Tombstone Courage (7 page)

I
N THE
relative pre-lunch quiet of Bisbee's Blue Moon Saloon, Angie Kellogg was studying her Arizona state driver's license manual as though her very life depended on it. Studying—serious studying—was something she had done so seldom in her short life that it came as a surprise. Even to her.

On the run from her drug-cartel, hit-man boyfriend, Angie was an ex-L.A. hooker who had landed in Bisbee two months earlier. Under circumstances that still amazed her, she had been taken under the protective wing of an unlikely trio of rescuers made up of Joanna Brady, Reverend Marianne Maculyea, and Bobo Jenkins, one of Bisbee's few African Americans. As the enterprising owner/operator of the Blue Moon, he had offered Angie Kellogg her first legitimate employment.

Determined to be out of “the life,” Angie was walking the straight and narrow for the first time in her short existence. She had purposefully changed her lifestyle, but not necessarily her clothing. Her trademark skintight jeans, platform heels, and voluptuous figure continually provoked comment and notice in the post office and Safeway.
They also made her by far the best-looking relief bartender in town. Bobo, a sharp businessman with one eye on Angie's figure and the other on the daily receipts, was quick to notice a distinct upswing in business whenever Angie Kellogg pulled a shift.

He joked that she was his most valuable employee. Since she was also his only employee, Angie didn't take that compliment very seriously. But in a place as small as Bisbee, where a severely limited population also limited the number of drinkers, anything that improved the bottom line of a marginally profitable business was an addition to be welcomed with open arms.

At first Angie Kellogg didn't pay that much attention to the well-dressed man who crashed through the swinging door of the Blue Moon Saloon and Lounge and slouched over to the farthest booth. It was a little before eleven-thirty when he ducked into the bench seat with his back to the entrance.

Annoyed to have her quiet study time interrupted prior to the normal lunch-hour rush, Angie put down her driver's license manual and hurried over to take his order. “What'll you have?” she asked.

“A Bloody Mary,” he answered. “A double.”

Angie guessed the stranger might be an attorney right away, although of a far better caliber than the ones her various L.A. pimps used to hire to bail their girls out of the slammer.

“Hot or not?” she asked.

Bobo had directed Angie to ask the question in
just that way, carefully explaining that some customers liked mild Bloody Marys while others wanted the drink so fired with Tabasco sauce that they required a water chaser. When Bobo, an athletically built black man, asked that particular question, no one gave him any crap. When Angie did, things usually went from bad to worse in a hurry.

The dweeb lawyer answered her with a disturbingly blank stare, and Angie braced herself for the inevitably rude comment that was bound to follow. If it was bad enough, she was fully prepared to tell him what he could do with the piece of celery she was supposed to put in the drink to stir it.

“I beg your pardon?” he said finally. “What was it you asked me?”

“The drink,” she prodded. “How spicy? Hot or not?”

“Not very,” he said.

Angie flounced away from him, tossing her blond hair. Maybe he didn't go to bars much. He acted like he didn't even speak the language, like he was from a foreign country or something. But at least he hadn't propositioned her. Bobo had made it clear that if Angie wanted to keep her part-time job as relief daytime bartender, “fraternizing with the customers,” which Angie translated to mean screwing around, was absolutely forbidden. To be honest, there weren't that many men who looked remotely interesting to her these days, and certainly not for free. As far as
that
job
was concerned, Angie Kellogg was permanently on vacation.

By the time she delivered the lawyer's drink and collected his money, the first of her noontime regulars had wandered in from outside. Archie McBride and Willy Haskins were already arguing when they sauntered into the bar and settled into their usual places at the far end of the counter nearest the door. Angie brought two vodkas along with Coors draft chasers without bothering to ask. They always ordered the same thing anyway, and it was too hard waiting for them to stop yammering long enough to get a word in edgewise.

The two old guys, both former underground miners, had been retired from Phelps Dodge for at least twenty years. They were relatively harmless maintenance drunks who had to keep a certain amount of liquor in their systems to keep from dipping into DTs. Their ongoing arguments never caused much trouble, although Angie always hoped the conversations would steer clear of politics or religion.

If it had been just the two of them, Angie might have tried to grab a few more minutes' worth of study time, but they were joined by another noontime imbiber, Don Frost, who meandered in out of the Gulch and settled onto his usual barstool.

Don, part of Bisbee's arts community, was a sculptor specializing in what he called “Mixed Media Dreg Art.” Frost's pieces consisted of hunks of discarded junk, glued and/or welded together. Sometimes, on a good day, they were even painted. Although Don Frost's work was promi
nently displayed in galleries around town, they seldom ever sold. He subsisted on monthly checks from some kind of trust fund that allowed him to drink and eat as long as he lived in a $150-a-month apartment above an abandoned Mom-and-Pop grocery store up Tombstone Canyon.

Sometimes, toward the end of the month and toward the end of that month's money, Don Frost would come into the Blue Moon and hit up Bobo for a loan to tide him over. Bobo was always careful to ask for an accounting at the beginning of the next month.

“It's good business,” Bobo told Angie with a sly grin. “Sure I lend him money, and he always pays me back from the next check. And that keeps it all in the family—he borrows here and drinks here too.”

Twenty-three-year-old Angie liked working as Bobo's relief bartender, her first-ever nonhooking employment. It was honest work that enabled her to keep up the payments on a modest two-bedroom house that had once served as company housing. It allowed her to indulge in her newfound hobby of bird feeding while still maintaining most of the cash nest egg Joanna Brady had helped her finesse away from Adam York and the Drug Enforcement Agency.

Most of the time Angie enjoyed her job, but some of the customers got to her—Don Frost most of all. An obnoxious loudmouth and self-appointed expert in everything, Frost freely shared with Angie his encyclopedic knowledge of mixology and was forever offering her unsolicited ad
vice as she struggled with learning the intricacies of her new job.

Don Frost fancied himself quite a catch, always hinting that there was a whole lot more money where the trust funds came from, and whatever woman was lucky enough to land him would be in for quite a ride. Since Angie was literally the “new girl in town,” Frost maintained a constant barrage of what he regarded as flirtatious banter. He had even gone so far as to bring in one of his recently completed works of art for her approval.

Angie Kellogg's taste in art was fairly unsophisticated. When Don assured her this was a five-thousand-dollar piece, she couldn't imagine why anyone would want to pay that much money for a chunk of painted garbage. Had Angie still been working the streets, one dose of Don Frost would have been more than enough. But here he was one of Bobo's regulars, someone whose daily presence contributed to both paychecks and tips. So she made the best of it.

With a sigh, Angie plucked the driver's training manual off the counter. As she slipped it into her purse and stowed it under the bar, Don noticed.

“So when do you take the exam?” he asked. “How long before the streets stop being safe for humanity?”

“Thursday,” Angie answered. “What'll you have?”

Frost grinned. “A nooner?” he asked hopefully.

The stranger in the booth caught Angie's eye and waved to her. “I'll have another,” he called.

Angie left Don Frost sitting at the bar and went
to mix the Bloody Mary. “When you make up your mind,” she said over her shoulder, “let me know.”

When she came back from delivering that drink, Frost was ready to order his early-in-the-month Kahlú and coffee. By the end of the month, he'd be down to beer spiked with occasional shots of tequila.

“Why do you suppose Mr. Burton Kimball is out slumming?” Frost demanded morosely, nodding toward the stranger in the booth as Angie put the chipped coffee mug down in front of him. “I've never known him to set foot in the Gulch.”

“Who's Burton Kimball?”

“If Bisbee had a
Mayflower
, Burton Kimball's family would have been on it. It's his uncle's case that's supposed to start in Judge Moore's court tomorrow. You've probably heard about it. The daughter claims her old man liked to play hide-the-salami with her when she was little. Now she's hired herself a lawyer, and she's taking his ass to court, suing him for damages.”

“Good for her,” Angie said, and hurried down the bar to bring Willy and Archie another pair of beers.

“You got something against men?” Don Frost asked, when she came back past him.

“Only ones who mess with their daughters,” she replied.

“You're not one of those feminazis, are you?”

“A what?”

“Don't you ever listen to Rush Limbaugh?”

“Who?”

“That jerk on the radio. I don't listen to him, either,” Don Frost said, pushing his cup away.

“He makes me sick. Give me another.”

Angie poured herself a cup of coffee at the same time she made Don Frost's drink. “Let me give you some advice about when you take the driving part of your test,” Frost said. “Signal for everything. And keep checking the rearview mirror. They mark you off if you don't check that enough. Do you know the manual forward and backward?”

Angie shook her head. “I should have spent more time studying over the weekend, but I was busy with the phone bank.”

“Fun bank?” a puzzled Archie McBride called from down the bar. Years of setting off dynamite blasts and loading ore cars underground had left Archie very hard of hearing. His twenty-six-year-old hearing aid had finally given up the ghost, and he refused to buy another.

“How the hell does a fun bank work?” he demanded loudly. “And where do we sign up? Right, Willy?”

The two old men collapsed against each other in gales of raucous laughter while Angie frowned and shook her head. “Phone bank,” she repeated, more loudly. “For Joanna Brady. For the election.”

“Oh,” Archie said. “That's right. The election. Isn't that today? You voted yet?”

Everyone in the room shook their heads. For the first time in her life, Angie Kellogg had actually wanted to vote—had even found a candidate she
wanted to vote for—but she had come to town too late to register for this election.

The guy at the booth waved to her again. She went over to him, expecting him to order another drink. “Would it be possible to use the phone?” he asked.

Angie Kellogg studied the man Don Frost had called Burton Kimball. She was gratified to realize her first impression had been right. The man really was a lawyer. At first glance, she had assumed he must be better than the lawyers she had known, the ones who had plied their trade by bailing whores out of jail, their retainers paid by pimps or drug dealers. But she had been wrong. If Burton Kimball was defending a child molester, a man who screwed his own daughter, then he was no better than the lawyers she had known before. In fact, maybe he was worse.

“Local?” she asked.

“Yes,” he said.

Bobo didn't generally allow customers to use the house phone. Outgoing calls could be made only from the phone in the back room. And Angie's first instinct was to tell this pervert-loving bastard to take a hike and go make his precious phone call from a pay phone, preferably one in the middle of a busy street.

But then another thought came to her. Hadn't Don Frost just told her that the attorney's big-deal trial was due in court the next day? What would happen if the attorney for the defense was too damn hung over to hold his head up? Keeping him out of court probably wasn't realistic, Angie
decided, but she could maybe make him wish he'd stayed home. Even a novice bartender was capable of inflicting that much damage.

“You can use the phone in the back room,” she told him with a beguiling smile. “The number's on it in case someone needs to call you back. By the way, what's your name?” she asked, even though she already knew the answer. “I don't think I've seen you in here before.”

“Burton Kimball,” he said, but he dropped his voice as though he really didn't relish the idea of other people hearing him.

Angie held out her hand. “I'm Angie. Glad to meet you, Burton. Welcome to the Blue Moon. Care for another drink? It's on the house. Sort of an introductory offer.”

“Sure,” Kimball said. “As soon as I make this call.”

When he came back, the new Bloody Mary was waiting in his booth. It seemed quite a bit stronger than the previous ones, and hotter.

Angie Kellogg watched with satisfaction as Burton Kimball stirred the new drink with the stalk of celery and swilled some of it down. His eyebrows shot up and down and he made a face, as though he was surprised by the extra jolt of Tabasco. But instead of complaining about the extra heat or the extra booze—a triple instead of a double—he nodded his thanks.

Angie smiled in return and returned to looking after her other customers, anticipating with some pleasure the moment when, because he was so
drunk, she would be justified in throwing Burton Kimball out into the street.

With any kind of luck, he'd have to crawl back down Brewery Gulch on his hands and knees.