The Loner: Crossfire

Chapter 14

“Did you find out what you wanted to know?” Nash asked as Conrad stopped at his desk.

Conrad nodded. “I hope so.”

“The old witch didn’t make you promise your firstborn in return for her help?”

Conrad managed not to wince. Nash didn’t know anything about the reason he was in San Francisco, he reminded himself. The reporter didn’t mean anything by the comment about Conrad’s firstborn.

“We reached an equitable arrangement. And I’d hardly call Francis Carlyle an old witch.”

Nash shrugged. “I’m probably being unfair to her. But watch yourself when you’re dealing with her, Conrad. She’ll steal a story right out from under you if you’re not careful.”

“But I’m not a reporter,” Conrad pointed out.

“She can be a little predatory when it comes to young men she finds attractive. At least so I’ve heard,” Nash added. “I don’t seem to be her type, thank God.”

Conrad shook hands with his old friend. “I’ll be in touch.”

When he reached the lobby, he spotted Patrick Dugan sitting in a chair next to a potted palm. Dugan was reading a newspaper, or at least pretending to. His gaze roved around the lobby constantly as he kept a lookout for trouble, the way a good bodyguard should.

He spotted Conrad and stood up, leaving the paper in the chair. “Get your business taken care of ?” he asked as he walked over.

Conrad nodded. “Yes, we’re going back to the hotel now.”

He wasn’t sure how he was going to fill up the time during the next four days as he waited for the ball at the Kimball mansion. Maybe he could actually force himself to rest and relax, as Claudius Turnbuckle had suggested, although if he was being honest with himself, he considered that possibility rather remote. After everything that had happened, he didn’t think he was capable of going back to a life of leisure.

A thought occurred to him as he and Dugan walked back toward the Palace. “Were you ever a policeman, Patrick?”

“Because I’m a big, redheaded Irishman, you mean?”

“Because you seem to know what you’re doing.”

“Oh. Well, in that case, yeah, I was on the force for ten years. Did right well for myself, too. Worked my way up to bein’ a detective. But then Mr. Turnbuckle offered me more money to work for him, and well, I had hungry mouths to feed. I couldn’t turn down the job.”

“What do you do for Claudius besides bodyguard work?”

“Whatever needs doin’. I’ve handled quite a few investigations for him, workin’ on one case or another.”

“When you were with the police, did you ever have anything to do with the tongs?”

Dugan bristled. “What do you mean? Are you askin’ if any of those heathen Chinamen ever paid me off to look the other way while they went about their mischief ?”

“Good Lord, no,” Conrad said without hesitation. “I just wondered if you handled any cases involving them.”

“Oh. Sorry,” Dugan muttered. “Reckon I jumped to a conclusion there. Yeah, some of the cases I worked on took me to Chinatown, and you can’t turn around in Chinatown without bumpin’ into somebody from one of the tongs.”

“Are they still at war with each other?”

“There’s still some trouble now and then, but it’s not like it used to be. Diamond Jack took care of that.”

“Diamond Jack?”

“Yeah. His real name is Wong Duck, but he calls himself Diamond Jack because he’s got a little diamond mounted right here.” Dugan tapped a blunt fingertip against one of his two front teeth. “He came up through the Woo Sing tong and finally took it over. That wasn’t enough for him, though. He managed to talk the other tongs into callin’ a truce. He said they could all make more money if they weren’t fightin’ each other all the time. That makes sense, of course, but I didn’t figure he’d ever talk all those other Chinamen into goin’ along with the idea. Somehow he did.”

“So they don’t have hatchet men anymore?”

Dugan laughed. “Oh, the tongs still have their hatchet men, all right. The leaders don’t trust each other all that much, and I reckon none of ’em completely trust Diamond Jack.” The bodyguard frowned. “Why are you askin’ about tongs and hatchet men and such like?”

Conrad couldn’t very well explain about his perilous adventure at Spanish Charley’s the night before. Dugan would tell Turnbuckle about the incident, and Turnbuckle would increase the number of guards watching over Conrad until it would be impossible to get out from under their scrutiny.

“I saw a big fellow on the street the other day,” he said vaguely, deciding he might be able to risk a description of the man who had come to his rescue. “He was Chinese, dressed all in black, with a half-moon shaped scar on his right cheek.” Conrad traced a finger along his own cheek to indicate the path of the scar. “When I saw him, I said to myself, now that looks like a hatchet man. So the sight made me curious, that’s all.”

Dugan grunted. “Sounds like a hatchet man, all right. Most of them are big, ugly scoundrels. You want to stay away from them, Mr. Browning, and you should steer clear of Chinatown, too. There’s nothin’ down there but joss houses, opium dens, brothels, and eatin’ joints where they serve things you’re better off not knowin’ what they are. No reason for a white man to have anything to do with that place.”

Conrad was sure plenty of white customers patronized those places Dugan had mentioned, but he didn’t point that out. “I’m not going there. I was curious, that’s all.”

“You just listen to old Pat Dugan, sir. I won’t steer you wrong.”

“I’m sure you won’t,” Conrad agreed.

At the same time, he wondered about the man who had saved his life in Spanish Charley’s. Dex Lannigan’s Golden Gate Saloon was on the boundary between the Barbary Coast and Chinatown. Was it possible there was a connection between the tongs and his mission to find his children?

Would Pamela have hidden the twins somewhere in the depths of the Chinese quarter? Conrad didn’t want to think so, but at the same time, was anything beyond the realm of possibility when it came to Pamela Tarleton?

Despite what he had told Dugan, he might have to pay a visit to Chinatown after all.

The rest of the day passed quietly, and that evening Conrad was sitting in his suite after supper when someone knocked on the door. Morelli was on duty in the corridor again, and Conrad knew that after being caught sleeping the night before, the bodyguard was unlikely to let anybody into the suite who wasn’t harmless. Conrad opened the door and found a man in a sober black suit standing there, bowler hat in hand.

“Mr. Conrad Browning?” the man asked. Morelli stood a few feet away, watching with his arms crossed and a suspicious frown on his face.

Conrad nodded. “That’s right.”

The man extended a square envelope with a fancy seal pressed into the wax holding it closed. “With the compliments of Mr. and Mrs. Madison Kimball, sir.”

Mrs. Carlyle had kept her promise, Conrad thought as he took the envelope and broke the seal. Sure enough, a fancy, gold-printed invitation to the ball at the Kimball mansion was inside on a heavy, giltedged card.

Conrad knew the man in the black suit—probably the Kimballs’ butler—was waiting for a response to take back to his employers. “Please tell Mr. and Mrs. Kimball I’ll be honored to attend.”

The man inclined his head. “Thank you, sir. I certainly shall. Good evening.”

When the butler was gone, Morelli asked, “Goin’ somewhere, sir?”

“Not tonight. But four nights from now I’ll be attending a party at the Kimball mansion.”

Morelli let out a low whistle. “I’ve heard of the place. Never been there.” He frowned. “Mr. Turnbuckle’s gonna want me to come along with you, and I ain’t sure they’ll let me in.”

“If they think you’re my driver, they’ll let you wait outside with the other drivers.”

Morelli shook his head. “I don’t know if that’ll be good enough to suit Mr. Turnbuckle.”

“I’ll speak to him,” Conrad promised. “I’m sure we can work something out. You’ll be close by, even if you aren’t in the mansion itself.”

“Sometimes close is still too far away.”

Conrad knew the truth of that perhaps better than anyone. He had been close enough to see Rebel in Black Rock Canyon ... just not close enough to save her from being killed.

He forced that thought out of his head and closed the door. Tossing the invitation onto a side table, he went back to the chair where he’d been sitting. A newspaper and a copy of Harper’s Weekly were on the table next to the chair. He had already been having trouble concentrating as he tried to read, and now that he knew he was going to the Kimballs’ ball, he was even more distracted. He began thinking about how he would approach Dex Lannigan. If Lannigan was behind the attempts on his life, the man probably knew what he looked like and would recognize him. It was highly unlikely Lannigan would pull a gun and start blazing away at him in the middle of the party, but Conrad couldn’t rule out the possibility entirely.

He needed a smaller gun, something he could carry without anyone noticing it. Tomorrow he would look for such a weapon, he decided.

Something small, but with stopping power at short range. If there was a gunfight at the Kimballs’ ball, all of San Francisco society would be scandalized, but Conrad didn’t care about that.

If there was a gunfight, he intended to win.