Find Angel! (A Frank Angel Western #1) (7 page)

‘
Aw,
play cards or fold, Sharp,’ one of the ranchers said. At the last
word, Angel straightened up and then edged around until he could
see Sharp’s face. The man looked up at him and their eyes met. Milt
Sharp had a peculiar cast to his eyes, Angel realized. It wasn’t
exactly a squint, but you had the curious impression that he was
looking just past you when in fact he was looking at
you.

‘
What
the hell you starin’ at?’ he snapped at Angel.

‘
Sorry,’ Angel said, holding up a hand in the peace sign. just
waiting for a chance to sit in.’

‘
You
can sit in soon enough if I don’t get some cards soon,’ growled
Sharp. ‘I can’t do a thing with this shit.’

‘
You
bettin’ or foldin’, Sharp?’ complained the dealer.

‘
He’s
doin’ whatever he wants to do, Singer,’ said the one called Kamins
softly. There was no edge to his voice at all, but Singer looked at
him sharply and paled visibly.

‘
See
here, Howie,’ he said, ‘no call for that kind of talk.’

‘
Then
let Milt play his hand the way he wants to,’ Kamins said
amiably.

‘
Sure, Howie, sure,’ Singer hastened to say. ‘No hurry. No
hurry at all.’

Kamins looked up across the table. He pushed back the Stetson
with his thumb, exposing a bright thatch of auburn hair, growing
thick and sharp to a widow’s peak in the centre of his
forehead.

‘
I
reckon I’ll quit after this hand, Milt,’ he said. ‘Just not my
night.’

‘
Mine, neither!’ scowled Sharp, slamming his cards down on the
table and taking a gulp of the whiskey from his bottle. If they
noticed Angel leave the saloon by the rear entrance they did not
react. They waited for the hand to finish and then got up, saying
their grumbling farewells to the other players with the joking
words that expressed good fellowship but in fact concealed their
seething rage at losing to what Sharp kept constantly referring to
as ‘small town hicks’. They came out into the street arguing,
Sharp’s voice slurred and angry, Kamins talking soothingly,
reasonably.

They
walked along the street until they came to the plaza. Sharp was
still sulking over his losses at the card table.

‘
Bastards,’ he said and spat on the sidewalk.

‘
Sure, Milt,’ Kamins said. ‘But no trouble, right? That’s what
we said. A nice layover. A few drinks, some girls - an’ no trouble.
We told Dick: no trouble.’

‘
I
know,’ Sharp said after a moment. ‘It ain’t the money, it’s …
’

‘
Come
on Milt,’ Kamins grinned in the darkness. ‘It ain’t as if it was
your own money.’ The two men laughed.

‘
Hey,’ Sharp said. ‘l got an idea. Let’s go over to
Angela’s.’

‘
Jesus, Milt, you must have had every puta in town twice,’
Kamins said. ‘You still lookin’ for more?’

‘
Keeps you healthy,’ Sharp leered. ‘You comin’ or
not?’

‘
I’m
going back to the hotel,’ Kamins told him. ‘You go get laid if
you’ve a mind to. I need a drink.’

They
stepped off the sidewalk into the wide dusty street and as they did
so Angel stepped off the walk on the opposite corner and came
towards them. When they were about twenty feet apart he
stopped.

‘
You
two!’ he said. ‘Hold it right there!’

Kamins stopped dead but Sharp leaned forward blearily and said
petulantly ‘What the hell is this?’

‘
I’m
going to kill one of you,’ Angel said flatly.

‘
Ain’t that the kid that was watchin’ the card
game?’

Kamins said, his voice cool and unpanicked. Then to Angel:
‘What beef you got with us, boy?’ He started to walk towards Angel,
his hands spread in an attitude of reasonable inquiry but Angel
stopped him with his next words.

‘
I’m
from Kansas,’ he told them.

Sharp
swore and moved as he did so, his hand stabbing for the gun in the
holster at his side. In the same moment Kamins grabbed for the gun
in his shoulder holster. He was about two seconds behind Sharp and
in that time Angel shot Sharp very coolly through the top of the
head and Kamins screamed as he was splattered with the grey-black
ooze from Sharp’s shattered skull. The gun he had yanked out of his
shoulder holster went off wild, and then he cocked it again, but
now Angel had run across the space between them, light-footed as an
Apache, swinging the long-barreled Colt in a looping arc that ended
in a vicious, smashing blow just above Kamins’ ear. The red-haired
man went down to the ground in a thrashing heap of arms and legs,
dust boiling up in a cloud as he rolled helplessly,
half-conscious.

Angel
kicked away the gun which had fallen to the ground and stood above
the fallen man. There were shouts along the street, and men were
coming out of the saloons. He heard feet running along the wooden
sidewalks, hoarse shouts.

‘
Where’s Cravetts? Angel snapped at the fallen Kamins, who was
trying to sit up, shaking his head. Angel kneeled down and jammed
the barrel of his gun under Kamins’ chin, jerking the man’s head
back.

‘
Where are they?’ he repeated. ‘Where’s Cravetts and the rest
of them?’

‘
Who
… who are you?’ Kamins managed.

‘
You’ve got ten seconds to answer my question, Kamins. Or I’m
going to kill you.’ Angel said it without any attempt at bluster.
It came out icy and convincing.

‘
Santa Fe!’ he gasped. ‘They were heading for Santa
Fe!’

‘
Where after that?’

‘
I
dunno,’ Kamins muttered. There was a lot of activity in the street
now. He knew help was on the way, and his courage was returning.
There was no chance of his being shot in front of twenty or thirty
bystanders.

‘
Kamins,’ Angel said warningly. ‘You better tell
me.’

‘
Go
to hell, kid,’ Kamins said, and Angel shot him through the knee.
The man screamed in blinded agony as the bullet smashed the bones
of his leg, and as Angel had expected, the sound of the shot drove
the oncoming townsfolk back towards shelter. They receded into the
shadows along the street, into doorways and saloon porches,
awaiting developments. A man didn’t prove anything by getting
himself shot, knocked down by a stray bullet. Vegas had a sheriff.
Let him handle it.

Kamins was moaning in agony in the dust on Santa Fe Street.
Angel looked dispassionately at him. ‘Now: the truth,’ he
said.

Kamins loosed off a stream of obscenities, every foul thing he
could lay his tongue to being directed at the flint-faced man
standing over him.

‘
You
got ten seconds, Howie,’ Angel said. ‘Then you get it in the other
leg.’

‘
You
wouldn’t do that!’ Kamins gasped. ‘You wouldn’t deliberately make a
man a cripple for life.’

‘
Try
me,’ Frank Angel said and cocked the Army Colt.

‘
Who
… who are you?’ Kamins managed. His face was still screwed tight
with the pain from his leg, both hands gripping the hurt limb
fiercely.

‘
You
never heard of me,’ the younger man said. ‘My name is Frank Angel
and you’ve got five seconds.’

‘
Angel?’ Kamins was playing for time and Angel knew
it.

‘
Three,’ he said.

Kamins looked into the empty eyes and watched as Angel raised
the gun.

‘
No,’
he choked. ‘I’ll tell you!’

‘
Make
it good, Howie,’ Angel said softly. He knelt down and laid the
barrel of the gun against Kamins’ good leg. ‘And make it
fast.’

‘
Santa Fe,’ Kamins gasped, hastily. ‘They was goin’ to lay
over a while in Santa Fe, get fresh horses. Torelli has a brother
in Socorro.’

‘
Torelli? Who’s Torelli?’

‘
Frank Torelli,’ Kamins said, ‘one of the boys.’

‘
Give
me all their names,’ Angel said. ‘Every man on the Fort Riley
job.’

‘
There was me, Milt—’ Kamins turned to look at Sharp’s
shattered head and shuddered. ‘Cravetts, Monsher, Vister and
Juba.’

‘
First names,’ snapped Angel. ‘Come on, come on!’

‘
Dick
Cravetts, Lee Monsher, Johnnie Vister, Denny Juba!’ Kamins rushed.
‘Listen, you got to get me to doctor!’

‘
Sure,’ Angel said. ‘Where does Cravetts hail
from?’

‘
Arizona,` Kamins said. ‘Tucson way, I think.’

‘
How
much did you boys lift from the Army payroll?’

‘
About sixteen thousand,’ Kamins muttered. ‘Listen, Angel, I
ain’t talkin’ no more till you get me a doctor. I’m gonna bleed to
death.’

‘
No
chance,’ Angel said, and, shot him through the heart. Kamins went
back down flat and hard, and Angel heard someone shout in alarm.
The people who had been watching from the safety of the ramadas on
the sidewalk about thirty or forty feet away scampered back out of
range to the safety of their doorways. Along the street Angel heard
the sound of running feet. Someone in the darkness shouted ‘It’s
the sheriff?

He
had only moments. Without hesitation or shame he rifled Kamins’
coat pockets, and then Sharp’s. Both men had wallets stuffed with
banknotes and both had pokes of what felt like gold dust. He jammed
everything into his pockets and ran for the tree-filled plaza,
where the shadows were like the bottomless pits of Hell.

‘
Hey,
you!’ he heard someone shout.

He
had traced his return path carefully earlier in the evening and
knew every step of the way even in the pitch blackness of the empty
square. He came out of the trees on the northern side of the plaza
and crossed over to the ramada of the hotel. A group of men was
standing in the doorway craning their necks to see what the fuss
was down the street. He came up behind them and asked a question. A
burly man in a business suit looked him up and down.

‘
Some
kind of fracas down the street,’ he said. At that moment the desk
clerk came up the sidewalk from the direction of the street and the
men outside the hotel clustered around him, Angel among
them.

‘
Two
men shot dead down there,’ the clerk was saying excitedly. ‘Some
feller shot them dead and robbed them right in the middle of the
street!’

‘
Anyone see who it was? someone asked.

‘
I
dunno,’ the clerk said. ‘Sheriff’ s down there now!’

‘
I
reckon I’ll go down there take a look,’ another man said. ‘You
comin’, Harry?’

‘
Hell
with it,’ the man called Harry said. ‘It ain’t no concern o’ mine.
Someone gets his liver shot out once a week in this
burg.’

The
knot of people began to dissolve. Some went down the walk towards
the scene of the affray, others went back inside the hotel. Angel
went in with them and asked the clerk for his key. The clerk handed
it to him without even taking time to look at Angel. He was anxious
to get back to talking about what had happened.

Angel
went to his room and locked the door. He sat on the bed and waited
a long time until his hands stopped shaking. Much, much later he
fell asleep fully dressed.

The
office of the Attorney-General of the United States was a spacious,
high-ceilinged room. It was on the first floor of the huge building
on Pennsylvania Avenue in Washington which housed the Department of
Justice.

The
office was in many ways a reflection of the character of the man
who occupied it. One wall was covered with shelves in which books
of all kinds were stacked, upright and flat, face forward and spine
out, books on criminal law and international law, books on
psychology, criminology, natural history, sociology and many more,
books which showed the signs of much use and a complete disregard
on the part of their owner to treat them as anything but what they
were: tools, part of his job. A huge desk dominated the right hand
corner of the room, and two floor-to-ceiling windows looked out on
the bustle of traffic in the muddy mess of Pennsylvania Avenue. Two
armchairs with dark leather upholstery were ranged in front of the
desk. The only other furniture was a huge oak cupboard and an iron
safe with an ornate scrollwork of brass. On the wall behind the
desk was the circular seal of the Department of Justice.

The
Attorney-General tossed aside the sheaf of buff colored reports he
had been reading and slapped the desk in anger. The man in the
armchair opposite blinked but let no expression cross his
face.

‘
Two
months!’ the Attorney-General said angrily. ‘Two months — and not a
trace! Not a smell! Nothing! What the devil are we
doing?’

‘
Everything we can, chief,’ the man in the armchair said
quietly. He was a big man, wide across the shoulders and still for
all his forty-five years, narrow-waisted and lithe, his frame
indicating that he would probably move with catlike grace and speed
if he had to. He had a tanned face, lines scoured into it by years
in the open, and the clear blue eyes of a boy. His hair was a dark
blond and he wore the customary fashionable moustache. Dressed in
ordinary city clothes, he looked, apart from the outdoor tan, like
any other city dweller. In fact he was the Chief Investigator of
the United States Department of Justice. His name was Angus
Wells.