Vengeance is Mine

by Reavis Z. Wortham

“Gene Stark called and said he found his brother shot to death up out toward Bill Stiles’ place. Tommy Lee’s still sitting in his truck, with the side of his head blowed off.”

  John struck out across the lot between them and the courthouse, where his car was parked next to the “colored” bathroom. “I’ll meet y’all out there.” Center Springs was far out of his assigned area, but John had long ago adopted the Parkers as part of his own family and was always willing to help.

  “All right, then. We’ll see you there.” Ned screwed himself into the front seat of the El Camino’s cab. “Dammit, boy, when are you gonna get you something decent to drive?”

  They were still arguing when Cody pulled away from the curb to take Ned to his own car parked on the square. O.C. stood alone on the sidewalk and shivered, worried that a dark train might be coming for them once again.

  Finally, he walked toward Frenchie’s to eat alone.

  Chapter Nine

  They drove east down Route 66 through Santa Fe before Anthony whipped the Plymouth into a dismal used car lot on the outskirts of town. A salesman in a drugstore cowboy hat and a gaudy bolo tie had Anthony’s door open almost before he could kill the engine. “Howdy, folks! How can I help you?”

  Anthony shouldered himself out of the car, forcing the aggressive ducktailed salesman to back up. “I need to trade this car in, but I have a problem.” He winked. “How about I give you the keys and pay you half again what that fifty-eight Buick there is worth?”

  Bolo Tie squinted one eye, noting the suit and Anthony’s flat eyes. “You must be in a hurry.”

  Anthony leaned close and spoke in a conspirator’s whisper. “Yeah. Her husband is looking for us and…well, you know the story.”

  Tilting his hat back, Bolo Tie rocked on his heels with a lascivious look on his face. “I see. A young couple in love is it? No title?”

  It was all Anthony could do not to punch him in the mouth. He shrugged.

  Bolo Tie scratched his cheek. “Well, I could get in trouble for this, but I know how young love is. That Buick might be a tad more than half again, but I bet we can come to an agreement.” He jerked his head toward the tiny office. “C’mon on and let’s get this done.”

  Anthony leaned into the car. “Doll, pull around to the back and we’ll unload the trunk after I make this deal. It’ll take both of us because there’s something in there that you can’t lift.”

  “That’s what’s making the rear end sag so heavy?”

  He smiled. “Sure is. I think there’s a safe in there.”

  “Um hum. Yours?”

  “Ours.”

  “Don’t you think it’ll be a little obvious, moving a safe between cars?”

  Anthony jerked his head toward the office. “After I finish in there, our new friend won’t look out the window until we leave. He’ll be counting his money.”

  “How are we going to move a safe?”

  “No worries. A place like this will have an engine hoist.”

  He winked and followed the salesman inside. Twenty minutes later Anthony handed the man a wad of cash and plucked the new title from his hand. “Now, give me a minute to move some stuff over.”

  Bolo Tie started to follow him out the door. Anthony stopped him with a look. “No. I said give me a minute while we move some stuff. The keys will be in the ignition when we leave, and then it’s yours.”

  Bolo Tie rocked back on his heels again, and built an awkward grin. “All righty, Mr. Smith.” When Anthony stepped outside and started the Buick, the dealer picked up the phone and dialed. “Kenneth. Get on over here and bring your tools. We got a hot one.”

  He hung up, stared out the front window, and didn’t move from behind his desk, even when he heard the chains rattle on his engine hoist not ten feet away. The Buick finally appeared from around the corner and pulled onto the highway. Bolo Tie breathed a sigh of relief and once again counted the cash in his hand.

  He stuffed several bills into his pocket and recalled the look Anthony gave him. He watched a car full of rough men pull slowly out of the parking lot across the street. It followed the couple down Route 66. He shuddered, glad the young man was gone.

  ***

  Feeling comfortable in the new car, the couple took their time and stopped at trading posts doing business behind giant papier-mâché Apache Indians and teepees, slept in a water-cooled motel with giant arrows in the courtyard, and ate in greasy spoon cafés serving overdone hamburgers, unidentifiable chicken entrees, and tasteless strawberry shortcake desserts.

  Their pursuers, if they existed, had no idea which direction they chose. The obvious direction was west to California, to disappear into the crowded cities of Los Angeles or San Francisco. Most of the gamblers in Vegas would have bet against Texas.

  Route 66 led through the wasteland of eastern New Mexico and the barren Texas Panhandle until they finally reached a small country town of Shamrock, less than a hundred miles from the geographic ground zero of the Dust Bowl. Dusk fell on the small town surrounded by irrigated fields that stretched as far as the eye could see. An art deco tower, thirty feet high, jutted up from twin filling bays of a futuristic Conoco station, glowing in the late evening light. Anthony pulled in to gas up, and the smell of frying food from the U-Drop Inn filled the air.

  Though it was dusk, and hotter than hell, they left the station and cruised down the burg’s main street. Samantha saw a movie poster in the lighted frames on either side of the ticket kiosk at the Liberty Theater.

  “Look. The Good, The Bad, and the Ugly. I’m tired of driving, and I’ve been wanting to see that picture.”

  “Doll, we’re on the lam.”

  “You said yourself they’re looking somewhere else. Besides, they have air conditioning. I want to sit for a while and look at something besides the desert or movie fan magazines.”

  Anthony quickly realized he couldn’t talk her out of seeing the spaghetti Western. He gave in when he realized he was tired, too. He drove on past the Liberty and at the edge of town, steered into the Clay Court Motor motel for the night.

  Swimming Pool! blinked under the neon sign.

  Below that, another sign announced, Kid Friendly!

  A chatty little old man with gray hair totally unfamiliar with a comb lurked behind the counter. “Mr. and Mrs. Smith. Glad to have you.” He licked his peeling lips, scratched deeply into the tangled mass on his head, and gave them a key attached to a large green plastic fob. “Y’all want the room for a couple of hours, or all night?”

  Anthony thought about knocking his old block off. “We want it for the night.”

  “I bet. I wish I was that young again.”

  “Hey, buddy, give me the keys without the commentary.” He felt his forehead throb and dialed back the rising anger.

  The old man frowned and stared down at the twenty-dollar bill in his hand. “Well, hell, I didn’t mean no harm. We don’t get many out-of-town folks named Smith that don’t want a short-term discount.”

  Without another word, Anthony held out his hand for the change, glad Samantha was waiting in the car. A minute later, back at the wheel, his frown prompted her to reach for his shoulder. “Something wrong?” she asked.

  “That old man in there is too nosy.”

  She grinned and glanced back into the tiny office. “There probably isn’t much excitement around here.”

  “He was about to get more excitement than he bargained for.” They pulled around the tiny swimming pool enclosed by the U-shaped motel and backed the Buick into the slot directly in front of their room. The warped door was stubborn. Anthony put his shoulder against it and shoved. It snapped open with a pop and they found themselves inside the stifling room smelling of stale cigarette smoke and Pine-Sol.

  The water cooler wheezed when Samantha punched the switch, but a trickle of cool air told them it would be a comfortable night
in the spacious room, if they only used the threadbare sheet as cover. “It feels good to be out of the car for a while.”

  Anthony pitched their suitcases on the sagging bed and closed the cheap curtains. “You hungry?”

  “For anything but a hamburger.”

  He thought about leaving his .45 in the room, but old habits die hard. Remembering the good smells drifting on the dry air while he pumped the gas, Anthony simply unbuttoned his suit coat and said, “Let’s walk back to the Conoco. The diner looks like the place to eat around here.”

  Without changing out of her high heels, Samantha led the way outside. They left the motel and strolled arm in arm down the scorching sidewalk. Anthony watched her honey-colored hair glow in the setting sun.

  The U-Drop Inn served a good seventy-five cent open-faced steak sandwich. Anthony wasn’t sure about the idea, but Sam explained it was nothing more than a chicken-fried steak on a piece of toast and covered with cream gravy. Their plates were empty an hour later when they left the little diner, full and fighting drowsiness. They walked to the Liberty Theater in the dark.

  The movie was unnaturally long, but comfortable in the air conditioning. Anthony went through half a pack of Luckies, the smoke mixing with others and spiraling in the projector’s strong beam. The young actor from Rawhide was only one of three characters in the Italian Western whose lips synched with the words, and they left laughing at the strangely quirky movie.

  Outside under the bright theater lights, Anthony lit two toonies, passing her the first. The high plains evening air was finally cool. Well-dressed couples passed on their way home.

  Samantha took a long drag and waved the cigarette toward the empty ticket booth. “I could get a job selling tickets and we could live here.”

  He’d already learned how quickly she made decisions. “This the one? They don’t have anything but flat here.”

  “I like this town. It fits me.”

  “All right.” Anthony realized he wanted to give her everything she desired. He’d never felt that way about anyone before and it left him light and cheerful. “I had a different town in mind, but we can look around tomorrow for a house, if you want.” He didn’t care where they settled, as long as it was far away from Vegas.

  It was nearly midnight when they strolled through the darkness back to the motor court. As usual, Anthony couldn’t relax his guard, keeping an eye out for Malachi’s goons. He wasn’t convinced they’d be easy to find so far out there in the sticks, but he learned long ago that no one in his business could ever be too careful.

  When they reached the motel, Anthony was surprised to see the manager’s office was dark, a neon No Vacancy sign sputtering fitfully in the window. They continued under the awning covering the office’s entrance, past the dark pool and playground.

  Clearly unnerved, Anthony paused and scanned the parking lot. “We have a problem. There aren’t enough other cars here for that no vacancy sign to be lit.”

  “It’s probably a slow night. It is Wednesday.”

  “Uh uh. Something isn’t right. Stay close and be ready to move if I say so.”

  Samantha picked up on the nervousness that radiated from the young man like a wave of electricity. Frightened for the first time since they left Vegas, she kept a hand on his back of his suit coat as they cautiously approached their room. In the dim parking lot, Anthony saw the lock on the Buick’s trunk was broken. The lid was halfway open.

  He slipped the Colt from the rig under his left arm and handed Samantha the key, keeping an eye on their surroundings. “Open the door and get inside while I keep an eye out. Grab our bags and let’s get out of here.”

  Sam was a quick study and didn’t ask any questions. She reached for the lock at the same instant Anthony gave it a quick glance.

  The knob twisted, opening from the inside. The stubborn door once again stuck, giving Anthony a half second to respond.

  He pushed Sam sideways off the high heels he’d been admiring all evening. She fell hard on the concrete walk with a surprised yelp. The door opened a crack, throwing a long rectangle of yellow light into the lot and revealing a barrel of a man standing there in his boxers.

  There was no time to wonder why the familiar man was in his drawers. The .38 in his hand was answer enough. Anthony hit the door with everything he had, like he was shoulder-blocking a linebacker. The man inside didn’t expect an attack.

  The wooden door caught Big Nose Pennacchio smack in the head, slapping him back into the room. He dropped the cocked revolver and fell backward, howling. Big Nose had fallen onto a little kid’s chair that matched two others around a scarred wooden table barely eighteen inches tall, part of the motel’s “kid friendly” advertisement. Two taller-backed support posts stuck up and he landed directly onto one of them. The thick post punched through his thin shorts, and into a place designated as an exit.

  Big Nose didn’t yell long, because Anthony shot him twice, the .45 deafening in the enclosed room. Big Nose’s presence immediately told Anthony they were there to kill him for leaving the business. The guys waiting in their room had done the same many times before, for lesser reasons, and Anthony had been a part of it on a number of occasions.

  Slick and shiny with sweat, two other goons leaped up from peeling the Boss’ safe and grabbed for weapons. They were also stripped down to their boxers and sleeveless undershirts in the stifling room after shutting off the swamp cooler to better hear what was going on outside.

  The gangsters must have been at it five minutes after the couple entered the café. The table beside the pole lamp in the corner was full of tools, beer cans, fedoras, and guns.

  Anthony swung the automatic’s muzzle and hammered them both. Red bloomed on their thin undershirts as they dropped to the floor like limp rag dolls.

  The last guy was stuck all the way to his elbow in the safe. The last time Anthony saw Seymour Burke and Big Nose was the night Best ordered him to kill the Sandoval family. Tufts of hair escaped his dingy undershirt. Burke tried to yank his hand back, and if he’d gotten it free, would have had a better chance at killing Anthony than the others, because the table was between them and Anthony couldn’t get a good shot. If Burke’d been up and ready for a fight, Anthony would have probably taken a slug.

  Instead, the man hesitated when he saw the young woman over Anthony’s shoulder. “Samantha?”

  Anthony quickly stepped to the side for a clear shot.

  Recovering from his surprise, Burke awkwardly reached for a pistol with his left hand. Anthony shot him in the head.

  Shocked by what he’d heard, Anthony spun to see Samantha in the open door, half expecting to look down the barrel of a gun in her manicured fingers. It wouldn’t have surprised him, because their business was one of double and triple crosses.

  Instead, she stood immobile, stunned at the sudden and deadly violence. He realized his pistol was pointed at her. When he didn’t see a gun, he lowered the muzzle, realizing he’d have been a dead man if she’d been heeled. His automatic was empty, the slide locked back. He quickly thumbed the empty magazine free, drove a fresh one home, and released the slide.

  Anthony stepped over the bodies to make sure no one else was hiding in the room. The closet was empty, but the dead motel owner sat against the bathroom wall with his legs splayed around the toilet. The Sealed For Your Protection slip from the cracked lid was stuffed in his mouth.

  Anthony turned back to the carnage. “You know these guys?”

  She spoke softly. “They work for Daddy.”

  Ears ringing, he thought for a moment that he’d heard her wrong. “Malachi Best is your old man?”

  Her voice trembled. “Yes.”

  “He’s the guy I worked for.”

  “I didn’t know.” Her blue eyes opened wide.

  “You said your last name was Chesterfield.”

  “Mother was a Chesterfi
eld. She kept it so I wouldn’t be tied to dad by name.”

  “I’ve worked for Best for years. I never saw you before.”

  “He always kept me at arm’s length, so nobody could use us as leverage. He lived in Vegas, and we lived in New York.”

  Anthony thought for a moment, weighing the pistol in his hand. “So they were after you? And the safe was extra candy?”

  “I don’t think so. I was only in Vegas for a few days to visit. Daddy thinks I’m going to be in Chicago all month.”

  “So it’s like I thought. They wanted me.” Anthony chewed his lip. And the safe was still candy.

  He took a good look at the peeled safe. It was the classic double cross in a dishonorable business. Obviously, the men inside their room were sent to kill Anthony and bring back the safe. The kick was their ambition. They planned to empty the safe, split the contents, and then tell the Boss that Anthony had taken the money and either spent it, or hidden it before they gunned him down.

  They’d tried to smoke the lock first, using a key blank and candle smoke to find the tumblers. The dead candle and blank lay discarded on the table, beside several empty Schlitz cans, because those guys were thugs, not safe crackers. They finally resorted to using a sledge hammer to peel it open, an ugly but effective way to open one up.

  Peelers hammer at a corner, any corner, until it bends enough for them to work a chisel under the outer layer of steel and pry it out of the way. That reveals the next dented sheet, which they also roll back. Like peeling back the layers of an onion, they continue the slow and tedious process until finally levering a hole big enough to drain the safe’s contents.

  Anthony and Samantha had walked into the stifling room the moment Burke had stuck his hand inside.

  “Quick, get our stuff into the car. Those shots will bring the cops even in this burg.” He jerked his head toward the bathroom. “He won’t be calling the cops, though.”

  “We take their car?”

  Anthony shook his head and holstered the .45. “No. That one is recognizable to Best’s men. It’s a cinch they haven’t called in yet to say they found us, and I can’t figure out how they hell they did that, but they’d take the money first, and then rat us out.”