The Devil You Know (23 page)

I shifted my lunge, slapping a hand over her mouth and wrapping one arm around her small body, lifting her backwards.

She fought, kicking and wriggling, then suddenly going limp and heavy, as though she’d fainted. I didn’t think she was that delicate. She wanted me to loosen my grip and maybe give me the business with that gun she’d kept.

“Isabelle DeLeon, you are the pip,” I said in her ear, my voice low. I kept her mouth covered in case she let out a yell.

She came alive, made a relieved and friendly
mmph
sound, and when I put her down, she wiggled around to give me a fierce hug. I returned it, hugely relieved and equally annoyed. She shouldn’t be here.

“Keep quiet,” I told her. “We could be surrounded.”

“They’re in that house,” she whispered. “Where the hell have you been?”

“The Casa Loma Ballroom crooning with Bing Crosby. You were supposed to be getting away.”

The next sound she made was less friendly. “Those guys are all over the place. I’ve been hiding and freezing. Where’s Jonathan?”

“He’s safe. He’s inside the house with Fleish Brogan and—”

“That’s safe?”

“—your pal Clapsaddle.”

“
Clappie’s
here?”

“He called Brogan after we left the newspaper. I’ll tell you later, but for now Brogan and Swann are having one hell of a labor dispute. We’re on Brogan’s side for this round.”

“Does this mean Clappie’s on the take?”

“Euhh. . .no. But you’ll have to talk to him about that—if he gets out of this. How many men are in the house?”

“A lot. I was busy hiding.”

“Smart girl. Keep doing that.”

“You’re bleeding.” She reached toward my face.

I reflexively jerked away, swiping a sleeve over my mouth. “It’s nothing, just a clip. I have to see a man about a dog.”

“Not without me.”

Arguing would waste time. “I need help. Can you watch the back of the house? Brogan’s car is there, maybe a few others besides.”

“Three cars. Big ones. Lots of guys.”

“Right. This is important: find a spot where you can cover the back door.”

“And do what?”

“You’ll know when the time comes.”

“
That
smells like a fib. What’re
you
doing?”

Inside the house a gun went off.

“No time to explain, move!”

I urged her in the general direction where she’d be out of the way. If I told her stay in place, she’d find something else to do. Instead, I’d given her just enough uncertainty to watch and wait for something interesting to happen.

Of course, my idea was to get in the house and remove Swann from giving orders, which would solve everything. Couldn’t do that with Izzy along.

There were more shots and yelling.

Solid as a bull’s eye, I hurried though the front entry, fairly confident that in the dark I’d be taken for one of his soldiers.

No one noticed.

Negotiations had taken a bad turn.

There was a man sprawled before the parlor’s open door, leaking blood from a cut on his head. Swann and his men were out of sight, but I heard frantic yelling and crashing from a room up the hall from the parlor.

A sudden flat pop and flash of gunfire within it made me jump.

Cursing, a man bolted from the room and headed right toward me, or rather for the door behind me.

Another man stepped into the hall. “
Get back here, you yellow—
”

The last word was obscured by a second shot.

Stepping to one side, I avoided the wild-eyed guy’s headlong rush as well as the next bullet. It missed us both, but inspired him to run faster.

The shooter took careful aim for a third shot, but his target made it outside, leaping from the porch to gallop down the drive. The shooter abruptly noticed me. I faded, leaving enough shadowy form visible to invite him to waste lead—which he did not. Instead, he retreated backwards into the room. Rather abruptly, as though he’d been pulled. I heard a cracking thud as something large connected violently with something hard.

Almost immediately afterward, a ghost floated through the doorway.

Man-sized, more or less vertical, and creepy as hell in the dimness, it surged down the hall, a gray, bloated, cloudy
thing
moving with intent.

I should be used to it, but it’s not as though I’d gotten much practice.

“Barrett!” I snapped.

It paused. I called his name again, louder. He wouldn’t be able to hear well.

It hung, churning in place a moment, then continued on. Whatever it was couldn’t wait.

I stopped just outside the parlor and called inside.

“Fleming?” Clapsaddle answered. “How the blazes did you—”

“What’s going on? Where’s Swann?”

“Damned if I know. What—”

At the other end of the hall, a man screamed in hideous agony, then came a volley of shots, the fast, desperate kind of fire I’d not heard in twenty years since I’d been a doughboy in France.

“Stay put!” I yelled and ran toward the commotion.

More shooting. I ducked involuntarily when bullets zipped overhead, nearly colliding with a man lurching away from the fight. He blundered on, limping and oblivious of me until I tripped him. He dropped flat and stayed there. One of his pant legs was ripped and bloody, and a shard of bone poked through the flesh. How the hell had he been able to walk, and why would he even try?

Another man howled, rage mixed with his pain, until he suddenly went silent. Guns were fired, men cursed and roared, things thumped, glass shattered. It was like listening to an episode of
Gangbusters
. I
rushed through a big dark kitchen, then a mud room, and paused before running outside. A man lay on the threshold, his prone body propping the door open. One of his legs was bent at the knee at an
angle
God never intended. Just as well he was out cold; he wouldn’t have liked being awake.

It had gone quiet. I peered around the door frame. The back area had three cars parked haphazardly on the driveway paving. Also haphazardly on the paving were a number of bodies. From the look of things, Brogan would have to hang out a “help wanted” sign. Even if he decided to keep these soldiers on the payroll, none of them would be up and around anytime soon. It might have been funny, but there was too much blood.

The breaking glass was the result of a man having been thrown through the windshield of one of the cars. He’d hit it back first, caving it in, and was out for the count.

Another had landed on the car’s roof. He groggily moved and slid off, hitting the ground hard, after which he ceased bothering.

Shots. Somewhere beyond the cars I heard a truncated volley and impotent clicks. They’d run out of bullets.

“
Cheese it!
” someone bawled.

A few guys stampeded away, running for the woods in flat out panic.

I charged around the vehicles and stopped, my jaw dragging.

Barrett and Kaiser were at it again like some twisted version of Popeye and Bluto.

Kaiser had the fireplace poker in one massive hand. He held his other arm, the one with the shattered wrist, close to his body, but the handicap didn’t slow him. He kept trying to swat Barrett, who dodged with unnatural speed, hardly shifting his feet. Whenever Kaiser missed, Barrett darted in to give a quick one-two, connecting solidly, then retreated to duck again.

The crazy bastard was grinning, playing with Kaiser.

“Get out of the way!” a man yelled, anger distorting his voice. It was Swann. He’d lost his frosty calm, dancing this way and that around Kaiser, waving his gun, desperate to get a shot in. Swann fired once, missed, then clicked on an empty chamber.

“Hey, Swanny! Wanna borrow mine?” I called, holding my semi-auto up.

That broke Barrett’s concentration. He glanced my way and the poker swept down on his skull.

Down . . . and harmlessly through. He flickered, going gray, then solid again an instant later. Kaiser had aimed to kill but overbalanced; the poker slammed into the paving, shattering a brick and striking sparks.

Barrett’s next one-two got Kaiser in the belly and jaw. Any other guy would have thrown in the towel and dropped, but he stayed on his feet, swinging the poker up in a backhand move. He was too sluggish. Barrett yanked it away and socked him again, which
still
didn’t finish the job.

I moved in a wide circle past Barrett and Kaiser, intending to inflict some painful payback of my own on Swann. Fleish Brogan was welcome to whatever was left.

Swann must have seen his bleak future in my face; he broke and ran. If he made it to the woods behind the property he just might be able to get clear of the mess he’d made. A sedentary clerk, he stood no chance. I snagged his collar. He frantically tried to slip clear of his coat, but I hauled him around and—

Something large and dark, it felt like a wall, hit me all over. Swann, too. As one, we collapsed beneath its weight and force. He gave a short grunting cry that was smothered as the wall squashed us into the hard, snowy ground. The little breath that was in me whooshed out. My ribs creaked from the pressure. It
hurt
.

Instinct took over again; I slipped clear of whatever it was, leaving Swann to fend for himself. It didn’t bother me, not even a little.

Shaken, I re-formed several yards away, convinced that we’d been hit by one of the cars.

Close enough. It had been Kaiser.

Barrett had bodily lifted the man and thrown him at us.

Swann’s legs were sticking out from under Kaiser’s now inert form. Neither man moved.

Barrett stalked over to glare down at them. He was no longer the dapper, perfectly dressed, high-hatting snoot he’d been at the start of the evening, but you couldn’t tell that from his demeanor. He slowly twirled the poker in one hand like a cane.

“You could have aimed him better,” I said. I was covered in snow and mud.

He spared me a brief sideways look. “Complain, complain. How tiresome.”

“Glad you finally stopped the malingering.”

He snorted. “Not my choice. One of those ruffians began shooting and caught me flat. The shock wrenched me away from the world for a moment. Next thing
I
know I’m preventing him and his friends from doing more damage. I quite lost my temper. Things went a bit fast and confused after that. Where did you hare off to, anyway? I could have used some help.”

“I was stopping them from setting the place on—”

“Jonathan!”

Izzy rushed out of the trees toward Barrett, her arms open. He was more than pleased to catch her.

“Thank God, I thought you were dead!” she said breathlessly, holding him tight.

He assured her he was much better.

“Holy cow, you went through them like a threshing machine. I couldn’t believe my eyes! You moved so
fast
!
And when you threw the big lug, that was
amazing
!”

He didn’t disagree with her.

Oh, brother
.

I must have groaned out loud.

She partially disengaged from Barrett. “Oh, Fleming, you did okay, too. Good thing you got out of the way or you could have been hurt when the big one landed on Swann.”

If that’s how she chose to interpret my suddenly not being there, so be it. “We’re not finished yet, there’s bound to be more of—”

“They’re taken care of,” said Barrett, with unequivocal assurance. “I got them all.”

“At least one ran past me out the front,” I said. “Not to mention the crowd back here—”

“I got all those that
mattered
,”
he clarified.

“Pardon me if I make sure.”