Bounty Hunter

Chapter 16

Night fell along the Barbary Coast and the streets thronged with sailors who rubbed shoulders with drovers down from the hills, bearded miners, rubes from the sticks and respectable businessmen in from the city who knew that any degenerate appetite they possessed, no matter how perverted, would be satisfied, so long as they had money to pay. Amid this bedlam bustled thugs, murderers, thieves, burglars, gamblers, pimps and whores, scuttling through the darkness like cockroaches.

The rain that had promised to stop had lied, and now fell in a light drizzle that added its gray curtain to the veil of the fog. Wet cobblestones gleamed like polished blue iron in the light of the streetlamps and passing cabs threw up cascades of water from their rattling wheels.

A gas lamp burned in the rear room of Chang’s house in Murder Alley, the window a rectangle of pale turquoise in the gloom.

Inside, John Tone was not in the best of moods. The round Chinese hat Chang had given him to wear was, like his clothes, too big for him and kept falling down over his eyes. Irritably, he pushed it back for the tenth time that evening, then growled when Chastity asked him a question.

Getting no answer, she asked it again: “How do you want to play this?”

Tone snatched the infernal hat off his head and glared at the woman. “Mickey Kerr is visiting his lady-love in her room above the Opera Comique. I plan to climb the stairs, kick in the door and gun him. Then I’ll turn around and get the hell out of there.”

Chastity nodded. “A fine plan, Tone. Just a couple of problems: One, Luther Penman told me the Opera Comique is a concert saloon with a dance hall in the cellar. The front door will be guarded and they won’t let you inside. You’re supposed to be Chinese, remember? And two, you’d never get out of there alive after shooting Kerr.”

Fighting down his irritation, Tone said, “Then what, pray, do you suggest?”

“I’ll go inside and take care of Kerr. But when I come out again, I want your guns covering me.”

“You’re also supposed to be Chinese, you know. Why would they let you inside and not me?”

Chastity stepped to the closet. She settled a straw coolie hat on her head, then picked up a bundle of clothing. Taking small, mincing steps, she trotted toward Tone, carrying the bundle.

“Let pass, please,” she said in a high, accented voice, keeping her head down, her face covered by the wide brim of the hat. “Laundlee for missy upstairs. She in velly big hurry.” She looked at Tone and said in her normal voice. “The toughs at the door will let me go. They’ll probably grope my tits and ass as I run past, but I’ll get to Mickey Kerr.”

Despite his peevishness, Tone saw the logic in what Chastity was suggesting. It showed in his eyes, because the woman said, “What are you worried about, Tone? You’ll still get credit for the kill.”

That gave Tone pause. Bounty hunting was a dirty, sometimes violent and bloody business, but he’d never bragged on the men he’d killed and considered those who did to be low-life tinhorns.

Chastity knew his wages depended on gunning Kerr and five others, and that was why she’d told him he’d get the credit. But to hear it put so coldly and matter-offactly as she’d just done troubled him.

Or was it bounty hunting that troubled him? Had he ever been completely at ease killing men or tearing them away from their wives and children all in the name of supporting his expensive lifestyle in Reno?

Angry at himself now, realizing that having second thoughts about his profession was a form of betrayal, Tone shoved the notion from his mind. His reaction to his self-damning introspection was to tear the Chinese tunic off his back and yell, “Hell, I’m dressing like a white man. I’ve had enough of this coolie shit.”

Chastity’s voice was controlled, level. “Penman is trying to save your life, Tone, or at least keep you alive long enough to fulfill your contract. I suggest you do as he says and wear the Chinaman’s clothes.”

Tone threw the round hat across the room. “Penman is an idiot!”

The woman refused to be baited. In the same controlled voice she said, “He is far from being an idiot. He’s possessed of a shrewd, calculating brain that helped make Mr. Sprague a millionaire.” She smiled without warmth. “Don’t make the mistake of underestimating Luther Penman.”

Tone stripped off the shoulder rig and picked up his seaman’s jersey.

“Where did you get those shoulders, Tone?” Chastity asked, smiling.

“Down on the farm, when I was a boy.”

“Your father was a farmer?”

“Yes, and a good one. Then the British came and burned everything he had. My mother died, of grief, the doctor said, and me dad soon followed.”

“I’m sorry.”

“Ireland’s history is written in sorrow.” Tone pulled on the jersey. “Anyway, it all happened a long time ago when I still had songs to sing.”

“You don’t sing now?”

“No. I can recall the words of the songs, but the music has long since fled.”

“How sad that is.”

“I don’t need sympathy.” Tone strapped on the shoulder rig.

“No, I suppose you’re not a man who does. But it’s still sad.”

Tone shrugged into his peacoat, then donned his watch cap. He glanced in the mirror. “There. I look myself again.”

“You mean you’re a target again,” Chastity said.

“I mean I’m a bounty hunter with a job to do and I start doing it tonight.” He looked at the woman, a delicate, haunting beauty in the pale blue gaslight. “Are you ready?”

Chastity checked her derringer, then picked up her bundle of linens. “I’m ready.”

“Then let’s get it done,” Tone said.