Storme Warning

  STORME WARNING

  The characters and events portrayed in this book are fictitious. Any similarity to real persons, living or dead, is coincidental and not intended by the author.

  Text copyright © 2015 W.L. Ripley

  All rights reserved.

  No part of this book may be reproduced, or stored in a retrieval system, or transmitted in any form or by any means, electronic, mechanical, photocopying, recording, or otherwise, without express written permission of the publisher.

  ISBN: 1941298664

  ISBN 13: 9781941298664

  Published by Brash Books, LLC

  12120 State Line #253

  Leawood, Kansas 66209

  www.brash-books.com

  BOOKS BY W.L. RIPLEY

  Hail Storme

  Storme Front

  Eye of the Storme

  Cole Springer Series

  Springer's Gambit

  Pressing the Bet

  Springer's Fortune

  For Penny, who makes life more fun.

  CONTENTS

  PROLOGUE

  CHAPTER ONE

  CHAPTER TWO

  CHAPTER THREE

  CHAPTER FOUR

  CHAPTER FIVE

  CHAPTER SIX

  CHAPTER SEVEN

  CHAPTER EIGHT

  CHAPTER NINE

  CHAPTER TEN

  CHAPTER ELEVEN

  CHAPTER TWELVE

  CHAPTER THIRTEEN

  CHAPTER FOURTEEN

  CHAPTER FIFTEEN

  CHAPTER SIXTEEN

  CHAPTER SEVENTEEN

  CHAPTER EIGHTEEN

  CHAPTER NINETEEN

  CHAPTER TWENTY

  CHAPTER TWENTY-ONE

  CHAPTER TWENTY-TWO

  CHAPTER TWENTY-THREE

  CHAPTER TWENTY-FOUR

  CHAPTER TWENTY-FIVE

  CHAPTER TWENTY-SIX

  CHAPTER TWENTY-SEVEN

  CHAPTER TWENTY-EIGHT

  CHAPTER TWENTY-NINE

  CHAPTER THIRTY

  CHAPTER THIRTY-ONE

  CHAPTER THIRTY-TWO

  CHAPTER THIRTY-THREE

  CHAPTER THIRTY-FOUR

  CHAPTER THIRTY-FIVE

  CHAPTER THIRTY-SIX

  CHAPTER THIRTY-SEVEN

  CHAPTER THIRTY-EIGHT

  CHAPTER THIRTY-NINE

  CHAPTER FORTY

  CHAPTER FORTY-ONE

  CHAPTER FORTY-TWO

  CHAPTER FORTY-THREE

  CHAPTER FORTY-FOUR

  ABOUT THE AUTHOR

  PROLOGUE

  Rory was surprised that the first thing he wanted was a beer.

  He would’ve thought it would be a woman. Long time without one. But no, it was a beer. An icy longneck Miller High Life, one of those in the clear bottle so you could see the gold color, sweat trickling down its side. And maybe a shot of Jim Beam beside it. Yeah, that would be nice. Funny what a guy missed. Then a big bleeding steak with that Texas toast and a fat baked potato with steam rising out of it. Served on a tablecloth and somebody asking if he was all right. Calling him sir. Can I get you anything else, sir?

  Then a woman. One who smelled of soap and strawberry shampoo. Soft and squeaky clean. In a big bed with a mattress more than a half inch thick. And sheets that didn’t feel like something you could file your fingernails down with. Clean and smooth as marble.

  Then, find that damn football player and blow his shit away.

  It was the football player’s fault his life was in the toilet. He’d been somebody once. Nice clothes. The best booze. Good restaurants. Caddy convertible, a cherry-red Diamante with leather seats that Bobby Frank was always telling him was too fucking something. What was the word he used? Ostentatious. Yeah, that was it. He’d looked it up, and it meant pretentious display. Fucking Wop who ate with his mouth open and picked his teeth with his fingernails, all that jewelry around his neck and his shirt open to the navel like it was the seventies all over again, telling Rory he was ostentatious.

  “It’s a nigger car, Rory,” Bobby Frank would say. “You gotta get a lower profile. Get a dark-colored hardtop. Something nice, y’know? Quit acting like you was a colored guy or somethin’, huh?” Then, his dipshit flunkies would laugh, all of them sitting around playing pinochle and drinking espresso and wine, sloshing it into water glasses. It was an Ed Sullivan trained animal act. Dipshit Dagos.

  But Bobby Frank paid well. Rory couldn’t kick about that. Even gave Rory a cut of the take on some of the collections. Sometimes when he didn’t even know it. Walk into some place with the persuader, a nine-inch piece of cable insulation with a leather thong at one end sticking out of his back pocket, let ’em see it pushing the tail of his coat up on one side. Ask to talk with the owner, tell him what a nice place he had. No threats. Maybe drop something breakable on the floor. Even pay for it. But let ’em see you did it on purpose. Tell ’em how much you’d like to have a business like this. Wait for his lower lip to start quivering or the muscle at the corner of his jaw to start bunching up, and you knew the deal was done.

  Then one day this black guy, owned a specialty coffee place, for chrissakes, gets nervy, says he ain’t paying. Not now, not ever. Now, that’s not good business. Guy had only one leg in the first place. Some kind of Vietnam vet or some shit. Everybody’s a hero anymore. Probably got the money to start the place on some kind of government handout to nigger gimps who’d been in the service. Can’t let ’em get away with that, so he gets nine inches of industrial insulation across the chest. Stand on his stomach and pull off the phony leg and throw it through the glass case where the guy kept his coffee and tell him there’d be another visit. Real soon.

  Only next time there’s this big guy there. Rangy guy built like Gary Cooper or Clint Eastwood. Taller than Cooper, bigger through the shoulders and chest than Eastwood. Shoulders like a fucking lumberjack. Dressed like one too. Carrying a cut-down baseball bat, if you can believe it, like he was fucking Don Mattingly or something. Hard fucking eyes. Blue-gray like car metal. And he had a mouth on him. Said he’d make Rory a deal. Told him his buddy “doesn’t want to pay, and you don’t want a proctologist to do your dental work from now on.” Later, Rory found out a proctologist was an asshole doctor.

  Anyway, he tried to sucker the guy, act like he was sorry for the trouble, all a misunderstanding, you know, while he was working the leather thong around his wrist. He’d practiced that move a thousand times and could slip it out of his pocket faster than you could say, “Ouch.” Meaning to put it upside the guy’s head.

  But he’d never seen anything like this big guy. Fucking hands were like lightning. Hit Rory twice with the bat while he was trying to clear the persuader—once on the point of the shoulder and the second one on the elbow, then backhanded him twice with a free hand, kicking his legs out from under him. Then while he was lying on the floor, the football player laid the bat across Rory’s throat and started talking shit at him.

  “Never come back,” Superstar said, acting pissed off about the whole thing. Like he was coming back anytime soon with a dislocated elbow and a broken collarbone. Hurt like a bitch. “You do, and I’ll change your whole life.” Then the big guy lets the colored guy kick Rory in the ass with the phony leg as he’s going out the door.

  So now, Bobby Frank’s all over him. “You stupid or something?” said Bobby Frank. “You let some off-the-street white-bread asshole take you down? Kick your ass?” Like he could take the guy easy. This is what Rory had to put up with. But Bobby Frank hadn’t seen the way the guy could move, the way his hands worked like there were two of him working him over, then picking him up—picking up a two-hundred-pound guy like he was a sack of sugar he was putting in a cabinet and throwing him out the door. Never seen anybody so big move that fast.

  Then Bobby Frank and his guys and Rory too started getting pulled over on the interstate by the state rods. Hassling them with speeding tickets and searching the car, busting Bobby Frank for open-container laws, failure to indicate when changing lanes, touching the white line on the side of the highways. Chickenshit stuff.

  Bobby Frank blamed Rory for all this too. “What’d you bring down on us, ya stupid fuck? This football player’s got the cops busting my balls every time I back outta my driveway. He’s friends with one of ’em. Didja know that? Huh? Naw, you don’t know shit. They got me standing on the highway with my dick hanging out while some thirty-grand-a-year guy in a park ranger hat’s going through my ride. I gotta tell you something. Rory, are you listening, you dumb Polack? I ain’t enjoying this shit.”

  So Bobby Frank cut him loose, and it was hard to get work what with a cast up to his neck for two months. So he took to robbing convenience stores and shaking down pimps and prostitutes. Then he got busted when his nine fouled robbing a jewelry store. They gave him a dime jolt because he used a gun, but he only did a deuce before his lawyer got him a parole for good behavior. The yards were too full, so they had to cut some guys loose. Two years inside and two broke bones. Still hurt when it turned cold, and he couldn’t reach behind him without effort. Fucking prison doctors. No more slick moves with the persuader.

  So now he was out, and he was gonna look up the football player—superstar, Rory called him—and whack his ass out. But he wanted Superstar to see it coming. Like De Niro did to Nolte in that movie, what was the name of it? Cape something. Cape Fear, that’s it. Bobby D. was a scary bastard in that one. Better than Mitchum was. Yeah, just walk up to the man, l
ook at him, let him know he was in town. “Remember me, Superstar?” Smile at the guy. Eat at the same restaurants. Shake ’im up a little, make ’im squirm. Then some night when the guy wasn’t looking for it, take him down.

  But first a beer and something to eat.

  And then find Superstar.

  What was the asshole’s name? Something to do with the weather or something. What was it?

  Wyatt Storme. Yeah, that was it.

  "Why can't we all ride together and be cowboy buckaroos?"

  —Mason Williams (Cowboy Buckaroos)

  ONE

  Blue-gray clouds swollen with rain hung in the charged atmosphere. The air was heavy with the deep smell of forest and decaying leaves and the clean aroma of freshly cut oak logs. Things change in autumn; it’s a time of readiness as nature prepares for winter, a time of beauty and color as the leaves turn. It’s a time of dying.

  Waiting for Chick Easton. Said he had a surprise.

  Chick Easton, an exclamation point with legs, often showed up at odd times, usually with interesting results. But it would be good to see him again. As it always was. It had been six months.

  I watched the Jeep bounce and careen up the rough lane leading to my cabin. I set my coffee mug on the ledge of the deck. Only a handful of people knew how to get to my Missouri retreat. Fewer would bother to go to the trouble. I only knew one person who would torture a vehicle in such a manner.

  As the Jeep neared, I saw the passenger, wide-eyed and strapped in, one hand on the dash, the other hand holding on to his cap. Chick skidded the Jeep to a halt in a spray of dust and chat, a three-acre smile on a face that gave no hint to his age, other than the scar above his left eye where an eyebrow should have been. Chick jumped out with a package in one hand, a foaming bottle of Michelob beer in the other.

  “Home is the sailor, home from the sea,” he said, “the hunter home from the hill.”

  I smiled. Couldn’t help myself. “What’s up, Chick?”

  “Got something for you,” he said. He tossed the package up to me. It pinwheeled through the air, and I caught it with my free hand. “Still got the hands, Wyatt.”

  I removed the wrapper to reveal the old-gold and red Macanudo cigar trademark. “Thanks.”

  Chick’s shell-shocked passenger unstrapped and stumbled from the vehicle like a shipwreck survivor. He straightened the line of his oilskin drover’s coat and reseated the fresh out-of-the-box LA Dodgers baseball cap. He had a clipped brown beard salted with blond and a few gray hairs.

  “I’m Geoffrey Salinger,” said the passenger, saying it like it meant something. Maybe it did. I didn’t get out much, and I didn’t keep up either. Maybe he was royalty of some kind, and me with the good china packed away. Always unprepared. Never going to get anywhere socially. Salinger stood there in his crisp Levi’s and Ray-Ban sunglasses awaiting my reaction.

  I yawned. Sipped my coffee. “Wyatt Storme,” I said, then nodded at him. “Nice to meet you.”

  “Geoffrey’s a motion picture director,” Chick said, rubbing the side of his nose with a finger.

  “Oh,” I said. In the distance I could see the thick fingers of rain on the southwest horizon. Could use a break in the weather, I guess.

  “A famous Hollywood director,” Chick said.

  Salinger, the famous Hollywood director, looked at Chick. Chick grinned, enjoying himself, apparently at Salinger’s expense.

  “Am I missing something here?” Salinger asked Chick.

  “A…well, Wyatt’s a little, you know, reclusive,” said Chick.

  “And you think it’s funny that he doesn’t know who I am?”

  Chick tilted the brown beer bottle and drank. He swallowed, looked at Salinger, and nodded.

  “Yep,” he said.

  Salinger ignored Chick and looked at me. “Is he always like this?” Salinger asked.

  I nodded. “Unfortunately.”

  Salinger smiled. “I’m a big fan of yours. Remember when you played. I have a business proposition I wish to discuss with you. May we come in, Mr. Storme?”

  “Sure.” Even hermits get lonely.

  Salinger removed his coat but not the hat when we went inside. I offered coffee to the director, who declined when he discovered it wasn’t decaffeinated. California guys. I love ’em. Chick asked if we had any caffeine-free whiskey. I didn’t answer, as he was fishing for a straight man, and he knew where everything was anyway.

  “Chick tells me you own the site where Bailey’s Crossing used to be.”

  “Yeah.”

  “They say the James Brothers were in on a robbery that occurred there.”

  “I’ve heard that.”

  “I also heard that Cole Younger hid the loot from the holdup somewhere around here.”

  “Heard that too. Not sure I believe it.”

  “I plan to proceed as if it were true. Westerns, particularly those depicting the West as an unlovely reality of dust and sweat and violence, are making a comeback.” He leaned forward, gesturing with his hands as if forming something out of the air. “I envision a picture about the James gang with the raid at Bailey’s Crossing as a centerpiece, recreating the town on the original site. Cameron Fogarty has agreed to play the lead, and I have Meagan Ames lined up for the female lead.”

  “I prefer Randolph Scott and western dramas of tightlipped men doing what they have to do,” I said. “I’m not sure it was all that unlovely.”

  It stopped him momentarily. He looked at Chick, who shrugged. “He’s this way sometimes,” he said. “There’s nothing to be done about it.”

  “Don’t you know who Fogarty and Ames are?” Salinger asked me.

  “Vaguely.”

  “They are two of the industry’s hottest young stars. Ms. Ames was nominated for best supporting actress last year. Don’t you go to the movies? Or watch television?”

  “Some.”

  “Reclusive,” said Chick, rummaging behind the bar.

  “This is a major production,” said Salinger.

  “I believe you,” I said. I sipped my coffee.

  “Sardonic,” said Chick, pouring Maker’s Mark whiskey into a square rocks glass. Salinger gave Chick a disgruntled look, which Chick reacted to with a satisfied smile.

  “What’s your proposal?” I asked.

  “I wish to shoot the picture on the original site with your permission. I will need a free hand, however. So, if you’ll simply sign an agreement I’ve had—”

  I held up a hand.

  “Take it easy,” I said, thinking about it. I envisioned people milling around and disturbing the wildlife. I had a couple of good deer trails down there, which I would have to forget about if they started hauling in a bunch of equipment. I could hunt elsewhere, sure. But there’d be reporters and autograph seekers, and gawkers and celebrity worshipers tramping around, pointing at things and leaving footprints and litter. Civilization.

  “We’ll pay, of course,” Salinger said. “Enough to make it worth your while.”

  “It’s not that simple.”

  “I could give you a job as an extra.”

  “No thanks.”

  “Perhaps a larger role. Maybe as a secondary character or gang member. Think about that. Your face on movie screens all across the country.”

  Just what I needed: my face on a thousand movie screens.

  “No,” I said. “I’d rather not tear up the land. I hunt that area. I like it there. It’s quiet.”

  “Diffident and intractable,” said Chick, taking a healthy swallow of whiskey. He held up the glass. “Yet, hospitable.”

  Salinger placed his hands on his knees and pushed himself into an erect sitting position. “We will be happy to restore everything as it was before we started, so you may resume murdering the animals after we leave.”

  I looked at Salinger. I let out a breath, then looked at Chick, my lips pressed together. Chick grinned and raised an eyebrow. He really only has one. The other eyebrow was like a sideways apostrophe, the result of his service in Vietnam. He put a hand up, said, “No, don’t thank me.” Then he produced a cigarette, which he lit with one of his ever-present wood matches.