“It’s for you, Brodie.”
He grabbed the phone. “Yeah?”
“It’s me. Don’t use my name.” Slim whispered on the other end of the line. “They just left here.”
“Thanks, Andy.” He hung up and headed for the door. The blond henchman jabbed a thick finger into Brodie’s chest.
“Mr. Riker’s still talking to you,” he growled. Brodie grabbed the finger, bent it back almost to the wrist, heard it crack. The gunsel bellowed. Brodie twisted the bodyguard’s arm up and backward, grabbed the back of his hair, and slammed his face into one of the stools. Blood squirted from both sides of his face. He made a gurgling noise, and Brodie lifted his head and slammed his face onto the stool again.
Riker, eyes bulging, was riveted to the spot. Brodie threw the limp hoodlum on the floor, reached under the gangster’s arm, and pulled a. 32 from his shoulder holster. He turned and aimed the pistol at Riker.
“I ain’t heeled,” Riker screamed, holding his hands high.
Brodie jammed the hoodlum’s. 32 under Riker’s chin and frisked him anyway, then grabbed a handful of his shirt.
“Where’s that bunch of yours going?” he demanded.
“I don’t know what you’re…” Riker stammered.
Lars groaned, raised himself up. Culhane kicked him in the jaw and he fell on his back.
“If that bastard ever touches me again, I’ll kill him on the spot,” he whispered in Riker’s face, and shoved him into a chair, which flipped backward. Sprawled on the floor, the gang leader trembled with fear as Brodie aimed the. 32 at him.
“What if I just put you out of everybody’s misery,” Culhane said. Then he pointed the gun toward the ceiling and emptied the bullets on the floor. He turned and dashed out the door.
Wisps of fog drifted past the sprawling Grand View mansion, leaving damp streaks on its ghostly white facade and dampening the hedges that led to the front door. The full moon was a hazy aura in the mist.
The black Chevrolet cabriolet pulled up to the tall iron gates, and a hard-looking man got out and walked to the postern, where a security guard stepped out on the other side of the gate.
“Do you have a card, sir,” he said in a flat, no-nonsense voice. The hard-looking man took a. 38-caliber pistol from under his arm and pointed it straight at the guard’s forehead.
“Will this do?” he hissed with a nasty smile.
The guard studied the gun and the face behind it, then walked over to the gate, unlocked it, and pulled one side open. The armed man stepped inside, stuck the gun in the guard’s back, led him back to the postern, and shoved him inside the small guardhouse.
“Sorry, pal,” he growled, and slashed the guard viciously across the jaw with his gun. The guard grunted and collapsed on the floor. The gunman pulled the telephone lines from the wall, walked back outside, and jumped on the running board of the Chevrolet.
“Okay,” he said, and the car inched down the long drive through the fog to the house. The gunman jumped off the running board and three other men piled out of the car behind him. The leader was Charly McGurk, a slick- looking little weasel wearing a gray fedora. There was a purple wine-stain birthmark on his right cheek. He put the gun back under his arm and they went to the giant double doors and he rang the bell. Inside, he could hear chimes gently stirring. A minute later, a burly chocolate-colored man with temples beginning to show a little gray opened the door. Noah’s eyes widened as the gunman put a hand on his chest and eased him backward. His cohorts followed him into the mansion.
They entered the wide, two-story foyer. McGurk looked up the winding staircase that faced them, then turned his attention to Andy Sloan, who sat at a table sipping coffee. Sloan jumped to
his feet as the four men entered, and his hand fell on the butt of a holstered. 38.
“Don’t do nothin’ stupid,” said McGurk. “Sit down.”
Culhane decided to take the old horse trail up the cliff to Grand View. It had been widened and there was a wall separating it from the drop to the rocks below. He started up the road, downshifted into low, and hugged the steep rise on his left.
Halfway up he ran into fog and slowed to a crawl, the transmission groaning as the Ford climbed toward the top.
At Grand View, three hooligans stood behind McGurk, their hands resting inside their suit jackets.
“We’re here to have a chat with the lady of the house.” He turned to Noah. “You-dinge-go get her.”
Noah’s jaws tightened. He looked at the deputy, who thought a moment before nodding. Noah went up the stairs, knocked on a door at the head of the steps. A moment later it opened and Delilah, handsome in a pale yellow evening gown, stepped out and glared down at the four men. She said something to Noah, who disappeared down one of the halls leading from the balcony.
“Who the hell are you?” she said sternly.
“You must be the O’Dell lady, all that red hair and all,” McGurk said with a sneer.
“So what.”
“So Mr. Riker wants to have a chat at the hotel. He sent us up to bring you down there.”
“What’s the matter, does he have a broken leg?”
McGurk rolled his tongue across yellow teeth.
“He said he wants to see you…”
She cut him off. “He wants to see me? Tell him he knows where I am and to come alone. Or maybe try a phone call, unless he’s forgotten how to talk, too.”
“Mr. Riker wants you to come along with us,” said McGurk in a harsh voice just above a whisper. “He wants to have a little friendlylike chat now.”
Buck Tallman stepped out behind her. His pure white hair flowed down over his shoulders. He was wearing a buckskin vest over a plain white shirt, and dark brown flared pants. A. 44 Peacemaker was hanging low on his hip and his badge glittered where it was pinned to the holster. His right hand hung loosely next to the six-gun.
“Well, well, if it ain’t Buffalo Bill hisself,” McGurk said, and chuckled. “You ain’t invited, old man.”
The tall lawman moved Delilah behind him and came down the stairs, his eyes glittering behind hooded lids. One of the gunmen walked to the middle of the room. The sheriff reached the foot of the staircase, strode resolutely forward, and stopped a foot from him. The other three goons divided up. McGurk near the door, another one next to Andy Sloan. The fourth thug sidled to the lawman’s right and lounged near a side door to the foyer. They had the room covered.
“He said…” the lead gunman started.
“Shut up,” the lawman said in a deep, gravelly voice. Then: “You oughta brush your teeth sometimes, your breath smells like a dead cat’s.”
As Culhane neared the top of Cliffside Road there was a shot, then another, and then Grand View exploded with gunfire.
For an instant, Brodie’s mind flashed back to a foxhole near the Somme, to a white horse racing through the fog, to lying in the hospital, where he had made the decision to come back to San Pietro. He flashed back to the fear he felt getting off the train, knowing he was really back in Eureka.
Now he knew that something terrible was waiting at the top of the Hill.
What he didn’t know was that the events of the next few minutes would change his life again, would be beyond his most terrifying nightmare, beyond fear of death or the fear of battle that lay behind him.
Another gunshot cleared his mind. He slammed on the gas and skidded around the curve, into the drive to Grand View. More gunfire. Brodie wheeled up the drive and skidded to a stop. An armed and wounded gunman staggered out the front door, reeled sideways along the row of hedges. Brodie saw the wine-stain birthmark on his cheek, jumped out of the Ford, using the open door as a shield.
“You there, McGurk, drop the gun,” Brodie yelled.
McGurk, still lurching along the hedge, turned and fired a shot that hit the windshield of Brodie’s car. It exploded, showering the inside of the car with shards of glass.
“I only ask once,” Brodie muttered as he laid his arm on the sill of the door window, aimed an Army. 45, and fired a single shot. It hit McGurk just above the left eye. His body arched into the air, the gun spun out of his hand, and he fell into the hedge with his arms spread out like he was singing an aria at the opera. He stayed there.
