Текст книги "Robert B. Parker's The Bridge"

Автор книги: Robert Knott

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The Bridge

Number VII of

Virgil Cole & Everett Hitch

Knott, Robert

Penguin Group US (2014)

Tags: Virgil Cole & Everett Hitch

Virgil Cole & Everett Hitchttt

The next gritty, gun-slinging entry in the New York Times -bestselling series, featuring itinerant lawmen Virgil Cole and Everett Hitch.

Territorial Marshals Virgil Cole and Everett Hitch are back in Appaloosa, where their work enforcing the law has been exceptionally quiet. All that is about to change. An ominous storm rolls in, and along with it a band of night riders with a devious scheme, who show up at the Rio Blanco camp, where a three-hundred-foot bridge is under construction.

Appaloosa's Sheriff Sledge Driskill and his deputies are the first to respond, but as the storm grows more threatening, news of troubles at the bridge escalate and the Sheriff and his deputies go missing.

THE SPENSER NOVELS

Robert B. Parker’s Cheap Shot (by Ace Atkins)

Silent Night (with Helen Brann)

Robert B. Parker’s Wonderland (by Ace Atkins)

Robert B. Parker’s Lullaby (by Ace Atkins)

Sixkill

Painted Ladies

The Professional

Rough Weather

Now & Then

Hundred-Dollar Baby

School Days

Cold Service

Bad Business

Back Story

Widow’s Walk

Potshot

Hugger Mugger

Hush Money

Sudden Mischief

Small Vices

Chance

Thin Air

Walking Shadow

Paper Doll

Double Deuce

Pastime

Stardust

Playmates

Crimson Joy

Pale Kings and Princes

Taming a Sea-Horse

A Catskill Eagle

Valediction

The Widening Gyre

Ceremony

A Savage Place

Early Autumn

Looking for Rachel Wallace

The Judas Goat

Promised Land

Mortal Stakes

God Save the Child

The Godwulf Manuscript

THE JESSE STONE NOVELS

Robert B. Parker’s Blind Spot (by Reed Farrel Coleman)

Robert B. Parker’s Damned If You Do (by Michael Brandman)

Robert B. Parker’s Fool Me Twice (by Michael Brandman)

Robert B. Parker’s Killing the Blues (by Michael Brandman)

Split Image

Night and Day

Stranger in Paradise

High Profile

Sea Change

Stone Cold

Death in Paradise

Trouble in Paradise

Night Passage

THE SUNNY RANDALL NOVELS

Spare Change

Blue Screen

Melancholy Baby

Shrink Rap

Perish Twice

Family Honor

THE VIRGIL COLE/EVERETT HITCH NOVELS

Robert B. Parker’s Bull River (by Robert Knott)

Robert B. Parker’s Ironhorse (by Robert Knott)

Blue-Eyed Devil

Brimstone

Resolution

Appaloosa

ALSO BY ROBERT B. PARKER

Double Play

Gunman’s Rhapsody

All Our Yesterdays

A Year at the Races (with Joan H. Parker)

Perchance to Dream

Poodle Springs (with Raymond Chandler)

Love and Glory

Wilderness

Three Weeks in Spring (with Joan H. Parker)

Training with Weights (with John R. Marsh)

G. P. PUTNAM’S SONS

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Published by the Penguin Group

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Copyright © 2014 by The Estate of Robert B. Parker

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Library of Congress Cataloging-in-Publication Data

Knott, Robert, date.

Robert B. Parker’s The bridge / Robert Knott.

p. cm.—(A Cole and Hitch novel ; 3)

ISBN 978-0-698-16409-3

1. Cole, Virgil (Fictitious character)—Fiction. 2. Hitch, Everett (Fictitious character)—Fiction. I. Title. II. Title: Bridge.

PS3611.N685R64 2014b 2014040666

813'.6—dc23

This is a work of fiction. Names, characters, places, and incidents either are the product of the author’s imagination or are used fictitiously, and any resemblance to actual persons, living or dead, businesses, companies, events, or locales is entirely coincidental.

Version_1

For Julie

CONTENTS

Other Titles from Robert B. Parker

Title Page

Copyright

Dedication

Prologue

Chapter 1

Chapter 2

Chapter 3

Chapter 4

Chapter 5

Chapter 6

Chapter 7

Chapter 8

Chapter 9

Chapter 10

Chapter 11

Chapter 12

Chapter 13

Chapter 14

Chapter 15

Chapter 16

Chapter 17

Chapter 18

Chapter 19

Chapter 20

Chapter 21

Chapter 22

Chapter 23

Chapter 24

Chapter 25

Chapter 26

Chapter 27

Chapter 28

Chapter 29

Chapter 30

Chapter 31

Chapter 32

Chapter 33

Chapter 34

Chapter 35

Chapter 36

Chapter 37

Chapter 38

Chapter 39

Chapter 40

Chapter 41

Chapter 42

Chapter 43

Chapter 44

Chapter 45

Chapter 46

Chapter 47

Chapter 48

Chapter 49

Chapter 50

Chapter 51

Chapter 52

Chapter 53

Chapter 54

Chapter 55

Chapter 56

Chapter 57

Chapter 58

Chapter 59

Chapter 60

Chapter 61

Chapter 62

Chapter 63

Chapter 64

Chapter 65

Chapter 66

Chapter 67

Chapter 68

Chapter 69

Chapter 70

Chapter 71

Chapter 72

Chapter 73

Chapter 74

Chapter 75

Chapter 76

Chapter 77

Chapter 78

Chapter 79

Acknowledgments

Prologue

T he dense mass of stars was unusually ominous and threatening, as if the whole tangle of constellations was up to no damn good. The wide night sky pushed down hard on the four weary horsemen, appraising them, like a powerful and intolerant observer.

With their tilted brims and slouching shoulders, the mounted men rode single file and without word, as their horses carried them toward their destination. They were all fairly young. One was a hefty fellow with a large gut; the second was gangly with a narrow face and shoulders; the third was also skinny but was dark-skinned, maybe a half-breed; and the fourth was small and wiry.

Hard to know what the hell these night riders were thinking. What was going on in their heads? They would have had to feel the overhead pressure, the challenging and unforgiving weight. The stars loomed close enough to reach out and touch; a twisted twinkling expanse. The four horsemen rode slowly, deliberately up the eastern rim of the Rio Blanco River.

The only sound was the occasional clink of a bit, the footfalls of their horses, and the soft rumble of the white-water river in the canyon far below.

The dropping moon provided enough light for them to see their dogged and hell-bent way, and just ahead, where he was supposed to be, they saw the big man waiting for them.

They had met him only once before. They knew from the brief encounter he was not someone to cross. Not ever. He was different, above average in every respect. He could smile and show his nice white teeth, but he was menacing and ill-tempered to his very core. There was something even more dangerous about him: it was as if he were from another place in time. One of the riders told the others that the big sonofabitch reminded him of what the warrior Achilles might have been like. He was handsome and rawboned. He had a warrior swagger to him as if he’d single-handedly just wiped out an army and was looking forward to his next victim. His movements were swift and specific. He had thick, broad shoulders and his hands and forearms were sinewy with muscle. His neck was wide and corded. He had a full head of shiny, coarse hair and his eyes were deep-set and dark blue.

The night riders were also fearful of the two brothers who would accompany them later, but they were in this, all of them. They would not turn back and they could not turn back, not now, not tonight. They were all committed to what they rode out on this night to do.

The big Achilles man got to his feet in the buckboard. He stood looking at them as they neared and then jumped down from the wagon as they came to a stop.

“You’re late,” he said.

He threw back a canvas uncovering the wagon’s freight.

“What about the telegraph lines,” he asked, before they could defend their belated arrival.

“They’re cut,” the dark-skinned man said, as he dismounted.

“You see anybody?”

“We did not,” the hefty man said.

“Anybody see you?”

“No, nobody.”

“You sure?”

“We are,” the hefty man replied.

“All right,” he said. “Let’s get a move on it.”

“How far from here?” the small, wiry man said.

“Quarter-mile,” he said. “From here we go in on foot. Each one hauls a load.”

“Where we gonna meet ’em?” the hefty man said.

“Just carry your load and follow me,” he said. “Got one hour before sunup.”

The riders didn’t waste any time. They tied their horses under a stand of small sycamores and went about the task at hand.

One by one, each of the men removed the supplies from the buckboard and followed the big warrior man, the Achilles man.

They walked along a narrow deer path through thickets, high above the river. As they neared their destination, they could hear someone up ahead of them.

“Far enough,” a man’s voice said.

The voice was raspy, with a distinct southern drawl.

They knew it was one of the brothers, and then they saw them both. The two men stepped out from a cluster of briars near a tree-covered wash that folded off down toward the river some two hundred feet below.

The brothers were stout men, with full, bristly beards and tangled, unruly hair. Two of the riders had known the brothers in earlier days and were not any more comfortable with them than they were with the warrior man.

Both brothers were intelligent men, but they were mercurial and quick-tempered. They presented themselves as polite and forthright, but a strange, disconnected quality lurked within. They both were quiet and though their eyes were kind, there was a constant callous and mistrusting element about their demeanor.

“Don’t ever turn your back on them,” the dark-skinned man said to the others.

This night, however, what these men were focused on was the brothers’ shrewd scheme. They recruited the warrior man and the four riders, and if everything went as planned, they all would make a lot of money. More money than any of them would have made in a lifetime.

Before tonight, they had done a mock run of the plan. Each man knew his job. When the taller brother said, “Let’s go,” they moved out.

It did not take long for them to plant the dynamite.

One of the men, the heavyset man, knew everything about how and where it should be placed. He had been the one who showed the others what to do. His extensive knowledge of explosives was the very reason for his recruitment in the first place.

Daybreak was upon them and the first rays of sun began to appear as the heavyset man instructed the younger brother how to terminate the last connection.

“I remember,” the younger brother said.

The heavyset man nodded. He started off walking toward the trail that led back to the buckboard. The others were ahead of him and he followed them as he unspooled the wire.

After the younger brother made the final connection and was headed back toward the deer path he came face-to-face with Percy O’Malley.

“Hey,” Percy said. “Good morning.”

The brother was startled to see the old man.

“Morning, Percy,” the brother said.

“What are you doing out here so early?” Percy said.

The brother looked around the old man to see if there was anyone behind him.

“I’ll show you,” the brother said, as he walked to the edge.

The old man followed him.

The brother pointed to the river, two hundred feet below.

“Look,” the brother said.

When Percy leaned over to look, the brother pulled his long knife from its sheath, cupped his hand around the old man’s mouth, and slit his throat. He shoved the man off the side and watched as his body tumbled into the river. If he had stopped to look, he would have seen the body swept up by the current, leaving a murky red trail dispatched behind it.

By the time he made it back to where the other men were, the heavyset man had the wires connected on the terminals of the detonator.

They had a good vantage point from their location.

“Who wants to do the honors?” the heavyset man said.

“Me,” the warrior man said without hesitation.

He got down on his knees and the others closed in behind him.

“On three,” the warrior man said.

“One . . . two . . .”

He lowered the plunger handle on the detonator and the men watched the three-hundred-foot iron bridge that crossed over the Rio Blanco River explode in a monstrous blast, earth-quaking and sulfurous as if it came from deep down in hell, delivered by the Evil Red Devil himself.

— 1 —

Weather.”

“Is,” Virgil said.

“Don’t look good,” I said.

“No,” Virgil said. “It don’t.”

Virgil and I were watching a faraway line of darkness coming toward us from the north.

“Got this place shingled just in time,” I said.

Virgil glanced up, looking at the underside of the porch overhang we were sitting under.

“Know soon enough if we got any leaks,” I said.

“’Spect we will.”

“This’ll be the first sign of weather since we’ve been back here in Appaloosa,” I said.

“It is,” Virgil said, looking back to the clouds. “Ain’t it?”

“Been warm and dry,” I said. “Hot, even.”

“Has,” Virgil said.

Virgil put the heels of his boots on the porch rail and tipped his chair back a little. We sat quiet for a long moment as we watched the dark weather moving slowly in our direction.

“What is it,” Virgil said, tilting his head a little. “Where are we, Everett?”

“November, Virgil. Second day of.”

Virgil shook his head a little.

“What the hell happened to October?”

“You had those two German carpenters you hired working my backside off on this place, that’s what happened,” I said. “Good goings for you things have been quiet in the outlaw racket.”

“Temperate times,” he said.

Virgil rocked his chair a little as he looked at the clouds.

“Hope it’s not the calm before the storm,” I said.

“Never know,” Virgil said.

“No reason to think about outlawing that’s not yet happened,” I said. “Or be downright superstitious.”

“No,” Virgil said. “No reason.”

We sat quiet a moment, watching the faraway storm.

“Bad weather does make folks desperate,” I said. “People get out of sorts.”

“Been our experience,” Virgil said, “people get cold, desperate, and hungry.”

I leaned back in my chair and looked through the open doorway into the house.

“Speaking of it,” I said. “What do you think she’s cooking up in there?”

“Don’t know,” Virgil said. “Allie said she was making something special.”

“That don’t sound good.”

Virgil smiled a little.

“She’s trying,” he said.

“Maybe you ought to get her a cookbook,” I said. “With recipes. Where she learns how to measure stuff out and how long to cook it and what goes with what and so on.”

“I offered,” Virgil said. “She told me all good chefs cook by the seat of their pants.”

We both thought about that for a moment.

“You got some of that Kentucky?”

“I do,” Virgil said.

“Might as well have ourselves a nudge or two,” I said.

“No reason not to,” Virgil said.

Virgil removed his boots from the porch railing and lowered the front legs of the chair he’d been tilting back in. He got to his feet just as three men on horseback wearing oilcloth slickers rounded Second Street, riding directly toward us at a steady pace. It was Sheriff Sledge Driskill with two of his deputies, Chip Childers and Karl Worley.

“Got some intention,” I said.

“They do,” Virgil said.

— 2 —

Might be the end of those temperate times we were talking about.”

“Might,” Virgil said.

Sledge and his deputies slowed as they neared and came to a stop just in front of the porch.

“Virgil,” Sledge said. “Everett.”

“Afternoon,” I said.

Virgil eased up to the porch steps.

“Sledge,” Virgil said with a nod. “Boys.”

Sledge was a big man with thick black eyebrows and a full dark beard streaked with silver. Karl was a skinny Canadian fella, an ex-cowhand who was never without sheep chaps. Chip was a chubby overgrown kid with a large wad of tobacco crammed in his cheek.

“What brings you here?” Virgil said.

“Wanted to let y’all know,” Sledge said, “got some business away. And the town will be scarce of us for a bit. Only deputies left on duty will be Skinny Jack and Book. Chastain is sick in bed with a stomach bug.”

“Where you headed,” Virgil said.

“We’re headed up to the bridge camp.”

“Now?” I said.

“Yep,” Sledge said, tipping his head to the dark clouds on the northern horizon. “Storm’s a comin’.”

“That it is,” I said.

“Need to beat it best we can,” Sledge said.

“Why the bridge camp?” Virgil said.

“Know Lonnie Carman?”

Virgil shook his head, then looked at me.

“Know who he is,” I said. “Little fella with the tattoos, did some time, works at the Boston House?”

“That’s him,” Sledge said. “He don’t work there anymore. He’s been working on the bridge crew.”

“What about him?” Virgil said.

“Well,” Sledge said. “His new wife, Winifred, believes something has happened to him.”

“What?” Virgil said.

“He didn’t return from his bridge shift when he was supposed to,” Sledge said.

Bridge camp was a construction site a day’s ride south of Appaloosa. The bridge had been a major undertaking for the territory. It spanned a wide chasm across the Rio Blanco, where rotating crews of workers had been constructing the massive timber-and-steel truss crossing for the better part of two years.

“Why does she think something has happened to him?” I said.

Sledge shrugged a bit.

“Says it’s unlike him. Says he’s punctual. She came to see me yesterday. Said Lonnie was supposed to be back home by now. Said she sent two wires to the way station near the bridge where they correspond bridge business, materials and what have you, but got no response back. I told her, give it a little time, maybe he was just busy bridge building.”

“She’s been back three times since,” Karl said.

Sledge nodded.

“Each time she’s been more riled. She put her nose in my face,” Sledge said, shaking his head a little, “said if I didn’t go and find her husband she was gonna come roust the two marshals in town to do the lookin’ and, well, I don’t want that. Having her coming over here pestering y’all.”

“She hollered in his face last time,” Chip said, then spit a stream of tobacco juice in the dirt. “Eyes damn near popped out of her skull.”

“Hollered, hell,” Karl said. “She screamed like a cut calf.”

“I didn’t have the heart to tell her maybe he run off,” Sledge said.

“I know I damn sure would,” Chip said. “Can’t imagine marrying a lady like that.”

“Hell, no,” Karl said with a nod in agreement. “Me for sure, neither.”

“No matter,” Sledge said. “Wanted to spare you two of the misery of her coming over here. We’re gonna ride up, see if we can find the poor sonofabitch.”

Virgil nodded some.

“We’ll be here,” he said.

Sledge gave a sharp nod, then backed up his big bay a bit.

The lawmen turned their horses and rode off south. We watched them as they galloped off and disappeared behind the mercantile at the end of the street.

“Winifred?” Virgil said. “That the fearsome lady churns butter at the grocer?”

“It is,” I said.

Virgil nodded a bit, then walked into the house to get the Kentucky whiskey.

— 3 —

Virgil and I had been working our job as territorial marshals for close to a year before we returned to Appaloosa. We spent the last part of the summer and near the whole of the fall helping the two German carpenters Virgil hired to rebuild Virgil and Allie’s house.

It was a bigger house than the one Allie had burned to the ground during a cooking mishap while Virgil and I were over in the Indian territories. The new house was a two-story with a three-sided porch. I told Virgil, and Allie, I was happy to help build it but had no interest in painting it. So, with the exception of the place being unpainted, the house was complete.

“She’s barefoot, covered in flour from head to toe,” Virgil said when he came back out with the Kentucky and two glasses.

Virgil poured us a nudge, put the bottle between us, and sat back in the chair.

“To the house,” I said, raising my glass.

“By God,” Virgil said, raising his.

“And to not being bossed around by those goddamn German boys no more,” I said.

Virgil offered a sharp nod.

“They’re particular,” Virgil said.

“You could call ’em that.”

We started to tip the whiskey back when Virgil stopped and looked toward the darkness in the far distance.

“You hear that?” Virgil said.

“Thunder?”

Virgil shook his head.

“No,” he said.

I listened.

“Hell,” I said. “Music.”

Virgil nodded and then we saw coming over the rise in front of the darkness to the north a tall colorfully painted wagon with musicians sitting on top, playing a lively tune.

Virgil shook his head a little.

“Don’t that beat hell?” I said.

“Does,” Virgil said.

Leading the wagon was a single rider on a tall horse. Behind the wagon with the musicians playing music on top were other wagons trailing behind, six wagons in all.

“That’s that troupe was up in Yaqui, no doubt.”

“What troupe?” Virgil said.

“Beauchamp Brothers Theatrical Extravaganza, they call it. A traveling group from New Orleans,” I said. “They go town to town doing dramatic shows, dancing, magic, got ’em a sharpshooter and clairvoyant fortune-teller, that sort of thing. Allie’s been talking about it for weeks. Said it’s been all the talk at the ladies’ social.”

“She never said nothing to me,” Virgil said. “First I heard of it.”

“She talks to me, Virgil.”

“Talks to me, too.”

“I listen to her.”

“Well, hell, Everett, I listen to her.”

“Not when she’s just going on you don’t.”

“Well, sometimes she talks just to listen to herself speak, Everett,” Virgil said. “More than sometimes. You know that.”

“I do.”

I got out of my chair and called into the house, “Allie.”

“What?”

“That Beauchamp Brothers bunch is coming into Appaloosa.”

“What!” Allie exclaimed. “Really? My goodness.”

She came running out of the front door, taking off her apron. She rolled it up and threw it in Virgil’s lap. A puff of flour dust exploded up in Virgil’s face as Allie leaned over on the porch rail and looked in the direction of the music.

“They weren’t supposed to be here until next week,” Allie said. “Oh my goodness, my goodness, my goodness. Isn’t this exciting, Everett?”

“Is, Allie.”

“Help me up, Everett?”

I held on to Allie’s hand so she could step up on the rail for a better view. Even though Allie was no longer a spring chicken, she still had a youthful beauty about her. Her agile body was firm, her eyes sparkled, and her skin glowed like that of someone half her age.

“Careful there, Allie, you don’t slip and hurt yourself,” Virgil said, as he bullwhipped the apron, freeing it of flour.

“Oh, Virgil.”

Folks started to gather in the street, looking in the direction of the Beauchamp Brothers Theatrical Extravaganza as they entered town. Now that they were closer, we could clearly see musicians playing banjo, trumpet, trombone, and tuba as a set of cymbals clanged together.

The single horseman leading the way held up his hand like he was a chief quartermaster halting his cavalry.

The musicians climbed down from the painted wagon and formed a line behind the horseman, never missing a beat.

“That must be him,” Allie said. “That must be Beauregard Beauchamp leading the way.”

“Everett said this extravaganza is the Beauchamp Brothers,” Virgil said. “Might well be the other brother.”

“Oh, no,” Allie said. “Boudreaux was killed a few years ago by a tiger.”