Table of Contents
CUTTING EDGE
COPYRIGHT
DEDICATIONS
CHAPTER ONE
CHAPTER TWO
CHAPTER THREE
CHAPTER FOUR
CHAPTER FIVE
CHAPTER SIX
CHAPTER SEVEN
CHAPTER EIGHT
CHAPTER NINE
CHAPTER TEN
CHAPTER ELEVEN
Other books by this author
CUTTING EDGE
New York is just another frontier town to Edge. A horse and carriage is just a fancier mule wagon. But if he’s caught in the alley, Edge’s skill with the razor will make any gangland godson smart.
When Edge gets trapped in the crossfire of two New York gangland leaders, he finds out that Boss Black and Emilio Orlando are gunning for him as well as each other. Playing both sides against the middle, Edge sets gang against gang, leader against leader, then steals away to his hideout in a nearby building. On the streets below, the gangland rumble explodes. It’s High Noon on the Bowery.
Waiting for a Train
By George G. Gilman
First Published by Kindle 2013
Copyright © 2014 by George G. Gilman
First Kindle Edition June 2014
Names, Characters and incidents in this book are fictional, and any resemblance to actual events locales, organizations, or persons living or dead is purely coincidental. All rights reserved. No part of this book may be reproduced or transmitted in any form or by any means, electronic or mechanical, including photocopying, recording or by any information or storage and retrieval system, without the written permission of the author, except where permitted by law.
Cover Design and illustrations by West World Designs © 2014.
http://westworlddesigns.webs.com
This is a High Plains Western for Lobo Publications.
Cover Illustration by Cody Wells.
Visit the author at: www.gggandpcs.proboards.com
For T.M.
The artist who paints it like it used to be.
CHAPTER ONE
As HE stood in the luxuriously appointed barroom of the Fifth Avenue Hotel sipping high priced bourbon and contemplating the pleasant prospect of a train ride into the far west, it would have been easy for the man called Edge to think of himself as one of the sights of New York City. For, as was his nature, he was constantly alert to everything that was happening around him even though he appeared to be totally concerned with his private thoughts.
He was aware of the ebb and flow of well-dressed patrons and the smoothly efficient bartenders in matching shirts and string ties who served drinks with smiles and then seemed to regret the need to accept payment.
The men behind the polished bar eyed Edge with surreptitious suspicion whenever they were between orders and thought he was not looking at them. The customers - whether men or women - were variously intrigued, curious, shocked, disgusted and perturbed to see this obvious interloper in their midst.
It was his clothing which first caught the attention of the native New Yorkers and visitors to the city who had chosen to conform with local custom. For here, in one of the most sophisticated establishments on the eastern seaboard of the United States, Edge was dressed western style. A grey, low-crowned, wide-brimmed Stetson, a black leather jacket, grey shirt, black denim pants and black riding boots without spurs. Around his waist was slung a gun-belt with a Remington revolver in the holster, one side of his unbuttoned jacket pulled back to both display and allow him easy access to the gun. A grey kerchief was tied loosely at his throat, not quite concealing a beaded thong that hugged the flesh more tightly just below his Adam’s apple.
Not only was the style and cut of the clothing completely out of place in the smart barroom of an ostentatious New York hotel, its condition also left much to be desired. For it showed many signs of age and hard wear - was shiny and scuffed, torn and stained. So that perhaps all that could be said for the man’s outfit in such splendid surroundings was that at least it had been brushed free of trail dust.
The man who wore the clothing also displayed many signs of age and hard wear and everyone who happened to be caught in the act of surveying the incongruous westerner felt compelled to look hurriedly away and be more cautious if they glanced again in his direction.
Edge had this effect on strangers without any need to make an effort. This was in part due to the accidents of his build and the formation of his features and the rest was contributed by the experiences of the recent past, his stature and face presenting a forbidding aspect.
He was a tall man who stood more than six feet three inches in his riding boots and he had a firm-fleshed physique which gave him a weight in the region of two hundred pounds, the bulk evenly distributed to suggest a deceptive leanness. This impression was augmented by the cut and set of his features which were drawn from the dual nationalities of his parents - a Mexican father and a Scandinavian mother. It was a long face, the skin stained dark by heritage and exposure to the extremes of weather and stretched taut between the high cheekbones and firm jawline. There was a hawk-like quality in the set of the nose and more than a mere hint of latent cruelty in the width and narrowness of the mouth. But it was the eyes of the man which revealed the greatest clue to his character. Permanently narrowed under their hooded lids they were of the palest blue color and totally devoid of expression, unmistakably piercing in the manner they surveyed the world and yet looking like no more than slivers of ice chipped from a frozen ocean.
The stretched, dark skin was engraved by countless lines splaying from the corners of the eyes and mouth and the face was framed by thick growing, jet black hair that reached to the shoulders of the man. Recently washed up and shaved - something else the patrons and bartenders were prepared to allow in his favor - he sported an unobtrusive moustache that followed the line of his top lip and curved down at each side of his mouth.
Anyone who had the inclination and opportunity to look closely at him might well judge his age correctly to be in the late thirties: but on first impression he looked several years older than this. Of the women who eyed him, some considered him hauntingly handsome: others were repelled by the strong impression of ugliness they received.
Nobody felt able to ignore him.
‘Guess a feller like you knows about horseflesh, sir,’ a man said.
Like Edge, the short, tubby, balding individual who spoke had entered the barroom alone and not met anybody there. All the other patrons had entered as couples or in groups or had joined friends. In all other respects the man who spoke fitted perfectly into the surroundings. He was well and expensively dressed, city style, and had appeared to be using the place to kill some time before he went out to dinner or to a theatre. He had been standing at the bar when the half-breed entered, half a whiskey ago, and been showing more than average interest in the tall man with the cold blue eyes: had needed two shots and most of a beer chaser to bring him fifteen feet along the counter and talk to Edge.
‘Don’t claim to be an expert.’
‘But you’re from Texas or someplace like that, sir?’
‘Iowa. Nothing like Texas, feller.’
The man, who was about fifty, shrugged his flabby shoulders. ‘Whatever. You want to earn some easy money?’
The smell of whiskey on the short man’s breath almost masked the sweeter aromas of his pomade and after-shave talc.
‘Doing what?’
‘Looking over a couple of stallions I’m thinking of purchasing, sir. For my lady wife who has this whim to get into stock breeding. See, I grow tobacco down in Carolina and I’ve got me some spa
re acreage. Amy would like to run some horses on the pasture and since we got a twenty-fifth wedding anniversary coming up I plan to indulge her. Feller out on Long Island has these two high-priced stallions to sell but tobacco is my trade. Can tell a stallion from a gelding and a mare is about all. Saw you standing here. Obvious you’re from the west. Thought to ask you if you’d run out to Long Island with me tomorrow and take a look at the animals. Be there and back before noon. Pay you fifty dollars for your advice. Whether I buy or not, of course.’
The man, who stood no higher than Edge’s shoulder, looked eagerly up into the deeply-lined, sparsely fleshed face of the half-breed. Then showed disappointment at the shake of the head he drew.
‘Fee’s too high for someone who isn’t an expert, feller. And anyway, I don’t plan to be in New York that long. Be heading out of Grand Central in less than two hours.’
The man nodded, still glum. ‘No harm in asking, was there? You didn’t mind me asking, sir?’
‘No sweat.’
‘Buy you a drink?’
‘I already got one.’
‘Drink up and I’ll buy you another.’ He finished his beer with a single swallow and crooked a finger toward one of the bartenders.
‘No thanks. I pay my own way.’
The short man seemed about to insist, but then saw at close range the depths of coldness in the narrowed blue eyes and asked the bartender for just one bourbon.
‘This is one lousy town, isn’t it?’ he said after he had paid for the drink. ‘I have to come here to do business sometimes. Never can wait to get out of it and down south fast enough.’
‘Guess there are worse places,’ Edge answered. ‘Never have been to them, though.’
There had been a subtle change of atmosphere in the barroom. A lightening of mood among the patrons and an easing of the tension which had affected the bartenders. Almost as if everyone felt more relaxed now that one of their kind had approached the dangerous looking stranger without paying any kind of price for his recklessness. Levels of conversations rose above a whisper, there were sincere smiles on some faces and occasionally a burst of laughter sounded. Only the tobacco grower from Carolina - who had caused the uneasiness to evaporate - found himself experiencing a disconcerting anxiety about the tall, taciturn westerner. ‘Been here long?’
‘Business trip?’
‘Way it started out.’
It was evident that the man now wanted to detach himself from the half-breed, was doubtless regretting the impulse which had caused him to make the approach. He had run out of openings for conversation and now searched his mind for an excuse to leave.
He gulped down his liquor and said hurriedly: ‘Well, it’s been nice talking to you, sir. Sorry we couldn’t do business. Have yourself a good trip back west.’
‘It has to be better than the trip east,’ Edge answered, without looking at the tobacco grower as the man set down his empty shot glass on the counter top and swung around, took a first step toward the door which turned out to be his last voluntary action in life.
The report of the gunshot which killed him cut sharply across the sounds of discreet happiness which filled the barroom and instantly silenced them.
Edge dropped his almost empty glass and it hit the counter without breaking, but then rolled and shattered as it fell to the floor. The half-breed had turned by then, in a gunfighter’s crouch, the Remington clear of the holster and cocked, muzzle raking across the room toward the point from which the killing shot had been fired. The piercing blue eyes, glinting in the light from the overhead chandeliers, moved ahead of the Remington’s barrel on the same arc. To glimpse the shocked face of a young man who stood transfixed in the open doorway of the barroom, seemingly frozen for part of a second in the act of pushing a still smoking Frontier Colt between the lapels of his fastened topcoat. Then the killer, who had blond hair and crooked, widely spaced teeth, made to bring the gun out from his coat again, but realized he had no chance of dropping a man who was only a split second away from drawing a bead on him. So he changed his plan, plunging the Colt into whatever kind of holster he wore under the coat, at the same time as he whirled and lunged to the side, out of the doorway.
The man from Carolina had ceased to twitch by then, had hit the floor under the half-breed’s outstretched gun arm, started to roll forward on to his face, bounced against Edge’s boots and ankles had been tipped over on to his back, limbs spread-eagled. Bright red, arterial blood from the wound in the left side of his neck was no longer being spurted out by heartbeats. Instead, it oozed at a rate which slowed with each moment that slipped silently into history in the totally still, shock-filled atmosphere of the barroom. Then every pair of widened eyes shifted their gaze from the doorway to the corpse and then switched between the impassive face of Edge and the Remington fisted in his brown-skinned hand. At the same time as the doorway, which gave on to the spacious lobby of the hotel, became filled with people anxious to see the result of the gunshot.
‘I’m the manager!’ a man called, shrill and angry and frightened. ‘I’m the manager! Let me through! Let me through here, please!’
The crowd in the doorway was forced to part to allow entrance into the barroom for a middle-aged, impeccably dressed man who seemed caught between the urge to sob and the need to faint. He came to a sudden halt and stared at the corpse sprawled at the feet of Edge as the half-breed drew back his arm to slide the Remington back into the holster.
The manager covered his gaping mouth with both hands and spoke through his pressed together fingers as Edge straightened up from the half crouch which he had instinctively assumed at the sound of a gunshot.
‘Mr. Powell! You’ve killed Mr. Powell?’
‘No, feller,’ Edge answered.
‘He’s not dead?’ The distraught manager of the hotel experienced a stab of hope.
‘He’s dead all right, Quinn,’ an evening-dressed customer confirmed in a growling tone. ‘This guy means he didn’t kill him.’
‘The murderer escaped through the lobby, Mr. Quinn,’ a woman added. ‘I saw him.’
‘So did I.’
‘Me, too!’
‘A kid with yellow hair and...’
Quinn held up both hands to silence the babble of voices. ‘All right, all right, ladies and gentlemen! Please all remain exactly where you are. I’ll have the police brought here.’
He turned around quickly and this time did not have to fight his way through the crowd in the doorway. They allowed him through without fuss, eager to have an uninterrupted view of the new corpse. With a single exception, everyone complied with Quinn’s order to remain seated or standing where they had been at the time of the shooting. The man who ignored the instruction was the one in evening dress who had explained Edge’s ambiguous response to the manager’s question. He broke away from the group of three similarly attired men with whom he had been drinking and advanced on the corpse - dropped down on to his haunches to look closely at the no longer blood-flowing neck wound. Then, still squatting, he looked up the towering length of the half-breed’s frame.
‘Something you want, feller?’
The man came erect, almost as tall as Edge but much thinner. About thirty, pasty-faced and tired-eyed, with an unruly mop of blond hair.
‘Mason Dickens, New York Daily Globe? he introduced. ‘You know something? If that guy hadn’t been stepping around the back of you, the bullet would have got you right between the shoulder blades.’
Silence had descended on the barroom again, so that the newspaperman’s words carried to every ear.
Edge swung toward the bar and looked at the tender closest to him. ‘Another whiskey, feller. I’ll need a fresh glass.’
The man gulped. ‘Certainly, sir.’
‘I’ll buy that,’ Dickens said, delving a hand into his pants pocket.
But the half-breed was first to place a heap of loose change on the counter top. ‘I pay my way, feller.’
‘Suit yourself.’
&nbs
p; ‘Usually do.’
‘You already figured out that shot was meant for you, uh?’
‘Sure thing.’
‘So maybe you know who the killer was?’
‘Not yet,’ Edge answered and swallowed the bourbon as he heard raised voices out in the lobby. He scooped up the change which the bartender had left on the counter and tipped it back into his pocket.
‘You’re not a very talkative guy, are you?’ Dickens muttered, disgruntled as he looked balefully toward the two frock-coated and glazed capped police patrolmen who entered the barroom ahead of the anxious faced Quinn.
Voices were raised again, as witnesses to the murder competed with each other to give their accounts to the policemen. But the uniformed men were not interested. One of them left to report to his superiors while the other sought to quieten the excited chatter as he closed the doors on the curious bystanders who had not seen the shooting. Under cover of the noise Dickens leaned close to talk fast to Edge.
‘Listen, if you mean what I think you do, I can help you. A reporter has to have contacts to do his job. And in a city the size of New York you’re going to need help to find the kid with blond hair.’
‘What do you need, feller?’ Edge asked, taking out the makings from his shirt pocket and starting to roll a cigarette.
‘A damn good exclusive story that’ll make my editor sit up and take notice of me. What do you say?’
‘I’m not the talkative type,’ Edge reminded with a bleak grin.
Dickens showed a fleeting smile that gave his sleepy eyes a more alert look. ‘Because you’re the kind that figures actions speak louder than words?’
The half-breed’s mouthline became re-set into narrow-lipped cruelty as his face lost all traces of the former grin and he struck a match on the counter front and fired the cigarette. He looked down at the corpse. ‘Far as I know, nobody ever got talked to death, feller,’ he muttered. ‘But I’ve seen lots like him.’
‘Like Powell?’ Dickens asked as the barroom became quiet again and the patrolman advanced on the half-breed and reporter with the stiffening cadaver at their feet
EDGE: WAITING FOR A TRAIN (Edge series Book 30) Page 1
