Bounty Hunter

Chapter 34

“Mr. Tone, this is getting tedious,” Inspector Muldoon said. “Seven dead men carried from this house in one evening is, to say the least, most unusual, and unfortunate to boot.”

He looked at Sergeant Langford. “Well, Thomas, what have you got to say for yourself?”

“Those were Sprague’s men,” Langford said. “Tone was defending himself.”

“Yes, I recognized Billy Charbonneau out there with the dead. He was a bad one and he’d been one of Sprague’s right-hand men for years.”

Muldoon sighed. “I’m going down to the waterfront to speak with Sprague, see if I can get to the bottom of this. He’ll deny everything, of course.”

“Please give him this, Inspector,” Tone said. “Tell him it’s from me.”

Muldoon looked at the Bible page in his hands. Tone had scored out his name and has substituted “Lambert Sprague.”

“He’ll know what it means,” Tone said.

“I’ve heard of this, but never seen one before,” Muldoon said, looking hard at Tone. “It’s given only to those who break the pirate oath.”

“I know,” Tone said.

“Did you take such an oath, Mr. Tone?”

“I did, before I fully knew what was involved.”

Now it was Langford’s turn to feel the full force of Muldoon’s icy stare. “I must say, Sergeant, for an officer of the law you keep some strange company, Mr. Tone included.”

“It’s all part of the job, sir,” Langford said defiantly.

“And I believe John Tone will make a fine police officer one day.”

Muldoon was unimpressed. “That remains to be seen, doesn’t it? No one knows better than you, Sergeant, that the standards of our department have become very high in recent years.”

Langford seemed to consider that a conversation stopper and said nothing.

The inspector seemed to enjoy the pause his words had caused, then said finally, “Well, I’ll root out Sprague and perhaps scare him into letting go of this foolish pirate-oath business. And perhaps I can get him to name the date and time of his peace meeting.”

Muldoon smiled. “We might be able to work with that, Thomas. Catch all the scoundrels in one place.” The smile slipped a couple of notches. “Of course, catching is one thing, charging with a criminal offense is quite another. It seems that when it comes to the police, the entire population of the Barbary Coast is blind, deaf and dumb.”

“Indeed, sir,” Langford said, his face betraying nothing.

Muldoon sighed again, this time more deeply. “Well, then, I’ll be on my way.”

“Let me accompany you, sir,” Langford said.

“Sergeant, I’ve worked the waterfront before and I have an escort of two burly officers, so I’ll be quite safe.” He shook his head. “No, you stay here and keep an eye on Mr. Tone. There’s mischief afoot and those brigands could come back in force.”

“Muldoon won’t find Sprague,” Langford said, pouring coffee for him and Tone. “He’ll sound the bugle and charge all over the place like Custer at the Little Big-horn and get nowhere. Sprague will be holed up ahead of his meeting tomorrow.”

“Tonight,” Tone corrected. “It’s almost three in the morning.”

“Yes . . . tonight.” The big cop was silent for a while, thinking. Then he said, “Are we doing the right thing, Tone?”

“You mean are you doing the right thing? I plan to kill Sprague, with or without your consent.”

“Damn it, man, the law—”

“I care only about one law, and that’s the law of survival. I have to kill Sprague before he kills me, simple as that.”

Langford was fingering the star on his chest, and Tone said, “Take it off if you want, but on or off, it won’t change a thing. A couple of hours ago Sprague came close. Next time he might do a lot better.”

“You did well, Tone. Five men dead, shooting in the dark like you did. You burned Sprague real good.”

Tone made no answer and the sergeant lifted bleak eyes to his face. “It’s the only way, isn’t it?”

“Yes, the only way. I kill him, Langford, then you live with it.”

“Live with it . . . ordering a man’s death. If you think about it, I’m no better than Sprague.”

Tone smiled. “I don’t need to think about it. On your worst day, you’re a better man than he’ll ever be. Why should it bother your conscience to kill a rat?”

Langford nodded. “He’s a man who deserves killing.”

“Then let it go and sleep content.”

The sergeant laughed. “On the floor? I don’t have a bed any longer.” He groaned. “Hell, I’m getting too old for this.”

Tone woke as the thin dawn light bladed through the kitchen window. Outside, birds were singing, but the wind drove rain against the glass panes with the sound of a kettledrum.

He pushed the blankets aside and rose to his feet and worked out the kinks in his back. From the parlor Langford’s soft snoring provided a homey counterpoint to the rain. The big cop had stretched out between a couple of chairs and seemed comfortable enough.

They’d heard nothing from Inspector Muldoon.

After he put the coffee on to boil, Tone stepped to the window and glanced outside. The garden looked peaceful, the flowers delighting in the rain, and there was nothing to suggest that it was where five men had died in a gunfight a few hours before.

As the coffee boiled, Tone cleaned and oiled his guns, then reloaded. The .38s were double-action revolvers, but by long habit he left an empty chamber under the hammers. If he couldn’t do the coming night’s work with ten shots, an extra two wouldn’t make any difference.

He poured coffee, lit a cigar and relaxed at the kitchen table, allowing the new morning to become one with him and him with it.

Ten minutes later, as Tone was pouring himself a second cup of coffee, someone burst violently through the front door of the house.

Tone grabbed his guns from the table, stuck his cigar in his teeth, and waited.

A few moments later, Inspector Muldoon staggered into the kitchen. Behind him a worried coachman stood in the doorway, wringing his hands.

“I offered to take him to the hospital, but he fair insisted on coming here,” the cabbie said. “He’d brook no argument, you can set store by that.”

Laying his guns on the table, Tone helped Muldoon into a chair. The front of the inspector’s tunic was covered with blood.

“Shotguns,” the man whispered, grabbing Tone by the front of his shirt, “up close. Officers Tom Tibbles and Henry Ward . . . both dead.”

Suddenly Langford was in the room, holding up his uniform pants with his left hand, his revolver in the other. “In the name of God, Inspector, what happened?”

“I’m done for, Thomas. They’ve done for me at last.”

“What happened?” Langford demanded again.

“I bungled it. Two officers dead because I bungled it.”

Langford looked at Tone. “Get him a glass of whiskey.”

“No, no whiskey,” Muldoon said weakly. “I’m a temperate man.”

“It will do you good,” the sergeant said. He turned to the agitated cabbie. “Go find a doctor, any doctor, and bring him here. Don’t just stand there gaping, man. Go!”

The cabbie touched his hat and quickly left.

Tone put the glass to Muldoon’s lips. The inspector drank a little, then coughed and pushed the whiskey away.

“I’ve sent for a doctor, Inspector,” Langford said. “Now tell me what happened.”

Tone unbuttoned Muldoon’s tunic and the shirt underneath. One look told him all he needed to know. The man had taken a shotgun blast full in the chest and his life was measured in minutes.

“We searched for Sprague for hours,” Muldoon said, his eyes already glazing as death stepped closer to him. “Couldn’t find him . . . anywhere. His taverns . . . house . . . no one knew anything. ‘Gone away,’ was all they’d say. Then . . . just before first light, we heard a woman scream in an alley. We investigated . . . three men . . . shotguns . . . fired on us.”

Muldoon was struggling to stay alive, but his face was gray and he suddenly looked old. “Woman . . . in a cloak . . . she fired at us. Laughed . . . Thomas, she laughed. . . .”

“Try some more whiskey, Inspector,” Tone said.

This time the dying man drank deeply. He managed a pained smile. “Very good. Maybe I should have tried that . . . earlier.” He looked at Langford. “Thomas, I crawled out of the alley after . . . they were gone.” His eyes took on a wild look. “The devil . . . the woman is the devil . . . cloak . . . laughing . . .”

Muldoon’s mind was starting to wander along a misty roadway that led to eternity. He struggled to talk. “Sprague’s work . . . didn’t want me to get close to . . . to what he’s planning. . . .”

He reached out a hand to Langford and the big man took it. “You . . . you’re a good officer . . . Thomas. . . . Fine . . . officer . . .”

Then he smiled and died.

Langford held his inspector’s hand for a long while, as though trying to help him along the road he had to take. Then he gently laid Muldoon’s hand in his lap.

Tone searched his mind for the right words, couldn’t find them, and let his silence do his talking. There were tears in Langford’s eyes, a strange thing to see in that tough, rough-hewn face.

Finally the sergeant said, his voice thick as molasses, “He was the most useless inspector in the San Francisco Police Department—didn’t know his ass from his elbow.” He dashed the tears from his eyes with the back of one huge hand. “Rest in peace, Muldoon. My friend.”

A young doctor arrived a few minutes later. He could only say what Tone and Langford already knew, that the inspector had died from a shotgun wound. But then he said, “A secondary bullet wound to his left shoulder hastened, but did not cause his death.”

Tone was surprised. He had not seen that injury. The doctor pointed it out to him, a round, inflamed hole made by a large-caliber bullet. “I’d guess a .45 or .44,” the doctor said, “fired from fairly close range.”

Chastity Christian’s derringer was a .44. She was the woman in the cloak who had shot Muldoon, then laughed as men died.

Tone vowed to himself that after tonight she would never laugh again.