The Thief (Isaac Bell 5)
“Telephone number’s on the back. Operator on-station night and day.”
“You don’t work for Edison anymore?” Tarses asked.
“Didn’t you hear?” McCoy grinned. “I’m a trustbuster. Just like Teddy Roosevelt.”
“What the hell is Imperial Film Protection Service?”
“‘The Independent’s Friend.’ Can’t you read?”
“Friend? I’ll bet. What’s it going to cost me?”
“Nothing.”
“Come on, Joe. What’s the big idea?”
McCoy threw a heavy arm around Tarses’s shoulder. “Jay, don’t look a gift horse in the mouth. And stop asking stupid questions.”
Tarses knew he had his share of flaws, but stupidity wasn’t one of them, and he said, “Thanks, Joe.”
“Don’t thank me. Thank Imperial. Well, sun’s in the sky. Bet you’re itching to get back to work— Say, what’s your picture called?”
“The Imperial Horseman.”
McCoy tipped his hat to Tarses’s pretty business manager, slung the unconscious thug over his shoulder, and carried him away.
Tarses shouted for his players to climb on their animals.
“Camera…”
That evening, when Tarses was paying off his extras, the one last in line drawled, “Who were those fellers pushing you around?”
Tarses was about to tell him to mind his own business when he recognized the extra as the tall, barbed-wire-thin cowboy with whom his costume girl had traded a French Foreign Legionnaire kepi for the cowboy’s Stetson, with a promise to trade hats again over a glass of wine after work. Tarses had noticed him sitting in his saddle as if born to it, and now, close up, he saw angular bone structure in the cowboy’s face that looked ferocious in the light of the setting sun.
“What’s your name?”
“Tex.”
“Come back tomorrow, Tex. I’ll be taking pictures for a Wild West drama.”
* * *
Texas Walt Hatfield sauntered into the Los Angeles field office, cast a withering glance at the front-desk man’s fancy duds, and shook howdy with Isaac Bell.
Bell felt the tall Texan flinch.
“What happened to your hand?”
“Busted it falling off my damned horse. Camel spooked him.”
Bell was astonished. There was no finer horseman in the West. “When’s the last time you fell off a horse?”
“Unless you mean shot off,” Texas Walt drawled, “Ah was three years old, and he hadn’t been broke yet.”
“Did you catch up with Joe McCoy?”
“Yup. Like Tarses told me, used to thug for Edison — McCoy called it ‘engaged by Mr. Edison’s legal department.’ Quit or got fired, Ah couldn’t tell, came out here, and hired on with Imperial Protection. McCoy claims they’ve been whupping the heck out of the Edison Boys.”
“I just saw a bunged-up bunch headed back East on the train,” Bell said. “McCoy have any inkling what Imperial Protection’s all about?”