The other mound was completely covered with weeds. There was no wooden crosspiece.
“Gus,” said Old Frenchy, pointing down at the grave “They send him here in 1938. I bury him ’cause ’Toinette want him here. I tell her, goddam, he no son of mine, but she say he is her son if not mine and she want him bury here. Poof!” Old Frenchy spat at the weed-covered grave. “You get shovel, you dig.”
Alder shook his head. Old Frenchy snorted and turned back toward the barn. Nikki touched Alder’s arm briefly, then fell in behind him.
In single file they started back. Old Frenchy again skirted the barn, but walked closer to it. Alder followed. Old Frenchy continued past the front of the barn, continued toward the house without looking to the right or the left.
It was that which gulled Alder. He stepped out from the protection of the barn wall and the poised whippletree swished down at his head. Only the instantaneous, split-second reflex of his arm, thrown up, saved his head from being crushed.
The arm deflected the force. The whippletree struck the very back of his head, ricocheted down his back.
Alder fell forward on his face.
Nikki did not scream. She stooped, looked at the man who had struck down Alder.
Leroy Dane grinned wickedly at her.
“Hello,” he said.
Old Frenchy turned and came back. “You kill him, you bury him.”
Leroy Dane tossed aside the whippletree, scooped up Alder’s shotgun and then worked the toe of his handmade Italian shoe under Alder’s stomach. He raised him on his side, used his heel to roll him over onto his back.
“Now that’s a dead one!” he said.
Nikki came forward. She dropped to her knees and cupped her hands about Alder’s face. She said, “He’s alive!”
“Too damn bad,” said Dane callously. “Move aside.”
He pumped a shell into the breech of the shotgun.
Nikki looked up, over her left shoulder. “Are you going to kill me before or after him?”
“You don’t think I’m going to let you walk away from here and spill your guts? Don’t you know who I am?”
“I know who you are, but—” She stared at him. “You don’t know who I am?”
“Yeah, sure, you’re the Collinson woman. Your soft-headed husband’s got about fifty million, maybe a hundred.” He sized her up. “I like ’em younger, but you’re a good-looking piece. You’d come around, I’d have given you a tumble. Might, anyway—”
“You gave me a tumble,” said Nikki, “twenty-two years ago.”
He looked at her curiously. Then suddenly shock came into his eyes.
“Doris Delaney,” Nikki said.
“Be goddamned!” cried Leroy Dane thickly. He stared at her. “I saw you the other night in Beverly Hills. I couldn’t place you. So many women chase me. Rich women, too. Hell, they give me diamond rings, watches. They want to pay me. Stud fees, I call em. You looked familiar. No, you didn’t. The kid was a tow-headed punk.” He stared at her again. “Maybe I made a mistake. I thought you’d look like this after twenty-some years. All that money. I couldda done worse. I should have married you.”
“That you could never have done.”
“Hell, I knocked you up. Whatever happened to...?”
“I killed it,” said Nikki. “I didn’t want that filth in me. I killed it, like I thought I killed you.”
“Yeah, that’s right. You shot me with my own gun. Hell, that little hunk a lead bounced off my skull. I was on my feet before you were out of the door.”
“And then you killed the man who called himself Danny Koenig.”
“Seemed like a good idea at the time. I was a punk and your old man had about fifty million dollars. The boss wouldn’t protect his people if he had to go against fifty million dollars. I put my stuff in his pockets and beat it.
“Nobody looked for me. Danny Koenig was a cheap punk. He’d never been seen around a girl named Doris Delaney. The school kids and the people in the ice cream place wouldn’t tie up a hood name of Koenig—”
“The paper printed your picture.”
“Only break I ever got in my life. All the rest I had to get for myself. The cops bust in on a bookie joint once. Some photographer took our pictures and some drunk newspaper man mixed up the names. They had me down as Koenig, Koenig as me. Any other little thing you want to know before...?”
“Before your brother gets here?”
Leroy Dane looked down at her for the beat of a second. “My big brother?”
“He’s in Bismarck.”
Leroy’s eyes went to his father. “You know?”
“I don’t know a goddam thing, Gus. I don’t hear from your brother longer’n I hear from you.”
Dane turned back to Nikki. She got to her feet.
“You’re lying.”
“Who sent the clipping to your fan secretary?”
“That blackmailing old hag! She got what she was asking for.”
“She was Big Frenchy’s accomplice,” Nikki said clearly. “From ’way back. Her record was blackmail right down the line. Tom told me.”
“This Tom fella was a busy little beaver,” sneered Dane, kicking the unconscious form of Alder. “I got rid of Julia and then he had to stick his nose into it.”
Leroy Dane scowled. His fans would not have recognized it, for he never scowled on the screen or in his pictures. He smiled, he looked into the camera with his honest blue eyes. He smiled when he wasn’t pensive or moody. He never scowled or sneered. Only villains did those things and Dane was a hero.
He said, “I can’t take the chance with that brother of mine. What I’ve heard, he doesn’t think like other people. Drag him in the house, Pop.”
He kicked Alder again.
Chapter 27
Alder was aware of the pain in his head before he was aware of where he was or what had happened to him. It was a dull, throbbing pain, but every fourth or fifth throb the pain lanced through his brain, causing excruciating agony.
His eyes opened.
Nikki, watching him, rose swiftly from the chair on which she had been sitting.
“Keep away,” Dane snapped. He was standing by the door, alert, sometimes looking out, sometimes watching those in the room.
Nikki paid no attention to him. She dropped to her knees beside Alder.
“Nikki,” Alder said.
She caressed his face with her hand. “You’ve a bad wound on the back of your head. It ought to be taken care of, but he... he won’t let me.”
“It’s all right,” Alder replied. He grimaced, pushed himself up to a sitting position with Nikki’s help. He touched a hand gingerly to the back of the head. “I’ll live.”
“Not for long,” said Leroy Dane from the door. “Just until my big brother comes.”
“You’ve never met him, have you?” asked Alder. “You’ve a treat in store for you.”
“I’ve heard about him,” retorted Dane. “Spent most of his life in prisons. Big Frenchy — big jerk!”
“Think that,” said Alder, “and you’ll make the greatest mistake of your life.”
“He couldn’t keep out of jails. Me — I’ve done all right. I got a bad start, but I made it. The hard way.”
“You’re a very smart man,” said Alder, “in a stupid sort of a way. Like changing your name. Koenig — German for ‘king.’ Leroy — French for ‘the King.’ And Danny becomes Dane.”
Dane jerked as if an invisible fist had struck him. He came into the room and standing beside Nikki and Alder, looked down at Alder.