Bounty Hunter

Chapter 26

Sergeant Langford was waiting for Tone outside. “I want to go talk to the detectives,” he said. “See if they’ve learned anything, though somehow I doubt it.”

Then Tone remembered.

“Penman had dirt under the fingernails of his right hand,” he said. “He’s a fastidious little man and a thing like that is out of character for him.”

“Is he left- or right-handed, do you know?”

“Right, I think. He carved his meat with his right hand.”

“Penman was rooting around in mutton gravy,” Langford said. “It would be easy to get some under his nails.”

Tone made no answer, and the cop said, “Still, it’s something to think about. It could have been blood, huh?”

“Yes, it could have been,” Tone said.

The detective in charge of the murder investigation was an earnest young man who looked hot and uncomfortable in a high celluloid collar and tie.

“Find anything?” Langford asked.

The detective shook his head. “Not a thing. This will go into the records as just another routine prostitute murder. My investigation begins and ends right here.”

“I wonder if Annie Forbes thought her death was routine?” Tone asked, irritated.

The young cop looked at him. “Who the hell are you?”

“A friend of mine,” Langford said, a hard edge in his voice that warned, “Lay off.”

“I can tell you one thing, Sergeant,” the detective said, now seemingly anxious to please. “She was strangled before she was cut. She has severe bruises on her neck.”

“Would that explain the lack of blood?” Langford asked.

The detective nodded. “Sure. When the heart stops, the blood quits pumping.”

“You’ll tell me if you come up with anything else,” Langford said.

“Of course. But right now I’m investigating a dozen cases, and this one isn’t high on my list.”

After he and Langford left the alley, Tone said, “That detective feller really burned me.”

The sergeant smiled. “Don’t blame him. There’s too much crime in San Francisco and too few cops. That young man is underpaid and overworked and he’s doing the best he can. And he’s right. A murdered whore doesn’t keep the chief of police awake o’ nights.”

“Why didn’t you mention Penman to him?”

“No point in that. The man has a cast-iron alibi. He was in the Jolly Jack drinking tea when Annie Forbes was murdered. Melody Cord and a bunch of others will swear to that.”

“I think Penman did it,” Tone said. “He’s a sodomite who hates all women with a passion.”

“So tell me, how the hell did he leave the tavern without anyone seeing him?”

“I don’t know.”

“Well, when you do know, we’ll talk of this again,” Langford snapped.

The big cop was clearly on edge, so Tone closed his mouth, letting him be.

The rest of the evening was taken up by what passed for routine police work on the Barbary Coast.

At the Eureka dance hall two whores, the Galloping Cow and Little Josie Dupree, got into it over the affections of an inebriated whaler. Her talking done, the Galloping Cow, just as drunk as the whaler, summed matters up when she produced a .22-caliber pepperpot and cut loose at Little Josie, missing her with all six shots.

Langford gave the Cow a stern warning and hinted darkly of three days in the calaboose if the offense was ever repeated.

Over at the Last Chance Saloon, a female gambler name Darkie Rose accused fellow cardsharp Banjo Billy Bates of cheating, whereupon the incensed Billy tried to brain her with a whiskey bottle, empty, of course. He swung, missed, and smashed the bottle over the head of a rube who was sitting at the gaming table. However, the rube was a big farm boy who proceeded to pound Billy into a pulp.

Sergeant Langford ended the fracas when he buffaloed the large and enraged lad with his revolver. But the farm boy had a hard head and quickly regained consciousness. After a stern warning from the sergeant, the relieved rube ordered rum punches all round and everyone sang “For He’s a Jolly Good Fellow,” including Langford and the battered and groggy Banjo Billy.

A person or persons unknown took a potshot at a streetlamp, but no damage was done, and a ferocious dog was reported in an alley off Pacific Street. Tone and Langford investigated, but the aggressive canine was not found.

Two cabs collided in the fog and the drivers argued about whose fault it was and then decided to settle the dispute with fisticuffs. Langford intervened and sent them on their way.

A total of six persons were rolled and robbed. There were eight assaults, one a razor cutting that was serious enough to require hospitalization for the victim and jail for the assailant. Someone stole a walnut ladder-backed chair from in front of Solomon Levy’s used clothing store, but despite a thorough investigation by Langford and Tone, neither the chair nor the thief was located.

As dawn broke and Tone and Langford wearily made their way home, the cop declared that apart from the ripping, it had been a quiet sort of night.