Bounty Hunter, page 21
“I know, but I still want to take a look.”
The woman sighed and led the way. She said over her shoulder, “Tom Langford, you’ve run out all my customers and now you’re going to scare the few that are left.”
Melody spotted the three in the corner and directed her irritation at them. “Hey, Lucy, you slut, button up and take it outside.”
“But it’s raining, Melody,” the girl whined.
“Yeah, well, give them two a quick knee-trembler and then come back inside. And when you do, make sure them cheap swabs buy rum. That’s what I’m selling in this place, not ass.”
Tone and Langford stopped and let the whore and her admirers pass. She led the way to the inglenook, but walked behind it to a narrow, recessed door. The girl fumbled in her purse, found a key and turned it in the lock. Then she and the two men walked outside, closing and locking the door behind them.
“Did Penman have a key for that door?” Tone asked Melody.
The woman nodded. “Yes, he did. I only give them out to my regulars. The rest who want to use the outhouse have to walk around the front. If the door is unlocked it’s too easy for bummers to sneak out without paying their score.”
“Can you see the door from the bar?” Langford asked.
“No. But since only regular—” Melody’s face changed, as the implication of what the sergeant had said dawning on her. “Oh, I see. . . .”
“That’s how Penman managed it,” Langford said. “He slipped out the door, did his dirty work, then sneaked back inside, and nobody the wiser.”
“He told me to leave him strictly alone unless he asked for something,” the woman recalled. “He said he didn’t want to be disturbed while he was studying his lawbooks.”
“So he had time enough to do what he had to do,” Tone said.
“Damn it, I’m going out there and dragging that slut Lucy Barnes back in here by the hair,” Melody said, alarmed. “The Ripper could be out there laying in wait for her.”
Once they were in the street again, Tone said, “What do you think about Penman’s sea voyage? Was he just covering his tracks?”
“I’ve been studying on it,” Langford answered. “Lambert Sprague has been pushed to the wall by the Celestials. It could be that he’s given up on the Barbary Coast and planning to set up somewhere else. He’d want to take his faithful lawyer and business manager with him.”
“Now I remember something,” Tone said. “When I went after Penman he yelled to me that everything had gone to shit. He must have been talking about Sprague’s enterprises along the waterfront.”
“Sprague is getting weaker while the Tong is growing in strength. They already control most of the Barbary Coast and are looking for more.” Langford glanced at the black sky. “At heart, Sprague is still a pirate and it’s not in his code to stand and fight when the odds are stacked against him. He’ll haul down his flag, make a run for it and hope for better times.”
“It seems to me that a man with his money could hire all the gunmen he needed and make a better fight of it,” Tone said.
“He’d need hundreds, an army, and even then the Tong would outnumber him. There are a lot more Chinese in San Francisco than guns for hire in the western lands. Besides, it would take time to recruit the kind of force you’re talking about, and by then Sprague knows he could be dead. The Tong have already come close to killing him once, and by now he must be afraid that every coolie carrying a bundle of dirty laundry on his head is a potential assassin.”
The big sergeant nodded to himself. “No, he’ll cut his cable and run. Gentlemen of fortune know when they’re outgunned.”
“Where to now?” Tone asked.
Langford sighed. “Do some more searching for Penman, I guess.”
Tone smiled. “Like you said, it’s going to be a long night.”
“Some nights,” the cop said, “are longer than others.”
Chapter 39
Dawn came slowly to the waterfront. Out in the bay a gray mist hung over green water and the sky had cleared, shading from scarlet to violet, adorned with ribbons of jade. Gulls squawked and quarreled around the topgallants of the tall ships at the docks and the morning smelled of salt air and timbers worn by wind and sea.
A sorry procession of hungover sailors and miners, exhausted by rum and whores, made their way to their bunks in the brightening light, seeking sleep or a merciful death.
Tone and Langford sat in Tilly Tucker’s Tea Room off Pacific Street, watching the world go by as they yawned over coffee and Tilly’s famous hot rolls and unsalted Wisconsin butter. There were few other patrons at this time of the morning and the three men and two women who were present sat pale, silent and numb.
Tilly was a little old lady, bent and wrinkled, with lively brown eyes and hands mottled with the same color. She stepped to the table, opened the lid of a cigar box and displayed them to Langford. “A morning cigar, Sergeant?” she said. “You look all in.” Then to Tone, “And so do you, young man.”
“It’s been a long night, Tilly.” Langford sighed. “A man gets tired.”
He selected a cigar and the woman reached into the pocket of her pinafore, found a match, thumbed it into flame, and lighted his smoke.
She did the same for Tone, who marveled at her expertise. He’d been around Texas drovers who lit matches like that, but none of them had possessed the old lady’s casual skill.
He told her so, and Tilly smiled. “Young man, I’ve been lighting cigars for gentlemen since I was fourteen. That was when these”—she slapped her flat chest—“were out to here.” She cupped both hands an exaggerated distance in front of her. “Back in those days, on the riverboats, they called me Tits Tucker.”
The last was so unexpected, coming as it did from the prim mouth of a little old lady, that Tone laughed, his first real bellow in a long time, and it felt good.
Tilly toddled away to wait on another customer and Tone and Langford smoked and drank coffee, letting a comfortable silence stretch between them.
After a few minutes a police whistle warbled in the distance. Tone looked at the sergeant and raised a questioning eyebrow.
The big cop shrugged. “Ah, let him get his head kicked in. I’m off duty.”
Then more whistles, strident and urgent.
Tilly was at her far window, craning her neck so she could see the waterfront.
“What’s happening out there, Tilly?” a man asked.
“I don’t know. Some kind of disturbance at the docks. Policemen running . . .”
Langford sighed and got to his feet. He looked at Tone. “I guess we’d better get down there.”
“Is Sprague making his run, you think?”
“Could be. Or they caught a drunken sailor pissing off the dock.”
There were two dozen policemen milling around the dock area when Tone and Langford arrived, the sergeant with a cigar in one hand, a half-eaten roll in the other.
“What’s going on?” he asked the nearest cop. “And where’s Inspector Anderson?”
“He’s escaping, Sergeant!”
“Damn it man, who’s escaping?”
“The Ripper! Look, out there in the boat.”
Langford’s eyes moved to the bay, where the boat was a dark dot in the distance, almost lost between a shoaling sea and the flaming sky. Desperately he turned to Tone. “Can you see anything?”
Tone’s far-sighted gaze searched the bay. “I think maybe six, seven men. Is Sprague’s longboat still tied up?”
Langford hurried to the edge of the dock, glanced down, then yelled, “No, it’s gone.”
Agitated, he tossed away his cigar and roll and walked back to Tone. “It’s got to be Sprague and Penman must be with him.” He looked around at the milling cops. “Who saw the boat leave?”
An officer stepped forward. “We did, Sarge, my partner and me. We were proceeding to relieve the two officers on duty here and that’s when we saw the rowboat pull away.”
“How do you know it was”—Langford hesitated—“the Ripper?”
“One of the individuals on board answered his description: a slight, small man wearing a gray coat.”
“Did you recognize any of the others?”
The officer shook his head. “No, but one of the men at the oars was a real giant.” He jerked a thumb at Tone. “Even bigger than him.”
“That could be Blind Jack,” Tone said.
“Sergeant Langford!”
Langford turned to the voice. “Inspector Anderson, I was wondering where you were.”
“I’ve got two dead officers back there, hidden behind the stack of whale oil barrels yonder. Their necks are broken.” He looked into the bay. “I believe the men who murdered my officers are in that boat, and quite possibly the Ripper is with them.”
“And Lambert Sprague,” Langford said. “If he’s harboring a fugitive from justice we could put that damned pirate away for years.”
Anderson was a young man with a full, spade-shaped beard and intelligent blue eyes. At that moment he looked both frustrated and helpless.
“Inspector, I’d bet my pension that they’re heading for Sprague’s steam yacht anchored off the Golden Gate,” Langford said.
“Then we’ll never catch them,” Anderson said. “We don’t have a steamboat or any other kind of boat. And even if we can find a rowboat they have too much of a start on us. We’re police officers, not expert oarsmen.”
Suddenly Tone recalled his conversation with Simon Hogg, the night the man described the six men Tone had been contracted to kill.
“Langford,” he said, “Simon Hogg once told me that Joe Carpenter kept a small steam yacht.” He looked at the crowded rows of sailing ships lining the docks, a forest of masts stretching away in the distance. “If we can find it and get the thing going we have a chance of catching them.”
Anderson was willing to clutch at straws. He yelled to his men, “Spread out and search for a small steam yacht. It must be anchored around here someplace.”
“How will we know which one it is, Inspector?” an officer asked.
The inspector was on edge and he let it show. “Damn it, man, find any steam yacht. How many can there be?”
Fifteen minutes passed while Anderson fretted and fumed, pacing up and down, occasionally throwing a long-suffering glance at Langford.
Finally he glanced at Tone, then said to the sergeant, “I don’t believe I’ve met this gentleman before.”
Langford made the introductions, then, anticipating a possible objection from Anderson, he said, “Mr. Tone plans to join the department soon.”
“Excellent, but still, he’s a civilian and—”
A whistle sounded and a policeman waved frantically in the distance.
“By God, they’ve found it!” Anderson yelled. Then he was running.
Tone and Langford pounded after him, their tiredness forgotten along with Anderson’s lowly estimate of civilian status.
Chapter 40
The yacht was moored at a jetty in front of an unused warehouse, well away from the main shipping channel.
Tone calculated she was about seventy feet long with a ten-foot beam. The boat was built low and racy, her single funnel raked for speed, and her foredeck was covered with a white canvas awning. She looked ship-shape and ready for sea. A man in Joe Carpenter’s profession would be expected to keep her that way. There was no one on board.
Tone, Anderson and Langford stood on the jetty, admiring her lines, and the inspector said, “She’ll do.” Then his face fell. “Wait, does anyone know how to make the thing go? I expected there would be a crew on board her.”
“For a start, she’ll need to get up a head of steam,” Tone offered. “I would imagine that takes hours.”
Anderson cursed out his frustration. “Hours! The Ripper and the others will be long gone by then.”
He turned to his men, who were grouped together among rusting machinery in front of the warehouse.
“You men, find me sailors who know steamboats!” he yelled. “Empty the brothels if you have to, shanghai them if you must, but get me seamen.”
“Begging the inspector’s pardon,” said an older officer, stepping forward, “but I was a boiler man on the old Wabash during the late war. If that tub’s wood-fired, I can get her started nice as you please.”
“Come forward, man,” Anderson said. “How long to get her going?”
“Let me take a look below, sir,” the man said. Gray hair showed under his helmet and peppered his thick mustache. “I have to see if she’s stoked with wood or coal.”
“Then do it, man,” Anderson said, tapping out an impatient little jig on the jetty timbers. “Time is a-wasting.”
The officer disappeared down a hatchway and was gone for a couple of minutes. When he came back on deck he said, “Aye, she’s wood-fired right enough. One boiler, single screw, but she’ll be fast through the water.”
“How long to give her . . . what do you call it? A full head of steam?”
“From a cold boiler, using a fire of split pine logs saturated with oil, five or six minutes.”
“That’s all?” Anderson asked incredulously.
“Yes, sir,” the cop said. “There’s only one problem.”
“What’s that?”
“The boiler could blow up.”
It took Anderson only a few moments to consider that warning and dismiss it. “There are barrels of whale oil on the dock. Get a few on board and soak that wood as much as you need. Let’s get her started.”
Tone angled a glance at Langford. “The boiler could blow up,” he said mildly.
“Yeah, and us along with it.”
“It do fill a man with confidence. Don’t it, Thomas?”
After ten minutes Anderson sent a couple of his men belowdecks to feed the boiler and he ordered the Wabash veteran to the wheelhouse, since he was the only man on board who had some knowledge of steering.
As Tone and Langford joined the inspector, Anderson was asking his officer how the boiler was holding.
The man shook his head. “Hard to say, sir. When you rapidly heat a cold boiler, some parts expand faster than others and it causes internal strains. At best you get seams in the metal, at the worst, boom! and the whole shebang goes sky-high.”
Anderson had suddenly developed a twitch under his left eye. “What’s your name, Officer?” he asked.
“Charles Benson, sir. Originally of New York town.”
“Good man, Benson. You aim this scow at the Golden Gate full speed ahead. If we catch up with the rowboat I’ll see you get a sergeant’s star in ten years or so.”
“Thank’ee kindly, sir,” Benson said, smiling, as he opened the throttle and eased the yacht away from the jetty. “Not so much for me, you understand, but the little lady would appreciate it.”
Tone, who had been thinking, said, “Officer Benson, that boat you were on—”
“The old Wabash, sir.”
“Right. Did she have guns?”
“She was a fifty-four-gun frigate, sir.”
“I believe if we tangle with Lambert Sprague’s pirate ship, she’ll have cannons on board.”
Benson’s face stiffened and he was silent for a moment. Then he smiled. “Well, sir, maybe our boiler will explode before that happens.”
“Good man, Charlie,” Tone said. “Always look on the bright side.”
“Yes, sir. It’s me nature, you might say.”
But Anderson was obviously worried. His eye twitching, he said to Tone, “How many cannons?”
“I don’t know, Inspector. I never saw them. But about a month ago he used cannons to shoot up a freighter, so he’s got some big guns, all right.”
“He could blow us out of the water before we even get close,” Anderson said.
“We could always turn back and leave it up to the Navy,” Tone said, testing what the young inspector’s reaction would be.
“No!” Anderson said, the word almost a shout. “I’ve left two officers dead on the dock back there and I plan to bring their murderers to justice.” He turned to Benson. “Full speed ahead!”
“And damn the torpedoes,” Tone added.
The inspector allowed himself a slight smile. “Yes, indeed.”
Tone was no sailor, but it seemed to him that the yacht was fairly racing across the water and he said as much to Benson.
“Yes, sir, she can fly. I’d say we’re doing twenty-three knots. We should catch the rowboat before it clears the strait, if the boiler holds.”
“Yes,” Tone said, “if the boiler holds.”
“Take the wheel, sir, if you will. I’m going below to see how she’s bearing up.”
Benson vanished and Tone gingerly took the wheel, concentrating on keeping the bucking boat aimed for the strait.
White water was crashing over the bow and two dozen cops were huddled under the canvas awning, soaked and miserable, several already leaning over the side, retching.
Tone’s face was grim. Could they depend on seasick men to fight when the time came? Revolvers against cannons?
Beside him Anderson was pacing anxiously, his eyes constantly measuring the distance between the yacht and the Golden Gate. Langford seemed composed, almost resigned to his fate, but when Tone caught his eye he could read a troubled mind in their blue depths.
Langford knew the odds they were facing and, like Tone, he apparently did not rate their chances very highly.
As soon as Benson reappeared, Anderson snapped, “Report!”
“She’s opened a seam, sir. We’re losing steam, but so far not too badly.”
“Will the damned boiler hold, man?”
“I don’t know, sir.”
Anderson looked out toward the strait. “We should have found that rowboat by now.”
“They had a fair start on us, Inspector,” Langford said mildly.
“What if they’ve already reached the steam yacht?”
“Then we’re in a heap of trouble, sir.”
Anderson swung on Benson. “Go tell the stokers to push it! I want every scrap of speed I can get from this tub.”
