Graves' Retreat (23 page)

    

    

    Black Jake closed the door and went over to the table and set his weapon down and turned up the kerosene lamp again and read the note.

    IN THE FIELD BY THE ICEHOUSE. 10:30.

    Black Jake smiled.

    He might have encountered more perfect setups in his time as the assistant to Judge Isaac Parker, but at the moment he couldn’t recall what they might be.

    Did T. Z. Graves really think Early would go to the field by the icehouse and stand around and wait for Graves to open fire?

    Black Jake had maneuvered himself out of such traps many times in the past. He had a simple rule about them. Don’t be ambushed; ambush.

    He pulled out his Ingram.

    10 P.M.

    There was still time to finish his letter to his wife before he went and collected T. Z. Graves.

    

    

    “You’re drunk.”

    Susan said it with a mixture of contempt and amusement. Proper Byron had never exhibited such a fondness for alcohol before and his newfound love was both exasperating and endearing.

    Byron stood in the light beneath the Edmonds’ front porch. He tried to stand erect, but he weaved and bobbed a bit.

    She wanted to smile but would not let herself.

    “You’re three hours late.”

    “I needed to work up my nerve.”

    “To see me?”

    He shook his head. He had never looked more the lost little boy. “Your father.”

    “Oh, Byron-”

    He held up a hand. “No. I insist. There are certain things I need to say.”

    She glanced behind her into the vast and dark house. “Are you sure, Byron?”

    “Very sure.”

    Even though his mussed hair and wobbly manner made him seem the child, there was steel in his voice and she welcomed it.

    “He’s on the back porch. With Mother.” She paused. “I talked to him for two hours this afternoon.”

    “And?”

    “And-for the first time since I was eight years old, I told him I loved him. Your words-affected him, Byron. Very much.”

    “You’re sure you don’t mean devastated?”

    “Yes-that, too. But they made him think. He let himself cry. I could never have imagined that happening.”

    He leaned against the door frame. You could see the alcohol working through his system. “But before I go in there, I have a question for you.”

    She said it simply. “I’m not going.”

    “My God-is that for sure?”

    “Yes. For sure.” She did her best to laugh. “Omaha has too many stockyards. The odor would ruin my clothes.”

    He swept her up then and held her close to him and kissed her with a frank passion that he’d never shown before.

    “My God, but I love you, Susan.”

    “And I love you too, Byron.”

    Then he set her down and set about composing himself. “Now I need to see your father.”

    “Are you sure you wouldn’t rather wait?”

    “No, Susan, I’ve been working myself up to this. I need to do it now.”

    So they went through the house, over hardwood and then oriental rugs and finally over the brick of the veranda.

    Mr. and Mrs. Edmonds sat at a white wicker table that the lamp glow made golden.

    Mrs. Edmonds frowned when she saw Byron. But she didn’t say anything.

    “Father,” Susan said, “Byron would like to speak with you.”

    Her father turned around and faced them. Oddly, instead of showing anger, he showed a certain embarrassment, as if Byron knew some terrible secret about him.

    “Mother, why don’t you help me make fresh tea?”

    Mrs. Edmonds looked first at Byron and then at her husband. “Is that all right, Clinton?”

    Clinton, saying nothing, only nodded.

    You could hear birds in the sudden silence and the distant yipping of dogs and the explosions of fireworks the night before the Fourth.

    Mrs. Edmonds stood up. “Byron, you had no right to take that tone with Clinton today.” The harshness of her voice surprised them all. They were used to hearing her speak in soft and subservient tones. Then she surprised them all again by going up and kissing Byron on the cheek. “But I have to say, it seems to have gotten Clinton talking again to everybody. The way he used to.”

    Susan touched a fragile hand to her breast. So it had all been worth it after all.

    She knew now that her father and Byron would settle their differences.

    She guided her mother into the kitchen so the two men could have their talk.

    

    

    Neely and T.Z. stood across the street, in the shadows of an alley, watching Black Jake Early’s hotel.

    T.Z. made a remark on every pretty woman who passed down the sidewalk. God knew there were plenty to gawk at. Hundreds of people milled around laughing, drinking, nuzzling each other animallike. The night before the Fourth was a major event.

    In front of the opera house, a few blocks away, they’d seen dozens of fancy carriages shiny beneath the streetlights, dispatching men and woman in formal garb. And everywhere there seemed to be workingmen dressed in white shirts and blue or black trousers cinched up with new leather belts and their women in colorful summery dresses window-shopping or hopping from tavern to tavern or strolling along the river and throwing pieces of bread to the ducks floating on the warm current below. A few of the nighteries had live music, everything from piano recitals of popular songs in the more fashionable places to the blasting joy of polkas in the Czech spots several blocks away.

    T.Z., who had still not gotten used to the idea, said, “You sure we have to do this, Neely?”

    Neely said, “You want him to follow us the rest of our lives?”

    “He’d give up eventually.”

    “Black Jake Early?”

    T.Z. sighed. “I guess you’re right.”

    “By dawn we’ll have the money and be riding.”

    T.Z. said, “You sure you can make it look like Les didn't have anything to do with it?”

    Neely clapped him on the back again. "I promise you, T.Z. I promise you.”

    Then T.Z. stiffened and pointed. “There he is.”

    And so it was.

    At ten-fifteen exactly Black Jake Early appeared from the hotel and stood on the sidewalk smoking a cigar. For a time he was obscured by a group of passing revelers but then he reappeared, still standing there, calmly working on his stogie.

    As usual, he wore a dark suit. As usual, he looked like an Indian who had had most of the Indianness worked out of him somehow.

    He dropped the cigar to the sidewalk and crushed it with a big foot and then proceeded west, through the crowd.

    “Let’s go,” Neely said.

    “You sure?”

    “I’m sure,” Neely said. “I’m sure.”

    To reach the field near the icehouse, Early should have turned right at the end of the First Avenue bridge.

    Instead, he kept walking straight ahead, giving Neely an indication of what the man had in mind.

    T.Z. said, “Why isn’t he turning?”

    Patiently, as if to a child, Neely said, “He’s going to ambush us.”

    “Are you serious?”

    “Sure. He’s going to sneak up on the other side of the place where I said you’d be. He thinks he’s going to get the drop on you.”

    “So what are we going to do?”

    Neely sighed. “We’re going to ambush him, T.Z. We’re going to ambush him.”

    Neely swung wide in an arc, moving along the alleys on the other side of the street, so that Early would not be able to see them walking parallel to him.

    Early got up even with the icehouse and then turned right. Across the river, factories poured hot gray smoke into the night sky. There were enough small buildings and few enough lights that they lost sight of him.

    “Damn,” said Neely.

    “Maybe it’s a sign,” T.Z. said.

    “A sign?”

    “Yeah. You ever read the astrology section in the newspaper?”

    Neely’s jaw muscles started working. “Don’t talk for right now, all right, T.Z.?”

    Obviously knowing he’d been scolded, T.Z. shut up.

    This was the riskiest part, Neely knew.

    Maybe Early was smart enough to know that they were following him. Maybe somewhere in the shadows ahead he was waiting for them, gun drawn.

    “Come on," Neely said, and for the first time there was tension in his voice.

    They had to cross First Avenue. There was plenty of light for them to be seen in. Neely had his gun in his hand, shoved just inside the flap of his suit coat pocket. Neely had never been able to get through an entire robbery without his stomach going to hell. It started going to hell now. Pain crisscrossed his abdomen. Sharp pain. He imagined that somewhere in the murk half a block away, Black Jake Early waited for them. Weapon ready. Smiling.

    “Come on,” he said, trying to give them both courage.

    A wagon flew by, the driver drunk and singing with his girlfriend.

    Neely and T.Z. had to step back to avoid being struck.

    Neely was tense enough that he wanted to pull his gun and waste the young farm kid with the reins. See his head burst open like a melon dropped from a height.

    But then they got across the avenue and stood in the gloom. They were half a block away from the field where the rendezvous was supposed to take place. Black Jake Early was nowhere to be seen. You could smell the fishy hot river. You could smell the grasses that had begun to bum in a sun subtly tipping toward autumn. You could smell your own sweat.

    “There!” whispered Neely.

    Around the edge of a building that sat a hundred yards from the field stood Black Jake Early.

    Neely laughed softly. “He’s expecting us to come up along the river path.” If that had indeed been their plan, then Early would have been in a good position to pick them off one at a time. And it was logical for a man like Early to assume that his would-be killers would indeed have chosen the small copse of oak trees to hide in.

    Logical-but wrong.

    Neely pushed T.Z. ahead.

    They went up half a block through the alley and then cut across between two buildings. The night soaked them. Mosquitoes ripped at them.

    When they reached a large warehouse, they cut along its side then came out on a board sidewalk. They went east again.

    The area was mostly commercial. Small empty factories. Dark storage buildings. A dairy. Nobody worked the night before the Fourth.

    Behind the dairy, abutting the field, was where they’d seen Early.

    What they’d done was swing wide and come up from behind him. He’d be watching the field when they reached him-looking in the wrong direction.

    Neely took his gun out.

    This would all have to happen very quickly. If T.Z. even began to suspect what was really about to happen, he would bolt and run and then Neely would have to start looking for him, too. And there wouldn’t be time for that. Neely expected to be on his way to Mexico by daylight.

    “Ready?” Neely said.

    But all T.Z. said was “I should’ve seen Les. Talked to him. Tried to make him feel better.”

    Neely spat. “I asked if you were ready.”

    T.Z. shaking, said, “I’m ready.”

    They moved.

    Through patches of light, through patches of darkness. Over grass and over board sidewalk. Neely’s heart was wild in his chest.

    Black Jake Early was still edging out around the side of the building, watching the field when they got there.

    Neely didn’t wait to catch his breath. All he said was “Are you Mr. Early?”

    And when Early whirled around, Neely shot him twice in the face and once in the chest.

    Early hadn’t had time to scream or to protest in any way. His long arms went out, fanning the air like a vaudeville comedian doing a backward pratfall, and then he dropped over with the force of a tree being felled. When the back of his head struck the ground, there was a pop and you could tell the impact had burst his head open.

    All T.Z. could do was stand there, transfixed.

    Which is exactly what Neely had counted on.

    “He’s probably got some cash," Neely said, running over to the fallen Early.

    Neely dropped to a knee, jamming his hand into the man’s coat pocket, pulling out an expensive leather wallet. He pulled out a thick wad of greenbacks and stuffed them into his own pocket.

    He did all this without once taking his eyes off the gun that Early still had clutched in his useless hand.

    Neely glanced up at T.Z.

    T.Z. was still gone somewhere inside his own mind.

    Sighing, readying himself, Neely reached wide over the horizon of Early’s belly and yanked the gun from his hand.

    Quickly, and without pause, he turned back to T.Z.

    Only in that final moment did T. Z. Graves see what was really happening here.

    He opened his mouth and started to protest.

    Neely shot him directly in heart. He wanted him dead right away. He did not want T.Z. to suffer.

    After T.Z. had fallen, Neely went over and stood above him. T.Z.’s eyelids still flickered feverishly. Neely had seen cows dying of anthrax. Their eyelids had twitched similarly. It was a measure of their agony and delirium. Nobody should have to endure that. Neely shot him twice more in the chest. Almost at once T.Z. was still. Perfectly and finally still.

    “I’m sorry, T.Z.,” Neely said in a flat voice. “I’m sorry.”