Deadly Pleasures Read online

  Thinking of Ruth made Jake remember good times spent with her. And with some of her charges. Quite a lot of her charges. Back in the days when that kind of thing mattered.

  His eyes homed back in on the frame. The ornate carved frame that stood on his fancy writing desk. The frame that had once contained the photographic image of Jake Junior.

  And he thought again of the bullion secure in his cellar. And where he wanted it to go when he was no longer around.

  Jake Parlane felt a pain in his gut. He took a long swallow of bourbon, and that numbed the griping. For a while. But he knew the time would come – and not too far away – when even whisky wouldn’t kill the pain.

  Yup, time was running out.

  If Jake Parlane was going to see through the plan that had been forming in his mind for some months, soon he’d have to make a start.

  He’d lost count of how many people he’d killed. Never kept a tally. He’d just done what was necessary for the job in hand. And if that involved someone dying … well, everyone in his trade took the same risks. The next day Jake Parlane could be the one who got shot.

  The Black Cross Gang. Most of them had served time in prison. Most had the same desire as Jake to be revenged on the world that had put them there. The polite world of small-minded men who thought about town planning and worried about keeping their neighbourhoods ‘respectable’.

  Funny that in later life Jake Parlane should have joined their ranks. The bullion he had stolen was worth more than he could ever spend. And, as shoot-out followed shoot-out, there were less of the Black Cross Gang claiming a share. When gang members died, it didn’t worry Jake Parlane much. They were just gunslingers with whom he’d drunk rough whisky, shared danger, shared jokes – and sometimes women. But they were guys who knew the risks. Nothing to get sentimental about.

  Jake Junior, though, that’d been different. He’d never been sentimental about the boy growing up, had no interest in him until he could hold his own with a six-shooter. And even then the boy was no damn use, too much of a dreamer. When he was allowed to join them, so far as his Paw was concerned, Jake Junior was just another member of the Black Cross Gang. And not one of the best members. Never going to match up to the exploits of his Paw.

  And Jake Junior’s death was kind of his own damn fault. The boy had been on reconnaissance duty, detailed to check out how the land lay at the River Crossing Bank. And he hadn’t done a good job, dreaming as ever. Otherwise he’d have known that when the horse team had been attached by ropes to the window and pulled it away – along with half the wall – they’d find the bank full of the River Crossing sheriff’s men with guns blazing.

  The Black Cross Gang lost a lot of men that day. Including Jake Junior. Served the little damn fool right.

  But Jake Parlane had been surprised by how much the death affected him. Not right away, but kind of gradually. He let the boy’s mother do all the weeping and wailing for the first few months. Her feebleness made him downright angry. She kept cradling that ornate wooden frame with the picture she’d had done of the boy by some huckster with a camera. Cradling it and weeping. Jake kept saying the kid would never have amounted to much, but that didn’t stop her. Her constant tears got on his nerves. Finally, in a fit of fury he’d ripped the photograph out of the frame and torn it to shreds. That had, needless to say, prompted more weeping and wailing.

  It was only after he’d destroyed the boy’s image that he started to miss Jake Junior. Never told the boy’s mother, of course. Jake Parlane had learned in prison how not to show pain. And, anyway, she died a few months later. Sentimental folks might have said her end was hastened by their son’s death. But Jake Parlane didn’t mix with sentimental folks, so he never heard them saying it.

  Somehow doing the jobs the Black Cross Gang had always done didn’t seem so satisfying with the boy gone. Not that Jake Junior had been the only one who’d been lost at River Crossing. The Black Cross Gang’s numbers were down. Also, the lawmen were starting to show their first signs of efficiency. The banks and mail coaches were getting better security. Robbing them wasn’t quite so much fun anymore.

  One last job and maybe it’d be time for Jake Parlane to hang up his boots. Even to become a respectable burgher of the clean, expanding town of Ruthville. He’d always known he could buy respectability there. Pump enough money into a few civic projects, pay for the construction of the schoolhouse, contribute handsomely to the building fund for the Episcopal Church … that’d do the trick. Reinventing oneself was still easy in the US of A. Most everyone in the West had a background to hide, and nothing hid it more efficiently than money.

  One last job then. For many years Jake Parlane had been planning a raid on the Wells Fargo office in Santa Veronica. Now the moment had arrived to put his plans into action.

  Then he’d change his life. Forget the Black Cross Gang. Forget Jake Junior’s mother. Forget Jake Junior.

  But even after he’d done the job he never threw away the wooden frame that had held his son’s photograph.

  When Jake Parlane started planning the Santa Veronica job, he knew it was going to be different. In the old days a bank raid hadn’t needed much finesse. Only research you needed to do was have a gang member check the comings and goings of stagecoaches to the bank. Pretty soon your man got to recognise the ones that were delivering coins or bullion.

  Way you got in was usually by pulling out a barred window – and often the whole wall – with the horse train. Just like they’d done at River Crossing. Six horses in harness – sometimes stolen off Wells Fargo – but they didn’t have a stagecoach to pull, just hooks attached to the window bars. Fix them up, and firing a few shots from your Colt near the horses’ feet usually got them moving real fast. Not many windows could resist that kind of force. As a kind of private joke, members of the Black Cross Gang referred to the procedure as the ‘Wells Fargo method’.

  Jake Parlane was always present when they were doing a job, but he let Aaron take charge of the actual break-in. A former slave who’d survived the Civil War, Aaron was ageless and tough as ebony. He’d served his time in prison too and, though he’d been brutalised by the experience, he was fiercely loyal to Jake.

  In the event you didn’t have a team of horses to hand for the Wells Fargo method, you just chucked in a couple of lighted dynamite sticks. That usually brought the bank managers and tellers out in a state more than ready to hand over the keys to the strong room. Any who resisted got shot. Then the Black Cross Gang loaded up with the coins or bullion and hightailed back to their hideout.

  But the Santa Veronica job was going to take more preparation than that. Wells Fargo were getting cannier all the time with their security. They had more men riding shotgun on their stagecoaches and they were making their buildings more robust. What had once been wooden structures were now stone and brick. It’d take more than a team of six horses to pull a window out of their new Santa Veronica office.

  For the first time in his career Jake Parlane required the services of someone on the inside.

  Finding the right guy didn’t prove too difficult. Aaron was despatched to do a bit of scouting round the Santa Veronica saloons. Back then the landlords weren’t too fussy about the colour of a man’s skin. It was the colour of his money they worried about. And Aaron always seemed to have plenty of that.

  So he lounged around the bars, almost unnoticed, steadily drinking rough whisky, his dark eyes beneath their hooded lids taking in everything. Occasionally he would engage some loose mouth in conversation. He always chose the drunks, who were less likely to remember the direction of his questions and more likely to be indiscreet in supplying him with information.

  He discovered that the agent who ran the Santa Veronica Wells Fargo office was called Colonel Tuckett. He apparently said he’d been promoted to that rank in the Union Army during the Civil War, but local opinion doubted the claim. Rumour also maintained that he didn’t attain the standard of incorruptibility required by Wells Fargo in their
agents. Loans he organised through the company usually involved kickbacks for himself. Tuckett was also a strong supporter of Santa Veronica’s saloons and brothels, where his transactions were rumoured not to involve money changing hands.

  When Aaron reported his findings, Jake Parlane knew they’d got their man. All they needed to do was to sort out the deal with him. Aaron was despatched back to Santa Veronica to carry out the next stage of the plan.

  It was easy. Aaron followed the oblivious Colonel Tuckett after he’d locked up the Wells Fargo office for the night. The agent didn’t mount his horse but led it, suggesting he wasn’t going far. Sure enough, the animal was tied up outside a saloon and, about an hour later, led to Santa Veronica’s most popular brothel. Colonel Tuckett’s business only detained him there half an hour, and he returned to his horse in the empty evening street to find himself confronted by a tall black man pointing a Colt in his face.

  When Aaron suggested they ride out of town together, the agent was too scared to disagree. Nor did he make any demur when the former slave insisted on blindfolding him and leading his horse the last couple of miles to the Black Cross Gang hideout.

  When the blindfold was removed Colonel Tuckett found himself facing Jake Parlane, behind a table on which were a bottle of rather good bourbon and two glasses. Coercion always remained a potential threat, but the gang leader thought he’d try the soft approach first.

  And he found the Wells Fargo agent very amenable to his suggestions. Fright and greed proved to be a very successful combination. Colonel Tuckett seemed to be moved less by the implicit threat of violence against his person than by the prospect of creaming off a bit of the loot for himself.

  He agreed readily to notify Jake when the next consignment of gold coins and bullion was due into the office. And he agreed to being tied up at his desk the night when the Black Cross Gang broke in.

  ‘But that does raise a point, Jake.’ He and Parlane were already on first name terms, Jake and Clinton. ‘Breaking into the new office ain’t going to be so easy. That place is built to last.’

  ‘Dynamite?’ his host suggested.

  The agent wrinkled his face in wry disapproval. ‘Seems a pity to destroy a new building.’ He was clearly rather proud of his workplace.

  ‘So what do you suggest?’

  ‘Simplest thing would be – I unlock the front door and you come in.’

  ‘Suits me.’ Jake Parlane grinned. ‘Might give you a bit of an explanation problem, though … you know, to the high muckamucks at Wells Fargo.’

  ‘Sure would … if they think I’m the one who did it.’

  Parlane was instantly alert. ‘What you saying?’

  ‘I’m saying I do it, someone else takes the rap.’

  ‘You got someone in mind?’

  ‘New junior clerk started in the office only a coupla months back. Name of Nathan Pooley. Head-in-the-air kinda kid. Lives in a world of his own.’

  ‘The perfect fall-guy?’

  ‘You said it.’

  The details were quickly agreed. Two nights after the consignment arrived, Colonel Tuckett would work late, ensuring that he kept his junior clerk behind too on some invented emergency task. At ten o’clock, when all the good citizens of Santa Veronica would be getting ready for bed and the bad citizens would be in the saloons, Tuckett would allow Nathan Pooley to go home, saying that he’d lock up. As soon as the boy was out of sight, the Black Cross Gang would enter the premises, tie up Colonel Tuckett, take his keys to the strong room and make off with the coins and bullion.

  At this point in their planning Jake suggested that, in the cause of authenticity, his boys might also rough the agent up a bit, but Tuckett wasn’t so keen.

  Then, a couple of months after the raid, by which time any suspicions of the colonel – if there ever were any – should have died down, Jake Parlane would arrange for an ingot of the bullion to be delivered to a safe drop-off point. From where Colonel Tuckett would collect it at his leisure. And they’d be square.

  The agent submitted willingly to having his blindfold reinstated and being led on his horse by Aaron to a spot from which he was free to ride back to Santa Veronica. Both he and Jake Parlane had the feeling that, not only had they made a good business arrangement, they’d also met a like-minded spirit.

  Come the day of the job, everything went like clockwork. Colonel Tuckett found some spurious extra work to keep Nathan Pooley in the Wells Fargo office until ten o’clock, then duly released him to go home. The clerk checked that his boss really didn’t intend to lock the door after him. (That was the normal practice; after office hours the building was kept locked at all times, even if there were still staff inside.) But Tuckett reassured his junior that he was about to leave and would lock up himself.

  Then he just waited for the Black Cross Gang to arrive, which they did within half an hour. The colonel didn’t get the full complement of villains inside the office, just Jake Parlane and Aaron. But there were others on the street watching, guns at the ready, in case anything went wrong. And also there was a covered wagon out there to take away the loot.

  Even though he was not going to change his mind about retiring, Jake could see the appeal of this new style of crime. With the help of an inside man, the business was easy, even a bit formal, just like going to a bank to draw out money during office hours. Except, of course, he was withdrawing more money than the average customer.

  Colonel Tuckett was very pleased to see them and eager to demonstrate that he had not been idle in anticipation of the raid. With pride he showed them one or two little refinements of his own that he had added to the plan. Most of these were designed to build up evidence of Nathan Pooley’s guilt.

  For example, in the waste bin by the junior clerk’s desk Tuckett had planted a scrap of paper. It appeared to have been torn from a large sheet, but the remaining text read clearly: ‘… ORTH OF RIVER CROSSING AND WE’LL PAY YOU THE MONEY WE AGREED.’ Then, above the words ‘BLACK CROSS GANG’, a cross had been scrawled.

  ‘I can write my own name,’ Jake Parlane objected.

  ‘Yeah, sure,’ Colonel Tuckett apologised. ‘Guess I got carried away a bit there.’

  ‘Mind you,’ Jake went on, ‘I wouldn’t have signed it on a note like that. Nice to keep a few secrets from the lawmen.’

  ‘That’s what I was thinking,’ said the colonel hastily, though he’d only just thought of it.

  To curry more favour from his new friend, he then showed off the bag of gold coins he’d secreted behind one of the drawers of Nathan Pooley’s desk. Together with a copy of the strong room key that he’d had made.

  ‘Looks like the perfect frame-up,’ said Jake.

  Colonel Tuckett smiled with pleasure. It was nice to get that kind of commendation from a professional.

  ‘Right, let’s load up the goods and get you tied up,’ said Jake Parlane.

  ‘Yes, but it won’t be too tight, will it?’ pleaded the Wells Fargo agent.

  ‘Gotta look convincing,’ said Jake, with a rather cruel little smile.

  He let Aaron do the tying up. He knew the ex-slave’s work would be convincing. Even down to the handkerchief stuffed in the man’s mouth and the bandanna tied tightly to keep it in place. Colonel Tuckett’s eyes looked terrified. Even more terrified when Aaron asked casually, ‘Sure you don’t want me to rough him up a bit, boss? So’s it looks like the real thing?’

  Jake was tempted for a moment, but he curbed the instinct. ‘No, let him be.’

  Then he went to open the strong room door with the key hidden in Nathan Pooley’s desk.

  When they saw how many bags of gold coins and ingots of gold bullion there were, they sent out for more members of the Black Cross Gang to help load the covered wagon.

  As they passed his office for the final time, Jake Parlane grinned at Tuckett and gave him a little wave. The colonel was in no position to give him a wave back.

  The frame-up went as smoothly as the job itself. When a very uncomfortable C
olonel Tuckett was released by his senior clerk who was first into the Wells Fargo office the following morning, he immediately pointed the finger of blame at Nathan Pooley. The accusation was repeated when Santa Veronica’s sheriff arrived. Searches of the premises fairly soon found the planted evidence and before noon the junior clerk had been arrested on suspicion of collaborating with a criminal gang in the perpetration of a robbery. Bail was not mentioned – which didn’t make a lot of difference, because the boy didn’t know anyone rich enough to offer it. And Nathan Pooley was incarcerated in the county jail to await trial.

  He didn’t have to wait long. Rough justice was favoured round Santa Veronica, and speedy justice too. Within a week Nathan Pooley was up before judge and jury in the town’s gleaming new courthouse. Jake Parlane thought about going to the trial. Nobody in Santa Veronica would recognise him as a member of the Black Cross Gang – they always masked their faces with scarves when they were working. And as for the ‘WANTED DEAD OR ALIVE’ notices, they were a joke. Jake had managed to leak into the River Crossing sheriff’s office the information that the Black Cross Gang was led by a guy called Garton Crail. He’d even had smuggled in a photograph of an evil-looking desperado, whose mugshot now appeared on all the posters. So Jake Parlane could go wherever he wanted with impunity.

  And the Santa Veronica Wells Fargo office had been his final job. There would be a kind of neatness in seeing it through to the end. So he did attend the courthouse for the trial.

  What became clear from the start was that, in selecting Nathan Pooley as his sucker, Colonel Tuckett had done a great job. The boy was the archetypal dreamer, who seemed to move in a world detached from the real one. Like Jake Junior he was never going to make anything of himself, he’d never be anything more than a waste of provender. And he had no support in the courtroom. Apparently, on hearing Nathan had been charged with the crime, his father had disowned him.