Robert B. Parker's The Bridge

“Not so much,” Nell said.

“I’ve never been,” Allie said. “Virgil tells me he’ll take me there, one day. I will believe it when I see it. You have family there?” Allie said.

“No,” she said. “I don’t.”

“How did you become an actress?” Allie said.

“Allie,” Virgil said. “Let her chew her food.”

“Oh, it’s okay,” Nell said. “I was a dancer at first.”

“How exciting,” Allie said. “The ballet?”

Nell smiled.

“No,” Nell said. “Dance hall.”

“Oh,” Allie said.

“Started when I was twelve,” she said.

“Oh,” Allie said.

“In the Barbary,” Nell said, matter-of-fact.

“Oh,” Allie said.

Virgil glanced to me.

It became clear to me the relationship between Beauregard and Nell. She was in the Barbary. He most likely pulled her out of the Barbary before she was completely devoured. The only women in the Barbary were whores. Nell and Allie had more in common, I thought, than what first met the eye. Both had a history of whoring, and given the fact they seemed to be two peas in a pod, it was becoming pretty clear just why.

“Let her eat,” Virgil said.

Nell worked at cutting the rabbit on her plate into little pieces before she said anything else.

“He’s not a bad man,” Nell said, looking at Virgil. “If it were not for him . . . no telling where I’d be.”

Virgil didn’t say anything.

“Not a good man,” Nell went on, as she continued to cut her rabbit.

She was sawing on the rabbit as if she were cutting up Beauregard.

“But not a bad man,” she said, as she forked a piece of rabbit into her mouth and chewed.

After di

We worked side by side, washing and drying the dishes for a long while without saying anything.

“He knows I like you,” Nell said.

I just looked at her.

She looked at me.

“That’s why he acted the way he did when I saw you walk into the door of the hotel,” she said. “He could see it in my eyes. He’s beyond jealous. He watches me. Watches my every move. He knows I’m looking for a way out.”

“I’m no savior,” I said.

“I know,” Nell said.

She continued to wash and I continued to dry.

“You could do one thing for me, though,” Nell said.

“What’s that?” I said.

“Before I have to leave Appaloosa,” she said, “I’d like you to make love to me.”

— 54 —

The night was dark and never without all the images of what Virgil and I had experienced this day and the last few that had preceded it.

The evening went on for certain without a roll with Nell or another strange encounter with Séraphine. Not sure I could have handled either. In fact, I knew I couldn’t.

My room was cold. I got the Pettit and Smith heater going and the chill lessened. I kicked my boots off and got myself ready to sleep.

I laid down, but my mind was active and unsettled.

I thought back about Virgil and me sitting on his front porch, talking about the incoming weather, and Sheriff Driskill and his deputies Chip Childers and Karl Worley stopping by on their way to the bridge in search of Lo

I looked to the ceiling, and thought about Virgil and me hearing the music and then seeing Beauregard and the troupe parade into town and how excited Allie had been.

I sat straight and picked up the bottle I had set on the floor. It had a little left in it and I drank it. I felt tired and in need of sleep, but my mind was restless.

I wondered what had happened that day, when Driskill and his deputies encountered those goddamn dressers. How did they get them, get the jump on them? They were not even a quarter-mile from town. I kept playing out how it could have happened. It was hard for me to shake the image of the brutal torture the men had most surely endured.

Sledge Driskill, Chip Childers, and Karl Worley’s smiling faces stayed in my head as I thought about them sitting on their horses in front of Virgil and Allie’s porch.

Then I thought about today, about them lying lifeless in the back of the buckboard under our slickers as we rode back to town. I thought about us putting them in the cold shed behind Joshua’s place and about the mayor making an a

I tried to drift off to sleep in my shitty room above the survey office but continued to have a hard time.

I thought about Séraphine, and when she left me the note. I thought about her saying she would remember me.

I thought about Nell, too, and the rabbit di

I thought about the Barbary Coast and what I remembered there. The rough men and women there and the rough life they led. I thought about Nell being there, and the life she had lived.

I thought about Virgil sleeping on his sofa and Allie and Nell sleeping in the same bed.

My mind would not quiet and I rolled and turned, trying to find some comfort, some peace, some slumber.

I thought about seeing the bridge blown up and the tons of wood and iron beams, draped down into the Rio Blanco River like a lifeless dead tree.

I thought of Bolger shooting at me, and of his brother, Ballard, and the buckboard and the clothes in the back.

Everything was revolving in my mind, including the cattleman Swickey. What could be his reason for blowing up the bridge? Or did he need one? Maybe it was sheer hatred for Cox and for not getting the contract?

I thought about us riding to Loblolly tomorrow and about finding him. I thought about who he was and what he looked like. I thought about confronting him and I wondered what to expect, if we would run into the men pretending to be soldiers there, too. Would this be it; would it go down?

I could not stop thinking about them, the pretend soldiers, the goddamn no-good murderers. The face of the bearded man who rode by Hal’s Café and lifted his hand, giving me a slight wave as he passed. Was that one of the Cotter brothers? I kept seeing his face . . . and his eyes, his disturbing, killer eyes. I kept seeing those eyes looking right at me.

But the men hanging in the slaughterhouse was the vision that kept me awake, kept returning in my mind, and I could not shake it. I knew those boys, Chip and Karl and Driskill. I knew them real well, they were good men, good lawmen; they were friends to one another and they were my friends. Goddamn . . . Goddamn . . . Goddamn . . .

—

In the morning I sat on my bed with a blanket wrapped around me and stared at the floor for a long time before I even considered getting out of bed and getting dressed. My Pettit and Smith heater had died out through the night and the room was cold. The wind was whistling a haunting melody through the cracks around the door.

Where is the damn light? I looked out the window; there was still no sign of sun, the weather remained cloudy and dark, and snow swirled in the bitter morning wind.

I dressed and stopped by Café Paris and drank some coffee. The Café Paris was the first place Virgil and I ever ate and drank coffee when we came to Appaloosa. The same place where we met Allie for the first time. Allison French, she’d said her name was, and Virgil asked her, that very first time he laid eyes on her, if she was a whore.

— 55 —

As pla