Susan Amarillas (5 page)

“I’ve got help.” She pulled back the covers and coaxed Ruth to lie down.

“What help? You mean Brody? Bah!” She fussed with her pillows until she was propped up.

“No, not Brody.” Rebecca smoothed the covers. “Someone—”

“Can I come in?” a decidedly male voice said from behind her. She didn’t have to turn to know Luke was there, in the doorway. She sucked in a breath and mustered her best formal pose. She needed all her composure when it came to Luke.

“Come in, Marshal Scanlin.”

Rebecca was sitting in the Windsor chair and holding Ruth’s hand. She was still wearing her navy dress, and Luke could see that she was drier now, though he figured that she was soaked to the skin underneath.

She should have changed, but she was stubborn to the end.

“Why, thank you, Becky.” He used her familiar name, disregarding her formality. He saw the irritation flash in her eyes, and he had to fight the smile that tugged at his lips.

He stopped at the foot of the bed. “Ma’am,” he said politely. “I’m glad to see you are feeling better. I saw the doc downstairs, and he said you were doing better, so I thought it would be okay for me to stop by.”

For a long moment, Ruth didn’t speak, didn’t even move. She just stared at Luke. Feeling uncomfortable, he shifted his stance and raked one hand through his hair. “Ma’am, is something wrong?”

Ruth blinked, then blinked again. “No...Marshal, is it?”

“Yes, ma’am. Luke Scanlin. I’m the marshal for this region.” He gave her his best smile.

“Have we met before, Marshal?” She kept on studying him. “You look like someone...” She shook her head, and Rebecca stilled.

Luke arched one brow in question. “Who?” He shoved one hand through his hair again.

Ruth’s face drew up in a puzzled expression. “I...” Slowly her eyes widened. “So it’s you...” Her gaze shot to Rebecca, then back to Luke. The color drained from her face.

Rebecca surged from her chair. “Ruth? Are you all right? Shall I send for the doctor?”

Luke made a half turn, as if to do just that.

“No.” Ruth’s voice cracked. “No,” she repeated, holding up one hand. “I’m all right.”

“Maybe I’d better go,” Luke said.

“No, Marshall, stay,” Ruth countered, more firmly. She adjusted her position on the propped-up pillows behind her back. Rebecca helped her.

“So it’s me what, ma’am?” Luke asked.

“What? Oh, so, it’s you who helped me to my room,” Ruth answered quietly.

“Yes, ma’am.”

“The marshal is new in town,” Rebecca said, smoothing the covers before sitting down again.

“Well, that explains a great deal.” Ruth’s tone was thoughtful. “Under the circumstances, Marshal, I think you know me well enough to call me Ruth. `Ma’am’ sounds so old, and—”

“And old is twenty years older than you are...Ruth,” he filled in, grinning.

“Marshal, I think I like you. I always did have a weakness for charmers.”

“Not me. I’m telling the truth,” he teased innocently.

Ruth laughed. “So this must be the help you said you had.”

“Yes” was all Rebecca said.

“Well, Marshal, we are thankful for all the assistance we can get. Aren’t we, Rebecca?”

“Grateful. Yes.”

Luke came around to stand close to Rebecca. “I’m sorry we’re meeting under these circumstances. I hope I can help find Becky’s boy. Actually, one of the reasons I came up here was to tell you that the search parties have gone out and I’m going myself, right now.” He touched her shoulder lightly in a familiar gesture. “They’ll come back here as soon as they’ve covered their assigned areas.”

Rebecca spared him a look that didn’t last as long as a heartbeat. “Thank you.”

He headed for the door.

Ruth’s voice stopped him. “Marshal Scanlin.”

“Yes.” He didn’t turn, only looked back over his left shoulder, one hand braced on the edge of the door frame.

Her expression and tone had turned serious. “It’s very important that you find Andrew.”

“Yes, ma’am. I know.”

“I wonder if you do,” Ruth said gently.

T
he Barbary Coast was only a few short blocks from Nob Hill, but it might as well have been the other side of the earth. The Coast was several square blocks of the seediest, raunchiest real estate anywhere. It was the reason San Francisco was the most dangerous city in America.

Sin was for sale on the Barbary Coast. A man could name his pleasure and be certain to find it. He could lose his money in the gambling halls and saloons, lose his virtue in the brothels, or lose his life in the opium dens along Pacific Street. All in all, there were over five hundred concert saloons serving alcohol, and anything else, to the unsuspecting.

The good people of San Francisco gave the Barbary Coast a wide berth. The trouble was, so did the law. “Enter at your own risk,” said some. “Let ‘em kill each other, and good riddance,” said others.

So it was only natural that when a man wanted something done that was, well, less than lawful, he’d come to the Barbary Coast.

That was exactly what Frank Handley had done last week, and tonight he was back, seated at a table near the back wall of Fat Daugherty’s.

It wasn’t much of a saloon, he thought, taking in the long, narrow room. The ornate mahogany bar took up all of one wall, and the mirror behind the bar had a couple of cracks as big as earthquake fissures. A bartender with a handlebar moustache and greasy hair was serving rotgut that the patrons didn’t seem to mind consuming.

Cigarette smoke grayed the air, and the planked floor was sticky from too many spilled drinks and too much tobacco juice.

The place was doing a brisk business, though, he noted with a bit of surprise. Nearly two-thirds of the tables were taken, by groups of sailors—whalers, most likely—and wide-eyed farmers and cowboys in town to “see the elephant” before going home flat broke, if the cardsharps had their way. They usually did. Hell, Will and Finck were actually putting out a catalog of devices for the professional gambler who didn’t mind using a little sleight of hand to ensure that he won. Yup, cheating was an industry, he thought, somewhat amused.

A man dressed in denim pants and a buckskin shirt edged past on his way to the bar, bumping into Frank with a thud, then glaring at Frank as though he were the one doing the bumping.

“Sorry,” Frank muttered.

“Yeah,” the man growled, and blessedly continued on his way.

Frank released the breath he’d been holding. He felt as out of place as a rabbit at a wolf convention. But he was here now, and he had business, so he leaned back in his chair and tried to look calm and composed.

The chair wobbled pretty much like Frank’s confidence. One of the back legs was shorter than the others, so he leaned forward again, forearms on the edge of the table. His finely tailored gray suit was in sharp contrast to the stained and gouged surface of the square table.

He was waiting for the Riggs brothers, who were late. Where were they? All he wanted was to say his say and get the hell out of here. This was not his sort of place, after all. Frank had finer tastes. He preferred saloons like the one on Montgomery Street—slate billiard tables, gilt-framed paintings and glittering chandeliers.

If it weren’t for his job, he wouldn’t spend five seconds in a place like this.

Music started up from the out-of-tune piano. An argument broke out at the table next to him. A man shouting at another about fixed dice in a game of high-low-jack. The two lunged for each other, and Frank shrank back against the wall, praying he wouldn’t get involved, or hurt.

The bartender scrambled over the bar, wielding an ax handle, and effectively and efficiently ended the dispute with a resounding blow across the shoulders of one man. Frank winced as the man sagged to the floor.

“I ain’t puttin’ up with no fightin’ in here,” he snarled, the saloon suddenly quiet. He waved the ax handle in the air to punctuate his order. Grabbing the unconscious man by the shirt collar, he dragged him toward the door. His boot heels left trails on the filthy floor. For the span of two heartbeats, no one moved. Then, as if nothing had happened, everyone went back to doing what they had been before.

Heart pounding, Frank slid back into his wobbly chair. If the Riggs brothers didn’t show up soon, he was leaving. Instinctively he patted the envelope that was making a small bulge in his jacket pocket. Damn. He couldn’t leave.

But, hell, he was a lawyer, not some street ruffian. Oh, sure, there were some who’d put his profession close to a criminal’s, but they’d be wrong, emphatically wrong.

Lawyers were hired by someone to do a job that that same someone didn’t want to do, or couldn’t do themselves. And that was exactly what Frank was doing. Okay, so maybe it wasn’t exactly legal, or ethical, but it paid well, very well, and no one got hurt. Frank had his code, too. It was simple. In business, everything was fair as long as no one got hurt—physically hurt, that is. Financially, well, that was another story.

Frank nodded to himself, pleased with his code of ethics. Across the saloon, a ruddy-faced man in a lopsided top hat kept pounding out music on the badly tuned piano. One of the saloon girls, dressed in nothing but white pantaloons, black stockings and a bright yellow corset, decided to sing along. The sound was reminiscent of fingernails on a chalkboard, and made his skin prickle and his ears ache.

He craned his neck, searching the room. God, where were they? He scanned the crowd again and flinched as the singer hit a particularly painful note that didn’t exist on any known musical scale.

It was reflex that made him pour a glass of whiskey from the bottle he’d ordered when he came in. Good sense stopped him from drinking it. The liquid was the color of a polluted stream and smelled like the contents of a chamber pot. He grimaced.

He’d take Irish whiskey any day. Still, he toyed with the glass, hoping he looked at home. Where the hell were the Riggses? Five minutes. He’d give them five minutes, and boss or no boss, he’d—

“Evenin’,” a male voice said, and Frank jumped at the sound, it was so close.

“We scare you?” Bill Riggs chuckled as he and his brother Jack circled around each side of him in a flanking maneuver. They dragged up chairs opposite him and sat down.

“You’re late,” Frank told them, feeling more than a little intimidated by the two hard-looking men.

“Sorry. I was—” Bill glanced at his brother, then back to Frank “—detained.” He lounged back. “Upstairs.”

Frank grimaced. “Take care of that stuff on your own time. Did you finish the job I hired you to do?”

“Sure.” Bill smoothed the lapel of his rumpled brown suit. His white shirt was open at the neck and had no collar.

Jack leaned forward, his lean face grim, his blue eyes hard as winter. “You got the money?”

With a furtive glance at the nearest table, Frank discreetly slipped the envelope from his pocket and placed it squarely in front of him, his fingers resting lightly on the edges.

“This is half of the money. You get the rest
after
the exchange is made.”

He pushed the envelope toward them. The white paper seemed to gleam against the dark pine table.

Bill pried the envelope partway open and ran his thumb across the stack of greenbacks before carefully slipping it in his jacket pocket. He looked up with a broken-toothed grin. “We’re right pleased to do business with you, Mr. Handley.” Elbows on the edge of the table, he looked at Frank Handley with a ferret-eyed gaze. “Just how’d you choose us for this job, anyway?”

Frank toyed with the full shot glass in front of him. Whiskey spilled over the top onto his fingers, making them sticky. “I needed someone who wasn’t...squeamish about such things, and you boys—” he looked first at one, then at the other “—you have that reputation.”

This time both men grinned, as though they’d just been congratulated for perfect attendance at Sunday school, instead of for being immoral thieves and worse.

“Nice to know a man’s reputation is worth somethin’ these days,” Jack told him, then elbowed his grinning brother. “We’re always lookin’ for a little work...of one kind or another.”

Yeah, Frank thought, he knew all about the brothers and their reputation. He’d asked around for someone who’d ask no questions and whose scruples declined in direct proportion to the amount of money paid. Everyone he’d talked with had mentioned the brothers, and they’d been right.

At the mention of kidnapping, they hadn’t blinked an eye, just asked when and how much.

“So...” Jack reached across to help himself to the untouched glass of whiskey. Tossing back the brown liquid in one gulp, he wiped his mouth with the back of his hand. “What next? You want us to get rid of the kid? ‘Cause that would be easier, and—”

“No!” Frank quickly glanced around to see if anyone else had heard his sudden outburst.

“No,” he repeated, more softly, but just as firmly. He drew the line at murder. “No harm is to come to the boy. He’ll be exchanged for the money tomorrow night.”

“Why not tonight?”

“Because we want to give the mother a chance to worry a little. That way, she’ll have to—” Frank broke off, then started again. “Just make the exchange tomorrow night. Nine o’clock, in the alley on Kearney, behind the So Different. I’ll make arrangements for the ransom note to be delivered.”

The brothers eyes him intently, and Frank could practically see them calculating, trying to figure how to make more out of this than he’d allowed for.

“And just how much money is the woman putting up for her brat?”

Frank frowned. “Don’t get any ideas.” His fingers trembled slightly, and he carefully hid them under the table. “Just do the job.”

“Sure. Sure.”

“I’ll be across the street, at the Bella Union. Bring me the bag, and you’ll be paid the balance owed you.”

“Yeah. Yeah,” said Bill, with a casual wave of his grimy hand. “We understand.” He cleared his throat and winked at his brother. “Don’t we understand, Jack?”

There was a smugness to his tone that made Frank’s stomach clench nervously.

“Sure, Mr. Handley. We understand,” Jack said.

The two men stood, almost in unison. “By the way, are you expectin’ any trouble makin’ the exchange?”

“Trouble?” Frank mirrored their stance, already eyeing the door. “What kind of trouble?”

Jack shrugged. “You know—law, for one, or them decidin’ not to pay, that sort of thing.”

Frank shook his head. “No, there should be no trouble. I’m certain she’ll pay. She may come herself, or send a messenger. Either way, take the bag and turn over the boy, and no one is to get hurt.”

“Okay. Okay. We’ve got it. Don’t worry.”

He started past Frank, then stopped when Frank said, “Don’t mess this up. If you do, if you get caught somehow, you’re on your own. If you tell anyone that I’m involved, I’ll swear on a stack of Bibles that I’ve never seen you before in my life.”

The two men didn’t seem to take offense, and they certainly didn’t seem concerned. “Don’t you worry, Mr. Handley. We’re not gonna get caught, and nothin’s gonna go wrong.”