Lone Star 02

by Ellis, Wesley

  By the look on Jordan’s face when she’d entered the lobby, Jessie had known that the detective was pleased with her appearance. He’d eyed suspiciously the odd-bulge in her purse.

  “Is that what I think it is?” he’d asked.

  “Yes, just in case,” Jessie replied.

  “Well,” Moore sighed, “as beautiful as you look tonight, I suppose I’d have needed something to remind me not to be too forward.”

  Jessie had been surprised to see that the driver of the cab Jordan had waiting for them was Thaddeus Simpson, the elderly cabbie Arthur Lewis kept on call. Moore explained that Lewis had offered Simpson’s services that afternoon, when Moore had deposited with the Starbuck executive the evidence Ki had gathered at the waterfront.

  Moore proved himself a man who knew his way around his city. He first entertained Jessie with his anecdotes concerning the variety and quality of the food served in San Francisco’s restaurants, as Simpson’s cab made its slow way along the cobblestone-paved streets.

  “San Francisco was settled by the natives of many different countries,” Moore told her as the hack swayed down the bright, gaslit avenues. “All of them kept the customs of their home-lands, including their native cookery. Also, you must remember that San Francisco was a gold, and then a silver town. Until recently, there weren’t many females around. The lone-wolf miners had all their meals in restaurants, and had the gold and silver to pay handsomely for the exotic foods they craved.”

  “Where are we dining this evening?” Jessie asked, as excited as a little girl.

  Moore grinned. “We’re going to the finest French restaurant in the city, the Poulet d‘Or. There are dozens of French establishments, but the Poulet has been around since 1850, starting out as a shack on Dupont Street. The miners back then liked the food fine, but they couldn’t handle the French. They dubbed the place the Poodle Dog, and that’s been the restaurant’s unofficial society name ever since. Of course, it’s no longer a shack, but a big, fancy place on Bush Street, just a stone’s throw from its original location.”

  The Poodle Dog featured snow-white linen, sparkling crystal, and a clientele dressed for the most part in expensive suits and gowns. More than a few men wore formal evening attire. Jessie confessed that it was difficult to imagine a bearded hard-rock miner clomping across the plush carpet in his muddy boots, setting his pickax and Winchester across the linened table, and snapping his grimy, callused fingers to summon a liveried waiter.

  “It might be difficult to imagine, all right,” Moore replied. “But if that miner came in, he’d be given a table. Men like that built this place, and this city, as well. And for all its veneer of sophistication, San Francisco is still a rough-and-ready, violent town.” He paused to taste the wine proffered by the steward, and after pronouncing it satisfactory, he waited for the man to pour them each a glass, and take his leave, before continuing on. “As far as your miner’s Winchester, consider what you’ve got stashed in your purse. I’m armed, as well, and nine out of ten of the gentlemen here have a gun somewhere about their persons.”

  Jessie looked about the room. Ki had instructed her in what to look for to spot concealed weapons, and now that she was doing so, she could indeed see here and there, the telltale bulge of a shoulder holster or the gleam of leather showing between the tails of a gentleman’s evening jacket.

  Their meal lasted for hours, but Jessie was having such a fine time that it only seemed like moments. Moore handled their ordering with aplomb. Jessie, who had learned to speak several languages at college, knew that his French was fluent, as were his poise and self-confidence in greeting those people who stopped by their table. Moore, it turned out, was well known. He did not introduce Jessie to any of his well-wishers, despite the fact that they were plainly curious.

  “I hope you don’t mind,” he apologized to her, “but I’d rather it didn’t get around that Jessica Starbuck is in town. Your name is well known, as is the fact that you are your father’s sole heir, but nobody knows what you look like, or anything else about you. For example, even though I’d been working for the Starbuck organization, until Arthur Lewis said you were actually his employer, I had no idea you directly controlled the empire.”

  “But what about your identity getting around?” Jessie asked, changing the subject. “Aren’t you concerned that being so well known will spoil your ruse of being a rich wastrel from Oregon? What if Smith and the others—”

  Moore shook his head. “It is a rather large city, Jessie. The odds of our running into Smith are slim, and if we do, I’ll simply take on my guise. My being with the loveliest woman in town would only add to it. The only person who might recognize you is Greta Kahr. But, again, the city is large and there are many night spots. Unless we want to keep you cooped up in your hotel room, it’s a risk we have to take.”

  “What about Chang, the leader of the Tong?” Jessie persisted.

  “Stop worrying!” Moore commanded. “Let me handle things. Tonight we are not employee and employer, but just a man and a woman.” He winked. “To prove it, I’m not even going to charge this dinner to expenses when I submit my bill.”

  “Oh, thank you!” Jessie laughed. “I’m so grateful!”

  “You will be, when you get my bill,” Moore told her merrily.

  Jessie smiled and kept silent, but she couldn’t help worrying. She respected and trusted Moore’s expertise, but her instincts told her that this time the brash detective was being overconfident.

  After dinner, Moore instructed Simpson to drive them to Russian Hill. During the ride, he told Jessie how the hill had come by its name: during the 1820s, a Russian crew of seal hunters had buried their dead on that spot. Once, only the richest people were able to live on the hill, for horses were required to negotiate the steep grade and act as pack animals to keep a home supplied with necessities and luxuries. But all that changed with the advent of the cable car.

  They stopped at a stone balustrade located in a peaceful cul de-sac just beneath the hill’s summit. Simpson waited with his carriage a discreet distance away, while Jessie leaned against the stone railing to gaze down at the sparkling, moonlit bay. Cypress and sycamore trees rustled in the night breeze, and the air was filled with the scent of daffodils.

  Moore was standing close by her, so close that just by shifting a little, Jessie found herself pressed against him. A moment later his arm was around her. She turned to face him.

  “I wish this night would never end,” she breathed.

  “It hasn’t yet,” Moore chuckled. “What we need now is champagne.”

  “But it’s so late!” Jessie protested.

  Moore kissed her lightly on the lips. Jessie felt weak in the knees as his hands caressed her back, vulnerable and bare, due to the low cut of her gown. “There’s no such thing as ‘too late’ in San Francisco,” he said, his jade-green eyes pinning hers, heating her to her very center. “Before anything else happens,” he continued, his voice husky, “we can take our time, and have our champagne.”

  They went to what Moore described as a “private sort of club,” hidden away on a dark and dismal street on the outer fringe of the notorious Barbary Coast. The place was called the Pink Slipper, according to Moore, but when they arrived at the address he’d given Simpson, Jessie saw no sign to tell them that they’d reached their destination.

  “This sort of place doesn’t advertise,” the detective grinned as he escorted Jessie to the stout-looking, plain wooden door of the windowless building. She shivered, feeling awfully deserted as Simpson’s cab rolled away. Moore had dismissed the cabbie for the night, confiding to Jessie that this was not the sort of area for the elderly cabbie to wait in, all by himself. The management would provide a cab for them when they were ready to leave.

  Moore extracted from his wallet and showed to Jessie a pink calling card, upon which there was no writing, but simply the likeness of a ballet slipper gracing the meticulously drawn and detailed, shapely contours of a bare female leg. The detec
tive rapped on the door and held the card up for inspection by the pair of eyes that appeared in the quickly opened peep-hole.

  Once they were inside the dark and smoky place, a husky, bearded man who looked ludicrous in his too-tight, formal dinner jacket, led them to an intimate booth for two.

  “Dis is one of our ‘love nooks,’” he grumbled. “Would it be satisfactory?”

  Moore assured him that it would be, and tipped the man a dollar for his trouble, asking that champagne be sent over as soon as possible.

  “‘Love nooks’?” Jessie giggled as soon as they were alone.

  “Actually, this place stole the term from the Poodle Dog,” Moore explained. “Before the Poodle got so fancy, it used to have an upstairs for drinking. The married pillars of society and the business world would take their mistresses and courtesans there, so the little booths came to be known as ‘love nooks.’”

  “Why all the secrecy about getting in?” she asked.

  “Well, a few years ago, the more staid segments of society decided that San Francisco needed a little taming.” Moore paused. “Say, do you mind if I smoke?”

  “Not if you let me have a puff now and then,” Jessie bargained. “Someday it’ll be all right for women to smoke.”

  “Propriety doesn’t stop Greta Kahr from smoking,” Moore observed as he fired up one of his slender cheroots.

  “Let’s not bring her up,” Jessie scolded. “Finish what you were saying about these after-hours clubs.”

  “Those staid church and civic groups lobbied their representatives to set closing hours for the bars. They did, and the police enforced the rules and, of course, turned a blind eye to the clubs that promptly sprouted, so they’d have a place to get a drink when they went off duty.”

  Jessie sipped at her champagne. It was icy cold, and tasted of strawberries. Its bubbles tickled her nose. “It’s all so complicated,” she marveled. “Police and politicians flouting the law. Aren’t they afraid of getting caught?”

  Moore shrugged. “There’s no one to catch them, Jessie. Here, corruption is considered the norm.”

  “Well, I consider it just plain dishonest!”

  Moore burst out laughing. “Shanks would hate to hear you say that. He’s an ex-policeman. He has quite a crush on you.”

  “Oh, dear,” Jessie giggled, taking another sip of her champagne. “I hope you didn’t tease him about my getting the drop on him?” she warned. “He’d asked me not to tell you about it, and I wouldn’t have, but then that man came after me, and I had to tell you what happened—”

  “Hush,” Moore said. “I never let on that I was informed of what had happened between the two of you.” He shook his head. “Not that the big oaf doesn’t deserve to be kidded ...”

  Jessie nodded in agreement. “He’s not very good.”

  “Actually, he’s better than you think,” Moore argued. “Don’t forget, most people are not as as alert as you are.” He smiled. “Often it helps our interests for Shanks to be so obvious. It panics the subject he’s following, and sometimes makes him or her do foolish things. Shanks, as I said, is an ex-policeman. He forgets that he’s no longer on the force, and that he has to be careful for his own safety, as well as discreet. The police in this town are pretty much all-powerful. I hope Shanks’s swagger doesn’t get him into trouble one day.”

  And I hope that your overconfidence doesn’t get you into the same kind of trouble, Jessie worried silently. “Lord! I’ve been having such a good time that I forgot to ask you about that man who tried to kill me. Did you ever find out anything?”

  “Only what I knew we’d find out,” Moore sighed. “I asked Shanks to talk to one of his old cronies in the department. It’s true that your thug had an assault record, but there is nothing to connect him with either the cartel or the Tong. Shanks had a good point to make about it all, by the way. He pointed out to me that it’s unknown for the Tong to use a Caucasian for their dirty work. They sometimes use whites as front men in their business dealings, but never to do anything underhanded. They only trust their own kind for that.”

  “That doesn’t clear the cartel!” Jessie, sitting with her back to the door, heard some commotion behind her, but did not bother to turn around.

  “It could have been them, Jessie, but we’ll never know—” Moore froze in midsentence. His face blanched, and when he next spoke, it was in a hoarse whisper. “It’s them! What rotten luck!”

  Jessie, totally mystified, glanced over her shoulder, toward the entrance. A single, ceiling-suspended gas lamp lit the foyer area. She saw in that flickering light a rather full-figured, but extremely attractive middle-aged woman, dressed in a tightly fitted gown of gold lame. Around her shoulders was a mink stole. Its shading matched the auburn color of her mass of curly hair. She wore no hat, but carred, despite there being no prediction of rain, a tightly furled umbrella.

  “That’s her!” Moore hissed. “That is Greta Kahr!”

  “Oh, no!” Jessie groaned softly. “We’ve got to get out of here! I’m sure she knows what I look like. The cartel must have supplied her with my description before sending her to San Francisco.”

  “Jessie!” Moore admonished, his tone quiet, but command ingly sharp. “Just stay where you are. They can’t see us, we’re hidden by the shadows. Once they’re settled in at their table, we’ll slip out. For now, take the opportunity to see who your enemies are. The gentleman escorting Madam Kahr happens to be Chang Fong, leader of the Steel Claw Tong.”

  Jessie scrutinized the man with Kahr. He was short, about five feet, five inches in height, a small, barrel-chested, bandy-legged Chinese fellow, his middle-aged face clean-shaven, and his glistening, ivory-colored pate hairless. His expensive, pin-striped suit did nothing to hide the length and thickness of his shoulders and arms. “He looks so strong...”

  “He got those muscles lifting and hauling tuna and sword-fish, back when he was a fishmonger,” Moore told her.

  “He doesn’t look that special—” Jessie began, and then gasped. Chang had been standing with his left side toward her, in a three-quarters profile. Now he stood facing Jessie. “His hand!” she whispered, recoiling into the dark protection of their shadowy nook.

  “They call him Steel Claw,” Moore reminded her.

  Where Chang’s right hand should have been was not a metal hook, but a claw. It was as if there were a small, gleaming rake protruding from his sleeve, and each of that rake’s five talons glistened needle-sharp in the flickering light.

  “They say that he uses that thing to gouge the eyes of those Tong members who have displeased him,” Moore whispered. “I, for one, believe it.”

  Jessie stared at Chang’s eyes, like two pieces of black onyx set in the ivory-yellow folds of his Chinese face. Those twin, glittering spots of blackness were totally without expression. They reminded Jessie of the eyes of a Gila monster, the big poisonous lizard found in the Southwest. A Gila monster would bite down on you to chew its venom into your flesh, and once that demon’s jaws clamped, there wasn’t a thing you could do to make it turn you loose. And all the time it chewed on you, its black, expressionless eyes would glitter like onyx. You could lop the lizard’s head clear off with a pair of wire-cutters, but it didn’t matter, didn’t change a thing; those black, shiny eyes never changed, not at all...

  “Jessie?” Moore reached out, placing his hand on hers.

  Jessie started. She almost jerked away her fingers.

  “What were you thinking about?” Moore asked.

  “About monsters.” Jessie shuddered. “About him!”

  She gestured toward Chang as he escorted Greta Kahr to their table. Flanking the couple were a pair of stern-faced Chinese bodyguards dressed in the traditional Chinese garb of long, dark blue tunics and pajama pants. Their inky black hair was plaited into queues that dangled down their backs.

  “Chang’s guards don’t seem to be armed,” she mused.

  “They don’t need weapons,” Moore grimaced. “All of Chang’s
hatchet men are Chinese boxing masters.”

  “Wu-shu?”

  “Why, yes,” Moore said, surprised. “What don’t you know?”

  “What those two are going to be planning over their champagne,” Jessie replied. “Whatever it is, it’ll mean trouble for me.”

  “For us,” Moore gently corrected her. “You’re not up against them alone, remember?”

  Jessie squeezed Moore’s hand. “Yes, I do remember,” she murmured, her eyes sparkling.

  “And right now, I’m much more interested in what we were planning over our champagne.” Moore put some money on the table and stood up. “Come on, they’re settled in. We can leave without being noticed.”

  “Don’t we need to call a carriage?” Jessie asked.

  “I’d rather not hang around here waiting for it to arrive,” Moore said slowly. “We’re not so far from the Barbary Coast. We’ll walk a bit. We’ll see a vacant hack soon enough.”

  As they left the club, Moore said. “Let’s say hello to Shanks. I know he’d love to see you again.”

  “What would he be doing around here?” Jessie asked, startled.

  “I forgot to tell you,” Moore grinned. “I’ve had him tailing Kahr. I thought it might put some pressure on her to have a man on her tail—if you’ll excuse my poor choice of words.”

  “Hmmm,” Jessie slipped her arm through his, to snuggle close to the detective.

  “Perhaps I should have put Ki on her tail,” he said slyly, as they strolled down the dark avenue.

  “Just make sure you don’t tease him like that,” Jessie laughed.

  “Don’t worry about that.” Moore’s expression grew distant. “Uh, I’m not sure how to bring this up, but I’d like to know ... there’s nothing between you and Ki, is there?” he asked tentatively. “I mean, as a man and a woman,” he fumbled.

  “No,” Jessie said, smiling to herself. “It really would never occur to him to make love to me.”