by Jack Lynch
“From my Air Force buddy is all. He said Barker was the one who started letting the truckers exchange the hot merchandise out back. But it was on a very small scale and he kept it low-key. Ma’s the one who let things sort of expand.”
“That was two years ago. Why should Slide have waited this long to make a move against the operation?”
Saunders grinned loosely. “I’m afraid I have to take credit for that.”
“Why?”
“Because he feels I represent the biggest threat to him. He thinks a big dope hauling operation is most apt to draw state and federal attention to little ol’ Sand Valley. He’s too dumb to see it just ain’t so. If I had just one receiver for all this cargo it would be one thing. But within three hours of getting this stuff to Ma’s place, it’ll be in a dozen different rigs moving in four different directions. He doesn’t see that, so he’s dumb enough to hire outside guys to try throwing a scare into me and Ma. Well, now, do you think the guys running a million-dollar fence ring are going to stand still for that sort of thing? They’ll probably hang him from a lamp post before tonight. But it’s nothing I have to worry about. The guys in the stolen goods business will handle it.”
Tucker came to the hangar door. “We’re ready, Colonel.”
“Right,” Saunders told him. “You and Hicks button up things and stay with the plane. We should be back inside an hour.” He finished his beer and got up. “Gotta roll.”
I finished mine and threw the bottle into the trash bucket “Why do you suppose he does it?”
“What?”
“Slide. What is it you suppose he’s doing that makes him afraid of outside law coming in and nosing around?”
“Beats me, pal. But it must be something pretty big. It sure isn’t the penny-ante gambling and girls operation he has. He’s an ambitious man, I’ve heard. He’s got a hard-on to get a piece of the action in Vegas. I heard he tried to buy into a place once but didn’t have enough cash. Another time something else went wrong. So far as I know, he’s still trying. But what else he has going on here, I have no idea.”
Saunders, Sam and the girl dropped me off back at the Rancho Sanchez parking lot, but instead of getting my car I went back into the mock frontier town looking for a site that would offer good surveillance of the nearby airfield. It wasn’t hard to find—the only four-story building there. It had an old-time dance hall on the ground floor, rooms for overnight guests on the second and third, and a dining room and the Gold Stirrup Room on top. A playbill out front said the Stirrup Room offered the melodic rhythms of the Harvey Pastor Sextet from Los Angeles.
That would be Connie Wells’s ex-husband. This old world just seemed to grow smaller every day.
I took an elevator up to the Gold Stirrup Room. The bar was open, but there wasn’t anybody around the piano. Windows on one side of the room looked out over the main street of the frontier town. Windows on the other side looked out over the desert and the Colonel’s airport. It would have been easy to spot Hicks and Turner waiting there by the hangar, if you’d been looking for them.
I ordered a beer and sipped it while making friends with the paunchy bartender who was peeling lemons and cutting the rinds into narrow strips. He said Harvey Pastor didn’t come to work until the cocktail hour. However, it turned out that he had been into the bar earlier that morning.
“Sitting about where you are,” the bartender said. “Checking his ascot in the backbar mirror and waiting for some dame to come by and pick him up.” He laughed, and looked up from his lemon peels. “Said he was going to tune her piano for her.”
“That’s funny?”
He shrugged and went back to the rinds. “Well, you know. It doesn’t matter what he’d say. He’s quite a chaser, if you know what I mean.”
“Did you see the woman he left with?”
“Yes. She was a good-looking girl. Young. Nice tan.”
“Did you know her?”
“I’ve seen her in here from time to time. So I guess she’s a local girl. It’s kind of surprising, really. Old Harvey usually hits on the tourist broads.”
There was a stand card atop the piano advertising the sextet. It had a head shot of Harvey. In the photo he appeared to be about thirty, with a round face, glasses, kinky blond hair close to his scalp and a capped-tooth grin. I didn’t think I’d trust him with tuning my piano.
THIRTEEN
The guys who’d lost their pants must have gotten a ride back into town. I didn’t pass them on the road. In Sand Valley itself, the bustling spirit seemed to have died out. There weren’t many people out and around. It looked as if they practiced the quaint custom of siesta. Businesses and shops along Nevada Street in the block just before the Sky Lodge were all closed up tight. There were only a couple of cars parked along the street. Mine made three. A worried-looking little fellow with a thin mustache and sweat on his forehead was locking the front door of a jewelry and gift shop. I crossed over to him.
“Hi, there.”
He hadn’t seen me approach. When he came back down onto the sidewalk and turned around I smiled. “Sorry. Did I startle you?”
“What the hell do you think?”
“Guess so. How come everybody down at this end of town is closed up?”
“I don’t know about everybody else,” he said, “but about twenty minutes ago two of the biggest, meanest-looking oxen I have ever seen walked into my store with some wooden staves and told me to be locked up and gone within ten minutes or they’d be back and break everything in sight, including my arms and legs. Well, I didn’t make it within ten minutes, but when they came back and saw I was working as hard as I could to get the expensive stuff back into the safe, they gave me a little extension. They said not to let them catch me here again when they came back, though, and that’s who I thought it was when you said hello to me, and my God, you bet it startled me and now I’m leaving.”
“You’re just going to let a couple of strange goons scare you off like that?”
“You bet I am. If you were as puny as I am, mister, you’d do the same. You have to be ready to roll with the punches in this town, and that’s what I’m doing. Rolling. Good-bye.”
“But why don’t you call the cops?” I yelled after him.
“You call them,” he cried over his shoulder.
I walked up the street until I came to a phone booth. I dialed the police number, told the man on duty who I was and asked to speak with Merle Coffey.
“He isn’t in right now. I’m Sergeant Stoddard. Can I help you?”
“I’d rather speak to the chief. Know when he’ll be back?”
“No, I don’t. Look, Bragg, I’m in charge around here right now. Do you have a complaint?”
“Not really, why do you ask?”
“Because you’re about the tenth person who’s called for the chief in the past fifteen minutes. They all sounded just like you. All questions and no answers.”
“Sorry, Sergeant, but I think it’d be worth your while to try getting in touch with the chief, wherever he is.”
“I’ve been trying to, but nobody answers the phone out there.”
“Out where?”
“The Truck Stop. Ma Leary called and asked for the chief and Lieutenant Trapp to pay a visit. She said it was urgent. We’d heard there was some kind of trouble out there last night, so the chief decided…Hey, what the—excuse me a minute, Bragg.”
He put down the receiver. A moment later I heard him raise a window and begin to shout. It was something about a truck blocking the driveway. Then it sounded as if he’d gone into a nearby room and was doing more shouting.
I hung up and started back down the street in the direction of the Sky Lodge. I was about fifty paces from the corner when I heard the deep-throated roar of a truck tractor. I turned and watched a large moving van thunder up the middle of the street. Its side hatch was open, and when it went past I saw the insides were filled with men, not household goods. At first I thought it was going to drive straight into
the Sky Lodge, but it swung to the right, into a cross street, wiping out a mailbox and street light on the corner. I heard the sharp gasp of air brakes, then a chunk of gears and the renewed roar of its diesel engine. This time when the backing truck came into view it was headed for the Sky Lodge. Its big, boxy rear rammed into the glassed-in lobby, and kept moving until only the cab of the vehicle was still outside the building. It must have busted through the leather-padded doors leading into the casino. A lot of lusty yelling was going on, accompanied by the sharp bangs of small-arms’ fire.
I ran across the street and into the doorway of a closed liquor store. Great shards of glass covered the intersection. From my vantage point I could see that the smash-in had transformed the front of the Lodge into something resembling a very ragged sidewalk café. The entire glass front had collapsed, leaving only steel support beams. Guys packing guns and swinging staves—as if trying to impersonate the men who busted up Ma Leary’s the night before—were going up in elevators and pounding up the stairs. They seemed to be evicting what guests were in their rooms that time of day. People were being forced out into the street. There was nothing gentle about this. Some of the guests must have resisted. They came into the sunlight bruised and stunned.
The din and punishment continued from inside the Sky Lodge. But the people Slide had hired must have suspected something of that sort could happen, and had plans for counterattack. I could hear the slamming of car doors around both corners of the cross street. There were other autos now being parked in the next intersection down Nevada Street. They formed a barrier of steel, and men were setting up positions behind them.
The people up and down the near cross street were beginning to shoot at the cab of the truck. The guests from the Sky Lodge scattered. A headlight on the truck exploded. Slugs ricocheted off the hood and fenders, and several pocked the large windshield. Somebody inside the casino blew a whistle. The guys with staves began coming down from the upper floors. There was more gunfire inside the casino and from the back of the truck, apparently aimed at the people on the cross street. A moment later the big diesel engine roared again. The moving van drove out of the gaping sore it had punched into the Sky Lodge and turned in my direction. I thought for a moment I was dead. It swung in a wide arc. One huge tire bounced over the curb. I pressed myself flat against the doorway as the truck’s side mirror ripped off the overhead canvas awning. The van straightened and rolled on up Nevada, picking up speed and heading for the auto-blocked intersection. It must have been doing nearly 40 miles an hour when it slammed into the side of a blocking auto. It was like a locomotive hitting a fifty-gallon drum. Guys at the barricade fled. The truck just kept on going, punching the smashed car ahead of it. At about the middle of the following block the auto became wedged under the front wheels of the truck. There was a horrendous scraping noise. The truck slowed, and then stopped. Men came boiling out the side hatches and back. This time they left their staves behind and took to the street with just their guns. The blocking force at the intersection scrambled back around to the other side of their cars and everybody got down to a serious gunfight. I wondered where the cops were, because not all of the civilians were gone from that stretch of Nevada Street where the truck had stopped. There was a lot of scurrying around going on. Autos were leaving the cross street in front of the Sky Lodge, Some roared up Nevada to reinforce the gang at the next intersection. Others were taking off on the cross street, probably to try flanking the truck. I ran across the street to take a look inside.
The casino looked as if somebody had swung a gigantic spiked ball through the place. There were huddled groups of customers and people who had worked for the casino. All of them had been knocked about some on the head and face. There was a lot of blood and torn flesh. One of the hostesses had a shattered jaw. She stared wild-eyed at her face in the backbar mirror, then fainted.
I started to leave when I saw a man’s foot sticking out from around a corner of the bar. I went down there to see if he needed help. It was too late. He must have been the service bartender. He was lying on his back, with a short-barreled shotgun on the carpet a few feet from his outstretched hand. He stared at the ceiling through eyes that couldn’t see. There were two bullet holes in his forehead.
Some of the bystanders stared at me dumbly, but most just stood around aimlessly. They were in profound shock. They didn’t seem injured anywhere except around the head and face. Some of them had been hit so hard that facial bones had broken, so they couldn’t support muscle and tissue the way they were meant to. Some of them looked like exhibits in a sideshow. I couldn’t take any more of it. I got out of there just before getting sick to my stomach.
I went back up the street to my car and drove over to the next street that paralleled Nevada. About four blocks up was another parked truck and more gunfire. That meant the battle was spreading, which meant more bystanders would be hurt. At the intersection a block this side of the new fighting, there did finally appear a small knot of khaki-uniformed police officers. Coffey was with them. I drove up and shouted to him. He was a shaken man. I asked him a straightforward question.
“Do you have a plan?”
“Not one I can implement at the moment. They were real smart. Called me and my assistant out to the Truck Stop. Then there was a flurry of calls for help from different parts of town, away from the center of things. When my men responded and left their cars to investigate, several of the units were disabled. I didn’t get word of what was happening until my one active patrol vehicle drove out to warn us. They even blocked the driveway at city hall so we couldn’t get more units out on the street. I just can’t do much of anything until I have more force, except to block the roads at either end of town. That I have done.”
“Would it help if I loaned you my car?”
“Not without a radio, thanks. Besides, I need the manpower more than anything, and I guess you wouldn’t want me to swear you into the force.”
“No. I still have my own job to do.”
“You came from the direction of Sky Lodge. Did you see that?”
“Yes, and it’s bad. They worked the place over violently. One of the bartenders was shot dead. There may be more. And there are bystanders over on Nevada Street near the fighting.”
“I know. I put in a call to the hospital for an ambulance. I’m hoping to arrange a truce so we can escort those people out. But until then, or when I get more of my men back together, I’m just one frustrated man.”
“I know the feeling. I think I’ll go on over to Nevada and see if I can help out the folks some.”
Coffey wheeled around. “Michaels! Go along with Bragg here. He’s going to try aiding some of the civilians. See if you can help.”
He’d called to a thin, blond man whose jaws were working quick time on a wad of chewing gum. He was in civilian clothes.
“My one plainclothes man,” Coffey told me. “I don’t dare send in a uniform until I can send in one helluva lot of them.”
“Right. Thanks for Michaels.” The young officer got in beside me and we took off.
“This is bound to get hairy,” I told him. “With the odds what they are, we’ll have to be more sneaky than brash.”
He just nodded, leaning forward in the seat with his eyes straining ahead and his jaws working a mile a minute.
I parked on the cross street just short of the gun battle. Michaels and I edged up to the corner and crouched where we could get a look at things. They all were about where they’d been when the battle started. The guys working for Slide were entrenched behind the cars in the intersection and the truckers were firing away from behind their rig halfway down the block. There were two pockets of bystanders who’d been trapped in that block when the fighting started. One group huddled across the street, three doors down from the intersection, in front of a locked-up savings and loan office. The others were trapped in a doorway on our side of the street almost even with the stalled truck. There was enough shooting going on to endanger them all. T
he din of cracking guns was beginning to give me an earache.
Michaels and I began a chancy leapfrog game, taking turns moving from one doorway to the next down the street. At his suggestion, we moved with our hands open and extended in an attempt to show we weren’t a threat to anybody. There was some pinging and smashing of glass around us but we managed to reach the pocket of bystanders on our side of the street. There were four of them—two middle-aged woman, an upright elderly gentleman and the bank vice president I’d spoken to about setting up a poster business, Howard Morton. Morton had been hit. He was lying on the pavement, unconscious. The women had tried to stem the flow of blood from his left arm. It had been smashed pretty badly.
“Somebody’s using big slugs,” said Michaels, snapping away on his chewing gum.
“Yeah,” I agreed. “He needs medical help. If we can get him on down around the corner I can go get my car and get him to the hospital.”
“But we could all get killed trying to get him down to the corner,” said the officer. He got to his feet and peered into the darkened café we were huddled in front of. “There’s an alley that runs down this block. Maybe the joint has a back entrance.”
He drew his service revolver and smashed the glass door near the doorknob, bringing a gasp from one of the women. It was heartening to see some of the old virtues still present in Sand Valley. They’d been trapped there in the doorway with bullets whizzing past and an unconscious wounded man at their feet, but they wouldn’t even think of breaking into a business that might afford them some protection.
Michaels reached inside and unlocked the door. We carried Morton to the kitchen behind the front counter and shooed the others in there with him. Behind the kitchen was a storage area and refrigeration unit, and a door that led out to a loading dock.
“Okay, get your car,” said Michaels. “Can you and the others load him in?”
“Sure, but where are you going?”
