The Big Showdown

by Mickey Spillane

  Still sizing her up, he said, “What kind of name is Filley? If you don’t mind my asking.”

  “It’s Irish. But my mother was Mexican. I grew up this side of the border. My papa was a blacksmith—not a family business either Sis or I could go into. When he died, the blacksmith shop went to Lola and she sold it. Came here and opened this palace.”

  He nodded. “It is something of a palace. I think you could do well here, even without the doves. Probably even better. Times are changing.”

  “I’ve noticed.”

  “This town will grow.”

  “Is that why you’re staying on, Caleb?”

  “I’m not staying on. Told you that.”

  “We’ll see. So. Do we know each other better now?”

  “I think so. But we do have more to discuss, if you’re of a mind.”

  “Please.”

  “What’s your relationship with Zachary Gauge?”

  She frowned, shook her head. “I have no . . . relationship with him. Business or otherwise. I’ve never met the man. I understand he’s in town. Like you, I’m sure he’ll get around to looking me up and sitting me down.”

  York’s gaze turned narrow-eyed. “But I gather he signed his interest in this saloon over to you.”

  “He did.”

  “And you never met him?”

  An elaborate shrug. “It was done through attorneys. All by wire and mail. He was in New York. I was in Houston. It took a while, but he signed everything over to me.”

  “For nothing?”

  “For one dollar.” She smiled. “That was something the lawyers insisted on.”

  “Why would he do that?”

  The big eyes grew wide again. “Maybe you should sit him down and ask him?”

  But York pressed: “Zachary didn’t say? I know you never met him, Rita, but in a letter . . . or through his attorney. . . ?”

  She gestured with open hands. “Caleb, I gathered he didn’t want to have any part of this place. Of a business like this. My feeling is he wanted to put a distance between himself and that black-sheep cousin of his. From what I hear, along those lines, he made a good impression at the Grange the other night.”

  “He did.”

  She shrugged, smiled. “Well, that explains it. You can’t be an upstanding citizen and run a saloon with an upstairs brothel. The womenfolk and the preachers just won’t have it.”

  York thought about that. It made sense.

  He hadn’t yet got to the real reason, or anyway the main one, that he’d come tonight. Much of his afternoon had gone to sending out another raft of telegrams, this time asking the sheriffs all around the territory to let him know if any of Harry Gauge’s old gang showed up in their vicinity.

  Then he said, “I like you, Rita.”

  “This is so sudden.”

  He flashed a grin. “What I mean to say is . . . you impress me as someone I might be able to trust.”

  Her eyebrows went up. “I’ve heard more ringing endorsements.” Then down. “What do you have in mind, Caleb?”

  He leaned in. “You’re new here, but your people on staff aren’t—the bartenders, the girls, your gambling crew.... I need to know when any of Harry Gauge’s bunch come in here.”

  She mulled it momentarily, then shrugged and said, “I guess I could do that. But, as you say, I wouldn’t recognize them.”

  “Well, you might. Your sister’s partner brought in outlaws and gunhands and set them up as cowboys and deputies, when it’s easy to see they aren’t. Some have flown the coop. But others are still around.”

  She was nodding. “All right. I’ll try. See what I can do.”

  He gave her a tight smile. “Good. The three bank robbers, who have lately been appearing in the undertaker’s window . . .”

  “I saw their show. They stink.”

  That loosened up his smile. “Be that as it may, they were all former Gauge cronies. And if the thieves had accomplices. . .”

  “It would be former Gauge men.” Nodding again. “I follow.”

  He held her eyes. “Somebody has the money that Bill Johnson and his buddies hauled out of First Bank. I want to find it. I want to give it back to the town.”

  She had a different kind of smile going now. Might call it wistful. “You are a gent, Caleb York. No wonder they write stories about you.” She raised her glass. “To Caleb York. First legend I ever shared a table with.”

  “Don’t be so impressed,” he said.

  “Why not?”

  “Don’t you know what the word ‘legend’ means? It’s a myth. Something widely believed in, but just not true.”

  Tulley had slept most of the day.

  The sheriff had put him on night patrol, and that meant a lot of prowling around, checking doors and alleys. The work was nerve-racking at times but mostly dull. During the day, Tulley slept on a cot in one of the cells at the rear of the office, because Clem over at the livery was put out with him for quitting and wouldn’t let him sleep in his usual corner.

  His stint on night patrol started at sundown and he was to keep it up for an hour after the Victory closed. Right now the saloon was open—it was going on eleven P.M. The place had no set closing time, but this time of week, business would be slow. By one A.M., they’d likely close the shutters over them batwing doors and lock up all around. So by two A.M. or so, he could hit the cot in that cell again.

  Till tonight, Tulley had been walking on a cloud. A deputy! With his own badge! His own scattergun! And, thanks to Caleb York, the Citizens Committee had agreed to pay him forty dollars a month. The last time he made forty dollars was that silver strike that petered out the second week.

  But walking up and down this sandy street made him thirsty. He was dragging. He looked almost longingly at the boardwalk he had so often crawled under to sleep, and sleep it off. It was cool under there in the warm times, and warm in the cool ones. He reckoned a man never had a more cozy resting spot betwixt womb and grave.

  And he had traded that snug nest, and the companionship of a good bottle, for a jail cell?

  Of course, Caleb York said he’d find Tulley something better. Just give him time. But time was something Caleb York didn’t have—Tulley knew the sheriff was only here for now. That when the robbery matter was wrapped up in a bow, Caleb York and his reputation would get on the stage, and then where would Tulley be?

  Would the next sheriff keep him on?

  Not likely. Not dang likely. Not damn likely.

  His gut was twitching with the want of God’s sweet nectar. His throat ain’t felt this parched since the mule before Daisy up and died on him in the desert. He sat on the boardwalk steps in front of the hardware store and thought about his lot in life, the scattergun across his lap. He might have cried some.

  Then got to his feet, shook the feeling off, told that damn thirst to crawl back in its hole, and Deputy Jonathan Tulley strode with pride down the street. Very much on patrol. And he was fine, just fine until he stepped into the pool of light spilling from the Victory.

  He crept up to the batwing doors and peeked over, and in.

  Hell’s bells but it was dead in there. Hardly a soul. Some men playing poker and that was about all she wrote. The fancy girls was at a table smoking little cee-gars, and looking glum like flowers nobody wanted to pluck. One gal, the beautiful one that ran the place, was at the bar talking to Hub about something. Damn, she was fine to look at, spitting image of her dead sister, only younger and smoother of face.

  But that only made Tulley sad again. When had he last been with a woman? Ten year? Twenty year? Twenty, since one he didn’t pay. Ten, since he could afford paying. The thirst was back, raging like a fire in his belly that needed dousing right damn now.

  He licked the driest lips in creation and pushed through them doors. He staggered like the drunk he hadn’t been in ages over to the bar and he stood right next to Miss Rita.

  He said, “Deputy Tulley. Makin’ my nightly rounds, ma’am. Could ye stand me to a sh
ort one?”

  She smiled on half her face, making one pretty dimple. “Do you deputies drink on the job?”

  “Now and then we does. When the night calls for it.”

  “Sure about that, Deputy?”

  She smiled wickedly and nodded over her shoulder.

  At the poker table, a man in black with his back to Tulley was turning his way.

  Sheriff Caleb York.

  “Evening, Sheriff,” Tulley said, too loud, grinning like a damn hyena. “Just makin’ my rounds!”

  Caleb York shrugged and returned to his game, as if he were saying, Your choice, Deputy. Up to you.

  Tulley grinned at the boss lady. “Ma’am, what I mean to request is . . . have you any saspirilly?”

  She did have, and Tulley drank the sarsaparilla down. The stuff had a patent-medicine taste with some licorice and vanilla mixed in. He didn’t mind it none.

  When he was finished, Tulley said, very loud, “Well, that was the best dang saspirilly I had me in some time!”

  Caleb York, at the poker table, made a noise that Tulley thought might be a grunt or maybe a laugh.

  Anyway, Tulley went on back out into the street, to continue his night rounds. While he was there, he checked the alley behind the Victory and, between some garbage barrels, he found a dead man.

  On his side, kind of sprawled there, the little weak-chinned character had glasses on that was sitting crooked on his face, his eyes open but blank as a dolly’s, his expression froze in something like surprise or pain or maybe both. Tulley didn’t move the poor feller, but not being at all squeamish got down close to see that the belly of the nice gray vest under a gray jacket was blood-soaked.

  But dried. Going black and crusty.

  A scorched bullet hole, in the middle of all that dark red.

  The deputy couldn’t place him at first. It was dark back here, which didn’t make it no easier. So the deputy flicked a kitchen match with a thumbnail and lit up the contorted face.

  “Well, I’ll be danged,” Tulley said to no one who could hear.

  It was that clerk from the bank.

  That Herbert Upton.

  Tulley ran and got the sheriff. After all, he knew right where he was.

  CHAPTER NINE

  Caleb York threw in his cards—all he had was a measly pair of deuces, anyway—but did take the time to collect his cash and coin before following his steamed-up deputy out of the Victory.

  In the cool evening air, Tulley led York behind the building to the sideways figure on the ground between two garbage barrels, where the sheriff knelt and had a look. Tulley got a kitchen match going, sending flickery orange over the crumpled body.

  “Fetch Doc Miller,” York said, still crouched there looking at the corpse.

  The doctor’s living quarters were behind his simple waiting room and surgery on the second floor of the three-story bank building.

  “Doc might be sleepin’,” Tulley said, waving out the match.

  “Wake him. Knock hard and keep knocking.”

  The deputy nodded and started off.

  “Tulley!”

  “Yes, Sheriff?”

  “Tell Doc what you found. Tell him who you found. And he can leave his medical bag behind. He already lost this patient.”

  “Yes, Sheriff.”

  “And, Tulley! Have Doc haul over one of those wicker baskets for bodies. He’ll need your help with it.”

  Tulley nodded and ran off, fast as his bandy legs would let him, holding his scattergun high in one hand like a one-man Indian raiding party. If he dropped the thing, more than just Doc Miller would wake up. Whole damn town, maybe.

  While he waited for the physician, York made his own diagnosis. Upton had been shot close-up—the powder burns told that tale. That meant the clerk got it from somebody he knew, probably somebody he trusted. The blood on the entry wound, blackened and crusted, meant the killing hadn’t just happened. The larger wound in back, ragged and bloodier, was similarly black and clotted.

  Some hours had passed since the trigger on a gun stuck in Upton’s belly had been pulled. Maybe the doc could hazard a guess how many. But York doubted the crime had occurred here in this alley. On a busy night at the Victory, a shot might have got lost in honky-tonk piano and gambling din. On a quiet night like this one, the report of a weapon would have cut right through, and made itself known.

  The lidless wicker coffin, bearing a sheet, arrived with Doc Miller—looking disheveled in a rumpled brown suit and no tie—at a handle on one side and Tulley on the other. York made room for them to set the basket down near the body.

  The heavyset little physician, his white hair sleep askew, got right down there and had a look at the deceased; Tulley lit yet another kitchen match. The doctor glanced up at York, catching some of the flame’s orange. “I don’t think you need a medical opinion on this one, Caleb.”

  “Oh but I do. I think he was moved. Shot somewhere else. Dumped here. What’s your expert opinion?”

  Having to work at it a little, the doc got back on his feet. “He was moved, all right. No blood in his face. Starting to settle.”

  York gestured to the dry ground at the victim’s back. “And where’s the blood that came out of him? If this happened here, that patch would be drenched with it.”

  The doc nodded. “Mr. Upton got shot and bled out. But not here.” He shook his head, his expression glum—as much tragedy as this doctor had seen, Miller was still the kind of man who felt it. “Friend Upton died hard. He didn’t pass out, either. Look at that expression.”

  York nodded, hands on his haunches. “All the pain in the world caught up with him. How long dead, you think?”

  The stubby physician shrugged. “Somewhere between two and six hours.”

  “How d’you come up with that, Doc?”

  “Rigor mortis hasn’t set in yet. That’s how long it takes—two to six hours. And in a few more hours, we can prove he was moved by where the blood settles.”

  “How so?”

  The medical man gestured vaguely. “Way he was shot, right in the guts, a man doesn’t land on his side, but on his backside. That’s where the blood would gather. But if he was moved while the blood was still settling, we’ll before long see the bruising look of it, on the side he’s resting on.”

  York narrowed his eyes at Miller. “Then let’s not wake up the undertaker just yet. Let’s haul Mr. Upton to your surgery . . . place him on his side, just like that, in the wicker basket . . . and then ease him onto your table the same way. And see how your theory holds.”

  The doc found that a good enough plan.

  Taking all this in, Tulley said, “I don’t know doodlely-do about blood settlin’, but I can just about gar-on-tee that this here bank clerk weren’t killed in this alley. Or anywheres else outdoors in this town.”

  Genuinely interested, the doctor asked, “Why do you say that, Tulley?”

  A many-hued grin blossomed in the bearded face. “Comes to gunfire, ol’ undertaker Perkins has the devil’s own hearin’. Betcha he sleeps in that there top hat and frock coat, so’s he can git hisself to the scene of dyin’ in a hell of a hurry.”

  Tulley was, of course, half-joking, but it got York to thinking.

  He did some of it out loud: “Our undertaker friend is just a few doors down. And folks live in the spaces above these shops, all along here. Somebody would have heard the gunshot, if Upton got it anywhere around here.”

  “Even indoors,” the doctor said, nodding. “Walls aren’t exactly thick in these flimsy structures.”

  York frowned. “You think people maybe heard it, and decided to mind their own business?”

  “In Trinidad?” The doc snorted a laugh. “The occasional shooting’s the best entertainment this town can boast. Beats a musical recital at the Grange, don’t you think? Anyway, did you hear a shot tonight?”

  “No,” York said.

  “Me neither,” Tulley said, “and I was out here walkin’ patrol. How about you, Doc?�
�

  “I heard no shot, but much of the evening I was out at the Watkins farm, lancing a boil on the middle boy’s behind.” The doc winced in thought, scratching his head. “Of course, I guess I wouldn’t have heard it even if I’d been in.”

  “Why so?” York asked.

  Miller shrugged. “Well, I live in the bank building, after all. Those walls are triple-thick. Reinforced.”

  “So they are,” York said, looking in that direction. “So they are.”

  The next morning, Caleb York again knocked on the wood by the glass of one of First Bank’s double doors a good half hour before those portals were to open for business. This time, however, he was not let in by Herbert Upton, who was at the funeral parlor at the moment, Doc Miller having turned him over to undertaker Perkins after the doctor and York witnessed the blue bruised effect of blood settling along the dead man’s side.

  On his third knock, York saw the bank janitor, Charley Morton—tall, thin, in his fifties, two white eyebrows the only hair on his head—come shambling over to see who was making such a racket. A friendly, googly-eyed skeleton of a man, Charley—in a work shirt a little too big and canvas trousers a little too short—bared his big yellow teeth in a smile, recognizing the sheriff.

  Charley was the kind of guy who smiled whenever he recognized somebody.

  “We ain’t open, Sheriff,” Charley said through the glass, grinning as if he’d just delivered good news.

  “I know, Charley. Official business. Let me in.”

  Charley nodded and did so, locking the door behind them.

  “You want to talk to me?” Charley said, with several nods that answered his own question.

  The two men faced each other just inside the doors.

  “Yes,” York said, “we haven’t had a chance to chat yet, have we, Charley? About the robbery?”

  He shook his head, frowning. “That was a bad thing. I weren’t here for that.”

  “I know, but I’m talking to all the bank employees about it. But right now I need to talk to Mr. Carter.”

  Carter was seated over at his desk, looking up from his ever-present ledger, clearly wondering why the sheriff had come around again, his frown landing just this side of irritated.