The Loner: Crossfire

by J. A. Johnstone

  The fear in her gaze struck him as genuine. When he asked again if she promised not to scream, she nodded and he believed her. He moved his hand away from her throat but held it ready to strike if he needed to.

  “I’m not going to yell,” she said in a surly voice. “If you’ll swear to let me go, I promise to tell you whatever it is you want to know.”

  “You answer my questions first, and then we’ll talk about what’s going to happen to you,” Conrad suggested in return. “That’s the best deal you’re going to get.”

  She sighed wearily. “All right. I agree. Now, will you stop pawing me and let me sit down?”

  “Keeping you from trying to kill me isn’t exactly the same as pawing you,” Conrad pointed out. He released her and pointed to one of the well-upholstered armchairs. “Sit down.”

  The blonde sat. She wore the same dark blue dress she had worn at Monroe’s office earlier. A matching hat perched on her head. She had tucked her hair back up as best she could after Conrad wrecked the arrangement of curls. She looked down at the floor. “What is it you want to know?”

  “Your name is Lorraine Eastman, isn’t it?”

  “That’s right. How did you know that?” Before he could answer, she went on, “Never mind. I suppose the law told you. They’ve been trying to get something on Mr. Monroe for as long as I’ve worked for him.”

  “How long is that?” Conrad wanted to know if Lorraine had been Monroe’s secretary when Pamela came through Carson City with the twins.

  “I’ve been his secretary for the past year and a half.”

  If she was telling the truth, that meant she had probably never seen Pamela or the children.

  “What happened to the secretary he had before that?”

  “He fired her when she ... well, when she turned up in a delicate condition.”

  “Pregnant?”

  Lorraine made a face. “If you want to be crude about it.”

  “And I suppose Monroe was responsible for that?”

  “Again, if you want to be crude about it ... yes. I didn’t really know what happened until later, when the woman came back to the office to beg Mr. Monroe for money. He ... he laughed at her and sent her away.”

  “Nice fellow,” Conrad said in a disgusted tone. “I suppose you were so quick to defend him earlier because the two of you—”

  He stopped short at the look of utter revulsion on Lorraine’s face. “God, no!” she exclaimed. “He was the most contemptible little weasel I ever met. But he paid well, and I didn’t want anything to happen to him.” She rolled her eyes. “That didn’t work out too well, did it?”

  “Is that the only reason you cared? Because of the money he paid you?”

  She hesitated, then said, “I didn’t want any trouble with the law. When you said he tried to have you killed, I was afraid you were going to bring in the authorities and they’d finally have something on him they could use to convict him. I knew if that happened, they would arrest me, too, and claim that as his secretary I had to be aware of all his crooked dealings.”

  “Well, weren’t you?” Conrad demanded.

  “Of course I was,” she snapped. “I’m not a fool. I saw the sort of men who came and went in that office, and I typed up his correspondence and notes. I hadn’t worked for him long before I knew what he was up to.”

  “Why come after me?” Conrad asked. “If you hated Monroe like you say, it couldn’t have been to avenge him.”

  “I don’t care that he’s dead,” Lorraine said bluntly. “But now the law is after me, and I need money to get out of town. I did some asking around about you, Mr. Browning. You’re a rich man, even if you did come into the office with mud all over your clothes. I figured you could pay me enough to get me out of Carson City so I can start over somewhere else.”

  “You mean you intended to rob me at gunpoint. That’s why you sent that telegram and paid some fellow you probably found in a saloon to come and knock on my door. You figured I’d be suspicious and try to spy on my visitor, and that alcove was the best place to do so. It was a cunning little trap.”

  “But you figured out what was going on and turned the tables on me.” Lorraine’s voice held some grudging respect along with the anger. “I underestimated you, Mr. Browning.”

  “So what do we do now? Do I turn you over to Deputy Wallace? I know he’d like to talk to you. He probably has a lot of questions about what went on in Monroe’s office.”

  “They’ll lock me up,” Lorraine said with a slight quaver in the words. “I couldn’t stand that. I ... I’ll do anything you want, Mr. Browning, as long as you don’t turn me over to the law.”

  The invitation was plain in her eyes and her voice. Conrad shook his head. “That’s not going to work.”

  “Are you sure?”

  “Positive. But I might be more inclined to let you go if you can tell me what this means.” He reached inside his coat and brought out the piece of paper he had taken from the filing cabinet in Monroe’s office. He held it out to Lorraine, who took it tentatively and studied the words printed on it.

  “Who or what is D.L.?”

  Lorraine shook her head. “I have no idea. You can see from the date that Mr. Monroe wrote this note before I came to work for him.”

  “That’s Monroe’s writing? You’re sure about that?”

  She nodded. “Yes, I’ve seen it often enough.” She pointed to the memorandum. “This other part, with the initials and the three hundred dollars ... I can tell you that was written fairly recently. It’s in a shade of ink that we never used until I bought some a couple months ago.”

  That was an interesting bit of information, Conrad thought. It indicated something or someone had triggered the deal Monroe had made three years earlier. Conrad figured that trigger had been him setting out from Boston to search for his missing children. He had suspected all along that Pamela had hired spies to keep an eye on him. The conspiracy against him stretched across the country like a giant spider.

  “Is there anything else you can tell me?”

  “Well ... the initials have to refer to Ed Gillespie and Walt Farley, but you know that already.”

  “What about Golden Gate?”

  Lorraine shook her head. “That’s something to do with San Francisco, isn’t it?”

  “But you don’t recall Monroe ever saying anything about it?”

  “No, I’m afraid not.” She sat forward a little in the chair. “I’ve told you everything I know, Mr. Browning. I’m sorry about, well, about what happened outside.”

  Conrad smiled. “About trying to rob me, you mean.”

  “I was desperate. I still am. Since you were responsible for Mr. Monroe getting killed, I thought it was fitting that you help me get away.”

  “Monroe was responsible for his own death. If he’d been honest, it wouldn’t have happened.”

  “Honesty might postpone death sometimes. It doesn’t prevent it.”

  She had a point there, Conrad thought. He opened the cylinder of the little pistol he had taken from her and shook out the bullets, then snapped the gun closed and tossed it in her lap.

  “You can get more bullets. I don’t want you being tempted to point that thing at me again. I don’t like it.”

  “You’re not going to turn me in?”

  He slid his wallet out of his coat pocket and removed a few bills. Lorraine’s eyes widened at the sight of them.

  “Take the money and get out.” Conrad extended the bills to her. “I don’t want to lay eyes on you again. A while back I ran into another pretty young blonde who kept trying to murder me. She wound up dead.”

  That was true enough, although Conrad wasn’t the one who killed her. He was going to let Lorraine Eastman draw her own conclusions, however.

  “If I see you again, I’m liable to get suspicious,” he went on as Lorraine took the money. “I won’t ask questions, and I won’t wait to do something about it. I’ll take action right then and there.”

  “You
don’t have to worry, Mr. Browning.” The bills disappeared somewhere inside her dress. “I promise you, you’re about the last person I want to see again. There’s an eastbound train this evening. I intend to be on it.”

  “I’d be careful if I was you. Deputy Wallace will probably have men watching the depot.”

  She laughed coldly as she got to her feet. “Those lawmen will never see me unless I want them to.”

  Conrad kept his hand on the butt of his gun as Lorraine went to the door. She paused and looked back at him.

  “What is it that’s so important about you? Why would someone in San Francisco pay five thousand dollars to have you killed?”

  “It’s a long story.”

  Lorraine shrugged. “I don’t really care. I was just curious for a second. You’d better be careful. There are probably more people out there who want you dead.”

  “I think you can count on that.”

  Chapter 7

  Considering the hour, Conrad ate an early supper instead of a late lunch. The rest of the evening and the night that followed passed quietly. He couldn’t help wondering if Lorraine Eastman had managed to get on that eastbound train and leave Carson City, but he didn’t care enough to find out.

  He and Arturo had been traveling light on their cross-country journey, but once he was in Carson City Conrad had bought more clothes, as well as the new Colt. Even so, he had only a couple small bags to take with him to the train station the next morning, and he carried them himself rather than have the hotel send them over. At one time in his life he had been accustomed to having servants take care of his every need, but now he was more self-sufficient.

  He wasn’t surprised when Deputy Wallace strolled up to him while he was standing on the platform, waiting for the westbound train.

  “Good morning, Mr. Browning.” Wallace touched a finger to the brim of his soft felt hat. “You didn’t have any more trouble after the last time I saw you yesterday, I trust?”

  “Not a bit.” Conrad wasn’t going to mention the encounter with Lorraine Eastman at the hotel.

  “No one tried to kill you? No shots were fired?”

  Conrad shook his head. “It appears Monroe and his hired guns were the only ones after me.”

  “The only ones here in Carson City, anyway.”

  Conrad shrugged. “It’s hard to predict what a person will run into elsewhere, isn’t it?”

  “Not always,” Wallace said. “For example, I predict that when you arrive in San Francisco, you’ll find yourself in more trouble. I did some checking, and that seems to happen all the time with you.”

  “It’s not my idea,” Conrad snapped. “I just want to be left alone to go about my business.”

  “From what I could tell, you have teams of lawyers in Boston, Denver, and San Francisco who take care of your business for you. Or were you referring to something else, Mr. Browning?” The deputy was digging, trying to find a reason for the violence that had occurred in his city.

  Conrad wasn’t going to satisfy Wallace’s curiosity by spilling the story. “I’m leaving town, Deputy,” he said without answering Wallace’s question. “Isn’t that what you wanted?”

  “Fine,” Wallace said. “I won’t be sorry to see you go.”

  With some apparently idle curiosity of his own, Conrad asked, “Say, did you ever find that woman who worked in Monroe’s office?”

  Wallace made a sour face. “No, but we will. She’s still around somewhere. She couldn’t have gotten out of town without us knowing about it.”

  Conrad would have been willing to bet the deputy was wrong about that ... but he kept that thought to himself.

  The westbound train rolled into the station a few minutes later with clouds of smoke and steam puffing from the diamond-shaped stack of the big Baldwin locomotive. Conrad lifted a hand in farewell as he climbed aboard.

  Wallace wasn’t sorry to see him go ... and Conrad wasn’t sorry to be putting Carson City behind him.

  Conrad arrived in San Francisco that evening. The train had passed over the Sierra Nevadas and through some spectacularly beautiful scenery since he boarded it that morning, but he hadn’t paid attention to any of it. He’d spent the time thinking about what he would find when he reached the city by the bay. Would he step off the train and right into the gunsights of some other hired assassin who wanted to kill him?

  At first glance, the only person waiting for him on the platform was the tall, burly Claudius Turnbuckle. The ruggedly-built lawyer with muttonchop side whiskers was a distinctive figure, immediately recognizable. Turnbuckle moved forward as Conrad came down the portable steps from the railroad car. He extended a hand, which Conrad gripped firmly. “Welcome back to San Francisco. Any problems during the last leg of the journey?”

  Conrad shook his head. “No, nothing happened on the train except that I got pretty bored.”

  “Yes, I can understand why you’d feel that way, what with no one shooting at you or anything.” Turnbuckle chuckled, then grew solemn. “Seriously, I’m glad you’re here, Conrad. You’re too much in the habit of going it alone.”

  “I wasn’t actually alone,” Conrad pointed out. “Arturo’s been with me.”

  “And Arturo’s a fine man, but you know what I mean. We have resources, Conrad. There’s no point in not taking advantage of them.”

  “Tell me what you’ve found out.” Conrad had wired Turnbuckle from Carson City the previous evening, asking the lawyer to check up on the information from the note he had found in Monroe’s office.

  Turnbuckle took Conrad’s arm and steered him toward the depot lobby. “I have a carriage waiting out front, and I’ll have someone bring your bags to the hotel. We can talk while we’re riding.”

  As they moved through the station, Conrad noticed several well-dressed but nondescript men moving along with them. A second glance showed him how tough and capable they looked, and he realized they were bodyguards hired by Turnbuckle to make sure no ambush took place at the station. Conrad appreciated that, but at the same time worried about how effective he would be in carrying out his investigation if he had guardians tagging along with him everywhere he went.

  “I booked a suite for you at the Palace Hotel,” Turnbuckle went on as he opened the door of a well-appointed carriage with gleaming brass trim and a team of fine black horses. Conrad climbed into the vehicle and took the rear seat. Turnbuckle followed and faced him, riding backward.

  “What about D.L. and the Golden Gate?” Conrad asked as the carriage got underway.

  “Do you have any idea how many Golden Gate this-that-and-the-others there are in this town? It’s a popular name. But I have men combing through the city directory and pounding the pavement, trying to find some connection between a Golden Gate and something with the initials D.L. It’s going to take a few days to cover all the possibilities.”

  “D.L. is probably a person.”

  “Probably, but not necessarily. Again, there are too many people in San Francisco to put our finger on the correct one right away.”

  “I’m not complaining, Claudius. You don’t have to defend your efforts.”

  Turnbuckle frowned. “I just want to do the best we can for you. You’ve been through so much.”

  “Everyone has misfortune in their lives.” Conrad shrugged.

  “Yes, but you’ve had more than your share.”

  Conrad thought about some of the people he had met in his travels and wasn’t so sure about that. It seemed to him that tragedy, in one form or another, came to everyone sooner or later. The trick was being able to deal with it without letting it destroy you. Rebel’s death had driven him perilously close to such destruction. At times he still felt like he was teetering on the edge of a cliff, poised over a bottomless abyss that would swallow him completely. All it would take to send him over the brink was the slightest push ...

  “So you don’t really have anything to report?”

  “Not yet,” Turnbuckle said. “But we’re just getting started.�
��

  Conrad nodded. “I appreciate that, I really do.”

  “What you should do is take a few days to rest. You have the finest, most comfortable suite in the hotel. You should relax and enjoy it. Regain some strength. You’ve run into trouble everywhere you’ve gone ever since you started searching for the children. You need to get away from all that for a while and let us worry about carrying on the search.”

  “I suppose you’re right.” Conrad leaned back against the sumptuous cushions. In truth, he had no intention of sitting back and doing nothing. Once, maybe, he could have done that, but no longer.

  The carriage wheels rattled over the cobblestone pavement. Conrad felt the vehicle tilt as it started up one of San Francisco’s many steep hills. Suddenly the driver cried out in surprise and the carriage lurched to the side, then came to an abrupt stop.

  “What in blazes are you doing?” the driver called to someone. “Move that thing!”

  Turnbuckle leaned out the window. “What’s wrong, Harry?”

  “Oh, some dunderhead driving a beer wagon pulled out right in front of us,” the driver explained. “Nearly ran into him, I did. And now he’s blocking the street.”

  Alarm bells began to ring inside Conrad’s head. Wagons and carriages nearly ran together in the streets all the time, he supposed. That was one of the hazards of living in a big city. But his instincts told him there was something wrong.

  “Are those bodyguards you hired following us?” he asked sharply.

  For a second Turnbuckle looked like he was going to deny hiring any bodyguards, but then the lawyer said, “Yes, they’re supposed to be back there.”

  The driver yelled, “Hey, what are you doing with that ax?” At the same time, a swift rush of hoofbeats sounded somewhere behind the carriage, and guns began to go off.

  “Claudius, I think we’d better get out!” Conrad reached for the door.