Broadway Bounty

Prologue

Decker turned the body over to look at the face. He already knew what he would see, but when the face came into view, he flinched, anyway.

Once Dover and Decker had been friends. That had been a long time ago, when they were younger—Jesus, when they were kids. People had commented on the similarity of their names—Dover and Decker—as if that made them brothers.

Then one day they went their separate ways. Decker ended up a bounty hunter.

So did Dover.

Now, more than fifteen years later, Dover was cold meat.

Decker let Dover’s body go, and it flopped onto its stomach again. The three gunshot wounds in his back had been cleaned and were now just pink, puckered holes. Decker felt cold, but not as cold as Dover.

“Who did it?” he asked the undertaker.

“You’ll have to ask the sheriff that.”

“You don’t know?”

“Why would I know?” the undertaker said. “That doesn’t matter to me. The who, the why, the where, none of that matters to me.”

“No,” Decker said, “I don’t guess it does.”

“Passing judgment on me, bounty hunter? You kill ‘em, and I plant ‘em. Which one of us is worse?”

“I don’t pass judgment,” Decker said. He headed for the door.

“I guess he was a friend of yours.”

Decker stopped and turned around.

“He was.”

“So then I guess you’d know if he had any kin?”

“He didn’t.”

“The sheriff has his personal stuff,” the undertaker said. “Don’t let him tell you different.”

Decker stood there for a few seconds. Then he said, “Thanks. I’ll be paying for his burial.”

“Anything special?”

“No, nothing special.”

“Come back after you talk to the sheriff, and we’ll settle up.”

Decker nodded and left.

“Sheriff?”

The sheriff of Harrison City, Iowa, looked up from behind his desk.

“Did you see your friend?”

“I did.”

“Nice, neat job.”

Decker gave the man a hard stare.

“Who did it?”

“How come you just happen to ride in the day it happened?”

“I was supposed to meet him today.”

“Got here a little late, didn’t you?”

“No,” Decker said, “I got here just in time.”

The lawman raised his eyebrows but said nothing.

“Who did it?”

“The Tyrone brothers.”

“Why?”

“You’ll have to ask them.”

“How many of them?”

“Three,” the sheriff said, “one for each hole.”

“Why aren’t they in jail?”

“Because, Decker,” the sheriff said, “there are three of them and one of me. I’m not a fool.”

“Where are they?”

“The saloon, I guess.”

Decker hesitated a moment, then said, “When I’ve finished with them, I’ll be back to talk to you.”

The look on the lawman’s face said he doubted that very much.

Decker turned and left.

Decker stopped right outside the only saloon in Harrison City and looked around. Apparently the shooting incident had driven many of the townspeople inside, for the streets were virtually empty.

Maybe they knew it wasn’t over yet.

Decker squared his shoulders and went into the saloon. There was only one man there, sitting at a table with a beer. Decker walked to the bar and ordered a whiskey. When the bartender put it in front of him, Decker put the money on the bar. As the man went to take it, he caught his wrist.

In a low voice he said, “The Tyrone brothers.”

When the man saw the look in Decker’s eyes, any thoughts he had of not answering immediately fled.

“That’s one of them over there,” he said. “That there’s Virgil.”

“And the other two?”

“Up-upstairs.”

“Good,” Decker said. “Now disappear.”

“Y-yessir.”

Decker downed the whiskey, and as it burned its way down his throat, he turned and faced Virgil Tyrone.

“Tyrone?”

The man looked up. He had the biggest ears Decker had ever seen.

“Who are you?”

“Decker.”

“I don’t know you.”

“But I know you. You killed a friend of mine.”

“Yeah? Who?”

“Dover.”

“Oh, yeah. The bounty hunter.”

“That’s right.”

“And you? Are you a bounty hunter?”

“Yes.”

“And now you wanna kill me?”

“I don’t have a choice,” Decker said. “This town doesn’t have any law to speak of.”

“Yeah, I’ve noticed that myself,” Tyrone said. “You know there are two more of us, don’t you?”

“Yes.”

“Do you intend to kill them, too?”

“Yes.”

“Well,” Tyrone said, standing, “I guess you’ll have to start somewhere.”

The man was a fool. While he was spreading his legs and readying himself for a fair draw, Decker pulled his sawed-off shotgun and killed him.

“Shit,” Decker said. “If I fought fair, I’d have been dead long ago.”

Decker went up the steps slowly, reloading his gun. He had no way of knowing if the bartender had told the truth, but he played it as if he had—figuring the other two Tyrone brothers were upstairs, doing what men did upstairs in a saloon.

On the second floor he paused to listen. What he heard gave him the impression that two men were having a good time.

He started down the hall, moving cautiously, on the lookout for creaking floorboards—not that anyone would have heard him. By this time a man was moaning loudly and a woman was making a high-pitched, keening sound. One of the brothers was real close to finishing his good time.

Decker found the door where most of the noise was coming from. He held his gun in his right hand and braced himself against the wall opposite the door with his left. He pushed off and kicked out at the door, hitting it right next to the doorknob with his heel. The door splintered and slammed open.

On the bed he could see a man’s naked ass and a woman’s legs. The man turned and stared at him, open-mouthed, and a girl leaned sideways to take a look.

“What the—” the man said. He pushed himself off the girl and onto his back. “Who are you?”

“The question is, who are you?” Decker said. The question was unnecessary because the family resemblance was striking—especially around the ears.

“Matt Tyrone.”

“My name’s Decker,” Decker said. “Dover was my friend.”

“Dover?”

“The man you and your brothers killed about two hours ago.”

Virgil looked at the sawed-off in Decker’s hand and licked his lips.

“You can’t shoot me while I’m unarmed.”

“There’s your gun,” Decker said, gesturing toward the gun belt hanging on the bedpost.

At that moment a man’s voice from behind Decker said, “Jesus, Matt, what’re you doin’ to the bitch? It sounds like—”

When he saw Decker, the man quickly backed out and ran down the hall. No doubt he was after his gun.

The man on the bed took the opportunity to move for his own gun, knocking the woman off the bed as he did. As it turned out, he knocked her out of the line of Decker’s fire.

As Matt Tyrone’s hand closed over the butt of his gun, Decker fired, catching the man in the back of the head and blowing it apart.

The woman—who was forty if she was a day—started to scream. Blood had splattered her naked body.

Decker put his back to the wall and quickly reloaded. The third Tyrone brother had his gun by now, and he was either gone or waiting in the hall.

The woman on the floor was still screaming, and Decker shouted, “Shut up!” Shocked, she fell silent, except for an occasional sob.

Quickly he moved past the woman to look out the window. It was a sheer drop to the street below, no ledge, no balcony. He moved back over to the wall next to the door and listened intently.

“Mike, what the hell is—” called a woman.

She was talking to Mike Tyrone. “Jesus,” Tyrone yelled, “Shut up! Get back inside!”

Both voices came from the hallway.

Decker moved away from the wall and jumped out into the hallway, keeping low.

Mike Tyrone was square in the center of the hall with his gun out. He’d just pushed someone into his room, and when he looked back down the hall, Decker was there. Tyrone—there were those family ears again—brought his gun up, but Decker pulled the triggers on his shotgun and splattered him all over the hallway.

“I told you I’d be back.”

The sheriff looked up from his desk and stared at Decker for a long moment.

“Heard some shooting,” he finally said. “The Tyrone boys dead?”

“Yep.”

“All three, huh? You’re good.”

“The best,” Decker said, moving toward the desk. “Now it’s your turn.” The sheriff looked as if he might reach for his gun.

“You make a move for that gun and this town’s going to need a new sheriff.”

“What do you want?” the sheriff asked warily.

“Is there paper on the Tyrone boys?”

“No.”

“Then why did they kill Dover?”

“The only reason those boys did anything is because someone told them to.”

“Who?”

“I don’t know.”

“Sheriff—”

“I really don’t know,” the lawman said. “Dover had a room at the hotel. Maybe you’ll find something there.”

Decker shook his head and said, “How did you get that badge, anyway—by default?”

“How’d you know that?”

“Lucky guess. By the way, I want Dover’s personal effects.”

“I-I don’t have them,” the sheriff said. “Ask the undertaker.”

Decker leaned on the desk and said, “I’m asking you.”

Decker went to the hotel and got Dover’s hotel key from the clerk. In Dover’s room he looked around but found nothing but some extra shirts, an extra gun and some bullets.

He sat on the bed and looked at the stuff he’d gotten from the sheriff. Some money in a wallet—there had probably been more, which the sheriff had spent—a letter to someone named Jane which Dover hadn’t mailed yet, and an old knife, which Decker recognized. Dover’d had that knife a long time, and the blade had dulled over the years. He’d only kept it as a lucky piece.

He dropped the knife and picked up the wallet from the bed. He riffled through it and found a folded-up paper. He unfolded it and spread it out. It was a poster on a man named Oakley Ready. Decker had never heard of him, but the price was high, five thousand. He was wanted for three murders.

He was wanted by Decker for a fourth. The only reason Dover would have hidden the poster was he didn’t want anyone else to see it. He wanted to make sure he got this man himself.

“I’ll get him for you, Dover.”

As Decker refolded the poster, he saw some writing on the back—a list of cities. It was probably the route over which Dover had tracked Ready.

There were two cities left on the list. One was Harrison City. Dover had died here. The other city on the list was probably where Dover expected to find Oakley Ready.

When Decker left the hotel carrying his gear, the Tyrone boys had been removed. He stopped at the sheriff’s office on his way to the livery.

“You clean up real quick,” he said to the sheriff.

“Yeah,” the sheriff said. He was pouring himself a cup of coffee and didn’t offer Decker one.

“I guess you’re the town garbage man, too, huh?”

The sheriff opened his mouth to reply, then thought better of it. He knew Decker’s reputation.

“Did you check out the Tyrone boys?” Decker asked.

“Uh, what do you mean…check them out?”

“Don’t play dense with me, Sheriff,” Decker said. “How much money did they have on them?”

“Uh, they each had more than one hundred dollars on them.”

“One hundred dollars?” Decker asked. “Are they local?”

“Yeah.”

“How long would it take them to earn that kind of money in this town?”

The sheriff laughed and said, “In a week, a month or a year?”

“Where’s the money now?”

Very quickly the sheriff’s eyes went to his desk, and then away.

“I…guess it’s at the undertaker’s—”

Decker walked around behind the desk and started opening drawers.

“Hey, you can’t do that—”

“You gonna stop me?” Decker asked.

The sheriff took one step forward, then stopped and took two steps back, shaking his head in disgust.

Decker found the money in a drawer and took it out. There was more than five hundred dollars there. He counted out enough for four burials and dropped it on the desk.

“I’ll be back to see the graves,” he said.

The sheriff hesitated a moment. Then he licked his lips and said, “They’ll be there.”

He watched as Decker tucked the rest of the money into his pocket and walked out.

Decker went to the livery, retrieved his horse and rode out of town. He had to find the nearest railroad and start his journey to New York City.