What of Terry Conniston?

by Brian Garfield

  “That was Floyd’s gun, wasn’t it? He hasn’t got another one.”

  “Knowing Floyd, he’s got an arsenal out here with him if he thinks he needs one. Guns are easy enough to come by down here if you’ve got the money to pay for them. Everything’s for sale down here. Jesus, Terry, I’m just talking to keep from going through the roof—maybe we better forget this whole thing and turn around.”

  “Is that what you want to do?”

  He had been thinking about very little else; but now he thought about it yet again and he realized with startling sudden clarity that these past days had secretly created resolve inside him. All his life he had failed at things. He didn’t know whether it was hysteria or courage but whatever it was, even if he failed again this time it would not be for want of trying. It occurred to him, in a way he sensed but could not explain even to himself, that he might lose more by turning away from this than he stood to lose even if he failed against Floyd.

  And so he took himself a little by surprise when he answered her question: “No. I guess I have to prove something.”

  “You don’t need to prove anything to anybody, Mitch.”

  “I need to prove something to myself. Does that make any sense?”

  “I guess it does, after all.”

  The dirt road crabbed its way up into the beige-colored hills, full of rocks with square corners and washed-out ruts; the Ford strained and lurched at slow speed. “She said it was the far side of the hill from the big rock that looks like a hat. Must have meant that one up there. I think I’ll leave the car there and leave you in it. Be better to go down on foot—maybe I can catch him by surprise.”

  “I don’t want to wait in the car, Mitch.”

  “I’ll have trouble enough watching him without looking out for you too. What the hell is that?”

  It was a car—a dusty Cadillac gleaming in the sun, parked in the road by the hat-shaped boulder. It might have been imagination but he thought he could still smell the dust in the air from its passage: it must have arrived just before them. Scowling, he halted the Ford behind the Cadillac’s bumper and got out, closing his hand around the gun, and walked quickly toward the crest of the hill. He heard Terry get out of the car behind him and he glanced over his shoulder to wave her back, but she kept coming and he didn’t want to lift his voice; he only gestured again and went on, getting up on his toes and beginning to run with a sense of instinctive urgency. It was then that he heard the gunshot.

  C H A P T E R Eighteen

  Oakley thought with bitter anguish, He set it up beautifully and we walked right into it.

  The tumbledown shack stood in the full glare of the sun fifty yards downhill from them in a nest of splintered boulders; the Oldsmobile stood alongside the shack and cooking smoke rose from the chimney. Standing bolt still, Oakley slowly turned his head to look back past Orozco’s frozen bulk toward the rocks high to their left from which the gunshot had come. The bullet had screamed off the dirt not three feet in front of Oakley’s boot toe; it had brought them both up short and now a voice issued from the rocks—a cool deep voice Oakley recognized at once from telephone calls:

  “Just stand still where you are and turn around so I can see you—slowly if you please; haste might make me nervous.”

  Orozco’s bootsoles crunched the earth as he made a slow ponderous wheel, keeping his arms well away from his body. Oakley stood fast, head cocked over his shoulder. He saw Floyd Rymer come out of the rocks moving like a big cat, all liquid grace and feline power, balancing a large automatic pistol on them. There was no mistaking Rymer’s identity—the glossy photographs had captured his likeness perfectly. All except the eyes: hard, penetrating, yet utterly devoid of emotion.

  “All right,” said Floyd Rymer. “The car belongs to Conniston but who are you?”

  Oakley made no answer; his narrowed glance steadied on Rymer’s gun and he felt sweat pour down his face. He heard Orozco say, “Let’s say we work for Mr. Conniston.”

  “Fine. Thumb and forefinger, now, both of you lift those pistols out of your belts and toss them on the ground. Don’t try any cowboy tricks because we all know I’ve got nothing to lose by killing you. They’d probably never find your bodies.”

  Oakley glanced at Orozco but Orozco made no signal; he only obeyed instructions by slowly lifting the revolver from his waistband and letting it drop on the ground a yard away from his boots. Oakley began to tremble; he did not stir until Orozco growled, “Do what he wants, Carl.”

  When he picked the gun out of his belt he lost his grip on it and it fell down the front of his trousers, banged off his knee and skittered away in the dirt. A twitch lifted one corner of Floyd Rymer’s mouth.

  Floyd said, “How’d you trace me here?”

  Orozco said promptly, “They picked up your license number when you crossed the border at Lochiel.”

  Floyd rested his shoulder against a tall rock. “No good—try again. I’ve switched plates twice since I crossed over.”

  Oakley’s nostrils dilated; he felt faint in the burning sun. Orozco said, “All right. There’s a radio bug in the ransom suitcase.”

  Floyd Rymer’s eyebrows lifted half an inch. “I salute you,” he said. “Thanks for warning me—I’ll have to attend to that. Who else is around here? How many others behind you—and how far?”

  Oakley said, “Don’t tell him, Diego.”

  “I wasn’t plannin’ to,” Orozco drawled. “Look, Rymer, we know your names, we found the two dead ones you left in Soledad. You can’t get away even if you do shoot both of us. The whole world knows who you are. Now you turn over the money to us and tell us where we can find Terry Conniston and maybe we’ll think about letting you cop a plea.”

  Floyd Rymer smiled very slowly. It was the most terrifying expression Oakley had ever witnessed on a human face. Oakley’s breathing was tight and shallow; his sphincter contracted, his palms dripped. Floyd lifted the automatic and Oakley clearly saw the knuckles begin to whiten; he knew that Rymer was going to shoot them both in their tracks.

  A voice rammed down from the splintered boulders above:

  “Stop it, Floyd!”

  Oakley saw the rest in a blur, as if it were a dream: forever afterward he tried to bring it back but it never came clear to him, there was only a wheeling kaleidoscope of impressions. Floyd’s head whipped around; Orozco began to move; there was a woman’s scream, thin in the high air; a youth standing above Floyd Rymer with a police revolver cocked; the frenzied glitter of Floyd Rymer’s eyes as the impassive expression suddenly broke and the handsome leonine face became a twisted ugly mask of fury. There was shooting: Floyd Rymer and the youth exchanging shots, both of them ducking and wheeling. The brass sun spinning overhead. Orozco ducking to the ground, scooping up his gun, coming up on one knee with amazing agility. One image stood out clear: the sudden jump and puff of a bullet striking the youth in the hip by his trouser pocket, the youth knocked down asprawl in the boulders by the impact of the big slug. The youth had fired a fussillade of shots but none of them had hit Floyd Rymer; Floyd came around and Oakley was staring down the muzzle of the automatic and he heard the great ear-splitting roar of two or three or four gunshots, a deafening rattle like artillery in his ear. Afterward he realized it had been Orozco, coolly and methodically pumping bullets into Floyd Rymer like a sharpshooter on a rifle range. Oakley had no recollection of Floyd falling, no recollection of the next few seconds; somewhere in the ensuing run of time he realized he had picked up his gun and walked forward, for he found himself standing above Floyd Rymer’s dead body with the unfired pistol clutched in his fist. Orozco was kneeling down by the corpse and two people were coming down out of the rocks together, the youth hobbling on one leg and leaning his weight on Terry Conniston.

  Oakley turned a comatose stare on them. “Terry.” His voice was a disembodied croak, not his own. Weakness flowed along his fibers: his body went flaccid and he sat down clumsily, abruptly. A red haze filmed his eyes and he almost lost c
onsciousness; he drifted in a mist.

  Rymer’s body must have cleared all its functions at the moment of death. The air stank of excrement. It was that ol-factory foulness that brought him out of it, as if it were spirits of ammonia. When he stood up the muscles of his legs hardly supported him.

  He met Orozco’s glance. Orozco’s sunken eyes had gone charcoal black: his round face was bitter. Oakley turned clumsily to face Terry Conniston—his eyes observed without believing. There was a disturbing tremor behind his knees.

  Terry said to him, “What the devil are you doing here?”

  The four of them congregated on the front step of the shack; Oakley thought vaguely that Floyd Rymer must have had a predilection for abandoned habitations—first Soledad ghost town, now this deserted ’dobe. Mitch Baird sat against the wall with his legs stretched out, Terry ministering his wound—not much of a wound; Floyd’s bullet had dug a shallow trench along the side of his hip. Oakley found the strength to say, “That’s a funny way to treat a man that kidnaped you.”

  Terry said without looking up, “He saved your life, didn’t he? Doesn’t that count for anything with you?”

  “I don’t get any of this,” Oakley said helplessly.

  “Nobody asked you to.”

  Orozco was opening the trunk compartment of the Olds-mobile. Oakley watched him lean over and heard the snap of suitcase locks and saw Orozco lift the lid of the suitcase into view. Orozco said, “I think it’s all here.”

  Terry said, “You can give it back to my father. I’m sure he’ll be thrilled.”

  Oakley’s eyes widened. “Your father is—” He couldn’t finish it.

  “A first-class son of a bitch,” Terry said. “We heard about what he said on the phone. As if he cared more about getting revenge than saving my life.”

  “That wasn’t your father on the phone,” Oakley said. “Where the hell have you been?”

  Mitch Baird said, “She’s been with me.”

  “You. That’s fine. That’s just dandy. Kid, do you happen to know what kind of trouble you’re in?”

  Terry looked up, drawn and furious. “You’re just like him, aren’t you, Carl? You never let simple things like gratitude stand in your way, do you? Mitch saved your life!”

  “I know he did. But it doesn’t change the fact that—”

  Terry bounced to her feet. “Shut up, Carl. Just shut up, will you? You just take that damned money back to my father and get a receipt for it and tell him I don’t ever want to see him again. Tell him Mitch and I are going away together. He ought to get a boost out of that.”

  Grim as a pallbearer, Oakley planted his feet and dragged a hand across his eyes and said, “I can’t tell your father anything, Terry. He’s dead. He’s been dead since the night you were kidnaped.”

  Terry’s reactions baffled him; but then everything baffled him. Oakley felt as if he had lost his grip on reality; he sensed he was going mad.

  She had gone from shock to rage; she had stormed, spiteful and willful; she had gone off into the rocks and he had heard the sound of her retching and seen the signs of misery on Mitch Baird’s wan face. But then she had come back, subdued, and she had sat down beside Mitch and groped for Mitch’s hand and Oakley stood above the two of them watching them and simply did not understand any of it.

  And then Terry said, “I can’t tell you how sorry I am, Carl.”

  “Are you apologizing to me? What for?”

  “For hating him,” she said. “Maybe that doesn’t make sense to you. He’s dead? I still can’t get it into my head, Carl. There were things we had to say to each other—it isn’t fair.”

  Oakley saw Mitch grip her hand in both of his; Mitch murmured, “Take it easy.”

  Something burst inside Oakley: he roared, “What in the God damned hell is his part in this?”

  Both of them looked up at him, and after a while they told him.

  Oakley had to absorb it. He turned a dumbfounded face toward Orozco, and the fat man said in his quiet way, “You can’t prosecute him anyway, Carl, in case you forgot. There never was any kidnaping—remember?” Orozco came away from the car and said, “Walk off a little piece here with me, Carl,” and Oakley, too wilted to question him, followed obediently.

  Orozco took him around the corner into the shade and said, “We got a few things to talk through, Carl. Right now.” An odd light burned in his eyes. When Oakley made no sign of resistance the fat man said, “You’re going to have to tell them the whole thing, you know. It’s the only way you can convince them not to talk about this, ever. You got to make a deal with them—promise you won’t expose the Baird kid. In return they promise not to expose you. Nobody ever mentions that there was a kidnaping. You get to keep Conniston’s business, or most of it anyway, and Louise gets her inheritance, and these two kids get to keep each other. And just maybe it might be a good idea if you sweetened the pot a little by givin’ them a wedding present, like say that half million dollars in cash. How about it, then?”

  “Nuts. I don’t have to tell them a damned thing.”

  “Sure you do.” Orozco began to smile. “Because if you don’t I will.”

  Oakley rested his back against the grimy wall, tipped his head back and closed his eyes. “You’re not finished, are you?”

  “Uh-unh. You understand me now, Carl—price is high, my price for not exposin’ you. Because once you get done setting up with these two kids you’re going to sign the Conniston ranch over to me.”

  Oakley said, softly, finally, “You made it work, didn’t you, Diego?”

  “You always used to tell me to grab an opportunity when I saw one.”

  “I never thought you wanted the ranch.”

  “Oh, I don’t mean to keep it. But once I give it all back to the chicanos, the whole damn land grant, I’m gonna have every Spanish vote in the country in my pocket, and a lot of Anglo liberal votes right along with them. And the funny thing is I’m gonna make a pretty damn good politician, Carl. With your help. Have I got it?”

  Oakley opened his eyes. He felt strong again, decisive. “Sure you have,” he said. He clapped Orozco on the shoulder and said, “You’re the meanest bastard I ever met, amigo, and it’s a pleasure knowing you.” He grinned, and turned to walk around to the front of the shack.

  Orozco came after him, smiling.

  Oakley came around the corner and saw Terry and Mitch sitting together with their arms around each other’s waists. They looked up when he appeared; they looked uncertain, afraid, slightly punch-drunk. Oakley felt full of self-confidence—strong, sure, warm with benevolence. He said, “We’ve got a lot of things to clear up but everything’s going to be all right. Will you both take my word for that?”

  They just watched him, not so much suspicious as puzzled. Oakley hunkered down on his heels beside them in the shade of the adobe wall and put an unlit cigar in the corner of his mouth and before he began to talk he looked up past Orozco’s looming hulk at the hard brassy sky above the rock hills. A few diaphanous cirrus clouds moved languorously overhead and a buzzard began to circle down toward Floyd Rymer’s body.

  All rights reserved under International and Pan-American Copyright Conventions. By payment of the required fees, you have been granted the non-exclusive, non-transferable right to access and read the text of this ebook onscreen. No part of this text may be reproduced, transmitted, downloaded, decompiled, reverse engineered, or stored in or introduced into any information storage and retrieval system, in any form or by any means, whether electronic or mechanical, now known or hereinafter invented, without the express written permission of the publisher.

  This is a work of fiction. Names, characters, places, and incidents either are the product of the author’s imagination or are used fictitiously. Any resemblance to actual persons, living or dead, businesses, companies, events, or locales is entirely coincidental.

  copyright © 1971 by Brian Garfield

  cover design by Mumtaz Mustafa

  This edition p
ublished in 2011 by MysteriousPress.com/Open Road Integrated Media

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