Ed floored the accelerator of his Pontiac when he saw the Buick come after him. He had missed the opportunity to kill Wulf; he had been too excited about the chance to sever Gil Schwartz's retarded head from his bull's neck. Little Ed had waxed big Gil. Wouldn't Jinx just shit his pants to know that? But he had done something for Jinx, too. He had rid the world of the ugly half-brother, but he had also told the world about the kinship, in letters written with Gil's blood on the back room door that Wulf had been hiding behind. He had written: Gil & Jinx, The Schwarz Brothers.
He should have signed it, dammit. He really should have. Ed looked at the brown sack of money beside him and began to laugh. Maybe he could find Len. Maybe he could advertise in the classifieds in Len's favorite magazines. He had enough money for both of them. More than enough. They could start over with a new life somewhere, just the two of them.
They could if he ever got rid of this gnat on his tail, anyway. He kept the accelerator to the floor as he left the town limits and hit open road.
"Just the two of us," the Texan sang along with the radio. The job had gone well and he was pleased. The blonde woman had finally dropped with a centered chest shot. She wouldn't survive that one—not unless someone around the house was familiar with emergency room medical procedure for chest wounds, which he sincerely doubted. The first hit on her jaw had upset him a little. He didn't know who the big guy behind her was, but killing two for the price of one always grated on him.
Was that the guy in the truck he had taken target practice on earlier? The tire he had shot out?
Well, what the hell. He guessed it didn't matter now, one way or another. He always enjoyed these little trips out of state. It was good to get away on occasion, even if it was to the less than stimulating prairie-desert of western Kansas. He rarely got out of Texas these days. There were regular hits in Dallas and Houston, enough to keep him on a tight schedule. The state was full of backstabbers with big pockets and bulging wallets.
And then there was Clarice Callahan. Rich bitch supreme. He still didn't know where she had gotten his name, but he supposed that didn't matter either. He could still see her, smell her, hear that snotty rich bitch snarl in her voice as she handed over the keys to the Aston Martin and told him the car was his payment for the hit. She couldn't pay him cash. William would know.
The man laughed aloud to himself in the car. Big William would know, huh? Well, your errand boy has got news for you, Miz Callahan. The kind of news that's funny as hell to the person in the know. That person being me, the Texan thought to himself good-humoredly.
Three days before Clarice Callahan called him her husband had sent over a down payment on a hit. The hit was Clarice, to take place the day after tomorrow on her birthday. The Texan, of course, had said nothing to Clarice of the deal with her husband. He was a businessman, after all. And he really liked the blue Aston Martin she offered. He had always considered owning one for himself.
The one concession to conscience he had made was to farm the hit on Clarice out to his nephew, his young protégé, rather than do it himself. He didn't owe Clarice anything, he had taken care of her business as contracted, but he still felt it was good manners to step back on this one and let the kid have a shot. Meanwhile, he could work on the deal in Corpus at the end of the month. He hated doing people on boats, but the price was right so he couldn't complain.
What he could complain about was the shit that passed for music these days. Once every ten songs there was something decent; the rest of the time it was worthless shit that sounded like the same damn record over and over.
He turned off the music and leaned back in the seat to dig his phone from his pocket. He would find a movie to watch, nothing overly loud and violent so he wouldn’t be too distracted.
When the Texan looked back up, he knew he was about to experience the loudest, most violent sounds he had ever heard. He also knew he was going to die.
Ed topped a small rise and looked away from his rearview mirror too late. The headlights ten feet from his front bumper were imminently more dangerous.
Nolan topped the same rise and immediately jerked the wheel of the Buick hard to the right to avoid including himself in the metallic kiss of death that was occurring in the road before him. Ed’s Pontiac was also sliding right, however, and the Buick's front left bumper was caught by the Pontiac's swerving back end, sending the Buick into a long, dust-clouded spin that was ended by a corner post of a barbed-wire fence twelve feet off the road and fifty yards away from the final resting place of the Pontiac…and the smaller car welded onto its hood.
Breathless, dizzy, and dangerously nauseated, Nolan sat and waited until he knew who he was and what had happened. His ears rang with the sound of metal twisting and glass shattering. His body felt numb, overdosed on adrenaline, while his mind insisted on replaying the crash scene over and over again. He shook his head and tested all his parts before taking a flashlight from his glove compartment and forcing himself out of the car.
His legs didn't want to walk in a straight line back to the wreckage, so he didn't attempt to make them. He weaved his way around the glass and metal hunks in the road and shined his light in the interior of the ... Aston Martin? What a shame, he thought abstractedly.
The man inside was dead. No doubt about that whatsoever. "When persons are in pieces," his first beat partner had said, "consider 'em gone."
Ed Kisner, surprisingly, was not. Not yet, anyway. Nolan shined the flash into the Pontiac and saw the old man's mouth move. He leaned in. It would take the jaws of life to get him out, but Ed wouldn't last long enough. His left arm was hanging by a shred and the blood was pumping black.
"Forget it," Ed said, as Nolan took off his T-shirt and reached in to make a tourniquet. "Back...broken. Get...the money."
Nolan looked. He didn't see anything.
"Between…legs," Ed breathed.
"What do you want me to do with it?" Nolan asked. He didn't like this.
"Don't…let Jinx have it. Not…Jinx."
Nolan reached in again. The sack was covered with blood. He pulled it out and held it between the tips of his fingers. Ed said nothing more. Nolan shined the light in his eyes for a moment then he walked away.
He backed the Buick onto the road then saw a pair of headlights approaching. He hit his flashers and prayed to God the driver was paying attention. He sighed in relief when the car picked him up in its headlights and began to slow. The Mustang creeped up to him and stopped. The driver was Cal. He started talking but Nolan held up a hand and backpedaled away. He put the Buick on the side of the road and grabbed the manila envelope, the sack of money, and his pistol from the seat before climbing into the Mustang. Before he could speak Cal looked at the twisted wreckage in the road and said, "That's my grandmother's car. Was she inside?"
"No. Some guy. Dead."
Cal drove around the metal and human corpses, his face void of emotion. "He shot Mom. He shot Al, too."
Nolan sucked in his breath. "Is she...?"
"No. But Al is. He was one of them, Nolan, one of the Denke people."
Nolan stared. "No. Not Al."
"He said he was like Darwin. He said he paid the town people with profits from his salvage yard to get out of doing the Denke thing. I didn't understand—"
"Your mother," Nolan interrupted. "You said she was shot. Is she okay? Are you sure she was hit?"
"I'm sure. So was the guy doing the shooting, sure enough to stop and drive away. I saw her get hit, and I saw the blood, but now she's. . ." Cal stopped talking. His eyes rounded slightly as he gazed at something beyond Nolan.
Nolan turned to see what he was looking at. He saw a long caravan of headlights heading in their direction.
"What the…?"
"The people from town," Cal said anxiously. "Al called them. I had to come and find you. They're on their way to our place. What are we going to do?"
Nolan stared at the bright string of headlights, his mind working.
"I can't
think," Cal said suddenly. "I'm supposed to be so smart and I just can't think. My mind is a blank. From the moment I saw my mother get shot it's like I can't get anything but the same image up there, over and over. I see her lying there like death and then I see another image over her, like some angel with wet hair bending down to touch her, and then the angel is gone and Mom is sitting up again, with no hole in her chest, just a lot of blood, and I…”
Nolan opened the door and got out of the car. "Get out of here, Cal. Go back, get your mom and the girls and get the hell out of here. You might call the state police while you're at it."
"We can't," Cal reported. "Al ripped the cord out of the phone. What are you going to do?"
Nolan shook his head. He still couldn't get over Al being one of them. Sonofabitch.
"I'm going to do whatever I can to keep them busy while you guys are getting the hell away from here. My guess is they'll stop to look at the wreckage. That'll give you some time. Now go on and get out of here."
Cal's bottom lip threatened to tremble. "Nolan, I can't leave you here. I can't."
"You're not leaving me here. I'm staying. I've got the pistol and a full clip. I'll be fine."
He also had the sack of money and a half-assed plan.
"I…" Cal began, but Nolan angrily kicked the driver's door of the Mustang. "Get out of here, dammit. Now."
Cal floored the accelerator and the Mustang sped away into the darkness. Nolan turned and ran back to his Buick to get out of sight.
The caravan arrived immediately, with the first two cars slamming onto their brakes as they approached the burning wreckage. One by one, the cars stopped and the drivers got out. Each man joined the others as they walked around the smashed Pontiac and the dead Ed Kisner. They shook their heads at what was left of the other dead man in the Aston Martin.
Then Nolan stepped out from his hiding place. He held up his pistol and waved as first one man and then another and another spotted him. He stopped twenty yards away from them. "Hell of a mess. Nearly took me with 'em."
"Too goddamned bad they didn't," someone said.
Nolan smiled. "I heard that." He gestured with the pistol. "Where's everybody going?"
The men looked at each other. Nolan heard several of them whisper in short, sharp sentences. He held out the bloody sack of money. "You know what this is?"
All eyes turned to the sack.
"This is fifty thousand dollars," Nolan said. "Ed Kisner was leaving town with it."
"That thieving bastard!" a white-haired man yelled, and several others shouted in agreement.
Nolan shook his head. "Nope. I was with him when he took it. He said it wasn't town money. He said it was money Jinx had been hoarding away over the years. He found it in Jinx's safe in the diner."
"Liar! Jinx wouldn't do that! What the hell were you doin' in there? You were in on it with Ed! Let's get him!"
Nolan held up the pistol as he saw the razors emerge from pockets. He aimed at Fred Bauer's warty nose. "I've got a round for each one of you murdering bastards," he promised. "So put those goddamned things away."
"He can't get all of us," someone said.
"Can too," someone else murmured. "Remember what he done to Gil in the barn that day?"
Slowly, in inches, the men advanced. Nolan saw and backed steadily away, keeping his pistol in front of him. "I'm going to make a deal with you," he told them. "I'm not going to kill anyone, and I'm going to give you the money. In return, you let us get out. All of us, including Vic, when he gets back."
"No deal," Hank Nenndorf shouted. "You'll have the law on us."
"Maybe, maybe not," Nolan said. "But you'd have the opportunity to get out before they got here." He opened his hands. "That's the best deal you're going to get tonight. Otherwise, at least four of you will die when you come to slit my throat. I promise you that."
The men looked at each other again. Two of them moved up and began to whisper to the others. Soon they were all talking and gesturing, casting angry glances at Nolan and even angrier glances at the dead Ed Kisner. Then Fred Bauer broke away from the others and took a step toward Nolan. "We'll take the money," he said. "Hand it over."
Nolan tossed the bag, and the moment he tossed, he saw flame spew forth from a revolver in Bauer's hand. The slug tore through Nolan's side and spun him around before he fell to the ground. The pistol in his hand bounced away from him on impact. He had time to wonder where the hell the gun had come from—hadn't Vic told him guns weren't allowed in Denke--then he heard the crunching sounds of glass and debris under the men's feet as they approached. Each step sounded a frantic alarm in Nolan's brain. He thought he could smell the dirty blades of those razors coming nearer to him. He opened his eyes and searched the ground around him for his pistol.
"Hell of a shot, Fred," someone was saying. "Better put that thing up now. You know how Jinx feels about them firearms."
"Jinx ain't here," Fred chortled as he put the gun back in the holster hidden under his jacket. "Can't nobody make me give up my granddaddy's old Colt."
Nolan heard another sound then, a sound he could feel under his cheek as well as hear. He wished he could turn his head to look, but it seemed too much of an effort. He heard the feet of the approaching men stop. In the next second, he heard excited shouts and the sounds of the men running away from him. With a monumental effort, he raised his head and looked. He saw headlights coming his way, three pairs of them. The second and third pair of headlights was accompanied by police lights and sirens.
Cal? Nolan wondered. Had Cal brought the cops? How? He gave up and lowered his head to the ground again. His hand went to his side in a useless effort to hold the blood in. Minutes later, Cal was standing over him and jerking his T-shirt over his head. He plugged up the hole in Nolan and rolled him over to check his back.
"It went right through," Cal revealed. Then he turned to shout something to someone behind him. Nolan lifted his head again and saw a state patrolman on the radio. The other car was leaving, going after the men from Denke. The patrolman signed off the radio then approached Nolan. He added his own emergency procedures to Cal's and told Nolan a helicopter was coming. Then he turned to Cal and told him to stay with Nolan. He had to go into Denke.
"Where did they come from?" Nolan asked in a pained voice as the patrolman left.
"They were with Mom when I got there. They said Vic called them long-distance from New Mexico and asked the sheriff to send someone to his farm to check on his little girls. Vic told them his girls were in danger, but he wouldn't say how. They didn't know anything about anything, and then they arrived and found Al dead in the living room. They were calling for more men when I got there. I told them about you and the crash and the men from town and they asked me to show them where. So we came and…found you."
Nolan heard the break in Cal's voice and he looked into the boy's eyes. "I'm not dying, Cal. Stop looking so scared."
"Are you sure? I mean, well, there's blood everywhere. You've lost a lot."
"And you don't see any angels around, right?" Nolan gave him a weak smile. "Trust me. It looks a hell of a lot worse than it is. I've been shot before, remember. Tomorrow I'll be up and walking around, good as new."
It wasn't the next day, or even the day after, but after three days under a doctor's care in Garden City, Nolan was back on his feet as promised. He returned to Vic's farm on a hot, sultry morning to find many somber faces waiting for him, Vic's and Carrie's among them. Vic seemed uncomfortable to see him at first, but he later hugged Nolan so hard it caused him to yelp in pain. Carrie hugged him and cried and Nolan immediately sensed a difference in her. She was more subdued, less intense, and even meek. And she seemed to cling to Vic. He couldn't leave the room for five minutes without her getting up to look for him. She treated Vic's little girls with a sweetness and sympathy Nolan would have believed impossible only six months ago.
When Vic finally explained what had happened to Carrie, Nolan suddenly understood the changes in his for
mer girlfriend. It made him even angrier at Jinx, and he demanded to know what had become of him. Vic claimed he didn't know. He said the old man had taken his suitcase and fled on foot when Vic opened the trunk of the Cadillac and found Carrie inside.
The police were looking hard for Jinx, the only member of the Denke council who had thus far escaped arrest. Everyone involved had given countless depositions, Nolan supplying his from his hospital bed. The police looked at him as if he were crazy after he told the tale Ed Kisner told him, particularly when the manila envelope in Nolan's possession was found to contain nothing more than receipts for farm equipment. It was Carrie MacArthur's car and statement that ultimately did the most damage to the Denke council. One by one, the men from Denke were picked up and placed under arrest.
Each one remained stubbornly silent when questioned by the police. They were waiting for their spokesman, they said. Jinx Lahr. He would represent them in court.
Nolan could only shake his head at the news. The entire nation was going to be horrified once the full story hit the media. So far only bits and pieces had leaked out about a robbery and theft ring in western Kansas. Any requests to protect the women and children of Denke would be eschewed by the press, Nolan was sure. All of Denke would go down together. The families would scatter. The ties would be broken.
Like his ties to Myra and Cal. Nolan hadn't spoken to her since his return that morning. He was still upset with her for attempting to leave when she had promised to stay. He didn't know how to deal with her. He didn't know how to treat someone like Myra. She did what she wanted to do regardless of what he did or said. She was stubborn, fiercely independent, and he would swear she was downright shy underneath all that blonde toughness. He didn't know what to make of her, or of the way he felt about her. His relationship with her son was the only thing he was sure of; Cal was a great kid, and Nolan loved him.
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