Cap Fog 3

by J. T. Edson

  Nothing the attorney had heard was making the situation any clearer. He had not known that the Texas Rangers intended to transport Philip Foote and the two bootleggers separately to Texarkana. Nor was he able to think of any reason why this should have been done.

  Unless—!

  Provoked by a memory, a sensation similar to that of being touched on the spine by an ice cold hand struck Mervyn. He remembered how his client had reacted to being informed of the fake alibi he was organizing. Foote had objected to being placed under such an obligation to Chiverton and Schulman. Nor had he been entirely satisfied with the attorney’s promise that they would be unable, even if they were brave enough to try, to exhort any more than the agreed payment for the service they would render.

  Although Foote had finally and reluctantly given the appearance of yielding to Mervyn’s wishes on the matter of the fake alibi, long experience with criminals had taught him how little they could be trusted. It was possible that the gang leader had only pretended to accept his assurances and decided to take steps to ensure the two bootleggers would be unable to create problems after they had served their purpose. In which case, he could have persuaded the Texas Rangers to take him to Texarkana in a separate vehicle. Provided they were offered something in return, they might agree.

  The price, Mervyn felt sure, would not have been money. Neither Goldberg nor Soehnen had ever taken bribes. Nor had Major Benson Tragg, for that matter, and he alone could have authorized the change in the arrangements. However, he might have been agreeable if he was offered a suitable inducement such as being given information which could help bring about the arrest and conviction of somebody who was wanted by the law.

  Considering the possibility, Mervyn was confident that the victim could not be Hogan Turtle or himself. Foote was unlikely to know anything sufficiently incriminating about the master criminal and the attorney had taken such care in covering his own tracks that the gang leader would be unable to offer more than unprovable suppositions. On the other hand, if the victim of the betrayal was of some importance in the underworld—as would almost certainly be the case if it was to be the reward of such a concession—Mervyn might also benefit. On being arrested, a person with any standing among the law-breaking fraternity was sure to seek his services as attorney for the defense.

  ‘Are you-all figuring on going to see them?’ the sergeant inquired, breaking into Mervyn’s train of thought as he was drawing his partially satisfying conclusions.

  ‘Who?’ the attorney asked, momentarily puzzled by the question which had jolted him so abruptly from his reverie.

  ‘Chiverton and Schulman,’ the peace officer supplied.

  ‘No!’ Mervyn answered definitely, having no intention of allowing himself to become involved if his suspicions with regards to Foote should prove correct. However, knowing how peace officers operated when seeking to acquire information, he decided it would be advisable to expand upon his instinctive negative response in case his reactions should be reported to the two bootleggers. ‘Were either of them hurt?’

  ‘Not so far as I know,’ the sergeant replied.

  ‘Then I don’t think there’s any need for me to go and see them,’ the attorney declared. ‘After all, it’s not as if they were my clients and I’m sure Sergeants Breda and Bratton are doing everything possible to catch whoever did the shooting. They’ll have more than enough on their hands without me bothering them. Besides, I have to be setting off for Fort Worth. I’ve business there demanding my attention as soon as possible.’

  ‘So you’ll soon be pulling out, huh?’

  ‘Just as soon as I’ve collected my bags and car from the Palace Hotel.’

  ‘Bueno,’ the peace officer stated, making no attempt to conceal his feelings. While he despised the two bootleggers for what they had done, he had nothing but contempt over the way in which Mervyn—who had hired them, even though this almost certainly could not be proven—was now obviously casting them aside. ‘It’ll save us good old boys keeping an eye on you.’

  ‘Keeping an eye on me V the attorney repeated indignantly. ‘Do you mean that you’ve been keeping me under surveillance?’

  ‘Not the way you’re figuring it was,’ the sergeant corrected. ‘It’s just there’s some around town who weren’t took kindly with how you was set to get Foote off and the Chief didn’t want anything to happen to you in his bailiwick.’

  ‘Tell him there’s no need for him to worry any more on my account,’ Mervyn ordered rather than requested. ‘Even if I wasn’t leaving his bailiwick—as you call it—in the very near future, I’m quite capable of taking care of myself.’

  ‘He’ll be right pleased to hear it,’ the sergeant asserted dryly. ‘And so will all the boys in the Department, seeing’s ain’t none of us had a day off watch since the trial started.’ Annoyed by the peace officer’s attitude of open animosity and derision, the attorney decided to bring the conversation to an end. Without saying another word, he started to walk forward. The police and deputy sheriffs had made the assembled people move away from the entrance to the areaway and, as Mervyn came from it, some of them started booing. Feeling a red flush come to his cheeks, he was starting to turn in the direction of the Palace Hotel—a more expensive establishment than the one in which Simeon Oakes had taken a room—when he heard a voice he recognized calling his name. Looking over his shoulder as he came to a stop, he frowned as he saw his confidential clerk emerging from amongst the crowd and hurrying towards him.

  ‘What’s wrong?’ Mervyn demanded, only just remembering in time to hold down his voice. He was aware that his employee should have set off to carry out the precautionary supervision about which he had warned the two Texas Rangers who had collected Foote from the courtroom. ‘Why are you still here?’

  ‘It’s the car, sir,’ the newcomer replied, his nasal Mid-West accent filled with a suggestion of whining apology. ‘I can’t get it to start!’

  —When Wilfred Plant was addressing his employer—or anybody else in a position which he accepted as being superior to his own—although he did not go so far as to refer frequently to his ‘humble’ origins, there was invariably much in his demeanor to suggest from whom he was descended on his mother’s side. 47

  Tall, gaunt to the point of being almost skeletal and with rounded shoulders, Plant had a lean and miserable set of features which his thinning mousey-brown hair did little to enliven. During working hours, he always dressed in somber black clothing more suited to an undertaker than the senior clerk of a successful and wealthy attorney. Sidling in a furtive fashion rather than walking, he rarely met the gaze of anybody with whom he was talking for more than a few seconds at a time. All in all, unless he was dealing with a person over whom he was confident he could assert a measure of authority, 48 he conveyed an impression of nervousness and down-trodden subservience.

  ‘Why the hell can’t you?’ Mervyn challenged angrily.

  The irascibility with which the attorney reacted was caused more by the memory of his far from respectful or pleasant treatment at the hands of Judge McCrindle and the peace officer than out of any forebodings over the possible danger to Foote. He was already starting to discount the gang leader as a former and not entirely satisfactory client to whom he was no longer under any obligation.

  ‘I—I don’t know, sir,’ Plant confessed, being able to drive without having taken the trouble to learn anything about how and why the vehicle functioned. ‘The engine wouldn’t start when I!’

  ‘When you what?’Mervyn growled, his suspicions aroused by the way in which the clerk brought the explanation to an end.

  ‘W—When I tried to start it so I could follow them,’ Plant replied, deciding it was not advisable to mention he had left the vehicle unattended while he took an attractive young woman—to whom he had offered a ride to Texarkana—for a drink in a nearby tavern. She had gone off in a huff when it became apparent that there was something wrong with the engine and he did not know how to rectify it. ‘I tried ev
erything I could, but it wouldn’t start.’

  ‘Did you go to the service station and have them send somebody to take a look at it?’ Mervyn inquired, feeling sure there was something he had not been told.

  ‘Yes, but there was nobody there,’ the clerk answered, with just a trace of defiance apparent to anybody who knew him as well as his employer did. ‘I waited for a while. Then, as nobody came, I thought I’d better come and let you know what had happened in case Mr. Foote should telephone and ask why I wasn’t doing as you promised.’

  ‘You did the right thing,’ Mervyn conceded just a trifle grudgingly, being aware that he could not adopt too high handed an attitude with an employee who knew so much about his frequently illicit activities. However, in spite of his disinclination to become further involved in the affairs of the gang leader, he realized he could not dismiss the matter and must at least make a show of having kept his promise, or word of his having failed to do so might reach other potential clients, making them reluctant to pay for his specialized services. With that in mind, he went on, ‘Go and see if they’ve opened yet. Then, if they can’t fix it, hire another car. I don’t think those Rangers will chance doing anything to Mr. Foote, but he might complain if he finds out you didn’t follow him.’

  Seven – Who Told Them to Try to Shoot Us?

  ‘Well, how’d it go, gents?’ asked the turnkey, looking around as the door which he had closed when the two Texas Rangers left was opened. When he saw who was entering he relaxed. ‘Did you get them?’

  Something over twenty minutes had elapsed since the bullets had narrowly missed Seth Chiverton and Irvin Schulman.

  After the other peace officers had set off in search of the men who had done the shooting, the deputy sheriff had given his attention to the prisoners. On examining them, he had ascertained that—although each had been hurt by their respective landing on the hard stone floor of the passage—neither was seriously injured. Their wrists had been grazed by the handcuffs. Having lost his hat while falling, the “straight man” had a lump raised on the back of his head where it had come into contact with the floor. Some skin had been tom from the heels of the comic’s hands, but his fears of having broken his back had proved groundless.

  Satisfied that neither prisoner required more qualified medical attention, the turnkey had collected the means to perform first aid. While he was attending to them, despite being curious, he had refrained from asking any questions about the shooting. Nor, each being more concerned with his own suffering than in talking, had Chiverton and Schulman offered to discuss it between themselves when he had completed his task and ordered them to sit on the floor until their escort returned to collect them. For all that, they were clearly ill at ease. He had considered this was only to be expected after they had had such a narrow escape.

  ‘Sure and ’though Colin had put down one of the varmints, it was a clean pair of heels the other showed us,’ Sergeant Aloysius “Paddy” Bratton answered. Then he nodded to where the two prisoners were sitting with their backs against the dividing wall glowering resentfully at him, and continued, ‘And is it any trouble this pair of darlin’s’ve been giving you, Barney?’

  ‘Nary a bit,’ the turnkey stated. ‘They’re neither of them hurt too badly, either.’

  ‘It’s no god-damned thanks to you that we weren’t,’ Chiverton protested, glaring indignantly at the burly Texas Ranger. ‘You could have made us bust our necks, or backs, the way you threw us in here!’

  ‘Could I have, now?’ Bratton inquired, but with a noticeable lack of contrition or sympathy, leaning his Winchester Model of 1897 trench gun by the door as he had prior to the shooting. ‘And wouldn’t that’ve been the pity if I had?’

  ‘They’re not showing what I’d call a whole heap of gratitude, Paddy,’ supplemented Sergeant Colin Breda, exhibiting a similar dearth of condolence as he studied the prisoners sardonically and placed his Winchester Model of 1894 carbine alongside his companion’s weapon. ‘Maybe they’d sooner we didn’t do anything at all that might help to save their hides the next time somebody starts throwing lead at them?’

  ‘Next time!’ Schulman repeated, having noticed the emphasis placed by the Scottish sergeant on the two words and employing a tone close to his high pitched stage voice in his agitation. Ignoring the pain caused by his hurried movements, he forced himself to his feet and his pudgy features registered a growing alarm as he went on, ‘What do you mean by “next time”?’

  ‘Like Sergeant Bratton told the turnkey, one of them’s lit a shuck and’s still on the loose, 49 Breda explained, refraining from saying, “Paddy” as he was addressing a person for whom he had no liking. His whole demeanor expressed what the prisoners considered to be far greater satisfaction then sympathy over the information he was imparting. ‘Could be he’s the kind of jasper who takes pride in his work, or maybe even enjoys doing it. Which being, might be he’ll take the notion to make another stab at doing what he’s been told to do.’

  ‘Where do you come off with that “mother-something”, “what he’s been told to do”?’ Chiverton wanted to know, also having accepted the suffering caused by standing up quickly and displaying just as much consternation as was being shown by his partner. ‘Who told them to try and shoot us?’

  ‘I wouldn’t say that anybody asked them just to try,’ the Scottish peace officer corrected dryly. ‘Fact being, I’m willing to bet’s they were told to do it.’

  ‘You’d be advised to take heed of what Sergeant Breda says, darlin’s,’ Bratton went on in a confidential tone. ‘Sure and I’ve never the once known him offer to bet on anything at all unless he was certain he’d be the winner. I reckon it’s his Scotch blood that makes him so cagey.’

  ‘Scottish blood, Paddy,’ Breda objected. ‘Scotch is a whiskey they make—!’

  ‘God damn it!’ Chiverton snarled, glaring furiously from one peace officer to the other and, with his partner nodding vehement concurrence, he went on just as heatedly, ‘You know “something-well” what I mean!’

  ‘Yeah!’ the chubby former comic supported. ‘Who done it?’

  ‘Well I’ll be damned if I don’t think neither of them know, Colin!’ the burly Irish sergeant ejaculated, sounding as if he could hardly believe such ignorance was possible. ‘And what do you think of that?'

  ‘Well now, Paddy, it just could be,’ the second Texas Ranger assessed, eyeing the two disconsolate prisoners with what might have been commiseration and pity for their lack of comprehension, although neither believed this to be his true feelings. ‘After all, it’s likely been done by somebody they might figure is more than somewhat beholden to them for what they’ve done to help him—even if he isn’t a feller’s they’d claim as being a real close friend.’

  ‘You mean it was?’ Schulman commenced.

  ‘He wouldn't, god damn it!’ Chiverton spat out in the same breath, but his tone was far from being convincing.

  ‘You’d likely know him a whole heap better than we do, having done business with him pretty regular according to what you said in the courtroom,’ Breda countered. He looked over his shoulder then, turning his gaze to the front, he gave a shrug redolent of what could have been resignation and continued, ‘Anyways, you don’t have to take just our word for it. Go and take a look out of the door there. They’re bringing in the jasper I downed. Could just be you know him from someplace.’

  ‘I wouldn’t be going right outside to take a look, though, was I you, darlin’s,’ Bratton warned, as the prisoners began to advance hurriedly with the intention of confirming their suspicions over who was behind the attempt on their lives. ‘Like Sergeant Breda and me told you, the other miscreant gave us the slip and, ’though I wouldn’t reckon it’s over likely, he might have figured we wouldn’t reckon he’d have the spunk to try it and’s sneaked back to have another go.’

  Concluding without debate between themselves that they had received a piece of very sound advice, Chiverton and Schulman halted as they arrived at the door
instead of going through it. Standing in much the same positions as—unbeknown to them—the two sergeants had occupied immediately prior to the shooting, they looked cautiously outside. Although they could detect no sign of life on the street or in the houses beyond the perimeter wall, they saw two men carrying a loaded and blanket-covered stretcher across the parking lot.

  Showing no concern for the possibility of a would-be assassin lurking in the vicinity, Breda strolled past the prisoners and towards the newcomers.

  Slightly taller and more heavily built than Bratton, the leading stretcher bearer had on the general attire of a working cowhand. His high crowned white straw hat was thrust back to show black hair. Although this was cut short, his coppery bronze features were those of a full blood Indian. He had on Kiowa moccasins, and a Colt Civilian Model Peacemaker rode in the open topped holster of his buscadero gunbelt.

  Slightly shorter than his companion, slender yet wiry and a few years younger, the other stretcher bearer was swarthily handsome in a Gallic way. However, nothing of his attire suggested he might be involved in ranching. He was clad in a jaunty white straw boater hat, a dark blue blazer with a crest of some kind on its left breast pocket, an open necked white shirt of some glossy material, a multi-hued silk cravat, gray flannels even closer than Chiverton’s trousers to being Oxford bags and mottled alligator hide shoes. For all his somewhat dandified raiment, like the man in front of him, he wore a gunbelt—although the Colt in its holster was a Government Model of 1911 automatic pistol—and displayed a badge indicating he too was a Texas Ranger.

  Having frequently been in contact with various law enforcement agencies throughout Texas even prior to becoming involved in bootlegging (they had in fact indulged in confidence tricks to boost their earnings as a cross-talk act) Chiverton and Schulman recognized the approaching peace officers. Despite realizing that Sergeants David Swift-Eagle and Alexandre ‘Frenchie’ Giradot were far from the regions in which their respective Companies operated, the prisoners spared not a thought to the reason why they should have been selected to help at the trial in Marlin. Nor did the two perturbed men wonder where the stretcher upon which Breda’s victim was being carried had come from at such short notice.