KILLER IN BLACK a gripping action-packed thriller (Johnny Silver Thriller Book 2)

by PAUL BENNETT

  The bar was called La Cantina and was Mexican themed. There were sombreros and pottery flasks hanging from the walls and a big display of different tequilas, only some with worms, behind a long highly polished wooden counter that the barmen could slide drinks along. Guitar music was playing softly in the background. There were about twenty round wooden tables, each seating four people, and two rectangular tables big enough for six. There was a scattering of customers, mostly men. None of them looked threatening. I ordered an orange juice, picked up a local paper and chose a table in the corner where I could look over the top of the paper and see the door.

  Bull arrived and took a position in the opposite corner. Red, Stan and Pieter came in one after the other and chose tables with their backs to the wall. At nine o’clock precisely, the ranch hands and Ho walked through the door. They ordered beers, a white wine for Ho and pulled the two rectangular tables together. The barman made a call on his mobile and it seemed a fair bet that the game was on.

  Fifteen minutes later seven men walked in. They were big, a little heavy around the middle perhaps, but easily the right size to knock you out with one punch. One was especially big, not so much built like a house but like a whole mansion. He was toned and would be the one to watch in a fight. They were all wearing faded denim jeans, white T-shirts and black leather jackets. The jackets were partly unzipped – not a good sign. On the back of the jackets was a skull motif. Their hair was long and had that greasy sheen that infrequent washing produces; one was grey-haired and seemed to be in charge. They didn’t bother ordering drinks. Just walked up to the ranch hands and circled them.

  ‘How’d you like rattlers,’ the one with the grey hair said, laughing.

  ‘Ho’s gonna cook us up a meal from them,’ Jesse said. ‘Thanks for that.’

  ‘I thought we made it clear you’re not welcome here,’ the grey-haired one said. ‘Have we got to teach you another lesson?’

  ‘Better include me in that,’ I said, getting up.

  ‘Keep your mouth shut and mind your own business,’ the grey-haired man said.

  ‘It is my business,’ I said. ‘If you know what’s good for you, you’ll back off and walk out through the door while you can.’

  The grey-haired man laughed. He probably thought that only Jesse of the ranch hands would be any sort of threat in a fight; if they had to take on one more, then the odds were still well in their favour, especially with Mr Mansion on their side.

  ‘It’s my business, too,’ Bull said, standing up and showing them six foot six of muscle.

  The grey-haired man didn’t look so confident now. I didn’t think he’d have the sense to walk away. They had come to do a job and they couldn’t back down now without losing a lot of face and the dream of making some easy money.

  The grey-haired man dispatched Mr Mansion and one other of his crew towards Bull and only one to me; I was offended.

  Red stood up. Then Pieter and finally Stan, who both walked across the room so that they had their backs to the counter and we effectively surrounded them rather than vice versa.

  The grey-haired man walked up to Pieter, sensing he would be the easiest target. He swung a punch that Pieter swerved away from and threw a straight left in return. The grey-haired man staggered and took a step back, rubbing his chin. He approached Pieter again, this time more warily. He pulled a length of bicycle chain from the back pocket of his jeans and swung it around.

  ‘OK, guys,’ I said. ‘They didn’t heed the warning. Time to show them what you get if you’re foolish.’

  I came nearer to the man appointed to me and feinted with my right, making him take a step backwards. He picked up a beer glass from a nearby table and smashed it. The jagged edge he thrust at me.

  Then all hell broke out. Jesse joined in to even up the numbers and there were fights taking place everywhere. Even Ho got involved. She was startling: producing karate high kicks and chops that had a force belying her slight frame. I wished I could have stopped to watch her, but that was not to be the case. Bull and Mansion were locked in a serious duel where neither had the advantage nor would back away. Tables were broken by flying bodies landing on them, chairs were thrown across the room and the bikers all had some sort of weapon – bottles, knuckledusters, knives. This was serious now.

  I backed off from the guy with the broken glass. He took a step closer and thrust it at my head. I grabbed his right arm, pulled him towards me and swept my right leg across the back of his. He couldn’t hold his balance and I helped him fall forward by chopping him on the back of his neck. He got up slowly and approached me again. He was ready for me to repeat the move. Instead I punched him hard in the stomach with my right fist and, as he buckled, I hit him on the chin for good measure. He jackknifed back and landed in a heap on the floor. He crawled away and that was when I saw the movement. His hand went inside his jacket and came out with a gun.

  I fired twice. The first bullet hit the gun and took it out of his hand. The second drilled a hole through his palm. He screamed and the fight went out of him; his only concern was the blood pouring from his hand. I looked around. The effect of the sound of the bullets was as if time had stood still.

  ‘Freeze,’ I shouted, waving the gun in a circle to make sure they all knew the threat.

  The fight broke up. Bull and Mansion were still having a face-off. The grey-haired man lay on the floor. Stan had his foot on one man’s chest; Pieter had his man in an armlock and Red had one man by the throat. Ho had a man in an armlock that he wasn’t enjoying physically, let alone his feeling of humiliation. Jesse and the ranch hands had the last man on the table.

  ‘Frisk them,’ I called out.

  We patted them down – they were all carrying – and put the guns and other weapons on the tables, together with wallets full of cash. We relieved them of the cash and took it to the bartender for the damage done to the bar.

  I nodded at Bull. He bent down, dragged the grey-haired man up on to his feet and thrust him down into a chair. I walked across and stood over him.

  ‘Time to talk,’ I said. ‘What’s your name?’

  ‘They call me the Fixer.’

  ‘Not after tonight they won’t. Who sent you?

  ‘The man in black, and don’t ask me his name ’cos I don’t know it.’

  ‘Describe him.’

  ‘Easy. Black suit, black tie, black loafers, mirrored Ray-Bans. Can’t see his eyes. Not that you would want to. ’Spect they’re black, too. You can tell a lot from the eyes. You wouldn’t want to mess with the man in black.’

  ‘Where do you fit in?’

  ‘He picked us up at a diner and offered money for us to stick around for a while and make life difficult for you guys. He pays in cash, which is fine by me.’

  ‘How do you get in touch?’

  ‘He calls us. Tells us where to meet him. I’ve no way of getting in touch with him, if that’s what you want.’

  ‘You got taught a lesson today, Fixer. Now we don’t want to see you around here again. Get on your bikes and ride on.’

  ‘What’s to stop me coming back with more men?’

  ‘You wouldn’t be so stupid. You’ve seen what we can do – the shot through the palm was just a warning. Next time we’ll aim to kill.’

  He looked me in the eyes and let out an involuntary shiver.

  ‘You would, too, wouldn’t you?’ he said.

  I nodded and lifted him from the chair. ‘Ride on,’ I said.

  They slunk away, not looking back.

  Jesse started clapping and the rest of the ranch hands joined in. They were going to stick around now. Mission accomplished.

  Sheriff Tucker and his deputy were waiting for us outside. I guessed he’d watched the bikers leave before stepping out of the safety of his air-conditioned office. He looked surprised – disappointed, I suspected – to see us in one piece.

  ‘Evening, Sheriff,’ I said. ‘A fine evening.’

  ‘Well, if it ain’t Mr Actually.’


  ‘Then it’s someone doing a very good impression.’

  He narrowed his eyes and looked at me.

  ‘Are you being funny with me, boy?’

  I looked across at Bull – you’re not the only one who gets called ‘boy’.

  ‘Obviously not,’ I said. ‘Tell me, how’s the war against crime going?’

  ‘Seems to be busier since you arrived. The sooner you go, the better for me and the town.’

  ‘We’ll go as soon as our job is done.’

  ‘And what would that be?’

  ‘Just as soon as a man can walk into a bar and have a quiet drink or ride his own prairie without being shot at.’

  ‘I’ll be watching you boys. Put one foot out of line and I’ll have your asses behind bars quicker than you can say jackrabbit. Now get out.’

  I nodded at him and turned to go.

  ‘Jackrabbit,’ I said, shaking my head. If it wasn’t so dark, I would have seen steam coming out of his ears. All in all, a good night’s work.

  CHAPTER SIX

  We got up at dawn. Even then there was a heat haze shimmering over the land as the morning dew evaporated. Stan had arranged a rota for keeping watch from the hills and Pieter was to take first shift. He did his press-ups, supervised by Bull, gathered up some sandwiches and water and a pair of binoculars which Stan had picked up in town and, most important of all, the sniper rifle. Red drove him in the jeep and dropped him off. He was due to be relieved by Bull in four hours.

  The rest of us gathered round and planned out the day.

  ‘Do you think the bikers will come back?’ Stan asked.

  ‘Not if they know what’s good for them,’ I replied.

  ‘They don’t like unfinished business,’ said Bull. ‘Maybe they’re too stubborn to walk away. Or maybe they’ll be offered so much money they can’t turn it down.’

  ‘My main worry is what the man in black will do next. We put out a warning shot across the bows last night. Will that be enough for them to give up, or will they escalate matters? Best be prepared.’

  ‘I can’t stand hanging around waiting,’ said Stan. ‘Let’s tour the firing positions.’

  Each firing position had some form of cover – a tree, large rocks, the side of a building and so on. As we toured, Stan hid a bottle of water and spare ammunition at each position. I still didn’t like it. Too many blind spots. But it was the best we could get and we had to hope that the enemy – whoever they turned out to be – didn’t get sneaky on us.

  When Red returned I told him of my plan for the day. It boiled down to the fact that we had too little information to know who was behind the threats against us. It was time to visit our neighbours and see if they had been experiencing any trouble, or, indeed, if we could find any evidence against them. There was an obvious place to start – the senator.

  Around eleven, Red and I set off. We took the horses to give them a workout and to make more of an entrance – also because I had grown kind of fond of Shadow and enjoyed riding him. And, most of all, it meant I didn’t have to risk Red’s driving – too many ways to die without adding that one.

  ‘You’re not going to like what I’m going to say,’ said Red as we rode along.

  ‘But that won’t stop you saying it.’

  ‘I think you may be coming down too hard on Sheriff Tucker. This is a small town and he doesn’t have the resources to take on a bunch of bikers. And if we get this problem sorted out, I’ve still got to live here. How about making an uneasy peace?’

  ‘Even though he seems as bigoted as the rest?’

  ‘Maybe we can get him to focus on the half of me that is white, rather than the half that is Comanche.’

  ‘If that’s what you want, I’ll go along with it, but I don’t think it will do any good.’

  ‘It’s worth a try.’

  ‘I’ll go see him this afternoon.’

  ‘Appreciate it,’ he said.

  We rode on for another thirty minutes and then the ranch came into view. Senator O’Hara’s place was like he had modelled it on the Ewing ranch, but had doubled all the measurements. Coming round a sweeping drive you were faced with a long three-storey colonial house with a pillared entrance like the Parthenon. The senator must have been a rider, too, for there was a hitching post and a water trough that looked like it had been carved out of marble. We tied up the horses and walked to the door. There was a black iron handle that you pulled to ring the bell. It was like stepping back a hundred years. Soon, as if someone had been waiting for us, I heard footsteps and the door opened.

  ‘Can I help you, gentlemen?’

  The speaker was a short black man, going on sixty, decked out in the full black flunkey outfit, even down to the white gloves.

  ‘Just a neighbourly call,’ Red said. ‘Is the senator in?’

  ‘I will see, sir,’

  Which meant he’d see whether the senator wanted to be bothered by people without an appointment. He waved his arm at two chairs either side of a wide hallway and disappeared somewhere in this maze of a building.

  A couple of minutes later and the butler returned. ‘The senator will see you on the lawns, sir. Please follow me.’

  He led us along the hallway, through a huge sitting room decked out with antique furniture: chairs, tables, sofas, and opulent accessories like they’d been chosen to prop a movie scene: vases, a grandfather clock. We stepped through tall French doors to the garden. There was a wide expanse of manicured lawn surrounded by flower beds full of different coloured roses, jasmine, hibiscus and bougainvillea. The air was heady with their fragrance. It was a fine place to sit and contemplate the world.

  The senator was sitting at a large, round, wooden table. On its top was a pitcher of some sort of drink, a deep bowl of ice and three tumblers. The senator stood up and motioned us to sit down without going through the formalities of shaking our hands. He was wearing a tweed jacket with leather patches on the elbows, beige trousers and brogues, as if he had stepped out of an English country house of the twenties. He was a tall man, but his most striking feature was his slickly combed ginger hair. It looked too good to be true, and if it wasn’t, it was the vanity of a middle-aged man.

  ‘What can I do for you gentlemen?’

  ‘Just a social call,’ said Red, introducing himself.

  O’Hara seemed to press himself back in his chair as if to put as much distance between this half-breed Comanche and himself.

  ‘And you are?’ he said to me.

  ‘Johnny Silver,’ I replied.

  ‘Not one of the banking dynasty?’ he asked.

  I nodded modestly and the senator gave me a big smile – one that he probably practised in front of the bathroom mirror each morning. He added ice to two glasses and poured what looked like iced tea complete with sprigs of mint. He passed them across to us. I took an experimental sip. I wasn’t going to ask him for the recipe.

  ‘That’s good,’ I lied. ‘You live in some style, Senator. I envy you.’

  He gave us another of those smiles.

  ‘Red’s been having some trouble,’ I said.

  He frowned.

  ‘Someone poisoned a stretch of his creek and he’s had a couple of run-ins with some bikers.’

  ‘How unfortunate,’ he said.

  ‘You could say that,’ I said. ‘We were wondering if you had experienced anything similar.’

  ‘Now you come to mention it, I think there was something about some steers dying under suspicious circumstances; well, unexplained at least. You’d have to talk to my foreman for the details.’ He raised a hand in the air and clicked his fingers. ‘Jackson,’ he called.

  The butler appeared out of nowhere and walked across to the table.

  ‘Jackson. Ask Slim to come here at once.’

  The butler nodded and walked slowly back into the house. If I had been him, I would have walked more quickly. It must have been like being in a sauna in that monkey suit with gloves and all. Maybe you got used to the heat. That seemed to
be what everybody said, but I still didn’t believe it.

  The senator moved his chair slightly so that he was facing me and Red was out of his immediate vision.

  ‘First trip to the States?’ he said.

  I nodded and wondered where this was going.

  ‘Mighty fine country,’ O’Hara said. ‘A man can make his dreams come true here.’

  Did that include Jackson, or did he not count? Did it include Red, for that matter?

  A man came out of the house. He was tall and wore a hat, sand-coloured chinos, an open-neck shirt matching the trousers and cowboy boots with Cuban heels. He approached the table, doffed his hat to O’Hara. He had hard features – nose, chin, cheekbones – like he had been chiselled out of a block of granite.

  ‘Slim,’ the senator said. ‘Meet Mr Silver and…?’

  ‘Red. Just Red will do.’

  ‘Slim,’ O’Hara said. ‘Mr Silver would like to know if we have been experiencing any trouble recently?’

  ‘Anything out of the normal,’ I added.

  Slim pondered the question. He ran his fingers through his blond hair and nodded as if it was all coming back to him.

  ‘While back,’ he said, ‘someone had put tacks on the ground by the stable – caused a couple of horses to go lame. One of the guard dogs got poisoned. Then we had some steers rustled – that won’t happen again, I’ve tightened up security since then.’

  ‘What did the sheriff say? Presumably you reported the rustling episode, at least?’

  ‘Tucker said he’d like to help, but he didn’t have the men to keep watch on the place and we should organize something ourselves. I now have one man who just works nights and keeps a look-out over the land. It’s an inconvenience, that’s all.’

  ‘Thanks, Slim,’ said O’Hara.

  Slim doffed his hat again and headed back to the house.

  ‘Any ideas who might be behind those incidents?’ I asked. ‘Got any enemies?’