The Sixteen Dollar Shooter (A Rockabye County Western Book 1)

by Edson, J. T.

  Progressing along the street, the deputies visited each establishment as they came to it. Tom appeared to be known by the people to whom he spoke and he introduced Brad as his new partner. He also inquired about Cruz Socorro, without learning any more than he had at the movie theater.

  ‘So this’s where we find “Mr. Britt”, huh?’ Brad drawled as he and his partner approached a small, undistinguished-looking bar and grill which bore the name “Ye Olde English Tea Shoppe”.

  ‘You tricky son-of-a—!’ Tom ejaculated, slamming to a halt and glaring at his companion’s smiling face. ‘And here I was thinking—’

  ‘That I wasn’t interested enough to ask why you’d called off going on the E.V.O.C.,’ Brad suggested, pausing until the other man started to walk again.

  ‘Something like that,’ Tom admitted. ‘How’d you know?’

  ‘It wasn’t too hard to figure, for a man who’s been trained by the F.B.I.,’ Brad declared cheerfully. ‘Central Control don’t pass out personal messages, so I knew it had to be business. And it wasn’t hard to work out what kind.’

  Before they could discuss the matter further, the deputies reached the door. Tom opened it and Brad followed him into Ye Olde English Tea Shoppe. Despite its elegant name and apart from an enormous brass tea urn on the counter, the room seemed to be little better, or worse, than any of its competitors in the neighborhood. There were a few booths, none of which had occupants, a pool table, the inevitable stools lining the bar and other standard fittings. Behind the counter stood a small, lean sharp-featured man clad in a mauve shirt with light green stripes which clashed violently with a multi-colored bow-tie.

  ‘I tell you,’ the bartender was informing the only two customers who were present as the deputies entered, speaking in an accent that struck Brad as having originated in London, England, rather than from anywhere in the Lone Star State. ‘It’s a bleeding liberty the way them track judges carry on. Sun Belle was so far in front that she was farting in Dolly Moor’s face and what does the bloody judge do? He gives her second.’ He glanced at the newcomers and went on, ‘What’ll it be, gents?’

  ‘Coffee and a couple of hot-dogs,’ Tom replied, taking one of the barstools.

  ‘And the same,’ Brad went on, conscious of the small man’s interested scrutiny. ‘Plenty of onions and easy on the mustard.’

  After making up the orders, the small man continued to talk about horseracing to his original pair of customers. Listening to him, Brad decided that he must be remarkably unlucky as he never appeared to win a bet. Every time a horse he had backed seemed likely to do something, it met with a disaster or was disqualified before it could justify his faith.

  ‘Well, if it ain’t me old china, Mr. Cord,’ the man greeted, after the two customers had paid their bills and left. ‘And how’s life treating you?’

  ‘I’ve been worse, English,’ Tom confessed. ‘Meet my new partner. Brad, this’s English Herb.’

  ‘A honor, sir, a very great honor,’ English Herb declared, offering Brad his hand. ‘Would you be a betting man, sir?’

  ‘Not often,’ Brad replied.

  ‘I wish I wasn’t,’ English sighed. ‘Why I could tell you—’ Pausing, he darted a glance at the door to the kitchen, then at the entrance and lowered his voice. ‘You’d best be taking a look at the Buenavista Hotel, Mr. Cord. There’s a couple of gents using it who’re planning to do a moonlight flit across the border.’

  ‘Who’d they be?’ Tom asked.

  ‘Paul and Hughie Boyer,’ English answered.

  Looking at Brad, Tom felt as if a cold hand had touched against his spine. The Boyer brothers were professional killers, with a string of fulfilled contracts and successful hits to their credit. While Tom had expected to receive some useful information, for the little Englishman was his most capable stool pigeon, he had not suspected that it would be of such magnitude. What was more, having been the recipient of the news, it would be the responsibility of his team to make the arrest.

  Except that Tom no longer had the backing of Harry Bidlow. As yet, he and Brad Counter were a team in name only.

  ‘The Buenavista, huh?’ Tom said quietly, glancing at his new partner. ‘That’s on Pelham Street, Brad. In Evans Hill!’

  ‘I dig,’ the big blond answered soberly.

  Unlike Evans Park Division, which shared the title the Bad Bit with Jepson, Evans Hill was a respectable portion of the town. It had been a separate community until the discovery of extensive oil fields in the vicinity had caused Gusher City to grow and, once beyond its modern fringes, retained the appearance of a small range country town.

  ‘You know any more about it, English?’ Tom inquired.

  ‘Only that they’re due to meet with their guide tonight, or in the early hours of the morning,’ the small man replied.

  ‘Gracias,’ Tom said, taking out his wallet. He removed and dropped two ten dollar bills on the counter. ‘We’ll check it out.’

  Finishing their coffee and hot dogs, Brad and Tom left the bar. Instead of returning to their car, Tom insisted on paying calls to several other places. He had told English the information they had pretended to be seeking, but wanted to make sure that he had covered up the real purpose of the visit.

  ‘Always protect your informers, Brad,’ Tom advised, as they sat in the car with him driving. ‘Technically, we should have called in a “Code Six” instead of a “Code Seven”, seeing that we were out for an investigation. But I never do it when I’m going to talk to an informer. A couple of years back, the Syndicate started monitoring Cen-Con’s calls and they pegged a few stool pigeons for snitch jackets through the officers using a “Code Six” when going to a meet.’

  ‘I’ll mind it,’ Brad promised. ‘Who is English, anyways?’

  ‘His real name’s Herbert Sandiacre,’ Tom answered. ‘Not that anybody’d know him by it. Reckons to have been one of England’s top peter-men. [xix] Came out here to help pull a caper, only the men who fetched him got themselves washed out in a hold up before he could make the contact with them. As far as I know, he’s clean.’

  ‘Why’d he start to snitch for you?’

  ‘I did him a couple of favors and this’s how he repays me. A lot of hoods use his place. I reckon they like to have it known that they’ve travelled and he tells them the latest slang from London, or gives ’em names to toss around. And while he’s doing it, he’s on the ear. He learns plenty and passes it on.’

  ‘So he’s not likely to be wrong about the Boyers?’ Brad asked.

  ‘He’s never steered me wrong yet,’ Tom pointed out ‘Call Cen-Con and let them know we’re coming in.’

  ‘Yo!’ Brad replied. ‘Shall I tell them to pass the word to the Watch Commander about the Boyers?’

  ‘No!’ Tom answered emphatically. ‘We’ll stop at a call box on the way and I’ll talk directly to Mac McCall. Like I said, I never take unnecessary chances where my informers are concerned.’

  ~*~

  ‘If the Boyers are staying at the Buenavista, and my informant’s always been right so far, they couldn’t hardly have picked a better place to hole up,’ Tom Cord told First Deputy McCall and the sheriff of Rockabye County. ‘Putting the arm on them inside would be trickier than toting nitro across ice in new leather-soled shoes. Which’s why we came in rather than going to make sure they’re there.’

  ‘You did the right thing,’ Jack Tragg stated.

  Sitting at the desk in his modern, air-conditioned and spacious office, the sheriff turned his eyes from Tom to Bradford Counter as they faced him across it. Jack guessed that the big blond had suggested a more positive line of action, but had been over-ruled by his experienced partner. There was just a flicker of relief on the young man’s face at having been given official approval for the decision to do nothing.

  Although Jack Tragg was wearing an excellently cut light-weight suit of Madison Avenue gray, a white silk shirt and a dark and light striped blue tie, he somehow still contrived to look like a traditio
nal Texas peace officer. Six foot tall, lean as a steer raised in the greasewood country, tanned by long exposure to the elements—despite having to spend much of his working day indoors—he had a ruggedly handsome face and close-cropped black hair. There was an air of tough, self-reliant efficiency about him which inspired confidence among the law-abiding citizens of Rockabye County. His deputies trusted him and knew that, as long as they were in the right, he would back them to the hilt regardless of public opinion.

  For their return to the Department of Public Safety Building, Brad and Tom had selected a route which would take them by the Buenavista Hotel. As he was driving, the stocky deputy had explained his feelings regarding stool pigeons. Some peace officers professed to hate, or despise, their unofficial helpers. Tom was not one of them. He believed that he had no moral right to stand in judgment, or to criticize, after having taken and made use of information the giving of which might easily cost the donor’s life. In addition, he was aware that—despite all the modern scientific aids to crime detection—there were still numerous occasions when it had been a stool pigeon who was responsible for cracking a difficult and complex case.

  ‘Once you’ve got a good stoolie, treat him right and protect him,’ Tom had said. ‘Do that and he’ll stick by you.’

  In the future, after the death of his partner, Brad would always remember and act on the advice. He never had cause to regret doing so, as it would bring him good results.

  As they had been approaching the hotel, Brad had suggested that they should try to arrest the brothers. Tom had declined, explaining that—in his opinion—to do so would create too great a risk to the other occupants of the building. While the deputies would be hampered by their concern for the safety of the people in the adjacent rooms—either of their handguns being sufficiently powerful to send a bullet through a wall and have it emerge with enough power to be lethal if it hit anybody—the brothers would have no such scruples. Either of them was capable of throwing lead without hesitation or thought for who it might strike.

  So the deputies had done nothing more than study the building and its surroundings in passing. They had not even stopped, in case one of the brothers might have been keeping watch and grown suspicious. However, they had seen enough to realize that capturing the Boyers was anything but a sinecure.

  ‘How often do you get something from this informer, Tom?’ the sheriff inquired.

  ‘Fairly often,’ Tom replied. ‘And he’s never given me a bum steer.’

  ‘Do you think the story might have been a plant?’ Jack went on.

  ‘I wouldn’t say so,’ Tom answered, having already considered the possibility of somebody slipping false information to English Herb as a way of proving that he was all informer. ‘He only deals with me and I’ve always covered him real good.’

  ‘He didn’t tell you what time they’d been leaving?’ McCall put in.

  ‘Nope,’ Tom drawled. ‘Only that it’ll be late tonight, or early in the morning, and they’re going to meet a guide. That’s one reason I don’t reckon it’s a plant. He knows enough, but not too much.’

  ‘I called I.C.R. [xx] as soon as I heard from Tom,’ McCall announced. ‘According to them, the Boyers always take a room in a smallish, not-too-expensive, but respectable hotel in a middle-rent part of town. Which means the Buenavista’d be their kind of pad.’

  ‘Couldn’t we go in after them?’ Brad inquired. ‘I don’t mean knock and say who we are, or even try to kick it open and burst in, but wait until they call room service and be there when the door opens.’

  ‘That’d mean putting whoever knocked in danger,’ Jack pointed out.

  ‘I could do it,’ Brad offered.

  ‘It’s been tried,’ McCall warned. ‘Seems that they get to know the regular help and, if a strange voice answers after the knock, they’re ready. They took two detectives in Dallas that way, I.C.R. told me. Paul opened the door with a piece in his hand and started blasting. Killed one of the fuzz and left the other for dead, which’s how I.C.R. learned what had happened.’

  ‘There’s too much danger involved,’ Jack declared. ‘Not only for you, but to the people in the building. We’re going to have to take them in the street.’

  ‘I’ve had the Traffic Detail send up a large scale map of the area,’ McCall told the deputies, nodding to a small table at the right of the door which connected with the Watch Commander’s Office. ‘It’d be a hell of a location to try to stake-out, but that’s part of the Boyers’ M.O. They always pick a place that can’t be covered easily and go for a room that gives them a good view of the street.’

  Following their superiors to the table, Brad and Tom studied the map. They saw nothing to make them reconsider their earlier summation—which McCall’s information from I.C.R. had confirmed—that picking up the brothers would be a tricky proposition.

  Standing in a business section, the Buenavista Hotel was flanked and faced by shops of various kinds. If the Boyers were following the usual method of operation, they would be occupying a room from which they could command a good view of their surroundings. To make matters worse, the majority of buildings in the vicinity left their sales sections’ display lights on after closing. Taken with the street lights, these would make concealing the men practically impossible.

  ‘That goes for using undercover trucks and cars, too.’ Jack pointed out, after mentioning the other difficulties. ‘It’s a parking-prohibited area during the night, so that the Department of Sanitation’s street-cleaning vehicles can do their work.’

  ‘I wonder how many ways there are out of the building?’ Brad asked. ‘We can try calling and asking and while we are at it, we might be able to find out if the Boyers are there and maybe even if they’ve said that they’ll be leaving.’

  ‘That’s out,’ Jack stated firmly. ‘Not because I think the desk clerk or the manager would deliberately warn the Boyers. They wouldn’t—intentionally. But you’ve seen the kind of place it is. Let them get a hint that we’re interested in a couple of their roomers and they’ll show it enough to tip off the Boyers. We’re not dealing with petty larceny punks who don’t know the time of day. These are smart, ruthless and experienced professionals who know the score and have stayed alive by taking precautions. If they get just one suggestion that we’re on to them, they’ll pull out. Or, worse still, they might hole up and grab hostages. I’d sooner let them get away than have that happen.’

  ‘Why don’t we have Alice drop by and see if she can get a room?’ Tom asked. ‘Even if she can’t, she’ll be able to get an idea of the inside lay-out.’

  ‘That’s a good idea,’ Jack conceded. ‘Fetch her in, Mac.’

  ‘Yo!’ the First Deputy answered and returned to the desk.

  ‘There’s a place real close to the hotel which offers good cover, sir,’ Brad remarked, tapping the map with his right forefinger while McCall was using a telephone to summon the woman deputy. ‘Hoffner’s Man’s Shop right across from it.’

  ‘Hell, yes!’ Tom ejaculated, glancing in admiration at his young partner. ‘It’s got a big alcove doorway with a square display case in the center. We could put men behind the case—’

  ‘But not too many of them,’ Jack pointed out. ‘Four at most, probably not more than two. If the Boyers are as hip as I figure them to be, they’ve already notice the alcove and’ll be watching it.’

  ‘I could call at the shop and ask if they leave their lights on all night,’ Brad offered. ‘Most of them are turned off automatically at midnight. If that happens, we ought to be able to stay out of sight.’

  ‘How’ll you get behind the cabinet?’ Jack wanted to know.

  Taking note of how the sheriff had said ‘you’, Tom realized what was implied. On the face of it, there was nothing unusual in himself and Brad being assigned to the task of arresting the Boyers. They had gathered the information and it was up to them to act upon it, particularly as they were not engaged in any other case.

  However, going up against a p
air of hardened criminals, killers who had never hesitated to use their guns, was a task for a skilled and experienced team. Brad had excellent qualifications, Tom conceded, and knew plenty about the theory of modern law enforcement; but he had had no practical experience.

  Under the conditions they might find themselves facing, experience alone counted. Theory was of little use.

  In a real gunfight, there was only one second prize awarded—death!

  Unfortunately, there were other elements to be taken into consideration. If the assignment should be passed on to another team, it would arouse comment and speculation. Possibly the older deputies, especially those who had opposed the sheriff’s new system of making appointments, would consider that they had proved their case. A man promoted from the G.CP.D., or an outside law enforcement agency, would be able to take part in the affair despite only just having joined the Sheriff’s Office.

  On top of that, to lose the assignment might—probably would—have a detrimental effect upon Brad’s confidence.

  He would, with justification, believe that they had been excluded because he was not considered competent to handle the work.

  There was only one thing to do, the stocky deputy decided, accept that Brad had been well enough trained to do his duty and get on with it.

  ~*~

  The time was half past two in the morning. Standing behind the big display cabinet, Tom Cord watched the eastern end of the Buenavista Hotel. Next to him, looking big in the darkness, Bradford Counter kept the other side of the building under observation. Although the street was well lit, the alcove lay in a deep and satisfactory shadow since the lights had switched themselves off at midnight.

  There had been more discussion in the sheriff’s office before all the major details had been settled. Even though there had been no definite proof that the Boyers were staying at the hotel, Jack Tragg had been willing to use every available man to help with their capture. However, having thought over the difficulties involved in placing the back-up groups in position without any of them being seen by the brothers, Tom had been against the idea. He had declared that the more men they used, the greater grew the chances of somebody giving the game away. There was not only the brothers for the men on the stake-out to consider. If English Herb was correct, they were to meet a man who would take them into Mexico. That implied they would not be using any legal means of crossing. So the guide would have considerable local knowledge, which meant he might recognize one of the peace officers if he saw them.