Ralph Compton - Bounty Hunter

Then Tone remembered.

“Penman had dirt under the fingernails of his right hand,” he said. “He’s a fastidious little man and a thing like that is out of character for him.”

“Is he left- or right-handed, do you know?”

“Right, I think. He carved his meat with his right hand.”

“Penman was rooting around in mutton gravy,” Langford said. “It would be easy to get some under his nails.”

Tone made no answer, and the cop said, “Still, it’s something to think about. It could have been blood, huh?”

“Yes, it could have been,” Tone said.

The detective in charge of the murder investigation was an earnest young man who looked hot and uncomfortable in a high celluloid collar and tie.

“Find anything?” Langford asked.

The detective shook his head. “Not a thing. This will go into the records as just another routine prostitute murder. My investigation begins and ends right here.”

“I wonder if Annie Forbes thought her death was routine?” Tone asked, irritated.

The young cop looked at him. “Who the hell are you?”

“A friend of mine,” Langford said, a hard edge in his voice that warned, “Lay off.”

“I can tell you one thing, Sergeant,” the detective said, now seemingly anxious to please. “She was strangled before she was cut. She has severe bruises on her neck.”

“Would that explain the lack of blood?” Langford asked.

The detective nodded. “Sure. When the heart stops, the blood quits pumping.”

“You’ll tell me if you come up with anything else,” Langford said.

“Of course. But right now I’m investigating a dozen cases, and this one isn’t high on my list.”

After he and Langford left the alley, Tone said, “That detective feller really burned me.”

The sergeant smiled. “Don’t blame him. There’s too much crime in San Francisco and too few cops. That young man is underpaid and overworked and he’s doing the best he can. And he’s right. A murdered whore doesn’t keep the chief of police awake o’ nights.”

“Why didn’t you mention Penman to him?”

“No point in that. The man has a cast-iron alibi. He was in the Jolly Jack drinking tea when Annie Forbes was murdered. Melody Cord and a bunch of others will swear to that.”

“I think Penman did it,” Tone said. “He’s a sodomite who hates all women with a passion.”

“So tell me, how the hell did he leave the tavern without anyone seeing him?”

“I don’t know.”

“Well, when you do know, we’ll talk of this again,” Langford snapped.

The big cop was clearly on edge, so Tone closed his mouth, letting him be.

The rest of the evening was taken up by what passed for routine police work on the Barbary Coast.

At the Eureka dance hall two whores, the Galloping Cow and Little Josie Dupree, got into it over the affections of an inebriated whaler. Her talking done, the Galloping Cow, just as drunk as the whaler, summed matters up when she produced a .22-caliber pepperpot and cut loose at Little Josie, missing her with all six shots.

Langford gave the Cow a stern warning and hinted darkly of three days in the calaboose if the offense was ever repeated.

Over at the Last Chance Saloon, a female gambler name Darkie Rose accused fellow cardsharp Banjo Billy Bates of cheating, whereupon the incensed Billy tried to brain her with a whiskey bottle, empty, of course. He swung, missed, and smashed the bottle over the head of a rube who was sitting at the gaming table. However, the rube was a big farm boy who proceeded to pound Billy into a pulp.

Sergeant Langford ended the fracas when he buffaloed the large and enraged lad with his revolver. But the farm boy had a hard head and quickly regained consciousness. After a stern warning from the sergeant, the relieved rube ordered rum punches all round and everyone sang “For He’s a Jolly Good Fellow,” including Langford and the battered and groggy Banjo Billy.

A person or persons unknown took a potshot at a streetlamp, but no damage was done, and a ferocious dog was reported in an alley off Pacific Street. Tone and Langford investigated, but the aggressive canine was not found.

Two cabs collided in the fog and the drivers argued about whose fault it was and then decided to settle the dispute with fisticuffs. Langford intervened and sent them on their way.

A total of six persons were rolled and robbed. There were eight assaults, one a razor cutting that was serious enough to require hospitalization for the victim and jail for the assailant. Someone stole a walnut ladder-backed chair from in front of Solomon Levy’s used clothing store, but despite a thorough investigation by Langford and Tone, neither the chair nor the thief was located.

As dawn broke and Tone and Langford wearily made their way home, the cop declared that apart from the ripping, it had been a quiet sort of night.

Chapter 27

Events escalated the following evening after the Ripper claimed his second victim and Tone was forced to kill a man.

“How it came up, Tone and myself were on routine patrol along the waterfront when the second whore was murdered, then an attempt was made on Mr. Tone’s life,” Langford told his superior, an inspector named Muldoon.

“Why was a civilian on patrol with an officer of the San Francisco Police Department?” Muldoon asked suspiciously. He looked at the sergeant. “Good coffee, by the way.”

“Thank you, sir,” Langford said. “Mr. Tone is seriously thinking of joining the department out of a burning desire to reduce crime along the waterfront and I was showing him the ropes.”

“What? Is he nuts?”

“No, sir, he wants to dedicate his life to law enforcement.”

It was a small lie, or at least a gross exaggeration, but it got him over the hump because Muldoon nodded, squirmed to get more comfortable in Langford’s kitchen chair, then said, “Go on.”

“Just after eleven o’clock last night, Tone and me were proceeding down Pacific Street when I ascertained that there was a disturbance in an alley between the Dew Drop Inn and Lo San’s Chinese laundry.

“Upon arriving at the alley we were informed that a woman had been murdered in her residence. She lived in a shack in a backstreet running parallel to Pacific Street that the locals call Pisser’s Alley.”

“I know Pisser’s Alley,” Muldoon said. “I investigated a murder there when I was a young officer, oh, about a hundred years ago.” He smiled. “Please continue, Sergeant.”

Langford poured more coffee for Tone and the inspector, then said, “The murder was reported by the dead woman’s friend, a sometime whore who goes by the name of Peggy French. She led us to the residence and we proceeded inside.

“The woman had given her child into the care of French while she entertained a gentleman caller, so she was alone in the one-roomed shack. She was lying in bed near the stove and was partially naked. As in the previous case, her throat had been severed by two cuts and her abdomen had been slashed open by a long, jagged wound.

“A message had been left in red chalk on the wall over the bed. I wrote it down in my notebook just as it appeared.”

Langford pushed the open book across the table. He had neatly copied the words:

The coppers are the boys who won’t buckle me

Muldoon pushed the notebook back to Langford and said, “Before I left the precinct to come here, I was told that the victim’s left kidney and part of her uterus had been removed.”

“I didn’t know that, sir,” Langford said. He consulted his notebook, flipping up pages until he came to the one he wanted. “The dead woman was a whore by profession, and her name was Elizabeth Jones, but she was known on the street by the alias Jonesy.