Shred of Evidence

I stopped counting bullet holes in the sedan when I got to thirty. It didn’t make any difference to my investigation and besides the sticky blood on the seats kept getting on my pants.

I looked across the garage at Sheriff Cooper and Deputy Weidman and asked, “What are you going to do with the reward money, buy more ammunition?”

Cooper didn’t crack a smile, he just stared right through me. “I think I’ll invest in a Thompson machine gun, Mr. Chisolm. If bank robbers continue spreading chaos across Texas we’ll need to be better armed in Selman County.”

Weidman spat tobacco juice onto the concrete floor of the garage. “If the banks is givin’ us a $5,000 re-ward for dead Meskin robbers I hope ever theivin’ greaser in Texas drops by.”

I guess I should explain what I was doing in Selman County with two of the state’s finest lawmen in 1928. Bank robberies had spiraled out of control over the last two years. The Texas Bankers Association wanted to make it clear they wouldn’t stand for that kind of thing. So someone suggested a “dead or alive” reward. Some other joker had to one-up the first fellow and proposed a “dead NOT alive”. It was like the old days when they put a bounty on wolf pelts or Apache scalps.

That was in the fall of ‘27. By March of ‘28 half a dozen men had been killed in attempted bank robberies. Lee Armbrister and Jose Martinez made it eight. My job was to verify the killings had occurred in the course of a bank robbery so that the bounty could be paid. After all the bankers didn’t want anyone to act irresponsibly.

“Tell me again how they got shot,” I asked.

Cooper cleared his throat. “We had a tip there would be a try on the Farmers and Mechanics Bank last night. Deputy Weidman and I waited in the alley opposite the bank. Shortly after eleven p.m. Armbrister and Martinez showed up in the adjacent lot. We called on them to surrender. They decided to shoot it out.”

“Bad idea.” I wanted a cigarette but the gasoline smell in the garage’s stale air prevented me. “How do you know they were the robbers? Did the tipster tell you?”

“Something like that.” Cooper was still impassive. “Reports from informants are confidential. But,” he added, “It was pretty obvious from their willingness to shoot. Besides, they went to the F&M Bank at night with an acetylene torch to cut the safe.” He pointed at the back seat.

I looked in the back of the car and saw a metal cylinder with a hose attached. I’d seen rigs like that before on work sites in the oil fields. Something seemed a little odd about this one. Something else was odd, I didn’t smell acetylene so much as alcohol. I went to the trunk of the car and opened it. There were six jugs of moonshine inside.

The inquest was held that afternoon at the courthouse. It was a nice brick structure the county had built thirty years before to show that Selman wasn’t just a frontier zone where a man could raise a few cows and shoot his pistol in the air when he got liquored up on corn squeezings. We sat underneath framed portraits of Sam Houston and George Washington while Cooper recited his tale again. It was a very informative hearing. I was surprised to find that Armbrister and Martinez were young, 19 and 20 respectively, though no one was too sure about the Mexican. I also learned they hadn’t actually fired on the lawmen. But Cooper produced a pistol the Armbrister had aimed at them. It was an old single-action six-shooter.

The real show came when the coroner insisted on the informant’s name. Cooper was reluctant, but he gave it, Clyde McTeague. The coroner, a sour faced old man named Fielding, pronounced “death while in the course of resisting arrest” and that was the end of the affair.

After the hearing I buttonholed Fielding in the hall outside. I asked him point blank why he had insisted on the informant’s name. Fielding stared at me for a minute through his steel rimmed glasses and then spoke.

“Sheriff Cooper has been an elected official of this county for many years. So have I. He has his notions of what constitutes his duties and I have my own.” With that he turned and walked out of the courthouse into the chill March afternoon.

It was too late to start my drive back to Austin so I checked into the town’s only hotel. After a meal I ambled over to the clerk at the desk to ask if he had a phone. He did and I called Ranger Captain Frank Hamer.

It was late but Hamer was in. I knew him from when I served with the Rangers on the Border, before I went to fight in the Great War. Those were bloody days for Texas. Rangers had shoot on sight orders. Sometimes we shot bandits, often we just shot any Mexican that moved. I had to quit when I couldn’t figure out what made us different from the bandits. At night when I’m trying to sleep, I still see the faces of the men I killed on the Border. Bloated, staring, and dead.

Hamer was good man to rely on in those days. He was tough, unassuming, and relentless in pursuing criminals. I told him what I was about and got straight to my point, “Armbrister and Martinez seem like minor punks to try a stunt like cutting open the F&M Bank’s safe. I want to find out if they were tied to a bigger gang. Can you check around at Austin headquarters for any background on these jokers?”

Hamer growled into the phone, “I’ll take a look. There’s not likely to be much except perhaps a prison record, but you never know.”

I said thanks and then Hamer hung up. Frank was always as talkative as an oyster.

The hotel lobby was empty except for myself, the clerk, and an old Mexican woman cleaning the floors. I needed to develop a few leads of my own, so I asked the clerk if there was a Clyde McTeague in this town and how could I find him.

The clerk looked at me funny and said he wasn’t some kind of free directory. A five-dollar bill moved quickly from my pocket to the counter and disappeared just as quickly.

“Go out Brushy Creek Road till you get to the county line. His place is past the oil derricks. Have all the fun you want but don’t bring any of it back here, this hotel is for decent folks.”

I waited a couple of hours before I went out Brushy Creek Road. If McTeague was at the sort of place I expected, things wouldn’t get interesting until later in the evening. And I wanted to see how interesting.

A few years back there had been some oil strikes in Selman. Lots of oil roughnecks, jackleg lawyers, speculators, and horse traders had moved in to make a dollar off the oil. So had the leeches. Oil production fell off and so did most of the leeches. But enough money remained in circulation to keep a few bootleggers, gamblers, and prostitutes in business.

I found the place all right. It was beyond the oil derricks back among the salt cedars. The place was a regular Texas juke joint, a barn converted to a speakeasy. Lights and music flooded out of the barn. Cars were parked haphazardly all around and drunks staggered under the trees, quarreling, urinating, or vomiting. As I pulled off the road my headlights swung across the parked cars. For a moment they lit up a man climbing into a Ford. I could see his face clearly though, it was Deputy Weidman.

I parked my car and sat, watching Weidman. If he noticed me I couldn’t tell. His car started and began to roll out of the tangle of cars. He picked his way slowly. For a few long heartbeats, or a Hell of a lot of fast ones, he seemed to pause by my sedan. I ducked down to avoid being seen and his car moved on. I waited until I could hear his motor recede, and then I climbed out of my car.

I went into the joint. There were rough looking tables with even rougher looking men sitting at them. Hard liquor and beer were in plentiful supply. So were poker games and girls that had seen a little too much, too fast.

I leaned on the bar and asked the fellow behind it if he’d ever heard of the Volstead Act.

“Naw, but we got some ol’ boys play the banjo and fiddle on Fridays. Buy a drink unless you’re a Prohibition Agent. In that case it’s on the house.”

“I’ll have a whiskey. Bourbon if you’ve got it.” I like my little jokes. He reached for some rotgut in a bottle that had once held real Scotch. “I’m looking for a fellow, name of Clyde McTeague.”

“Who wants to know?”

“It came up in conversation today at the courthouse.”

Just then a roughneck in oil stained overalls came up. “’Nother beer, Clyde!” he sang out.

McTeague drew the beer and turned back to me. “I’m McTeague and this is my joint. Now who are you?”

“I’m Earl Chisolm. I’m a private investigator looking into the attempted robbery at the F&M Bank. You were named by Sheriff Cooper as his informant at the inquest on Armbrister and Martinez.”

McTeague looked a little green when he heard that. “Yeah, so what? I run a place for regular fellows to have some fun. I wasn’t about no bank robbin’.” He lit a cigarette.

“Sure,” I sneered, “you’re a regular pillar of the community. Giving folks what they need, rotgut booze, crooked games, and girls who used to have a chance but are going to end up more poisoned than the booze you brew in an old radiator.” I laughed at him.

“Look,” I continued, “Cooper and Weidman are going to pull down ten grand for their shooting spree. Maybe they’ll throw a few dimes your way. That’s all well and good, but the people I work for hate loose ends. I want to tell them there’s no bigger gang behind this job, waiting to hit ‘em somewhere else.”

“Hell no!” McTeague spat. “Armbrister and the Mex was just dumb punks. A pair of pups that thought they was lobo wolves.”

“How’d you know they were going to hit the F&M?”

“Armbrister was in here with the greaser kid, shootin’ his mouth off.”

I saw an opening and pounced. “So they drank in here often and let you know all about the Federal crimes they were planning? Come on, do you expect me to believe those kids were that stupid? Or were you in on it?”

“Look, Lee Armbrister was from a no ‘count family. He was a crook like his brother J.R., up in Huntsville. The pen or the graveyard was where all them Armbristers was headed.” He was sweating and starting to shake.

“What about Martinez?” I was relentless.

“What about him? He was just a Mex.” McTeague shrugged. When you’re used to seeing people living like scum, you start to believe that people are nothing but scum.

“Sure, I just had to ask is all.” I downed my drink. “One more thing, how long had Armbrister been running whiskey for you?”

McTeague mumbled a reply, but I didn’t care at that point. I guess being a snitch didn’t go down any easier than his rotgut whiskey. I tossed a few silver coins on the bar top and walked out.

When I got to my car a couple of fellows were leaning on it. I could smell the whiskey on them. It was too dark to make out much detail, but I had a feeling they weren’t from the Eppworth League.

“Mind if I get to my car fellows?” I asked.

“Yeah, I mind,” snarled one. He was dressed in work clothes that smelled of crude oil.

“Is this the one?” said the other.

“Shudup,” oil-smell growled. He took a swing at me. He was slow and I dodged but the other was moving. I had to finish one of them fast. I whipped a punch at oil-smell’s throat. But in the dark I slipped on the uneven ground and my punch landed awkwardly. The other made a grab for my arm and got an elbow in the face instead. Oil-smell bounced back and grabbed me. I kept swinging until I was pulled down. Then I took a shot to the head and everything went black.

When I came to, they were frog-marching me away from McTeague’s. We were among the salt cedars and the darkness was a smothering blanket. The monotonous sound of a pump-jack working drifted thorough the air. I heard oil-smell speak again. “Take him to the toolie’s shed.”

“The man just said a beatin’. All he paid for was a beatin’,” the other replied.

I wasn’t too sure where the toolie shed was but I knew I didn’t want to be alone in a dark place with these two. I dragged my feet a little and they caught on a piece of discarded junk. I fell heavily and slipped from the thugs’ grasp. The jagged edge of a tin can was digging painfully into my side. My hands clutched at the trash and closed on a smooth piece of metal bar, slim and cool to the touch.

“Get up you son of a bitch!” oil-smell barked.

I rolled over with the metal in my right hand. From the weight of it I’d say it was about two feet long. I swung it for all I could. It whistled through the air and connected solidly at shin level. A man howled and stumbled away. Thank God for people who leave trash lying around.

Oil-smell landed a kick in my side. His heavy work boot hurt like hell when it connected. I rolled away and scrambled to my feet. He was game and came after me. I smashed the steel bar into him and heard one of his ribs snap. He howled in agony and staggered away. His partner was long gone. I was happy to let them go, so I stood there in the dark with my breath coming like the wheeze of the pump-jack.

The door to the tool shed was open. I stumbled in and felt around for a lantern. I needed a light, if only to find my way back to my car. I lit a lamp and looked around. The shed was filled with every kind of tool you would need on an oil rig as well as sheet and bar metal of all lengths and gauges for fabricating equipment. In the corner was an acetylene torch. A thought, small as a mouse, gnawed at the edge of my mind. As I stared at the torch rig, the thought grew. I realized what was wrong with the torch in Armbrister’s car. It had no tip for the hose, without a tip you couldn’t ignite the flame. Without flame it wouldn’t cut butter. My thought had grown to a rat, large and disgusting.

I got back to my car without anyone tying to stab or shoot me. For a moment I considered going back to confront McTeague, but I was too weary and sick from being beaten. I got back to the hotel and limped to my room under the gaze of the cleaning lady and the disapproving clerk. That night Germans that smelled like crude oil chased me while Sheriff Cooper sang a border corrida and Mexican kids asked me where papa was.

The next morning I called Hamer again. I didn’t tell him about the incident or my suspicions, I don’t like to say much until I’m sure. I did ask him to look into the older Armbrister boy, J.R., Hamer said he would and hung up.

I drove out to the Armbrister farm, making a half dozen right angle turns along the road that zigzagged through the fields. My .45 sat heavy in the shoulder holster under my arm, I wasn’t going to be caught unprepared again. I looked over the fields. Sand roughs were encroaching where the shinnery wasn’t. It was poor stuff to scratch a living from, but that was true of a lot of places. The better part of Texas farmers were in debt to the banks. Little love was lost between them. Why should some old boy with too many debts and too many mouths to feed care what happened to a bank? As far as he knew the banker was the same as an outlaw, only the banker used a pen instead of a gun.

The Armbrister farm was back in the shade of the post oaks. A few chickens scratched around in front of a run down house. To one side was a dilapidated barn. It was just what I expected, except for two things. A telephone line was strung to the house and parked in the yard was a shiny new Packard with Missouri license plates.

I pushed my jaw back in place and got out to knock on the farmhouse door. I had to walk around the house to get to the front door. My car was out of sight around the corner. The house was a pale, worn shade of gray and so was the woman who came to the door. It’s not easy to ask a grieving mother if she could spill some dirt on her dead son’s criminal friends, but I’m not paid to do easy jobs.

“Ma’am, I’m Earl Chisolm,” I began. “My condolences on the death of your son.”

“Thank you, sir. Did the folks at the Shiloh Baptist Church send you?”

I took a breath, “No ma’am. I’m a detective for the Bankers Association, here to look into the shooting incident.”

She looked sick and angry at the same time. That wasn’t necessarily bad, people aren’t too cautious what they say when they are angry. I pushed on.

“I’ve spoken to Sheriff Cooper and others involved in the case. I thought it was only fair to come out here and get your side of the story.” It was crass as hell of me to say it, but I find people can’t resist a chance to say their piece.

“My boy did what he could to take care of me. I did what I could to keep him off his brother’s path. But I’m an old, sick woman. Lord, it is hard when ten gallons of whiskey brings so much dirty money.” She was weeping now.

“He carried whiskey for the bootleggers in this county. I know who and I could say! But my boy was no robber. Him and that Mexican boy weren’t killers. Sheriff Cooper didn’t need to shoot them. You go tell those bankers to pay Cooper his blood money. There’s a God in Israel and he will see to the wicked!” Her sobbing was stopped, but she was still trembling.

“My apologies for troubling you ma’am.” I stepped back. Before she could close the door, I turned and said, “I guess you have kin visiting from out of state. It’s good to have help at a time like this.”

She turned a bit grayer, her eyes were big and startled. “That’s my nephew, Bob. Lee and his cousin were always close,” she stammered.

The door slammed shut. I felt like a first class heel. I am a first class heel, but it takes a heel to get to the bottom of muck like this bank job. I trudged back to my car. There was a man leaning on it.

He wore a suit that would have looked just right on a lawyer, a hat with a brim turned just so, and a tie you could see a mile away. He looked like a cheap hood and the bulge under armpit tended to confirm it.

“I don’t know you mister,” he said. “Lee’s funeral is for kin.”

“I’m not here for his funeral. My name’s Chisolm, I’m an investigator for the bank.”

“Did you come to gloat?” his voice was even, but his eyes glittered like a wolf’s.

I didn’t need another battle to the death with a stranger, so I chose my words carefully. “I’ve been looking into the shooting of Lee Armbrister and Jose Martinez. There are a few things that don’t add up. I’m not convinced they really planned to break into that bank. Your aunt indicated she knew the bootleggers Lee worked for.” He was listening intently. “You wouldn’t happen to know if Clyde McTeague was one? Or who he pays to look the other way so he can operate on Brushy Creek?”

“McTeague,” he spat the name as though it were filthy. “He’s a dirty son of a bitch. He doesn’t pay off the law, he works for the law! There ain’t a drop of liquor drunk in this county that don’t belong to Cooper.” He glared at me from ice-blue eyes. “You can git now.”

I did as he said. As I drove back into town I let all the parts of the story float in my head. Two young men in a car full of bootleg whiskey and an acetylene torch that won’t work are sitting in the dark, planning to rob a bank. They are cut down from ambush by the man whose whiskey they are carrying. The parts kept floating, not connecting properly.

I planned to make one more phone call and then head back to Austin. Then my report would go to the bankers. It was going to be short on facts and long on unpleasant conclusions. No matter how you sliced it Armbrister and Martinez were not much of a threat. Their plan was a burglary, not a stick-up. Cooper insisted they fought and had to be killed. Maybe they were that loco. But you couldn’t avoid the fact that in jail they were worthless punks. Dead, they were worth $10,000 cash money.

I pulled up on the street by the hotel. My plan was to pack up and leave, but Selman County wasn’t done with me yet. As I stepped out of my car I heard a man shouting and turned to see Clyde McTeague staggering down the sidewalk a block away. He must have been drunk, he was weaving on his feet and slurred his words as he shouted.

“C’mon out Cooper! C’mon you sons o’ bitches! Y’all are gonna get ten grand! Where’s my share? I done the informin’, I want my blood money!”

From across the street Deputy Weidman strode towards McTeague like a shark to raw meat. His right hand was held low by his side out of sight. As he came within arm’s reach of McTeague, the deputy’s arm snaked out and seemed to caress the bootlegger’s face. McTeague howled in agony and clutched his face. He collapsed to his knees and Weidman’s boot caught him in the belly, the blackjack that had smashed his jaw still hovering. McTeague crumpled, groaning in pain.

I looked back up the street. Cooper was standing, arms folded, staring impassively at the scene. While Weidman threw a couple more kicks into the prone bootlegger, Cooper strolled over. He and his deputy spoke together for a moment, then Weidman walked away and returned with a police car. They threw McTeague in the back and Weidman drove off. Cooper looked around and, noticing me, walked over.

“Weidman will take him home to sleep it off. McTeague’s a public nuisance,” he said in the flat, pompous voice I was coming to detest.

“A beating like that a man could sleep forever on.” I lit a cigarette. “I’ve seen enough guys found dead in jail cells. They slip in the shower, maybe they slipped a dozen or so times. There’s always lots of paperwork, it’s much neater if they die at home.”

“You think you’re quite a wit don’t you, Mr. Chisolm. We take law enforcement seriously here.”

“If that’s what you call it.”

“I think the bankers of Texas will find our law enforcement satisfactory.”

“Maybe. I’m going to advise an immediate end to payment of blood money for dead bank robbers. I’m also going to recommend suspension of payment in the F&M Bank case pending a full investigation by the Rangers.”

Cooper’s mask fell away for a second. I glimpsed what was underneath, raw, primitive hatred. Then the mask was up again and his features were composed and impassive.

“We’ll see about that,” was all he said and then he walked away.

Sometimes I say too much for my own damn good.

I went into the hotel lobby. The desk clerk was at his post and the Mexican cleaning lady was battling the eternal Texas dust. The clerk called me over.

“Nasty business that,” he said. He looked shaken. The clerk was young fellow, probably not much older than Armbrister, but lucky enough to have a nice job in hotel.

“Don’t the local heel flies usually beat up people on Main Street?” I asked very innocently. “I suppose you know about Lee Armbrister and the F&M Bank. In a small town like this I bet you knew all the other young guys your age.”

He nodded. I reached for my money, but he stopped me with a gesture. “I didn’t know Lee too well. His family had a bad name what with his brother up in Huntsville and all. But I heard stuff from other guys. Some said Lee was running bootleg for some crooks and there was rumor he’d stolen a car load of moonshine and sold it up in Oklahoma.” He shrugged “Well, that’s all I ever heard, anyway.

“Oh, by the way. There was a phone call for you, Mr. Chisolm. It was Captain Hamer in Austin.”

I called Hamer back and he gave me the latest information. He’d gone to work on Martinez and J.R. Armbrister. There was nothing on the Mexican boy, but James Robert Armbrister had done a stretch in Huntsville for armed robbery was known to be a gunman for the Egan mob up in St. Louis.

“He’s clear of his sentence for robbery in Texas, but if he shows up Prohibition agents will pick him up on a Volstead Act charge. The Egan gang may have the St. Louis agents buffaloed, but the Austin office is clean.” Hamer didn’t have to add that it was clean because he had personally arrested the crooked agents after they tried to kill him.

I went back to my room and packed my bag. As I snapped it shut a thought clicked with me. I was closing this case. Without something more than a lot of half-baked doubts and rumors there wasn’t going to be any investigation. I could make a fuss about the blood money and the rewards might be ended. But who would look into this case? Who cared what happened to a pair of nobodies? The only way to make anyone look was to shove their noses in it, to have proof, solid, stinking, ugly proof. I had to stay until I got it.

I spent the afternoon racking my brains for how to get it. Anther trip to the Armbrister place might get me a bullet from Cousin Bob. Cooper had the county sewed up tight. The coroner didn’t think much of the sheriff, but not so little as to do something about it. The bootlegging ring was the key, but I’d already had one beating. It was no part of my plan to get another. Still the Brushy Creek juke joint and Clyde McTeague looked like the best point of entry. I checked my .45, it was oiled and loaded. I slipped it in my shoulder holster and I was ready to visit Sheriff Cooper’s speakeasy again.

As I was crossing the lobby the clerk called me over. “Mr. Chisolm, a youngster left a message or you.”

It was a note folded into a dirty envelope. The handwriting was a shaky, semi-literate scrawl, but I understood it well enough. “Mr. Chisam. I got to talk too you. I noe about how Lee & the Mex got shot. I can spill it all for the rite $.” It was signed by McTeague. The bootlegger was the weak link in this business all right.

I wasn’t going top go in blind if I could help it. And I wasn’t going to disappear without a trace either. I used the hotel phone to call Hamer again.

Hamer was a little more talkative than usual and I was a little less. I should have known that would cause trouble.

“I’m going to the Brushy Creek saloon to meet an informant named McTeague. This could break open the Armbrister shooting,” I said.

“O.K., keep your eyes open partner. I’ve talked to some of the Rangers that work that part of the state. A couple of them are interested in talking to Sheriff Cooper about bootlegging in Selman County. They have a notion he may know more than a little.”

“That’s a fair notion.”

“They’re going to Selman tonight. They’ll meet Cooper tomorrow at the courthouse. The J.R. Armbrister angle is interesting too.”

“The Rangers want J.R. Armbrister?”

“They might want to take him in for questioning. Nothing particular, mind you. Just general principal.”

I chose my words carefully. Taking J.R. could mean bloodshed if it wasn’t handled right. “Tell them to talk to me first. This county can be dangerous.” I didn’t want to spill everything to Hamer over the phone, there would be time when the Rangers got here.

Hamer agreed and hung up. I started to walk away from the phone and noticed the old Mexican cleaning lady. I didn’t know she’d been listening. I didn’t really care, after all I didn’t know if she spoke English.

“Por favor, señor. I mus’ use thees telephone. Could you help me ring the person I need talk to, señor?”

She handed me a paper with a number on it, Pecan-6431, and I dialed. I didn’t stop to listen to whom she spoke. She didn’t speak Spanish though, she spoke in a low tone but it sounded like English.

Soon I was speeding out to Brushy Creek Road. The light was fading and I wanted to get this over with before travelling any lonely country roads in the dark. I knew enough fellows who started trips like that but never finished them.

The saloon was quiet. My car was the only one there. Birds fluttered and wheeled over the surrounding trees. The ground where the boozers parked their cars was bare, except for burr clover and liquor bottles.

I turned off my motor and went to the front door. It was locked. There was a well-used path that lead around the left side of the building and a set of tire tracks showed fresh in it. I followed them around the saloon. There was an open area behind the main building. It was not as big as in font, but enough for working. The saloon had a back door with firewood piled beside it. To my left was a shed. It had two small windows on either side of its door. The car tracks led past it along the dirt trail that led into the cedar brakes. There was no sign of the car that made the tracks.

My eyes went back to the shed. The door was ajar and I could see something inside. It looked like the sole of a man’s shoe. It was facing me on the leg of a man sprawled on his back.

I pulled my .45 and gingerly stepped over to the door. A gentle push revealed Clyde McTeague lying on his back, blood oozing from a bullet wound in his chest. I stepped back from the door ready to shoot, but before I could make a move Sheriff Cooper spoke behind me.

“Drop the pistol! Now hands up and turn around slowly!” I did as he said.

Cooper was stepping from the back door of the saloon, gun in hand. Weidman was with him, leveling a Winchester repeater at my chest.

Cooper smiled, a sour, hateful smile. “Too bad Chisolm. You had to keep pushing. That got Clyde here killed.”

Weidman laughed a jackal-like laugh. “Gonna get you killed too, Mister Dee-tective.”

“Are y’all crazy? Do you think you can just murder me and get away with it?” At that moment I was truly amazed at how stupid Cooper was. But when I reflect on a long career involved with criminals of many kinds I find few that had much smarts, at best they are a little smarter than the marks and the cops.

“Oh no,” Cooper replied. “Clyde will kill you. It seems he shot you in a drunken argument and we had to kill the old fool.”

“I expect he had the D.T.s from drinking his own ‘shine.” Weidman made his jackal-laugh again.

“What’s your angle Cooper? Do you just like killing people? Why did you kill Armbrister and Martinez?” I asked.

“Those punks got uppish. Thought they could steal my whiskey and sell it on the side. So I got rid of ‘em. It lets the other rumrunners know who’s boss in this county. And I’ll get paid for it too. Except you couldn’t just pay us and leave, you had to go to work on Ol’ Clyde. He felt bad about setting up the boys. The lousy Judas. He’d have cracked sooner or later and that would’ve been the end. But now there are no more witnesses, no nosy detective. Now the banks will just pay me. Goodbye Chisolm.”

My mind was racing a million miles a second and going nowhere. I didn’t know how killing me was going to cover up Cooper’s crimes. Fat lot of good that did me. I was going to die in the millisecond after Cooper’s finger squeezed the trigger and his bullet crashed through my brain. Who’d be stupid then?

The growl of a motor cut through my mental dialog. It grew to a roar and involuntarily I looked behind myself.

A shiny new Packard I had last seen at the Armbrister farm raced around the corner of the saloon. We all scattered as it veered straight toward us. I saw “Bob” lean from the driver’s window. In his hand was a Thompson sub-machine gun. The gun roared and bucked as bullets rained out in a deadly hail.

I threw myself to the ground. Cooper and Weidman fired once each and ran for the shed. The car’s wheels grew huge as they rolled mercilessly toward me. They flashed past, a foot from my face, while the Tommy gun spat lead and boomed like a Western Front barrage. The Packard skidded to a halt, passenger side facing the shed.

I scrambled to my feet to make a run for the back door of the saloon. I saw my gun on the ground and snatched for it. Gunshots cracked viciously between the shed and car. As I stooped for my .45, I felt a slug burn across my leg. My leg went numb with the pain and I hit the ground.

For a dazed second I expected a dozen more shots to rip me apart. Slugs whined overhead and one splashed dirt in my face as it struck the ground. Then I felt an arm reach out and pull me to cover.

“Nice driving, Mr. Armbrister,” I said. My leg was bleeding badly so I set about making a pressure bandage with my handkerchief and necktie.

He was couched behind the car, switching the drum on his Tommy gun. “Call me J.R.,” he said. “I learned how to drive running liquor past the revenuers.” He patted his gun. “A fast car and one of these babies and nobody touches us Egan mob guys.”

“How’d you know I’d be here?”

He grinned wolfishly. “A little birdie told me.” He finished fitting the drum in place and cocked the gun. Armbrister stood and sprayed the shed with hot lead. The staccato crash of the Tommy gun mingled with the flat cracks of Weidman’s rifle and the popping reports of Cooper’s pistol. Suddenly the Tommy gun stopped and Armbrister writhed in pain.

“Sonuvabitch!” he groaned. “That one went in.” Blood was pouring from a wound in his shoulder across his expensive suit. He glared at me, the madness of battle in his eyes. “If I’m going out, I’m taking those sons of bitches with me!”

The roar of his battle cry was nearly drowned by the chopping blasts of the Tommy gun. He rushed the shed, firing from the hip. Splinters of wood and glass flew from the walls and windows of the shed as bullets clawed them apart. Bullets flew from the shed too. Armbrister staggered and stopped shooting.

Cooper lurched into the doorway, covered in blood from wounds that should have killed him. He raised his pistol, taking aim slowly and deliberately at Armbrister. The sheriff’s eyes were dead already. He clicked the pistol on an empty cartridge. Armbrister turned the Tommy gun on him and blew apart Cooper’s head. Then he too collapsed.

Weidman slowly emerged from the shed. He was bleeding too, from superficial wounds.

“You shouldn’t have come back J.R., now you’re gonna join your brother!” He levered a round into the Winchester and raised the rifle to his shoulder.

I came up from behind the Packard and blasted two shots into Weidman’s midsection. The .45 slugs slammed him down like a rag doll.

I limped over to Armbrister. He had another wound that had grazed his neck and a third in his leg. He opened his eyes and looked at me.

“They got me pretty bad, but I can make it.”

“I’ll take you to a doctor. I think I can drive.”

“No. I won’t hang for this. I know a doc in Oklahoma, he’s on the gang’s payroll.” He groaned. “Oh Lordy, I’m getting out of the rackets. Ma’s already lost Lee. Seeing me hang would finish her.”

I helped him to his feet. The wounds didn’t look good. He plugged them with a handkerchief and got behind the wheel. The man’s stamina was shocking. I’d seen men live through worse wounds down on the Border, but I’d never seen a man pick himself up and propose to drive hundreds of miles with holes like that. There was something in his ferocious will to survive that frightened me. He had killed to avenge his brother, but he would live to spare his mother. He drove off on the trail into the cedar brakes and was lost to my view.

My leg was ablaze with pain and growing stiff. I carefully picked up the two shells from my .45 Colt. I had just pocketed them when headlights came around the corner of the saloon. The car stopped and a man stepped out. The glaring headlights blinded me. He stood silhouetted, his right hand held a pistol.

“Texas Rangers! Keep your hands in sight and tell me what’s going on here!”

They got me to a doctor who patched my wound while I explained how the Brushy Creek Road speakeasy turned into a slaughterhouse. I told them how Cooper and Weidman ran the bootlegging in Selman County. They had used McTeague to set up Lee Armbrister and Jose Martinez because the boys had crossed them. I was a little vague here, I said maybe another bootleg mob was involved.

I told them how the scheme to bump off Armbrister and Martinez for the money worked. And I told the Rangers how and why they had killed McTeague and wanted to kill me.

Then I picked my words very carefully. I told the Rangers that some rival gangsters had showed up and gunned Cooper and Weidman down. I wasn’t sure who they were, maybe some outfit from New Orleans or Chicago.

“Scum like Cooper and Weidman won’t be missed,” one of the Rangers said. “Hell, we should send them gangsters a medal for cleaning up the state.”

We all laughed and agreed that suggestion wasn’t too bad.

I guess Armbrister made it to Oklahoma. They never arrested him in Texas. I did a bit of checking. A Prohibition agent up in St. Louis told me the Egan gang had a gunman named Armbrister but he dropped out of sight around 1928.

All that came later though. What I saw when I left Selman County cleared up a lot of things. One of the Rangers offered to drive me back to Austin since my leg was injured. But when we passed the cemetery I made him stop so I could get out.

Finally I saw them together. Mrs. Armbrister sat side by side with her. They were laying flowers on a couple of fresh graves. I never did know her name exactly, but I guess it was Martinez. I’d just known her as an old cleaning woman, the kind of person you barely notice.

I thought about a telephone line, a luxury a son rich with dirty money might buy for a worried mother. I wondered what Martinez’ mother had told the person on the other end and what she had heard. I looked at the crumpled up piece of paper she had given me the night before. Pecan-6431 connected to the Armbrister farm.

I got back in the car and we went back to Austin. I watched Selman county and its secrets fade in the rear-view mirror.