Portlandtown: A Tale of the Oregon Wyldes (13 page)

Bart turned his gaze from the back of the mayor’s head. The gun remained on target.

“Maybe you should listen more carefully when you’re not the one doing the talking.”

“Fine,” said the mayor. “What do you have to say?”

*   *   *

Kick pushed his sister’s feet above his head and through the trapdoor that led to the loft above the storeroom. Maddie reappeared an instant later.

“Gimme your hands,” she whispered, reaching back through the small opening.

Kick stretched as far as he could, which was just enough. Maddie pulled him over the edge and soon both were beneath a table at the back of the space. The twins crept forward slowly, keeping on their hands and knees, until they reached the railing at the front edge of the loft.

The view from above didn’t change the situation—their father and the mayor were still held at gunpoint by the deputy mayor.

“What do we do?” Maddie asked.

“I don’t know.”

“Because you don’t know, or because you don’t know what’s going to happen? You can’t tell yet, right?”

Kick looked at his sister. They rarely spoke about it, but the twins’ ability to predict how a situation would unfold had become increasingly accurate. For years they’d been able to act as one, knowing instinctively what the other would do or say in almost any situation. Recently, they’d found their instincts leading them beyond their own to the actions of others. They could guess how a person might react, what he might say, even when exactly he was going to do it. They couldn’t predict the future exactly, but they could follow its path and intercept it down the line.

They rarely spoke about it, because they didn’t have to. They understood what they could do and that was enough.

“Something still seems wrong,” Kick said. “Like I can’t see everything.”

“Maybe we can’t. We’re not close enough, or something’s out of sight, or—”

“Hidden.”

Maddie nodded.

Both watched the scene below, waiting for something to reveal itself, something they couldn’t see but knew was there.

*   *   *

“… Two days I spent, sitting on my hands, waiting for you to finish your damn meeting. Not once did you consult my opinion of the situation. Not once! And I had an opinion, of that you can be most certain.”

“Bart, I’m going cut you off there, because I’ve made an executive decision. This ends now.”

“Excuse me?”

“I believe I’m in the right, here,” the mayor said, and then, in what was likely the bravest (and stupidest) thing he would ever do in his life, he turned to face his colleague directly.

Joseph was just as surprised as the deputy.

“Bart, you need to put that weapon away and see reason. This is not the way men—professional men—behave. I’ll have none of it in my administration.”

Bart stared at the man whose life he’d nearly ended minutes before. “You think you can talk your way out of this? That you can just open the great maw and spew forth a proclamation to end hostilities, is that it?”

Joseph knew the deputy had decided to pull the trigger a full minute before the shot was fired. He heard it in the man’s voice. Resentment and anger had been joined by futility, which in Joseph’s experience were never a good combination.

“I fail to see how violence will serve our current situation in any meaningful manner,” said the mayor. “You’re not thinking this through, Bart.”

Joseph retreated to the counter behind him, moving slowly so as not to attract attention. Without raising his shoulders, he found two books within reach: a first edition of Herman Melville’s
Moby Dick
and the latest edition of the
Chicago Journal of Tanning & Blackening
. Melville’s was by far the thicker tome (and the more valuable), but as Joseph slid the book off the counter he wondered if it might be too heavy for the maneuver he intended to employ. It was too late to test it now.

“This is foolishness, Bart. I’ll see you removed by morning. You’ll never get a dime. I don’t care who you try to peddle this false smut to, I’ll not have it!”

“Who’s the fool now, Jim?”

Joseph bent slightly at the knees and then popped up quickly, flipping his wrist so as to launch the novel over the back of his head in a long, arcing rotation. The motion was silent and practically invisible save for the book now flipping end over end above the men’s heads. As it was, neither the mayor nor his deputy saw the book even as it fell between them at the exact moment Bart fired his weapon.

The bullet struck the book squarely, sending it slamming into the mayor, who toppled backward in front of Joseph.

A path now clear to his target, Joseph let fly with the journal, striking the deputy squarely in the face with the leading edge.

The deputy howled in pain and dropped to one knee, clutching his face. Blood began to pour from between his fingers.

Joseph grabbed the mayor’s hand and led him around the counter, between several shelves, all the way to the back of the store, where they found cover beneath a four-foot shelf filled with oversize research volumes on topics of a botanical nature.

“Are you hurt?”

“I don’t … I don’t think so,” the mayor said, only just starting to catch his breath. He still clutched the book that had saved his life tightly to his chest. Closer inspection revealed a hole in the front cover and a small raised bump in the back. The mayor flipped through the pages and was nearly to the end before a small, flattened slug slipped harmlessly into Joseph’s outstretched hand. The bullet, which had no problem cutting through most of Melville’s epic, had stopped thirteen pages shy of the end.

“Lucky I used the first edition,” Joseph said. “Thicker paper.”

The mayor nodded silently.

Joseph raised his head and listened. The mayor’s breathing was by far the loudest thing in the room, but not the only thing. The deputy remained at the front of the store, his breathing wet, but in control. Joseph’s attack would do little permanent damage, though blood continued to flow from the deputy’s nose and scalp, making it hard for him to see as he reloaded his weapon.

Not reloading,
Joseph thought,
checking the chambers.
The deputy had another gun.

“How many weapons does he carry?”

“I assume it was the Remington that was put to my skull. He also has a small five-shot revolver, and a six-inch blade that he carries inside the left breast pocket.”

Joseph wasn’t surprised he’d missed the knife, but the second pistol bothered him. He should have caught that, but hadn’t. He’d been sloppy. Kate was going to be mad.

*   *   *

Maddie handed Kick a small but solid book about the rearing and harvesting of the eastern oyster. Kick tested its weight, nodded, and then turned his attention back to the scene below.

The deputy mayor stood at the counter, stooped slightly but still high enough to see the tops of most of the shelves. He held a revolver in his right hand, a bloodied handkerchief in his left. He scanned the room, looking left and right repeatedly, but never up.

Their father and the mayor were not visible directly, but a line of polished metal panels near the ceiling gave away their position at the back of the store to anyone who knew how to read the amorphous reflections.

Kick held the book up before his face, waiting. He and Maddie watched the deputy move forward around the counter, past the center table, look left and then right, and move forward again. He was halfway to the back of the store.

When he looked to his right again, Kick lofted the book into the air.

*   *   *

Bart was three rows from Joseph and the mayor when the book hit the ground near the front of the store. The deputy turned and fired twice, losing one bullet in the wall, the other in an explosion of pages that had been an architectural history of Florence.

Joseph clamped a hand on the mayor to keep him from crying out. He knew immediately what had happened, but found the advantage he now had—three shots, down from five—was not worth the exchange—four targets, up from two.

Kate was definitely going to be mad.

“Stay here,” Joseph whispered. “And stay silent.”

The mayor nodded.

At the front of the store, Bart checked the door once more, scanning the boardwalk as he did. A handful of pedestrians could be seen on the other side of the flooded street, but no one seemed to be paying the bookshop any extra attention. The deputy turned back to the store.

“Here I was beginning to think you’d lighted out a back exit, leaving me to stumble around until reinforcements arrived.”

Joseph slipped around a shelf on the west side of the store and listened. The deputy was against the wall on the opposite side, moving toward the back but no longer bothering to stay low. The twins were in the loft, beneath the table along the railing. Nothing gave them away, but it made sense this was where they’d be. He turned his face upward and shook his head slowly, knowing they could see him, hoping they would do as they were told.

*   *   *

Kick frowned.

Maddie slipped back from the edge. When her brother did not, she grabbed him by the belt and pulled.

*   *   *

Kick’s face slipped into the shadow just before the deputy turned his gaze upward. Bart scanned the room, taking in the entire space. There was no movement in the loft and nothing on the ground floor. Sunlight bouncing off the water outside sparkled in a series of panels that ran along the ceiling, otherwise the space was still.

That was when the deputy noticed the ladder at his side.

*   *   *

Joseph heard the creak of the ladder as Bart took his first tentative step and knew immediately it would take only a half-dozen more before the mayor, and possibly himself, would be visible to the deputy.

Moving quickly and staying low, Joseph slipped around the shelf and stopped behind the counter, which would provide cover from all but the top of the ladder. He would have to make sure the deputy never got that high.

Bart reached the sixth of ten steps with his back to the ladder, one hand holding firm, the other gripping his pistol. After ascending each rung, he stopped to scan the store. So far, nothing had revealed itself.

Movement caught his eye near the door. A book slid to a stop, which the deputy quickly had in his sights, but managed not to fire on.

“I’ll not be wasting any more ammunition on your inventory, Mr. Wylde.”

Bart waited, but received no reply. The deputy climbed two more rungs, steadied himself, and scanned the room. He found what he was looking for near the back of the store.

“Point of order, Mr. Wylde,” he said, using his heel to push the ladder slightly to the right. “Can you speak to terms?”

“What terms would that be, Mr. Hildebrandt?” Joseph asked, bouncing his voice off the shelf in front of him so that it echoed about the room.

“Surrender, of course. I’ve no need to sacrifice you for the sins of our common employer. In fact, I’d be perfectly happy to let you go right on living, assuming we can find a solution that leaves us both comfortably situated.”

That the deputy was lying Joseph had no doubt. What concerned him, however, was the angle he was encroaching upon, which would give him a clear shot of the mayor. The ladder had stopped moving, which suggested he’d already found it. Joseph’s options ran out. He heard the hammer draw back on the deputy’s gun and decided to give the man another target.

Joseph leaped from behind the counter and ran directly at the wall on the other side of the store.

The deputy swung his gun around, but wobbled on the ladder, forcing himself to get his footing before finding his aim.

Joseph leaped at an angle he hoped was accurate and landed squarely on the ladder opposite the one the deputy now occupied. His momentum got the ladder rolling, but a swift kick off the second shelf pushed him along faster. A gunshot tore into the row of books he’d just passed by.

The deputy panned with his target and fired again, taking a chunk out of the rung directly above Joseph’s head.

Joseph felt a dozen tiny splinters bounce off his face, a few of which stuck. Sensing his luck (and shelf space) was about to run out, he dropped off the ladder and rolled smoothly onto one knee next to the crouching mayor. Without hesitating, he grabbed the mayor and yanked him backward, once again saving the man’s life as the deputy’s bullet whizzed past his head and into the floor.

“You lucky bastard!”

The deputy drew back the hammer and fired again, knowing full well the futility of pulling the trigger on an empty chamber. A moment later he leaped from his perch onto the nearest shelf, which toppled over, sending a flood of books and the deputy sliding across the floor. He tried to stand, but found the footing untenable among the shifting materials. When his feet finally did find purchase he had just enough time to draw his knife before a book struck the side of his head. He wobbled, but didn’t go down. A second book glanced off the bridge of his nose and soon the blood was flowing again. He had enough of his wits to know the second book had come from above, but when he looked to the loft there was no one there.

“I’m right here, Mr. Hildebrandt.”

The deputy never saw the last book to hit him that day, which turned out to be an oversize collection of Canadian maps swung by Joseph at very close range. Joseph delivered the blow with such force that a section of the title remained embossed on the deputy’s forehead for some hours afterward. The more immediate result was that Deputy Mayor Bart Hildebrandt was unconscious even before he fell backward into the books.

Joseph had just enough time to let out the breath he’d been holding when he heard the front lock unlatch and the door swing open.

“Don’t know why it’s locked, it shouldn’t be unless—” was all Kate managed to say to her father before she spied the blood on the floor. A moment of panic flared and then she spied her husband standing over the unconscious man atop a pile of books in the middle of the store. Then she saw her kids.

“Hey, Mom!” Kick called from the loft railing. “Look what we did.”

Kate looked from her son to her husband.