Smugglers' Gold (9 page)

“So, we're here,” said Marley, as he drew an X to stand for Awful Annie's on a street he'd represented with a narrow double line. “And this is Gerta's place.”

Named for another woman, Ryder noted, which appeared to be a trend in Galveston. Maybe it set a drinking, whoring mood somehow, but that appeared to be superfluous. As far as he could tell, men carried all the weight in Galveston. Except, perhaps, in Awful Annie's case.

“We'll split up when we leave here,” Marley told his troops. “Half of you come with me, down Pearl Street. Otto takes the rest on Gem. We'll have them boxed in, front and back. My signal, we bust in and finish it for good.”

A question came to Ryder's mind. “All of the people in this Gerta's place belong to Menefee?” he asked.

“There's likely to be other customers,” Marley replied.

“Is that a problem, Georgie?” Otto interjected.

“Not for me,” said Ryder, “but it strikes me that your sheriff, or whatever kind of law you've got here, might not like us putting ordinary people in the cross fire.”

“
Ordinary
people,” Seitz repeated, fairly sneering it.

“He's got a point,” Marley admitted. “We've got fairly good relations with the coppers and I want to keep it that way. When we go in, spot your marks. We know Jack's plug-uglies by sight. Don't mix 'em up with yokels. And no shooting women.”

“What if one of
them
tries shooting
us
?” asked Tommy Rafferty.

“Nobody's saying that you can't defend yourself,” Marley replied. “Just do your best. And Jack belongs to me. Any more questions?”

“What about old Gerta?” Seitz inquired.

“Gerta can look out for herself. Let's go.”

Marley and Seitz each took a shotgun, Joe Wallander picking up the third. As they were crowding toward the exit, Otto said, “I'll take the new boy.”

“Never mind,” Marley replied. “He'll come with me.”

*   *   *

O
n the map Marley had drawn, ten or eleven inches separated Awful Annie's from their target, but in fact, Gerta's saloon was closer to a quarter mile away. Their party, fifteen men in all, split up as soon as they were on the street. Ryder and half a dozen others followed Bryan Marley north on Pearl, while Seitz and his team vanished down an alley on their way to Gem Street and the rear approach.

Ryder was anxious as they moved along the mostly darkened street, wondering how he would acquit himself once battle had been joined. It was a murder party, plain and simple, not the kind of thing that was expected from an agent serving Uncle Sam. But what choice did he have? If he had begged off, any hope of staying close to Marley would have instantly evaporated—and the gang might well have turned on him as a potential witness to their scheme. Why leave him breathing if he wasn't on their side?

Now he was into it, faced with the quandary of how to pull it off and still avoid a charge of homicide that would contaminate whatever evidence he managed to collect and, incidentally, destroy his new career. The best that he could think of was to wait and see what happened once they got to Gerta's place. Protect himself and play the hand that he was dealt.

Gerta's saloon resembled Awful Annie's from the street, three stories tall with clapboard walls and no sign to proclaim its owner's name. Two drunks, unsteady on their feet, were exiting as Marley and his crew approached the swinging doors. One glimpse of all the guns appeared to sober them, and they were running full tilt by the time they reached the next corner, then vanished from sight.

“You think they'll bring the law?” asked Ryder.

“Screw the law,” growled Marley, as he pushed in through the flapping doors.

A black pianist with a derby on his head stopped playing as he entered. Conversation dwindled down to nothing in another second, faces at the bar and at a dozen tables turning toward the door in unison. Some of the patrons blanched, cringing, while others scowled and tensed for action. Ryder saw hands slipping out of sight, reaching for weapons.

“We come looking for Jack Menefee and anyone who serves him,” Marley told the room at large, raising his voice to make it heard upstairs. “Whoever doesn't fill that bill should get the hell out while you can.”

Approximately half of Gerta's customers immediately bolted for the street, past Marley and his men, one of them jostling Ryder as he stood with one hand resting on the curved butt of his Colt. Upstairs, a door banged open on the second-story landing and a tall man with a plume of red hair standing straight up on his head appeared, clad only in long underwear, holding a pistol in each hand.

“Who wants Jack Menefee?” he called down into the saloon.

Marley stepped forward, answering, “You know me, Jack. It's no good playing dumb.”

“I wondered when you'd come to see me, Bryan,” Menefee replied—then dropped into a crouch behind the landing's rail, his pistols angling in between the balusters. Marley was quicker, squeezing off a shotgun blast, and then all hell broke loose.

Ryder was ducking, dodging, as the room echoed with gunfire, bullets whistling overhead and all around him. Somewhere on the upper floor, a woman screamed, the sound cut short as if someone had cut it with an ax. Ryder felt a slug pluck at his sleeve before he reached the nearest table, tipped it over on its side, and hunched behind it. Flimsy cover in the middle of a lead storm, but it beat standing exposed with guns firing on every side.

He didn't hear the second party enter from the rear, until Seitz bellowed out some version of a Rebel yell and joined the battle with a vengeance. Ryder raised his head in time to see a blast from Otto's shotgun lift the barman off his feet and send him tumbling through the air, a lifeless straw man. Marley stood amidst the chaos, empty scattergun discarded, Colt in hand, firing methodically at fleeing enemies. Upstairs, Jack Menefee was on his back, one foot protruding through the rail, blood dripping underneath it to the bar below.

Behind Marley, a shambling figure rose up from the floor, one hand clutching a bloody, wounded side. It was the other hand that Ryder focused on, a long curved blade protruding from it, drawn back for a lethal strike. He fired instinctively, no thought behind it, dropping the backstabber with a bullet through his chest. The shot, so near at hand, made Marley flinch and turn. He saw the fallen adversary, glanced at Ryder then, and flashed a dazzling smile before he went back to the fight.

It didn't last much longer. With their chief down, caught up in the cross fire, Menefee's surviving men seized any opportunity to save themselves. Ryder saw two of them reach windows, one escaping in a headlong dive through glass, the other hastened by a bullet in the buttocks as he rolled over the windowsill. No one bothered to chase them, or to finish off the wounded groaning at their feet. Police whistles were shrilling somewhere in the dark, outside, and it was time to go.

Running with Marley, back down Pearl Street, Ryder felt his heart pounding against his ribs. They didn't slow until they'd covered half a dozen blocks and ducked into a side street, huddling there to catch their breath.

“That's twice you've saved my skin,” said Marley, from the shadows.

“Seemed the thing to do,” Ryder replied. Thinking,
You're no good to me dead.

At least, not yet.

B
ack at Awful Annie's the proprietress broke out champagne to celebrate the raid on Menefee and company, calling her girls downstairs to circulate among the victors if they weren't already serving other paying customers upstairs. Ryder had only tasted champagne once before, at a long-ago wedding reception, and discovered—for the second time—that fizzing bubbles in a glass of wine did nothing to enhance the pleasure he derived from drinking it.

Their triumph over the opposing gang, although complete in Bryan Marley's estimation, had a price attached to it. One of their own—the big Swede, Wallander—had been shot dead and carried off by three of Seitz's raiders for disposal in some place and way that was supposed to keep police from linking anybody else to the attack on Gerta's place. Two other members of the gang had suffered minor wounds and had gone off to see a doctor Marley paid to deal with such emergencies clandestinely. Both hoped to make it back and swill their share of booze before the party finally shut down.

Soon after their return to the saloon, Marley was called upon to eulogize their fallen comrade. While declaring at the onset that he had no gift for “speechifying,” he proceeded nonetheless, with glass in hand, to offer the memorial.

“You all knew Joe,” he said, while the combatants muttered their assent. “He never feared a man or anything, as far as I could tell. He put his whole heart into anything he did, and that was more than most manage to do. We'll miss him, but he went the way he would have wanted, fighting toe to toe with them that hated him and putting some of them away before they cut him down. God bless 'im, if the Devil hasn't got him yet!”

A cheer went up at that, and there were more drinks all around. Ryder hung back, tried keeping to himself without being standoffish in a way that might offend, sharing the laughs at jokes about how this or that member of Jack Menefee's crew had bled when they were shot or stabbed. It was the kind of talk he'd heard after horse races, sometimes after boxing matches, although spectators at prizefights were more likely to review the action than the battered pugilists themselves. He doubted whether many soldiers in the wake of battle sat around and crowed about their knack for killing, but then again, the draftees from the recent war had not been in the game for sport or profit.

The cops arrived some forty minutes later, after alcohol and Annie's girls had dampened down the first wave of excitement spawned by mortal combat. There were thirteen of them, with a captain in the lead, all looking nervous as they entered Awful Annie's, hands held close to holstered pistols. They were dressed in blue serge uniforms, vaguely resembling Yankee soldiers, but with peaked caps on their heads and badges made of polished brass. As they formed a ragged skirmish line, their captain asked, “Which one of you is Bryan Marley?”

Marley sauntered forward, smiling. “Don't you recognize me, Tom?”

“It's Captain Quinn to you,” the officer replied. “We've just been 'round to Gerta's, where you left one fine helluva mess.”

“How's that?”

“Jack Menefee and his boyos. Remember them?”

“The name's familiar, but I couldn't put a face on it,” said Marley.

“Not tonight, especially,” the captain answered back, “since someone blew it off for him. We've got nine dead so far, and three more on the way without much question.”

“Lord have mercy! What's this city coming to?”

“As if you didn't know. All innocent as babes, I guess?”

“I wouldn't go that far,” Marley replied. “But if you're trying to accuse us of some wrongdoing tonight, the fact is we've been here all evening.”

“And you can vouch for one another, I suppose,” the captain fairly sneered.

“We can. Along with Annie and her ladies.”

“Ladies.” Spitting out the word as if it had a rancid taste.

“I don't suppose you've come with any evidence against us?” Marley challenged.

“Funny thing about that. Dead men aren't too talkative, and those you left alive all have that whatchacallit. Bullshit when they can't remember nothin' that they saw or heard.”

“Amnesia,” Ryder offered, from the sidelines.

The captain spun to face him. Asked, “And who are you, exactly?”

“George Revere.”

“A new frog in the pond, is it?”

“Just helping with your memory,” said Ryder.

“Don't you worry, boyo. I'll remember
you
, all right.” He turned back toward the others. “I'll remember
all
of you, and see you pay for this night's work, if nothing else.”

“We paid you lot already,” someone chimed in from the back.

“Who said that!” Fuming in his rage, the captain studied ranks of passive faces, then, through clenched teeth, told them all, “Don't think we're finished yet!”

“Drop in and see us any time,” Marley encouraged him. “The more, the merrier.”

Rude laughter saw the coppers on their way, then Marley was beside him, voice low-pitched. “I'm going to relax upstairs a while. In case I miss you later, come around the docks at noon tomorrow. We've got cargo coming in.”

“I'll see you there,” Ryder replied.

*   *   *

S
mart-aleck bastard. Who's he think he is?”

“What's that?” asked Tommy Rafferty.

“The new boy,” Otto Seitz replied. “See how he's kissing ass with Bryan?”

“
Saved
his ass a couple times, I'd say.”

“Who asked you?”

“You did,” Rafferty reminded him and drank another shot of whiskey.

“Christ, am I the only one who sees it?”

“Sees what, Otto?”

“How he comes out of nowhere and worms his way into our business.”

“Same way that anybody get to be a part of it. Bryan invites 'em in, is how.”

“You think so, do you?”

“What's your story, then? You reckon that he came from Menefee? After tonight?”

“The only thing I know for sure is that there's somethin' wrong about him.”

“Know what I think?”

“Do I wanna know?”

“I think you're jealous.”

Seitz felt a sudden flush of anger heating up his cheeks. “The hell you mean by that?”

“You see him gettin' close to Bryan, and you think he's after your spot.”

“That ain't gonna happen.”

“But you're in a sweat about it, anyhow.”

“A lot you know.”

“I know I need to get a poke. You seen Lavinia around?”

Seitz turned away from Rafferty, disgusted by his inability to see the obvious. It was ridiculous to him, a total stranger being welcomed in to join a killing raid, of all things, when they barely knew the man. No, scratch that. None of them, in fact, knew George Revere at all. He was a cipher who had come from God knew where, appearing just when Marley needed him, as if by magic, and
voila
! The next thing Otto knew, Revere had joined their inner circle somehow and had saved Bryan
again
, shooting a man this time.

The thing Seitz couldn't figure out was
why
. What did he want?

There was the obvious, of course, if Otto took him at his word. Some kind of minor outlaw looking for a gang to join and maybe work his way up through the ranks. Nothing disqualified his story, on the face of it, though he'd been reticent about providing details. Some would call that only natural, if he was on the run, but Seitz still couldn't swallow it. He
wouldn't
swallow it.

Jealous? To hell with that!

He had the business to look out for, even if their leader wasn't doing what he'd call a bang-up job of dealing with security. No bummer off the street was going to invade and undermine their operation, not if Seitz had anything to say about it.

And he would. Oh, yes indeed.

Bryan had asked Revere to join them at the docks tomorrow, helping with a shipment that was scheduled to arrive. Call that another test, and Otto would be watching, primed to land on Georgie Boy with both feet at the first sign of a shady move. Both feet and then some, you could bet your life on that.

Lavinia appeared in front of him, a trifle tipsy, just the slightest bit unsteady on her feet. “Somebody said Tommy was lookin' for me,” she told Seitz. “Know where he is?”

“Ain't seen him,” Otto said. “But since you're free, why don't we head upstairs?”

“You think I'm free, you don't know much,” she said.

“I know enough,” Otto assured her. “You just wait and see.”

*   *   *

W
alking back from Awful Annie's to his boardinghouse, the second night in Galveston, Ryder was sure that he had someone trailing him. Make that at least two someones, since they muttered back and forth from time to time, not making any serious attempt at stealth. Two pairs of shoes plodding behind him, or it might be more, the way they echoed in the dead streets trying to catch up with Ryder.

Who this time?
he wondered, as he ducked into an alleyway. All darkness, he had learned, was not created equal, and he wanted maximum concealment now, hoping that it would save his life.

Jack Menefee was dead or dying when they'd left him on the second-story balcony at Gerta's place, but Ryder guessed that other members of his gang could have been absent from the battle zone. If so, replacement of their fallen leader was inevitable, and it wouldn't take survivors long to lay the blame at Bryan Marley's doorstep—which, it seemed, meant Awful Annie's. And their next step would be . . . what? They might not be prepared for a reprisal in force, so soon after the beating they'd taken. But picking off a single member of the gang might help assuage their fury for the moment.

Ryder didn't know if he had been the first to leave the celebration of their victory. He'd spent a sweet, intense half hour with Nell upstairs and had not bothered counting heads as he was leaving the saloon. It would have served no purpose anyway, since any number of the crew might be engaged in similar activities with Annie's girls, behind closed doors.

The muffled voices had drawn closer now, approaching Ryder's hiding place. He had a choice to make, and quickly. Should he flee along the alley, seek another route back to the boardinghouse, or spring an ambush of his own and find out who was dogging him?

Another possibility, he thought, was Otto Seitz or someone he'd put up to it. Marley's lieutenant had no use for Ryder and he took no pains to hide the feeling, even after Ryder saved his boss's life a second time. Did Seitz possess some prescience, despite his brutish aspect, that had let him see through Ryder's pose as rootless felon George Revere?

Or were the midnight trackers simply muggers, of the kind he might expect to find in Washington, New York, or any other major city in this lawless age? He knew that Galveston must have its share of cutthroats prowling after dark. Indeed, he'd met a few already, and might be considered one himself.

Ryder was running out of time. The shuffling feet had closed to half a block from his position, maybe less. If he was going to escape, he had to do it now. The darkness should conceal him if he left immediately and avoided making any noise. He had a fair chance to escape if they were simple muggers, but if Seitz had sent them, they could simply go on to the boardinghouse and head him off.

To hell with it,
he thought and drew his Colt Army.

Nerves jangling, Ryder waited in the shadows at the alley's mouth until his trackers closed the gap to six or seven feet. He stepped into the open then, his pistol leveled, putting on a cheery tone to welcome them.

“Good evening, gents,” he said, then registered their uniforms, the badges on their chests, and felt his stomach drop.

The two policemen gaped at Ryder for a heartbeat, then went for their guns, secured in military-style flap holsters. Ryder could have killed them then—or fired to wound them, maybe at their kneecaps—but he drew the line at shooting lawmen. Thinking quickly while they fumbled with their holsters, be sprang forward, swinging with his Colt to left and right, the weapon's eight-inch barrel making solid thunking sounds on impact with their skulls.

The cop to Ryder's left went down immediately, grunting softly as the Colt stunned him. His partner turned to meet the backhand swing Ryder directed at his temple, taking it across the forehead, stumbling as he went down on his backside. Ryder followed through, another swing to put him out, sprawled on the sidewalk with his gun still holstered. Turning to the other, Ryder found him stretched out on his side, moaning, eyes closed.

Now what?

The first thing that he thought of, on impulse, was to snatch their badges, reaching quickly down to pluck each from its place on a blue coat and put them in his pocket. Let the two go home with headaches and concoct a story for their captain when they couldn't find their tin stars in the morning.

Would the pair of them be safe where they were lying, until they regained their senses?

Not my problem,
Ryder thought and struck off toward his boardinghouse.

*   *   *

L
isten, I know you trust him, but—”

“You don't. I hear you, Otto. What you can't explain is
why
?”

“I just—”

“Tonight makes twice he's saved my bacon, and this time he killed a man to do it.”

“
May
have killed one.”

“No. I saw the body. He was dead as dirt. Ike Murphy.”

“Still . . .”

“Still nothing. First you thought he might be working on the sly for Menefee, and that turned out to be a load of bunkum. What's your story now?”

“I haven't got a story, but—”

“But what?”

“There's somethin'
wrong
about him, Bryan. I can smell it on him. You know I can always smell a rat.”