Vengeance is Mine

by Reavis Z. Wortham

  It was too much.

  We charged across the living room. Pepper shot the bolt on the front door and we raced out of the house.

  Once safely outside, I looked over my shoulder, but there was no one on the stairs.

  Chapter Seven

  It was after midnight in Las Vegas, and the temperature still hovered in the low nineties when Anthony dropped Sam off at her apartment. “I’ll be back in a couple of hours, Doll.”

  “You’re not going back to your place?”

  He thought about it for a moment. “I have some business to finish, but I’ll be back before daylight. Pack your grip, and we’re outta here.”

  It was a dangerous move. They needed travel money and Anthony recalled it was one of those rare times that Best’s house staff had the night off. He planned a little visit to the empty house, because Best did business by keeping large amounts of cash money on hand at all times.

  He drove to a car lot owned by Best and utilized a drop system that had been in place for years. Half a dozen spaces in a fenced area behind the office held clean cars registered to fictitious people. The Ford that Anthony drove came from there over a week ago. He pulled it into an empty slot and pitched the keys in the ashtray. Selecting a Pontiac facing outward, he reached under the back bumper and located the keys. After transferring his suitcase into the new car, Anthony drove off.

  When the manager arrived the next morning and found the Ford nosed into the parking slot, he wouldn’t ask any questions. By that afternoon, the car would be on a carrier heading out of Vegas, replaced by another one available to any of Best’s trusted employees.

  Half an hour later, Anthony parked at the curb and knocked on the front door of the dark house. Despite the early morning hour, Leo Barbeau opened the door. Obviously awakened from a deep sleep, Leo lowered the pistol in his hand and scratched his mussed hair. “Ant’ny, where the hell you been? The Boss wants your ass…”

  Smiling, Anthony grasped Leo’s shoulder with his left hand and shoved the .22 against the older man’s pajama-covered chest, pulling the trigger twice. Leo collapsed backward and Anthony stepped inside, shoving the door closed with his foot.

  He kicked Leo’s gun away and waited, listening. The house remained silent.

  Confident the house was empty, Anthony left Leo’s body where it fell and backed the car into the mob boss’ empty garage. He passed through the open living room and den. The wall safe behind a heavy mahogany desk held thick stacks of bills. He’d seen it open a couple of times when Best paid him, but Anthony didn’t have enough time to crack that one.

  Instead, he rolled a stout two-wheeled dolly from the garage into the master bedroom’s walk-in closet to load up a small free-standing Hercules safe. The guys who worked for Malachi said it was full of bills and jewelry, but by the weight, Anthony figured it contained gold, too. He had to throw his entire weight against the dolly to tilt the safe far enough to get it out of the closet and down the thickly carpeted hall.

  After dragging a long crease down the sheetrock in the hallway, he maneuvered around several corners and through the kitchen. It barely fit through the door leading into the garage. He stopped behind the Pontiac and studied the squatty little chunk of steel. There was no way he could lift it into the trunk.

  Anthony found a car jack in the super-heated garage and maneuvered it underneath the Hercules. He worked the stiff handle. The black safe scraped the bumper as it rose higher, but he didn’t care…the Pontiac wasn’t his anyway.

  Once he had it high enough, it was nothing to tilt the safe and let it fall heavily into the trunk. He figured to open it somewhere else and hoped the contents would be enough to pay him what Malachi owed, with a little left over as severance.

  ***

  He picked up Samantha half an hour later. She was waiting on the sidewalk outside of her apartment and eyed the unfamiliar car.

  “Nice.” She pitched two bags into the backseat and they cleared out. It was almost too easy. She adjusted herself in the seat, curling up like a kitten. “When did you get the new car?”

  “A couple of hours ago.”

  “We heading to the airport?”

  “Nope. The Boss and I didn’t end on good terms. You said you knew the business. I’m sure he has people out there looking for me, so we’re not going where they are.” It was a good bet that Best’s men were watching the airport and bus station. Even the Las Vegas Holiday Special train, once called the City of Las Vegas, was off limits. The only safe way to travel was by car.

  “I know how he operates. Instead of heading for California, we’re driving to Texas.”

  She smoothed her skirt around her legs. “What’s there?”

  “Paradise, I’ve heard, and none of the Boss’ people.”

  They didn’t see the sedan driven by Pinocchio following at a safe distance.

  Chapter Eight

  “This world’s a changin’, Mr. Ned, and I don’t know if I can draw a tight enough rein to hang on for the whole ride.”

  Pursing his lips to think, Judge O.C. Rains crossed one leg over the other and laced his fingers over his knee.

  Ned studied on Deputy Sheriff John Washington’s statement for a long moment. They were sitting on the concrete retaining wall north of the courthouse, beneath the crepe myrtles and a cloudy sky. “What do you mean?”

  “There was a cuttin’ outside of Sugar Bear’s joint last night, and it weren’t like no regular fight. It looked like somebody butchered a hog when this one sorry outfit got done with the other’n.”

  A giant of a man, John Washington was the only black deputy in Sheriff Griffin’s department, and worked with virtual autonomy, something unheard of in most rural Texas cotton towns.

  “Well, we’ve worked cuttin’s before.”

  “Yessir, but this one was different, y’all. When the loser was down, the cutter kept at him somethin’ fierce. That colored boy bled out in a lake of blood, and when I got there, the one a-doin’ it stood up, folded the razor in his hand, and laid it on the dead man’s forehead. When I ast him why he done it, he laughed and said the devil made him do it.”

  “Well, I reckon that’s the truth.” O.C. rocked slowly back and forth, still holding his knee. “The ol’ Devil is behind most meanness, black, white, or red, as far as I’m concerned.”

  “Yeah, but we never had anything like that, ’til the last three or four years.” John shook his great head. He dwarfed the old men sitting on either side. “Now all we got around here is one killin’ after another.”

  Ned studied a foreign-looking man walking past them on Main. “That’s true, sure ’nough. At least you got him locked up, instead of us having to run him down.”

  Traditionalists, they were waiting for noon to walk down the street and eat dinner at Frenchie’s café. John hadn’t decided if he wanted to join them in the front part of the “whites only” café, or to sit in the back with his own people. It was a difficult decision, because he’d taken coffee in the front before, though it brought stares and muttered comments from the same white citizens he would protect if they needed a lawman.

  “You know what I was asked yesterday while I was working that cuttin’ at Sugar Bear’s?”

  O.C. raised a bushy white eyebrow. “What?”

  “If me and Mr. Ned went down to Mexico after The Skinner. They thought he caught Cody and tried to kill him before them Mexicans put him in jail.”

  Ned shook his head. “They just won’t leave well enough alone, will they?”

  “I reckon not. They still scared of The Skinner comin’ back. The story is he’s down on the Rio Grande there, skinnin’ folks on both sides of the river. I tried to tell ’em it ain’t so, but they won’t believe me. If there’s a murder in the next ten years, they’ll lay it off on him.”

  “Folks will forget in time…who’s that?” O.C. finally noticed the same str
anger in a dark suit standing at the corner, taking pictures of the courthouse with a Polaroid camera. Most folks in Center Springs used Brownie Hawkeyes or those new Instamatic cameras with plastic flashcubes on top.

  John squinted from under his Stetson and watched the man push three levers on the camera before peeling the picture from the open back. He waved the photo for a moment, then slipped it into his pocket and shot again. “I don’t know,” John said. “I’ve seen him a time or two on the square these last few days, taking pictures and making notes on some papers he carries in that briefcase there.”

  “Could be a spy, intending to send a missile down here on us.” Ned twiddled his thumbs as he thought.

  O.C. blew out his lips in exasperation. “I don’t reckon there’s much sense in bombing Chisum.”

  Ned immediately reddened. “The army camp’s just north of us. I ’magine it could still be a target. We probably got some of them missiles of our own buried out there.”

  “You blamed old fool. Them Ruskies’ll bomb Dallas or Wichita Falls or Houston, but I doubt they’ll waste an atom bomb on Chisum, unless they know you personally and have had all they can take. I could understand it, then. I just hope I have time to get gone far enough away from you so I don’t get any on me.”

  “Well, Top and Pepper tell me they practice what they call them duck-and-cover drills under their desks ever couple of weeks or so, like a little ’ol school desk is gonna be enough cover if somebody drops an atom bomb on us. So I reckon the government still thinks them damn fools over there are liable to shoot at us.”

  John grinned, and cut off further argument between the two old friends who enjoyed arguing as much as eating. “Yessir, but Maxey ain’t much camp no more, not like back in the war. They mostly jus’ chicken houses there now. I’ll drop by and get two or three dozen eggs from ’em every now and then when I’m heading over to Rachel Lea’s house.”

  John had met her back in the spring. After finding out that her husband left her in a shack to raise her own two children and her dead sister’s kids, he began to visit two or three times a week. At first it was to bring groceries to the struggling family, but later, he finally admitted it was to see the attractive woman with the deepest, prettiest dimples in all of Lamar County, in his opinion.

  “Her young’uns eat a lot?”

  “Right smart, Mr. O.C. They all growing like weeds.”

  “Well, you a good man, John, for taking up with a woman with so many kids. Besides, her cookin’ must be somethin’ else.”

  The old men exchanged looks and laughed.

  O.C. reached deep into his pants pocket, thumbed through a fold of limp bills, and handed several over to John. “Use this for ’em. I got a boy’s life of stoop labor behind me, and would hate to see them kids working the fields if they don’t have to.”

  The big deputy knew better than to argue, especially after Ned added to the collection. John nodded, stuffed the cash into his shirt pocket, and buttoned the top down.

  “Thankee.”

  “That’ll dry up once you marry that gal.” O.C.’s eyes twinkled.

  John bit back a grin. “There ain’t no talk about marryin’ up.”

  “I bet there ain’t much talk no how,” Ned said and they laughed.

  “Mr. Ned, they’s so many kids around, all we can do is talk.”

  “Don’t let Griffin hear about you being over there too much during the day,” Ned warned. The sheriff was about as popular as the Itch. “He’ll make something up about you, if you do, and it might come around and cost you your badge.”

  O.C. sobered quickly and spoke, making sure no one was within hearing distance. “Y’all, I’m hearing more things that ain’t settin’ well with me about Griffin.”

  All three men despised Chisum’s sheriff. He was crooked as a dog’s hind leg, in Ned’s opinion, and it proved true when they traced a direct line of illegal drugs from Mexico to the Red River, all covered by Griffin and one or more of his deputies.

  Cody found out the truth while he was held in a Mexican prison. The final confirmation came from a couple of offhand photos shot by Top when he was playing spy outside the Lamar County Courthouse one snowy day. One captured Griffin taking a thick envelope from the hand of a known drug-runner.

  Judge Rains leaned in to Ned. John shifted to listen. “Y’all, I hear he’s keeping the highway hot between here and Dallas. You know Deputy White. Well, he’s told me that Griffin spends a lot of time on the phone in his office, and White’s seen him go home two or three times a day. He said he went over there one day so’s he could ask him a question, and Griffin was on the phone. He hung up real quick and gave White a chewing out for coming by.”

  “Hell, O.C., that’s a lot of…What do you call it?”

  “Supposition, and you’re right. That’s all it is, but it’s more than that. It’s a feeling I have from being around that sorry bastard for so long. Y’all keep an eye out for him, and watch your back when he’s around. I can protect you most of the time, but when it’s you and him out on the highway somewhere, I’m out of the loop.”

  Their dark mood fled when Wade Reidel hurried up the sidewalk, waving his arms in agitation. Wade always needed a haircut, and the hair growing down the back of his neck and into his collar was almost as long as his cowlick in the front.

  Ned sighed. “Uh, oh. This ain’t gonna be good.”

  Wade jerked his chin upward in a hello. “Ned, we got a problem.”

  “What’s that?”

  “Well, I think my in-laws are in cahoots with my wife to keep me out of the house.”

  “That ain’t against the law.” O.C. always hated trying to pull information out of someone who, in his opinion, should offer up the story and be done with it.

  “Hidy, Mr. O.C., sorry I didn’t speak. How you doin’?”

  “Fair to middlin’.”

  “Mr. Ned, I’m so riled up it’s eating a hole in my stomach. I don’t like to hang my dirty laundry out in public, but me and Karen Ann started having troubles about July and things have been rough since then.”

  He paused, as if expecting one of the men to say something sympathetic. Instead they waited.

  Wade cleared his throat and dug at the wax in his ear. “Okay, I wanted to move out, but I held on ’cause, you know, folks tend to think things’ll work themselves out. But that ain’t gonna happen as long as she keeps stringin’ off across the river two or three nights a week to drink in Cody’s club.”

  “Careful there, Wade.” O.C. held up a hand. “Just cause Cody owns the Sportsman, it don’t mean he’s at fault. There’s half a dozen other joints over there with jukeboxes and drinkin’, and I doubt his is the only beer hall she visits.”

  “Didn’t mean no disrespect to one of your constables, Mr. O.C.” He examined the exploratory results under the nail of his little finger. “Mr. Ned. Anyways, I guess I shoulda seen things were changing when she started sleeping in the living room all the time. She said it was because her back hurt and our cotton mattress was too hard, but that old couch has springs coming up through the cushions, though you can’t see ’em because of that bedspread she keeps on it…”

  “Can you get to the point, Wade?” Ned was half listening, half watching the well-dressed man with the camera. He’d changed positions and was shooting down north Main toward Frenchie’s Café, and maybe including their little cluster on the retaining wall. From the corner of his eye, Ned saw O.C.’s attention was on the man, too.

  “All right. Anyways, I’m a nervous wreck over all this and they always say the husband is the last one to know…Hey, did either of y’all know that Karen Ann is running around with Bud Templeton? I believe they’re sleeping together, too.”

  No one made eye contact. Bud Templeton was so far down the list of Karen Ann’s bed partners that they didn’t have the heart to bring up the others that stretched back t
hrough their stormy marriage. She was a knockout, all right. The young men in Lamar County stopped what they were doing to watch her walk by. The truth was, not all of them just looked. Ned knew why her back ached, and it wasn’t their hard cotton mattress.

  “Anyways, okay, both of us have a tendency to get mad real quick, so we might both be guilty of something, but certain third parties got involved—well, it was her sister for one, who talked Karen Ann into pitching my clothes out in the yard and changing the locks. Said I was doing her wrong. So I marched myself right over to the courthouse to see if somebody can help me and to hire a lawyer, cause they keep telling her what to say and every time I call the house, her mama’s listening in on the party line ’cause you know they live down the road a piece, though I think her daddy likes me well enough. I ain’t against him or nothin’…”

  The young man simply stopped, as if he’d run out of energy.

  Ned took the opportunity and stood.

  Wade gathered himself. “Are you leaving, Mr. Ned?”

  “I’m trying to. I’ll drop by and talk to Karen Ann and her folks, but if they haven’t done anything other than change the locks, there ain’t much I can do right now.”

  “Well now, I’d be proud if you did that.” He started to leave, then dug in his pants pocket and came out with a handful of silver dollars. He handed one to each of the surprised men. “I’d like to buy y’all dinner today. I’ll see you soon.”

  After he left, the three lawmen frowned and shook their heads. “How come him to do that?” Ned asked.

  “People do funny things,” O.C. stood. “Let’s go eat.” He handed the silver dollar to John and Ned did the same, both knowing the money would go to Rachel for food or clothing for her kids.

  Before they could step off the curb, Cody pulled up in his red and white El Camino and spoke through the open passenger window. “Ned, we need to go to work. Howdy, Judge, John.”

  Ned leaned forward and peered into the window. “What is it?”