Lust Is No Lady

by Michael Avallone

  “That’s him,” she whispered fiercely. “The little bastard.”

  17

  Sight of P.J. working on the plane had the imagined effect on Brandy. I saw her shudder, lift a brown fist as she made some silent curse to her gods. Then she flung up the Winchester and sighted along the barrel. I got to her just in time, wresting the gun from her. Mr. Riker helped me. Brandy spat at us, her black eyes blazing. Rita rushed to her side and made some more hand talk.

  “Tell her we have to talk to P.J.” I said. “We can’t do that if she chases him off with gunplay. Later, she’ll get her justice.” I was thinking of her spread-eagled, naked body. A typical P.J. prank. Nice way to take care of a pregnant lady love.

  Rita must have got through to her because Brandy subsided. Only her shivering-with-rage body showed how she really felt.

  We scrambled down the rise toward the cabin and the plane. The grass of the prairie lay before us like an enormous golf course with the scorched cabin looking like some fantastic hole-in-one. There was no need for a quiet approach shot. P.J. had seen us coming. I could tell by the way he stopped toying with the propellor. I saw him scratch his head. He wore no hat. Just a mop of tangled, bushy black hair that seemed to hang over his forehead characteristically.

  Old man Riker started to walk faster. His sturdy legs thrust out in great strides. He was outdistancing us without even trying. Rita, Brandy and I followed closely. I kept my .45 ready. It had been a crazy two days and there was no telling what was coming up on the bill of fare. I was fascinated though. Meeting P.J. for the first time had me on the edge of my brain. You hear a lot about a guy, see some of his handiwork, go through his private papers and the urge to see him up close is a drug. I expected a half-monster of some kind. A cross between a monkey and a human being.

  As the space between us and the plane got smaller, P.J. waited for us. He went around to the cabin door of the Cub, leaned against the fuselage and made a great show of lighting a cigarette as if he had all the time in the world. Or the top cards. He didn’t seem to have a weapon of any kind. Just a small-sized kid in chinos and dirty white T-shirt. I wondered why he was at the cabin so early. Four o’clock was still an hour away.

  Mr. Riker halted about five yards away from the plane and his indolent son. His balled fists raised in supplication but no words came out of him. Desperately, his eyes sought out Rita who sidled up alongside him. Rita said nothing either, she just took one of his balled hands and held it. I hung on to Brandy and moved in closer too. I could feel her hot hand shaking in mine. For some funny reason, we had all stopped within the same distance of P.J. As if drawing any closer to him and the plane would contaminate as. The only other person I’d ever known who affected people that way was a slobbering drunk on Third Avenue.

  P.J. was enjoying himself. Somewhere in his head was the idea that he looked to be so regarded. He took an elaborate puff on the cigarette and picturesquely blew some smoke rings that hung in the dry air. The copper body of the Cub gleamed with sunlight. I studied P.J. as he play-acted.

  He was no monster. He was a supremely good-looking boy. His features could have come off a coin. His complexion was something no bottle of lotion could ever give you. White, perfect teeth clenched the edge of the cigarette as if it were a cigar. The curl and undisciplined shock of black hair hung like a wave over his scalp. His shoulders were square and smartly military like Brian Donlevy’s.

  He was no monster — but he was a freak.

  Nature, which had given him a perfect start, had laid down on the job when it reached his waist. His legs were mysteriously short and shriveled. Not nearly as long as his torso. He was barely four and one half feet tall. Mr. Riker, the giant, had sired a dwarf.

  Something had hindered P.J. from growing a long time ago.

  P.J. suddenly sailed his cigarette far out onto the grass, watched it, and seemed disappointed it didn’t start a fire.

  “You’re too early,” he said. His voice was strong and deep, making even a greater mockery of his youth and size. “How come you’re so early?”

  “P.J.” Mr. Riker began thickly. “I just don’t know how to talk to you, boy. You’ve run amok since you left the house. You need help, son —”

  P.J. wasn’t listening. He was looking at Brandy, allowing some surprise to show in his clear blue eyes. His gaze shifted to Rita, challenged her, then moved on to me. I kept my grip on Brandy’s twitching hand and stared back at him. P.J. scowled. He glared at his giant of a father. “Who’s that?” he snarled. “If you brought somebody down here from that place I’ll tell you nothing. I’ll keep the gold for myself. Who is he?”

  “You ought to remember me,” I said evenly. “I had that nice blue Buick that caught your eye yesterday on the road.”

  His face widened into a boyish smile.

  “Say, that’s right. Neat, huh? Sure had you jumping.” He laughed, a pure kid’s laugh, his mind already diverted. “Nobody ever thought of something like that. I did though. Did it all by myself. Ever hear of a Piper Cub with a bomb bay?” He drew himself up proudly. “Took me a week’s work but it was worth it. Getting so I can hit a bobcat at fifty feet with a brick. Look —”

  He had suddenly scrambled inside the plane as excited as a schoolboy with a new toy. He tinkered with the controls and buttons, jumped out of the plane again and indicated the parted flaps under the belly of the ship. I remembered the science magazines and all the do-it-yourself pap in his cabin. Old man Riker looked at me helplessly as P.J. rambled on. I kept hanging onto Brandy. I didn’t like the way she was staring at P.J.’s tangled mop of black hair.

  “— the bricks were easy,” P.J. concluded. “They started to build a wall out near the Slocum property. With these big red bricks. I helped myself. You got to do things yourself.”

  Mr. Riker raised an arm.

  “P.J., things have come to a head. I’ve decided to abandon Agreeable Wells. Las Vegas and his men have — pulled out. You couldn’t have possibly found the gold out here? You were just fooling because you wanted to see me again. You want me to forgive you, don’t you? You want to come back into the fold. Very well — I forgive you. Brandy harbors a grudge but it will pass —”

  I couldn’t see what tack Mr. Riker was hitting. He knew his own son better than I did so I just kept quiet. But his words couldn’t have had a worse effect on P.J.

  “Forgive —?” White hot anger made a twisted mask of the so young, so good-looking face. “Why, you old fool! I’m the one who found the gold! I’ve got the money! Me, me, me! You and Vegas and all the rest of the big men with all the equipment — and I found it! Me, me, me —” He had to stop to catch his breath, spittle clogging his mouth. He leaned against the cabin door for support, shaking his head as if it hurt.

  “My boy —” Mr. Riker was whining.

  “Shut up! Shut up! Don’t call me a boy —” P.J. pulled himself together. His sudden smile was no longer surprising. He shifted emotional gears too fast to follow. “So all you big men couldn’t find the gold? Ain’t it awful? And little old P.J. had to be the one to do it.” He glared at Rita whose face was soft with pity for him. “Doesn’t that make me bigger than my father? Doesn’t that make me better? Little old P.J. got his fingers on what all the big men have been dying to find for weeks. Well, I got it and I don’t think I’ll share it with anybody. So you can all go home and mind your own damn business —”

  Maybe Brandy couldn’t understand English but she could see him. Sight of his hard face and twisted expression must have been her breaking point. She ripped herself loose from my restraining hand and was on him before I could stop her. Her wild hands raked and clawed at his face savagely. But P.J. was fast too. He side-stepped with the speed of the monkey he resembled and drove a boot into her groin. It was a terrible kick. Rita shrieked with sheer female empathy as Brandy stopped dead in her tracks and collapsed in a heap below the wing of the plane, her guttural groans contorting her face with agony.

  Mr. Riker reached P.J.
before I could. His ham-like hand thudded into the young face with bone-breaking force. I got to him before he could hit his son again. The second punch would have killed P.J. The first had slammed him off the hull of the Cub with the velocity of a return serve on a tennis court.

  P.J. rose to his knees, his face a bloody smear, his arms folded across his head. “Don’t hit me — don’t hit me again —!”

  I hated to look. I hated to listen. It was the whine of a small child being unmercifully beaten by the tyrant parent. Even though he’d had it coming, the total recall it brought with it was painful.

  “Stop it, Mr. Riker,” I growled. “He’s had enough.”

  Mr. Riker towered above his cowering offspring, his gigantic body trembling. His bleak eyes targeted down on his pitiful son.

  “Blood of my blood, bone of my bone —” He stopped quoting and cursed. A good, manly, normal curse. “God damn you! If you have anything to tell us, tell it and be damned!”

  P. J. lowered his arms, his blue eyes peering out from their protection. “You won’t hit me again —?” Mr. Riker cursed once more and dragged him to his feet, holding him out at arm’s length as though he were a baby or a small dog. I heard Rita mumble something about Brandy being all right behind me but I couldn’t take my eyes off the picture of Riker Sr. and Riker Jr.

  “Is there gold here?” the old man roared.

  “Yes —”

  “Where?”

  “In the cabin.”

  “What’s that again?”

  “In the cabin —” P.J. blurted out, tugging himself loose from his father’s surprised grasp. He sagged against the plane, breathing hard. “Old Charley — he had the last laugh — that map and all your digging — hahahahaha —” P. J. thought it was funny. Mr. Riker had stopped in confusion, his eyes incredulous, his mouth open like a landed fish.

  I put my face close to P.J.’s.

  “Let’s have that again, son. Slower this time.”

  P. J. licked some blood away from his mouth. The side of his face was inflamed with Mr. Riker’s punch.

  “It’s there, I tell you — under the floor of the cabin — where it’s been all the time. Nobody would have found it except for the fire. The old Indian was laughing at all of us — digging up the country — when all the time he was squatting on those gold bags like a big old hen —”

  “Well I’ll be damned,” I said.

  P.J. laughed some more. “Go ahead —” he cackled like the hen to which he ’d compared Charley Redwine. “See for yourself. I found it yesterday when I flew over — saw the fire last night — I set down and dug into the junk when I got here. Thought I might pick up some spare parts for my gadgets —”

  Mr. Riker stared at me. “It’s not possible. Old Charley would not have lied.” He glared at P. J. “If you’re lying again —”

  “Hold it,” I said. “There’s only one way to find out. Come on, P.J. Lead the way. Show us this buried treasure you found yesterday.”

  He led the way toward the cabin, running across the flattened-down grass. We ran to keep up with him. He was like a small boy let out from school. His grotesque form bounced across the fifty yards to the ruins of Charley Redwine’s cabin. Rita remained behind, comforting Brandy.

  We were all making noise in a beautiful graveyard.

  18

  Charley Redwine’s cabin was a mass of fused, charred rubble. It had burned down as far as the wood would go. I had a bad second remembering how his corpse had hung from the main beam. I couldn’t guess and I didn’t want to guess what condition the corpse would be in now. Unless some coyote attracted by the fire, had prowled around until the ashes had cooled and had himself a meal. But that wasn’t likely.

  There wasn’t a chance of stumbling over the body unless we dug for it. The burned timbers had made a tumbled mass over the ground.

  I watched P.J. circle the scorched earth carefully, keeping an eye on his odd body. Mr. Riker stood to one side and waited. I wondered how much of a ghoul P.J. was. To have discovered anything in that ruined ground he would have done a lot of probing. I sniffed the air experimentally. Nothing but the smell of charred wood and blackened carbon. The heat of the sun had burned down into everything and the wide open spaces had swept away the tell-tale odor of sizzled flesh. Now I knew why they called it the great outdoors.

  “Here —” P.J. was gasping as he bent over a cleared away area in the rubble. “Look here — if you don’t believe me —”

  Mr. Riker and I moved to the spot he indicated. He was bent before us, kicking embers and wreckage away with his boot. The old man stooped over, dug for something and stepped back, wrenching a moldy, brown leather pouch into view. He held it in one big hand and poked it open with another. Whatever marking had been on the surface of the bag had long since eroded. Suddenly, Mr. Riker’s great voice erupted. “Glory be to God —!” He whirled. “Mr. Noon — look here! It’s gold — gold!”

  He held out his right hand. Yellow gold dust clung to his horny palm, trapped the sunlight and held it. I looked at P.J. He was watching his father’s face, happy as a loon, glad he had been responsible for an adult’s excitement.

  “I told you, Pa. Didn’t I tell you?”

  Mr. Riker’s face was forgiving and all smiles.

  “How many bags are down there, boy?”

  P.J. straightened up. His head didn’t even reach his father’s chest. “No telling unless we dig them all out. There’s at least a dozen just like that one down there in that hole. Maybe more. Old Charley had them under the dirt floor of the cabin all the time.” He spit onto the charred embers. “Lying old Redskin.”

  Mr. Riker hugged the gold sack to his stomach and eyed me with deep interest. “How is it so, Mr. Noon? Why would Charley have played this terrible joke on me? It wasn’t like him.”

  “I’d say it was exactly like him, Mr. Riker. Even though I never met the man personally.”

  P.J. looked at me with contempt. “Yeah, what do you know about it, you’re so smart?”

  I smiled at him bleakly. “P.J., it was Charley’s old tribe that took this gold from the white man. Charley was a kid when the Army wiped out his village. I can’t think of anything more Indian than Charley regarding that gold as his. The white man had taken everything else from the red man. Quite a joke for a blind Indian to be sitting on the gold all these years. He didn’t need a map and he didn’t need the gold. But he did need to keep it as a memory of his one triumph over the whites. I can see why he might want to die rather than part with it.”

  Mr. Riker was happy but still puzzled.

  “But the map, Mr. Noon. Las Vegas had a map sold to him by Charley when they met in Rock Springs. Why would he even risk having strangers looking over this land of his?”

  I remembered what Mary Lou had told me about that during her midnight visit. I’d been sure Las Vegas hadn’t been working a confidence game. Otherwise he’d never have gone along with the gag. But it still fitted in with the picture I had of blind, wise old Charley Redwine.

  “So he gave up the map for some fine Scotch. So what? It’s a great joke all around for Charley. Must have tickled him silly to have grown men running all around this territory trying to find some gold he was sitting smack dab on. He knew nobody would ever look in his shack. Why should they? No. The more I think of it, the psychology is right up an Indian’s tepee.”

  Old man Riker shook his head. P.J. was already beginning to show signs of boredom and restlessness. He had a bad way of continually looking at my .45.

  “Still —” Riker had to admit. “We never would have found the gold if the shack had not been burned down.”

  “There you are,” I said. “And there’s where the fellow who killed Charley Redwine made his mistake. He went to a lot of trouble for no good reason at all.”

  Mr. Riker looked at his son and then looked at me. P.J. looked like he was going to giggle.

  “Mr. Noon, I know it looks bad for the boy,” Mr. Riker began slowly. “But P.J. is not
quite himself —”

  “Who’s talking about P.J.?” I said.

  His eyes got round. “But you seem to think —”

  “Forget it,” I said. “It will keep. You’ve got your gold now. You can build your tabernacle. And when Mary Lou gets here with the sheriff, if and when, we can all say goodbye to each other and go our separate ways. There’s nothing in this for me and there never was. Just as long as there are no more killings, it’s okay with me. I haven’t lost a thing except some sleep and a car that was too old anyway.”

  P.J. scratched his head and squatted over the cache of gold dust again. “Pa, there’s enough down there to buy me another plane. A bigger one maybe. One of those racing jobs.” He made wings of his arms, banked around till he was facing us again and plane engine noises buzzed through his nostrils. Some kid. I couldn’t look at him anymore.

  “Come on,” I said. “Let’s get back to the girls. You know where the loot is now. It can’t run away.”

  The old man nodded soberly and tucked the gold bag inside his shirt. He unloosened a button to do it. I moved through the pile of rubbish toward the outside. I could see Rita and Brandy standing off huddled together near the Cub. Brandy seemed to have recovered from the awful kick.

  It’s not a safe world, all right. I figured it was all over. The gold had been found, Riker could pack his idiot son off for a cure and Rita could work things out for herself. Old Man Riker would square things with Brandy by moving her in with him or buying her a piece of land or something. Who knows? Charley Redwine’s murderer had gotten what was coming to him. It was all over. All we had to do was wait for the posse and after a few necessary explanations, I’d be on my way to California even if I had to thumb a ride or borrow Mary Lou’s motorcycle.

  But it wasn’t going to be that way. The pot was going to be stirred some more. And the unforgetable beauty of the whole thing was that it was entirely out of my hands.