Find Angel! (A Frank Angel Western #1), page 12
‘Why did Cravetts go to Virginia City?’ Angel wanted to know.
‘Parlay his stake,’ Monsher gasped. ‘Saloon. Going to buy … saloon. Listen—’ his hand reached out and clutched Angel’s sleeve. ‘You promised. Hospital. You promised … ’
‘That’s right,’ Angel said. He straightened up.
‘You can have him,’ he told James.
James looked down at the bleeding man on the floor.
Monsher was pretty well unconscious now. There was a heavy pool of blood beneath his body. ‘You gave him a hard time, Angel,’ he said.
‘Poor chap,’ was the reply. ‘You believe what he said?’
‘I believe him,’ James said. The door of the saloon burst open and Wells came clumping in with the deputy who had been sent to fetch him. He saw the two of them standing on the balcony.
‘Is he dead?’ he shouted up.
‘All but,’ James told him.
‘Get anything out of him?’ Wells asked Angel.
‘All we need to know,’ Frank Angel told him.
The deputy hustled some men off the street and requisitioned a blanket from one of the stores on Kearny.
There was a crowd outside the saloon but they soon dispersed when Monsher’s body was brought out cradled in the blanket and put into a paddy wagon.
‘I’ll take him downtown, sor,’ the deputy told James.
‘See he gets those wounds looked at,’ James shouted after the rattling wagon splashed off down Kearny. The deputy waved an arm in acknowledgement and the three men stood on the pavement by Kennedy’s for a few minutes, Wells lighting a cigar and puffing on it reflectively.
‘Virginia City,’ he said, musing. ‘That’s a hard ride.’
Then he shrugged. ‘Que sera … we’ll skin out tomorrow morning. Larry, can you get us a room someplace for the night?’
‘Already did,’ James grinned. ‘At the Occidental.’
‘You mean — ’
‘While we were waiting for Monsher,’ the DA’s man said. ‘Figured Monsher sure as hell wasn’t going to be needing it.’
Wells shook his head grinning and they started back along Sutter to the hotel. Later they ate some cold chicken and Angel tasted white wine for the first time in his life.
‘You handled things … uh, pretty good,’ Wells said, finally.
Angel nodded, keeping his head bent over the plate.
‘But you’re still pushing your luck,’ the older man grumbled.
For the first time since they had left Fort Bowie, Frank Angel smiled. It made his whole face boyish again.
‘Hell, Angus,’ he said. ‘Isn’t that what luck is for?’
Wells had no answer for that one. They finished their meal and went up to their room.
‘Virginia City,’ Wells muttered as he turned in. ‘He’s sure as hell got his nerve.’ He fell asleep almost instantly, leaving Angel still dressed sitting at the window looking out across the lighted city.
When he woke up next morning the boy was gone.
Chapter Nineteen
Angel was moving fast.
Lake Tahoe stretched ahead of him, forty miles wide and blue as a Chinaman’s robe. Quail scattered in front of his horse, their head feathers quivering with every movement as they ran between bushes and rocks. Ahead, the mountains soared in huge phalanxes of black and puce and purple and slate, their shoulders mantled with pine, peaks etched with snow. Angel pointed the sorrel’s nose downhill from the pass.
‘Well, there’s the avalanche,’ he muttered to the horse, ‘but where’s the trail?’
In truth, the trail along the flank of Echo Mountain was like an avalanche to look at, a series of gigantic furrows scoured into the flinty earth by the wheels of the Concords and wagons on their way to and from the mining country. He followed it down to the shore of the lake and by nightfall he was over Second Summit and coming down the long shelving slope eastwards into the Nevada desert. He wondered what Wells was doing.
He had left no note. Wells wouldn’t need to be told where Angel was going, and a frosty smile touched Angel’s lips as he visualized the older man stomping around the hotel room cursing when he discovered him gone. But he knew Wells would waste very little time on recrimination. He would move heaven and earth to get to Virginia City, to cut down the head start Angel had given himself. He figured he had a slight edge on the Justice Department man but nothing more. Travelling horseback he could make better time than the coach Wells would have to use. That might give him twenty four hours at the best, twelve hours at the worst, to find Cravetts in Virginia City. He shrugged to himself. It would just have to be enough.
Next morning early he pushed up the twisting road that climbed the canyon to Mount Davidson, passing dump after deep mine dump, and shaft houses either working or already abandoned and rusted. Then just like that, around a corner he was in the town, its crude, ugly, overpowering mass clamped to the face of the canyon.
The streets went up the side of the hill in lettered array, with downhill streets crossing them. Everywhere there were shacks and tin pot stores with mining equipment hanging in jangling disarray outside them. The sidewalks were crammed with people, and the whole length of B Street was one churning seething hive of animals and men, carts and wagons and coaches and horses and mules and yapping dogs and over it all lay a steady, unaltering level of noise — the deep thumping of the pile drivers below ground, the unending hubbub of human voices, and the punctuation provided by the shrill blast of the Virginia 8c Truckee Railroad down at the depot.
It was already growing very hot in the open. The light mountain air was thin and heady. Angel found a livery stable on the mountain side of B Street and while he was unsaddling, asked the owner a question.
‘Cravetts, Cravetts?’ said the man, scratching his head. ‘Cain’t say I’ve heerd the name, son, but that ain’t nuthin’. Too danged many people hereabouts for a man to know any but his own kin, an’ a right few o’ them ain’t usin’ the name they had in the States.’
‘Place is sure humming,’ Angel agreed, looking out on to the street.
‘Waal, we better make the best of her,’ the stableman said. ‘You want my ’pinion, the gold’s a gonna peter out afore too long, an’ the way they’re drillin’ down there, wouldn’t surprise me if the whole burg caved right in.’
‘Cheerful thought,’ Angel said. ‘Where’s a decent hotel?’
‘You could try the International down the street a ways,’ he was told. ‘Good as any. The stage line uses it.’
Angel thanked him and went out on the street, drifting with the endless crowd on the battered and broken sidewalks. Virginia City was raw and ugly and the smell of gold excitement came off it like rancid butter. Along the street he found whiskey mills every twenty paces, and looked into one or two. They were cheap deadfalls and he didn’t expect to find anything, but he looked anyway. Wells had told him that. Always look, he said. Costs nothing, and you never know what you’ll find.
But there was nothing to find. He had been naive to think he could come to a big place like this and find one man in it. He walked further along the street, and in the slide area between two buildings he saw a cock-fight with a crowd of men clustered around the screeching birds, fists full of currency, shouting and cheering when blood was spilled. He came to the International Hotel, a solid-looking brick building of two storeys, and went inside, taking a seat in the lobby.
He was trying to think like Wells, and cast his mind back to their weeks of waiting at Fort Bowie. Wells had told him many of the ruses, the ploys he had used in his time with the Justice Department. Tricks of the trade, he’d called them.
‘People become thieves because they’re lazy,’ Wells had said. ‘Deep down, basically, I mean. They’re too lazy to graft for their money so they steal it instead.
They’ll kill while they’re stealing it because they’re too lazy to fight for what they’ve stolen. A lawman has to capitalize on the fact that criminals are lazy, greedy, cunning, always expecting someone to try and put something over on them. And use the knowledge to bring them to him.’
Angel nodded to himself. But how, Angus, how? He had to get action quickly. ‘Always use the simplest, most direct methods,’ Wells had told him. ‘Less chance of fouling up on a detail.’
He went across to the desk.
‘How would I go about finding a man named Cravetts who runs a saloon in town somewhere? he asked.
The clerk looked at him indulgently.
‘In Virginia City proper, sir,’ he said, ‘or Gold Hill?’
‘I don’t know.’
‘There are more than one hundred saloons in town, sir,’ the clerk said patiently.
‘Which one is the biggest, the fanciest?’ Angel asked.
The clerk raised one eyebrow slightly. ‘The Alhambra, I’d say.’
‘That’s on B Street?’
‘No, sir, on C, at the corner of Taylor. Two blocks along and one up.’
Angel nodded his thanks and left. He found the Alhambra without much difficulty, and pushed through the crowd to the bar. The bartender served him the beer he asked for and then pointed down the bar at a florid-faced man with a huge belly standing talking to some of his customers near the free lunch counter.
‘Happy Jack’s the owner, you want to talk to him,’ he said as reply to Angel’s question. Angel walked down to the end of the bar and waited for a moment until he caught Happy Jack’s eye.
‘Wondered if you could help me,’ Angel said. ‘I’m trying to contact someone. Name of Cravetts. Dick Cravetts. Bought a saloon up here quite recently.’
Happy Jack pursed his lips and looked at his molded ceiling for inspiration. ‘Cravetts,’ he muttered. Then a beaming smile split his face wide open, instantly explaining his nickname.
‘Dick Cravetts!’ he said. ‘Course! Bought that big place down on A Street next to Crazy Kate’s. Had a fancy opening. Harry — ’ he called to the bartender, ‘ — what did that guy Cravetts call the old Brewery when he took it over?’
‘The Pay Roll,’ said the bartender, and Happy Jack smiled, his double chins jiggling. ‘Some name for a saloon, eh, mister — ?’
‘Torelli,’ Angel told him. ‘Frank Torelli.’
‘You new in town, Frank?’
just got in,’ Angel said. ‘I’m at the International. Thought I’d look old Dick up.’
‘Well, that’s where you’ll find him, down the hill all the way from here, turn left on A and there you are. Give him my regards, tell him to come in some time for a chinwag.’
He gestured at his double chins and the grin split his face again. ‘Chinwag,’ he gurgled. ‘Get it?’
Angel supplied the fat man with laughter and a drink, then went out into the street and found his way back to the hotel, where he booked a room for the night. It was no problem to find someone to go down to the Pay Roll Saloon with his message.
‘Just tell him Torelli, Frank Torelli sent you,’ he told the youngster. ‘Tell Mr. Cravetts I’m in Room 14 at the International and I have to see him about the money.’
‘See him about the money, yessir,’ said the boy, and picked the silver dollar that Angel flipped to him out of the air. With a satisfied nod Angel went into the dining room and ate a good meal. Then he went up the street and bought a few things which he took to his room.
Once there he stripped off his coat and went to work.
When everything was the way he wanted it, he sat down on an upright chair in the corner of the room to wait out the afternoon. He did not think anything would happen before dark.
They came soon after nightfall and if he had been in the bed he would have had no chance. The first one hit the rope Angel had rigged two feet off the floor and went sprawling as Angel dropped the second man with a roundhouse clout from the barrel of the Army Colt. The first man was getting to his knees when Angel hit him in the throat and dropped him retching beside his twitching comrade. Angel manhandled the man on to the bed and lashed him feet and hands X-shaped on the hard bed. Then he checked the pulse of the man by the door, nodding in satisfaction. The man would be out for an hour or more. He picked up the water jug from the wash stand and threw water into the face of the man on the bed. The man surged up spluttering against his restraining bonds and then realizing he was bound relaxed backwards on the bed, only his dark eyes alive with apprehension. The swarthy skin and heavy black moustache suggested foreign blood.
‘What’s your name?’ Angel rasped.
The man tried to spit at him.
‘I know Cravetts sent you,’ Angel said. ‘What for?’
The man turned his face away from his questioner, his mouth a tight thin line.
‘All right,’ Angel said, and hit him hard in the belly.
The man’s eyes bugged out of his head and he arched upwards on the bed, his mouth a gaping O of astonished pain. Then he retched and fell back panting, his eyes wide and filled now with fear.
‘One more time,’ Angel said, ‘What were you supposed to do?’
The man shook his head. ‘He’d kill me,’ he said.
‘You think I won’t?’
Again the man shook his head. Angel said nothing more. He took one of the cartridges he had stood ready on the bureau, its leaden slug already extracted. He poured the gunpowder out on the top of the marble wash table making a long thin line. Then he touched a match to it. The powder lit with a small sound, and then burned smoking from one side of the table to the other.
The man on the bed watched, a crease of puzzlement between his brows. Then Angel came across to the bed and ripped the man’s shirt, exposing his bare body. He yanked the man’s trousers and underpants down to his knees and without haste poured the powder from two more cartridges on the man’s naked body, starting at the breastbone and letting the trail trickle down to the man’s genitals. The man caught on now and surged against his bonds, shaking himself to make the powder spill off his body, but the perspiration kept most of it where Angel had poured it. Then Angel looked at the man and took a match from the box.
‘Last chance,’ he said.
The man’s Adam’s apple went up and down with a sound like a boot coming out of a mud hole.
‘You wouldn’t,’ he ventured. The look on his captor’s face stopped him saying more.
‘Your name,’ Angel said relentlessly.
‘Bryan,’ the man said. ‘Barney Bryan.’
‘Go on.’
‘He said we was to kill you, that’s all.’
‘Just that? Go to the International and kill a man called Torelli?’
‘That’s all.’
‘You’re lying,’ Angel said and struck a match.
‘Christ, no, Torelli, lissen, I’ll tell you!’ screeched the man on the bed, panic in his expression. ‘Put that thing out!’
Angel blew out his match.
‘Talk,’ he said.
‘Cravetts said we was to bring you in. He said you couldn’t be Torelli because Torelli was dead, so he wanted to know who you was.’
‘Then what?’
‘We was to bring you to his house. Up on D Street.’
‘Describe it.’
‘Big place, it is,’ Bryan said. Now he was talking, the words flowed quickly. ‘Big bay windows, wrought iron fence. Terraced steps an’ them gingerbread gables on the roof. All painted white. It’s the third house along from Union on the left.’
‘Who’s up there with him?’
Bryan shook his head. ‘I don’t know, Torelli, honest. I only been there the once.’ The color was coming back into his face now. He looked almost eager to please.
Angel turned away and spent ten good minutes lashing the hands and feet of the man on the floor with a length of rope. Then he grinned down at Bryan.
‘Room’s paid for,’ he said. ‘You might as well use it.’
Bryan watched him in silence as he put on his shoulder holster rig and donned his jacket.
‘You— you goin’ after Cravetts?’ he said in disbelief.
Angel nodded.
‘You mean — you set this up just to find out where he was?’
‘Right,’ was the monosyllabic reply. ‘I couldn’t take him in the saloon.’
‘You’re out of your head,’ Bryan said flatly. ‘He’ll cut your gizzard out an’ feed it to the dogs!’
‘That’ll be the day,’ Angel said, and went out.
Chapter Twenty
Angel underestimated Angus Wells.
The Justice Department man wasted no time in recriminations. He knew where Angel had gone and why, so instead of cursing he used all his energy and all authority his office gave him to set up a chain of transportation. Within an hour of his discovery of Angel’s disappearance, Wells was in a specially-chartered paddle steamer churning across San Francisco Bay. He had no eyes for the beauty of the scenery, fuming as Angel Island went by to starboard, fretting as they forged through San Pablo Bay and Benicia slipped astern. He was still grumbling with impatience as he stumped off the boat at Stockton and clambered aboard the waiting Concord.
He was no sooner in the red-painted stagecoach than the ribbon shaker gave vent to an explosive Rebel yell and the team careened out of the depot raising a huge cloud of dust as they burned up the road towards Sacramento.
A train was waiting for them there: Larry James had telegraphed ahead. It was just an engine with a flat car behind it, and had steam up already. They could only go as far as end of track, which meant that Wells had to pick up another Concord at Shingle Springs. He picked his way past the horde of gaudy dancers shuffling gravel on to the newly-built right of way by the light of flaring kerosene lamps. Night was down hard now on the teeth of the Sierras, but Wells would brook no delay. Aching in every joint he piled into the waiting Concord and the driver swung out on to the Placerville road. They pulled in four hours later.
‘What’s the road like?’ Wells asked the company at large, miners, travelers and freighters using the eating house on their way to or from the high country. He was wolfing down a plate of cold meat, beans and tortillas which he hardly tasted. It was fuel and Wells took it aboard as an engine takes on wood.
