by Jory Sherman
Pete displayed his detective’s badge and showed him the warrants from Judge Leffingwell.
“I want you to just stand here while we go and talk to the bank president.”
“All four of you?” the guard said.
“Carlos here will keep you company. I don’t want any interference from you, is that clear?”
“Yes, sir. Mr. Wolfe won’t like it none, you searching his office.”
“Carlos, you stay with this man. If he interferes in any way, shoot him.”
Carlos grinned at the guard, whose visage turned pale as chalk.
The bank was small, with only two teller cages directly opposite the doors, completely caged in. Wolfe’s office was to the left behind an imitation marble balustrade, just beyond two desks for clerks. The office door, with Wolfe’s name on it as president, was slightly ajar. High windows streamed sunlight through their panes, and small trees stood in clay pots near the lower windows.
Miss Andrews looked up, rose from behind her desk, and walked to the railing.
“You’re here,” she said to Pete.
“Yes, Betty. I want you to bring all the bank papers dealing with the Golden Council and secret bank accounts to Deputy Culver and Julio Aragon here while I speak to Mr. Wolfe.”
“He won’t like it,” she said.
“I’ve heard that before,” he said and pushed through the small gate and strode to Wolfe’s office, his satchel in one hand, his badge wallet in the other.
Adolphus Wolfe was seated at his large oaken desk examining a loan application. Sunlight sprayed his desk with pale yellow light that was almost like a mist.
“Yes?” Wolfe said. “Where is my secretary? She should have announced you, sir.”
Pete flashed his badge and set his satchel on the desk.
“Private detective? What is the meaning of this intrusion?”
“Stand up, Wolfe, and shut up,” Pete said as he closed his wallet and slid his badge in his shirt pocket. He opened the satchel and brought out the search warrants for Wolfe’s office and home. He handed them to Wolfe, who now stood beside his high-backed leather chair. He read the documents.
“You’ve got a lot of nerve, Mr. Farnsworth.” He set the warrants down on the desk. Pete returned them to his satchel.
“Step away from your desk and just stand over there by that map on your wall. If you try to leave, there are three armed men outside your office who are prepared to detain you, or shoot you, if you try to run.”
“Why I ...” Wolfe spluttered. “This is outrageous.”
Pete’s hand dropped to the butt of his pistol.
“Move or they’ll carry you out of here on a litter.”
Wolfe moved and stood by the large map of Colorado that hung on one wall. He put his hand on the globe standing next to him. His face was flushed, as florid as if suddenly sunburned by the single ray that slanted down to where he stood.
Pete went through all the drawers in Wolfe’s desk. He kept those papers he deemed valuable to his case and a ledger that he opened and leafed through with intense concentration. It was in a drawer with a lock on it, which was unlocked.
“This might do it,” Pete said.
“That’s private property,” Wolfe said, looking as if he were about to explode, his eyes bulging from their sockets, his neck swollen to almost twice its size, the buttons on his vest straining in their eyelets.
“Not anymore,” Pete said. “This ledger is full of entries assigned to the Golden Council account, a record of extortion monies deposited in your bank under various aliases. Some of the entries are in code, but we can break those.”
“You filthy, uncouth sonofabitch,” Wolfe breathed.
“Where do you get this uncouth shit, Mr. Wolfe?” Pete cracked. He slipped the ledger into his satchel, then walked over to Wolfe and stuck his face within inches of the banker’s.
“Now we’re going to your house, Wolfe, to find those silver bars you have stashed away. You can walk out of here either in handcuffs or as you now stand. It’s up to you.”
“You’ll certainly hear from my attorney, Mr. Farnsworth.”
“Wonderful. Now, what’s it going to be? Cuffs or what little dignity you may have left?”
“No cuffs, please.”
“That’s better. Out the door and straight to the street.”
Pete escorted Wolfe from his office. Wally had several papers in his hand. Betty was handing more to Julio, who stood with his arms outstretched.
“That all of it, Betty?” Pete said.
“I-I think so. Are you arresting Mr. Wolfe?”
“Not yet. We’re going to his house for tea.”
Wolfe grumbled something unintelligible.
“Wally, put those documents in the satchel and get the ones Julio has. You carry the satchel, Julio. We’ve got one more stop to make before we lock Wolfe up.”
“I’ll see you all hanged for this,” Wolfe spluttered.
“Shut up, Wolfe,” Pete said, “or I’ll figure a way to cuff your damned mouth.”
He gave Wolfe a shove toward the door and glanced at Betty.
“Pete . . .”
“We’ve got him dead to rights, Betty. Sorry you had to be caught up in this mess.”
“I-I . . .”
But she never finished. Pete and the others guided Wolfe out the door and onto the path.
“We’ll go by the livery and get that wagon, Julio. Is that where you took it?”
“Yes, it is there with our horses.”
A half hour later, Wolfe was seated in the wagon, with Wally driving the team, Pete and Julio following on horseback. Pete rode alongside the wagon. The satchel lay under a pile of blankets in the wagon bed, the cloth jiggling as if it were crawling with dozens of worms.
“To your house, Wolfe,” Pete said, leaning over from the saddle.
“I’ll show you the way. This is blasphemous, just blasphemous,” he raged.
“Seems like you don’t go to church much, Wolfe,” Wally said dryly. “Ain’t nothin’ blasphemous about the law. Not the way I see it.”
“I haven’t broken any law.”
“Oh no? I suppose you think murder and robbery is legal as long as you line your own pockets.”
“You imbecile,” Wolfe said.
Wally laughed.
They arrived at Wolfe’s home at one end of Chestnut Street. The yard was enclosed behind wrought-iron fencing, the concrete walkway lined with rows of pansies and buttercups, the porch clean and neat with an outdoor love seat on one side. There was a small stable in back and to the side.
A small, delicate woman answered the door. She stepped back in surprise when she saw her husband.
“I am Gerta Wolfe,” she said, a slightly Germanic accent beneath her words. “What is the meaning of this?”
“Gerta,” Wolfe said, “these men are here to search our house. I’m sorry.”
“Step aside, ma’am,” Pete said, pushing Wolfe through the door.
“I will not allow those Mexicans in my home,” she said, a bitter edge to her shrill voice.
“You have no choice, Mrs. Wolfe,” Pete said, sweeping her aside as he and the others walked past her.
She stamped one foot on the floor and clenched her dainty fists but stood powerless as the men entered the foyer.
“You can save us all time, Wolfe,” Pete said as they stood before the elegantly appointed living room with its Persian rug, spinet piano, marble statues, bookcases, and Louis XIV furniture, the wood polished and gleaming, the flowers bristling from fine ceramic pots like floral rainbows.
“How so?” Wolfe choked.
“Show us the silver bullion you have stored away, the bars with the GC and the wolf’s head stamped in the metal.”
“You . . . you disgraceful bastard.”
“Or we can start tearing up the rugs looking for a floor safe, go through the whole house, trashing everything we see that might be hiding your ill-gotten gains. Hell, it ought not to take long,
no more’n a day or so.”
Gerta appeared and walked around the men gathered at the entrance to her front room.
“Don’t you dare touch anything in this room,” she said, brushing back a strand of her sliver hair, her small eyes flashing daggerlets of light with each movement of her head.
“In my study,” Wolfe said, pointing to a door at the far end of the room.
“Adolphus,” Gerta said, “are you going to let these men violate our lives?
“I have no choice,” he said.
“Step aside, Mrs. Wolfe,” Pete ordered.
“I go to get Elijah,” she said and stormed out of the room before Wolfe or anyone else could stop her.
Wolfe led them across the sunlit front room and opened the door to his study.
They entered a dim, quiet room with a rolltop desk; a small table with an unlit lamp; a pipe rack with briars, meerschaums, and rosewood and clay pipes; a humidor; walls lined with books, some bound in Moroccan leather, others in calf, fawn, or doeskin; original oil paintings by some of the Dutch and Flemish masters, including Rembrandt and Van Dyck; a chandelier studded with yellow candles; a draped window that reached from floor to ceiling; and three expensive chairs that might have come from a German court.
“Open the safe,” Pete ordered. “Wally, keep an eye on him while I go through that rolltop.”
Wolfe trudged to the safe, his head hung low in despair. Pete rolled up the clattering cover of the desk and looked at the cubbyholes and inkblotter, inkwell, and three or four quill pens. But in the center, on the blotter, was a piece of foolscap with the name Golden Council at the top in Gothic script and the names of several men underneath. He recognized some of them: Earl Fincher, Cole Buskirk, Tom Ferguson, and Alonzo Jigger. One name, Ned Crawford, was neatly crossed out.
There was a separate sheet on ordinary bond paper beneath the foolscap. On this sheet were written the same names, but alongside them were the names of hotels that Pete recognized. The names appeared in groups of two, with the names of the hotels and room numbers opposite them. Earl Fincher and Lenny Carmichael were at the Carmody, for instance.
“Wally, come here,” he said. “Julio, you keep a close eye on Wolfe.”
Wally came over and Pete showed him the list of names and hotels.
“Damn,” Wally said and let out a low whistle. “You got ’em all right there.”
“On a silver platter,” Pete said.
The whirring of the safe lock stopped, and they heard the heavy door swing open on oiled hinges. The safe was about five feet high and at least that deep.
“It is open,” Julio said. “I see something shining, and there are heavy bags.”
Pete and Wally pushed Wolfe aside and looked inside the safe.
“Jackpot,” Wally said. “There must be two dozen silver bars stacked in there.”
“Let’s see what’s in those bags,” Pete said.
Wally reached in and dragged out two of the bags. They were velvet with heavy drawstrings. Pete pulled one of them open, and the contents glittered with gold coins of several denominations, including double eagles and fifty-dollar coins mixed in with tens, fives, and one-dollars.
Wally opened the other bag and drew in a breath as if something had sucked all the air out of him. It, too, was heavy with hundreds of dollars in gold and silver coins.
Wolfe looked sick to his stomach.
A large shadow filled the doorway.
“Get away from that safe,” a man said in a deep booming voice, holding a raised shotgun.
They looked at the silhouette in the doorway.
Pete recognized the man as the driver who took Wolfe to the bank every day and picked him up before closing time.
Behind the man stood Gerta Wolfe, a rolling pin in her hands, a fierce look on her face.
“Elijah will shoot you dead if you don’t leave this house immediately,” she said.
Pete’s jaw tightened. A muscle rippled under his skin. He felt, for a fleeting moment, as if he were looking into the abyss of eternity.
And the abyss, with its black eyes rimmed in white, was looking back at him.
THIRTY-ONE
Brad used the key Ruben had given him the night before to open the padlock on the doors to the blacksmith shop. He swung them wide and walked in to find two of the Panamint dray horses in the only stalls. Their short halter ropes dangled as they fed on grain Ruben had put in their troughs. The musty smells of horse droppings, urine, dried corn, and alfalfa thickened in the stale air. The horses whinnied and turned their heads to look at Brad as he opened their stall doors.
He opened the back door, which led into a small corral. He led two horses out and closed the doors. The horses ambled to the water trough and drank, their rubbery noses quivering and snuffling as they blew on the water.
The sun poured a slab of light on the dirt, stopped short of the back doors, leaving that portion of the shop in deep shadow.
Brad waited in that shadow for Quince and Jigger. He pulled the thong around his neck and lifted up the set of rattles he carried next to his chest. He felt a calmness come over him as he thought about the terrible finality of death on an ordinary day in an ordinary town.
He did not relish either a gunfight or the soul-crushing burden of killing a man. But Jigger had murdered three innocent men in cold blood. And he had done the deed while wearing a badge, a badge of authority. Such men were a travesty, and since he was the law, the law was wrong.
Is there another way? he wondered. He wondered if he, even as a private detective, had the authority to call Jigger and either force him to surrender or, as arbitrary judge, jury, and executioner, gun him down.
He slipped his pistol from its holster, thumbed the hammer back to half cock, and spun the cylinder. It was fully loaded. He always kept six in the chambers, the hammer down in between two of them. Many six-gun shooters only lodged five cartridges in their tubes, preferring, for safety’s sake, to keep the hammer down on an empty cylinder. Brad saw the sanity of such a policy. Many a man had accidentally shot a toe or a foot off by carrying six in the wheel. But there were times when he had needed a full half dozen shots in a gunfight.
He slid the pistol back in its holster, tugged it up and down a couple of times until it felt just right. Snug but smooth on the draw.
He listened to the sounds from the street and watched the pale avenue of sunlight pull back toward the front door as the sun rose higher in the morning sky. There was the crunch and clatter of cart and wagon wheels outside on the street, the thud and plod of hooves on dirt and gravel, the staccato syllables of rapid Spanish from stores across the street, women and men striking bargains in a small grocery store, a street vendor hawking his early spring vegetables, a yapping dog assaulting a stray cat, the low hum of the breeze through the skeletal rafters of the blacksmith’s shop.
Brad waited, his ears tuned to the nuances of every sound, his senses atingle with anticipation, wariness, and a corporal readiness. His muscles were relaxed but supple, rippling with unharnessed energy.
He waited.
Finally, he heard two deep male voices down by the livery, followed by the crunch of boots on the dry grit of the uncobbled and unpaved street.
Then the voices became intelligible.
“Right down yonder, Sheriff.”
Quince’s voice. No mistake.
“I see it.” Alonzo Jigger, for sure.
“He’s in there.”
“Looks empty.”
“He’s in there, I tell you. With his leg broke, all stove up.”
“He better be.”
The voices louder now.
Coming close.
A dozen thoughts, each of them stillborn, coursed through Brad’s mind. He let them go, emptied each vessel as quickly as it threatened to fill.
He looked at the retreating patch of sun, the expanse of open doors.
Then two shadows shot across the block of sunlight, and he saw Quince and Jigger come to a stop in the cent
er of the street. Jigger, with his two guns on his hips. Quince aslouch with his single six-shooter carried high in its holster, up close to his belt.
“Where is he?”
“He’s back in one of the stalls, Sheriff.”
Brad could almost feel Jigger’s eyes searching for him, looking into the depths of the shop, seeing only a block of black shadow and a crack of light down the seam of the back doors where they almost touched together.
He knew that a man or an animal, if it stood perfectly still, was difficult to see if it had no silhouette. If that shape was against a rock or a tree or a large bush, it was virtually invisible.
He stood perfectly motionless.
He held his breath, so even his chest did not move.
He presented no silhouette.
So, he reasoned, as far as Jigger was concerned, he was invisible.
For the moment, at least.
Then Jigger spoke again but did not move toward the entrance.
“Brad Storm,” he said in a loud voice. “You in there?” Brad let out a breath from the side of his mouth. He let out a low groan from his throat.
“I hear somethin’,” Quince said.
“Shut up.”
“Storm, I’m comin’ in. This is the sheriff.”
Brad kept silent.
“You hear me in there?”
Brad projected his voice out of the left side of his mouth. “Ooooooohhh,” he moaned.
“You hear that, Sheriff?”
“I heard it.”
“Storm, you just stay where you are. I won’t hurt you none. I just want to talk.”
The man is wary, Brad thought. And he might just be harboring the tiniest trace of fear. Fear of the unknown. A fear of dying from a gunshot he would only hear for a fraction of a second. Fear of having a bullet he would never feel strike deep into his brain. Right between the eyes.
“Storm, I don’t want no trouble,” Jigger said. “Just want to talk. My guns are in my holsters.”
Brad gave out another moan.
“He’s hurt bad, I tell you,” Quince said.
Brad almost smiled. Quince was a good actor. A damned good actor.
“Maybe,” Jigger said. “You stay here. I’m goin’ in.”
“He ain’t in no shape to fight you, Sheriff. He’s in a lot of pain. I got him in the leg and maybe one in his gut. He’s probably dyin’.”
