Lone Star 02 (6 page)

“Gentlemen, please!” Lewis moaned in exasperation. “We seem to be at an impasse. Jordan, if Jessie were to tell you why we need to know the new representative's identity? Might that change your mind?”

Moore nodded slowly. “It might.”

“Arthur, it's really private business—” Jessie began.

“Excuse me,” Ki interrupted, “but we need the information, and if we do not get it from Mr. Moore, we must seek it out ourselves. That would be both time-consuming and dangerous.”

After a few seconds' hesitation, Jessie had to agree. “Very well. Mr. Moore, I ask you to keep this in strictest confidence.”

Moore nodded, picking up his cheroot and relighting it. “I will if I can, but I have a partner, and if he needs to know some or all of this, I will tell him. Fair enough?”

“Agreed,” Jessie said, impressed, in spite of herself, with Moore's straightforwardness. “At the time of my father's murder, he ran our enterprises from our cattle ranch in Texas.”

“That's the Starbuck ranch,” Moore said. “I've heard of it. It's supposed to be huge. It's where you really grew up, eh? And, I suppose, where you learned about guns?”

“And about roping and riding and a lot of other things, as well. Anyway, my father was shot dead in an ambush staged on our own land by agents of the Prussian cartel.”

Moore frowned. “Arthur?”

“It's all true,” Lewis assured him. “It's been substantiated by the federal government's own investigators. Jessie and Ki, along with a deputy United States marshal named Long, brought the actual killers to justice, at the same time foiling the cartel's plot to take over the Texas cattle industry.”

“I'm impressed,” Moore said with unfeigned sincerity.

“The murder of my father was not the beginning of the violence between the Starbuck empire and the Prussians,” Jessie continued. “But they hoped it would be the final blow in their campaign to illegally take control of America's political and business establishment. The war actually began long before my birth, when my father first confronted these villains in the Japans. During a series of bloody trade wars between the two business concerns, the Prussian cartel was responsible for the murder of my mother.” Jessie paused. “I was only a child, then.”

Moore watched the play of passions and memories drift across Jessie's lovely face, the way dark storm clouds will slowly fill a lovely summer sky. Her large green eyes grew shiny, and for one awful moment he was worried that she was going to cry. But no. Moore saw that she was made of sterner stuff than that. “Were your mother's murderers ever caught?” he asked.

“No, but my father retaliated by personally killing the only son of his chief Prussian adversary, the man responsible for issuing the orders to have my mother killed.” The look of steely determination was back on Jessie's face. “That awful exchange of familial violence capped the bloodshed for some years.”

“An eye for an eye,” Moore observed.

“Until my father was struck down.” This time it was Jessie who leaned forward in her chair in order to lock Moore's eyes with her own. “Ki and I travel the country in order to thwart the schemes sponsored by the cartel. I've got the resources of Starbuck Enterprises, and the guidance of a diary of leads that my father compiled down through the years. He'd hired private detectives, you see. Men like yourself. They told him of the various representatives of the cartel—crooked politicians, law-men, businessmen, and outlaws—who are attempting to entrench these foreign powers in our nation.”

Moore pondered what he'd been told. “I had no idea. I mean, I thought it was—”

“Will you help us, Mr. Moore?” Jessie asked softly.

“Wild horses couldn't keep me out of something like this, and please call me Jordan.” He looked at Ki. “Both of you.”

Ki nodded. “I would be honored. Now, the name of the Prussian representative? Who is he?”

Moore laughed. “What makes you think it has to be a man?”

Ki, Jessie, and Lewis looked at each other, obviously taken aback. Ki's face began to redden noticeably, and Jessie said, “Ki, what's wrong?”

“Nothing,” Ki replied hastily, but a dreadful thought had occurred to him. He looked steadily at Moore. “What is her name, then?” he asked, though he was sure he already knew the answer.

“Greta Kahr,” Moore said.

Jessie was still staring curiously at Ki. He felt the pressure of her gaze, and turned to face her.

“I met her this morning,” he said. “When I went back to fetch our luggage, there was an attempted purse-snatching. This woman was the intended victim. I, uh, foiled the thieves.”

Moore took out his little notebook and a pencil stub. “Do you think you can describe her for me?” he asked.

Ki's face reddened to an even deeper shade, and Jessie had to conceal a smile as she remembered Ki's tardiness in arriving at their hotel. “Go on, Ki,” she said. “Tell Mr. Moore what the lady—to give her the benefit of the doubt—looked like. I'm sure you got quite a good look at her...”

Chapter 3

The morning after their meeting with Jordan Moore in Arthur Lewis's office, Jessie and Ki went down to the waterfront. Lewis had offhandedly mentioned that a Starbuck clipper was scheduled for unloading today. Jessie did not want to miss this opportunity to witness this first, vital link in the chain that made up the Starbuck fortune.

The day had begun gray and cloudy, with a wind-driven, slanting drizzle that made the cobblestone streets glisten. But by the time Jessie and Ki had paid their five-cent fares to ride the Market Street cable car back to the Ferry Building, and had strolled north along the Embarcadero, the sun had broken through the woolly gray of the overcast sky.

A strong, hot sun had soon dried the last drops of rain off the smooth, stone-surfaced Embarcadero, the huge, manmade esplanade that had taken decades to build and had added dozens of blocks to downtown San Francisco. Before it was built, deep-water ships usually ended up scuttled in the mud flats that had reached to what was now the very fashionable and completely dry Montgomery Street.

But now the big three-masters could come directly to shore. Jessie and Ki wandered past the ships, staring up with awe at the spiderweb rigging of the cargo vessles, and trying to stay out of the way of the swarms of denim- and canvas-garbed longshoremen. Like ants swarming over the carcass of a dead grasshopper, the longshoremen would disappear into the hold of a ship, to reappear, each man lugging a wooden crate or rag-wrapped bale of goods. Workhorses, their big, blunt heads drooping patiently, stood still except for their fly-whisking tails as the rough-paneled carts they were hitched to were filled with, or emptied of goods. Jessie's and Ki's ears were filled with the squawking of gulls, the cries and shouts of the dock workers, and the hissing and clanking of the steam donkeys that were more and more replacing both animal and human muscle power for lifting and lowering heavy loads.

As they walked, Jessie and Ki spotted the flags of a score of companies flying from the masts of the docked clippers. The larger concerns, sensitive to public opinion, used longshore teams comprised of Caucasians, while the smaller, less established companies hired Chinese, who were supervised by white foremen. Nowhere during their walk did Jessie and Ki see a team where the two races were working side by side.

At last they reached the Starbuck ship. Flying from the mainmast of the docked clipper, and from a flagpole atop the cargo shed on the dock, were the Stars and Stripes and, just below it, the yellow pennant on which was emblazoned in red the Circle Star, the insignia of the Starbuck empire. The emblem, a five-pointed star enclosed in a circle, was branded on Starbuck cattle; it was stenciled on the crates of Starbuck goods that crisscrossed the country and the oceans; it was carved into the ivory grips of the derringer pressing so snugly against Jessie's thigh; it was even embroidered into a comer of her lace hankies!

A dock foreman, holding a clipboard, watched over the longshoremen who were tossing from man to man the crates of tea and spices and bolts of silk that made up this particular consignment. Finally they were stacked in Starbuck-marked dray wagons. Jessie and Ki stood well away from the action, and no one noticed them.

“I shall introduce you to the foreman,” Ki said.

“No.” Jessie took hold of his arm. “I'd rather they didn't know I'm here. I just want to see how it's done, Ki. I just want to watch it all happen, the way it happened when I was a little girl and my father was still alive.”

Ki nodded, and left her to her memories. His own thoughts drifted back to his homeland, to the stem chain of islands that made up
Nippon,
the Land of the Rising Sun. His memories were nostalgic, but they were not happy. In
Nippon,
Ki had been considered a barbarian's offspring, a half-breed, a mongrel not fit for society.

He glanced at Jessie, so lovely in profile, her eyes half closed, dreamy with fond memories. What was she thinking of? Her blond-haired, blue-eyed father who smelled of the cherry pipe tobacco he smoked, and fragrant green tea and spices he imported? Of his worn leather jacket that—when she was little—smelled of the salty sea, and when she was an adult, carried the honest scent of clean, healthy horseflesh?

“Yes,” Ki said, so abruptly that Jessie was startled. “Yes, your father's
kami
is here,” he continued. “He watches over the men working, and he is proud to see that his daughter does the same.”

Jessie, beaming, rose up on her toes to plant a soft kiss on Ki's cheek. “Then let's leave,” she said. “All's well.”

His cheek still tingling where her lips had touched, Ki took her arm to lead her away from this place so filled with bitter-sweet memories for both of them. Suddenly he stopped and raised a hand to point at a pennant snapping in the breeze above a nearby ship. The flag bore the insignia of one of the shipping companies that either belonged directly to the cartel or paid the organization a percentage of their profits for the privilege of being allowed to remain in business.

“The cartel's shipping dock!” Jessie exclaimed. “Let's see what's going on there!”

The dock and cargo shed were much the same, but the loading crews were not at all like those manning the Starbuck slip. Here, a rough-looking, unshaven dockmaster holding a billy club sauntered back and forth along the planking, goading his men to work ever faster. The workers were all Chinese, but unlike the other Oriental crews working the waterfront, these men wore the garb of coolies. They had no shoes to protect their feet, nor gloves for their hands as they scampered past the club-wielding foreman. The Chinese were thin and sickly. Some looked as if they would not last out the day's hard labor.

“These men are being used as slaves,” Ki seethed. “It is clear that they receive only pennies—if that much—for their work.”

“I'd love to know what contraband they're being forced to unload,” Jessie replied. “Come on, let's go see—”

“Just what do you folks want?” came a voice from behind them.

Ki and Jessie turned to confront a large, corduroy-suited figure holding a mean-looking, snarling dog on a short length of braided leather leash.

“We're just tourists out to see the sights!” Jessie remarked innocently, batting her eyes at the guard while Ki nonchalantly tugged lower the brim of his Stetson. From past experience he knew that his height, his garb, and his Caucasian features allowed him to pass as a non-Oriental as long as he kept his eyes shaded. He did not want this man to report back to his superiors that Jessica Starbuck had been spotted snooping about. A man and a woman could pass as just another tourist couple, but a woman of Jessie's beauty, accompanied by a half-Japanese, was another matter entirely! It was just his good luck that his encounter with Greta Kahr yesterday morning had ended as well as it did. Obviously she had just arrived—as had Jessie and Ki—and had not yet received a briefing on her enemies. Today she doubtless realized, as Ki now did, that she had made love with an arch-rival.

“You two go do your sightseeing somewhere else,” the guard warned gruffly. “This here's private property.”

The dog, a big, ugly brute, dull yellow in color, with a squashed-in face, drooled spittle from its loose black jowls as it shifted its attention back and forth between Jessie and Ki. All the while, a low, constant snarl vibrated from its throat, and the short fur along its spine stood stiff.

“Easy, boy,” the guard muttered. As he bent to pat the dog, his corduroy jacket gaped open, revealing the worn wooden butt of a revolver shoved into his belt.

“Come, dear,” Ki urged, before Jessie could say anything else. “We'd best be getting back to the hotel.”