Aces & Eights

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Aces & Eights Page 14

by Loren D. Estleman


  The paper in the prosecutor’s hands tore loudly. Enraged by the impertinence, Blair snatched up his gavel. Before he could strike it:

  “I’m sorry, Your Honor,” Scout said hastily. “It was a nervous reaction.” The judge nodded abruptly and sat back.

  As Scout turned from the bench to deposit his notes atop the prosecution table, Bartholomew was alarmed at his partner’s expression. Tension had drawn his features into a caricature. His hands shook as he absentmindedly straightened up the rent pages. But the face he presented the court a moment later was serenely confident.

  “Phil Coe was the greatest man who ever lived, is that right, Mr. Thompson?”

  “Well, I wouldn’t go so far as to say that.” The witness was condescending. His contentment had returned with the locking away of his past.

  “Oh, but you did,” chided the prosecutor. “Asked by General Crandall your opinion of Coe’s character, you called him ‘the best and truest friend a man has ever known.’ It’s in the record if you don’t remember.”

  “Perhaps I said something of the sort.” Thompson shifted in his seat. “I would amend it to say that he was the best friend I ever had. Anything more would be an exaggeration.”

  “Are you given to exaggerate?”

  “Objection!”

  “I withdraw the question,” Scout said, before the judge could sustain. “What would you say if I told you that Phil Coe was incarcerated at Galveston, Texas, during the late war for impersonating an officer?”

  “I would say that you are a damned liar!” thundered the witness.

  “You would then be guilty of perjury, Mr. Thompson, for records show that you shared Coe’s cell after you were arrested for desertion.” The prosecutor was moving forward, boxing him in.

  “I’d forgotten. It’s been twelve years.”

  “You seem to have no trouble remembering how long it’s been. Unlike you, Coe was a civilian. Did he flee to Mexico until the end of the war to avoid conscription?”

  “You tell me.”

  “No, Mr. Thompson, you tell me. That is what you are here to do.”

  “I don’t know where Phil was. Right after I was released I helped capture the Harriet Lane at Galveston and assisted in the destruction of other Union vessels in the harbor. Then my regiment was ordered to Louisiana, where we routed Pyron at La Fourche and my brother Billy and I became separated from the company. We kept stumbling over dead men and horses. My leg had been injured when my horse fell on it and after we located the rest of the command I was laid up for weeks while it healed. After that we transferred to Colonel Ford’s outfit and were assigned patrol duty east of the Rio Grande. I didn’t hear from Phil all that time and had no idea if he was even alive.”

  “I agree that it was a hectic period for you. The record shows that you were placed in the guardhouse for attacking yet another sergeant, this time with your crutch. Had it not broken, your toll thus far would be twenty-one.”

  “Objection!” Crandall spoke up harshly. Actually, he wasn’t as angry with the prosecutor for the derogatory comment as he was with his witness for parading his record as a Confederate soldier before a northern court.

  “Sustained. I’ve ruled against this line, counselor.”

  Scout adjusted his tack. “In Abilene, did Marshal Hickok ever threaten you or Coe in so many words that failure to turn over a portion of the Bull’s Head’s winnings would result in its being burned or closed down?”

  “He was clear enough about it,” was the sullen reply.

  “That isn’t what I asked.”

  “He didn’t say so in those words. Hickok was too cagey for that.”

  “As the reigning lawman in Abilene, wasn’t it Hickok’s duty to protect the businesses as well as the citizens within his jurisdiction from harm?”

  “Yes, but he was paid to do that from the taxes.”

  “Did you and Coe pay taxes?”

  “We bought a license to operate, which amounts to the same thing.”

  “Not precisely, Mr. Thompson. Licensing requires a set fee to be paid on a regular basis. The amount doesn’t vary unless the city charter is amended to allow for the increased or decreased cost of living. Taxes, which in most parts of the world are levied against income, are based on percentages and rise or fall with the principal. Couldn’t it be said that the percentage of winnings that yours and the other gambling establishments in Abilene were required to surrender to the marshal constituted an income tax, in return for which you received the protection to which you were entitled?”

  “It could not! It was extortion, pure and simple!”

  “So you say. But then your opinion could hardly be termed impartial, could it, Mr. Thompson?” The prosecutor had his hands on the railing and was leaning over the witness, his face closer to Thompson’s than that of any other the killer had allowed to live.

  “Your Honor, the prosecutor is being argumentative. This is not a Harvard debate.”

  “Sustained. But leave my alma mater out of this, General.” The judge smiled thinly.

  “You intimated earlier that your refusal to share your profits with the marshal’s office resulted in a threat to close the Bull’s Head,” resumed Scout, uncowed by Blair’s ruling. “What evidence do you have to substantiate this claim?”

  “Ask anyone who was there. They’ll tell you.” Thompson’s serenity was once again a thing of the past. His forehead was dark.

  “No one else was there, Mr. Thompson.”

  “Are you calling me a liar?” Cold death lurked behind the gunman’s retort.

  “Yes, Mr. Thompson,” said Scout. “A liar is exactly what I’m calling you.” His voice rose. “An hour ago, in that very chair, you told General Crandall and this court that the Bull’s Head was closed when Phil Coe refused Hickok his daily stipend. You said that you and Coe and the marshal were alone in the room. Now you claim that others were present. Somewhere you are lying, Mr. Thompson. I have a roomful of people and the court record to bear witness to that. What proof have you?”

  “I meant afterward, when Hickok came around with the order to close. There were a dozen witnesses at least.”

  “Was anything said at that time about funds refused Hickok?”

  “Well, no, but everyone knew—”

  “Do you deny that the sign before your establishment violated the ordinance against public indecency?”

  “Technically—”

  “Technicalities are all that concerns this court. Would you agree that as city marshal, empowered to uphold the laws of Abilene and the State of Kansas, James Butler Hickok was acting within his rights when he ordered you and Phil Coe to change your sign or be closed?”

  Thompson was trapped. He kept silent as long as possible, obviously hoping that Crandall would object. When it was evident that no such reprieve was forthcoming, he fixed the prosecutor with a look of raw hatred.

  “Yes,” he snarled. “I suppose I’d have to.”

  Scout thanked him abruptly and said that there were no more questions. When the prosecutor was back in his seat, Bartholomew leaned close to his ear and whispered, “I don’t remember him saying anything about he and Coe being alone with Hickok when they refused to pay.”

  “Fortunately, neither did he.”

  Crandall waived redirect, upon which Thompson, excused, tramped briskly toward the gate separating the principals from the spectators. On his way through it he paused.

  “Do yourself a favor and stay away from Texas.” The whisper was so low that only the prosecutor heard it. Then he was gone.

  “Call your next witness, counselor,” Blair told the General.

  “Your Honor, we call the defendant, Jack McCall.”

  Chapter 17

  The rifle was a full Sharps Big Fifty, equipped with a descending breechblock and set trigger and a range, if the tales of some buffalo hunters were to be credited, of a thousand yards. Certainly it was good for six hundred. Anyone who hankered to shoot farther than that was dreaming any
way. Pound for pound it was the best long-range target gun ever invented, which suited Deputy U.S. Marshal Walter Donaldson down to the ground, because he was the best long-range target shooter ever born. So he styled himself, and the sharpshooting medals in his war chest and dozens of blue ribbons garnered from every turkey shoot between Bismarck and Wichita bore him out.

  He didn’t look the part. Small-boned, with a narrow, stubble-bearded face and watery eyes behind thick spectacles, he might have been a clerk fallen on hard times but for his expensive fur hat and shaggy, ankle-length coat, bulky attire designed for sitting or standing for hours in the freezing cold. He was putting them to maximum use now, lying full-length on his stomach upon a rooftop in the blowing snow half a block to the rear of the Sargent mansion. His cheek rested on the smooth wooden stock of the Sharps while he kept his bare trigger hand warm beneath his left armpit.

  He had let pass a hundred chances at his target, a pistol-toter in shabby clothes and a derby who kept coming to the kitchen window to peer out. Burdick had ordered Donaldson to hold fire until signaled, Presumably, this would be the task of the laborer whom the deputy had spotted tarring a roof across the street from the house with the aid of a smoking smudge pot. Though he was too far away for positive identification, the man’s ponderous build and the way he moved told Donaldson that this was Harry Wildfire, a full-blooded Shoshone the marshal sometimes hired for jobs his deputies refused. Outlined clearly against the gray sky, he offered a tempting target if anyone in the house became suspicious.

  Donaldson had no idea who was in the house or what they were doing, nor did he care. The army had taught him not to ask questions of his superiors, and the lesson had stuck. He only knew that he was there to kill the first male that showed himself at a window once the signal was given.

  He had no qualms about this. Burdick had called upon him to do much the same thing more times than he could remember, and he had yet to fail the marshal, despite the fact that there was no love lost between the two. He had nothing but contempt for the head lawman, who detested Donaldson for his record of kills, but who never hesitated to make use of his talents whenever they were needed. Yet the deputy had never considered resigning, for he knew of no other honest work that would let him do what he did best, and the risks involved in most illegal enterprises with which he was familiar were prohibitive. He possessed no conscience, and suspected that this much-touted emotion was the invention of politicians and lawmen like Burdick designed to prevent crime and save them the trouble of apprehending criminals. The taking of life meant no more to him than the opening of a can of sardines.

  In short, Walter Donaldson was an assassin, perhaps the best of his kind.

  “It’s five of two. Where is your cook, Mrs. Sargent?”

  There was no tension in John Vames’s voice, but Grace could feel it nonetheless, thick as must in the air between them. She fought to keep it out of her own manner.

  “Eloise has never been on time for anything in her life.”

  “That’s unfortunate. She won’t want to miss her mistress’ funeral.”

  They were seated across from each other in the entrance hall as before. Varnes had returned his partner’s Smith & Wesson in favor of his own Remington, recaptured from the trussed deputy. As the minutes had crawled past, the nearly tangible odor of fear in the room had retreated before boredom, but with two o’clock approaching rapidly they had traded places again. The hostages’ eyes were restless. All but those of Dora Hope.

  For nearly an hour, Graces’s mother had sat motionless on the sofa, eyes focused straight ahead, her face a blank slab. She bothered Varnes. Fear in all its normal manifestations he could handle, but there was no predicting what a person suffering from deep shock would do next. He had decided that she would be the first one he’d shoot the moment something went wrong. He looked from her to the daughter, who was watching him, and he knew that she had been reading his thoughts.

  “My neck is already in the noose, Mrs. Sargent,” he explained. “My partner has seen to that. One murder or eight, they can only drop me through the trap once.”

  “Why don’t you stop playing games?” She spoke bitterly, her words tumbling out in a rush. “You’re going to kill us anyway. You said so.”

  Her mother’s hand squeezed hers. Alarmed for her mental state, Grace shot her a quick glance and was surprised when the older woman’s eyes responded. She was cautioning her daughter—not at all the reaction of a person paralyzed with fright.

  Varnes hadn’t noticed the exchange. “I said what I said to frighten you. I didn’t want anyone thinking we didn’t mean business. You will live if you cooperate.”

  “There are degrees of life, Mr. Varnes.” Encouraged by her mother’s strength, she smiled wickedly at the ripple of surprise that passed across his aristocratic features. “Yes, I know who you are. My mother’s interest in crimes of violence hasn’t been lost upon me. I put it together when your partner said something about your hiring people to do your killing for you.”

  “You were talking about degrees of life.” He had regained his composure in an instant.

  “There is a degree beyond which one’s own life is worth nothing. Will I care about living after you’ve turned me over to your partner aboard the boat, as you said you would?”

  He lowered his voice. “As I’ve already explained, what I say and what I do are often very different from each other. As you may have noticed, my partner has a short attention span. In order to keep his mind upon what is important it is necessary from time to time to dangle a bright bauble before his eyes. To his thinking at least, you sparkle sufficiently to get him down to the river.”

  “Then what? He’ll kill you if you break your promise.”

  “He won’t kill me.”

  “How can you be so sure? He didn’t waste any time on that poor man out back.”

  “He won’t be able to kill me.”

  She stared at him while his meaning sank in. Then, “Why should you bother? You could be just saying that to get me to cooperate.”

  “I could,” he said. “But then you’ll never know unless you cooperate.”

  After a moment his eyes returned to the front window, beyond which a heavy figure enveloped in a voluminous hooded cloak was hobbling up the walk. The clock in the parlor struck two.

  “History is made, Mrs. Sargent,” said Varnes, rising. “Your cook is punctual.”

  Walter Donaldson was blowing on the fingers of his ungloved right hand when the roofer working opposite the mansion stood up and swung his smudge pot in a wide circle around his head, describing a smoky halo that hung there for an instant before the wind tore it to shreds. If that wasn’t the signal, Harry Wildfire had discovered a new way of spreading tar. The deputy used his thumb to smear the glare off the Sharps’s front sight and drew an unhurried bead on the house.

  At that moment, the heel of a pudgy hand rubbed frost off the kitchen window and a moustachioed face beneath a derby was pressed against the glass.

  Tim Brady frowned at the bleak scenery out back and wished he were somewhere else. He knew where that somewhere else was, and who should be sharing it with him. Every time he thought about her he was transported to that doorway across the street, watching her peeling shadow. He had never been with a woman like that, and the thought of it made his neck burn and his hands grow slimy.

  He was thinking about how it would be on the boat when the window exploded.

  “Stay where you are!” Varnes barked, from his position against the wall on the other side of the door. The warning was unnecessary, for none of the hostages had moved. He waited until the brass door knocker sounded tentatively, and then, gripping his revolver in one hand, he pulled the door open with the other.

  He was preparing to yank the cook inside when glass tinkled in the distance, followed instantly by a thunderous report.

  In spite of his bulky coat, the recoil of Donaldson’s Sharps was like a roundhouse to his shoulder. He accounted for it instinctive
ly and didn’t miss.

  The bullet struck Tim Brady at a sixty-degree angle downward, caving in his face, blazing through the cerebrum (at which point he ceased to know or care what was happening to him), severing the pons Varolii and the centers of sensation, destroying the cerebellum and the victim’s balance, and taking out the entire back of his skull upon exit. Its speed undiminished, the slug smashed through the heavy oaken floor near the base of the opposite wall, whistled through the dank air of the basement, splintered a wooden crate, pierced the mortar separating two stones in the foundation, and plowed through twelve feet of earth before stopping. So swiftly had it traveled that Brady, lifted off his feet by the impact, was still in the air when it ground to a halt. He came down dead.

  Disregarding the ladies present, John Varnes cursed, for he knew immediately what the noises meant. But his reactions were faster than his judgment and he swung in the direction of the kitchen, taking his revolver from the hostages and the newcomer. Even as he did it he realized his mistake and began to turn back when the cook’s cloak flew open and the muzzle of a sawed-off shotgun tickled the back of his neck.

  “Your brains would just about reach the wall from here,” said Marshal Burdick.

  Silence roared as the marshal, looking like an armed monk in the cowled garment, removed the Remington from Varnes’s raised left hand. Then something broke inside Dora Hope and out poured a flood of bitter tears.

  Chapter 18

  “No news yet. I am sorry, Julian.”

  Scout nodded jerkily as Bartholomew, returning from a brief conference with the deputy marshal at the rear of the room, slid into his seat beside the prosecutor.

  “She’s all right,” said Scout, without conviction.

  “Nothing can happen to her while her mother’s around. She won’t even tolerate snuff in her house.” The forced witticism fell on deaf ears and Bartholomew turned his attention to the witness box, where Jack McCall had just been sworn in. Watching his partner in his present state was too painful.

 

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