West of the Law

Chapter 1

The sky was on fire and death stalked the darkness.

John McBride, until that night a detective sergeant, one of New York City’s finest, pressed his back against the side of a freight car, the Smith & Wesson .38-caliber self-cocker in his right fist up and ready at shoulder level.

Beside him he heard Inspector Thomas Byrnes curse the rain, the gloom and the lightning that scrawled across the sky like the signature of a demented god.

‘‘John, where is the damn . . . ?’’ Byrnes’ final word was lost in a crash of thunder.

‘‘Train?’’ McBride finished it for him, a faint smile tugging at his lips.

‘‘Yeah, the train, damn it. I paid the guard ten dollars just to wave a lamp from the back of the caboose as he pulled out of the yard. Well, I don’t see a caboose, I don’t see a lamp and I sure as hell don’t see a train.’’ The inspector’s anxious gaze searched the rain-lashed darkness around them. ‘‘You see anything?’’

‘‘Nothing.’’

‘‘At least there’s no sign of Sean Donovan’s hoodlums. That’s good.’’

‘‘Yeah,’’ McBride said, his bleak eyes lost in darkness, ‘‘that’s good. But the fact that we can’t see them doesn’t mean they’re not out there.’’

The big cop saw only a sea of wet, gleaming rails and the hunched, black silhouettes of motionless boxcars. Here and there rose the looming bulk of water towers, standing on four skinny legs like creatures from a child’s nightmare. Shadows pooled everywhere, mysterious and full of menace, the torrential rain talking among them in a voice that rattled like black phlegm in the chest of an ancient coal miner.

Beyond the train yard, unseen in the darkness, sprawled a warren of warehouses, slaughterhouses and cattle pens, and behind those the teeming, pestilence-ridden tenements of Hell’s Kitchen. The rickety buildings, infested by rats and slyer, more dangerous two-legged vermin, were inhabited by poor Irish immigrants, starving paupers, orphaned children, whores, pickpockets and criminal gangs, the most vicious of them big, laughing Sean Donovan’s Forty-fifth Street Derry Boys.

Donovan, six feet four and 250 pounds, all of it bone and muscle, had come up the hard way. He’d begun his criminal career as an enforcer for Dutch Heinrich’s ferocious Nineteenth Street Gang. On Dutch Henry’s orders he’d used brass knuckles, boots and skull to smash and destroy all those foolish or brave enough to defy the gangster. Donovan had killed eight men with his fists and several more with a gun or knife before he finally forced out the Dutchman and took over his protection, prostitution, gambling and opium rackets.

For all his well-cut suits, his diamond pinkie ring and his cynical, self-serving generosity to the poor, Sean Donovan was a bad man to cross, a born killer with a long memory. It was Detective Sergeant McBride’s misfortune that he’d been forced to kill one of the big Irishman’s sons . . . and that was a thing Donovan would not forgive or ever forget.

McBride stepped to the corner of the freight car and stared into the flame-streaked night. Sizzling like water on a hot plate, lightning flashes lit up the train yard, scorching the darkness with bolts of scarlet and gold. Nothing moved in the searing light that flickered like a gigantic magic lantern before dying into blackness. There was no sound but the crash of thunder and the dragon hiss of the rain.

‘‘See anything, Sergeant?’’ Byrnes asked again, a faint note of hope rising in his voice.

‘‘Nothing.’’ McBride let his gun drop to his side. With a toe he pushed his wet carpetbag farther under the freight car, then turned and stood by the inspector. ‘‘This doesn’t sit well with me,’’ he said. ‘‘I mean to cut and run like this. It’s sticking in my craw like a dry chicken bone.’’

Rain ran in rivulets off the black oilskin capes both men wore, and drummed on their plug hats. Around them the raging night was on fire.

Byrnes spoke slowly, as though he were talking to a child. His eyes tried and failed to meet McBride’s in the gloom. Thunder crashed, lightning flared and the air smelled of ozone and the rubbery tang of wet oilskin.

‘‘John,’’ he said, ‘‘Donovan vows he’ll pay the man who brings him your ears a thousand dollars in gold.’’

‘‘I know that, Inspector,’’ McBride said, a small, stiff anger rising in him. ‘‘Isn’t that the reason we’re here?’’

‘‘So I’m telling you something you already know, but it won’t do you any harm to hear it again.’’ He waved a hand. ‘‘Back there in the Kitchen, there’s no lack of toughs who will cut any man, woman or child in half with a shotgun for fifty dollars. The word is out, John. You’re a brave man and a good officer, but you’re in over your head. For a thousand dollars they’ll come at you in the hundreds. There will be no end to them. And finally they’ll get you, someday, somewhere, with a bullet or a knife in the back.’’

‘‘I could go after Donovan,’’ McBride said. He’d moved even closer to Byrnes and the hard planes of his face seemed cast in bronze. ‘‘If he’s out of the way, there’s no one to pay his blood money.’’

Inspector Byrnes shook his head, a motion McBride heard rather than saw. ‘‘John, you know we can’t touch Donovan, at least for now. He covers his slimy tracks real well. Even if we did arrest him, his battery of high-priced lawyers would get him out within the hour, and later they’d make sure we never got a conviction.’’ Byrnes’ laugh was bitter. ‘‘Add to that the fact that he’s got half of city hall in his pocket, and right now Mr. Donovan is well-nigh untouchable.’’

McBride stepped closer to Byrnes, a gusting wind slapping rain into his face. ‘‘He’s not untouchable, Inspector. I can get to him.’’

It took a few moments for the implication of what McBride had just said to sink into Byrnes’ consciousness. He put his hand on the taller man’s wet shoulder. ‘‘Sergeant McBride, you are an intelligent, brave and resourceful officer, but if you killed Sean Donovan, it would be my unpleasant duty to charge you with murder. That means either the rope or forty years in Sing Sing. Either way, Donovan would have won because you’d be dead or buried alive in the penitentiary.’’ Byrnes made a fist and punched McBride lightly on the chest. ‘‘You think about that now, boyo.’’

A sense of utter defeat weighing heavy on him, McBride turned his face to a black sky cobwebbed with lightning, thunder roaring like gigantic boulders being hurled along a marble hall. He said nothing. He could not find the words.

‘‘John, you will leave for the Western lands just as we planned,’’ Byrnes said, his tone cajoling. ‘‘A man can lose himself out there in the wilderness. After that, let me deal with Donovan. Let the law deal with him.’’

‘‘The law hasn’t dealt with him so far,’’ McBride said. ‘‘What makes you think things will change?’’

‘‘He’ll make a slip, John. His kind always do. We’ll get him in the end and lock him away for a long, long time.’’

‘‘And then I can come running back,’’ McBride said. His voice was flat, the words tasting bitter as acid on his tongue.

‘‘Yes, John. Then you come back.’’

‘‘The prodigal returns,’’ McBride said. ‘‘Welcome home, Detective Sergeant, the man who fled the city with his tail between his legs. The man big Sean Donovan ran out of town.’’

‘‘It won’t be like that, John.’’ Byrnes heard the uncertainty in his own voice and immediately said it again, more confidently this time as he attempted to repair the damage. ‘‘It won’t be like that.’’ He thought for a few moments, then added, ‘‘Besides, you’re not running. You’re obeying a direct order from your superior to get out of New York.’’

Byrnes couldn’t see McBride’s face, but he felt the man’s accusing eyes burn into him. The inspector turned away, cursed under his breath, then said aloud, ‘‘Where is that damned train?’’

The thunderstorm had encouraged the wind and now it blew stronger, slapping the oilskins around the legs of the two men, driving the hard, raking rain straight at them, stinging into their faces. The freight car provided little shelter and McBride felt it rock on the rails, its wooden walls creaking in protest.

His hand wet on the handle of his gun, McBride used his wrist to wipe rain from his eyes. His years as a detective had given him an instinct for danger, and now he felt it strongly. The darkness drew around him, pressing on him, giving him no peace. Out there in the train yard, somewhere, death was drawing close. McBride did not need the candle of reason to read the signs, for there were none. It was enough that he felt the approaching threat, smelled it in the wind. It existed.

Inspector Byrnes drew closer to McBride and reached inside his oilskin. He produced a thick envelope and shoved it into the younger man’s hand. ‘‘I almost forgot, John. This is for you.’’

McBride studied the envelope for a moment, then opened it and looked at the contents.

‘‘Eleven hundred dollars,’’ Byrnes said, his voice rising against the keening wind and the relentless rattle of the rain. ‘‘A year’s salary in advance. Mayor Grace gave his full approval. As far as he is concerned, you are still on the police payroll.’’ The inspector hesitated, then added, ‘‘Don’t be stiff-necked about this, John. Take the money. You’ll need it to help you get settled when you reach the Western territories.’’

Angry and sick at heart as he was, McBride had it in his mind to refuse. But, a practical man, he knew to arrive exiled and penniless in a strange land would add a new set of problems to the ones he already had.

After some thought, he capitulated. ‘‘Thank you, sir,’’ he said, shoving the envelope into the inside pocket of his coat. ‘‘And please thank the mayor.’’

‘‘I will, John,’’ Byrnes said. ‘‘God knows, no one deserves that money more than you do. You—’’ The inspector glanced wildly around him. ‘‘Wait! I hear a train!’’

McBride heard it too. He stepped away from the freight car and his eyes scanned the night. A few lights burned over at the warehouses and one by one he saw them blink out as they were obscured by a hulking black shape. The locomotive’s bell clanked and steam jetted from between its wheels, the huff-huff-huff of the venting smoke from the chimney drowning out the sound of the rain.

Byrnes shoved McBride’s carpetbag at him. ‘‘It’s the train. Go now, John!’’

McBride felt it then, an overwhelming sense of dread. The men who stalked him were close. They were here.

A bullet smashed into the side of the boxcar, inches from McBride’s head. Another whined viciously off the iron rail close to his feet. Suddenly Byrnes was firing into the darkness, a .38 bucking in his right hand. He turned his head slightly. ‘‘Go, John!’’ he yelled. ‘‘I’ll hold them off!’’

Lightning branded the sky, flashing bright. McBride caught a glimpse of four men running toward him, one of them with a shotgun slanted across his chest. McBride fired at that man, very fast. The light flickered and died as a wild scream split the night.

‘‘You got one of them!’’ Byrnes yelled. ‘‘Now run for the train. That’s an order, damn it!’’

Desperately, McBride cast one final look at Byrnes, then turned and ran. The caboose was right ahead of him and he saw a red lantern waving from the rear platform.

Behind him, he heard Byrnes’ gun. Then the man was pounding after him, running between the rain-slicked rails. Another shot and Byrnes stumbled and fell, clutching at his right leg. McBride stopped, looked back, but the inspector waved him on. ‘‘Get to the train!’’ he hollered. ‘‘I’ll be all right.’’

‘‘Inspector, I—,’’ McBride began, standing uncertainly, his gun in one hand, the carpetbag in the other. Now the caboose was off to his left and the train of boxcars was gathering speed, rattling into the darkness. McBride could see the guard now, frantically waving the lantern, yelling words he could not hear against the crash of thunder and roar of rain.

‘‘Go, John, before it’s too late!’’ Byrnes yelled.

McBride ran for the caboose. He heard Byrnes call out, ‘‘John, write to me when you get to where you’re going.’’ A pause, then: ‘‘Confide in no one! Trust no one! Sean Donovan reaches far.’’

A sickness in him, McBride ran. ‘‘Hurry!’’ the guard yelled.

The big cop threw his bag onto the caboose platform, then leaped for the rail. He swung himself up beside the guard and saw that the man’s eyes were wide with fear. A bullet smashed into the glass of the door behind the guard and he yelped, dropped his lantern and ran inside.

The train was moving faster, the boxcars and caboose hammering along the rails, plunging into the darkness.

Fear coursing through him, McBride put his hands to his mouth and roared into the night: ‘‘Inspector!’’

He heard a flurry of shots. Then an echoing silence mocked him.