Night and Day (Book 3): Bandit's Moon (19 page)

Bar duty. Drinking bars? Prison
bars? Did it even mean anything important? There was no way to
tell.

And then hit me. There was a way to
find out about bar duty and maybe more. We just had to ask the right
person.

Chapter
Twelve

I read. It helps me unwind. And I
figure you can never know too much.

One of my favorite subjects is
history. I find it interesting, on its own, and it can also be helpful.
People are people, and always have been. If you know what they’ve done in
the past, you can figure out what they might do in the future.

And you sometimes get some good
ideas.

A year after the American Civil
War, the U.S. government was at war with a Sioux Indian chief named Red
Cloud. Outside a fort in Wyoming, teams of loggers, cutting trees for
construction timber, came under regular attack. The Indians learned that
soldiers sent to repel the attacks on the loggers could be lured away by
small groups of decoys.

One day, the Indians made another
attack on the loggers, and a detachment of eighty men was sent out of the
fort, under the command of a captain named Fetterman. A small group of
Sioux, including and maybe led by Crazy Horse, came over a ridge and began
taunting the soldiers. Fetterman took the bait and his command chased them
back over the ridge.

Right into around two thousand
waiting Sioux, Cheyenne and Arapaho who promptly slaughtered them in about
forty-five minutes. It was the worst defeat suffered by the Army in the
Indian Wars until Custer got his ass kicked at the Little Bighorn ten years
later.

In this case, Schleu’s people were
the Army, Werkle’s the Sioux. And we weren’t going to try to lure all of
them out of the Floresta. Just one. Then maybe we’d get some
answers.

I didn’t tell Werkle about
Fetterman, or where I’d gotten my inspiration. He didn’t seem like a
history buff. I told him just what I planned, and how I thought it should
play out.

He listened, then asked, “How does
all this kill that bitch?”

“By giving us the information we
need to kill her right,” I said. “This is just the first part, Mr. Werkle.
We snatch one of her guys and put the screws to him. I got a lot of
questions about what’s going on inside the Floresta, and at The Hole, and
with all these groups of civilians she’s been gathering. Only Schleu’s
people know the answers. Once we know what she’s doing and what it all
means, then we can put together the second part of the plan. The part that
ends with her dead.”

Werkle didn’t say
anything.

“Or you can go ahead and make some
calls,” I said. “Get a bunch of guys together, hit the Floresta.” I paused.
“And when you’re done, they’ll be dead, she’ll still be there, and you’ll
be sitting here with your thumb up your ass.”

Beside me, Angelo took a deep
breath. “Don Alfredo, what Mr. Welles means is...”

“I know what he means,” Werkle
said. “What do you think?”

“I think it’ll work,” Angelo said.
“We do it right, we can be smart about how we take them out. And if it
doesn’t help us, you can still go to the mattresses and do it the other
way.”

“Twelve hours,” I said. “Give me
till sunrise. If this doesn’t pan out, I’ll shut my fucking mouth and help
you do it your way.” That wasn’t strictly true. If it didn’t pan out, and
it looked like Werkle was going to make a frontal assault on the Floresta,
I’d call Deputy Area Governor Phillip Bain and go home.

We waited in silence for nearly a
minute. Then Werkle nodded. “Okay, you got till sunrise. When you catch one
of those
strunzos
, you bring ‘em back here. I want to be there when
you ask your questions.” He smiled. It wasn’t a friendly smile. “We’ll do
it in the woodshed.”

“Of course,” I said. I didn’t know
what the woodshed was, but from the expression of Werkle’s face, it wasn’t
going to be good for whoever we snagged.

“We’re going to need three or four
torpedoes,” Angelo said. “Good guys, who can work fast and quiet. I’ll be
with them. Mr. Welles is going to call it from that apartment, if we can
get in there without a fuss, so he’s going to take Eichhorn and Pirelli
with him. But we need somebody fast for the decoy.”

“Terry Legs,” Werkle said. “The
little spic is fast on his feet, and if something happens...” He shook his
head. “We don’t need Legs anymore.”

He looked at his son. “Talk to
Marco, have him pick six guys for Angelo to choose from. Then make a call
to Bedford and get Legs over here.”

“Yes, Poppa,” Alfie said. He looked
happy to be asked to do something meaningful for a change, and hurried out
of the office.

Werkle looked back at me. “You take
Alfie with you, Charlie. Let him get a look at how things are done. Be good
for the boy.”

It took some effort to put a smile
on my face. “Sure, Mr. Werkle.”

“You’re a smart boy, Charlie,” he
said. “Maybe when this is all over, you might want to give up the private
dick stuff and come work for me.”

“I’ll think about it,” I said. I
was already done thinking about it by the time the words were out of my
mouth. It didn’t take much thought. And I’d have plenty of time to work out
a graceful way to decline his generous offer.

Mario’s car was no longer sitting
by the curb on McLendon when we eased around the corner from
59
^th
Street. Picked up by Schleu’s guys? Stolen?

The dead guy at the mouth of the
alley was gone too, as was his rifle, but otherwise, it was just as it had
been when we’d left that afternoon. Only a lot darker.

Eichhorn was in the front seat of
the Jeep beside me, Pirelli and Alfie in the back.

“What if they’re watchin’, just
waitin’ for us to come back?” Pirelli asked.

“Why would they?” I asked in
return. “Schleu made her point. Leave her alone, she leaves you alone.
She’s got other things on her mind, like what she’s got planned for
Christmas Eve. She’s not looking for a war, even a war she can
win.”

“I don’t like this,” he
said.

“You don’t have to like it,
Paulie,” Eichhorn said. “You just have to do it.”

“Yeah,” Pirelli
muttered.

I pulled the Jeep to the curb about
a hundred feet back from the alley. “Okay, Bobby and Paulie in front, Alfie
in the back. We take it nice and easy to the alley.” I paused. “You sure
those pea-shooters you’re carrying will do the job?”

Angelo had given both of them .22
caliber automatics, each with a short, homemade silencer on the barrel. I
understood the need for quiet, but I wasn’t sure a .22 would bring down a
man if it came to that.

Pirelli smiled. “It’s what we
always use when we need to clip somebody quiet. Don’t worry about it,
Charlie. You shoot somebody in the face a couple of times, size of the slug
ain’t an issue.”

“I’ll take your word for it,” I
said. “You clean, Alfie?”

“I’m not carrying, Mr. Welles,” he
said.

“Good.” I was, but I wouldn’t pull
the Glock unless everything turned to shit, and it was time to run like
hell.

We got out of the car and the two
men moved slowly down the sidewalk to the opening of the alley. Pirelli in
front, Eichhorn a couple of feet behind him and to his right. Both men had
their pistols in their hands.

I slipped the sack with the
equipment over my shoulder and fell in behind them, leaving a little gap
between them and me. “Stay a few feet back, Alfie,” I said softly. I took
the keys out of my coat pocket and tossed them to him. “If something
happens, you run back to the Jeep, start it up. If it looks like we’re not
coming, you back up to 59
^th
and meet up with Angelo.
Fast.”

He nodded.

Pirelli reached the alley and
stopped. As I got closer, I could just make out the bloodstain on the
sidewalk, where Angelo had dropped the guy who shot Mario.

Eichhorn stopped next to him and I
moved up to join them. “Same thing through the alley. There’s a little
courtyard there, by the back door of the shop, right?”

“Yeah,” Eichhorn said.

“Be careful when you get there,” I
said. “If they left somebody in the apartment, that’s where they’ll first
see you.”

“You first, Paulie,” Eichhorn said.
“If I see anybody, I’m gonna open up on ‘em and you can run.”

“Why don’t I cover you, Bobby,”
Pirelli said. “I’m a better shot.”

“Enough!” I said softly, but with
an edge. “Just get going.”

Pirelli sighed and went around the
corner into the alley. Eichhorn followed.

I gave them a couple of seconds,
then went in, Alfie behind me.

The alley was dark. The little
light that came from the night sky was mostly blocked by the walls on
either side. I could just make out the dark silhouettes of Pirelli and
Eichhorn against the slightly-brighter wall of the courtyard
ahead.

Pirelli had stopped again. When I
reached him, he said, “The door’s open.”

I peeked around him. The back door
to the store below the apartment hung open. I checked the windows of the
apartment above. No light, no movement.

“That’s good,” I said. “If they
left the door open, it’s because they cleared out.”

“Or it’s a trap,” Pirelli
said.

“Only one way to find out,” I said,
giving Eichhorn a quick smile as Pirelli continued to peer around the
corner. “Let’s go, Paulie.”

He raised the pistol and walked
slowly into the courtyard. Eichhorn had his pistol raised as well, aimed at
the windows above the open door.

Pirelli reached the door, hesitated
for a moment, then stepped inside. Nothing. Silence. Then he stuck his arm
out and waved us forward.

Eichhorn continued to cover the
windows as me and Alfie hurried across the courtyard and through the door.
The stairs going up to the apartment were like something you’d see going up
to the attic in a house. A folding stairway up to an open
trapdoor.

Pirelli stood at the foot of the
steps, pistol aimed upward. I went around him and peeked through the open
doorway into the storefront. Empty. In the gloom, I could just make out
foot tracks in the dusty floor. A lot of them.

Eichhorn came through the back
door. I returned to them and pointed upward. Pirelli rolled his eyes and
started up the stairs, Eichhorn behind him. They reached the top, waited
for a moment, and disappeared.

A minute or so passed. Then
Eichhorn reappeared at the top of the stairs. “It’s empty,” he
whispered.

Alfie and I went up the stairs.
There was a small, empty room at the top, and a door to left. Eichhorn
waved me forward and I followed him through the door and down the dark hall
to the kitchen where I’d had my chat with him Friday night.

In the dim light from the kitchen
window, I could see that the card table was still there, a chair on either
side. The propane lantern was gone. Pirelli stood in the door, looking into
the living room.

“Okay,” I said. “So far, so good.
How’s the light in there, Paulie?”

“What light?” he asked.

“Good. Remember, we do not go near
the window. We stay at least ten feet back from it. They’re probably not
going to be watching this place after what happened, but I don’t want to
take any chances.”

I opened the sack hanging under my
arm and pulled out the small two-way radio. Lifting it to my mouth, I
pressed the button on the side and said, “Red Cloud, Crazy Horse. Radio
check.”

It was probably unnecessary to use
code words. The chances that anyone was listening was pretty slim, and even
slimmer that the guys in the Floresta would be monitoring the channel. But
better safe than sorry.

A moment later, I heard Angelo’s
voice. “Crazy Horse, this is Red Cloud. You’re loud and clear.”

“Okay, Red Cloud. The ridge is
empty. I repeat, the ridge is empty. Is the bird ready to fly?” Terry Legs
was the bird.

“Flapping his wings, Crazy Horse,”
Angelo said. “Ready and waiting.”

“I’ll give you the word, Red Cloud.
Crazy Horse out.” I pulled a pair of binoculars from the sack and handed
them to Eichhorn. “Okay, you’re up first. At least ten feet back. Let me
know when they change sentries.”

The plan was pretty simple. We were
operating on the assumption that they’d keep to the schedule Eichhorn and
his crew had observed for almost six days. New sentries every two hours at
night, when it was coldest. Since we didn’t know when they’d last swapped
sentries, we’d have to wait for the first shift change, then make our move
the next time they switched out.

An hour after the new shift took
over, Terry would came around the corner on 59
^th
and walk west
on Tuxedo, toward the Floresta. He’d go a little ways, then stop and start
yelling at the sentries. Taunting them. Then he’d run like hell back around
the corner.

I was betting that they wouldn’t
come after him with just the two sentries there. They probably wouldn’t
shoot either. Probably. If they did, I hoped Terry was fast enough to get
around the corner before he took a bullet. If he wasn’t, Angelo would have
to use one of the torpedoes for the second part of the job.