Good Fences Make Good (A Dan Wilder Short Story) Read online

forearm against Belton’s back, straight up and down, his elbow gouging a little into the man’s lower back.

  “Now open it,” he murmured.

  Belton turned the knob and started to push the door open. Wilder slugged him behind the ear with the .38, bracing himself to take Belton’s weight and at the same time shouting, “Harris!”

  He heard movement behind the door. He pushed the unconscious man against it, swinging it abruptly inward into darkness.

  Still holding Belton upright, he again shouted, “Harris!”

  The shout echoed loudly in the vestibule and stairway.

  Wilder shoved his decoy partway through the open doorway, keeping himself to the right, close to the wall, out of the line of fire.

  “Harris!” he roared. “Come out of there or I’ll give you what Raney got.”

  Then the shooting started. He felt the impact of the bullets ripping into Belton. Again and again he shouted Harris’s name, just to keep the uproar going.

  More shots flashed out of the dark room. Belton twitched. A moan escaped him. Wilder dropped him, took the .38 and smashed the vestibule’s ceiling light. Darkness was immediate.

  Crouching, Wilder peered carefully through the doorway into the darkness, saw movement, and fired at it.

  Another couple of shots came at him. He waited until they stopped, then went through the doorway in a dive. Hitting the floor, he kept rolling. He heard another shot rip into the floor back where he’d landed.

  Vaguely in the gun-flash he glimpsed a face, snapped a shot that way, heard a grunt, and went on rolling until he thudded up against something hard. His fingertips explored and told him it was a steel desk. He lay on the floor beside the desk, listening and waiting.

  He could hear small clicking reloading sounds. Over by the doorway were other sounds from the wounded man, like gargling. Wilder wondered how Belton could still be alive with all the slugs he’d taken.

  Another shot cracked. Harris, or whoever it was, had his gun reloaded.

  For an instant, the flash lit the room. Wilder saw the shooter stretched out on the floor, like himself, in a room beyond the one he was in. Wilder shot him in the darkness after the flash was gone.

  Giving it a minute, he got up, crossed the room and slipped into the next, moving silently. He could hear harsh breathing and he approached the sounds from the side. With careful fingertips, he traced along the man’s coat sleeve. When his fingertips came to where the wrist should be, he lifted his left leg and stepped down hard on it.

  Thrashing, the man cried out. Keeping his left foot on top of the twisting wrist, he kicked the man with his other foot. The thrashing stopped. Now there was only a hoarse gasp.

  Reaching down and probing, Wilder found the man’s gun, and then turned, found a light, and switched it on.

  On the floor lay a big-shouldered gray-haired man in a spreading pool of his own blood. His right arm was extended along the floor, the fingers of the hand curled as if they still held the gun. Wilder used a foot to roll him over onto his back. Angry black eyes steadied on Wilder.

  “You Harris?” Wilder asked him.

  The man cursed at him.

  Wilder leaned down and clipped his cheekbone with the gun he’d taken from him. The man’s mouth twisted with pain. A high nasal “Aaaah!” escaped his lips before he could stop it.

  “Are you Harris?” Wilder asked again.

  “Yeah,” the man gasped, “and I’ll see that you get—”

  “Where’s my stuff?” Wilder interrupted. “That ice you shortstopped on me. Where’d you stash it?”

  Harris began cursing again. Wilder rapped him with the gun again on the same cheekbone, not too hard. Harris stopped cursing.

  “You’re shot twice,” Wilder told him evenly. “This one’s through your shoulder. Looks like it just got the meat. The other one might be worse. You want me to walk out of here?”

  “Hell with you!” Harris gasped. His face was white and twisted in fury.

  Wilder shook his head, turned away and started to search the place.

  Every so often, from what sounded like a great distance, he could hear sudden clocking noises, followed by ringing roars. The bowling was still going on down below, so they hadn’t been able to hear any of the shots.

  It took him ten minutes to find the little felt sack of jewels he had turned over to Drogo for conversion to cash. He checked to make sure the ice was inside. It was. He put the little sack into his pocket.

  Harris was staring at the ceiling, looking white and sweaty. His lips whispered words Wilder couldn’t make out. Wilder looked down at him while he wiped his own fingerprints off the gun he’d taken from Harris. Then he stopped, slapped the gun into Harris’s right hand, pressed the cold fingers around the butt, and dropped the gun a foot away on the floor.

  Harris was muttering, “My town. I’ll handle . . .”

  Wilder grinned.

  “Sure it’s your town. You’re welcome to it. I’m through with it myself.”

  Going over to the other man out in the vestibule, he found him dead and put the .38 he’d gotten from Raney in Belton’s hand, after wiping all his own prints off it. He nudged Belton’s trigger finger against the trigger. The shot hit the opposite wall, near the doorway to the inner office. That was in case the police gave Belton a paraffin test.

  Wiping the .32 automatic clean, he stuck it back into Belton’s hip holster and left the place.

  No one was out back. He walked across town and found his car where he’d left it in the parking field beyond the Main Street park.

  He was a hundred miles away before the news on the car radio started telling about the two prominent businessmen who had apparently shot each other to death. When he heard that, Wilder grinned, then grimaced in disgust.

  “Did the bastards think I’d pay them dues every month?” he muttered to himself.

  # # #

  We hope you enjoyed “Good Fences Make Good.”

  Double Take

  The Road to Nanty Glo

  Also available is a full length novel featuring Wilder:

  The Glorieta Pass

  Dan Wilder is a professional criminal with no past, no ties, and no responsibilities.

  When Wilder shows up a day late for a knock-over job on an underground gambling parlor, he decides to spend his time in the arms of the lovely Glorieta Duncan. But she is a kept woman and her keepers are the most powerful men in Thomaston. Before long, worse gets worst, and someone pins the murder of a cop on Wilder. Now he's gotta stay one step ahead of Johnny Law while he looks for revenge.

  He may be a thief and stick-up artist, but Dan Wilder's no cop killer.

  * * * * *

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