It all happened in less than a minute. One of the hoodlums decided to run for it and Bucky shot him as he went out the door. Then Bucky fell against the staircase banister, started reloading his pistol, and the one who had shot Andy started to get up. He was crawling around on his knees looking for his gun. Then I heard a shot outside.
Culhane: When I came through the door, there was Bucky, gut shot, trying to reload his Peacemaker, his hands so bloody the bullets kept slipping through his fingers and falling on the floor. Andy Sloan was dead on the floor. Everybody was dead but Bucky, me, and the last of Riker’s men. He and Buck were both shot all to hell. They were across the room from each other, probably twenty, thirty feet apart.
Through the years, I’ve played what happened next over and over in my head like one of those slow-motion movies, and I wish I could stop it. I wish I could turn off the projector and stop time.
I was twenty feet to the left of Riker’s man.
He’s struggling to his feet. He’s raising his gun.
Buck slaps the cylinder shut on his. 44 and his arm is going up.
I go for a head shot, figuring I’m closest. But even shot up as he was, Bucky was faster than me. Probably by half a second. Bucky shoots and I shoot. His bullet hits the gunman first, a split second before mine. His head snaps backward, and my shot goes right past him and hits the door to the bedroom on the first floor.
Bucky looks up at Del and says, “Wouldn’t you know it. Killed in a whorehouse.”
And then a woman screamed. She was behind the door to the first-floor bedroom, which was more or less reserved for locals. I ran across the room and kicked open the door. There was a man lying on the Persian rug, shot in the throat. Blood was spouting out of the wound. The woman was covered with his blood and hysterical. Her bloody hands were crossed over her face. She was shaking all over. But I wasn’t looking at her.
“Get her out of here,” I yelled to Delilah, and they were gone, and I was looking down at the youngster lying at my feet. I saw his eyes go blank.
It was my godson, Eli Junior.
My bullet killed him.
They both stopped talking. They were long past tears but the depth of their sadness swept through the garden like a cold wind. Bannon took Millicent’s hand with both of his, held it tightly, and kissed it. Tears trickled down her face.
All I could think of was to get Eli out of there. I moved as fast I could. Wrapped him up in the Persian rug, which was drenched in blood. There was hardly any blood in the room except on the bedspread. I ripped it off the bed and threw it in the closet. Then I picked Eli up and carried him outside through the side door by the hedgerow, down to his car, and put him in the trunk. When I came back, the coroner was just arriving. I said as casually as I could, “Nothing in the bedroom.” I had left the door open so he wouldn’t see the hole in the door.
Then I made the toughest phone call I ever made in my life. I called Ben and told him to meet me at the overlook. It was foggy as hell. You couldn’t even see your belt buckle. He met me there and we mourned over Eli. We prayed over him and we talked to him and we were dying inside. We decided his mother could never know what happened. Killed in a whorehouse, killed by a man she loved. It would have killed her. He was her magic child, the mortar in a great friendship. So we cranked up the Chevy and I got behind the wheel, drove it to the edge, and jumped out. It seemed to take forever before it hit the shelf. And then a minute or so later, it exploded.
I don’t know how Ben kept his sanity when he went home to Isabel. He had to wait until the next morning, until a newsboy saw the wreck on his way up Cliffside Road, and I went over and told them both.
He stopped and held his glass up. Delilah filled it. Bannon looked across the table at the old warrior.
“And you kept that secret until Isabel died?”
Culhane nodded. “Me, Ben, Delilah, and old Eli knew.”
“And one more,” Bannon said. “The girl young Eli was with-Wilma Thompson.”
Millicent looked shocked. Delilah surprised. Culhane just smiled.
“Figured it out, didn’t you, Cowboy?”
“It’s the only way it made sense. The out-of-towners weren’t coming to barter for a piece of the action. Riker sent them because he figured Delilah was hiding Wilma at Grand View.”
“He had just done ten lousy days in the local jail for beating her up,” Delilah said. “It should have been ten years. When she dropped out of sight, he sent those animals up to my place to find her.”
Delilah is in her apartment when Noah taps on the door.
“It’s old Mist’ Eli,” Noah says. “He’s downstairs in his car. Can’t come in ’cause of the wheelchair.”
Delilah and Eli are friends, have been for years. Not social friends. Eli had never been to Grand View, but they talked on the phone once a week or so, about Eureka, about Riker. Delilah grabs her mink, wraps herself in it, and goes down. Raymond, Eli’s chauffeur, holds the door for her and she gets in the backseat. Raymond wanders off in the dark.
Eli looks frail; even in the darkness of the car she can see the toll the shooting has taken on him. Six months and he is still mourning. Will always mourn the loss of his grandson. But his eyes glitter in the gloom. The window is cracked slightly and smoke from his cigar wisps through it.
“Does the cigar bother you?” he asks. Always the gentleman.
“Don’t be silly,” she says and lights a cigarette.
“There’s nobody I can trust as much as I trust you, Del,” he says. There is something in his voice, a cruelness she has not heard before. Anger, yes, but not cruelty.
She says nothing.
“The young girl, Wilma? You are protecting her, aren’t you?”
Delilah doesn’t answer at first. Then she slowly nods.
“She’s not one of my girls, Eli. She does some work around the place and I pay her a salary, but she stays under cover.”
“She meant a lot to young Eli, didn’t she?”
Delilah nods. “She’s a decent young woman. Just got mixed up with Riker. Those things happen.”
“I have a plan,” the old man says.
“What kind of plan?”
“To get rid of Riker once and for all.”
Delilah just nods, wondering where he is heading with this.
“They call the son of a bitch ‘the Fisherman’ because he kills people and drops them at sea for the fish to eat. He probably doesn’t do the killing himself, his kind never do. They have scum who do it for them.”
Delilah still doesn’t say a word.
“Supposing it appeared that he killed Wilma?”
“Kill Wilma!”
“I said ‘appears.’ ”
Delilah stares at him, at the tip of the cigar glowing in the dark.
“You want to frame Riker?” she say cautiously.
“He lives on his boat. I hear he drinks heavily. Drunk almost every night…”
“You want to frame him,” she says, and it is not a question.
He quickly outlines his plan.
Delilah sits quietly for a minute.
“Brodie won’t buy it, Eli. Brett Merrill won’t either.”
“I know that. We need somebody else to do it, somebody who’ll pull it off without a hitch, so nobody ever knows. Wilma can disappear, go anywhere she wants. I’ll arrange for her to get a new license, a new identity, and make life easy for her for the rest of her life.”
Delilah is quiet again. A long minute passes.
“This is a very risky thing.”
“I know that, my dear.” His voice is the voice of the crafty old fox. The man who outfoxed her father. Age and illness had wasted his body but not his brain.
