Mike Shayne Mystery Magazine, Vol. 41, No. 4, October 1977

The Only Road to Glory by C. G. Cobb

Glory was dead — a near-ghost town with only six remaining inhabitants. But the old mining town held a rich and deadly secret — and the man who came over the hill knew it had to be there.

Rudell Foster was knocking the ashes out of his pipe when the first car of the day appeared over the top of the low hill to the east of Glory. He shaded his eyes against the early sun, squinted, and managed to make out a four-door sedan, gray, looking new, probably a Chevy. It parked in the visitors’ lot and let out a stocky man who moved, with a curious rolling gait, like a sailor, over to one of the dispensers.

The dispensers were marked FREE — TAKE ONE, and were kept filled daily by Ranger Warren. They held maps of Glory and historical facts about the old mining town. The man took one, opened it, studied it, looked around, then used his odd walk to come rolling down the path and into the town. In a moment, the man was lost from sight amid the ancient empty buildings, so Rudell studied the gray sedan.

It was new, all right. One of those short Impalas. It probably smelled new on the inside, too. Sometime Rudell would have a car like that. Maybe better. As he watched, two other cars drove in. A middle-aged couple emerged from one, a youngish couple with two yelling kids got out of the other.

Rudell almost felt like locking the house and going up to work the claim, even though it was his self-appointed day off. Kids carried a racket around with them that was enough to drive a man out of his mind. But he stayed put, looking at the people who came to look at his town.

Over the years, Rudell had come to know the signs of the tourist strain. It marked those people who were on their way to someplace to look at something and then go away again. Aimlessly purposeful. Grimly enjoying the dictates of their free maps. Exactly the same, all of them.

Well, not quite. That fella with the funny walk, he was different. Oh, he used his map, all right, but in a different way. He’d started at one corner of the township and moved from house to house, from yard to yard. Never missed a window or a door. Looked over every fence he came to. Moved on to the end of a row, passed over to the next, started back down it.

Now he wasn’t going to someplace to look at something, he was going everywhere and looking at everything. Why, hell, he was looking for something. Trying to be casual about it. Taking his time and trying to act like a tourist and not fooling Rudell Foster one bit.

Here he came, passing Rudell’s house and yard and door-step. In his forties. Stocky, all right — downright wide, in fact. Five foot nine or ten, maybe a hundred eighty-ninety pounds. Wide, wide shoulders, thick neck, small head with black hair. Plain blue windbreaker over a T-shirt. Big hands. Hard face. Wide-spaced eyes so dark they looked black.

Rudell had been with the Third Division in Europe and had seen eyes like that before, staring out of men’s faces who’d been killing Germans entirely too long. Cold eyes, dead eyes, eyes looking constantly for targets. Rudell got a good look into those eyes because the man stopped and stared at him, a neutral expression on his face.

Rudell stared back, nodded, cleared his throat, got ready to be civil. Rudell Foster had been around better than fifty years, and he knew it was important to be civil with this kind of man.

“Morning,” said the man. He had a high-pitched voice which was faintly startling at first. Rudell remembered from listening to the radio that Rocky Marciano had had a voice like that.

Rudell gave the man good morning and asked if he were enjoying his visit.

“Yeah,” said the man. “You get many people through here this time of year?”

Rudell found something needing his attention in the bowl of his pipe and inspected it before answering slowly, “Fair amount.”

The man started to speak again, then changed his mind and went on his way without another word. Rudell watched his sailor’s walk, watched him check the next building, and the next, and the next. Watching, Rudell saw the man give only cursory attention to the stable and the old mortuary and the smithy. He paid his main notice to those buildings which had been living quarters.

Through most of the remainder of the morning, Rudell sat and smoked and watched that hardfaced stranger as he quartered the town and never missed a thing. Around noon, Rudell knocked out his pipe and walked over to Tod Spencer’s.

Back in the Thirties, after the gold market had gone to hell, the town of Glory gave its last convulsive kick and died for good and all. The big mill closed down, a fire destroyed half the dwellings and the entire red light district, a record snowfall buried the town that winter, and almost everyone packed up and left.

Ten families remained to scrape the leavings because they couldn’t afford to go anywhere. The parents died, the sisters went off to find obscure relations, two of the sons were killed in War Two, another went away to die in a drunk tank somewhere, still another just plain disappeared. Now five men were left, all in their fifties.

Each had his family claim, each worked it steadily enough to produce enough gold flakes to keep him in essentials, and each ignored the state government which turned their town into a barely-accessible tourist attraction (only one road led here, an unmarked, thirty-miles-long collection of jagged rocks). Warren, the live-in ranger, passed gradually from a state of being tolerated by the five remaining natives of Glory and into a twilight zone of acceptance.

Tod Spencer, who owned the biggest house, had turned it into the town’s working general store. Actually, it was the communal pantry of the five. Tod kept a rigid accounting of all supplies, and his books and shelves were always open to the other four. It was a workable arrangement, and Tod’s house had become the stereotyped country gathering place.

Joe Morgan was already there with Tod, and after Rudell arrived, Phil Boyer walked in. When Larry Dobbs got there, the five of them sat on the wide veranda and drank coffee and watched the stranger who was not a tourist at all.

“Now just what in the hell does he think he’s doin’?” asked Phil Boyer of no one in particular.

Tod Spencer, his Lucky Strike centered in his thin lips, coughed his dry cough and said, “Looks to me like he’s headin’ up toward the mill.”

“He ain’t payin’ no attention to them Keep Out Danger signs.” This from Joe Morgan.

“You notice somethin’ peculiar about that fella?” asked, Phil Boyer.

“Walks funny,” Larry Dobbs grunted.

But Rudell had noticed what Phil had. “He ain’t walkin’ on that dirt road. He’s walkin’ on the side of it, in the brush. Watchin’ the road...” Rudell let his voice trail off.

Joe Morgan said that it wouldn’t be long before Ranger Warren noticed that the fella was heading up where he wasn’t supposed to, and would start yelling pretty soon. He wasn’t off the mark by more than half a minute.

“Hey! Hey, you!”

None of the five could see Ranger Warren, but they knew he must be somewhere on the other side of the old schoolhouse by the sound of his voice. They looked back up the hill and saw the stocky man standing with arms akimbo, his back to the town, staring at the dirt road leading into the leaning walls of the mill. He did not give any outward sign of having heard the ranger.

“Get down outa there! Hey!”

Finally, the stranger turned. No hurry about him. Looked over toward the school.

“Get down off there! Go on!”

The stocky man paused a moment, the started leisurely down the hill. This time, he didn’t worry about staying off the road, but marched straight down its dusty surface. Ranger Warren appeared then, walking across the sparse sagebrush, his strides long and angry-looking, to meet the man. He started talking before he reached the stranger.

The stranger just kept walking his rolling, side-to-side walk, now and then glancing at Ranger Warren, who was now alongside keeping pace. The stranger just kept moving, never changing his speed, until finally he stopped and turned toward Warren, his movement seeming impatient, irritated. Warren stopped talking and stood still. Watching the two of them, Rudell thought of a rattlesnake and a jackrabbit.

The stranger was talking quietly. Warren, a tall man in his late thirties, listened, jerked, shook his head. The stranger asked him something. Warren spoke, the words carrying clearly back to the five by a stray gust of air.

“No, I haven’t. You know how many people I see here every day?” The stranger spoke some more. “No, I said! If somebody like that came around here, I’d know about it!” The stranger asked something else. “Listen, what are you trying to pull, here? This is state property and you can be ordered off if you try any funny stuff! Now you just—”

But the stranger had turned away from Warren and walked away, leaving the ranger standing there looking nervously after him. The five on Tod’s veranda got a good look at the man as he came rolling by, and all nodded civilly to him when he nodded at them. He walked on up the street toward the parking lot.

“Looks like Warren’s glad that fella’s leavin’,” said Phil Boyer.

“He’ll be over to brag it up, how he threw him out of town, and all,” muttered Joe Morgan.

But Morgan was wrong. Ranger Warren stood indecisively for a moment before finding something over at the saloon which interested him.

And Phil was wrong about the stocky man leaving. He appeared at Tod’s veranda not quite thirty minutes later, holding a big blue-and-white ice-chest, which had to be heavy. He wasn’t even breathing hard.

“This looks like the only place in town to get a beer,” he said with Marciano’s voice. His grin seemed open and cheery enough, but there were still those eyes, telling Rudell to be careful.

“Nothin’ here’s for sale,” coughed Tod around his Lucky Strike.

“Well, that’s no problem.” The man put the ice-chest down on Tod’s porch and opened it. His hand came out holding a can of Coors, with a frosty bit of crumbled ice clinging to the bottom of it. “This stuff ain’t for sale, either.” He tossed the can toward Larry Dobbs, who snatched and caught it. “I just like to have some company. My name’s Black.”

“Larry Dobbs,” mumbled Larry Dobbs. As he was introduced to each of the other four, Black handed out the Coors, and took their stiff, unaccustomed thank-yous. Maybe because it was getting warm, Black took off his windbreaker, and now Rudell saw the reason for the swaggering walk. Black’s arms and torso were muscled like a wrestler’s. He had to walk that way.

Black opened a can for himself, closed the ice-chest’s lid, and sat down easily on top of it. After taking a long drink, he sighed and burped and grinned again. “You boys are the only ones living here, right?”

“Us and the ranger,” grunted Joe Morgan.

“Well, does he count? I mean, he’s here because somebody told him to be. You guys are here because you all wanted to be.” Black raised his eyebrows at Rudell Foster and made it into a question.

“Yea.” And there was nothing else to say.

“Us sittin’ here, we’re all there is,” said Tod Spencer. He started to say something else, but broke into a fit of coughing so bad he had to take his Lucky Strike out of his mouth. Little bits of tobacco clung to his lower lip.

“What Tod was gonna say was, if you’re lookin’ for somebody else that lives in Glory, you can stop lookin’.” That was Phil Boyer.

The man Black chuffed out a short laugh and finished off the rest of his Coors. “Well, that’s plain enough, and you guys have been watching me look all day. The ranger doesn’t want to remember too much, but then he’s busy with tourists all the time. Maybe one of you noticed the man I’m trying to find.”

“We only take one day off a week,” said Larry Dobbs.

“Most the rest of the time we’re up at our claims,” said Joe Morgan.

“Most likely we didn’t see ’im,” said Tod Spencer, plucking tobacco off his tongue.

“Then again, maybe one of us did,” said Rudell Foster.

“What’s he look like?” asked Phil Boyer.

Black had looked hard at each of them. Finally he settled on Rudell Foster to talk to. “Forty years old. Skinny. Little pot belly. Soft hands. Going bald on top and gray around the edges. Weak chin. Veins in his nose. Talks like he’s from the east coast. And if you saw him he was probably nervous. You didn’t see that guy, did you, Rudell?”

Rudell wrinkled his chin and stared off, letting his eyes go out of focus while he thought about it. Phil Boyer asked, “What’s his name?”

“Micchiche.” Black pronounced it Mitch-i-kay. “Danny Micchiche.”

“You a friend of his?” asked Joe Morgan.

“Never met him.”

“We aint’s seen ’im,” Tod Spencer grumbled snappishly and lit another Lucky Strike.

Black slowly cocked his head and stared at Tod. His face had gone strangely gentle. A curious, tender expression played around his hard mouth.

“Now that’s interesting how you knew that, Tod. You boys only take one day off a week. Most of the time you’re up at your claims. You get together afterwards and talk about folks you didn’t see, is that it?”

Black crushed his beer can in one hand and placed it carefully on the porch. He stood, shrugged on his windbreaker, picked up his ice-chest, and walked away without another word.

When they couldn’t hear his footsteps any more, Tod said, “That one’s kind of a smart-ass, ain’t he? All’s I said was—”

“What you suppose he’s lookin’ for that fella for?” put in Joe Morgan. “What’d he say his name was?”

“Black,” said Larry Dobbs.

“No, not him. The one he’s lookin’ for. Some kinda wop.”

“I bet his name ain’t Black,” said Phil Boyer.

“I bet he’s prob’ly a wop, too,” said Joe Morgan.

“Maybe not,” said Tod Spencer. “He’s got the Jew look to ’im.”

“If I was that Micchiche,” said Rudell Foster, “I don’t believe I’d care to have that fella Black lookin’ for me.”

The five of them stood and watched the gray Chevrolet leave the parking lot and drive over the low hill to the east and disappear. Tod Spencer got out some crackers and some sardines and some canned tomatoes and they ate, being hungary from the beer they had consumed.

Later they got up a card game, and later still Rudell threw in and went back to his own place. The rest of them stayed on, now and then passing a pint of Seagrams. It was almost twilight by that time, and the last of the tourists were leaving. Rudell saw Ranger Warren trudging toward his house up on the rise just outside town.

Evenings were eerie in Glory. The very shadows were ancient, hiding ancient empty things. The stars looked colder and farther away than they did in other parts of the world. The wind whistled down from the hills and came pussyfooting through the dirt streets and empty buildings. Tumbleweeds scratched against walls like things begging entrance. Rudell Foster lived here because he wanted to and hadn’t been scared of it in a long time, but tonight he banged his door getting it closed and locked behind him. He didn’t feel like sleeping, so he stoked up the wood stove and made a pot of coffee and got down his rifle for cleaning. He took his time with it, laying out the rod and solvent and rags and patches and oil on the kitchen table. He took the rifle apart and cleaned each part thoroughly, wiped it carefully, applied oil, and reassembled it. The beauty of the thing caught his eye and he admired its fine, graceful lines. It was a Savage Model 00 in meppn and there was an amoral ruthlessness in its functional design which appealed to him. He opened the box, spilled cartridges on the table, and admired them, too, before loading his weapon.

Then he just sat, not knowing why.

He wasn’t even surprised when he heard the shot. Just terrified.

Without thinking, he put out the light. He sat in darkness, letting his eyes accustom themselves until he could make out objects in the room. Moonlight came through the small windows and made splashes on the bare wood floor. The wind outside came in fits and starts — low moaning, heavy gust, more moaning, then silence before the next gust. The shot had sounded during one of the gusts and had been muffled, but Rudell knew a shot when he heard one. He listened, hard, but heard nothing else besides the wind.

Smart thing to do, thought Rudell Foster, is just stay in here and wait for whoever it is. Yessir. That’s what I’ll do.

He wondered if the others had heard the shot. Man alone, he hears things four fellas drinking and playing cards and talking don’t hear, sometimes. If they didn’t hear it, why, they’d go right on with cards and talking and drinking. If they did hear it, well, then, they could get ready. Each of them could take a window. Be a sight better off there than here, with him having to look everywhere at once.

The longer he sat, the harder the fear gripped him, and the more he wanted to be over at Tod’s place, and the less he wanted to be here, by himself, all alone. So finally, he forgot about doing the smart thing, and left his house.

Besides, thought Rudell Foster, he knows where I live.

He slipped out the back door and padlocked it behind him. He stayed close to the buildings’ backsides and moved carefully, catching the shadows, keeping away from Main Street, pausing to look and listen at corners. His hands sweated on the checkered wood stock of the Savage, and his heart hammered at him. The air went dry past his throat and sat cold in his lungs. All he could think was something he’d heard when he was with, the Third in Europe — you never hear the shot that kills you! But all Rudell Foster heard was the wind and the pulsebeat in his ears.

When he was a half-dozen houses away from Tod’s he heard the second shot. He froze, his knees shaking, and tried to look everywhere at once for the attacker. But he saw no one, and then another shot banged out.

It came from the general direction of Tod’s, and it didn’t echo off the hills and go fainter and fainter against the mountains, the way a shot did when you fired it out in the open. Which meant that whoever fired that shot had let go inside.

The next shot decided him. He took off, rifle at high port, legs pumping furiously, past the wall, out onto Main Street under all that moonlight. The building he was running for was the mortuary with its different sizes of wooden caskets.

He heard another shot, the fourth since leaving his house, the fifth altogether, but it was fired from inside a building like the others, and besides, you never heard the shot that kills you. Then he was across the street and behind the mortuary. He didn’t stop there, but kept right on going, up the slight rise that led out of town, the very same rise where Ranger Warren’s house was.

Ranger Warren’s house was dark and the door was open. Rudell didn’t want to go in there, because he knew what was waiting for him to stumble over. But he was more afraid of what was back at Tod’s, and he didn’t want to be caught out here in the moonlight, so in he went.

The ranger lay flat on his back in the middle of the front room. Rudell could see his face clearly, even though no lights were on. His eyes were used to darkness, now.

Rudell had been in here before, visiting with Warren over the years, and he felt his way across the room and found the flashlight. He pulled out the chair, sat down at the ranger’s desk, and turned on the flash just long enough to find the switch on the two-way radio and pick up the mike. He didn’t fiddle with the settings or anything like that because he knew that Warren never had.

“Hello,” he said, his voice hoarse from the phlegm and the fear and the running, “come in... I need help here...”

But nothing was happening. The radio wasn’t doing the things radios are supposed to do, and after a few seconds of sitting with the dead mike in his hand, Rudell stood and flashed the light quickly behind the radio, saw where the wires had been ripped out. Outside the ranger’s house the wind moaned and went silent, getting ready for a gust.

Panic came in and took Rudell, then. He couldn’t just stand here, he had to do something, didn’t know what. Get out of this goddamn place, that’s what he had to do, get out there on top of one of those low hills where he could, hunker down and see anyone coming at him, where he could spot anything that moved out of this town. Good.

He swung the door, open and looked out. Nothing stirred but the wind. Down the rise from his lay the town, its ancient shadows cutting deep gouges into the moonlight. Over on the right was Tod’s house with the light on. No movement at all from over there, no sound, nothing. Rudell leveled his rifle straight ahead and stepped through the doorway.

The man was waiting for him against the outside wall. He gripped the rifle’s barrel and twisted and heaved, and Rudell was lying flat on his back, disarmed, staring open-mouthed and gasping with fear at a black head and impossibly wide shoulders silhouetted above him against the sky.

Rudell had known all along who it was. He’d shaken with fear inside, remembering those cold, dead eyes looking for targets, and he knew he was going to die. He closed his eyes tight.

Black said, “Get up.” Rudell heard the sound of the lever cocking the Savage. He opened his eyes just as Black kicked him hard in the calf of the leg. “Get up, I said.”

Suddenly, strangely, they were back inside Warren’s front room. Neither of them paid any attention to the body. Rudell could see Black clearly in the moonlight. He was dressed as before, only the windbreaker was zipped all the way up, hiding the white T-shirt. The big hard hands were out of sight inside tight dark gloves.

The rifle clattered against the opposite wall as Black tossed it away and confronted Rudell with empty hands. Rudell wondered where the other gun was, the one Black had used to kill the others.

“Where is he?” There wasn’t a trace of civility in Black’s voice. It was the snarling voice of an animal.

“Who?” Rudell faltered.

Black gritted his teeth and said, “Okay.” He snatched Rudell by the front of his dirty shirt. “You are making me mad, punk.” He slammed Rudell against the wall and kicked him in the pit of the stomach. Rudell pitched to the floor, wanting to breathe, to dry out.

“When I get mad I break things.” Black picked up the ranger’s chair and smashed it against the desk, flung most of the remains through the window. The shattering glass shocked Rudell and made him look up through his pain. Black was holding the leg of the chair and advancing. “I think I’m gonna start with your hands.”

The rough treatment had shaken all resolution out of Rudell. He knew he had no chance against this man, that this savage individual was his master, who would gleefully break every bone in Rudell Foster’s body if he wanted to, and that Rudell could do nothing to stop him.

“I’ll tell you,” he gasped, wanting to weep, “I’ll tell you—”

Snarling obscenities, Black reached down with one hand and hauled Rudell to his feet. The strength in the man was terrifying. Rudell would have handed over his mother to him if asked. “Save it for later. Right now you show me the money.”

Rudell didn’t want to go down there, but the presence of Black was an imperative he couldn’t think of defying. He merely nodded and led the way to Tod’s house.

The lights were still on. The card game had still be in progress. They’d been playing for poker chips, that’s all. Joe Morgan had been holding the bottle of Seagrams when Black’s bullet found him, and the room stank of whiskey. The others were all there, too. Rudell tried not to look at them as he and Black walked back to the pantry.

Rudell pulled a case of Spam onto the floor and removed the top layer of cans, and there was the money, neatly stacked, on the bottom with Tod Spender’s ledger book.

“Siddown over there,” murmured Black, and Rudell obeyed, easing himself down into a corner and drawing up his knees. He watched as Black picked up each stack, fanned it with his thumb like a deck of cards to check the denominations, and replaced it.

“We ain’t hardly touched it,” Rudell ventured, like a child trying to please an agry parent. “We wasn’t going to spend it but a little at a time.”

Black ignored him and opened the ledger. He grinned without humor and remarked, “Had a hundred and twenty thousand to start with and got it down to one-nineteen-eight. You guys are big spenders.”

The animal seemed to have gone out of Black, now. The terrible raging energy had left him, to be replaced by the affability he’d shown earlier that day, right out there on Tod’s porch. Now that Black had what he came for, Rudell dared to hope, maybe he might be softened. Maybe now Rudell might get on his good side. Maybe now Rudell could live. He cast about for something to say, trying to engage in small talk with a mass murderer.

Black dropped the ledger back on top of the money and stood. “Okay,” he said in the same civil tone as that morning, “put the cans back in the box.”

Rudell did so, then looked at Black for further instructions. Black raised his eyebrows at him. “Micchiche, remember? If you’re gonna need a shovel, you better find one.”

Black carried the shovel and made Rudell carry the box with the Spam and the money. Walking over to the ancient cemetery, Rudell plucked up his courage and asked, “How’d you know?”

Alongside him, Black smiled. “The guy who runs the gas station down by the turnoff remembered Micchiche coming in. Never saw him leave, and there’s only one road to Glory. Only reason Micchiche would bother with this dump was to hole up, so I just asked the residents. The ranger got scared and tried to throw me out. You guys lied to me. Every goddamn one of you had to be in on it. You stashed his car in the mill, right?”

“Yeah, but — oh! You saw the marks on the dirt road where we swept out the tire tracks, didn’t you? Pretty smart.”

“That ain’t it, Rudell. You guys were just too stupid about the whole thing. Handled it like amateurs.”

“You’re in that Mafia, ain’t you?”

Black smiled again. “There’s no such thing.”

“You’re one of them hit men, huh?”

“Been called that once or twice.”

The grave looked like all the others, except that this leaning headstone had nothing carved on it. Rudell put the box down while Black stood away from him and tossed the shovel.

“I sure hope you clowns didn’t put him a full six feet under. Gonna be a lot of digging for you if you did, Rudell.”

“Nope. We didn’t.” Rudell got to work with the spade.

Black said, “You make sure you toss all the dirt over there on the other side, right?”

Well, he still wasn’t taking any chances, but Rudell could see he was getting friendlier. Most men warmed up by talking about themselves to a willing listener, Rudell knew. So he continued to get on Black’s good side. Between spadesful, he asked, “How you think we did it? I bet you got that all figured out, too.”

For a moment, Black just stood there in the moonlight, watching. Then, “What’s to figure? Micchiche came into town, found out who the residents were, and buttonholed a couple of you. Maybe he flashed some money. He offered you good cash to let him live here, out of sight.

“You guys added it up, decided he had a big pile with him and no one would ever know if you hid him really good and kept everything for yourselves. After you snuffed Micchiche, you scared the ranger into keeping his mouth shut, maybe forced him to take a piece of it so he’d be involved.

“So all six of you buried him, shoved his car in the mill, brushed out the tracks, and played dumb to anybody coming looking for him. Right?”

Rudell’s spade struck wood. He started shoveling the dirt swiftly now. “Mainly. There was a while there we thought we might have to kill Warren, too. Make it look like an accident, you know. But we didn’t have to, he went along.” Rudell bent, scooped, threw. Bent, scooped, threw. “What’d this Micchiche fella do, anyhow?”

Rudell didn’t dare look up through the silence. Finally Black answered him.

“He was what is called a bagman. That’s a guy who goes around collecting money. In this case he collected it from numbers runners. Most bagman have been in the organization a pretty long time, and the money ain’t bad. Lots of ’em have families. They buy tract houses and second cars and make payments on color TVs. and send their kids to college.

“The important thing is, your average, bagman is trusted by the organization to do his job and deliver the goods and not get dishonest. That’s a big no-no, Rudell. Say you’re a boss, and one of your people swings with a lot of cash. No way in hell you can let him get away with that because the minute you show weakness, somebody else is going to move in and retire you. But there’s a law against what you’re doing, so you can’t report it to the cops, even though some of them might be on your payroll.

“But you still have to nail this guy. Now you’ve got some heavies working for you, but your bagman knows ’em and that’s no good. So you call in a freelance man. He ain’t on your payroll, but you know that he’s pulled the trigger before, so you have one of your lieutenants set up a meeting and offer the going rate, and the guy can take it or leave it.”

“And you took it, huh?” Rudell had exposed almost the entire lid of the casket they’d taken from the mortuary.

“Well, I hadn’t worked in a while.”

Rudell tried a dry-sounding chuckle. “How long you been doin’ this, anyway?” He placed the shovel carefully on the mound of new dirt and bent to brush loose soil off the lid.

“I’m forty-five years old. I got my first contract when I was eighteen.”

“Sounds like you got a corner on the business.” Rudell worked on, not lifting his head. “Don’t it make you have real bad dreams?”

“Everyone I ever killed deserved it, Rudell. I have never hit an honest man. I never hit a man in front of his wife or his children. I never go into his home for any reason or involve his family in any way.”

“You talk like there’s rules.”

“That’s right. This money, now. I’ve already been paid, so I won’t touch this dough except to take it back to its owner. Every penny of it’s gonna be accounted for. And that’s why you’re digging up Danny Micchiche right now. I got to see him and make sure he’s dead. If you’re thinking of asking me to take all the money for myself and split, you can forget it. I got more brains than Micchiche had.”

Rudell was finished now. He straightened, eased his back, climbed out of the grave. “Why’d you kill ’em all?”

“You got to be kidding. You guys hit Micchiche in the head for that dough. I’m supposed to just walk up and ask you for it? You get into this game, Rudell, you better know some rules.”

“Listen.” Rudell was sweating now and the wind was cold on his damp skin. “I could tell ’em that we was havin’ a poker game when one of ’em — Joe Morgan, say — went crazy and started shootin’. I ran out and Joe chased me and shot Warren when he tried to stop him. I ran home and got my gun and killed Joe in self-defense. I could drag his body out in the street to make it look real.”

The wind gusted and moaned and died. Black just stood there, thinking. At last he said, “No. They’d never believe you anyway, and besides, what about the wires ripped out of Warren’s radio? It’d be better just to bury ’em all like you did Micchiche. Yeah. Yeah, I could do that. Sure. That’d work. You bet. Yeah.” He bent down, got hold of the lid, and heaved. Little funnels of dirt went sifting down on the body. “Well, there he is.”

Black walked closer and looked down. “Yeah, that’s him. Not that it matters, Rudell, but which one of you jokers shot him?”

Rudell drew in a deep breath. “It was me.”

Black nodded.

Rudell drew assurance from that and said, “My share was twenty thousand. That about right for a killin’?

“It’s the going rate.” Rudell laughed. “Well, that ain’t bad for no amateur, is it? Did pretty good my first time out, didn’t I?”

His laughter choked, because now he saw Black’s gun for the first time. It was a revolver, short-barreled, with a big bore.

“No way, sucker,” Black said, his smile mirthless. “No way.”

Rudell started to say, “But you never killed an honest man.” The words ended in his throat.