Black Hats (27 page)

Something, a shoulder probably, smashed against the juncture of the doors, straining the loop of rope.

Wyatt aimed down the long barrel at where the doors met, but above the rope-wound handle, and on the next ramming, fired off a round, wood chips flying.

“Shit!” somebody on the other side said.

Moments later, like a nasty parody of the hammering rain, the machine gun ripped into the doors at that crucial juncture and chunks of wood flew and the rope took a hit but held on by a few threads.

The tommy-gun fire let up—Wyatt figured the shooter was changing magazines—and he said to Bat, “You’re fine right there,” and scrambled around to the third aisle, where awaited the other set of metal steps, which he positioned just down from Bat to the left, and climbed and took his post at the top of the fortress of booze.

Another thunderous flurry of lead was unleashed on the doors and more wood flew and the rope threads were obliterated and two men came shouldering through, doors bursting open, the pair of hoods making way for the bald machine gunner who came in blasting, stitching bullets across the upper half of the first wall of crates, wood splintering, bottles cracking, liquor leaching.

Bat, trying for another head shot, managed only to take the machine gunner’s fedora off, revealing his pink fleshy dome; but it scared the son of a bitch, and as the shooter backed up, losing his footing in the bay’s blood, bumping against the dead horse, a wild spray of slugs sent his two cronies scurrying in opposite directions as he literally slipped back into the outer warehouse.

Despite the slapstick of seeing the one thug slip-sliding and the others ducking their own boy’s bullets, this had served to send the adversaries deeper into the storehouse, the curly-haired hood going to the left of the stacked crates, the squat joker to the right. From his position Wyatt saw each man streak by, and took a shot at both, twisting to do it, not succeeding with either round.

Confident Wyatt would watch his back, Bat kept his eyes on that opening, which yawned fairly wide now; the machine gunner was out of sight, either snugged on the other side of one big door, or crouched down using the horse carcass and overturned wagon as a barrier behind which to reload and cogitate.

In the meantime, in his own aisle, Wyatt had shoved the steps closer to the rearward row of crates, and climbed up them, and crawled onto the two-carton-deep stack to lie horizontally, belly down, and get a view of empty aisle four. Carefully, with some difficulty—not wanting to stick the .45 in his waistband even for a moment or two—he managed to drop down into that aisle, landing nice and soft.

He moved to the left, staying low, the long barrel of the gun in his right hand making of his very arm a rifle. Silent as a Sioux, he made his way to the end of the aisle, hurtled around to aisle five with the weapon ready to fire…

…but aisle five was empty.

He repeated the process, but headed right this time, and came around into aisle six, only to find it empty, as well.

This meant the two hoods had to be between the last wall of crates and the rear wall of the warehouse itself. Nowhere else for them to be.

He moved along aisle six, slowly, haltingly, pausing to listen.

Gunfire had, for an unsettling full minute or more, given over performance privileges to the pounding rain. Loud as the declamatory downpour was, with its punctuation of thunder, he could hear something else, somebody,
somebodies
, whispering.

With the position of his adversaries established, Wyatt smiled grimly to himself.

With some reluctance, he shoved the .45 into his waistband, and he reached up, as if surrendering, his hands finding the top crate on the stack.

And he shoved.

The two crates, butted against each other, went for a ride to come down hard on the two unseen men, whose cries of surprise and pain took any doubt away about their location, emphasized by the clatter of crates on concrete, and Wyatt emptied his Colt into the pine wood and the bullets crashed through, breaking glass, wasting liquor, and, judging by the howls, finding their intended targets.

Quickly he reloaded—his milkman’s left jacket pocket was filled with cartridges—and came around to see what he’d accomplished.

Under the two broken-open crates, with shattered bottles of Scotch spilling fragrantly onto the floor, the two hoodlums lay. The squat character had a bullet in the head as he lay sprawled face-up atop the curly-headed one, who was wounded, arm and gut for sure, though the fat thug and the two busted crates and the scattered liquor somewhat obscured the view.

“Son of a bitch,” the curly-haired hood muttered.

Wyatt wasn’t sure whether this was an insult or merely an expression of displeasure, and didn’t ask, before shooting the man in the head.

“Two down!” Wyatt called.

“No sign of Baldy!” Bat called back.

Bat and Wyatt could only speculate how this exchange had fueled the remaining hood—perhaps he was outraged or saddened, learning of the demise of his co-workers; or maybe he didn’t like to have his hairlessness bandied about in so loose a manner.

At any rate, Wyatt had barely peeked out of the aisle when the tommy gunner came bounding through the gaping opening, into the storeroom, screaming as if he were on fire, but he was the one laying down fire, opening up with that tommy in sweeping, frenzied arcs.

Bat ducked back so quickly he came rattling bump bump bump bumping down the metal stairs and landed with no grace whatsoever on his ass; and, simultaneously, Wyatt dove back into the nearest aisle, number five.

The sounds this last man was generating—from his own war-party screams to the insistent barrage of bullets to the crack and crunch of splintering wood and the shattering glass of bottles—formed a mad symphony of destruction and rage, and Wyatt, with his own .45 up against a weapon that could spit .45 slugs back at him at a rate of fifteen hundred rounds a minute, wondered if his time had, at last, come.

He was not afraid; he had never been afraid in a gunfight, and his coolness, his steadiness, remained the eternal ace up his sleeve. So he told himself not to let a little noise unsettle him, and slipped out of the aisle and around behind, where the two dead hoodlums lay in a pool of bloody liquor and scattered pine.

As the mechanical chatter of the tommy continued counter-pointing the bald bastard’s banshee wail, along with the sad sound of shattering glass and snapping wood, Bat—wishing to hell he knew where Wyatt was, and what his friend was up to, but not daring give away either of their positions—got to his feet in the aisle and did his best to sort out where exactly the cacophony was coming from.

The shooter seemed to have moved from the doorway and off to the left. My God, the wood was flying! So were shards of glass, and the liquor gave off a pungent, medical aroma laced with cordite that in such quantity, not to mention circumstances, downright stank.

Bat was crouching, sensing that he should move left, when the tommy gunner appeared at the mouth of the aisle at left, and bullets went flying Bat’s way, as the shooter’s screechy scream went up a note or two, and Bat dove as if the floor were an inviting pool, which it wasn’t, unless wood and glass and booze was your idea of inviting….

Bat crawled around the corner into the next aisle and then was on his feet, running, hoping to come around and get the guy, but the gunner anticipated him, and the shrieking son of a bitch unleashed another hail of bullets, and Bat hit the floor and rolled, no wood or glass or liquor in this aisle—yet. When the gunner got through, though, there’d be plenty….

And then the shooting stopped.

The son of a bitch was out of ammo.

Bat cut back around aisle three, to blindside the bastard, but Wyatt’s gunfire, from the rear wall, drove the gunner back toward Bat.

Again Bat scrambled down an aisle, this time heading toward the rear wall, where Wyatt had been.

The machine-gunning started in again—must not have taken the boy long to shove a new magazine in—but at least the screaming had stopped.

Only that was bad.

Good for the ears, but bad every other way, because the more out of control the gunner was, the better their chances were. If the hood had his mind clear and his deadly purpose in focus, then Bat and Wyatt had real trouble; after all, they were seriously out-gunned by this bird….

By now the entire stockpile of liquor had been sprayed with bullets, and as the noise of cracking wood and breaking glass continued, the world of the warehouse, this section of it anyway, became a stench-ridden, booze-sodden, wood-chunk-cluttered obstacle course.

And when Bat got to the rear wall, he found the ghastly remains of the other two hoods, but no Wyatt.

Then he realized the relentless pummeling of gunfire was coming his way. He dropped to his knees, getting them wet in spilled liquor, using the two fallen hoodlums and the broken crates littering them for cover.

How desperate this was, Bat had scant time to consider, though he knew that chatter-gun could chop right through his modest man-wood-and-glass barricade.

When the bald gunner rounded the corner, still spraying slugs, Bat took aim and fired twice, and the guy, not hit but startled, pulled back, letting up on the trigger.

Bat had him now, and he fired…only he didn’t fire, he squeezed the trigger, all right, but the hammer fell on an empty chamber.

He was out.

“Even little guns need bullets,” the gunner said, his eyes wild, his smile rabid-animal crazed.

The son of a bitch was laughing when he fired…

…only
he
didn’t fire, either, his trigger bringing only clicks.

He was out, too.

Bat was scrambling to reload when he heard the footsteps.

Wyatt’s steady footsteps.

The bald hoodlum, in the process of pulling another drum-like magazine from a pocket of his slicker, had eyes showing whites all round and a wide open but silent mouth as he swivelled to face Wyatt Earp.

“Big gun,” Wyatt said.

The guy was shoving the magazine in.

“But empty is empty.”

The thunder of the long-barrel .45 rivaled anything the sky could summon, and the force of its impact shattered the bald head like a melon, splashing the bricks nearby with red and pink and gray matter, none of which was of any further use to the hoodlum, who fell like a cut-down tree, the machine gun clattering to the concrete a moment later.

In seconds Wyatt was at Bat’s side, helping him to his feet.

“Will you live, Bartholomew?”

Bat was checking himself out, hands roving over his milkman’s uniform. “Any nick I have’s from broken glass. Mostly I’m going to hurt in the morning, from all this running and jumping.”

“You’re not a young man, anymore.”

“And you are?” Bat’s eyes went to Wyatt. “What’s that?”

“What?”

“On your ear?”

Wyatt touched his left lobe. His fingers brought back blood. “A little graze.”

Bat roared with laughter; it struck Wyatt damned near as hysterical as the dead gunner’s shrieking. “Don’t tell me after all these years, you finally took a bullet!”

Wyatt raised a blood-dabbed forefinger in warning. “Not a word.”

They took stock of their situation.

First, they checked the street, to see what attention had been attracted; when, in the outer warehouse, Wyatt opened the side door, and stuck his head out, he got a faceful of rain and the heavens roared at him.

No sign of anyone or anything.

He wandered back over to the fallen horse and the overturned wagon and the dead skinny hoodlum, the first casualty of the gunfight.

“Damned waste of life,” Wyatt said.

Bat was approaching. “What, that dead son of a bitch? Why the hell should we care?”

“The horse.”

“Ah. Yes. You do have a point, at that.” Bat’s hands were on his hips as he continued to assess things. “Wyatt…not taking into consideration the four stiffs that need attention, we’re in a nasty spot.”

“I know.”

“That bald jackass splattered his bullets all over Johnny’s booze stockpile. Why, the boy’ll be lucky to salvage a fifth of it.”

“He’ll be lucky to salvage a fifth.”

Bat sighed. “How the hell did this go wrong?”

Wyatt shrugged. “Somebody made us, hauling ‘milk.’ Following us back would have took

’em only as far as the dairy. So I figure they staked out your place and followed us here.”

“Goddamn.” Bat gave another bigger sigh. “We let Johnny down. Well and truly we did.”

Wyatt shook his head. “No. Odds were against us from the start in this game.”

“I suppose.”

He put a hand on his old friend’s shoulder. “Bartholomew, what with no sign of the coppers, I’d suggest we dump the bodies, and go request that Johnny’s friend Droste come collect his horse and wagon.”

Bat nodded, and jerked a thumb toward the ruined fortress of booze. “And maybe have his dairy crew clean this place up, and see if any of the soldiers in those crates survived.”

“Yes.”

Yet another sigh came from Bat, who then scratched his head. “Well, Johnny still has his club, anyway. He’s not out of business by a long shot. All he has to do is arrange to buy from—”

“Who, Yale?” Wyatt said, frowning, his head back. “Think, Bartholomew. With Johnny’s liquor gone, nothing stands in the way of Capone taking his revenge.”

The blood drained from Bat’s face; the pale blue eyes turned sorrowful. “Christ, Wyatt.

Young Johnny’s a dead man. Unless…”

“If there’s an ‘unless,’ I’m pleased to hear it.”

Suddenly Bat was grinning; he gestured to the nearby corpse. “Who says
we
killed these bastards?”

“I seem to recall doing it.”

“Yes, but who’s the wiser? Those four stiffs aren’t talking, not any more than that poor dead bay.” He shook a friendly finger in Wyatt’s face. “Remember this: Yale and Capone have their hands full, across the river, right now—there’s a small war growing bigger and bigger by the day.”

Wyatt’s eyes tightened. “The Irish gang? Those White Handers?”

“Exactly. Who’s to say
they
didn’t do this? In fact, if we handle the disposal right, namely Brooklyn way, they could be the prime suspects.”