by Lou Cameron
Stringer said, “You weren’t listening when we asked them at their billing office whether anyone recalled making out a bill for a hundred dollars or more, as Hotwire Hamilton suggested.”
Magnuson shook his square head and replied, “I was listening. If my wife and kids ever run up a bill for more than ten bucks I’d recall it well at my murder trial. They said nobody reading meters or typing up bills has reported anything half as unusual, so you struck out with that angle, too, and how many times do I have to tell you nobody steals money before the customers can mail it in, even if they can get into the vault, which nobody, not even the bank president, can even think about right now!”
Stringer nodded grimly and said, “I told you before the name of the game is complacency. The mastermind behind all this razzle dazzle is counting on anyone who suspects anything at all putting things together exactly the way you just did. Hold on, I think that’s our boy now, I wasn’t banking on him having any backing, after what happened to his other boys last night.”
As they both stared from ground level at the three men striding toward the depot across the street, the lawman frowned thoughtfully and said, “We’d best do it my way. It’s too big a boo, your way, with old Sparks Fletcher guarded by such hulks!”
But Stringer insisted, “It’s got to be my way. We only get one chance and if he’s been as smart about the money, it still may not hold up in court!”
So a few minutes later, as wiry old Sparks Fletcher and his much younger and way bigger henchmen stood on the rear platform, anxious as well as early for the morning southbound, the older gent’s morning was just about ruined as he saw Stringer approaching from the end of the platform, covered with dust all down the front of his blue denims and letting his gun hand ride casually on the grips of his six-gun.
The troubleshooter for the electric company pasted an innocent smile on to say, “Howdy, MacKail. You headed for Santa Fe this fine Sabbath morning, too? Meet Bill and Jimmy, my two fine nephews. This here’s that newspaperman I told you about, boys.”
They both smiled at him, about as sincerely as a fox smiles at a plump pullet. He didn’t want to shake with his gunhand, so he left it right where it was as he said, “I want in, Sparks. I reckon we all know what I’m talking about and I hope you’ve seen the error of your ways in sending those other pet apes after me last night. So let’s keep it neighborly, this time.”
The old man smiled so innocently that Stringer would have been tempted to let him off if he’d been on the jury, and inquired in a sincerely puzzled voice, “What are you talking about, old son? You got no possible quarrel with me and mine. It’s our day off and we’re just headed down to Santa Fe to visit kin. Is there anything wrong with that?”
Stringer smiled back, not half as nice, and said, “Bullshit. You’re on your way to Mexico and where have you hidden the dinero, a money belt or more? I was afraid you’d be smart enough to ship the loot separate and meet up with it somewhere like Salt Lake or Omaha, where innocent old gringos don’t stand out as much. Since you’re making the usual run for Old Mexico I figure you’ve got it on you. Nobody with such a guilty conscience would be about to trust the Mexican Postal Service, even in less troubled times. So, let’s see, I reckon an even thousand would take care of my own conscience, Sparks. I’m not greedy. What made you so greedy, that gold watch and modest pension waiting for you, not that far down the straight and narrow, Sparks?”
The one called Bill glanced about and spread his bootheels for better balance as he softly growled, “It’s the word of three good old boys against one dead pissant, Boss.” But Sparks just went on smiling as he purred, “It’s a mite public and I’d like to hear what the pissant has to say, boys.” So the one called Jimmy edged around to put Stringer at further disadvantage, muttering, “Have your say, Pissant.”
Stringer ignored the two gun waddies, big as they must have thought they loomed above the wily old goat between them. Nothing much was apt to start without the troublesome troubleshooters say so. Stringer said, “Hell, Sparks, you surely know what you’ve been up to your fool self, with that electrified gear on your buckboard and extension cord long enough to enter a roping contest with. Do you really want me to spell it out for you?”
Sparks nodded and replied, “I surely would, MacKail. You must think you have a lot to spell out, if you’re asking a thousand dollars not to.”
Stringer shrugged and said, “Last night, whilst you were out in the darkness of your own creation, playing early Halloween tricks with your wireless whatevers, I took the liberty of going over some of the ledgers at your billing office. I figured anyone experimenting all that much with their own house current had to have run up a whopping meter reading. Doc Tesla did that time. In the end, your company had to pull the plug on him, remember?”
The old-timer’s smile grew even broader as he replied, “I do indeed. The asshole was drawing more current than the Broadmoor Hotel and trolley line together, with nothing to show for it but showers of sparks. What about it?”
Stringer said, “Hotwire thinks he was trying to build a wireless set that could reach Paris in time for their big world’s fair. But you’re right. I’d have made him pay or pulled his plug if I’d been working for the electric company. His tinkering must have spun the meters like little tops.”
Stringer reached for the makings with his left hand, leaving his gun hand where it was, for now, as he continued, “The winking and blinking that’s been going on lately never showed on any customer’s electric meter. Once I saw that, I realized the genius we had to be dealing with this summer wasn’t paying for his juice. I tried to be fair. I considered some crook tapping into some innocent soul’s house current. Both Hotwire and your own Pete Collins assured me there’d still be something showing on some damned meter, somewhere, unless, of course, some slicker tapped into one of those ashcan transformers, up an alley pole. When I made sure there was just no way to switch off any of the power mains without simply throwing a damned emergency switch somewhere betwixt the power plant and where said power was bound … Hell, Sparks, who else but the troubleshooters entrusted with tracing the outtages could have played so fast and loose with the current without getting caught? Anyone else would have, or should have been caught right off. The only real mystery was how they could be getting away with it. Only there’s no mystery to it, once you study on who, the only who, who could have pulled it off!”
The moose called Jimmy murmured, “Folks will be drifting over here to catch that southbound, Boss.” But Sparks just purred, “Let’s not do anything we might not have to, boys. MacKail’s got a mighty wild tale, it’s true, but who’s going to buy it without any sensible motive on our parts for such tomfoolery?”
The one called Bill grinned at Stringer and demanded, “Yeah, what’s our motive, Tom Fool?” So Stringer smiled back and replied, “I just asked if the money was being packed in one money belt or more. Money was the motive all along, right, Sparks?”
The older man’s smile had grown sort of wan by now. He still managed to sound brassy as he asked, “What money? What are you accusing me of? Skimming some of the money from the confused customer’s electric bills?”
Stringer shook his head and said, “You wanted it all. You planned to rob your employers in a series of slick moves. First you and your confederates fucked up the electric current here in El Paso County with slick tricks we needen’t go into any more. You got folk to wonder if it was something the innocent Doc Tesla had done. You even tried to make me suspect Hotwire Hamilton, knowing she’d worked for Tesla and know how to play electrified magic tricks. You worried more about me than your own local victims, even licensed electricians, because you had them confiding any suspicions they might have to you, whilst I was an unknown quality with a rep for investigative reporting.”
Bill almost moaned, “Boss?” But the old man shook his head and went on staring at Stringer, saying, “You’re fishing. You don’t have anything you can prove. You haven’t said why on ear
th anyone as smart as you seem to think I am would carry on so wild.”
Stringer cocked an eyebrow and replied, “I thought I was doing pretty good. After you had the local electricity all screwed up, you had the bookkeepers in your billing department all screwed up as well. You were too slick to go anywhere near the cash drawers. So they soon got used to you working on their side of the counter, instead of out in the field where you belonged. They needed help, a lot of help, from an old-timer with the company, to figure out the crazy meter readings your own crew, innocent as well as crooked, handed in.”
“To what purpose?” Fletcher demanded, adding, “I fail to see how I was supposed to make a dishonest penny outten giving the clerks a hand with the confused billing occasioned by all the odd power surges we’ve been having this summer.”
Stringer said, “Nice try, but let’s not shit each other, Sparks. I want my own cut and Jimmy’s right about the others who might be coming to board that southbound. If I know, you must know you wriggled your way into the confidences of the clerks whose jobs involve the cash. It couldn’t have taken you long to get the combination to the bank vault across the way. Of course you had to wait until you had to be called in a few times to fix the time lock after a few of your pranks. Businessmen here in the big city just won’t wait for their money as they might in smaller towns. You and your work crew here, got to be familiar figures all along the money line as well as the power lines. I figured this weekend for your best bet to make your last big move for the same reasons you did, Sparks. The end of June is the end of the fiscal year. The money that’s been coming in was supposed to pile up as high as possible this month, in order for the outside auditors to report rosy profits and higher stock prices for the fiscal year, so …”
Then Stringer was crabbing to one side and drawing his .38 as he saw he’d miscalculated the older man’s patience, and speed!
Stringer beat Sparks Fletcher to the draw; it wasn’t easy, but even as he blew the wiry old cuss backwards off the platform and threw himself the other way to throw down on Jimmy, he knew there was just no way he was going to hit two widely spaced gunslicks with one shot, and one shot, with luck, was all he was going to manage!
Then, as he jack-knifed Jimmy with a .38 slug just above the belt buckle, Sergeant Magnuson at last broke cover to put a round in one of Bill’s ears and out the other. As Stringer rose to full height in the haze of gunsmoke, he muttered, “I was wondering where the fuck you were all this time.”
Magnuson dropped off the platform to hunker by the body of Sparks Fletcher, grunting, “The old rogue didn’t let much butter melt in his mouth ’til he was ready to make his move, did he?” Then he patted the dead man’s waist more thoughtfully and added, “Must have many a peso in this money belt, even if it’s singles. I’m sure glad for your sake. For it proves beyond a shadow that you had just cause to throw down on this thieving son of a bitch, even though Pete Collins says that even with the current restored there’s just no way of checking the contents of any time-locked bank vaults before banking hours commence Monday morn!”
Stringer didn’t answer as Magnuson got back up with the overstuffed money bag offering all the proof anyone would ever need. For both other lawmen and rubberneckers attracted by the dulcet sounds of gunplay were gathering around the three dead bodies in ever-growing numbers and conversation was becoming more a shouting match than a social art by now. So he tried to blend into the crowd and, when that worked, he lit out for his hotel to settle up and pack. He knew it was only a question of time before the authorities warned him or Miss Hotwire begged him not to leave town for a spell.
He just hated protracted goodbyes and figured he could file his story as well from Cheyenne, now that it seemed ended here in Colorado Springs. But there was a message waiting for him at the desk when he showed up. Miss Fionna Kirkpatrick informed him in purple ink on perfumed note paper that she might just go for that Coca Cola after all, if he wanted to look her up at her new address in Denver the next time he passed through. The desk clerk must have misread Stringer’s bemused expression. For he asked with concern if anything was wrong, only to be told with a gallant grin, “Nothing I can’t handle, thanks just the same.”
THE END
YOU CAN FIND ALL OF LOU CAMERON’S STRINGER SERIES AVAILABLE AS EBOOKS:
STRINGER (#1)
STRINGER ON DEAD MAN’S RANGE (#2)
STRINGER ON THE ASSASSIN’S TRAIL (#3)
STRINGER AND THE HANGMAN’S RODEO (#4)
STRINGER AND THE WILD BUNCH (#5)
STRINGER AND THE HANGING JUDGE (#6)
STRINGER IN TOMBSTONE (#7)
STRINGER AND THE DEADLY FLOOD (#8)
STRINGER AND THE LOST TRIBE (#9)
STRINGER AND THE OIL WELL INDIANS (#10)
STRINGER AND THE BORDER WAR (#11)
STRINGER ON THE MOJAVE (#12)
STRINGER ON PIKES PEAK (#13)
STRINGER AND THE HELL-BOUND HERD (#14)
STRINGER IN A TEXAS SHOOT-OUT (#15)