Revenge of the Dog Team

by William W. Johnstone

  Kilroy soft-footed it along the dry creek bed, barely disturbing the stones underfoot. It wound south, then east, rounding the knoll. There was an opening in the brush at the top of the creek bed. He climbed the side, taking a look-see through the bushes.

  He was behind the two grave diggers, about fifty feet away from where they were hunkered down behind the backhoe and the dirt mound. From the grave site came the droning rise and fall of the voice of one of the priests reciting the burial service.

  One of the grave diggers was the shooter; the other, the spotter. The shooter was bareheaded, the spotter wore a khaki-colored, duck-billed baseball cap. The shooter stood with one knee on the ground, giving the scoped rifle a final going over. The spotter squatted on his heels, peeking through a narrow gap between the dirt mound and one of the oversized wheels of the backhoe. He was watching the mourners, the graveyard stretching to the east, the police cars and hearse and black funeral cortege cars lining the ornate, black iron spear fence bordering the cemetery. Watching everywhere but behind him.

  Kilroy reached into his right front pants pocket, pulling out a blue-steeled, snub-nosed .38 revolver. The wooden cross-checked grip felt good in his hand. Slipping between the bushes, he stepped out into the open, arm at his side, the gun screened by his body.

  He crossed toward the grave diggers, detouring around crosses marking several graves between him and them. The hard-packed ground was covered with dry grass, loose dirt, and pebbles; his passage created no more noise than the shadow of a drifting cloud. On the ground beside the shooter was the toolbox in which he’d smuggled in the dissassembled rifle. He was fitting a silencer on the rifle muzzle; oddly or appropriately enough, the silencer resembled a beer can.

  Kilroy knew the plan. The target was Rio. His execution by silenced sniper fire would trigger a wild panic at the grave site, mourners fleeing in a mad rush. The silencer would ensure that the shot’s origin was unknown. The shooter would break down the weapon, stowing it away in the toolbox. He and his partner would join the fleeing throng, using the confusion to mask their exit from the cemetery and their getaway.

  He even knew the killer duo. The shooter was Tex Barker and the spotter was his partner, Lee Deetz. They were a pair of contract killers operating mainly along the Gulf Coast, through Texas and the Southwest. Barker was a hefty guy with a brown mustache, Deetz was lanky and long-faced, with an upper lip so thin as to be virtually nonexistent. Barker finished screwing on the silencer and got into position to line up his shot. Deetz squatted down beside him, looking like a lean, long-legged toad gathering itself to make a leap.

  They never heard him coming. The first they knew of his presence was when he said, “Howdy, boys.”

  Deetz started like he’d been goosed. Barker’s head swung around like it’d been whiplashed as he looked back over his shoulder to see the speaker. Recognizing him, Barker shouted, “You!”

  Deetz was fumbling around with a hip pocket of his coveralls, reaching for the handgun tucked inside it, when Kilroy shot him right between the eyes. Barker tried to swing the rifle around to bring it into play, knowing it for a foredoomed effort. Kilroy’s bullet drilled through Barker’s forehead.

  Taking Barker and Deetz was easy. Now came the hard part: not getting shot by any of the excitable gun-toters in the Maldonado entourage. The melee was already on, shouts, screams, chaos erupting from the grave site.

  Kilroy rested his gun on top of a tombstone. It was a good piece and he’d hate to lose it. Stepping several paces away from it, he raised his hands in the air, holding them open and in plain sight to demonstrate they were empty and unarmed.

  Angry shouts, pounding footsteps neared. Suddenly, a half-dozen gunmen came crashing into view, darting between tombstones, scrambling over the dirt mound and circling the backhoe.

  All wore mourning clothes, black jackets and pants, black ties and white shirts. Some were bareheaded; others wore hats. The hats were black. The gunmen ranged in age from a skinny kid in his teens to a wizened graybeard. They were angry, frightened, and confused. Some shouted at him in Spanish, others in English. Their guns were all pointed at Kilroy and if some hothead pulled the trigger, it would set off a chain reaction that would turn the group into a firing squad.

  A very tense moment. Vital details of the scene began impinging on the awareness of the gunmen. One who’d come scrambling over the top of the dirt mound came down practically on top of Barker and Deetz, whose corpses lay sprawling in the dirt. He jumped back like they were red-hot.

  A couple of guns swung away from Kilroy to cover the dead men. Seconds dragged by as thoughts percolated through the brains of the pistoleros that the downed duo were really and truly dead.

  Kilroy just stood there motionless, hands raised, outwardly calm, his expression blandly neutral. He dared not smile because sometimes with gun-waving hotheads who think they’ve just been shot at, a smile is taken as a deadly insult, to be wiped off the offending face by a bullet.

  Someone more observant than his fellows discovered the silenced sniper rifle, setting off a fresh round of heated commentary.

  The two Maldonado brothers entered the scene, along with Hector. Rio’s hair was combed straight back from the forehead, covering his ears and collar. It was chestnut brown with blond highlights; Kilroy wondered if that was its natural coloring or if Rio had had it dyed. He suspected the latter. Rio had inverted V-shaped eyebrows over hazel-colored eyes and was clean-shaven. His shoulders were ax-handle broad and his massive torso hung down from them like a brick wall, presenting a broad front. He wore a black suit with a white shirt and black string tie. His feet were small, narrow, and neat.

  Leandro had curly black hair, a broken nose, and a knife scar running slantwise through his left eyebrow, dividing it in two. He had a well-groomed black beard and a bull neck.

  A melon-shaped head and thick limbs had been pasted onto Hector’s barrel-shaped torso. Balding on top, he had thick tufts of hair on the sides, seemingly of the same consistency as steel-wool scouring pads. His long, thick ragged beard reminded Kilroy of pictures he’d seen of the pirate Blackbeard.

  Rio, Leandro, and Hector brandished no guns, nor did they need to, their followers ably carrying out that duty. Scowling, Hector demanded of Kilroy, “Why you try to shoot Rio?”

  “Not me,” Kilroy said, shaking his head no. Tilting it toward the two corpses, he said, “They wanted to kill Rio.” He was speaking not to Hector, but to Rio.

  Rio said, “Who are you?”

  Kilroy said, “I killed them.”

  At that moment, the police arrived, the sheriff and a couple of deputies. For an instant, Kilroy feared that the interruption might trigger off a shooting match, but cooler heads prevailed, namely those of Rio and the sheriff.

  Rio’s gunmen made their weapons disappear, the deputies holstered their sidearms. The encounter ended pretty much as Kilroy had suspected it would, with him seated in the back of the sheriff’s car, riding off to jail.

  At least, he wasn’t in handcuffs. Once the law showed up and started leaning on Kilroy, the Maldonado crowd got the idea that the cops were persecuting the guy who’d just saved their boss Rio from two would-be assassins. Their hostility fastened on the lawmen, the mood getting ugly fast. Sheriff Boyle had to announce that they weren’t arresting Kilroy, not yet, but were taking him to the station for questioning as a material witness.

  Kilroy climbed in the back of the sheriff’s car. There were no handles on the inside of the back doors, and a wire-screen partition separated the front seat from the back seat. As the police car pulled away from where it was parked outside the cemetery’s front gates, Kilroy noticed in the forefront of a mass of onlookers a medium-sized man with straight thick black hair hanging down to his jawline, a ruddy complexion, and a wide, high-cheekboned face. He was Brand, a partner in this joint venture with Kilroy. The two made eye contact for an instant, not the slightest sign or flicker of recognition passing between the two to indicate anything other than
that they were complete and total strangers.

  The police car rolled east, leaving the church behind.

  TEN

  The police station—sheriff’s department really—was located at the north edge of Old Town, just south of Fremont Street, part of a cluster of official buildings grouped around a square. They had all been built around the same time, early in the twentieth century. Mostly big, square gray stone structures, they included a post office, a library, a municipal building that served as City Hall, and a courthouse with a tower clock. The sheriff’s department was sited in the courthouse building.

  Boyle and two deputies hustled Kilroy into an office on the first floor. The dispatch room was up front, with an officer manning a high, dark brown wooden desk that stood on a dais so it was raised a foot or two above floor level. A radio crackled with police-band calls, the desk officer responding to them by speaking into a handheld mike. A waist-high wooden barrier separated the dispatch area from the squad room and administrative offices.

  Sheriff Boyle was big, beefy, with wavy salt-and-pepper-colored hair and a craggy, thick-featured face that might have been considered handsome twenty years and thirty pounds ago. His assistant, Deputy Mort Lane, had short gray hair, a hawklike profile, and wore mirror-finish sunglasses that he kept on indoors. The third lawman was a big, hulking oaf who looked like an overgrown plowboy in uniform. His name was Viller but the other two called him “Sonny Boy.”

  The interrogation room was a stark, cubelike space with a gunmetal gray table and a couple of wooden chairs. Deputy Viller gave Kilroy a hard palm-heel shove between the shoulder blades, knocking him into the room so hard that he came up just short of bouncing off the wall.

  Kilroy spun, facing the three lawmen as they entered the room. Lane closed the door behind him and casually leaned up against it. His eyes were bright, expectant, in an otherwise expressionless face.

  Kilroy said, “Tell that ape of yours to keep his paws off of me, Sheriff, or he’s going to get knocked flat on his ass.” His voice was flat, even-toned.

  Boyle’s bushy eyebrows rose; Lane smirked. Viller’s face flushed, the lower half of it splitting into a sloppy, loose-mouthed grin.

  Viller rushed Kilroy, launching a looping roundhouse right at his head. The blow couldn’t have been any more telegraphed if it had been sent by Western Union. Kilroy stepped in, blocking the punch with his left forearm, and immediately countering with a short, hard right jab to the deputy’s solar plexus.

  Kilroy’s counterstrike stopped Viller dead in his tracks, causing him to rise up like he was standing on tiptoes. The deputy’s eyes bulged; his mouth was a gaping black hole that sought to draw breath but couldn’t. The blow to his nerve-net center had a temporary paralyzing effect.

  Kilroy could have grabbed the man’s gun, too, if he’d wanted. Instead, he stepped back to deliver a curving leg sweep that struck Viller’s feet behind the ankles, knocking his legs out from under him and sending him crashing down to the floor on his back.

  Boyle’s eyebrows were still raised, but Lane’s smirk was gone. Lane drew his sidearm; he was fast. He leveled his weapon at Kilroy, who stood in place, hands at his sides.

  Kilroy said, “Think fast, Sheriff, as though your career depended on it, ’cause it does. Would I have pulled a move like that if I didn’t have an ace in the hole?”

  Lane said, “You’re begging for a hole in your guts—”

  Kilroy said, “Those two gunning for Rio didn’t get taken by accident. Things are happening, Sheriff, big things, and if you’re smart you’ll look before you leap.”

  Lane said, “Just give me the word, Rance, and I’ll cut loose—”

  Kilroy said, “Do that, and the ones they send out after me won’t be a nice guy like I am.”

  On the floor, Viller lay doubled up on his side, hugging himself, sucking air. Kilroy said, “A shit storm’s coming to Adobe Flats. Don’t get on the wrong side of it. You already dodged a bullet, you and your whole department. Think what the Maldonado gang would’ve done if Rio got gunned at his brother’s funeral. Worse is on the way if you don’t get up to speed fast. You’ve got nothing to lose by listening.”

  Lane said, “He’s bluffing, Rance.”

  “Call it,” Kilroy said. “Hell, you can always burn me down for resisting arrest later.”

  Lane said, “You’ll wish you got off that easy, smart-ass.”

  Boyle’s brows knit in a frown. He made the act of thinking look like a heroic effort. Reaching a decision, he rested his hand lightly on the forearm of Lane’s gun hand. He said, “Easy does it, Mort.”

  Lane, incredulous, darted a quick glance at Boyle, not wanting to take his eyes off Kilroy. “You’re not falling for his line of horse puckey?!”

  Sighing heavily, Boyle said, “Too much has already happened today that I don’t know the whys and wherefores of. Let’s not go off half cocked.”

  Kilroy said, “I’m going to give you a phone number, Sheriff. Call it and tell them Kilroy sent you and see what happens. If it doesn’t pan out, you can always turn your wrecking crew on me later.”

  Lane said, “That’s just what’s gonna happen, mister, and before I’m done, you’ll be begging for a bullet in the belly.”

  Kilroy said, “Who runs this department, Sheriff, you or him?”

  “I do,” Boyle said. “Back off, Mort.”

  “But Rance—”

  “That’s an order, Deputy.”

  “Okay,” Lane said, “but I’m keeping this bastard covered. Let him try his tricks on me.”

  Kilroy said, “Ready for that number, Sheriff?”

  “Go ahead.”

  “Better write it down. I’d hate for us all to come to grief because you misdialed.”

  “Mister, I sure hope you are bluffing, I surely do. Because I’d really like to see you get taken apart.” Boyle reached into the breast pocket of his shirt, took out a notepad and a pencil stub, opened the pad to a blank page, and stood poised with pencil to paper, ready to write. “Go ahead.”

  Kilroy said a telephone number. Boyle wrote it down and repeated it aloud for confirmation. He said, “That’s the state capital exchange.”

  “That’s right,” Kilroy said. “I suggest you make the call from a secured line and not one that anyone else can listen in on. You’ll understand why when the call goes through. The less people who know about it, the better for all of us.”

  Boyle turned to Lane. “This won’t take long. Do nothing until I return.”

  Lane grunted. Boyle gave him a hard look and said, “I assume that means affirmative.”

  “Yes, dammit,” Lane said.

  Viller was showing signs of life, his hand feebly scratching at the safety flap of his holstered sidearm. Boyle said, “Better secure Sonny Boy’s gun so he doesn’t do anything stupid.”

  “Affirmative,” Lane said. Still covering Kilroy with his own gun, he hunkered down beside Viller, unholstering Sonny Boy’s gun and taking it, holding it in his other hand so that he now had Kilroy covered with two guns.

  Boyle opened the door, glancing back over his shoulder at Kilroy. “This better be good,” he said. He went out, closing the door behind him.

  Kilroy said, “Mind if I sit down?”

  Lane said, “Yeah, I do.”

  Kilroy shrugged. “Suit yourself.”

  “It’d suit me better if you tried some more of your tricks on me this time, instead of that dumb ox.”

  Kilroy tsk-tsked. “Is that any way to speak of a brother officer?”

  “He ain’t no kin of mine,” Lane said.

  Time passed. After a couple of minutes, Lane got tired of holding both guns leveled at Kilroy. He lowered Viller’s gun, letting it rest at his side, but kept his own gun trained on Kilroy, holding his elbow against his hip.

  Five minutes passed before Boyle returned. Under his deep tan, he looked almost as pale as Viller, though without the green tinge. There was a worried look in his eyes that hadn’t been there before. Lane
looked at him expectantly.

  “Well,” Boyle began. “Well, well. Seems like there’s been a little misunderstanding here.”

  Kilroy said, “I see you got through to that number, Sheriff.”

  “Yes. Yes, as a matter of fact, I did. Yes, sir!”

  Lane looked disgusted. “Don’t tell me this bastard’s on the level!”

  “That’s no way to refer to Mr. Kilroy, Mort.”

  “Aw, for crissakes, Rance—”

  “Put up your gun.”

  Lane holstered his weapon, his expression sulky, almost pouting. “I wish to hell somebody would tell me what’s going on here!”

  “In due time, Deputy, in due time,” Boyle said. He turned to Kilroy. “I want to apologize for the misconduct of Deputy Viller here. He was way out of line. If you’d like to file a complaint, the appropriate action will be taken.”

  Kilroy said, “I don’t file complaints. Just see that he stays out of my way and keeps his mouth shut about anything he’s heard in here.”

  By now, Viller had managed to crawl to a wall, where he sat with his back to it and his legs stretched out on the floor. He was hunched up, cradling his middle with both arms. He was able to breathe now, short shallow panting breaths. His pained face had a greenish tinge.

  Boyle bent forward from the waist, bringing his head close to Viller’s to speak to him. “You heard the man, Viller. One step out of line and you’ll be out of uniform and back on the farm shoveling shit. And keep your damned mouth shut about this, savvy?”

  Viller nodded, tight-lipped with pain. Boyle straightened up, crossing to the door, gripping the knob. “This way, Mr. Kilroy. We’ll be able to speak plainly in my office.”