I Travel by Night by Robert R. McCammon Read Free Book Online

slept not in its rather moldy bed but in its much more moldy closet, away from the broken shutters that allowed in a little too severe a sun for the gentleman’s comfort.
    His first drink of the evening had been cattle blood from a small Japanese bottle similar to the one that had broken in his coat the night before. He’d bought six of the things, all from the same Royal Street antiques dealer. It pleased him to be in possession of things of beauty, especially if they were functional.
    He walked in the direction of the saloon, which was a flimsy wooden structure near the docks. The town, as much as it was, ended at the edge of the swamp. Logging boats and barges were tied up for the night. He would need a rowboat himself, for later. At the moment he needed information, as the gnarled old woman who ran the boarding-house had only told Lawson in her thick Cajun accent that Nocturne was “no mo’”.
    Fiddle music came from the direction of the Swamp Root, the name painted on the bar over the batwing doors. Yellow lantern light spilled out. Loggers staggered around, supported by flouncy women. Across the way was another building with Pleasure Palace painted in red on its front. It seemed to Lawson that St. Benadicta held only two activities for these lumberjacks when they weren’t sawing timber in the morass out there. He avoided a collision between himself and a drunken bulk of a man who was being helped across the street by an equally drunk and bulky woman, and then he pushed through the doors into the Swamp Root.
    The place was crowded, smoky and noisy and altogether disagreeable, but it was the only bar in town. Above Lawson, a couple of dozen old axeheads had been driven into the timbers and left there to grow red skins of rust. A bartender was busy pouring hard liquor and beer for thirsty and very loud patrons. The fiddler was doing his best, but every third note seemed to be a cat’s squall. No one minded. Women wearing patchwork gowns and with feathers in their hair hung on the arms of florid-faced men who were spending their pay unwisely and too well. Lanterns hung from ceiling hooks and the candlelight jumped off broken teeth and the glint of coins. Lawson took a long look around. There were no vampires in here, only humans in need. He stepped up to the bar, caught the bartender’s attention and asked for a small shot of whiskey, best in the house.
    It came in a glass that was sufficiently clean. “We don’t want no trouble, sir,” said the bartender, as he set the whiskey down. His voice was nervous and he had a cocked left eye.
    “No trouble,” Lawson answered, with an attempt at a reassuring smile. He was aware that he looked the part of trouble, and that his pallid and rawboned appearance spoke of graves and death. When the Colts were in full view, so much the more. He was confident of his speed and his aim, and confident that no man would take him on without paying a price, and those confidences also spoke in his silence.
    “A question for you,” Lawson said as he put upon the bar the coin for his drink. “I’m looking for a town called Nocturne, south of here. Heard of it?”
    “No sir. Ain’t been here very long.”
    “Thank you anyway.” Lawson looked at the heavy-set man on his right. “A town called Nocturne. Heard of it?”
    “Don’t know nothin’ ’bout that,” was the rather addled reply, for a nearly empty bottle of rotgut stood at his pleasure.
    “A town called Nocturne?” Lawson asked the gray-bearded and wiry man on his left. “South of here? Do you know it?”
    “Ain’t nothin’ south a’here,” the man answered in a voice that might have put to shame the grind of a heavy bandsaw cutting through the hardest cypress. “Swamp and more swamp, is all.” He took a swig from his mug of cloudy brown beer. “You got the city smell on ya. New Aw’luns?”
    “That’s right.” Lawson mused on how many smells he could perceive in the Swamp Root, and how few of them were