knew where the gun was.
Joe started to push off from the table. “Well, it sounds like you fellas have a lot to…” Out of the corner of my good eye, I could see Henry’s hands move from his pockets.
“Sit.” It was the soft voice he used when he would ask me if I really wanted to make a move in our chess games, the warning voice that sounded like the guttural vibration in the back of a cougar’s throat. Joe eased back into his chair, and I turned to Lucian.
We looked at each other like we had for decades, a blind man talking to a deaf one. There was a line that neither of us was able to cross: his sneering at my supposed weakness and my righteous indignation at his immorality. I was sure that the chasm between us was a generational one. Lucian’s world was simpler, and he was unable to see that law enforcement had become complicated in the modern era; or was it that he was so close, so much of a part of the whole mess, that he had lost perspective on it long ago? Charlie Nurburn hung out there like a reoccurring nightmare and in Charlie’s child and his child’s child.
I guess the heat was getting to Joe, because he felt compelled to interrupt. “We were just having a little conversation somewhere quiet.” His voice was a little unsteady. “I came across some information I thought might interest Lucian.”
I glanced back as Lucian pulled his pipe from one jacket pocket and the beaded leather pouch from the other. The tension eased but only a little. “I got some information, too.” Lucian filled his pipe and struck a match on the side of his chair. “I, um…” He sucked on his pipe until he got it going, the thick plume of smoke roiling from the corner of his mouth. “Beebee Banks was visitin’ her mother over at the home. Walt, she told me to tell you she found out who had that little Baroja girl’s bakery building before she did.” The smile played on his face like a reflection on moving water. “Why, it was Joe here.”
Like the motor drive on an automatic shutter, I counted six different stills as my head rotated to Joe, like six separate heartbeats. “Don’t move.”
The weight of it was in the room with us now like a cold cloud-burst had suddenly let loose; the rain of recognition was dripping from all of us and, as I saw Joe’s hand slip from the table, I was positive that of the four men in the room, three had guns. I saw the Bear move, but I was closer.
The bones in his wrist crunched with a nauseating give, and I finally got a look at the Joe Lesky that had been so carefully hidden from me as, with a snarl of rage, he tried to twist and pull away. My left held, but I wasn’t going to trust it to do the job alone. His expression changed as the cold barrel of the. 45 pressed up under his jaw, forcing his head back to where he had to look over the contours of his face to see me.
I took a deep breath. “I said, don’t move.”
I watched as his nostrils spread, and he pulled air in like a bellows. “Let go of my wrist!”
“I don’t hardly think so.” I eased the pressure of the. 45 and allowed his head to lower enough so that I could see his expression. I thought of an old drill sergeant who had told me that a professional is the one who always has his gun. I risked a glimpse to the right, around the damn eye patch, and saw the long-barreled. 38 of Lucian’s duty revolver extended across the table eight inches from Joe’s face.
I looked back at Joe, who was glancing at his coat and thinking about trying the reach with his left. “You do, and I will splatter your brains all over the pressed tin ceiling.” His eyes came back to mine. “Now I’m going to place your hands back on this table, and you are not going to move them, do you understand?”
I swept my hand behind him, lifting his coat and throwing it to Henry. I pulled my cuffs from my belt. “Put those on.”
“You broke my wrist.”
“Put those on.” He pressed the one loop through and delicately placed it around his damaged wrist, only partially locking it as I counted only three notches that clicked. “All the way.”
He looked at me. “It hurts.”
“So will the. 45.” He clicked it again and then did the other hand as specified. I leaned back and took another deep breath as I pulled the Colt away from the underside of Joe’s chin. I turned my head, so that I could see Lucian with the inside of my good eye. “You all right?”
“I ain’t the one without a gun, if that’s what ya mean.”
I looked back at Joe. His eyes shifted from me, to Lucian, and then back to me. “I don’t know what’s going on here, but I’m not saying anything until I talk to a lawyer.”
Lucian snorted. “What makes you think that you’re gonna see a lawyer?”
My voice sounded a long way away, like it was coming from the land of reason. “Lucian.”
The old sheriff ’s hand didn’t move, and the extended barrel of the Smith and Wesson stayed even with Joe’s eyes. “I aim to kill this son of a bitch, right here and right now.” He pulled the pipe from his mouth and blew a strong lungful of smoke away from us. The pounding of “Ring Those Christmas Bells” continued as the jukebox charged on.
I cleared my throat and swallowed. “Lucian, I’m going to need you to lower your weapon.”
He gestured toward Joe with the stem of his pipe. “You killed my wife.”
I needed to buy some more time. I studied Joe. “When did you find out that Charlie Nurburn was dead?” He didn’t move, but his eyes switched from Lucian to me. “I’m betting that you knew he was dead by the time you contacted Leo. I guess you figured that Lucian here had kept Charlie alive for fifty-odd years and there was no reason why you couldn’t keep him alive for a little while longer or at least until you could get a share of Mari’s money.”
He didn’t move. “I don’t know what you’re talking about.” His tongue flicked across his lips. “Walt, you’ve known me…”
“No I don’t.” I leaned in on the back of my chair. “Did you kill Mari Baroja before you got Leo over here? You knew you could get him to kill Lana and Lucian, certainly Anna, but he didn’t kill them all, did he? And you didn’t do so well with Isaac.”
I was tired, and I wanted it all over with, but there was so much more to tell. “Leo tried to save his grandmother; he was hurt and was going to run for it but you knew we were down on the old Nurburn place. You were the one that shot Wes Rogers, and then you sent Leo down there in the cruiser even though you knew we were waiting and either way, you figured this problem would solve itself.” I kept the. 45 leveled between Joe’s eyes. “What were you going to do, Joe? Blame it all on Leo?”
His voice was strained. “I want a lawyer.”
Lucian exhaled, his arm still extended. “Best you can hope for is a priest, and that right soon.”
“You can’t prove any of this.”
I looked into Joe’s eyes, trying to see some common ground between us, but there was nothing there. I glanced back at his rumpled coat, hanging from Henry’s hand. “If I go over there and pull a. 32 automatic from your coat pocket, and it makes a ballistic match with the gun that shot Wes Rogers, I can start proving a lot.”
I reached into the pocket of my jacket and lay the Christmas ornament on the table, face up. I slowly pushed it toward Joe, where the visible part of the man’s face in the photograph matched the man in front of me. “Never mind all the others… he was your son, Joe. How could you do that to your child?”
The old sheriff cocked the revolver.
I could see the lanyard ring at the base of the pistol’s butt, the loop that used to attach Lucian’s old service revolver to his belt in the style of the cavalry riders so that they wouldn’t lose their sidearms while mounted. Like Lucian, this morning it was untethered, out there in the wind where bad things could and would happen. “Lucian, you know what it is Joe here was getting ready to tell you. Whether it was as a bartering chip or leverage, you can’t do what you were planning to do because you’re not alone in this anymore.” He blinked, and I could see the welling in his eyes as Fred Waring and the Pennsylvanians took the Christmas train home amid four-part harmony.
I saw his trigger finger tighten, and the legendary grip squeeze the wooden handle like a lifeline. The best I could hope for was to knock it away with my own gun, flip the table, or throw myself sideways into him. In the split second I was thinking this, Lucian swung the revolver around and emptied it with five thundering reports into the shuddering and now forever silent jukebox. He tossed the empty. 38 back onto the table where it clattered and spun with its barrel pointed at an absolutely immobile Joe Lesky. Lucian’s voice was low and weak in the silence. “Jesus H. Christ… I always hated that damn thing.”
