To anyone who happened to glance out of one of the thousands of windows in the hundreds of tall buildings, he would look like nothing more than a weary, unwashed, unshaven and oddly-dressed-for-the-city man riding easily toward a destination he was in no hurry to reach.
The glinting eyes that swung to and fro between the narrowed lids searched for the unknown agents of identifiable enemies. Gilpatrick’s officers who Dickens had said were looking for him. The hired guns of Marlon and Orlando who might be guarding against the eventuality that Rod Kirkby had failed again. Boss Black’s men because there was a chance the Negro could feel he had been double-crossed. And government men because Lincoln might consider that, outside his control, the half-breed was capable of doing more harm than good.
But he saw no one on the ride from Delancy Street to the Silver Lady Bar between 54th and 55th on Park. He found his way there easily, for this city he had grown to hate had one thing going for it - the numbering rather than naming of most of the streets and avenues enabled a stranger to find his way about without difficulty.
After he had dismounted a block down from the pool of gaslight that illuminated the whorehouse sign and started to walk north, a drizzling rain began to fall. And several nearby clocks struck the single note to mark the time as one in the morning. He pulled his hat lower down over his brow and turned up the collar of his topcoat. He did not have to check that the right side of the coat was rucked up, allowing his hand easy access to the butt of the Remington jutting from the holster.
Directly across the avenue from the whorehouse a new building was in the course of erection. The bricks were laid to second storey level, but without frames or glasses in the windows yet. Above this was the skeleton framework of iron girders rising to the seventh storey. Many long ladders zig-zagged up through the vertical girders to reach the horizontal ones.
When Edge had come to the whorehouse earlier, men had still been working on the building and the cement they had been laying was not yet dry. The smell of it was strong in the rain washed air as he turned off the sidewalk and started down the steps to the basement entrance of the Silver Lady Bar. Light filtered out through the colored panes of circular glass in the swing doors. He could hear no noise from beyond. Certainly nobody was playing the piano now. He pushed open the doors like they were batwings at the entrance to a frontier town saloon and stepped across the threshold: right hand close to the butt of the revolver but not touching it.
Some twenty men were doing more than merely touching their guns. They had their hands fisted around the butts of cocked Frontier Colts, aiming the short-barrel revolvers at Edge as the half-breed came to a halt on the threshold, the doors held half open by his broad shoulders. Young men, well dressed in city suits, clean and well groomed.
Mario and Rico were as smartly turned out as the rest of the Italian looking gunmen. Perhaps expressed a little more blatantly their wish to sending a killing shot toward the newcomer.
‘I told you!’ Luigi Orlando blurted. ‘He’s with Boss Black!’
The men with the guns were aligned along each side of the room, in front of the booths which now had their drapes drawn aside. Orlando, who had a large, dark swelling on his temple where he had crashed into the wall at the Staten Island mansion, stood with his back to the circular bar. His godfather was also back to the bar, but he was sitting on a stool. Both men were still attired in full evening dress. The obscene fountain was as silent as the deserted piano.
‘Is Luigi correct, cowboy?’ the older man asked, his expression and tone of voice cold and hard.
‘I’m with me,’ Edge answered, not allowing his curiosity about the massive turnout of gunmen to show.
‘Then why are you here at precisely the time which Black arranged for my meet with him?’
Doubt filled the half-breed’s mind. It did not smother the anger and hatred which Mason Dickens’ death had aroused in him. But it did give him pause for thought: to wonder if his instinctive desire to kill was directed towards the wrong man.
‘Guess it ain’t a coincidence, feller,’ he answered softly. He nodded at Orlando. ‘His boy Kirkby just tried to kill me again.’
Marlon clenched his fists and looked as angry as when he had shattered the brandy balloon at his mansion on Staten Island. His dark eyes moved in their sockets to direct his displeasure toward Rico and Mario. Both men sensed this and were suddenly anxious as they were drawn to shift their attention away from the half-breed.
‘We did as you asked, Mr. Marlon,’ Rico said quickly, nervously.
Mario nodded the truth of this. ‘I told Kirkby your orders, Mr. Marlon.’ His face abruptly lit up. ‘You can ask Miss Fay! She was right here when I spoke to him.’
Some of the strain left Marlon as he looked back at Edge. ‘I am a man of my word, cowboy. I am also a man who insists his orders are obeyed. Rico and Mario used one of my private boats to cross to the city ahead of you and ensure that Luigi’s men were aware of my orders. You have heard...’
‘Uncle!’ Orlando cut in. ‘You don’t have to give explanations to him! We’re wasting time! It’s a trick. It has to be!’
‘A trick?’ the older man posed. ‘To gain what end, my boy? Your men are still on guard upstairs are they not? Will warn us if others approach the building?’
Edge had to believe what Marlon said. The man had kept his word. And Rico and Mario had done as they were ordered. So the only lie told was by Kirkby. Why?
‘Think about it, cowboy,’ Marlon went on, his soft spoken response to his godson having eased Orlando’s mind. ‘If I wanted you dead, you would have more than twenty bullets in your corpse by now.’
He gestured with both hand’s to encompass the silent, grim-faced gunmen lining each side of the room.
‘I am thinking, feller.’
‘That Luigi is right? A trick had been played. But on you.’
A rifle shot sounded out on the street. The crack of the explosion almost masked by the shattering of the window in the door held open by the half-breed’s right shoulder. The bullet drilled trough tie carpet to bury itself in the floor. A thousand glinting-shards of multi-colored glass showered across in front of Edge’s chest. As curses ripped from the mouths of the gunmen and Orlando, the men instinctively dropping down into crouches, their eyes raked toward Marlon.
Edge was already looking at the man. Saw, a split-second before anyone else, the expression of depthless rage take command of every line on the face. And knew there was no time to wait for him to give an order. For the half-breed could not read the mind behind the glaring eyes, had no way of knowing what words would issue through the clenched teeth between the snarling lips.
So Edge had to assume the worse. And he threw himself backwards and to the side. Out of the doorway and on to the hard, wet cement at the foot of the steps.
The doors swung closed. Then were forced partially open again by a hail of bullets that cracked through the drizzling rain to slam into them, exploding splinters of wood and shattering the other glass panel.
‘Kill him!’ Emilio Marlon shrieked, rage driving his voice to a high pitch. ‘Kill the bastardo !’
More than twenty revolvers were fired, to pepper the inside of the doors with bullets. None of them penetrated the stout timber. Two cracked through the broken windows to dig chips of cement from the wall below the railings.
But Edge was out of the line of fire anyway, bellying up the stone steps with the Remington in his right hand. His mind was racing in search of an explanation and this aroused a self anger that was even more powerful than the rage he felt toward an unknown enemy. Because right now, when he was caught in the crossfire between opposing groups of gunmen, an explanation was unimportant. All that mattered was to get completely out of the line of fire.
More gunshots exploded as he forced his mind away from its irrelevant line of thought. From inside the Silver Lady Bar. From the half finished building across the street and from the front rooms of the whorehouse above him. Men were yelling a
nd cursing. And some women were screaming. The lightly falling rain acted to make the stench of drifting gunsmoke more pungent. Then a faint odor of escaping gas started to permeate the air as bullets shattered the lamps which illuminated the bar sign above the riddled doors.
But the street lights continued to gleam through the mist-like-rain - showing up Edge as a clear target as he lunged from the steps and sprinted along the sidewalk. Bullets ricocheted off the cement under his thudding feet and exploded chips of stone from the facade of the building. One such chip inscribed an inch long cut in his cheek just as he powered into a turn that took him into the inky darkness of the alley at the side of the building under attack. A final volley of rifle shots was directed into the mouth of the alley before the men across the street returned their full attention back to the building.
Edge slowed from his headlong run, still stooped as the ricocheting bullets and flying chips of dislodged stone spat and hissed around his head. He was breathing fast, more from the tension of fear than because of the exertion. He had to struggle to keep his anger an ice cold ball in the pit of his stomach, prevent it from expanding to engulf his entire being and becoming white hot.
Somebody had used him. And got two men killed in the process. Kirkby didn’t matter. He was owed what he got from the half-breed. But Mason Dickens, he was different. Another innocent victim, like the tobacco grower from Carolina, of the violence that dogged Edge. But why had he been used? Who had sent Kirkby after him - had enough influence over the gunman to persuade him to disobey Boss Marlon’s orders and then lie with virtually his dying breath?
‘You just can’t keep out of trouble, can you?’
Edge had come to a stop and was waiting for his eyes to adjust to the darkness. Was inwardly cursing himself as his mind involuntarily returned to the futile search for answers that even if they were found would serve no useful purpose here and now. He heard Lincoln’s voice during a brief lull in the gun battle. And did not recognize it as the government man’s before he swung the Remington to aim in the direction from which the words came.
‘It trails me almost as close as you do, feller,’ the half-breed rasped as the short, fat, balding man stepped away from a doorway recessed into the side of the building across the alley from the whorehouse. He still held the cardboard suitcase in one hand. In the other was a Frontier Colt loosely gripped and hanging down at his side so that it was aimed at the ground.
‘But you always stay one jump ahead of it, don’t you? Far enough away to survive.’
The shooting and the shouting had started up again but within the confining high walls of the buildings flanking the alley the sounds had a distant ring to them. So that the two men, standing six feet apart, could talk at a normal conversational level and still hear each other.
‘Mason Dickens didn’t survive,’ Edge said, as calm now as his tone of voice. His Remington was still aimed at the bulging belly of Lincoln. His narrow eyes beneath the hooded lids had now adjusted to the dark of the alley and he was able to see the dough colored face of the man. It expressed what seemed to be a frown of genuine sadness.
‘What happened?’ He spoke with regret.
‘Don’t you know, feller?’
‘I can’t be in two places at one time, Mr. Edge. By the way.’
‘Yeah?’
‘If you fire that gun at me, I’ll have your company in hell.’
He tipped back his head to look up at the strip of rain clouds visible between the high walls. Two men were leaning over the roof of the building behind Lincoln and as Edge looked up at them they thrust rifles out, showing them briefly against the sky before they resumed their aim down into the alley.
The half-breed pursed his lips as he looked at Lincoln, then drew back his gun hand and slid the revolver into its holster, easing the hammer to the rest. ‘Guess I can wait.’
‘Why don’t you do that? At Grand Central. For the train west. You can use some time counting this.’ He lowered the suitcase to the ground and nudged it toward the half-breed with the toe of his boot.
‘Money?’
‘What else? Of course, the case isn’t full of it. Just five thousand. For you to keep your mouth shut’
‘About what?’
‘Uncle Sam’s involvement in this.’ He waved his now empty left hand toward the Park Avenue end of the alley where the acrid smelling gunsmoke could now be seen drifting in thick billows through the rain under the street lights.
‘How much did you pay Kirkby for shutting up the newspaperman, feller?’
‘That wasn’t supposed to happen, Mr. Edge!’ Lincoln was not sad anymore. He sounded irritated. And there was a scowl on his pale face.
‘I know, but it did.’
‘What was Dickens to you?’ Lincoln snapped.
‘The only feller in this city who made me an offer I could refuse without the risk of getting my head blown off.’
The government man thought about this for a few moments against the background sounds of gunfire. Then he nodded. ‘All right, Mr. Edge, I guess I can understand how you feel. But don’t you owe me something, too? I didn’t have to come out into the open and give you the money. I could have stayed back in cover and saved five thousand dollars of taxpayers’ money. And you would never have known I sent Kirkby after you.’
‘I’d have figured it out, feller,’ the half-breed countered. When I gave myself time to think. Remembered that you were some place close down at the ferry landing when I gave the cab driver Dickens’ address. And that only somebody like you would have the pull to keep the law off my back. Dickens told me every police officer in the city was looking for me after what happened the last time I went to the Silver Lady Bar. And I figured I’m an easy man to see in a town like this.’
Lincoln nodded again and now he seemed to be growing impatient. ‘All right, all right. But it doesn’t matter anymore. What’s done is done. And the only thing that’s gone wrong is Dickens getting killed. If he’s got any dependents the government will take care of them. And he died in a good cause. With Marlon dead his bunch won’t last much longer and Boss Black’ll have the city sewn up for himself. Not the way decent people would like things to be, but a whole lot better than having two gangs fighting over it all the time.’
‘Something else went wrong,’ Edge said evenly. ‘I didn’t kill the old man.’
‘You didn’t...?’ Lincoln choked on the words he was rasping.
Two shots cracked out, isolated by distance from the gunfire being exchanged across the streets. Immediately overhead. And two rifles fell through the rain washed air to clatter to the ground at either side of where Edge and Lincoln stood. The two men tipped back their heads to peer upwards. And saw that the owners of the rifles were hanging over the rim of the roof, heads inert between their slightly swinging arms.
The half-breed drew, cocked and leveled the Remington. And the click of the hammer overlaid Lincoln’s expression of shock with one of fear as he looked again at Edge.
‘Do not kill him yet, cowboy,’ Emilio Marlon growled from a second storey window of the whorehouse.
Lincoln had snatched his terror-filled eyes away from the half-breed’s scowling face when he heard the window slide up in its frame. To stare at the man who gave the order.
Edge glanced upwards again, too. But not to look at Marlon. Instead to see if the men who had shot the government agents from the whorehouse roof were now in a position to back their boss’s play. They were not. It was impossible to check all the windows in the side of the building. Because it was too dark and there was not the time, between choosing his course of action and putting it into effect.
He turned from the waist, tipped back his head and swung his gun hand around and up. Saw the satisfied smirk on Marlon’s face began to change into a frown of rage. Saw also the fingers of the man hooked over the window-sill tighten as he prepared to push himself backwards into the room. Then glimpsed, before he snatched his glinting eyed gaze away, the small hole in the centre of
Emilio’s forehead as the bullet from the Remington found its mark.
‘Uncle!’ Luigi Orlando shrieked from out of the darkened room into which the dead man was flipped by the impact of the bullet.
‘Move it!’ Edge snarled at Lincoln, who seemed to be rooted to the ground by the shock of what had just happened. Then he clutched at the government man’s upper arm, forced him in a half turn and shoved him along the alley. Away from Park Avenue with its lights, muzzle flashes, gunsmoke, shouts, screams and constant barrage of shots.
‘You’re crazy, you know that!’ the government man yelled, plunging out of shock and into elation, racing forward, leading the half-breed around a sharp turn heading for the lights of 55th Street. At the mouth of the alley he halted, gasping for breath and needing to lean against the wall. ‘I was sure you were going to kill me back there,’ he forced out. ‘Why...?’
‘Figure to be on the winning side, feller,’ Edge cut in, peering back down the alley, then checking the lengths of 55th Street stretching away into the misty rain in each direction.
Lincoln showed his teeth beneath the bushy red moustache in a broad grin. ‘I’d say you’re a man who always is.’
Edge started along 55th toward the intersection with Park. ‘Not always,’ he growled.
‘But you’re sure to be this time,’ the government man said excitedly as he hurried to catch up with the half-breed. ‘Like I told you before, with Marlon dead they’re finished.’
Edge spat a globule of saliva out over the sidewalk and into the gutter. ‘Yeah, I already heard one of them yell uncle.’
CHAPTER ELEVEN
As HE looked across the broad width of Park Avenue with Lincoln standing at his side, the half-breed witnessed another example of how New York was much like a frontier town but on a larger scale. For the gun battle had become a spectacle for the citizens who lived in the immediate locality. There were upwards of two hundred men, women and children on the avenue to the north of where the gangs of Boss Black and the now dead Emilio Marlon were trading a constant barrage of rifle and revolver fire. And the crowd was swelling by the moment as the excitedly curious from further away came running, riding horseback or aboard wagons and carriages. And there were just as many people to the south of the battle arena, both eager crowds held back beyond points of relative safety by lines of scowling and cursing police officers.
EDGE: WAITING FOR A TRAIN (Edge series Book 30) Page 12
