Send Angel! (A Frank Angel Western #2)
Page 17
‘I could kill you myself,’ Angel said, reflectively. He put no emphasis on the words, and Burnstine paled. Then anger mottled his face and he jabbed a Finger forward.
‘You!’ he hissed. ‘You will be the one who dies, Angel!’ The charming facade slipped away from the benign politician’s face, and the sleeping tiger beneath it appeared. The hate-filled eyes shouldered, the megalomaniac who had planned this gigantic plot, the real Burnstine, the calculating, coldblooded manipulator who had brought the reign of terror and destruction down upon the Rio Blanco valley, showed in every straining fiber of the man’s body. The man was evil incarnate and despite himself, Angel recoiled slightly from the venomous power of the man, a thing almost tangible.
‘You, Angel, will be lucky if you reach Washington alive,’ Burnstine hissed. ‘I will put out word on you. Wherever you go, whatever you do, someone I have sent will be close behind you, dogging your footsteps. If I have to spend a million dollars -and I can, Angel, I can - I will have you dead! Somewhere, sometime, they will find you. You may stop one of them, or even two. You may hide in the remotest part of the world. But someone will find you. Waking, sleeping, wherever you are, however long it may take, they will find you and kill you. Now get away from me. I’m sick of the sight of your face!’
The hard and certain power of the old man’s words touched a chill finger on Angel’s spine. He felt doubt seep into his mind: he knew Washington, knew the endless years that Burnstine could, and would, fight through the courts, his case shuttled from committee to sub-committee, the buck always passing on. Few men in the capital would want to have the black mark on their political career that condemning a senator of the United States Government to death would make. No matter the justice of it, the human lightness involved. This evil old man with his millions could stay his execution for a year, two, ten, and all of those years would be filled for Angel with the fear of the assassin in the night, the bullet from the darkened alley, somewhere, sometime, never knowing when. Angel got up out of the chair.
He went out of the room without speaking and he heard the old man laugh as he went, a sound like a snake in a basket full of newspapers.
Chapter Twenty-Six
Nobody ever found out how Larkin did it.
It might have been that he spent his last dollars bribing one of the young soldiers who were guarding him, or he might even have somehow, in some incredible fashion, managed to get out of the hotel without being seen. It was late in the evening. Angel was upstairs with Metter and Blackstone, awaiting the arrival of the US marshal, and the saloon downstairs was dark except for a light on the table in front of Senator Burnstine, who was playing cards with the sheriff. Burnstine was in an expansive mood, losing large sums of money with a happy laugh, his belly warm with cheap brandy, a fine cigar smoldering in the ashtray. He dealt Austin five cards and was just about to deal himself a hand when he looked up. The cards slipped from his fingers as if they had turned to wax. His jaw gaped open and Austin, who was sitting with his back to the door, turned in his chair. His bowels turned to jelly. Framed in the doorway, a street window lighting him against the night darkness, stood Larkin. He was leaning against the doorjamb and they could hear him struggling to breathe. The sound was like an old, rusty pump being used for the first time in many years. Larkin lurched into the saloon, standing about six feet away from them, just inside the circle of lamplight. Austin gasped when he saw the front of the man’s body: it was a pulsing mass of thick, black blood. Larkin was all but dead on his feet, his wound torn open by the terrible effort of getting from the hotel to Metter’s place. But the eyes held that burning, blank, killing light that Austin had seen before and he sat frozen in the chair, his tongue paralyzed in his mouth.
‘Senator,’ Larkin said. He lifted his bandaged right hand a few inches in greeting and they saw that the white linen was also bright red with blood.
‘How in the name of God... ?’ Austin finally managed.
‘Don’ know,’ Larkin said. ‘Leg’s like pulp. Just about made it.’ He grinned, pain drawing his face into a terrible death’s head. ‘Couldn’t go ’thout sayin’ bye, could I?’ His voice slurred.
He let them see the sixgun and Burnstine’s eyes touched it and then rolled up in his head. ‘Oh God,’ he said.
‘No help comin’ from that quarter, Burnstine,’ sneered Larkin. He lurched, almost falling. Then he drew himself upright. His willpower was astonishing. Burnstine scrabbled out of his chair, fell to his knees, crawling towards Larkin.
‘Don’t,’ he sobbed, ‘don’t, don’t, don’t. I’ll do anything. Only don’t. ...’ He was abject, craven; nothing in him left functioning. The pungent smell of sweat and urine arose from him and Austin’s nostrils wrinkled in distaste and horror. The man had come apart.
‘I - uh – Larkin ...’ he began, trying to find courage to tell Larkin that he was going to shout for help, but the words just would not come. Austin stared at Larkin in fascinated horror, totally terrified, completely prevented by the sight of the man from intervening in what was happening.
Burnstine sobbed and crawled across the floor towards Larkin.
‘Get up, Senator,’ Larkin said, softly, his voice fading away. His eyes closed for a second, then jerked open again. ‘Get up. I’m not going to kill you. It’s all right. Get up.’
Burnstine looked up from the floor, hope kindling in his eyes, his face red raw with tears of terror, his nose dribbling, his mouth wet and loose. He looked at Larkin to see if this was some terrible, final jest and Larkin said again, ‘Get up, Senator. Get up.’
Burnstine got to his feet, babbling, his hands moving like butterflies on pins.
‘You’ll never regret it, Larkin, David, my boy,’ he sobbed. ‘I’ll give you money, anything, anything you want. Just tell me ... tell me.’
‘Sit down, Senator,’ Larkin said. His voice sounded very far away. ‘Don’t be afraid. It’s all right’
Burnstine fell into the chair, knuckling the tears and snot off his face, his eyes touching Austin with something like a plea, and he let his shoulders relax, a hiccup shaking his body.
‘You ... won’t... ?’ he tremulously began. Larkin shook his head and for the first time, a spark came back into Burnstine’s eyes, the thinnest edge of the foxy craftiness, the first faint sign that the brain was beginning to function, to emerge from its deep black plummet into terror. Austin saw Burnstine’s eyes flick over the swaying Larkin, calculating how long, how much longer the dying man could stand.
‘That’s my senator,’ said Larkin and shot Burnstine in the face three times. The shocking sound of the sixgun, the flash of the powder by his face made Austin scream with pure terror and he had fainted dead away when Angel came down the stairs three at a time, Blackstone behind him.
Blackstone went quickly to Burnstine’s side. He recoiled at the sight of the old man’s head. Austin sat up, then keeled over to one side, vomiting. His face had been resting in Burnstine’s bloody brains.
Angel kneeled by Larkin’s side. The gunman coughed, and a gobbet of blood coursed down his chin. His eyes looked up into Angel’s and he suddenly smiled, a bright, happy child’s smile.
‘Now we’re even,’ he said. And then he died. Angel never knew whether Larkin meant himself and Burnstine, or himself and Angel. Much later he would realize that Larkin had meant both.
Chapter Twenty-Seven
The Palace Hotel in San Francisco was one of the finest in America. Renowned for its cuisine, for its palatial luxury, the Palace attracted the most handsome men and the most beautiful women in the world to its portals. At this time of year it was crowded with the rich, the famous, and the hungry swirling motley multitude of seekers for fame and fortune who came to California like a never-ending torrent.
Frank Angel sat in the dining room, looking at Kate Perry across the snowy expanse of linen and gleaming silver on their table. He raised his wine glass and made a silent toast to her. She smiled back.
It had been two weeks
since that last fateful night in Daranga. With the death of Burnstine, the troubles in the Rio Blanco valley had come to a bloody and sudden end. There had been reports to send to Washington, and many loose ends to tie up. But that was all behind them now. Kate Perry was a very rich young woman, for the Government purchase of the portion of the ranches which were to be flooded, both her father’s and Walt Clare’s, would be a generous one, all of it hers by unarguable right Even now, Army engineers were surveying the canyon of the Rio Blanco, and the booming dynamite could be clearly heard in Daranga. Angel had bidden his friends a last goodbye and then they had been free to go. They had been driven in an Army ambulance, with an escort headed by Lieutenant Blackstone and proudly led by Sergeant Battle, across to Tucson and from there they had come to San Francisco. The sweeping bay with its happily-named islands had enchanted them, and the blush of roses had softly come again to Kate Perry’s cheeks. She had gone shopping in the busy streets with a childlike abandon, and the pale blue dress she had bought brought out the beauty that rough clothes had only hinted at.
Still, what she had gone through had scarred her deeply, and for a while she had flinched whenever Angel touched her hand, her arm. Then, one night, her mood had changed, and the girl had become a woman. Afterwards, in the big, high-ceilinged room with the plaster cupids in the corners, she had cried for a long time, finally falling asleep in his arms. He had lain awake long into the night, watching her sleeping. What Kate Perry had lived through, survived, would have broken most women. Her courage was something he could understand and admire, and he knew that now she was whole again, what had been between them would change. He had felt the old restlessness, too. Now they sat, warmth between them and sadness as well, and she said softly:
‘You want to go.’
‘I’ll be around for a while,’ he told her.
‘Only ... a while, Frank?’
He looked out of the window and watched the clanging, noisy bustle in the streets of San Francisco.
‘I have money, Frank,’ she said softly, as if reading his thoughts. ‘I ... we could go anywhere. Anywhere you wanted to’
‘I know,’ he said softly. ‘But it’s not for me. I have my work.’
‘Your work?’ she said, surprise in her voice. ‘Your work?’
‘It’s what I do,’ he said doggedly. ‘What I am.’
She fell silent for a long, long moment, toying with the knife beside her plate. ‘You will not be tied down, is that it?’
‘I guess so,’ Angel said. He was uncomfortable, talking about it. ‘I can’t live steady, Kate. I need the change, and the challenge. Living the same life day after day after day - that would be a sort of death for me.’
‘We could be happy, together,’ she reminded him. ‘We are. Happy. And safe.’
‘Safe?’ he echoed. ‘I don’t want safety, Kate. Being safe is like saying you’re just waiting to die.’
‘This job,’ she managed at last. ‘Somewhere, one day, you will die. Someone will kill you. You know that.’
‘All the more reason to live,’ he said. ‘Really live now. Not just exist.’
She looked at him again and he looked at her, and they got up and went out of the dining-room, the surprised head waiter watching them go with raised eyebrows, then nodding wisely, These honeymooners, he thought. He had seen thousands in his time. They always made him sentimental. He would buy Rosa some flowers tonight, he thought.
In the big room Kate Perry came into Angel’s arms all golden and warm and in her love for him and his for her, they found all the giving that could be done. Tomorrow, she would lose him. Tomorrow, he would go out of her life and back to that other, harder, deadlier life to which he truly belonged.
‘But that’s tomorrow,’ she said softly and blew out the light.
Frank Angel will return in
KILL ANGEL!
Coming Soon!
And available in the series
FIND ANGEL.
About the Author
Frederick Nolan, a.k.a. 'Frederick H. Christian', was born in Liverpool, England and was educated there and at Aberaeron in Wales. He decided early in life to become a writer, but it was some thirty years before he got around to achieving his ambition. His first book was The Life and Death of John Henry Tunstall, and it established him as an authority on the history of the American frontier. Later he founded The English Westerners' Society. In addition to the much-loved Frank Angel westerns, Fred also wrote five entries in the popular Sudden series started by Oliver Strange. Among his numerous non-western novels is the best-selling The Oshawa Project (published as The Algonquin Project in the US) which was later filmed by MGM as Brass Target, starring Sophia Loren, John Cassavetes, Max von Sydow, George Kennedy, and Robert Vaughn. A leading authority on the outlaws and gunfighters of the Old West, Fred has scripted and appeared in many television programs both in England and in the United States, and authored numerous articles in historical and other academic publications. He has received the Border Regional Library Association of Texas' Award for Literary Excellence, the France V. Scholes Prize for outstanding research by the Historical Society of New Mexico and the first J. Evetts Haley Fellowship from the Haley Memorial Library in Midland, Texas. In addition he has been awarded the Western Outlaw-Lawman History Association's Glenn Shirley Award, the National Outlaw-Lawman Association's William D. Reynolds Award, both in Recognition of Outstanding Research and Writing in Western History. True West magazine has not only named him the "Best Living Non-Fiction Writer" but judged his book The Lincoln County War one of the fifty most important books on the American West. As if that were not enough, The Westerners Foundation has named his The West of Billy the Kid one of the 100 most important 20th-century historical works on the American West.
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