt his sweeping, but didn't comment on it. "Sure, Big Jim. You'll have to come up front. I can't keep the rats out if there's even a sniff of food back here. Don't know where they're comin' in from."

Daria bottled up a derisive snort. There was a hole in the wall back here big enough for her to crawl through on hands and knees. That was how she'd gotten in. The vile stench of rats, mice, and roaches back here indicated that they'd been living and breeding in these walls and in the capacious spaces behind these booth units for longer than she'd been alive. Gnawed-open packets of various poisons and scattered roach and rodent corpses testified to ongoing efforts to control the infestation, but the plentitude of feces and the scratching and skittering sounds provided an irrefutable indictment of their efficacy.

Daria risked a peek around the edge of the booth as mayor Roach followed Sappy through the kitchen door. The handle end of a black leather sap protruding from Sappy's right back pocket suggested to her that his nickname might not have to do with his softheartedness or gullibility after all.

Well, that was probably all the graft and corruption she'd witness tonight. It was more than enough. Mayor Roach and his cronies on the city council were definitely in need of beautification. Daria began retreating toward the hole in the corner. Her hand contacted a small metal tube running along the base of the wall. A bit of tactile exploration revealed that it ran to a large gas space heater a few feet out from the row of booths. Inspiration struck. "Why not?" she thought. "There's no time like the present."

Silently moving out into the now-empty room, Daria ascertained that the heater was not in use and the pilot light was off. She turned the gas valve wide open, then backed it off a little to the point where the hissing noise would not interrupt the crap game. The reek of cigar smoke would cover the odor of the gas. Then she quickly made her way back to the corner.

Lifting up the masonite panel that had been tacked on to disguise the gaping hole on the inside, she crawled through. Facing this direction, the cause of the decay was obvious. Through another gaping hole Daria could see that a large institutional dishwasher occupied this corner of the adjacent kitchen, and it emitted enough steam to keep the wallboard and studs constantly warm and damp.

Daria shouldered aside a large piece of vinyl siding that had been nailed to the outside of the building. The bottom nails had pulled out of the rotted plate timber. If Sappy didn't replace these rotting stud walls with concrete or cinder block pretty soon, she reflected, this whole end of the building would collapse. Then she remembered what she'd just done, and what would occur when Big Jim lit his next cigar. A soft chuckle floated away on the night breeze, and a shadow shifted and blended with the other shadows in the dark weedy alley. Then all was still once more.

Daria was almost halfway back to the Morgendorffer house when an orange light from behind her lit up the houses and trees of the street down which she was walking. A loud boom rolled out across the suburbs of Highland and returned as echoes from points round about. Agitated barking arose from neighborhood dogs awakened untimely from their doggy dreams. She turned in time to see a sizeable fireball transform into a column of gray and black smoke, lit by fires from below. Fires that marked the location of the Dry Gulch Saloon. With a smile that would have sent Quinn screaming away in terror, Daria turned back and continued on her way, humming "See what the boys in the back room will have, and tell them I died of the same" and thinking of Marlene Dietrich.

Daria stealthily approached the darkened house and listened intently at the opening of her bedroom window. Hearing nothing, she silently opened the window wider and slipped in. She removed the artfully-wadded dirty clothes from her bed where they'd made a Daria-shaped lump under the covers, threw them on the floor, and added her current outfit to the pile.

Slipping into bed, she pictured the note she'd send to the editor of the Hooraw. "Roach was the third. The list is long. Highland Beautification League." It had a nice ring to it, she thought, but she'd wait for the casualty list and see if there were any other names she might want to add. An idea occured to her. She could change the last line to "The list is long, and you are on it", make copies, and send them to the Highland denizens she knew of who needed killing. Should she add "Mend your ways or die?"

Daria realized her brain was overstimulated by her noctournal adventure. With a sigh, she turned on the lamp on her nightstand, pulled out an old, tattered copy of Better Farms And Ranches and opened it to an incredibly boring article about silage. It had never failed her yet.

~~~