The Loner: Crossfire

Chapter 9

Turnbuckle arrived at the hotel the next morning while Conrad was having breakfast, which a waiter had delivered and served in the sitting room of his suite. The lawyer looked tired, which was not surprising considering his age and the fact that he had gotten only a few hours sleep.

He had news to report. He took the cup of coffee Conrad offered him and said, “I’ve been in touch with one of those sources inside the police department you mentioned. One of those would-be assassins killed last night was named Floyd Hambrick. He was a known criminal suspected of a number of killings along the Barbary Coast. His grandfather was a Sydney Duck.”

Conrad raised his eyebrows to indicate he didn’t understand the reference.

“That was a gang of Australian criminals who dominated the San Francisco underworld back in the fifties, in the days after the Gold Rush,” Turnbuckle explained. “A lot of them were hanged by the Committee of Vigilance, but some survived, and even married and had children and grandchildren. In Hambrick’s case, evidently the proverbial apple didn’t fall far from the proverbial tree.”

“Have the police been able to tie this fella Hambrick in with anybody else?” Conrad asked.

Turnbuckle shook his head. “Not so far. I suspect it may not be a very productive lead. Hambrick, and no doubt the other two men, were simply hired assassins, the sort who would kill anyone if the price was right.”

Conrad sipped his coffee and nodded. It wouldn’t be the first time such men had come after him since he’d started his search for the twins. Someone was always masterminding those efforts, though, someone who had been paid off directly by Pamela while she was still alive. He was confident that would turn out to be the case.

That mastermind might finally be able to tell him where his children were.

He picked up the ivory token from the table next to the fine china holding the remains of his breakfast and tossed it to Turnbuckle. “Have you ever seen anything like that before?”

The lawyer studied the token, turning it over in his fingers and running a fingertip over its carved surface. “That looks like the Golden Gate.”

“I’m convinced it is.”

Turnbuckle handed the token back to him.

“But, no, I’ve never seen one like it before, at least not that I recall. Where did you get it?”

“It was lying in the street next to the wagon carrying all those beer barrels,” Conrad explained. “I can’t prove the man who drove the wagon and cut the barrels loose dropped it ... but he might have.”

“I’d say it’s even likely,” Turnbuckle replied. “Should I take it and show it to some of our investigators ?”

Conrad shook his head. “No, I’m going to hang on to it. But you can describe it to them and see if they remember ever seeing anything like it.”

“Fine. I’ll do that. In the meantime, what are your plans?”

“You told me to rest and relax, remember?” Conrad smiled. “That’s what I intend to do.”

Turnbuckle looked a little like he had a hard time believing that, but didn’t say anything. He finished his coffee and left.

A short time later, dressed in a brown tweed suit, Conrad opened the door of the suite and looked out into the hall. A large man wearing a derby and sporting a red handlebar mustache sat a few feet away in an armchair he had pulled up from somewhere. The man was reading a newspaper, but he looked over and gave Conrad a polite nod.

“I suppose Claudius stationed you there,” Conrad said.

“The boss says you ain’t to be disturbed, Mr. Browning. It’s my job to see to it things stay that way.”

“What’s your name?”

“Dugan, sir.”

“Well, Mr. Dugan, you’re supposed to prevent anyone from getting into this suite. Are you also supposed to prevent me from leaving?”

Dugan set his paper down in his lap, took off his hat, and scratched a bald, somewhat bulletshaped head. “He didn’t say nothin’ about that.”

“I’m surprised,” Conrad said.

“Just that if you go anywheres, I’m to go with you and make sure nothin’ happens to you.”

“Oh. Do you have a family, Mr. Dugan?”

A grin split the big man’s face. “Aye, sir. A fine wife and four redheaded little ones.”

“Did Mr. Turnbuckle inform you that the last men he hired to watch over me all wound up dead?”

Dugan’s grin went away. “He told me. That don’t matter. I’m bein’ paid to do a job, and I figure on doin’ it.”

“That’s an admirable attitude. And I assure you, if anything happens to you, I’ll see to it that your family is taken care of financially. Or if I can’t, Mr. Turnbuckle will.”

“And that’s a reassurance indeed, sir,” Dugan said. “But I don’t plan on windin’ up dead.”

“Let’s hope for the sake of those four redheaded little ones that you’re right.”

Conrad went back inside and closed the door. It was going to make things a little more difficult, because he was determined no one else was going to lose their life because of him.

A little more difficult, yes ... but not impossible.

Conrad stayed close to his hotel room all day, leaving it only to eat lunch in the Palace’s sumptuous American Dining Room. Dugan trailed him and took a table in an unobtrusive corner where he could keep an eye on Conrad. It was likely Dugan could not afford to eat there and Conrad assumed Turnbuckle had instructed the hotel to put the bodyguard’s meal on his tab.

Conrad chose to have supper in the suite, as he had breakfast. Dugan had gone off-duty and been replaced by a short, thick individual who introduced himself as Morelli. The new bodyguard followed the waiter into the suite.

“Could be one o’ them assassins in disguise,” Morelli explained. The waiter, who by his accent was Russian, took offense at that, and Conrad shooed them both out and told them to take their squabble outside.

He ate supper and waited for full darkness to settle over the city by the bay. When it had, he took off his tweed suit, his cravat, and his white shirt. In their place he pulled on a homespun shirt and a rough brown coat and trousers of the sort working men wore. While he was downstairs for lunch he had stopped at the concierge’s desk and made arrangements to have the clothes bought and delivered to his suite that afternoon, along with a stevedore’s cap. He tugged the cap down over his fair hair and tucked the Colt behind his belt at the small of his back, where the coat would conceal it.

The Palace was as modern and up-to-date as it could be, but it didn’t yet have fire escapes outside the windows the way some hotels back east did. However, it did have decorative ledges along the exterior walls. Conrad slid open the window in his bedroom and stepped out onto the ledge. It was only about six inches wide.

Facing the brick wall, he slid his feet along the ledge toward the corner of the building. His fingers went into the cracks between the bricks and gripped tightly to take some of the strain off his toes. His suite was on the fifth floor, so there was a lot of empty air underneath him, with hard, unforgiving pavement waiting at the end of any unlucky fall. There was also a drain spout at the corner, connected to the rain gutters around the roof of the building. That was his destination.

After a few nerve-wracking minutes, he reached it. Keeping his feet on the ledge and one hand holding the wall, he pulled on the spout to test its strength. Satisfied it would hold him, he moved both hands onto it and got a good grip. Supporting himself with the drain spout, he began walking down the side of the building.

He knew it was a crazy thing to do, but he couldn’t carry out the sort of investigation he wanted to if he had one or more of Turnbuckle’s hired bodyguards watching him all the time. The trail led into the seamy district known as the Barbary Coast, and no one there was going to talk to the police. Those bodyguards looked like policemen, and some of them probably had been on the force, before going to work for Turnbuckle.

Conrad had to do it alone. It was his best chance to find out what he wanted to know, so he had run the risk of climbing out of a hotel window and down a drain spout.

He heaved a sigh of relief when the soles of his boots touched the floor of the alley next to the hotel.

Having spent time in San Francisco he knew how to get to the Barbary Coast. Because someone who knew him might see him and recognize him, he didn’t follow the alley to the front of the hotel. He went to the rear, crossed the street quickly with his cap pulled down over his face, and found another alley that took him in the right direction. He smiled faintly, confident he had gotten out of the Palace without Morelli or anyone else knowing he was gone.

Sliding a hand in his pocket, he touched the ivory token he had brought with him. With any luck, before the night was over he would know what it meant.

And he would be one step closer to finding his children.

Because he was preoccupied, as well as because he didn’t have eyes in the back of his head, Conrad didn’t see the hulking, shadowy figure that appeared at the mouth of the alley beside the hotel. He didn’t realize he was being watched, didn’t feel the dark, almond-shaped eyes tracking his every move as he crossed the street and entered the other alley. The figure was clad all in black and was next to invisible in the shadows.

After a moment, the follower emerged from the alley and crossed the street as well, moving so swiftly and silently despite its size anyone watching might have taken it for a trick of the eyes, not something real and substantial.

The figure entered the other alley and the darkness swallowed it completely again, as if it had never been there.