The Right Thing to Do by Jonathan Kellerman

Malcolm Bluestone stood by as three men tried to kill his brother.
    The first assassin came from behind Steve, materializing in a puff of dust, a rifle aimed at Steve’s head. Steve wheeled and fired before the bastard’s trigger finger could budge.
    A red spot tattooed the assassin’s forehead. As he fell, he gave a look of dull consternation followed by the terror of insight.
    By that time, Bastards Two and Three were already charging, Two brandishing a long-barreled revolver, Three howling savagely and waving a bowie knife.
    They came at Steve simultaneously, Knife to the right, Gun to the left, forcing a split-second decision. One miscalculation, and Malcolm would be looking at his brother’s corpse.
    Steve used his Colt to strike out faster than the snap of a bullwhip, chopping Knife’s plunging arm. The guy fought for equilibrium, the bowie flying from his hand. He scurried to retrieve it. Rather than try to stop him, Steve turned his attention to Mr. Gun, who’d lofted his weapon.
    Three quick bursts of gunfire. Another headshot, followed by two bloody holes at center body mass.
    Mr. Gun fell hard on his back. Mr. Knife had retrieved his blade but was still half turned, showing part of his back to Steve. The easy thing would’ve been for Steve to plug him in the spine and be finished.
    Not Steve’s way.
    He waited until he and Knife were face-to-face, Knife hefting the bowie, grinning and growling and plunging forward.
    Steve deflected the blow, this time with his own sleeve, barely missing the upthrust of the blade. Knife tottered but came at Steve a third time, silvery steel jabbing inches from Steve’s face.
    Steve feinted backward, stepped forward, repeated the pattern; dancing, confounding Knife. Finally making his own charge and distracting Knife with a flourish of his gun, he kicked the bastard in the nuts.
    Knife moaned and bent over double and Steve rabbit-punched him on the nape of his neck and the guy collapsed in agony, landing atop Gun’s body. Steve took the knife, glanced at the weapon disparagingly, tossed it into the brush.
    The sun was sinking, shadows descending on ramshackle buildings and the sharp-jawed, clean-cut contours of Steve’s tan face.
    From the ground, Knife muttered something pitiful and incoherent.
    Steve grinned and holstered his Colt and took out a cigarette and lit it.
    Knife mewled again.
    Steve said, “I kept you around, amigo, because we need to talk.”
    The director yelled, “Cut.”
    —
    The film was a low-budget oater titled
Blood and Dust,
a genre already losing fashion in the States and destined for immediate export to Italy and smaller European countries like Andorra and San Remo and Monte Carlo. In Milan, it would be overdubbed in out-of-sync Italian and rechristened
Il Desperado
.
    The shoot was at a place called Deuces Wild Film Ranch, out in the Antelope Valley, seventy miles north of L.A. and accessible only by rutted roads that did nothing for the suspension of Steve’s teal-blue ’56 Eldorado convertible. Steve didn’t mind, assuring Malcolm, “It’s just a big bucket of bolts, they come and go, maybe next time I’ll get a Jag XKE.”
    This morning, driving to the lot, an unfiltered Camel drooping from his lips, he’d reacted to a particularly harsh bump by putting on speed, as if daring the terrain. Malcolm holding on as Steve had laughed. “Don’t worry, I’m more concerned about your kidneys, little bro.”
    Malcolm laughed, too, and said he was fine, even though his back was starting to hurt like hell.
    No way he’d look like a weakling in front of a man’s man like Steve Stage.
    —
    It was the summer of 1965 and Malcolm’s second trip to see his brother.
    The first visit had taken place in ’58, when Malcolm, fourteen, had been the beneficiary of Steve’s surprise offer, raised during one of his irregular long-distance calls to Brooklyn: a one-year-late bar mitzvah gift consisting of a full, expenses-paid week of fun in the L.A. sun,