Lincoln paused, for breath rather than to allow time for an unnecessary answer. ‘So the decent and honest men who are involved in running New York want this gang war settled fast and as cleanly as possible. And can’t trust their own police force to handle it. So they asked for secret Federal help which is why I and my men came up from Washington.’
‘Only way to keep a secret is not to tell anyone,’ Edge murmured, as eager as his horse to be on the move but staying because of Lincoln’s earlier mentions of the old Kansas killing. The government man ignored the remark. ‘We got here in time to learn something of what was going to happen out at that railroad town in Kansas. And when we saw what happened we got the idea. One big battle, engineered in a way and at a place where we can exercise some control. Let the bastards fight it out. It’s too much to hope that they’ll wipe each other out. But there’s a good chance one bunch will massacre the other.’
The half-breed showed a cold grin that had a vaguely mocking quality in the way the lips curled back from the even, white teeth. ‘You’ve been reading too many dime western novels, feller.’
Lincoln shook his head. ‘Most interesting thing I’ve read lately is an old wanted poster.’
‘With a picture of a feller named Hedges who died a long time ago.’
‘Amnesty, Edge. With a new flyer going out to every law office in the Union stating the charge against you has been dropped. And to get that you don’t have to do very much more than what Boss Black asked, I’d guess.’
‘Kill Emilio Marlon?’ A nod. ‘And let his boys think I took up Black’s deal?’
‘That’s just the little more you have to do.’ ‘The decent city fathers like the Negro better than the Italian, uh?’
A shrug. ‘Just the way the breaks have come. Marlon’s gunning for you because he thinks you were on Black’s side out in Kansas. And he probably knows Black helped you out in the alley earlier tonight. So it won’t be too hard for his men - especially that snotnose godson of his - to believe you’re still working for the Negro.’
Edge pursed his lips.
‘What about it, mister?’ Lincoln urged insistently. ‘It’s a powder keg just waiting for the fuse to be lit. But we can’t take the risk of Washington being caught with the lighted match. What we can do is bring some indirect pressure to bear on the local law if they try to collar you. So you’ve got nothing to lose and everything to gain by doing what you plan to do anyway. But doing it Uncle Sam’s way. Which is to make sure Luigi Orlando believes you’re working for the Negro.’
‘The godson and godfather are pretty close, uh?’
‘Related, even. Orlando’s the Boss’s nephew.’
‘Just like me and my Uncle Sam,’ Edge murmured sardonically, lifting the reins from around the saddle-horn.
Lincoln showed a humorless smile. ‘Makes it a sort of family affair.’
The half-breed clucked to the eager horse and heeled him into an immediate canter. He growled to himself: ‘With all the outsiders thinking I’m a Black hand.’
CHAPTER SEVEN
WHILE they had been waiting for the ferry to dock at the slipway, Edge had asked Lincoln where exactly on the island Emilio Marlon lived and the government man had supplied the information freely. In a colonial-style mansion on the southeast shore of the island set in an estate surrounded on three sides by a ten-feet high stone wall with Lower New York Bay beyond grassy sand dunes guarding it on the unwalled side.
By following the directions the government man had given him, the half-breed travelled for the most part along open trails flanked by pastureland. Just occasionally riding through small towns that looked peaceful and prosperous. Places where the more fortunate men forced to work in the city could return at night and at weekends to rest and breathe air permeated with the pleasant scents of the ocean and countryside. The kind of places - similar in some respects to certain Western towns Edge had passed through - where a man who was unshaven, dressed in workaday clothing and with the knowledge of blood on his hands could feel at ill-at-ease. If that man had once had ambition to live a quiet life in a freshly painted frame house with lace curtains hung at the clean windows standing in a neatly kept garden enclosed by a picket fence in a good state of repair.
But on a night like this one, when his mind was filled with the prospect of killing an enemy, Edge had neither the time nor the inclination to consider with bitter regret what might have been. For all that mattered was what was to be.
It was after midnight when he reached the point where two lengths of high wall met at a right angle. And fifteen minutes later at the horse’s walking pace when he reached the double wrought iron gates set into the wall. He saw the woman sitting on the grassy knoll to one side of the gateway long before he had ridden close enough to attract her attention. There was something eagerly hopeful in her attitude as she watched his approach. But the way he sat the gelding and his impassive face under the brim of his hat lessened the fire of her enthusiasm when he halted the horse a few feet from her and she got to her feet.
She was about twenty, with a pretty face framed by long, jet black hair. Short and full-bodied, the generosity of her curves shown by the tight fit of the bodice of the white dress she wore. A dress that had been ripped at the centre of the neckline so that instead of displaying just the top halves of her breast, it also revealed the full depth and length of the valley between them. She made no attempt at false modesty by holding the fabric of the dress together.
‘This the place where Emilio Marlon hangs out too, ma’am,’ the half-breed asked, touching the brim of his hat.
‘You got the right place, mister,’ the woman answered sourly. ‘Turned out to be the wrong one for me. Tonight. Guess you ain’t in the mood to sell me that horse?’
Edge eyed her reflectively from head to toe. ‘Dressed like that, I guess you carry money in your garters.’
She shook her head. ‘I don’t have no money. That’s why you have to be in the mood. All I got to pay you with is me. Name’s Belle.’
‘Get called Liberty Belle, I figure.’
‘I ain’t anybody’s!’ she flung back at him.
‘But you got to have a crack,’ he answered, swinging down from the gelding and leading the horse by the bridle over to where the iron gates met at the centre under a curved stone arch.
‘Ain’t locked, mister,’ Belle offered, calming her irritation with him and attempting to repair any damage she may have done. ‘But you better have been invited. Nobody goes in there unless they’re invited. There oughta be a sign on the gates. Saying: KEEP OUT, SURVIVORS WILL BE PROSICUTED. The people in there ain’t friendly.’
The half-breed tested the simple latch and discovered it lifted easily. ‘You got a torn dress, ma’am,’ he said. ‘But your hide looks in good shape.’
The woman sagged down on to the knoll again, placed her bent elbows on her splayed thighs and rested her chin in her cupped hands. ‘I’m lucky, I guess. Work at one of Lu Orlando’s houses. Lu brought me out here into the sticks to a party. Party! Gees! Him and his uncle got into an argument and that creep Marlon started to take it out on me. Wasn’t for Lu, I don’t know what. Got thrown outta the house. But nobody told the dumb guards that look out for people not supposed to be the other side of the wall. Twice I almost got shot. I been waitin’ here more than an hour for Lu to show.’
She had started out replying to Edge’s comment but then had begun talking to try to release some of her pent up bad feelings for Marlon and Orlando. It was obvious she was not the smartest whore in New York and was too involved with her own position to consider that she was revealing information that might get her killed. It was almost as if she had forgotten somebody was listening to her, for she looked up with a start when Edge tapped her on the bare shoulder. Then she flashed a bright smile and rose quickly to her feet when he held the reins of the gelding toward her.
‘Need a favor, ma’am. Not one of the kind you trade in.’
Her happiness waned faster than
it had waxed. ‘You ain’t supposed to be here, are you, mister? If it wasn’t that way, you’d just ride up to the house and to hell with the guards.’
The half-breed pointed a brown-skinned finger toward a stand of sycamores fifty feet back from the gateway on the other side of the dirt road. ‘You take him over there and wait with him until I come out. Then I’ll return the favor. Let you ride with me back to the ferry town.’
She was no longer merely dejected. Nervous anxiety showed in every line of her face. ‘What if Lu comes out first?’
‘Didn’t bother you when you were ready to trade a ride for a ride.’
She searched for another route of escape. ‘What if you don’t come out?’
‘Give it to sun-up, ma’am. Then take the horse back to town. He belongs at the Carter Livery. Feller there wanted me to leave money. More than the rental. Told him my word was better than money. Hate to have to break it.’
‘What’ll it matter if you don’t come out, mister?’ Belle said morosely. ‘That’ll mean you’re dead.’
Edge showed her a bleak grin that curled back his lips from his teeth but failed to add warmth to the glittering slits of his eyes. ‘I been told I’ve got haunting looks, ma’am,’ he said as he turned and moved toward the gates.
He waited there, watching as the whore started to walk miserably out across the road in the direction of the timber, after tugging angrily on the reins to stir the gelding into movement. Then he went under the arch and closed the gates softly behind him.
A gravel road curved this way and that through unspoiled terrain of rises and hollows liberally featured with trees and brush which grew naturally. For perhaps a quarter mile. Then the twenty-foot wide gravel ran straight as an arrow between perfectly flat, close cropped areas of seeded lawn broken by flowerbeds, ponds and clumps of exotic shrubs, finished at a large circle of gravel fronting the two storey, two winged house which was about a half mile from the gateway. Two windows of the house showed light, both of them to the right of the pillared porch. The soft glow which filtered out through the curtains fell across a carriage with a pair of horses in the traces which was parked on the turning area. Wood smoke rose from a chimney, pale against the dark clouds, adding a faint familiar scent to the damp, salty air which the ocean breeze wafted across the big estate.
The lawns looked like dark colored expanses of velvet in the dim moonlight, smooth and unsullied by the booted feet of men. Certainly nobody moved across them now, the guards the whore had spoken of either in the cover of the house or the trees. To the south and north the tree line advanced closer to the mansion than at the west facing front and the half-breed elected to go to his right, his hand hanging close to but not touching the butt of the holstered Remington. He placed his feet lightly in the long, lush meadow grass, eyes constantly moving in their slitted sockets and ears strained to pick up sounds made by men who had no reason to be as cautious as he.
He was in back of the house, heading for the end of a stable block, when he heard soft-spoken voices and altered his course to move toward their source. He did not halt until he was in the deep shadow of a leafy oak tree from where he could see one man and listen to the talk of two. One standing outside a door in the stable wall, midway along the block. The second on the other side of the door. The bad smell which the salt breeze just failed to mask made it evident that there was a latrine on the other side of the door.
‘Breasts like friggin’ melons, Rico. Wouldn’t you say that’s what she had?’
‘Yes, I would say that, Mario.’
‘And he kicks her out’
‘Yes, he kicked her out.’
The man outside was the one who was enthusiastic as he talked about Belle. A short, olive-skinned man with a wiry build dressed in dark pants, dark shirt and dark vest. Tieless, the collar of the shirt unfastened. With a revolver in a holster under his left armpit. And a repeater rifle canted to his right shoulder.
The man in the latrine agreed with him in the dull tones of somebody with something else on his mind.
‘But Mr. Marlon.’ The man outside leaned against the wall and sighed. ‘What is one more woman to him?’
‘Yes, what is one more woman?’ the man inside agreed. And broke wind. Then emptied his bowels with a sound like the first torrent of a flash storm.
Mario grinned, as if sharing Rico’s pleasure in gaining relief. Then voiced a low curse and grimaced when he caught the stench. He moved along the rear of the stable block, rested his rifle against the wall and took out a tailor-made cigarette and a match. When he turned to strike the match on the stone wall, Edge powered into four long strides which took him into a clump of shrubs at the angle of the rear and side walls of the stable.
The two Italians were talking again, their voices louder now that Mario had retreated from the stronger smell coming out of the latrine. Making crude jokes about the reason for Rico’s diarrhea. Then the man outside began to get irritably impatient and their exchanges grew heated, spoken in their native tongue.
Under cover of the bickering, the half-breed used the vines of a strongly growing climbing plant to reach the shallow pitched roof of the stable block and inched along on hands and knees until he was immediately above where Mario stood, the aromatic smoke from his cigarette marking the Italian’s position.
He eased the Remington from his holster and waited until Mario had finished talking and Rico was launched into a defensive response. Then he leaned forward, over the eaves of the stable block roof, and swung the revolver, hand fisted around the barrel so that the base of the butt crashed against the crown of Mario’s head. The man groaned softly and corkscrewed to the ground.
Edge landed on the soft grass a moment later, while Rico was still talking. And worked fast, jerking off the pants of the unconscious man and using them to tie up Mario, one leg around his ankles and the other lashing the wrists. He used the razor to cut off a sleeve of the man’s shirt and this formed a tightly fastened gag.
Rico had become anxious by now, the tone of the foreign words he spoke revealing that he was calling questions, asking Mario why he had gone quiet.
Edge took Mario’s Colt from the shoulder holster and hurled it twenty yards into a thickly planted flowerbed. Then holstered his own hand-gun, picked up the Winchester and advanced on the door of the latrine. Reached it just as it was flung open and Rico emerged, still fastening the front of his pants while he vented vehement Italian curses. He came to a sudden halt, curtailed what he was saying and raised his head to show a terrified expression as the muzzle of the rifle prodded his belly.
He was in the same early thirties age group as Mario. But taller and more thick set. And wore a suit jacket, bulging under the left armpit. His rifle was held loose in the crook of his arm slid out easily when Edge tugged at the barrel. The stench from behind him seemed to have a palpable presence in the darkness of the latrine.
‘Mario?’ Rico croaked.
‘He’ll live, feller,’ the half-breed replied, backing off and moving his head to indicate the Italian should advance at the same pace. ‘You want to share in his luck?’
Rico stepped outside the latrine and looked toward where the trussed up Mario lay. Edge threw the spare rifle through the open doorway. It landed with a dull splash, as if in soft mud.
‘What do you want?’ Rico had recovered from the initial shock and no longer seemed so frightened. He had pulled back his shoulders and spread a hard expression across his dark-skinned, finely cut features.
‘Answers to questions. Like how many more like you are in and around the house?’
‘I will tell you nothing!’ Rasping and defiant.
Edge sighed, drew back the rifle a few inches, then thrust it forward. The muzzle thudded into Rico’s belly and the Italian groaned his pain and bent from the waist, clutching with both hands at the source of his agony. The half-breed side stepped, raised the rifle and brought the barrel down across the nape of the man’s neck.
Rico was not unconscious. Bu
t stunned enough so that he had no control over his muscles. Edge had time to dispose of the second rifle in the same manner as the first, then catch the Italian before he pitched to the ground, drag him around and haul him by the slack at the back of his jacket into the darkness of the latrine. Smell guided the half-breed to the lip of the trench which ran along the rear of the place where he stooped beside Rico and made a more secure prisoner of him by pressing a knee hard into the small of the man’s back. Rico coughed and gagged toward a recovery as his head was forced over the side of the trench so that his face was only an inch or so above the slime of human excrement.
Edge had to fight his own urge toward nausea as his nostrils filled with the evil stench. ‘Same question, feller.’
Rico tried to struggle but he was already weakened by the two blows from the rifle and the foul atmosphere threatened to put him completely out.
‘Just Mario and me in the garden,’ he croaked. ‘Two more guards in the house.’
‘Other people?’
‘Mr. Marlon and Mr. Orlando.’
‘I know about them Servants?’
‘Just women. Cook and three maids. Get me out of here! I’m going to be...’
He showered vomit into the trench, to add a new equally foul smell to the thick atmosphere. And continued to retch, marking his trail with the contents of his stomach as Edge dragged him back into the fresh, open air. He lay exhausted and fighting for breath while the half-breed took the revolver from the shoulder holster and tossed it into the latrine before closing the door. He abandoned his attempt at ineffectual struggle and had to be content with muttering soft and venomous Italian curses as he was tied up in the same way as Mario. Edge had to cut away the jacket sleeve to reach the shirt.
EDGE: WAITING FOR A TRAIN (Edge series Book 30) Page 8
