Frame Angel! (A Frank Angel Western) #7 by Frederick H. Christian Read Free Book Online

you’re not in my class. An’ that’s not
vanity, either.’
    ‘ That’s
what you think,’ Briggs said.
    ‘ Whatever it is, the hell with you, big shot!’
    ‘ All
right,’ Angel said wearily. ‘Go ahead, convince me. You’re a
mastermind, right? What you did was to knock off some grocery store
in a placita fifty miles from no place, huh? Or was it bigger than that?
Maybe you got away with a couple o’ hundred bucks from some drunken
trail driver someplace or held up a county bank and made off with
the life savings of three Mormon farmers. Boy, Briggs, I can’t wait
to hear it!’
    ‘ Me an’
two other guys,’ Briggs began, ‘we…’ He hesitated and then fell
silent, biting his lip. ‘Forget it,’ he said roughly. ‘You just
forget it.’
    ‘ Go on,
big man,’ Angel said roughly, pushing him now, knowing that if he
didn’t get Briggs to say it right now, he’d never say it at all.
‘Tell me what you and these two other guys did that was so
stupendous. I ain’t had a good laugh since I come in here,
anyway.’
    ‘ We
knocked off a train,’ Briggs said.
    ‘ With a
quarter of a million dollars on board!’
    Angel just looked at him. He
didn ’t say a
word, but the look on his face told Briggs what Angel was
thinking.
    ‘ Goddamn
it, it’s true!’ Briggs said, trying to keep the note of pleading
out of his voice.
    ‘ Sure,’
Angel said. ‘I read all about it in the papers. Headlines a foot
high. About how the train was robbed and all that money took. In a
pig’s eye! What you take me for, Briggs – some kind of
idiot?’
    ‘ I’m
tellin’ you the truth,’ Briggs said hotly. ‘If it wasn’t in the
papers, it’s ’cause they wanted to keep it hushed up. Figured maybe
I’d crack, give them a lead to the others. Well, I never. Not a
word.’
    ‘ That’s
some story,’ Angel said. ‘I’ll give you that.’
    ‘ Goddamn
it—’ Briggs started again, but Angel held up his hand.
    ‘ All
right,’ he said. ‘Let’s say I believe you.’
    ‘ You
believe me?’
    ‘ Let’s
say I do.’
    ‘ Then
let me make the break with you.’
    ‘ Why you
want out, Briggs?’
    ‘ I want
my share o’ that robbery – what else?’
    ‘ Fine.
What I mean is – why should I help you?’
    ‘ Jesus,
we’d be helping each other, wouldn’t we?’
    ‘ I’m the
one with the knife,’ Angel pointed out. ‘I can get out o’ here
alone slick as snake oil. Why should I give you a hand? You got
nothin’ I need.’
    ‘ I got
twenty thousand dollars waitin’ for me outside,’ Briggs said. ‘You
help me get out o’ here, five thousand of it’s yours.’
    ‘ I
thought you said you got a quarter of a million?’
    ‘ Five
thousand,’ Briggs repeated, ignoring his question.
    ‘ Seventy-five hundred,’ Angel said.
    ‘ Done,’
Briggs replied. ‘When do we go?’
    ‘ Tomorrow,’ Angel said. ‘Right after exercises.’
    End of day three, and he had him.
    Much, much later, he lay awake
on his cot, thinking back over what Briggs had told him. There had
been three of them; he knew that was the truth. Briggs
hadn ’t lied
about that nor the total amount taken from the train. So there was
no reason to doubt that he had $20,000 waiting for him. But if his
share was only $20,000, did that mean the other two were taking
$115,000 each, and if so why?
    He kept going back to his own
theory about the robbery. He had contacted Larry James, a district
attorney ’s
man in San Francisco, and James did some discreet checking on the
banks that had made up the shipment and on the personnel in those
banks who had known about it. They all came up smelling of roses.
The Pinkerton Detective Agency was happy to let someone from the
Justice Department check out any of their people, and Angel
personally looked over the dossiers of Leaven and Ruzzin. As far as
he could tell, they were clean too, and when the bearded Mr.
Pinkerton told him that both men were checking their own back trail
through Arizona and New Mexico,