Rockabye County 11 Read online

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  The downed cop was a rookie. The shooter was scum, part of a gang planning the biggest bank heist in Gusher City, Texas. The only witness was a fat man too scared to talk. Now, working under legendary sheriff Jack Tragg, Deputy Brad Counter—great-grandson of Mark Counter from Ole Devil Hardin’s floating outfit—was as fast with a gun as his ancestor. His partner was Alice Fayde. Her weapons of choice were her looks and her brains. They had a plan for catching these lowlifes ... it involved two pretty call girls, an unwilling civilian, a slimy informant, and a trap that would catch a rat—or cost Alice and Counter their lives.

  ROCKABYE COUNTY 11: TEXAS TEAMWORK

  By J. T. Edson

  First Published by Dell Publishing in 1997

  Copyright © 1997, 2019 by J. T. Edson

  First Digital Edition: July 2019

  Names, characters and incidents in this book are fictional, and any resemblance to actual events, locales, organizations, or persons living or dead is purely coincidental. All rights reserved. No part of this book may be reproduced or transmitted in any form or by any means, electronic or mechanical, including photocopying, recording or by any information or storage and retrieval system, without the written permission of the author, except where permitted by law.

  This is a Piccadilly Publishing Book

  Cover image © 2019 by Tony Masero

  Check out Tony’s work here

  Series Editor: Ben Bridges

  Text © Piccadilly Publishing

  Published by Arrangement with the Author’s Agent.

  For Stevie Shaw, to whom “Steffie Willis,” in Wedge Goes to Arizona, Arizona Range War, and Arizona Gun Law bears a very close resemblance that may be purely coincidental.

  Author’s Note

  We would like to point out that although plots for The Sixteen Dollar Shooter, The Lawmen of Rockabye County, and The Sheriff of Rockabye County preceded the events recorded in it chronologically, the first volume of the series to be published, The Professional Killers, was put “on the shelves” in 1968.

  We would also point out that the names of people who appear in this volume are those supplied to us by our informants in Texas, and any resemblance to those of other persons, living or dead, is purely coincidental.

  We realize that, in our present “permissive” society, we could use the actual profanities employed by various people in the narrative. However, we do not concede that a spurious desire to create realism is any justification for doing so.

  Furthermore, we refuse to pander to the current “trendy” usage of the metric system. Except when referring to the caliber of certain firearms traditionally measured in millimeters (Luger 9mm), we will continue to employ miles, yards, feet, inches, pounds, and ounces when quoting distances and weights.

  Last and of greatest importance, we must stress that the attitudes and speech of the characters are expressed as would have been the case in the period of this narrative even though these might not be regarded by some people as being “politically correct.”

  J. T. EDSON

  Prologue – Paths That Were To Cross

  The time was a quarter after eleven on a mild early-summer night with a half-moon and, although none of them were aware of the fact, the fates of several people in Gusher City, “seat” of Rockabye County, Texas, all except five of whom had never met, were soon to become intertwined.

  Walking along Lanigan Street, employing a somewhat faster pace and greater noticeable diligence than a more experienced officer would have employed under similar circumstances, Patrolman Lawrence “Larry” Merton was carrying out his duty in a manner that indicated he was not a long-serving member of the Gusher City Police Department. He tried the handle of every door to ensure it was securely fastened as he passed the various business premises lining both sides of the street, all of which were closed for the night and mostly in total darkness. While doing so, he was constantly scanning his surroundings in the hope that he might see something that would allow him to gain acclaim on his first night to be allowed to go alone on a foot beat.

  It was, in fact, the moment the tall and well-built young patrolman had been eagerly awaiting ever since having graduated from the Police Academy and sent on his first assignment. He told himself that nothing was likely to happen, the beat having been chosen because his superiors estimated that such would prove the case so as to let him “feel his feet” and learn to experience at first hand the dull routine that was all too frequently the lot of those at his level in the Patrol Bureau. Still, he was imbued with “the hope that springs eternal within the human breast” and remembering the cases he had heard of—rare though they undoubtedly were—when other harness-bulls of equally short service were fortunate enough to participate in an incident of such a magnitude that it was rewarded by early promotion to the Bureau of Detectives and, in addition to a most gratifying hike in salary, attained a rank equivalent to that of a uniformed sergeant whose service with the GCPD was of much longer duration.

  After Merton had gripped and twisted at yet another obviously locked and secure door, he glanced ahead to where—attached to the kind of sturdy metal streetlamp post supplied by the municipal utilities—was one of the dark-blue official telephone boxes over which he would eventually have to report to his station house. Even though he had only just been brought to the area where his beat was located and set down by the Duty Wagon, then commenced his duty on night watch out of the Business Division’s station house, he could not help hoping for something more dramatic to declare than a prosaic, “All correct!”

  Having not too long ago graduated from the Police Academy, where he had learned something of the latest developments in law-enforcement equipment, Merton felt that having to use one of the various strategically placed telephones when the need arose to communicate with the station house was only slightly more efficient than beating the sidewalk with his nightstick or blowing the whistle, which was another of the accoutrements issued with his dark-blue uniform attire. He accepted that the “walkie-talkies” used by the military during World War II and since were too large and bulky to be practical for use, particularly by a harness-bull walking a beat instead of riding a “black-and-white,” a radio patrol car. On the other hand, he was aware that there were smaller and more compact handheld two-way radios, such as the General Electric “Voice Commander,” in service. However, such improved devices had only reached the Sheriff’s Office and Bureau of Detectives, and even there were used solely for special occasions. Therefore, even in the event of an emergency, he would not have such an aid to rapid communications.

  Thinking of the dearth of what he regarded as really up-to-date equipment, even though he was aware that the same state of affairs existed in every other municipal and county law-enforcement agency throughout the United States, the young patrolman was giving a resigned sigh when he heard a car’s horn. It was only a brief blast, but he suddenly realized that the sound was coming from the display area of Willet’s Used Car Emporium, which he knew to have been closed for the night shortly after six o’clock.

  “Oh, Armie honey,” Ruby Lassiter said, her New England voice pitched in what numerous visits to cinemas and much watching of television led her to assume was a suitable note of seductive disappointment. “Do you have to go?”

  “I must, Sweety Lamb,” replied the man to whom the words were directed. He had an accent indicating he was not a native Texan, even though he made a very lucrative living in the seat of Rockabye County. “I’m booked on the red-eye flight to Austin and have to get to the airport and check in.”

  Despite his name being Armond Jean-Luc Dubois, there was nothing externally to suggest that the man preparing to leave the apartment of an attractive and shapely
young brunette who was not his wife—and he hoped the latter would never come to hear of his acquaintance with her—could qualify as the classic passionate and immoral French lover of fiction. Of medium height, in his late forties, he was pudgy in build and not even his mother could claim with any truth that he was good-looking. Rather, his pallid features, which were hardly enhanced by a thinning thatch of brown hair and a tiny mustache, were suggestive of his being a most respectable and reasonably affluent member of society. Neither they nor the gray pin-striped suit he had on offered any indication that, although living on Gusher City South, he was the owner of a successful funeral parlor on the fringes of Upton Heights and attracted much business from the very wealthy residents of that area.

  A psychiatrist might have explained that the reason a married man of Dubois’s otherwise completely decent background and station in life was involved with a much younger woman from a lower stratum of society could be attributed to the “male menopause.” For his part, without any originality, the undertaker based his association with Ruby on the grounds that “my wife doesn’t understand me.” In fact, as their union had failed to produce any offspring and their interests were never close—although he was aware how being married added to his mantle of respectability, which was of great benefit to his business—he and his spouse had at best endured one another through all the years they were together.

  To be fair to Dubois, however, regardless of his far-from-satisfactory marriage, the girl was the first with whom he had established any kind of rapport. While he was lavish with his gifts and paid the rent for the apartment where he joined her three times every week, which exhausted his excuses to explain his absence from home, their relationship had never progressed beyond what might be termed “kissing and cuddling.” Nor, if it came to a point, had he desired that it should. His ego received all the boost it required from the thought that he could still win over the affections of a young woman with the alluring physical attractions he found lacking in his wife and “Sweetie Lamb” possessed.

  Aware of how inadvisable it would be for him to have their relationship become known to his wife, never forgetting her own respectable upbringing and being far from promiscuous regardless of the way she spoke and behaved when in his company, Ruby was quite willing to go along with the way things were between them. She was willing to accept his financial support and gifts, and she would have been horrified if anybody had suggested there was anything immoral taking place between them or in her dealings with other men. In fact, on the nights when “Armie honey” did not join her, she either stayed home or attended a movie with a female friend.

  “Well, if you have to!” Ruby said, her voice redolent of resignation.

  “I do,” Dubois asserted, having told his wife that he would be leaving to attend a convention for members of his profession at Austin, and she having supposed he had taken an earlier flight. “But I’ll see you at the weekend and bring you something to make up for me having to go.”

  “Oh, that will be nice, Armie honey. And I’ll have that to remember you by,” the brunette declared, glancing at a folder that held a quarto-size photograph of each of them on its two sides and was positioned in what was obviously a place of honor at the center of the sidepiece. Wrapping her arms around the neck of her visitor, she gave him a kiss before continuing, “Let me turn off the lights in case that old biddy next door is looking out. It wouldn’t do for her to see you leaving.”

  “Come on, Baby Face. Get out of it!”

  If any of the clientele or those with whom she associated daily at work had seen Halina Walenska at that moment, they would have been hard put to recognize her as the bespectacled, trim, very efficient, and always soberly attired teller at the First Cattleman’s Bank in the upper-middle-class area that the GCPD designated the Evans Hill Division. Because of what she was doing, she was unable to wear the glasses without which she was never seen in business hours. What is more, her usually modest attire—selected to avoid drawing any more than the slightest attention to her trimly curvaceous five-foot-five-inch figure—was replaced by a scarlet bikini of such diminutive dimensions that it left little to be imagined about her physical contours. Although more rumpled than usual and not unexpectedly damp in appearance, the curly reddish-brunette hair framed attractive heart-shaped features with “rosebud” lips. Even while engaged in such an unorthodox fashion, she retained something of the suggestion of babyish innocence she exuded in working hours. On her arrival at the large and, in spite of the present dearth of furnishings, obviously expensive apartment that she concluded to be located in Upton Heights, although the way she had been brought there prevented her from having been able to see exactly where it was located, she had been wearing considerably more facial makeup than was the case during her respectable and conventional daily life. However, it had been washed away by the treatment she was being accorded and freely shed perspiration caused by her strenuous activities.

  Hearing the suggestion—and the sobriquet by which she was known to the select circle who were present—called by the man responsible for her being in a predicament, which under different circumstances might have appeared bizarre to say the least in such sumptuous surroundings, and the generally supportive clamor from the other dozen or more people standing around the open space that was left by the removal of all the furnishings except a cocktail cabinet in one corner, Halina felt an inclination to ask, “How?” Instead of wasting her breath, which was in short supply right then, she devoted her thoughts and efforts to seeking a means to achieve the desired end.

  For the past ten minutes without pause, Halina and the just as scantily clad and now even more noticeably disheveled curvaceous blonde who was introduced just as “Dorinda” had been engaged in a bout of the little-publicized exotic sport called “apartment-house wrestling,” in which she had attained some local fame since first having accepted a dare to do so from a friend at a party. From the beginning, having spent a tomboy childhood that only a few intimate acquaintances were aware of and still keeping herself in excellent physical trim, Halina had shown an aptitude for the unconventional activity and enjoyed the financial benefits that accrued from it.

  In addition to bringing in a considerable sum of money, which need not be disclosed for the purpose of taxation, it served as a means of expressing the exuberant zest for life and uninhibited nature that Halina was compelled to keep concealed during her regular employment and from her staidly respectable parents. Furthermore, without her mother and father having become aware of her participation, for the past two years she been a regular and not unsuccessful competitor at such events, which were held generally on weekends—although not on this occasion, it being the birthday of the organizer—in several cities around Texas.

  Halina had been helped to acquire her reputation. Little knowledge of formal unarmed combat as such was required, although she like all the others possessed some competence in it. The action was mainly hair-pulling and rolling-around “fighting” of the kind seen in female fracases for movies and which was generally well-simulated rather than performed in earnest when two paid participants were involved. 1 The bouts were closer to the kind of instinctive feminine tussling in which she had frequently engaged throughout her adolescence. Any qualms she might have had over the extremely skimpy attire in which she was required to appear were lessened by her having become aware that even the bra section was only very rarely lost during the struggling. Nor, as she did not suffer from false modesty regardless of how demurely she might dress during formal working hours and knew the payment she received for competing under such conditions would be adjusted accordingly, had she ever felt embarrassed when such a deprivation had taken place.

  Furthermore, the combatants were required to remove all jewelry and have their finger- and toenails cut and filed smooth prior to the bout—regardless of claims made to the contrary that would soon begin to make appearances in various magazines purporting to report on the sport—in the interests of avoiding even acciden
tal infliction of a disfiguring injury, which might lead to a lawsuit by the recipient, bringing to light how it had occurred.

  The reddish-brunette was satisfied that nobody would learn how she augmented her salary at the bank. In fact, even when opposed by a “silver spoon”—who might be indulging for some form of erotic motivation or to attract the attention being directed at the participants—she had never sustained any bruising or other indications of the conflict where it could be seen. Therefore, she felt certain she would show no signs of her present activities when she went about her everyday work; after all, she was up against another paid opponent equally eager to avoid sustaining or inflicting visible “battle damage,” as she had been assured by the organizer she was that evening.

  Having a slight advantage in size and weight, as well as being seven years younger at twenty-two, Dorinda had appeared to be gaining the best of the encounter at first. However, such was the speed and verve by which Halina “fought” back while keeping within the unwritten code of conduct formulated and mostly followed by the paid participants, she had slowly begun to gain the ascendancy. With each succeeding minute of their hectic struggling, although both had successfully made every effort to put on a realistic-seeming performance with a minimum of actual suffering, or the fact becoming discernible to the onlookers, the blonde had begun to accept as gospel the comment made by an early participant that the baby-faced reddish-brunette appeared to have at least six hands and feet, all of which were capable of doing something potentially painful simultaneously and entirely realistic in appearance. In fact, regardless of the judicious faking—despite each having sought to gain a position to attain some means of bringing about victory without the result of the bout being seen as prearranged— Dorinda was growing conscious of becoming increasingly weaker and less able to counter much of what was being inflicted upon her.