Barbary Coast (A Searcher Western Book 12)

by Len Levinson

  He came to the edge of the roof, checked his guns as he didn’t want anything hanging loose, then took a deep breath and hurtled through the night. His boots touched down on a balcony of the building across the alley. He turned the doorknob gently, but it was locked.

  He heaved his shoulder against the door. The latch burst apart, and he stumbled into a musty area of indeterminate size. It contained rows of books covered with a gray patina of dust He took down a Holy Bible, cracked it open. A moonbeam illuminated ‘All is vanity and vexation of spirit.’

  He unbuttoned his shirt and stuffed the King James Bible inside. Then he headed toward the door. The plush carpeted hall smelled of leather and good cigars. He heard the dignified laugh of a gentleman from a lower floor. Stone walked down the hall, came to a flight of stairs. A door opened straight ahead.

  A man in a suit stepped into the hall, not bothering to lock his door. He walked past Stone and descended the stairs. Stone slunk to the room and turned the knob. He was greeted by the odors of tobacco, men’s cologne, a lamp just snuffed out. He opened the closet door, saw a long black cape, put it on. He found a stovepipe hat, perched it atop his head, held his cavalry hat hidden beneath the cape. In the mirror, a dandy, not the cowboy who shot the sailor in an alley.

  He went down the wide curved staircase. On the second floor, groups of men sat in their private club, oil paintings of medieval hunting scenes adorned the walls, uniformed servants carrying trays of food and drink. In the corner, an obese gentleman with a pig face read a newspaper. Near the fireplace, a young fop regaled his friends with the latest joke.

  A hollow knight in armor guarded a doorway. That's the kind of clothes a man needs in San Francisco. A restaurant was on the bottom floor, Stone skirted the tables and made for the door. A uniformed servant opened it. Stone found himself on the deserted street.

  Where’s Russian Hill? No familiar landmarks presented themselves. In an unfamiliar city, I should get a map. A drunk shuffled toward him. ‘Which way to Russian Hill?’

  The drunk pointed, but Stone doubted the man’s clarity. Might end up anywhere. He climbed the hill, to reconnoiter the territory. Ahead, a man turned the corner, walking along unsteadily. Stone lowered one hand to his Colt. The man stopped in front of a doorway and inserted his key into the lock. He glanced at Stone, the light from the street lamp illuminated his face and strange circular black hat. It was the painter from Ned’s Saloon. ‘Thought the police got you,’ he said. ‘Come up and see the painting of Marie.’

  They entered a narrow hallway and climbed the carpeted stairs. The sweet fragrance of decay came to Stone’s nostrils. ‘In the attic,’ the painter explained. ‘Best light in town.’

  He flipped the latch of a large room with windows that admitted moon and stars. Canvases lined the walls, stacked in corners. He lit wicks at strategic points throughout the room, illuminating paintings of nude or scantily clad women reclining on couches, cavorting in Turkish harems, bathing at river’s edge, the type of art hanging in every saloon on the frontier. This was the man who painted them. Stone leaned toward the signature: Algeron Shadbume.

  ‘Marie’s over here.’ Shadbume held up a lamp.

  Stone took a step backward. Marie, naked as the day she was born, reclined on a leopard couch.

  ‘Painted the same theme many times,’ Algeron explained. ‘The fabulous Amazon queen. Every man desires and fears her. I don’t mind telling you—I would’ve married Marie. But she didn’t love me. She loved … I suppose … you.’ Stone’s spirit entered the mystery of the painting. He embraced Marie on the leopard skin.

  ‘Here’s another.’ Shadbume held up a head and shoulders portrait of Marie, the top of her bosom covered with black velvet, a diamond necklace around her throat.

  ‘How could you let her disappear?’

  ‘You don’t know her as well as you may think.’ He pointed at the portrait. ‘Look at those eyes. What do you see? Fear, caution, what? She was very secretive. I never knew where she lived. At first she thought I was a policeman. Said she’d been arrested twice, but was innocent.’

  Stone’s knees went rubbery. He dropped to a chair.

  ‘She often spoke of becoming a nun,’ Shadbume continued. ‘Sometimes lost her train of thought in the middle of sentences. A wounded bird.’ Shadbume cocked his head to the side as he studied Stone. ‘You’d be a marvelous subject for a painting. The battle-worn cavalry officer fighting the odds.’

  ‘Did she ever speak of me?’

  ‘Said you were the only man she ever loved. Would you mind if I began the painting? But you’ll have to give me everything you’ve got .’

  ‘She say anything else about me?’

  Shadbume’s eyes gleamed obsession as he mixed oil on his palette. ‘Sometimes she made no sense. Terrible things happened to her during the war.’

  ‘Like what?’

  ‘She never provided details. Reticent about explaining her past’

  ‘Did she have any other friends?’

  ‘She kept her life in separate compartments. Sometimes she changed her name. She was too much for Canfield. I’d have taken care of her, but she wouldn’t have me. She preferred the soldier of her dreams to the mad artist who bays at the moon.’

  ‘She ever mention places she might want to go?’

  ‘Marie could be anywhere, like a tumbleweed blowing in the wind.’

  Chapter Three

  Figures lurked in alleys, hidden by shadows and mist from the bay. A foghorn honked in the distance. In the gutter, a man lay face down, stripped naked. Stone knelt, rolled the body over. Blank eyes stared sightlessly at the moon. Dark blue line around the throat. Garroted for the clothes on his back.

  Stone hugged the shadows as he moved along. Like rats in a small enclosed place, San Franciscans turned on each other. Many citizens were hardened criminals before they arrived. Buy a six-year-old girl or boy. Opium. Gambling. Hired killers. Warring packs of outlaws.

  A disembodied voice spoke behind him. ‘Put yer hands in the air real slow, you want to go on a-livin’, bub.’

  Stone grabbed the sky.

  ‘Turn around, an’ no cute moves, if’n you don’t mind.’

  Stone looked behind him. A robber with a gun lurked in the alley, and Stone didn’t notice because his mind was elsewhere. Unshaven, gruesome, the criminal looked like an overgrown weal. ‘Hand over whatever you got or I’ll shoot.’

  Stone went for his guns. The street exploded with flying lead, a bullet whizzed past Stone’s ear. The robber danced like a puppet on strings as Stone’s barrage slammed into him. Stone stood still as a statue in the shadow of the building’s eave as the robber crumpled to the ground. Nothing moved in his vicinity. From the next street, he heard a police whistle.

  ‘He’s over there!’

  Stone charged into an alley, jumped over a pile of trash, tripped over a board with a nail in it, fell to the ground, skinned knees and hands, but leapt to his feet immediately and resumed his run. Another whistle, police closing in. Ahead, a window. He ran toward it, dived into the air, covered his face with his arms. The window splintered, something cut his arm, he flew through the air and crashed into a stovepipe. It broke into three pieces, soot fell onto him. He struggled to rise, tripped over the woodpile, head banged painfully into the wall. A man with a walrus white mustache, wearing a robe, aimed a shotgun at the ex-cavalry officer.

  ‘Hold it right there!’ the man said.

  His wife ran to the window. ‘Help! Police! He’s in here!’

  ‘Raise ’em high,’ the man said to Stone. ‘Be quick about it. The life of a hoodlum don’t mean a damn thing to me.’

  ‘Pm an innocent man.’

  ‘Look, Martha. He’s a-wearin’ a Reb hat.’

  ‘Sounds to me like jail’s the best place for him.’

  Martha opened the door. Five policemen entered the kitchen, guns in hands. The sergeant glanced at Stone. ‘You’re under arrest. Bill—get his guns and them knives in his boots.’
>
  Before Stone could think about it, his weapons were gone.

  ‘Get moving,’ the sergeant said, ‘and keep them hands up.’

  ~*~

  They searched him at the police station. His money and spurs stored in a box, they let him keep the picture of Marie. He signed a receipt. They led him to a narrow flight of circular stone steps.

  ‘Down there,’ one of them ordered.

  Walls damp with moisture, the stench of unwashed human bodies rose to his nostrils commingled with the fragrance of the slop bucket. A guard sat at a desk.

  ‘What he do?’

  ‘Shot somebody.’

  Stone was kicked into a dank pen with twenty other prisoners. It resembled a medieval dungeon. He glanced around at his fellow inmates. A scurvy crew if ever I saw one. The one in the corner looks like he slit somebody 's throat.

  ‘Plant yer fuckin’ eyes someplace else, you son of a bitch.’

  In another corner, men slept beneath a moth-eaten blanket. A prisoner lay like a lizard before Stone, grinning maniacally.

  ‘What you in fer?’ the lizard asked.

  ‘Murder.’

  ‘I killed a little girl. Held her throat and squeezed.’

  A voice came from the other side of the cell. ‘Somebody should do the same thing to you, you bastard.’

  The lizard bounded to his feet. ‘Want to try?’

  ‘Ought to jump ’im together,’ somebody said in a cockney accent. ‘Pay ’im back fer what he did.’

  The lizard turned on him. ‘How about what you did? We’re all the same here. Don’t play high and mighty with me.

  A man in a mustache rose to his feet. ‘We ain’t the same here. I din’t kill nobody, an’ I din’t steal nothin’ ’cept a loaf of bread to feed me kids. How can they put a man in jail with a child murderer, fer stealin’ a loaf of bread?’

  ‘What’s your name?’ asked Stone.

  ‘Ronnie Dossick. I ain’t no crook. But me kids were hungry.’

  The lizard spat in disgust, ‘You’re a goddamn thief an’ won’t admit it.’

  Stone moved into the shadows. Peck you to death, like chickens in the barnyard. A prisoner with a scar on his chin plunged the wood dipper into a tub of water, took a drink, then hooked the dipper on the edge of the tub.

  Stone lay on the cold floor and tried to rest, but the wheels in his head kept turning. How do I get a lawyer? How long can they hold me without a trial? The door opened at the top of the stairs. ‘Take your filthy paws off me, ruffians!’

  The man hollered as he tumbled head over heels down the stairs. Black formal suit, white shirt with starched collar, black tie, he landed at the bottom, rolled over, and tried to rise. ‘Scoundrels! Dogs! I’ll take you on singly, or all at once! This is Benjamin Tilford you’re pushing around!’

  A policeman hit him over the head with a club. Tilford collapsed onto the floor. The sergeant opened the cell. Two policemen heaved the gentleman in.

  He groaned. Guards locked the door. Several prisoners examined his fancy clothes, conceived the identical plan. They moved closer. He opened his eyes and saw his worst nightmare.

  ‘’At’s a real nice coat you got there, mate,’ said the lizard. ‘How’s about handin’ it over.’

  ‘Come and get it, you gutter scum!’

  The gentleman tried to rise, and the lizard aimed a kick at his head. His foot caught in something, he lost his balance and fell to the floor, rolled quickly, saw a tall man in a Confederate cavalry hat. The lizard reached into his boot and pulled out a small knife with a two-inch blade.

  ‘Cut you down to size in about a minute.’

  The lizard lunged for Stone’s midsection. Stone timed him coming in, pounced on the wrist of his knife hand, yanked him off his feet, spun him three times around his head, turned him loose. The lizard crashed against the wall, slid to the floor, and lay still, the small makeshift knife fell out of his hand. Stone tucked it into his boot.

  ‘I’d like to thank you, sir,’ said a voice behind him. Stone turned toward the gentleman. Blood leaked from his left nostril. Scalp wound. But a gentleman nonetheless.

  ‘I’m new to Sari Francisco,’ Stone explained. ‘How can I find a lawyer? Is there anyone you recommend?’

  ‘You can use my lawyer when he arrives. We’ll be out of here before you know it. What’re you in for, by the way?’

  ‘Murder.’

  ‘I struck a certain swine with my cane. He said the lady I was with was a whore, which of course was true, but he didn’t have to say it.’

  Stone led him to a dark part of the cell, where they wouldn’t be visible to greedy eyes.

  ‘Don’t turn your back on them,’ Stone advised. ‘Bad bunch.’

  ‘Decent of you to stand up for me. Have we ever met?’

  ‘Not that I know of.’ Stone took out the picture of Marie. ‘Ever see this woman?’

  ‘It’s possible. Evidently you don’t know who I am. Benjamin Tilford, the noted Shakespearean actor? Earlier tonight, I played Mark Antony in Julius Caesar?’ Tilford shuck a heroic pose, thrust out his bony chest, and hollered: ‘Friends, Romans, countrymen, lend me your ears; I come to bury Caesar, not to praise him.’

  Silence in the jailhouse for a few moments, then somebody smirked, ‘Throw ’im a fish!’

  Tilford held a palm over his breast. ‘Last night I appeared as Macbeth.’ He gazed dreamily at the dank murky ceiling and intoned, ‘Tomorrow, and tomorow, and tomorrow. Creeps in this petty pace from day to day, To the last syllable... ’

  A boot flew through the air and struck the actor on his noggin. He dropped to one knee, but didn’t miss a beat. ‘‘... of recorded time; and all our yesterdays have lighted fools, The way to dusty death. Out, out brief candle ... ’ A tin plate crashed into the wall over Macbeth’s head. ‘They don’t appreciate Shakespeare,’ he said ruefully. ‘Thoroughly terrible crowd. Care for a drink?’ He reached into his back pocket, pulled out a small curved silver flask, handed it to Stone. The denizens watched carefully, mouths watering, as Stone swallowed. The whiskey warmed his empty stomach. ‘When do you think your lawyer’ll get here?’

  ‘Soon as they find him. I still think you don’t who you’re talking with. Tomorrow afternoon I perform Richard the Third, and they can’t go on without me.’ Tilford hobbled like an ogre, eyes narrowed with ambition, fingers like claws. ‘Deformed, unfinished, sent before my time into this breathing world scarce half made up, dogs bark as I halt by them.’

  ‘Better get some rest,’ Stone suggested. ‘You go first, and I’ll stand guard.’

  ‘I can’t sleep on that filthy floor. You lie down, and I’ll take the first shift of guard.’

  Can I trust this drunken actor to watch my back? Stone decided he couldn’t. In the wee hours of the morning, decent people are asleep in their beds. Why can’t I have a normal life? He saw Marie naked on a leopard skin, a gold tiara in her hair. Soon as I get out of here, I’ll hire the Pinkertons. But what if I never get out of here?

  ~*~

  In a Denver hotel, Amanda LaFollette dreamed she lay naked in her husband’s arms, straining against the barriers, soaring across heaven. They twisted and undulated, grasped each other’s bodies, drooled and slobbered like wild dogs.

  Never had she imagined ecstasy could be so available. He was the drug that satisfied her deepest gnawing needs. She rolled on top of him, thought she’d faint, hugged him more tightly, kissed his wet lips, dynamite bursting.

  Cotton fabric touched her mouth, she opened her eyes. Randy receded into the night. I’m making love with my pillow. Bitter fluid filled her veins, she rolled away disdainfully.

  Drenched with sweat, breathing heavily, cold needles drove into her naked goose-bump skim The pain of losing him overwhelmed her. She wailed uncontrollably, her body convulsed with loneliness, misery, and pain.

  Chapter Four

  Stone remained awake, while Tilford slept soundly. Other prisoners rustled like rodents, muttering in the shadows. They slept,
awoke, used the slop bucket. Stone heard a snatch of conversation. One of the prisoners had been in the dungeon two years.

  I might get stuck here for the rest of my life with a drunken Shakespearean actor. No windows, impossible to tell whether it was day or night. The only light came from a coal-oil lamp on the desk, next to the head of the sleeping guard. The stench was suffocating; Stone felt nauseous on an empty stomach. A nail drove through the center of his brain.

  The door opened at the top of the stairs. Policemen appeared, followed by civilians in suits. Tilford sighed with relief. ‘My lawyer at last.’ He arose and staggered toward the bars.

  One of the well-dressed men had an enormous belly, as if about to give birth to twins. He had to lean back, so the mass wouldn’t pull him down onto his face. The producer looked at his leading man through the bars. ‘Costs a fortune to keep something like this out of the papers.’

  Tilford grabbed Stone’s sleeve and pulled him forward.

  ‘Meet my friend, Captain Stone. He saved my life tonight, and I’m not leaving unless he conies with me.’

  ‘Now, Ben . . .’

  ‘Mister Tilford to you, you filthy merchant, your fingers stained by money you grab day and night. What about honor? This man saved my life. There’ll be no Richard the Third, if you don’t spring him.’

  The producer turned to his lawyer. The lawyer winked at the sergeant. ‘How much?’

  ‘I can’t let that man out of here,’ the law enforcement official replied. ‘He shot somebody.’

  ‘Self-defense,’ Stone said. ‘No witnesses.’

  The lawyer raised his forefinger in the air. ‘How can you hold a citizen with no witnesses? Haven’t you heard of habeas corpus? Do you want to lose your job? Let me tell you this: Policeman with more rank than you have been dismissed for far less.’

  ‘Two hundred dollars,’ the sergeant replied in a muffled voice.

  ‘Awfully high, considering no witnesses.’