Where Cowards Tread

by Sabrina Flynn

  “As for the police, I have only one thing to say. The police force is largely made up of ex-bandits, and naturally the members are interested above all in saving their old friends from punishment. Policemen here are quite as much to be feared as the robbers; if they know you have money, they will be the first to knock you on the head. You pay them well to watch over your house, and they set it on fire. In short, I think that all the people concerned with justice or the police are in league with the criminals. The city is in a hopeless chaos, and many years must pass before order can be established. In a country where so many races are mingled, a severe and inflexible justice is desirable, which would govern with an iron hand.”

  Citizens and everyday merchants were forced to take matters into their own hands at times to combat roving gangs and outlaws who were fond of setting the city on fire. San Francisco was nearly burned to the ground numerous times before the great earthquake and fire of 1906. The city had lots of practice with rebuilding. And the first Chief of Police, James F. Curtis elected in 1856, was in fact a former member of the San Francisco Committee of Vigilance.

  While the SFPD had a rocky start, they really got their stuff together in later years. In the early 1900s they were known for being one of the pioneering forces for modern law enforcement. But who knows, maybe that was partly due to Bel and Riot’s influence…

  Acknowledgements

  Most acknowledgements at the end of a book are full of gratitude to everyone who helped a writer finish their book. I’m going to do things a bit differently for this one. It’s still an acknowledgement. Just maybe not one of gratitude. So here goes: to Gus Gus, for eating my office wall, $300 worth of shoes, my dining room chairs, my basil, mint and rosemary plants, a rotten snake egg (Yay, vet bills!), wild onions (and subsequent poisoning), countless socks, an art glove, logs, frogs, innumerable papers, my chocolate, and too many plastic toys to count. You added a month of writing to this book.

  It’s amazing you’re not dead (for so many reasons).

  And I will acknowledge a few others—not, I hope, for eating odd things. Thank you to my beta-readers: Alice Wright, Erin Bright, Rich Lovin, and Chaparral Hilliard. Your feedback was much appreciated! To my creative editor, Merrily Taylor—you are the only one who I’m brave enough to send a first draft to! And to my line editor, Tom Welch—your attention to detail leaves me in awe. Thank you so much! And please don’t eat anything odd from now to my next book. I don’t know what I’d do without you!

  Read on to sample the next book…

  Crime Scene

  “Suicide. Really?” Liam Taft stared across a corpse at a patrolman.

  Officer Finley turned red and shrugged.

  There was a perfect little hole between the dead man’s eyes. No burn residue. Liam shifted the corpse’s head to look for an exit wound. Blood matted the hair at the base of the skull.

  “Was a gun found nearby?” Liam asked.

  “No. This fellow was picked clean. He wasn’t in nothin’ but his long johns,” Finley said.

  “A robbery maybe?” Sam Batten asked. Where Liam Taft was middle-aged and tall with a physique his wife referred to as ‘squeezable,’ his partner Sam was half his age and size, and threw a mean left hook.

  “That’s what I said,” Finley stood straighter, “but the coroner said otherwise.”

  Life was cheap in San Francisco. Even cheaper in Mission Bay, where the dead man had been discovered. “Though the body pickers down that way aren’t so much the murdering kind. More like opportunists.”

  Liam squinted at the dead man’s bruised and roughened knuckles. Surely he’d been a prize-fighter in life.

  “I seen this fellow before, coming out of a boxing club around the warehouses. I went over there to ask after him. Close-lipped bunch. But I got it out of an old man that our corpse here had a fierce row with some other fellow a few weeks back. I asked to see his locker and I found this, so I told your lot.”

  Officer Finley held up a six-pointed bronze star with black lettering: Pinkerton’s U.S. Detective Agency.

  Liam took the bronze star and curled his fingers around it until the points dug into his skin. “I want to see where this dead fellow was found.”

  “Found him right here under some garbage,” Finley said.

  Liam frowned at the refuse-strewn alleyway. Not a pleasant place to meet your end. Sam signaled his agreement by turning his head to spit between his teeth. This was the type of neighborhood where that was acceptable.

  Officer Finley glanced over his shoulder towards the gray light. Finley, a short, broad-shouldered man with a mushroomed ear, kept fondling his billy club like he enjoyed using it. And yet he seemed uneasy on his own beat.

  “No wallet, no cash or coin, and stripped down to his long johns like every other unlucky soul I find around here.”

  “Happen much?” Liam asked.

  Finley chuckled. “Every week.”

  “With a bullet between the eyes?” Liam asked.

  Finley shrugged. “Not so much. Mostly beaten rotten. Some are drunk, though. Found a fellow face down in the creek last month with a knife in his back.”

  “All picked clean?”

  Finley nodded. “Thieves are quick here.”

  Liam studied the star in his palm, tilting it this way and that in the silvery mist. “How do you know thieves aren’t killing these folks?”

  Finley tapped his head with his billy club. “I got the detective instincts. So do you know that dead fellow, then? He one of yours?”

  There was hope in the patrolman’s voice. If Liam claimed the man as one of his own, then it’d fall on the Pinkertons to investigate. That meant less work for the patrolman.

  “We’ll look into it,” Liam said.

  Finley gave his billy club a whirl, clearly pleased that he could wash his hands of the case. “Sorry about your operative. You need anything else?”

  “Let us know if any of his gear turns up.”

  Finley snorted. “Probably scattered to every fence in the city by now.”

  “All the same.”

  Finley touched billy club to hat. “You watch yourselves ’round here.”

  “One more thing, Officer,” Liam said. “Did you drag the body out? Or wait for the dead wagon?”

  “I didn’t touch him. Went straight away to the call box. It’s a good walk, it is.”

  Liam shared a look with his partner, then thanked Finley for his help. After the officer left, Sam Batten spat again. “Lazy bastard.”

  Liam smoothed his drooping mustache in thought. “You reckon he got assigned to Mission Bay for his work ethic?”

  Sam only shook his head in disgust as he studied the drag marks in the dirt. “Looks like he was shot, then dragged into the alleyway to be divested of his earthly belongings.”

  “Appears so,” Liam said.

  The two spread out to search the area, but thieves, police, and body haulers had trampled it.

  “Not much here,” Sam noted.

  Liam followed the drag marks to the end of the alleyway where he spotted a dubious stain on the boardwalk. He crouched to rub a finger through the grime. Dried blood.

  “Here we are,” Sam said, drawing his Bowie. He used the tip to pry a bit of lead free from a wooden plank. “I wager it’s a forty four.”

  Liam took the mushed bullet and eyed it, then tucked it away in a pocket. He turned to the street. It was more of a dust bowl lined with boardwalks than a street, and one that would fast become a mud pit in the rain.

  “He was a big fellow, wasn’t he?” Liam said aloud. Used to his partner’s rhetorical questions, Sam didn’t reply. “Scarred knuckles, built like a bull… I’d like to meet the man to get in a fight with a fellow that size.”

  Sam shrugged. “Size doesn’t matter.”

  It was true, Liam knew. His partner Sam Batten was a boxer himself, the rangy kind. Having a boxer as a partner suited Liam; he needed young blood at his side. Liam had spent his own youth chasing hell, and now he
was well past middle age and hell had caught up to him. He preferred desk work to fieldwork these days.

  “You think this has to do with that other matter?” Sam asked.

  The ‘other matter’ was a thorn in Liam Taft’s side. “We’ll find out soon enough.”

  The pair headed for a battered iron sign, hanging but too heavy to swing in the breeze: The Den.

  Liam paused at the entrance. The Den was as dingy as one would expect in Mission Bay. The boxing rings were cobbled together from mooring lines and dirty mats—or in some cases smooth planks sprinkled with sawdust to soak up blood. Heavy bags, split and worn, dangled from rafters.

  Two men sparred in the center ring, as an old man swept the floor, an endless task. The gym smelled of male sweat and rawness. Blood, too. Liam’s wife would say it needed a woman’s touch. Most places he visited needed a heap more women.

  “You lookin’ to get rid of that paunch, old man?” a wiry man called from where he was pummeling a bag. He had a straight nose, and the muscled physique of youth.

  Just you wait, Liam thought. Time has a sense of humor.

  Liam touched the brim of his Stetson. “I’m afraid you’d have your work cut out for you,” he said, giving the fellow a smile.

  “You’re in the wrong place, mister.”

  “Usually am,” Liam said. “Are you the owner of this gym?”

  The young man slammed his taped fist into a punching bag, then stopped to regard him, the bag swinging lazily. “I like the sound of that. But, nah, I’m not fool enough to claim that.” He nodded over to a corner where a bull of a man sat talking with two others. They all looked keen to pummel flesh.

  Liam walked over to the men. “Gentlemen,” he greeted.

  They didn’t return the greeting. No surprise. He was trespassing on their turf. “A member of your gym was killed down the street.”

  “You a lawman?” asked a man with blood on his shirt.

  Liam lifted his coat, revealing a bronze shield with an “all-seeing eye” and the Pinkertons motto “We Never Sleep” below it. “Liam Taft. Pinkerton detective. This is my partner, Sam Batten.”

  Sam raised two fingers in greeting.

  “Do you know the man who was killed? Big fellow. Scarred knuckles, mustache, crooked nose.”

  The others looked to a balding fellow with the jaw of an ironclad. “Sure. That was Monty,” he rumbled. “Montgomery Johnson. Look, we already answered Finley’s questions. We don’t know nothin’.”

  Liam took silent note of Ironclad’s use of the officer’s name. “Did Monty have enemies?” he asked.

  The trio laughed.

  “Monty is a salty sort,” a blond fellow said.

  “Was,” Liam corrected.

  The men sobered.

  “You don’t seem surprised.”

  They stared. Deadpan. “Rough streets,” Bloody Shirt said.

  “The body was moved, then plundered,” Liam said.

  “Rough streets,” Ironclad repeated.

  “How’d he die?” Blondie asked.

  “A single bullet between the eyes.” Liam hooked a thumb in his belt, and the trio’s eyes were drawn to a row of ammunition. “About those enemies?”

  “Easier to name his friends,” Ironclad said.

  “That would be helpful.”

  “Do we look like the helpful sort?” Bloody Shirt asked.

  “No, but as of now, you’re my only suspects.”

  This got their attention. Blondie and Bloody Shirt stood up to glare. Sam glared back.

  “Thieves, addicts, and drunkards live around here like rats,” Ironclad said. “It’s why I started a gym. To give them something else.”

  “That’s noble of you. Was Monty one of those fellows?”

  “No, but he liked to gamble.”

  “He owe any of you money?”

  Ironclad worked his jaw, but restrained himself. “Yeah, he did. But Monty owed money to rougher men than me. Gambling debts, for one. And sure, he was behind on his membership dues. But half this lot is. Why would I kill him? A dead man can’t pay me back.”

  Blondie looked to his friends. “Who was that fellow he was always going on about? The one he beat to a pulp and rolled out the door?”

  “Monty had a beef with just about everyone, including you,” Ironclad said.

  “Salty bastard he was,” Blondie said fondly. “But no, I’m talking about that pompous ass fellow. Remember him? The one with the fancy walking stick? The one that came in and took a cheap shot with that stick of his.”

  “Andy Ryan, or something close,” Bloody Shirt ventured.

  A fellow at a nearby bag yelled out an answer. “Atticus Riot.”

  Blondie snapped his fingers. “That’s the name. The two of them got into a rumble. Monty cleaned the arrogance right off his noble brow.”

  “And that fellow had a revolver too,” Ironclad said. “Word is he’s a gunfighter.”

  Liam rocked onto his toes and came down. “Now that’s a place to start. Did any of you hear a gunshot a few days ago?”

  Blondie chuckled. “Daily. I don’t pay much mind to them in this part of town.”

  Or any part, Liam thought. He had to agree. Gunfire was commonplace in San Francisco. “Does this Monty have kin?”

  The men gave an appearance of thought.

  “Friends?” Liam asked.

  “I seen him at Dusty’s Place. A saloon down the way.”

  Liam handed over his card. “If you remember anything, I’d be obliged. Do you mind if I chat with some of your regulars?”

  Ironclad shrugged. “I got nothing to hide.”

  Liam touched his brim and went to speak to the old man with the broom. Now that fellow was full of insightful information. And all roads led to Atticus Riot.

  No Rest For the Weary

  Wednesday, November 14, 1900

  “Are you positive she can handle this alone?”

  Isobel Amsel Riot glanced up from her book to the man across the cabin saloon. Atticus Riot, her husband of nearly two months. He had his face pressed to a porthole.

  “Nervous, Riot?”

  “You’re the one holding your book upside down.”

  A hoarse voice shouted orders over the wind, then footsteps scrambled across the overhead deck. The cutter heeled and Isobel braced herself against a table that was bolted to the cabin deck while Riot steadied himself against the bulkhead. He was an odd shade of green.

  “I’m merely conducting an experiment,” she quipped.

  “Which of us will crack first?”

  Isobel sniffed. “No. Whether inverted reading will eventually become natural.”

  “You mean to say you’re distracting yourself.”

  She gave him a sharp look, and his eyes danced in reply. “Leonardo da Vinci wrote thousands of pages in mirrored script. With his left hand.”

  The cutter slammed back down into the ocean. With their bobbing world set aright, Riot stretched on the settee and placed a cushion under his head. “We could very well be inverted before the day is over.”

  “Jin will manage,” she stated.

  “I’m sure she will.”

  “Lotario has reinforced the Pagan Lady. If she does hit something...”

  “Like the dock?”

  “…then I’m sure the dock will be the one to suffer.” At least she hoped.

  “Just remember, I can’t swim.”

  “I can’t save Tobias, Jin, and you. You really must practice more.”

  Riot tapped his head. “Still recovering. Besides, the children are wearing cork vests. I’m in your hands.”

  Isobel snorted at his excuse, but it was half-hearted. Only weeks before he’d suffered a severe beating that edged him towards a grave. But the two weeks they’d spent strolling under redwoods and beside idle streams, then lounging on a sandy beach by the wild Pacific, had done wonders for his recovery.

  The trip hadn’t been devoid of excitement, but she expected no less from a man named Atticus
Riot. And luckily children were resilient.

  To her surprise, Isobel found she wasn’t keen on returning to the city. It turned out she enjoyed indolence in the right company.

  She studied him now. His beard needed a trim, his hair had curled, and the sun had bronzed his skin. In shirtsleeves and vest, with an open collar, he looked like some rakish Spaniard.

  “I hadn’t realized how dark you are,” she noted.

  Riot cracked open an eye. He had one bare foot braced against the table, making a lie of his calm façade, as the boat surged over a choppy San Francisco Bay. “I tan well.”

  So did she—the Azores blood ran thick in her veins—but not that well. Not for the first time, she mused over her husband’s parentage. His mother was a crib whore, which led to an entire spectrum of possibilities.

  Definitely some sort of Mediterranean descent, she decided.

  “I try to stay out of the sun for that reason,” he added, reading her line of thought.

  “Ah.” Any whisper of other than ‘white’ would close several doors for him. “A pity. The sun suits you.”

  Shouts sounded on the overhead deck, followed by a girlish scream, pounding feet, and a sudden turn of the cutter. Isobel glimpsed an alarming amount of wooden dock in her porthole. She braced herself for impact.

  But the Pagan Lady only drifted sideways in the water to bump the dock before settling. Triumphant cries sounded on deck, followed by orders from a pint-sized acting captain. “And snap to it!” Sao Jin shouted.

  Isobel took a deep, calming breath, and deliberately placed her book in its nook.

  “Are we dead yet?” Riot murmured. He had his eyes closed.

  “The day is young.”

  Isobel and Riot emerged on deck to find the crew standing at attention. “Captain on deck,” Jin announced.

  The three children saluted. Jin stood proudly in the cockpit, Sarah beamed from the dock where she’d been securing the mooring lines, and Tobias vibrated with excitement, hopping on the cabin top.