Robert B. Parker's Blackjack (A Cole and Hitch Novel) Read online

  THE SPENSER NOVELS

  Robert B. Parker’s Kickback

  (by Ace Atkins)

  Robert B. Parker’s Cheap Shot

  (by Ace Atkins)

  Silent Night

  (with Helen Brann)

  Robert B. Parker’s Wonderland

  (by Ace Atkins)

  Robert B. Parker’s Lullaby

  (by Ace Atkins)

  Sixkill

  Painted Ladies

  The Professional

  Rough Weather

  Now & Then

  Hundred-Dollar Baby

  School Days

  Cold Service

  Bad Business

  Back Story

  Widow’s Walk

  Potshot

  Hugger Mugger

  Hush Money

  Sudden Mischief

  Small Vices

  Chance

  Thin Air

  Walking Shadow

  Paper Doll

  Double Deuce

  Pastime

  Stardust

  Playmates

  Crimson Joy

  Pale Kings and Princes

  Taming a Sea-Horse

  A Catskill Eagle

  Valediction

  The Widening Gyre

  Ceremony

  A Savage Place

  Early Autumn

  Looking for Rachel Wallace

  The Judas Goat

  Promised Land

  Mortal Stakes

  God Save the Child

  The Godwulf Manuscript

  THE JESSE STONE NOVELS

  Robert B. Parker’s The Devil Wins

  (by Reed Farrel Coleman)

  Robert B. Parker’s Blind Spot

  (by Reed Farrel Coleman)

  Robert B. Parker’s Damned If You Do

  (by Michael Brandman)

  Robert B. Parker’s Fool Me Twice

  (by Michael Brandman)

  Robert B. Parker’s Killing the Blues

  (by Michael Brandman)

  Split Image

  Night and Day

  Stranger in Paradise

  High Profile

  Sea Change

  Stone Cold

  Death in Paradise

  Trouble in Paradise

  Night Passage

  THE SUNNY RANDALL NOVELS

  Spare Change

  Blue Screen

  Melancholy Baby

  Shrink Rap

  Perish Twice

  Family Honor

  THE COLE/HITCH WESTERNS

  Robert B. Parker’s The Bridge

  (by Robert Knott)

  Robert B. Parker’s Bull River

  (by Robert Knott)

  Robert B. Parker’s Ironhorse

  (by Robert Knott)

  Blue-Eyed Devil

  Brimstone

  Resolution

  Appaloosa

  ALSO BY ROBERT B. PARKER

  Double Play

  Gunman’s Rhapsody

  All Our Yesterdays

  A Year at the Races

  (with Joan H. Parker)

  Perchance to Dream

  Poodle Springs

  (with Raymond Chandler)

  Love and Glory

  Wilderness

  Three Weeks in Spring

  (with Joan H. Parker)

  Training with Weights

  (with John R. Marsh)

  G. P. PUTNAM’S SONS

  Publishers Since 1838

  An imprint of Penguin Random House LLC

  375 Hudson Street

  New York, New York 10014

  Copyright © 2016 by The Estate of Robert B. Parker

  Penguin supports copyright. Copyright fuels creativity, encourages diverse voices, promotes free speech, and creates a vibrant culture. Thank you for buying an authorized edition of this book and for complying with copyright laws by not reproducing, scanning, or distributing any part of it in any form without permission. You are supporting writers and allowing Penguin to continue to publish books for every reader.

  eBook ISBN 978-1-101-98254-9

  This is a work of fiction. Names, characters, places, and incidents either are the product of the author’s imagination or are used fictitiously, and any resemblance to actual persons, living or dead, businesses, companies, events, or locales is entirely coincidental.

  Version_1

  CONTENTS

  Other Robert B. Parker Novels

  Title Page

  Copyright

  Dedication

  Chapter 1

  Chapter 2

  Chapter 3

  Chapter 4

  Chapter 5

  Chapter 6

  Chapter 7

  Chapter 8

  Chapter 9

  Chapter 10

  Chapter 11

  Chapter 12

  Chapter 13

  Chapter 14

  Chapter 15

  Chapter 16

  Chapter 17

  Chapter 18

  Chapter 19

  Chapter 20

  Chapter 21

  Chapter 22

  Chapter 23

  Chapter 24

  Chapter 25

  Chapter 26

  Chapter 27

  Chapter 28

  Chapter 29

  Chapter 30

  Chapter 31

  Chapter 32

  Chapter 33

  Chapter 34

  Chapter 35

  Chapter 36

  Chapter 37

  Chapter 38

  Chapter 39

  Chapter 40

  Chapter 41

  Chapter 42

  Chapter 43

  Chapter 44

  Chapter 45

  Chapter 46

  Chapter 47

  Chapter 48

  Chapter 49

  Chapter 50

  Chapter 51

  Chapter 52

  Chapter 53

  Chapter 54

  Chapter 55

  Chapter 56

  Chapter 57

  Chapter 58

  Chapter 59

  Chapter 60

  Chapter 61

  Chapter 62

  Chapter 63

  Chapter 64

  Chapter 65

  Chapter 66

  Chapter 67

  Chapter 68

  Chapter 69

  Chapter 70

  Chapter 71

  Chapter 72

  Chapter 73

  Chapter 74

  Chapter 75

  Chapter 76

  Acknowledgments

  For Julie

  1.

  Ruth Ann was running now, moving as fast as she could through the dense forest. The Comanche moon hanging directly above dimly lit her way through thick timber of pine, blackjack, birch, and maple.

  There were no shoes on her bloody feet and what was left of her dress was ripped, soiled, and hanging off her bare shoulders. She was dirty, with leaves and sticks tangled in her auburn hair. She glanced back as she ran. She was terrified, her face tearstained, scratched, and bleed
ing, and her eyes were wide with fear and . . . then he awoke. It was not the first time Roger Wayne Messenger awoke from this vision, this nightmare of Ruth Ann running through the woods, and he was fairly certain it would not be his last.

  Roger sat up a little and worked the ache from his back. His mouth was dry and his head was pounding. With the exception of the dampness he found in the corners of his eyes, the rye whiskey he consumed on the journey sucked his body of all its moisture. His mouth was so parched his lips were stuck together. He sat up and looked around at the dark landscape passing by. All of the other passengers were asleep. He wished he, too, was asleep, but sleep was something he had not been accustomed to for some time. He dug into his knapsack and found his canteen and drank and drank.

  Roger was a big, lean, and strong man with thick, dark hair that was three inches long on the top and cropped tight to the sides of his head. He was normally clean-shaven around his sweeping thick mustache, but at the moment he was sporting three days of whiskers. He wore a brown herringbone suit that was usually pressed over a starched white shirt, but currently his attire was crumpled from days of neglect.

  When Roger stepped off the morning train in Appaloosa, he snugged his brown wide-brim with rolled edges over his square forehead and walked into town. He stopped at S. Q. Johnson’s Grocery and bought a can of beans. He sat under the shade of the store’s overhang, opened the can with his army knife, and ate the beans using the blade. When he finished he went about the task he’d come to Appaloosa to accomplish.

  He poked his head in the door of Cheever’s Saddle shop and asked the old-timer tanning a large hide for directions to his destination. Then he walked seven blocks, turned south on Main Street, and went two more blocks to the construction site.

  It was an impressive building. Three stories tall and at least seventy-five feet wide, with a second-story covered porch that had five sets of glassed double doors across the balcony. To Roger’s untrained eye the structure appeared to be nearly complete, but the building was busy with construction workers.

  Roger thought about just walking into the place, but decided he would watch for a while, watch and wait. He was good at watching and waiting; it was part of his job, and now that he was here, he was not in any hurry. Better to be patient. Better to wait.

  He stood across the street, watching all the laborers going about their business. There were painters on scaffoldings painting a second coat of white and carpenters on the boardwalk, assembling wood pieces and going about other various tasks of measuring and sawing, remeasuring and resawing.

  A team of mules pulling a flatbed stopped in front of the stairs leading up to the entrance with a load of hardwood. Roger rolled and lit a cigarette as he watched a few of the teamsters unload the flatbed and stack the shiny planks neatly on the boardwalk under a wide leaded-glass window.

  He thought about the amount of money it must take for an impressive undertaking such as this. He had no idea, but then again, this line of business was something that Roger was just not all that familiar with.

  Roger watched and waited. He moved off the boardwalk and found a comfortable spot in the narrow alley between an upholstery shop and a dry-goods store, where he had a good view of the goings-on across the street. His head was still throbbing and he felt a little dozy, but he remained alert by nipping on the second bottle of rye he had in his knapsack and rolling and smoking cigarettes. He had plenty of both.

  At nearly ten-thirty a slender sorrel pulling a two-seater buggy with a covered backseat rounded the corner and stopped in front of the building. An older, portly man with bushy white muttonchops and wearing a flattop brushed beaver hat sat in the backseat. Next to him was an attractive young woman wearing a plum-colored dress with a high collar.

  They remained under the shaded cover, looking at the building for a long while. Then the man worked his way butt first out of the buggy’s backseat.

  Roger smiled to himself as he watched the round man struggle to get his chubby frame out of the backseat. When he was out of the buggy and standing, supporting his stance with the aid of a polished black cane, he removed his hat and wiped sweat from his forehead with a handkerchief. The young woman remained in the buggy. She leaned out and her eyes caught a little sunlight before she sat back in the shade of the buggy.

  “Come back, pick me up by two o’clock,” he said to the driver, “two o’clock sharp.”

  “Sir,” the driver said with a tip of his brim, and then clucked the sorrel and moved off down the street, with the young woman still aboard and leaving the portly man looking up to the building. He turned, walked a few steps toward the middle of the wide street, stopped, then turned and looked back up at the building.

  It was obvious to Roger the man wanted to have a full view of the building, wanted to take in all its grandness. The way the man moved and held his chin high reminded Roger of his own grandfather’s survey after a day of stacking hay in the barn. But this man was no farmer. Roger thought by the way he stood with his fists on his hips holding back the sides of his coat, watching the workers with an appraising eye, that he must be the man with the money, the man in charge or the banker that loaned the business the money.

  Then Roger saw him, the man that he had traveled two days on the train to locate. The man known in gambling parlors from New Orleans to San Francisco as Boston Bill Black.

  Boston Bill came walking out of the building flanked by two smaller men. It’s not that the men by his side were in any way short or even below average in size, it was simply that Boston Bill was unusually tall. Not unlike Roger—Roger was tall, too—but he was a good hand shorter than Boston Bill. Boston Bill’s head barely cleared the top of the door as he walked out. He was wearing a fancy suit with a green vest that was adorned with a draping gold watch fob.

  2.

  The tall gambling man that Roger had come searching for in Appaloosa was right here in front of him now. He was a strong, handsome-looking man with silver-streaked black hair and a black-as-coal mustache.

  At the moment he had a huge smile on his face as he walked down the steps with his hand extended toward the portly man in the street. The two men with him stayed back behind him a few steps. They both wore dark suits, but they weren’t refined in any way, not like Boston Bill.

  Roger could certainly determine that detail about the two men. It was part of his job to quickly assess people and he was good at assessing. He figured if it wasn’t for their long, dirty hair, they might pass for guardsmen, like Dickerson men or Pinkertons or Denver police, even. But hell, they were nothing, no-accounts. One of them was blond and pretty like a woman, Roger thought. The other had deep-set eyes with a scraggly beard. He was skinny and younger than the blond man and a little smaller.

  They both were heeled and looked like capable customers to Roger, but he was unconcerned with them. It was the tall man, it was Boston Bill, that Roger was interested in.

  Roger knew how to do his job. He’d been at it for a long while, and even though this time the job was personal, he still operated as he had always operated, with ease and friendliness. No need to get all rigged up or emotionally boiling.

  “Mr. Pritchard,” Boston Bill said. “Good to see you. How was your trip?”

  Before Mr. Pritchard could answer, Roger moved out of the narrow alley and spoke with some volume.

  “Mr. Black.”

  Roger stepped off the boardwalk and took a few steps into the street. He took a step back and waited as a horse and buggy passed, then continued to walk toward Boston Bill. It’s okay, Roger thought. It is okay.

  “I’d like to have a word or two with you,” Roger said. “Just a moment of your time.”

  Roger always worked like this. He was as smooth as butter, everyone would say. Boston Bill glanced back at his two seconds, then looked back at Roger. Roger had to slow up again as a horse and rider hurried by.

  “I’m sorry,” Bos
ton Bill said. “If you are looking for work, I’m afraid there are no positions available at this time.”

  “Oh, no, no,” he said. “Not looking for any position.”

  “Well, what can I help you with, then?”

  Roger thought to himself, Just keep it simple; just keep it calm. Roger had done this sort of thing at least one hundred times. And like mother always said, “An ounce of kindness Roger, an ounce of kindness is worth, worth . . . something about gold . . . the weight in gold?”

  “Just a little business matter,” Roger said.

  Boston Bill’s second, the one with the blond hair, stepped forward with a stance that suggested to Roger he thought he was much tougher than he looked.

  “That’s far enough,” the blond man said.

  Roger smiled.

  “There’s no need to concern yourself, young man. This isn’t any of your business.”

  The other of Boston Bill’s seconds, the smaller man with the dark beard, took a stance and spoke up with speech that seemed to Roger to be impaired by what looked to be a swollen jaw.

  “It is our business,” the man with the dark beard said, and then spit in the street.

  Most of the workers stopped what they were doing and turned their attention to Roger.

  Boston Bill looked to Mr. Pritchard and nodded toward the entrance of the building.

  “Let’s step inside,” he said. “After you, Mr. Pritchard.”

  “Just hold on,” Roger said. “Just a moment, I have something you need to see.”

  Roger put his hand into his knapsack, and when he did the blond man quickly pulled a butt-forward Colt.

  “No,” Roger said. “Just . . .”

  Roger had underestimated the essence of the men. He did not expect this, not at all.

  There were two quick shots. Gun smoke kicked from the barrel of the blond man’s Colt. Roger was stunned. He stood looking at the smoke that hung almost motionless in the stillness of the late morning.

  One of the shots went through the side of Roger’s jacket, missing his torso, but one shot hit him dead center in his midsection. Roger looked down to where the bullet had entered. His hand came out of the knapsack clenching a scrolled paper.

  “Oh, lordy,” Roger said.

  Roger staggered, falling on his backside on the hard packed dirt, and when he did his jacket opened up to reveal a shiny silver star pinned just over his heart on his gingham vest.