Tornado Alley Read Free

but—"
    "You doubt it."
    "If it was my stomach, I'd say no."
    "These surgeons are knife-happy ... worse than Mexicans."
    The doctor knew that Lee Ice was well-read—in fact, a learned man. But it amused him sometimes to talk like an illiterate redneck.
    "Well, how much time would you say? I mean, how much time in which I can get around?"
    A spasm of pain twisted the man's body, and he leaned forward onto his cane.
    The doctor shrugged. "A month, perhaps two ... I'll give you a prescription. You know how to use a hypodermic?"
    The man nodded, remembering the barn loft, the boards curling apart to show the blue sky, and Tom with a gambler's .32 slug in his stomach. That doctor had been an old Chinese, unhurried and nothing caring. He gave Tom an injection of morphine and matter-of-factly took one himself. He squatted down, looking at Tom's lean stomach.
    "Hold, please."
    Quickly he leaned forward with a long, pronged instrument and inserted it into the wound. Tom screamed, and it was all Lee could do to hold him down. The doctor held up the forceps with the bloody lead bullet. The morphine was taking effect. Tom's body relaxed and his face went slack. The doctor explained how to change the dressing, and left a bottle of morphine pills with a syringe and some spare needles. He showed Lee how to use the syringe. "How often?"
    "When need. Hundred dollar, my flee."
    Lee paid him. He knew the Chinese would not betray them. He had shown the doctor a letter of introduction from Chinese in St. Louis; such letters are not given lightly. Tom needed morphine for a week, and Lee took the shots with him. It was boring to sit there all day, and he could not risk leaving the hiding place. Yes, he knew how to use a syringe.
    A month ago when the pain started, he went to Denver to buy morphine or heroin. Hone of the old-timers he used to know were around any more. A Black junky with a sincere, untrustworthy face promised Lee he would score and be right back.
    "I can't take you in to the Man." He spread his hands in a disarming gesture as his hand shot forward, the knife glittering in streetlights. There was a sound like a metallic cough. The Black froze, knife in one hand, a tiny blue hole in the middle of his forehead. Lee Ice holstered his silencered .22 and walked away.
    Then he had remembered Doc Hill in Boulder.
    "You can cash this at the pharmacy on the hill. Generally a quarter-grain is enough. That's one pill. But you will know what you need."
    A half-hour later, Lee pulled down his sleeve and looked out into the garden from his room at the back of the house. He had just injected a half-grain into his upper arm. The pain in his stomach was disappearing in throbs of warm comfort. He opened a drawer and took out a little black book.
    My grimoire. My Book of Shadows. A few
    calls to make, a few scores to settle----
    Nobody ever did him a favor or an injury without being fully repaid.
    That was Sulla's epitaph. It would do for Lee Ice as well.

     
     

Where he was going
     

     
     
     
    Farm kitchen, blinds drawn, guns propped in corners. Plates and glasses have been shoved aside to make room for road maps.
    Four men lean over the maps. There is a basic sameness in the faces. Kerosene lamps cast a flickering light of death on cheekbones and lips, on the tired, alert eyes.
    "Sure to have roadblocks here, and here..."
    Ishmael pours a generous portion of whisky into a dirty glass.
    "Couldn't we just hole up here?"
    "Uh uh. They don't rumble us movin' out, they will close in for a house-to-house search."
    "Makes sense."
    "Let's try it here."
    And suddenly it occurred to him that he was going to die. not "sooner or later"— he knew that of course, they all did—but tonight. It came in a puff, like wind that makes a candle flicker, and sick, hollow fear hit him like a kick in the stomach. He doubled slightly forward, supporting himself on the back of a chair.
    It's always like this, he tells himself: the fear, and then a rush of courage