Longarm - Longarm On The Fever Coast Part 10

Vail chuckled. "Oh, I don't know about that. Seems I can hardly send you down to the corner for a bucket of beer without you uncovering a gang of bank robbers. But you done us proud this time, old son. Rod Gilbert's on his way to full recovery and Clay Baldwin's on his way to the gallows, whether he gets better or not."

Vail snubbed out his own cigar in the big copper ashtray he kept handy for himself, and set the report aside as he chuckled fondly. "It's still a good thing for you that Coast Guard officer never learned to play cards on an army blanket. He's naturally changed his story a dozen times since you arrested him, and he almost had some higher-ups convinced that you were making up mean things about him. So it's just as well he told that whopper about you before you arrested him instead of after."

Longarm shot his superior a sincerely puzzled frown and asked what they were talking about. So Vail chortled, "O he wired me as well as the Surgeon General's office some c.o.c.k-and-bull story about you and some government nurse carrying on disgracefully in the officers' quarters down there. Even if a thing like that was true, it surely shows how Flynn had it in for you. He must have known you were closing in on him, right?"

To which Longarm could only reply, "I reckon the poor b.a.s.t.a.r.d must have been desperate, making up a whopper like that one!"

The End