Read Three Tales From the World of Cotton Malone for Free Online Page B

Christopher Combs.”
    A puzzled look came to the man’s face. “Two of you? After the same thing?”
    â€œWhich is?”
    Gamero shook his head, then motioned and led him through a ragged curtain into the back of the shop. The building had apparently once housed a bank, since left over from that time was an iron vault. He watched while Gamero spun the bronze dial, released the tumblers, then eased open a heavy black door.
    â€œSee for yourself. Just as Combs did. I will be out front.”
    He entered the vault and yanked the chain on a bare bulb dangling from the ceiling. Eight filing cabinets were arranged against one wall. One door led out, but it was secured by a hasp lock. Hestudied the cabinets, noted their rust and decay, and concluded that time probably had not been kind to their contents.
    He slid open one of the drawers.
    Tattered folders and yellowed paper were packed tight inside. He removed a few samples and noted the writing, mostly in faded type.
    German.
    He could not read any of it.
    He examined the other drawers. Each was similarly stuffed.
    Apparently this was some sort of German records cache. Swastikas adorned many of the pages as part of the letterhead.
    He heard the bell from the front of the store.
    Then two pops, like balloons bursting.
    Then, the bell again.
    He left the vault and walked back toward the front. The shop was quiet. No one in sight. People milled back and forth outside the front windows on the sidewalk. Cars whizzed by on the boulevard beyond. Gamero, though, lay facedown on the floor in a pool of his own blood.
    The pops had been from a sound-suppressed weapon, two exit wounds dotting the man’s skull.
    He checked for a pulse.
    None.
    He stepped to the front door, locking it from the inside. He then dragged Gamero behind the counter, out of view of the windows.
    He needed to finish what he’d started.
    Remembering the locked door inside the vault, he frisked the corpse, finding a set of keys. He retreated behind the curtain, back into the vault, and opened the hasp lock that secured the door.
    He yanked the chain for another bare bulb.
    The room was little more than a walk-in closet, its stone walls lined with wooden shelves sagging from an assortment of memorabilia.
    Uniforms, busts, swords, pistols, all adorned with sig-runes and swastikas. He counted twenty tattered copies of Mein Kampf. Ceramics, too, mostly animals and statuettes. One, a storm trooper doll, had its arm raised in a salute. There were also beer steins, helmets, and a music box that still chimed.
    Was Gamero a collector? Or a dealer?
    Had this drawn Combs’ attention?
    He heard a noise from the front of the shop. In the store’s silence, everything seemed amplified. He stepped back to the curtain and peered past. Two men were outside. One was jimmying the door lock while the other stood in front, trying to block the view of passersby.
    He decided that he wanted to know what these two were doing, so he retreated into the bowels of the building and slipped behind a ceiling-to-floor stack of cardboard boxes, each container overflowing with books. He was able to squeeze behind them just as the bell sounded, and he used the spaces between the stacks to watch as the two men pushed through the curtain and found the vault. Each carried a small briefcase, which was laid on the floor as they disappeared inside. He heard the metal drawers shriek open and the sound of paper fluttering, then more objects slamming the floor.
    They were apparently emptying the memorabilia closet, too.
    One of the men returned and retrieved a briefcase.
    A couple of minutes went by, then they both exited the vault.
    The second briefcase was opened, and Wyatt spotted four bundles of a gray material wrapped in clear plastic. Each was laid on the floor, down the hall, two on one side, two on the other. Protruding from each was a small black rectangle.
    He knew exactly what he was looking at.
    Plastic explosives with