Bounty Hunter

Chapter 35

Night came to the Barbary Coast and the old round of business, pleasure, folly, vice and violent crime went merrily on.

Already, and still before six o’clock, two Frenchmen got into a duel with rapiers over the favors of a whore. The fight ended with a skewering, a dead man and the sobbing victor dragged off to the calaboose. In the basement of the La Scala Hotel on Drum Street, a man named the Shanghai Chicken, who fancied himself a prizefighter, took on a pugilist by the name of Soapy McAlpine. Before a well-heeled crowd, the Shanghai Chicken was defeated in eighteen rounds. Minus part of his nose and right ear—the other was badly chawed—he later claimed he lost the fight because Soapy landed an illegal low blow that “damn near exploded my balls.” But all would have ended peacefully enough had not the Shanghai Chicken’s sweetheart, perhaps fretting over possible damage to a part of her lover dear to her, obtained a revolver from behind the bar of the Sailor’s Haven tavern and proceeded to demonstrate her annoyance at Soapy by pumping three bullets into his brisket.

As John Tone prepared to leave Langford’s house, Soapy was languishing at death’s door in St. Mary’s Hospital while his unrepentant assailant sat in her police cell and sang the latest hit ballad, “After the Ball,” to all who would listen.

“I’ll walk with you, Tone,” Langford said. He seemed uneasy, a man who was not at peace with himself. “When we reach the waterfront, we’ll go our separate ways.”

Tone shouldered into his peacoat. “Pity, isn’t it, how things work out. We know who the criminals are, what they’ve done, yet we can’t just go and arrest them or rid the city of their shadows permanently.”

“It’s how the law works.”

“I know, and as I said, it’s a pity.”

“What we face is the scum of the earth, rich enough to hire expensive lawyers and have friends in high places,” Langford said. “It’s a stacked deck.”

“Tonight we’ll get rid of one of them, and maybe a lot more,” Tone said. “By midnight, Lambert Sprague will be burning in hell.”

“It has to be done, Tone. Isn’t that right?”

“We’ve already gone through that. Yes, it has to be done.”

Langford tugged at his tunic irritably, his face haggard, fighting his own private war. “Damn, my uniform doesn’t fit. It’s uncomfortable, like it was made for somebody else.”

Smiling slightly, Tone said, “Yeah, and your tin star has lost its luster.”

The big sergeant’s eyes were bleak. “I’m hurting here. Inside me, something’s hurting real bad, like the croup.”

“It’s called a conscience. All good men have one.” Tone pulled on his watch cap. “Walk with me, Thomas.”

Tone and Langford parted ways on Pacific Street, where there was now a large police presence following the death of Muldoon. They had spoken little to each other. All the words they might have exchanged had already been said.

The sergeant had contented himself with a handshake and a whispered “Good luck,” which Tone had acknowledged with a slight smile and a nod.

Now he made his way toward Sprague’s house, walking through a noisy throng of people under a cloud-streaked moon rising slowly in the sky.

Keeping to the shadows, Tone strolled past Sprague’s house. The front door was shut and he saw no sign of guards or any other activity. He felt a pang of unease. Had the meeting been cancelled?

Tone walked another fifty yards, then stopped. Across the street an alley was a beckoning rectangle of darkness. There were few people about this far from the waterfront dives, and he sprinted across the road and into the narrow passageway.

After standing still for a few moments for his eyes to become accustomed to the alley’s deeper darkness, Tone followed the passage until it fed into a dusty gravel lane. He turned to his left to get behind Sprague’s house, his way lit by the waxing moon. Here no tumbledown shacks lined the lane; in their place were large houses with well-cared-for yards that ended in whitewashed fences.

Every room in Sprague’s house was ablaze with light. Tone stepped over a fence and warily walked closer to the rear of the building, gun in hand. He found a circle of shadow under a tree and studied the windows one by one. Nothing moved behind them. Then a man in a white chef’s coat and tall hat appeared at a window to the left of the rear door. He opened the window wide, breathed deeply, and disappeared again.

Tone smiled. If the window stayed open, it would provide his access to the building. But now was not the time. Let the guests arrive and get settled; then he’d make his move.

His eyes searched the house again, hoping for a glimpse of Sprague. But the man was nowhere in sight.

Crossing the street again, Tone took up a position in a doorway where he could cover the front of the building without attracting too much attention.

For an hour, people came and went on the street; then, just as Tone was giving up hope, a cab pulled up to the door and stopped.

Three men got out, two of them making an elaborate show of deferring to the third, a large man with a brutal face and a neck as thick as a ship’s hawser. All three were welcomed into Sprague’s house by a pretty girl in a maid’s uniform and then the cab pulled away.

Over the next ten minutes, all five of Sprague’s guests arrived and Tone recognized the banker and slave dealer Edward Hooper, who pulled up in his own private carriage.

He looked up and down the street. There were no police in sight, since most of them were concentrated in busy Pacific Street. Two Chinese men, bamboo poles over their shoulders, weighted at each end with heavy wicker baskets, were trotting toward him, their faces hidden in the shadow of coolie hats.

Tone ignored the men and plotted his next move. He would return to the lane and then—

The razor-sharp knife edge pressed against his throat numbed Tone’s brain into immobility.

“Do not move, Mr. Tone,” a Chinese voice whispered in his ear. “You stay away from Sprague house tonight.”

The second man stepped in front of Tone and unbuttoned his peacoat. Tone tried to struggle free, but the knife dug deeper. “Very sharp, cut throat real nice,” the voice in his ear said again.

The second man removed Tone’s guns from their holsters, then raised his head to the moonlight.

Tone recognized the handsome features at once. It was the Tong leader, the man who called himself Weimin.

“Come with me, Mr. Tone,” he said. “We must get away from here.”

The pressure of the knife edge lessened on his throat enough for Tone to say, “I’m here to kill Lambert Sprague.”

Weimin smiled. “Sprague is not at home. We must go now.”

Seeing Tone’s reluctance, he said, “Why would Lambert Sprague buy half a ton of gunpowder in Chinatown? For fireworks, you think?”

The knife blade scraping against his skin, Tone turned his head and looked at Sprague’s house. From inside he heard music and talk and the languid laughter of heavy-lidded whores.

Now the full impact of the danger dawned on John Tone.

“Let’s get the hell out of here!” he said.

He and the Chinese men had only gone a few steps when the ticking time bomb that was Sprague’s house exploded into thunderous flame.

The force of the blast slammed Tone onto his face and as he lay stunned on the sidewalk, fiery debris rained down on him like molten lava from an erupting volcano. A heavy steel I beam, about ten feet long, torn loose from its mountings, clanged onto the road just inches from his legs. The beam bounced high into the air, then crashed, cartwheeling, through the front window of a house opposite.

Above the roar and crackle of the flames, Tone heard women and children shriek inside the building, then nothing.

He climbed to his feet and looked back. Sprague’s house was gone, and the others on each side of it, leaving only blackened, smoking spars of wood on which a few scarlet flames still fluttered.

Weimin, his face blackened by smoke and debris, stepped to Tone’s elbow. “No one could have survived the explosion,” he said. “They’re all dead.”

Tone, still numb from shock, nodded to the house opposite, the front window a shattered nightmare of glass and wood. “I saw a steel beam go through—”

“Yes,” Weimin said, “I know. I saw it too. That was the front parlor where families gather. We’ll find nobody still alive.”

In the distance, Tone heard the clamor of fire engines and saw that there were bodies lying in the street near the destroyed house.

Bitterly he reflected that Sprague had eliminated his five rivals and the fact that he had killed innocent men, women and children in the process would not trouble him in the least. Inside his house, now all dead, had been whores, musicians, waiters, cooks and others trying to earn a rich man’s buck. People had been killed in the neighboring homes, and women and children had been slaughtered, scythed by a whirling steel beam in their own parlor.

“Sprague is indeed a formidable adversary, a man without a conscience,” Weimin said, as though he’d been reading Tone’s thoughts.

Tone nodded. “It’s going to take a lot to kill him,” he said.

The Chinese man’s smile was as brief as a lightning flash. “Yet I will kill him very soon.”

Reading the question on Tone’s face, Weimin said, “We must leave here.” He handed the other man his guns, then added, “Walk with me.”

As they headed for Pacific Street, several fire engines passed, bells clanging, their big Percheron drays at full, ponderous gallop. Gaping crowds were already clustered around the blasted buildings and cursing firemen yelled at them to get the hell out of the way. The rain was still falling, turning the cobbled streets into thoroughfares of polished iron.

Walking under the blue cone of a streetlamp, Tone turned to Weimin and said, “I didn’t know you had a beef with Sprague.”

“I don’t, not with him personally. But I am Tong and we are moving to take back what is rightfully ours. With five of our enemies dead, the time for us to strike is now. Sprague has two choices: Stand, fight and die or run for his life.” The man smiled again. “He can always go back to his old profession, piracy on the high seas.”

Tone stopped, looking down at Weimin, who seemed small and frail next to his wide-shouldered bulk. “You plan on getting rid of Sprague and taking over the whole waterfront?”

“Yes. At first it was Sprague’s plan, now it is the Tong plan.”

People jostled past them, and Weimin pushed a reeling drunk away from him. “Mr. Tone, half the whores on the Barbary Coast are Chinese. The opium and slaves that make men like Sprague rich are from China. We Chinese will no longer step back and let white men reap the rewards. If there are Americans along the waterfront who wish to keep their saloons and dance halls, they can do so, but only by paying tribute to the Tong. That is how it will be.”

“Do you even know where Sprague is?” Tone asked.

Weimin shook his head. “No, but he will crawl out from under his rock quickly enough when we start to take over his business interests.”

Tone looked at the Chinese man. “Right now, Weimin, my fight is with Sprague, not you. But later we could become enemies.”

“Better the Tong than Sprague, Mr. Tone. We are only taking back what is rightfully ours.”

“You really think you can fight him?”

This time Weimin’s smile was genuine. “There are twelve hundred Tong in Chinatown, Mr. Tone. I will bring every one of them here to the waterfront if I have to.” He looked into Tone’s eyes. “You did me an honorable service not long ago. I would not like it if we became enemies.” Weimin looked around him. “We must part ways now. Good luck, Mr. Tone.”

Before Weimin turned to leave, Tone said to him, “You saved my life tonight. Your debt to me is settled.”

The man smiled and shook his head. “No, I will always be in your debt, Mr. Tone. That is the way of the Tong.”