“It’s that the neighbors described Commissioner Pinter as a frequent late-night visitor to this house. Custis, are the same alarm bells starting to ring in your ears that are ringing in mine?”
“Yes,” Longarm said. “Have you started the hunt for the Marble Gang?”
“Of course. Without any fanfare or publicity, we have launched an intensive hunt for those five men. But I don’t expect to find them.”
“Why not?”
“They had a small fortune of bank money hidden,” Billy said. “So much that the damned prosecutor was trying to strike a deal for a reduced prison sentence in exchange for the recovery of that stolen cash. I fought hard to nix that deal. Those men are ruthless killers. They’d have gone on another lawless spree the moment they were released.”
“They’re as bad as they come, all right. How’d the department finally pin the goods on them?”
“Now that is a very complex secret,” Billy replied, “even to me. I suppose part of it would have come out during their trial, at which time I’m sure we’d have learned something more about our mysterious Mr. James Smith.”
“The one you think is The Assassin.”
“That’s right.”
Longarm frowned. “And of course, if he was responsible for their capture, then that would explain why they torched his house.”
“Exactly!” Billy steepled his pudgy fingers. “If James Smith died in that fire—and we should know one way or the other any day now—then it will probably never be known if he really was The Assassin. But if he survived, the question is—what will he do now?”
“He’ll go after the Marble Gang for revenge.”
“I agree,” Billy said. “He’ll be relentless in hunting them down and killing them.”
“Would that be so bad?”
“It would be contrary to every principle we hold dear concerning due process and justice.”
“I guess it would.”
“And The Assassin wouldn’t just kill the gang members,” Billy said. “He’d torture them—horribly.”
“How do you know that?”
“We’ve discovered a few of his victims over the years,” Billy said, taking another long pull on his beer. “You see, it’s my theory that Commissioner Pinter only used this man on the rare occasions when it became obvious that we couldn’t—for one reason or another—obtain a murder conviction against a known killer. And so, rather than allow the killer to go free on some legal technicality, he’d hire The Assassin to mete out the justice.”
“Vigilante justice.”
“No, much worse than that,” Billy assured him. “The Assassin’s victims that we know about were all tortured before their deaths. Custis, this man has to be stopped!”
Longarm drank another glass of beer, trying to digest all that he’d just learned. Finally, he looked across at his grim-faced boss and said, “So you think that James Smith is The Assassin and that he forced Commissioner Pinter to drink whiskey and then threw him off the top of our building.”
“That’s right. It makes perfectly good sense when you think about it. Smith, or whatever his real name is, risked his life and that of his family to bring in the Marble Gang. Soon afterward, Commissioner Pinter fails to seal the case down tight enough to keep a slick lawyer from convincing Judge Franklin Getty to grant the gang bail. Once on the loose again, they murder Smith’s wife and kid in retaliation and try to make it look like an ordinary house fire.”
“But if all this is based on revenge, then why didn’t Smith murder Judge Getty?”
“I think,” Billy said, “that if The Assassin yet lives, that’s exactly what he’s going to do next.”
Longarm tossed down his beer and stood up to leave. In his haste he accidentally bumped into the brutish waiter, who was carrying another tray of beers, and they spilled all over the man and a table of customers.
“Uh-oh,” Billy said as the waiter whirled around with his fists cocked. “Custis, I think you’ve just made a very, very unfortunate mistake.”
Billy was right. Longarm could see the demented fury in the bruiser’s eyes as he swayed forward.
“Now wait a minute!” Longarm said, throwing up his hands. “It was an accident. Honest!”
But the man wasn’t listening. Instead, he lunged forward with an overhand that Longarm managed to duck and that actually penetrated the saloon’s thin wooden wall. It took Longarm but an instant to decide that discretion was the better part of valor and to leap toward the nearest exit. And he’d have made it too if some sneaky bastard hadn’t tripped him and sent him sprawling into the sawdust.
The waiter pulled his fist free of the wall, then roared as men scrambled out of his path. He would have kicked Longarm’s head in if Billy hadn’t made a flying tackle and knocked the brute off balance.
“You’re on your own!” Billy shouted, scooting through the doorway as Longarm lurched to his feet and braced himself for another furious onslaught.
The enraged waiter scrambled up from the sawdust cursing and spitting. He swung again and Longarm ducked, but the professional fighter nailed him with a left uppercut that slammed Longarm into the wall.
Longarm jabbed the waiter twice with hard, jolting punches that momentarily knocked the bruiser back on his heels and broke his nose, causing a torrent of gushing blood. The brute roared and came in swinging. Longarm, knowing that he could not trade blows with this demented monster, drew his six-gun and slammed it across the charging man’s forehead.
The attacker’s eyes crossed, and yet he still tried to grab and crush Longarm, who had little choice but to
