EDGE: WAITING FOR A TRAIN (Edge series Book 30)

by George G. Gilman

  Rico became as silent as the half-breed but expressed total misery in contrast to Edge’s confident determination as the razor was replaced in the pouch. Then he groaned: ‘You might just as well kill me. Mario, too. Mr. Marlon will have us executed for this failure.’

  Edge lowered the gag toward the vomit-run mouth of the Italian. ‘Aim to kill Marlon, feller,’ he said. ‘What this is all about.’

  Rico squeezed his eyes closed, as if to prevent tears from spilling. ‘Then Orlando. Orlando is worse.’

  Edge laid the gag across the mouth to force the whispering voice into silence, then jerked up the man’s head and knotted the silken fabric tightly at the back of the neck. ‘Seems I dropped you in the shit anyway,’ he muttered.

  Rico snapped open his eyes and for a moment they expressed horror at a vivid memory which crowded into his mind. Then hopelessness filled the eyes.

  Edge looked from Rico to Mario and back, both men trussed up with their own trousers. ‘Just not your night, is it? You and your partner both. You’re bound to be caught with your pants down.’

  CHAPTER EIGHT

  CERTAIN that the unfortunate Rico had told him the truth about the number of people inside and outside of the house, Edge altered his plan of approach to the place. He abandoned his intention of entering secretly through the rear and instead moved in on the front. Stealthily at first, setting his booted feet down lightly on the gravel as he crossed the area where the carriage was parked, the two-horse team standing quietly in the traces. He ignored the big, nail studded oak door at the top of the broad flight of entrance steps and moved through the shrubbery to first one lighted window and then the next.

  Both were in the same room, hung with lacy curtains that allowed him a blurred view of the furnishings, decor and the two men who were surrounded by luxury. A high ceilinged room with many paintings hung on the encrusted papered walls. The floor was covered with deep pile carpet. The many pieces of furniture were of dark-stained, highly polished hardwood, the easy chairs deeply padded.

  The men sat in two such chairs, one either side of a large fireplace with a grate which was piled with unlit logs. The brandy balloons they held glinted with the many facets of crystal in the light from a chandelier which hung from the centre of the molded ceiling. They were not talking as Edge peered into the room, but the expressions on their faces gave a clear indication of the pattern their earlier conversation had taken. The older man had been bawling out the younger and now the former was trying to calm his temper while the latter continued to smart from the tongue-lashing.

  Emilio Marlon was about sixty years old, short and thickset with silver grey hair that served to emphasize the Latin coloration of his wrinkled skin. His face was handsome and distinguished the features square-cut and suggesting great strength of character. He was freshly shaven and groomed, attired in formal evening dress.

  His nephew was similarly well turned out. Tall and slender and thus vastly different in build from his uncle. He was also handsome, but although Orlando was in his mid-thirties there was a certain immaturity in the composition of his features. His skin was smooth and despite the olive tones of his heritage somehow had a pasty look to it, as if he seldom exposed himself to sunlight. Only vaguely in the angles of his profile did he bear a family resemblance to his uncle. His hair was jet black, slicked down with pomade and had thinned to give him a high forehead.

  He sipped at his brandy as though it were a bad-tasting medicine. Then choked on it as glass shattered and lengths of timber snapped. The shockingly loud sounds made by the half-breed as he hurled himself sideways-on through one of the high many-paned windows. Edge’s left shoulder took the brunt of the impact as he sprung up from a half crouch, chin tucked down on his chest, hat at an angle to protect his face from flying glass. Then his thighs and knees were jarred as he folded his legs to enlarge the hole. He kept his hands deep in the pockets of his coat until he was in mid-air and dropping to the carpet through the billowing lace curtain and the shower of glass shards. Then, as he hit the floor on his side, he jerked his right knee free, drew the Remington and rolled over once before coming up into a crouch, gun aimed at Emilio Marlon.

  ‘Don’t they have doors in those wide open Western spaces, Edge?’ the crime boss asked, sounding as if his composure had not been shaken by a part of degree by the half-breed’s violent entrance.

  Edge straightened to his full height, gun steady but narrowed eyes flicking between the two men at either side of the fireplace and the closed double doors that obviously gave access to the room from the hallway. Footfalls were thudding toward the other side of the doors.

  There was no interruption of the cadence as the running men hit the doors, bursting them open and slamming them back against the wall to either side. Like Edge, they used their left shoulders to force entrance into the room: but they had then-guns already drawn.

  Marlon made no move nor uttered any sound to issue an order. Would probably not have had time to convey even a hint of his wishes to the men, anyway. For, as the shirt-sleeved, food-chewing man saw the intruder and skidded to a halt on the threshold of the room, their gun hands swung and their trigger fingers became taut and white.

  The instinct to protect Boss Marlon was too strong to allow time for thought. And so they did not even spare a glance toward the fireplace to check for that hint. A man was in the room and had no right to be there. A man they doubtless recognized as an enemy of Emilio Marlon. A man who had somehow got past them and their partners to force a way in.

  Edge shot one through the heart a split second before both men fired their Colts. And dropped down on to his haunches to explode a shot at the second. This took the man in the right shoulder and spun him. The injured man had time to cock his Colt and start to bring it back to the aim before a third bullet from the Remington drilled through his neck. He gargled on his blood as he staggered to the side, bounced off the jamb and collapsed across the body of his partner in the doorway. Both Colts continued to be gripped by the dead hands of the corpses. The bullets they had exploded were lodged at angles into the plaster at the side of the smashed window.

  ‘There are doors everywhere, feller,’ the half-breed muttered, straightening up again and resuming his aim at Marlon. Trouble is, you can never tell what’s on the other side of them. You can see what I mean?’

  The advent of sudden death into his luxurious surroundings had pierced Marlon’s veneer of calmness. But, whereas Orlando was more frightened than ever, the older man was gripped by an intense rage. He tried to raise the balloon glass to his lips to take some brandy, but his grip tightened suddenly and the crystal broke, dropping shards, liquor and blood from his hand into his lap. The man looked down at this, then at his hand. And in the few seconds of time this took, he brought himself under control.

  ‘And to think that I have just been berating my godson for trying to have you killed,’ he said softly.

  Of all the obviously Italian men the half-breed had come across since becoming involved with the New York crime boss, Emilio Marlon revealed least about his heritage with the spoken word. His voice was virtually free of any accent.

  ‘Uncle I told you...’

  ‘Shut you mouth, Luigi!’ Marlon cut in on his nervous nephew, his tone biting.

  ‘You’re not just trying to talk your way back from the grave are you, feller?’ Edge posed, conscious that to anyone outside he would be a fine target in silhouette against the light. So he moved away from the window to put his back to the wall. In a position where he could watch both men at the fireplace and also had a clear view of the doorway with two corpses sprawled atop each other on the threshold. There was no reason not to continue to trust what Rico had told him. But it could be that the female servants in the house were as fanatically loyal to Marlon as the bodyguards had been.

  The net curtains billowed slightly in stray breezes which curved around the sides and front of the house from the ocean. No sounds advanced into the room from the lighted hallway beyon
d where the bodies lay.

  Marlon shook his head. ‘Not with lies. I do not lie. Perhaps would only consider doing so in order to protect my godson, who I love very dearly.’ He sucked at the several small cuts in the palm of his hand while he carefully picked splinters of glass from his lap and tossed them delicately on to the unlit logs in the grate.

  ‘Uncle!’ Orlando gasped. He had thrown the brandy down his throat in one and it had failed to steady his nerves. He looked paler than ever and on the verge of a paroxysm of trembling.

  ‘Hold your tongue, my boy,’ Marlon ordered with less vehemence than before. Then looked questioningly at Edge, ‘In a situation where life is cheap there has to be some other currency of value.’

  ‘You’re gonna buy him off!’ Orlando blurted, relief flooding across his soft, strangely younger than its years face.

  Marlon sighed, then with one glance from eyes that were briefly cold and hard drove his nephew back into fear. ‘With a man such as this,’ he said, looking at and talking about the half-breed, ‘It cannot be money. For this man cannot be bought. So I suggest truth.’

  The older man’s dark eyes requested a sign of agreement from Edge, who kept the Remington aimed at its new target of Luigi Orlando but provided a response of sorts by not squeezing the trigger.

  ‘The boy thinks as highly of me as I of him,’ Marlon went on. ‘He was seeking only to please me by arranging for you to be killed.’

  The ‘boy’ of at least thirty-five years old gasped.

  ‘Thoughtful of him,’ the half-breed growled sardonically.

  Marlon nodded, but his expression made it a negative gesture. ‘In one sense of the word, yes. But in another, Luigi did not think at all. He is inclined to be impetuous. There are many who continue to have this fault far beyond the years of youth.’

  He looked pointedly toward the billowing curtains and the broken glass and splintered pieces of window frame below.

  ‘It ain’t me you have to make excuses for, feller,’ Edge said.

  ‘Quite true,’ Marlon agreed. ‘Luigi, bring me another brandy. I’ll need a fresh glass.’

  Orlando looked fearfully toward the tall, lean, slit eyed man who was aiming a cocked revolver at him.

  ‘Do as I tell you, boy.’ Marlon insisted. ‘He will not harm you. Nor me. If he wishes to live to see another day.’

  ‘That a boast or a truth, feller?’ Edge asked.

  ‘If we do not deal in truth, this conversation is pointless.’ He nodded to his godson, who rose cautiously from the thickly upholstered chair and moved across the room to where some decanters and glasses were set out on a wheeled table. Orlando did not shift his anxious gaze away from the half-breed until he had to concentrate on pouring brandy from a decanter into a balloon. Edge tracked his moves with the gun. ‘You have killed four of my men tonight,’ Marlon continued.

  ‘Five,’ Edge corrected.

  Confusion threatened the older man’s composure. ‘These two. Mario and...’

  ‘These two plus three aboard the ferry. The two outside are lying down. They won’t need laying out.’

  ‘On the ferry?’ Marlon snapped, and held off accepting the fresh drink from Orlando as if he feared his new rage might cause him to break another glass. Then he controlled himself and nodded for his godson to resume his seat. He took a sip of the brandy. ‘Those men were not looking for you to kill you. They had a message to give you.’

  ‘I never got it.’

  ‘Because you never gave them a chance?’

  ‘Just didn’t want to be on the receiving end of anything fellers like that might have in mind to give me.’

  Another sigh, to signal that Marlon had calmed himself. ‘In view of what happened earlier, I can understand your attitude. I should have thought of that aspect and kept Franco and the others here at the house. Spoken to you personally as I am now.’ He shook his head, his face showing an expression of regret, whether for the deaths of his men or his own error of judgment, it was impossible to say. ‘Those three. Peasants. No finesse.’ He glanced at the two dead men on the threshold of the room and then at Orlando, including them in the point he was making. ‘It would perhaps have been better for all of them if they had remained in Sicily to grow grapes for the wine.’

  Edge briefly recalled the deadly cat and mouse game aboard the lumbering ferry and experienced no sense of regret over the triple killing. Boss Marlon’s men had looked nothing at all like message bringers. If a mistake had been made, they had made it.

  ‘We’ve got the dead head count right, feller,’ the half-breed said. ‘You want to pick up where you left off about why this feller shouldn’t be numbered among them?’

  Orlando clutched tightly at the padded arms of the chair and stared hopelessly toward the liquor-laden table.

  ‘Yes, of course. Truth rather than opinions. You were partially responsible for the slaughter of the men I sent to obtain a valuable objet fart which is now in the possession of that nigger Black.’

  He paused, expecting an interruption from Edge. Perhaps a denial. But the half-breed did Lincoln a favor of saying nothing.

  ‘When I heard of what had happened and of your involvement I was not happy. Not happy at all. And when I am not happy, everyone who is close to me knows of it. Unfortunately, not everyone who is close to me has learned that I prefer to deal with my own troubles in my own way.’

  He directed a damning glare toward his godson, who pressed himself further back into the deep armchair. And Orlando remained in his cringing attitude for several seconds after the older man had directed his attention back toward Edge.

  ‘And that nigger and the men who do his dirty work are a great trouble to me. Which I intend to deal with in my own time and in my own way. And my way of dealing with trouble is to attack the root of it Not lop off unimportant branches, one at a time. In the bars of hotels and back alleys.’

  Orlando was in receipt of another withering glare and reacted in the same way as before.

  ‘No offence intended,’ Marlon assured Edge. ‘But in terms of what is happening in New York, a single fast gun from Texas is a snap of the fingers.’

  He snapped his fingers.

  ‘Iowa, feller,’ Edge said.

  ‘What?’

  ‘I’ve been to Texas, is all. I was born and bred in Iowa.’

  ‘No matter.’

  ‘It does to me.’

  ‘All right!’ Marlon snarled impatiently. ‘I apologize for the mistake.’

  Edge nodded toward Orlando. ‘It’s his mistake we’re talking about.’

  ‘Not so much a mistake as an error of judgment, I think. Much as the one you made in killing my men on the ferry from Manhattan. Luigi knew I was very angry about what happened and when he heard that the man called Edge was in New York he thought he would be doing me a favor by arranging for your execution. Now, since we are speaking the truth, I will admit that if he had succeeded, I would undoubtedly have been pleased with him. But all he has achieved is to get two of his own and five of my men killed. Which will stir up public anger about slaughter on the streets and cause the city police to…’

  ‘Your problem,’ the half-breed put in. ‘Mine ain’t so big. But a lot more important. To me.’

  ‘You will not solve it by putting a bullet in my godson, Edge!’ Marlon said with heavy menace. ‘Which I do not think you want to do in any case. What I think you want is the taste of revenge and then to get back out to Texas or Iowa or where-ever.’

  ‘I got simple tastes,’ Edge allowed.

  ‘Then they have been satisfied, I would say!’ Marlon came back quickly, with a glint of triumph in his dark eyes. ‘The lives of seven men in payment for two failed attempts on your own. It is not a bargain I am entirely happy with, but if you are prepared to accept it, I will put my seal on it. Give you my word of honor that if there are any other threats to your life before you leave New York, they will not be as a result of orders issued by me - or anyone close to me.’

  Orlando
had just gotten over the shock of hearing his godfather talk about Edge putting a bullet into him. Now he swallowed hard again and fresh sweat beaded his forehead as the cold, hard eyes of Marlon stared at him. The expression on the older man’s face did not alter at all when he swung his attention back to the half-breed.

  ‘What is the alternative? For you to kill Luigi to sweeten your revenge. Then to kill me because you know I would then become a threat to you. Two valid reasons for a man like you to kill. But you are not sure how valid they are in this instance, are you? Or else you would have gunned us down as you came through the window. Or even have shot us from outside. You needed this talk to make up your mind. And if it is not yet made up, I will repeat what I told you earlier. If you wish to live and see another sunrise, then you will leave this house without further violence. Because if you don’t you’ll become a target for every man who works for my organization. And that’s a whole lot of men, cowboy!’

  As Marlon warmed to his subject, so his cultured accent suffered, he contracted words and his voice held undertones of his Italian extraction. He abruptly became aware of this and while he paused it was almost possible to see the effort in his face as he struggled to calm his feelings.

  ‘But nobody is perfect,’ he went on, now sounding well-bred and well-read again. ‘My judgment of you is based upon what I have heard about you and this brief time I have seen you. So it could be unsound. Perhaps you did not come here for personal reasons. Maybe you are still in the pay of the nigger. In which event you run the risk of Black having you killed for making this deal with me.’

  He smiled and the expression gave him the look of some well-fed animal of prey content to pass up the chance of an easy capture. A patronizing smile.