Frame Angel! (A Frank Angel Western) #7 Read online

  ‘You want to let me have that description now, Angel?’ Sherman called from the telegrapher’s room. ‘We’re ready to send.’

  Angel nodded and went in, hitching his hip on the corner of the telegrapher’s desk.

  ‘Six feet even,’ he said. ‘Dark blond hair, blue eyes. Wears a mustache, also dark blond, but he may have shaved that off. Last seen wearing dark suit, black cape. Like a matador’s,’ he said, remembering what Abrana Gutierrez had said. ‘Which could mean it’s got a red silk lining. He may also be disguising the fact that he has a limp, favoring the right leg. Uses his left hand more than the right – any gun will be on that side. And tell them to be very, very careful if they go after him. He’s a crack shot, an expert knife fighter. And he can kill men with his bare hands.’

  ‘By God, Angel,’ Sherman said. ‘You sound as if you know him.’

  ‘I’m beginning to think I do,’ Angel replied.

  He went back into the outer office and pulled a pad of telegraph blanks toward him. Picking up a pencil, he wrote the words ‘Personal Attention of the Attorney General Only.’ Then he put what he knew and what he suspected into words.

  Chapter Thirteen

  It was Vargas who spotted the Norteamericano first. He hissed a warning to Chavez and Montoya and jerked his chin at the three men coming down Guadalupe Street toward the railroad depot.

  Two of them they knew very well already: John Sherman and the sheriff, Mike Hogben. The third fit exactly the description of the man they planned to kill.

  The depot was an adobe building with a long canopied ramada similar to the one outside the Palace of the Governors – the same viga poles, the same three-foot thick adobe pillars, the same rounded corners, even the same apathetic Indians from San Ildefonso or Santo Domingo, their wrists jangling with bracelets, their arms burdened with gaily striped blankets. The three lawmen came on with long, purposeful strides as an elderly looking, white-haired man came bustling out of the office to the right of the loading platform and hurried toward them.

  ‘Here comes Gray now,’ Hogben said.

  Robert Gray, district supervisor for the Atchison Topeka & Santa Fe Railroad, bustled toward them, mopping his brow even though it was scarcely a few hours past dawn.

  ‘Mr. Angel?’ he said. ‘I’m Robert Gray, and I want to tell you that I’ve never been put to so much trouble in all my years with the Santa Fe. Why, do you know my Head Office …?’

  Angel let the man babble on, not really listening to him, intent on seeing for himself whether the engine was ready to go. Through the dark-shadowed arches he could see a locomotive at the siding. An engineer in a blue-striped coat was leaning out of the side with the kind of expression men have on their faces when they’ve been told to hurry and then have to hang around waiting for the people who told them to hurry.

  ‘You’ve cleared the right-of-way?’ Angel asked, cutting across Gray’s self-justifying chatter. ‘All the way up the line?’

  ‘Yes, yes, you’ve no idea how difficult it was,’ Gray said. ‘I’ve been up most of the night, what with one thing and another … ’

  Jabber, jabber, jabber, Angel thought; what does he think we’ve been doing all night, drinking tequila and chasing whores? His eyes were gritty from the hours spent waiting by the telegraph. Each time it erupted into spiteful chatter, it demanded more justification, detail, and evidence which he had no way of providing.

  The evidence was in Trinidad, Colorado. The only way he could prove his case was to go there and get it. He said it again and again by means of the telegraph, and finally, almost as if wearying of the argument, the machine had clattered the attorney general’s permission. Given, if he knew the old man, with the utmost reluctance. But given. He knew that the feverish activity he had begun in Washington would continue, the checking and double-checking would go on until something was found. But in the meantime he was alone again, the way he preferred it. He shook hands with Sherman and Hogben, thanking them for all they had done.

  ‘This way, Mr. Angel,’ Gray said, going ahead into the depot. ‘The engine’s waiting.’

  He gestured toward the panting locomotive on the far side of the yard and turned as if to lead him on.

  ‘That’ll be fine, Mr. Gray,’ Angel said, ‘just fine. No need for you to get your shoes all muddy out there.’

  Gray looked at his spotless shoes and then at Angel’s scuffed and dirty mule-ears. He frowned. It was true, the ground around and between the right-of-ways was filthy with oil spill, charcoal, coal ash, and soot. Even though Santa Fe was a spur line – the main track ran through Lamy, ten miles to the south, and up through the Glorieta Pass via Canoncito – they got enough traffic up here to filth the place up, no matter how much time and wasted breath he spent telling the engineers and their crews not to let people use the facilities when the train was in the depot, no matter how often he raked them over the coals for throwing out their oil-stained rags and their cigar butts.

  ‘Very well, Mr. Angel,’ he said.

  Angel nodded and stepped down off the depot platform, quartering across the rails toward the engine. The depot building was a squat oblong facing east. Behind it was a long platform with steps leading down to two passenger platforms. The carriage shed hulked black and gloomy on the north-western corner of the area. There were three sets of buffers behind the depot and four on the northern edge of the yard. There the rolling stock awaiting loading or unloading could be switched to keep the passenger bays free. Between these lines and the passenger bays was a water tower, perhaps twenty feet high, which loomed now over four empty flatbed trucks standing on the farthest incoming passenger line. Angel walked the passenger platform alongside these wagons, heading for the open area west of the water tower where the waiting locomotive stood. And every inch of the way, from the time he stepped off the platform with Robert Gray, who was watching his retreating back uncertainly, Angel was in the sights of three rifles. Vargas had the best spot.

  He had climbed the water tower and was stretched flat on the platform which ran around it, his body curved a little uncomfortably but with plenty of room for his cradled elbows and the Winchester with which he was going to kill the Anglo. Across on the southern side of the yard was a switchbox, a crude cover for the control levers. It stood about two feet high and behind it, kneeling, Montoya steadied his rifle, waiting for Vargas’s signal. Over on the south side of the depot, where the rear platform hugged the southern wall of the building, he knew that Chavez was crouching behind a pile of wooden crates, awaiting the next downhill train. Angel was out in the open now. No cover – he was about fifty yards from the platform and roughly the same distance from the panting engine. Vargas adjusted his elbow slightly, took a deep breath, and gently squeezed the trigger of the Winchester, leading slightly to compensate for Angel’s purposefully swift walk. The other two opened up almost simultaneously, and Angel went down as if he had been hit by a thunderbolt. Vargas was already clambering down the metal rungs of the ladder on the side of the water tower. Montoya and Chavez leaped to their feet, running across the tracks where the fallen Angel lay, aiming past the dead man for the same place for which Vargas was now scuttling – a wooden stairway at the northern edge of the yards. All they had to do then was jump over a low barbed wire fence that wouldn’t have stopped a three-year-old.

  Gray’s squalling shouts brought Marshal Sherman and Sheriff Hogben thundering through the depot building and to a skidding stop beside the quaking rail-road man.

  ‘They just shot him!’ he screeched. ‘Look at them running, there, there!’

  Sherman and Hogben were already moving, guns drawn. Sherman ran around the far side of the water tower to try to intercept Vargas, who was now crossing the siding and about halfway over. Hogben ran straight to where Angel lay in the middle of the passenger bay. The two Mexicans veered off toward the west when they saw him coming, and Hogben threw a shot at them. They were more than thirty yards away, however, and he didn’t expect to hit anything. They were
almost in a straight line ahead of him now, leaping across the second pair of rails when Hogben saw Angel rise off the ground. The two Mexicans shied away as if a dinosaur had suddenly spiraled up from nowhere, one of them working the lever of his Winchester furiously, whipping the carbine around to try another shot at this apparently indestructible man.

  He never had a chance.

  Angel’s hand had flickered toward his hip with a speed that defied sight, and the gun was up and spouting fire. The rolling boom of the shots was like a short clap of thunder. Hogben saw the first Mexican catapult backward, his Winchester flying into the air. He fell in a twisting circle in dream-like motion, his face wiped away by the two heavy caliber bullets. The second man was falling even as the first went down, slapped off his feet as though someone seventy feet tall had hit him with a flat plank wielded horizontally.

  Hogben ran toward Angel, but the tall man waved him back, gesturing to Sherman’s direction. Hogben twisted around, scrambled between the connections of two of the standing flatcars, and came out beside the water tower. He could see Sherman crouched behind the farthest set of buffers on the siding, his six-gun coughing. The third assassin was bayed at the base of the wooden stairs, which Sherman’s fleet-footed pursuit had prevented him from climbing in time. Hogben ran quickly toward the buffers, vaulting over them and coming up alongside Sherman, combining his own six-gun fire with the marshal’s. The assassin shifted desperately: his position was insecure, the ancient wooden stairs no protection against the smashing impact of the lawmen’s bullets. Vargas broke and ran. Dodging and weaving, panicking as if a trapped bird was caught in his throat, he ran like a rabbit toward the looming carriage shed, to the safety of thick walls and dark corners, to the bolt-hole of open ends and shrouding brush on all sides of it. He ran knowing that his life depended upon getting there, and he bent every single ounce of effort and concentration he possessed.

  He wasn’t more than twenty yards from the yawning entrance to the sheds when he saw Angel coming across the lines. He knew it was impossible, knew his shot could not have missed, yet here was the dead man running across to intercept him, pistol in hand.

  Without breaking stride, he levered the Winchester and threw a shot at Angel, but it was panicked and wide. Angel acknowledged the shot merely by swerving slightly in his run. Vargas levered the Winchester again and flinched when he saw Angel’s hand move. The six-gun boomed, and the earth erupted a foot from Vargas’ left leg. Squealing with fear, he leaped into a run, dashing like a rabbit across Angel’s path. He saw the engineer clambering down from the train, shouting something, but the white fear drove him blindly forward. Ten yards, ¡Dios, por favor! Only ten yards! He saw the tall man go down on one knee, leveling the six-gun, both hands clasped solidly around the butt, elbow resting on his right knee, and he knew that he was dead. But no shot came.

  With a gesture of disgust, Angel looked at the empty gun in his hand. He was on his feet again, although this time he lurched slightly as he moved. Vargas was no more than twenty feet from him, perhaps the same distance from the carriage shed. Angel paused to touch the side of his boot where the throwing knife was nestled. He shook his head. He was good. But not good enough to hit a running man at that kind of distance. He stood waiting until Sherman and Hogben came panting up, their feet crunching on the oily gravel. Both men were winded, perspiration streaming from their faces.

  ‘In the name of God, Angel!’ Sherman said. The entire side of Angel’s body was a pulsing mass of blood from the wound Vargas had given him. It should have killed him. The bullet had ploughed into his body just below and behind his right arm, where the long solid muscle was ripped as if by some ugly predator. He had been lucky; the bullet had hit a rib, and instead of turning inward, it had ricocheted outward, ripping a lacerated tear perhaps seven inches long across the front of Frank Angel’s chest. Montoya’s bullet had torn a hole through the flapping tail of his coat. Chavez had missed, God alone knew how.

  ‘Sherman, cover this end,’ Angel said, ignoring the marshal’s reaction to his wound. It wasn’t as bad as it looked, although he could feel the first faint, flickering flutters of warning weakness inside his head. There was a point when your body could no longer be pushed by adrenalin: the shock came up like a tide rising on the Continental Shelf, irresistible, consuming, total – and then you went down. He knew that would come, but he wanted the man who had tried to kill him before it did.

  ‘I’ll take the far end,’ Hogben said.

  ‘You all right, Angel?’

  Angel nodded. With fingers which fumbled very slightly, a fumbling he did not allow them to see, he reloaded his six-gun.

  ‘All right,’ he said. Tm all right.’

  ‘Let me go, man,’ Sherman said. ‘Or Mike.’

  ‘No,’ Angel said, flatly. ‘I want this one alive.’

  ‘For God’s sake wait, then,’ Sherman snapped. ‘I can get a dozen men down here to flush him out!’

  ‘I don’t have the time,’ Angel told him. Sherman nodded, thinking he meant the waiting train, the long haul to Trinidad still to be made. Angel let him think it.

  Without another word he slid around the edge of the carriage shed and into its gloomy interior. It was simply a pair of walls with a timber roof, open at both ends, with three sets of buffers up against the brush-choked bank of the western end of the yard. Hogben would be down at that end; if the killer tried to bolt that way, he wouldn’t get far.

  There were three lines of track inside the shed. On the pair nearest Angel was a row of four coal trucks. The center line was empty. On the far side of the shed were two passenger coaches. He flattened himself on the ground, his eyes already accustomed to the gloom, scouring the spaces between the bogies for a pair of boots or legs. Nothing. The man wasn’t that much of a fool.

  And he still had a carbine.

  He eased his way along the line of coal trucks to the far end of the shed. The light was better now, and halfway down he found a big old packing case, nearly three feet high, that had obviously brought in some mining machinery or maybe a lathe for one of the sawmills up in the Rio Chama country. He eased himself behind it, and using the wall as a brace, slid up onto the top of the case. He put his six-gun beneath his armpit under the coat and cocked it, the triple click deadened, almost inaudible. Then he quickly stood, his gaze sweeping the length of the high-sided coal trucks. The truck at the end had a tarpaulin loosely spread inside it, and he swept the gun up and fired three shots into it. He dropped quickly and waited.

  The thunder of the shots magnified by the closed space sounded like the crack of doom. The gun-smoke swirled and drifted in the uncertain breeze. Angel shook his head. He eased himself back, getting into a position where he could slide down to the ground. The whiplashing crack of the Winchester blended with the smashing impact of the bullets hitting the crate inches from his face, whacking huge splinters out of the wood. One of them flickered across his face like a razor, drawing a fine-etched line that oozed blood into the corner of his mouth. He found himself on the ground, having rolled off the top of the crate without even knowing it. There was a deep, solid throbbing in his head now, and for a moment he had trouble focusing his eyes. He didn’t even know where the shots had come from. But there was only one place left.

  He laughed like a hunting wolf and rolled onto his haunches, the six-gun still ready in his hand. Then he ran fast for the end of the carriage shed, coming around the coal wagons in a diving forward somersault. Like a rolling ball, he barreled across the graveled space between the rails as the man in the far passenger coach, his carbine leveled out of the window, poured five simultaneous shots at the fleeting target. Then Angel was sheltered by the end of the coach, and he swung aboard. The door into the carriage was open, the interior dark but visible.

  What would the killer expect – roof or interior?

  Roof.

  He nodded and slid into the doorway, moving on silent feet the length of the carriage. When he came to the vestibule, which l
ed into the platform outside, he stopped and slid between two seats on the right-hand side, gently lowering the window. It slid down silently and he leaned out, his hand arching up and over, tossing his six-gun up high onto the roof of the next carriage.

  Vargas heard the sound on the roof that he had been expecting. He was poised by the platform between the two carriages, and he went through the door like a snake, eeling down onto the gravel with the cocked carbine up and leveled for the killing shot at the exposed figure he expected to see on the roof of the carriage.

  His jaw was just dropping with the realization that there was no one there when Angel landed lightly behind him. He was nicely set as Vargas whirled around, his hand already clenched in the way that Kee Lai had taught him during those endless, punishing sessions they had shared in the gloomy gymnasium the Justice Department snared with the army. The Korean had taught him that there is an inner strength upon which a man can call, summoning all of himself at one moment, directing all that is him into the effort he needs to make. The Korean had called it ch’i and said there was no word for it in the English language. But Angel knew that it was a total belief in yourself – if all of you was at its fullest potential, what you were and what you could do were insuperable, unstoppable. Thus he knew that when he hit Vargas with the inward, downward chopping, clenched hand, it would break the man. And it did.

  The Mexican was driven to his knees as if a pile driver had hit him, a thin scream of agony wrenched from his twisted mouth. The carbine clattered to the gravel from his nerveless hands, and he pitched forward, writhing in agony on the ground while Angel looked dispassionately down as if the man were some form of lizard he had trodden upon. He felt no pity for the man, nothing. Academically there was a corner of his mind which knew, as if turning the pages of some bizarre medical catalog, that he had probably broken Vargas’s collarbone and shoulder blade, dislocated or snapped the humerus, crushed or punctured the upper lung, cracked or broken two or more ribs, and possibly punctured the pleura. Medically Vargas was in desperate need of a doctor, not because he would die, but because without the proper attention, his injuries could cause him great pain and suffering, possible hemorrhage and pleurisy or pneumonia aggravated by massive shock. He shouted two names and slowly looked up as Sherman and Hogben came running into the shed, guns drawn. They saw the twisting, writhing thing on the floor, and both men looked at Angel’s empty holster and unarmed hands.