Bounty Hunter, page 6
“They all live in Silver City,” Tone said. He read again: “Mickey Kerr.”
“He strong-arms for Moylan. That’s all I know, ’cept he’s a bad ’un.”
“Edward J. Hooper.”
“He owns a couple of boardinghouses along the Barbary and specializes in shanghaiing sailormen and importing opium and young Chinese gals as whores. He can buy a girl for four dollars in Canton and sell her for hundreds along the waterfront.” Hogg brightened. “I know what he does in Silver City. He owns a bank and he’s a church deacon. The cap’n told me that.”
“Luke Johnson.”
“I don’t know nothin’ about him except I’ve seen him with the others.”
“Joseph Carpenter.”
“Joe Carpenter owns a couple of waterfront dives and he has a small steam yacht he keeps at the docks. He’s real good with a gun. About a year ago he shot two of his customers dead for roughing up one of his whores.”
“Last, but probably not least, Maxwell Ritter.”
“He owns as much of the waterfront as the cap’n and he’s just as rich. He doesn’t go anywhere without two or three bodyguards.”
Tone sat back on his chair, lilac cigar smoke curling over his head. “It’s not much to go on, but at least I know where to find . . . what’s his name?” He looked at the paper. “Edward J. Hooper. How many churchgoing bankers can there be in Silver City?”
“You’re going there?” Hogg asked, surprised.
“Better than staying here and making myself a target for any two-bit gunman who wants to earn fifty dollars.”
“Mr. Tone, I don’t think the cap’n—”
Knuckles pounded on the door. Luther Penman shoved it open and stepped inside. He seemed to be in an evil temper, his death’s head face set and scowling.
He ignored Tone and looked at Hogg. “Simon Hogg,” he snapped. “What an unpleasant surprise.”
“I was just leaving, Mr. Penman,” the innkeeper said, almost bowing to the man who represented all the wealth, authority and power of Lambert Sprague.
“Then go, and be about your business, nefarious though it no doubt is.”
Hogg shuffled his feet, suddenly uncomfortable in his own crawling skin. “Begging your pardon, Mr. Penman, but Mr. Tone here says he plans on leaving for Silver City. That’s what we was about to discuss, like.”
“If Mr. Tone wishes to discuss his future actions, he’ll discuss them with me and me alone.” His empty eyes fell on Hogg and the man squirmed worse than before. “Why are you still here?”
Hogg knuckled his forehead and headed for the door, a man relieved to be anywhere but in Tone’s room.
“Coffee?” Tone asked after the man was gone.
Penman shook his head and took the chair recently vacated by the innkeeper. “Why did you tell Hogg you were leaving for Silver City? Be brief now, and to the point.”
“I’m tired of making myself a target. Do you know what happened here last night?”
“I heard about it.” Penman let his shark eyes rest on Tone. “The whole point of your agreement with Mr. Sprague is that you do make yourself a target. You will remain on the waterfront, draw the six men to you that you’ve been contracted to kill and then deal with them.”
“I think—”
“Don’t think, Mr. Tone; it doesn’t become you. We hired your gun, not your brain.”
“I want to take the fight to the men who paid to have me killed last night.”
“You will let them bring the fight to you. Those are your orders and you will abide by them.” There were pinpoints of flickering blue in Penman’s eyes. “A word of warning: don’t take the Pirate’s Oath lightly, Mr. Tone. The last man who did was taken to an island off the coast, his belly was ripped open and his intestines were strung out and tied around a tree. I have it on good authority that he screamed for three days before he succumbed.”
Penman smiled with all the warmth of a python regarding a wounded rabbit. “That man’s name was Jim Riley, one of Mr. Sprague’s most trusted crewmen. I recall that he was a stout, jolly fellow. He was not so jolly when he tried to tear loose from his own guts.”
“I won’t break the oath,” Tone said, angry that he heard a catch in his voice.
“Good, it’s settled. Mr. Sprague will be in San Francisco in a week, and you can report to him personally then. Like me, he’s going to say that it’s high time you earned your first thousand dollars. And speaking of money”—Penman pulled a slip of paper from his pocket—“this is Hogg’s bill for your keep, and quite frankly your expenses are horrendous.
“Five dollars a night for whores . . . champagne . . . Havana cigars . . . it goes on and on. For instance, here—why did you feel the need to buy five dozen roses?”
Tone shrugged. “To go with the whores, champagne and cigars.”
“My dear fellow, this can’t continue. I’ve instructed Hogg that your per diem allowance for bed and board will be three dollars a day. Anything above that amount must be cleared by me or met out of your own pocket.” The lawyer sniffed. “Who buys roses for whores?”
“I do.” Tone smiled.
“Well, no longer. Roses for whores . . . pearls before swine, indeed.”
As Penman rose to his feet, Tone smiled and said, “Anyone ever tell you that you’re a likable man, Luther?”
“No.”
“Then I won’t either.”
“Remember,” the lawyer said as he stepped to the door, “Mr. Sprague will be here in a week.”
“I’ll do my best to stay alive until then,” Tone said irritably.
Chapter 9
Night fell on the Barbary Coast and the gas lamps were lit in the streets, illuminating another long orgy of intoxication, fornication and homicide.
The dance halls, concert saloons and gambling dives were open for business, already filled to the walls with sailors, miners, slack-jawed rubes from the hills, whores, pimps, robbers and cutthroats of all kinds. Everywhere could be seen licentiousness, debauchery, pollution, disease, insanity from bad liquor, dissipation, misery, grinding poverty, great wealth, profanity, blasphemy, death . . . and here and there pale-faced preachers, Bibles clutched to their breasts, warning the few who would listen that hell was yawning open to receive the whole putrid mess.
Into this maelstrom of sin that came easy but never cheap walked John Tone, his short-barreled Colt in a shoulder holster under his navy blue peacoat. Penman had told him that he was being paid to make himself a target, and he’d decided that anything was better than waiting in his room for another assassin to strike.
Pacific Street was crowded with humanity and few people paid Tone any attention, intent as they were on their own pleasures.
The alleys leading off the street were mysterious canyons of shadowed darkness, except those where the Chinese lived, which were bright with paper lanterns, teeming with male and female Celestials wearing gaudy red, yellow and blue silks.
Jostled by the crowds, Tone strolled along the street, his restless eyes everywhere, the weight of the Colt bringing him a measure of comfort. He passed a saloon where sailors were singing a popular waterfront song about the used-clothing dealer Solomon Levy.
After a couple of minutes Tone passed Levy’s store, conveniently located between Montgomery and Sansome streets, and open for business twenty-four hours a day. In front of Levy’s door were huge piles of worn blankets and old clothes and shoes, chained and pad-locked to large iron staples driven into the front of the building.
Every customer who bought a dollar’s worth of goods received from Levy’s own hand, with great ceremony, a card on which he’d painstakingly penned a composition of his own making:My name is Solomon Levy,
And I own a clothing store
A way up on Pacific Street—
A hundred and fifty-four.
If you want to buy an overcoat,
A pair of pants or vest,
Step up to Solomon Levy,
And he’ll sell you all the best.
The sailors considered Levy’s verse first-rate poetry and they sang it to every tune they could bend to the words.
Beyond Levy’s store the crowd thinned a little, but there were more Chinese in evidence. Small men hurried past Tone, each carrying heavy burdens on the ends of a supple bamboo pole slung across a shoulder. Others balanced huge bundles of soiled clothing on their heads. None spared Tone a glance as they trotted past, chattering to each other in a language he could not understand.
Tone walked by another alley, this one dark, and his hand strayed to his gun. His instinct for danger clamoring a warning, he saw nothing. Then he heard a short, sharp scream from somewhere ahead of him. Here there were few streetlamps and the fog drifting in from the bay reduced their light to hazy blue and yellow orbs.
It had been a girl yelling out; he was sure of that. But women’s screams were heard often along the waterfront and he was inclined to walk away and let the whore and her pimp work things out for themselves.
Another little shriek, then a man’s harsh voice, followed by the hard crack of a backhanded slap. Tone sighed and walked toward the disturbance, cursing himself for being a meddling fool.
He was coming up on an alley, and he slid his Colt from the leather. As he stepped closer he saw black shadows move against the lesser darkness of the alley. Then he heard the man’s growl again.
“Get her on the ground, Clem. We’ll do her there. And rip them damn Chink pants off’n her and we’ll see what she’s got.”
On cat feet, Tone stepped into the alley. A man had his back turned to him and Tone tapped him on the shoulder. “Excuse me,” he said.
The man swung around, his face frozen in shocked surprise. Tone hammered the barrel of his Colt across the man’s nose, hearing bone break. Sudden blood streaming into his mouth, the man squealed and staggered back. Tone ignored him, aware of the second man jumping up from between the girl’s naked thighs. His pants and long johns were down around his ankles and he tripped, staggered a step and fell. Tone drew back his right foot, then kicked the man full in the face. The kick should have stopped him. But it didn’t. This would-be rapist was big and mean and full of fight.
He sprang to his feet, quickly stepped out of his pants, and a knife suddenly appeared in his right hand, held low and sharp blade uppermost for a slashing belly cut.
“Damn you.” He snarled. “I’ll gut you from balls to navel, I will.”
It was an English voice. Tone fired, fired again. Hit twice dead center of his chest, the Englishman groaned and sank to the ground, his right cheek scraping down the rough brick of the alley wall.
Tone looked down at him. “This was to be a gunfight, Englishman,” he said. “I’m real surprised you didn’t notice.”
The man with the broken nose got to his feet, cast a pained, terrified glance at Tone, lurched into the street and took off in a staggering run. Tone let him go.
As the dying man’s last breath rattled in his throat, Tone kneeled by the girl. She was very young, her black eyes huge and scared. Her legs were open and a small dark triangle pointed the way to the portal where all the mysteries of womanhood began.
He spoke to her, trying to make his voice calm and reassuring, but he knew the girl, a child really, did not understand a word he said.
After Tone helped the girl to her feet, she found a scrap of white handkerchief in a pocket of her pien-fu, the silk knee-length tunic worn by Chinese women along the waterfront. She carefully wiped off the top of her thighs, then grimaced in disgust and threw the handkerchief away. She pulled up her baggy silk pants and tied them at her waist and stepped to the two baskets suspended from a bamboo pole that she’d been carrying when she was attacked.
The baskets were filled with burlap sacks that leaked a black powder. Tone tested the stuff between his thumb and forefinger and nodded to himself.
He’d heard somewhere that Celestials were much given to fireworks of all kinds and the sacks contained the raw material for such displays, gunpowder.
The girl bent to pick up the pole, but Tone lifted it himself and hefted it on his shoulder. It was a balanced load but surprisingly heavy, too heavy for the slight girl who’d carried it.
He smiled. “Allow me to escort you home, ma’am.”
The blank look on the girl’s face told him she didn’t understand, but she walked out of the alley and turned left and Tone followed.
They passed Solomon Levy’s store, where a couple of drunk sailors were laughing and slapping each other on the back as they tried on silk top hats, and then the girl led the way into one of the Chinese alleys, ablaze with paper lanterns and gaslit shop fronts.
Tone’s nerves were stretched as taut as fiddle strings and what happened next came at him too fast, and for a moment he felt a surge of panic.
The girl threw herself into the arms of an older woman with a dark, deeply lined face, and began to shriek words between sobs. Immediately Tone was surrounded by a hostile crowd of Chinese men, some of them wielding wicked-looking knives, all of them yelling, their black eyes glittering with rage.
He took a step back, burdened by the bamboo pole on his shoulder. He had three rounds left in the Colt . . . three more men dead on the ground . . . then he’d be chopped to pieces.
Chapter 10
The older woman saved John Tone’s life.
Her yell was almost a scream, a torrent of Chinese that had no meaning and held no emphasis, good or bad, for Tone.
But the effect of her words was almost magical. Instantly scowls and angry yells turned to smiles and the knives disappeared. Men stretched out and touched Tone, whether for luck or out of a sense of gratitude, he had no idea.
A handsome younger man, tall for a Chinese and well built, wearing tailored Western clothing, pushed his way through the crowd. He went immediately to the sobbing girl and spoke to her for several minutes.
The young man stepped in front of Tone. Without a word he took the bamboo pole from his shoulder, then stared intently at Tone’s face, as though memorizing his every feature.
Finally he said, “Thank you. Best you leave now.”
Tone nodded. “I hope the girl is all right.”
“She is my sister and she will be all right.” He hesitated a heartbeat, added, “Her honor is still intact.”
By the flat expression in the man’s eyes, Tone judged that this conversation was now over. He nodded again, then turned and walked to the mouth of the alley. When he looked back, the young Chinese man was watching him.
By ingrained habit, Tone sat at the table in his room and cleaned and oiled his revolver. More than one man had died in a gunfight because of a dirty weapon.
He reloaded, then looked at the gun on the table in front of him, his mind racing, considering the Colt’s implications.
He had deliberately made himself a target, but ended up shooting the wrong man. The Englishman needed killing, or so he told himself, but his death didn’t bring him a profit and no closer to settling with the six men on his list.
He would not walk the street again at night. There were so many robbers and killers along the waterfront that by making himself a target he could kill men every night. Where was the sense in that? There was none. He was a businessman, not a killer.
Unbidden, another, more disturbing thought, came to him: did the Englishman die only because of his nationality?
Tone picked up the Colt, enjoying its balance, the cool look of blue metal, the warm glow of the mahogany handle.
The Englishman came at him with a knife, threatening to gut him. It was a justified killing. Self-defense as ever was. But he’d fired twice, making sure the man would die. No, that wasn’t true. He wanted only to put him down and have him stay down.
Tone laid the Colt back on the table. He hadn’t murdered the English sailor. He’d killed the man in a fair fight. Even Blind Jack would be able to see that.
The Fenian rebellions, the Troubles, Molly O’Hara’s death—that was all behind him, a life he’d led in a different time and place. Ireland was a forgotten memory, like a beautiful fairy gift that had vanished in the morning light. . . .
Someone tapped lightly on the door. Tone asked who it was, his hand on the revolver.
“It’s me, John. Jennie Burns.”
Tone told her to come in, but he didn’t let go of the gun until the woman stepped inside. She was carrying a bottle. “A peace offering for running out on you like that,” she said.
“I guess you had good reason,” Tone said.
“Glasses?”
“By the bed there.”
Jennie brought a couple of glasses and set them on the table along with the whiskey, and she sat opposite Tone.
“A couple of drinks first, then I’ll give you a riding lesson you’ll never forget. I’m a bucker, remember?”
Tone smiled. “I remember.”
The woman filled two glasses and handed one to Tone. She raised her drink and smiled. “Slainte!”
“Slainte!”
Tone drained his glass and stretched out a hand for the bottle to pour another. He never reached it. Suddenly the room was cartwheeling around him and Jennie was smiling . . . a smile of triumph.
The door burst open and Simon Hogg rushed inside, a couple of big men right behind him. Despite his reeling head and blurred vision, Tone was aware of a fourth man standing back in the shadows, gaslight wobbling in the little pince-nez glasses perched at the end of his nose.
“That’s him!” Hogg yelled.
Tone struggled to his feet. “Hogg, you traitorous bastard!” he shouted.
The big man’s face seemed to be submerged in a tank of turbulent water. “You’re only a traitor if someone finds out about it, Mr. Tone,” he said. “And no one will, because by this time tomorrow you’ll be on the high seas bound for Canton.”
Tone staggered across the floor, trying to reach his gun. He tripped over his own feet and fell flat on his face.
“Pick him up, ye swabs,” the man with the pince-nez said harshly. “Kill the whore, then let’s get him on board.”
