Ralph Compton - Bounty Hunter

“The cab driver was killed when the cab turned over,” Tone said. “His neck is broken.”

The sergeant turned to Evans and felt his shoulders. “Soaked to the skin. He’s going to catch his death of cold.” He pointed at the younger cop. “You, give me your cape.”

With marked reluctance, the cop parted with his cape and Langford draped it over Evans. He turned to the two cops again. “There were three assailants, two firing revolvers, the third a shotgun. I have no description of the men, but you can ask around the crowd and see if anybody got a good look at them.”

“You’ve got a bloody nose, Sarge,” the older officer said. “It might be broke.”

“Don’t you think I already know that?” Langford said testily. “Now, get on with your investigation. You’ll need written statements from me and Mr. Tone here. I’ll bring those to the station later tonight.” He glanced at the dead cabbie. “And get that poor man off the street.”

Tone flagged down a cab and they bundled Evans inside. The little sailor didn’t look good; he was pale and drawn, his black eyes glazed and unfocused.

As they headed for his house through a pelting rain, Langford looked over Evans to Tone. “That ambush back there, was that what you meant by seeing the elephant?”

Tone shook his head. “We caught a glimpse of it, maybe. I believe there’s a lot worse to come.”

“I hope you’re wrong about that.”

“I wish to hell I was,” Tone said.

He looked at his legs. Both calves were bloody, but the buckshot had been slowed by the floor of the cab and none of his wounds were deep.

Beside him Evans was whimpering again and Tone told him to shut the hell up.

Chapter 31

“I’ve only got one spare bed, and that’s yours,” Langford said. “I’ll have to put him in there.”

Tone shrugged. “I don’t mind. I have a feeling that there’s not going to be much sleep for either of us.”

They laid Evans on the cot and Langford, fairly gently, covered him up to the chin. The man was wailing about being murdered in his bed, begging to be taken back to St. Mary’s and the sisters.

Langford poured a glass of whiskey and pulled a chair up to the bedside. “Drink this, Bandy,” he said. “It’s good for your nerves, like.”

He lifted the whiskey to Evans’ mouth and the man drained the glass, then coughed, phlegm rattling in his skinny chest.

The sergeant beamed. “That’s the ticket, Bandy. By the way, the buckshot missed your ass, and here’s some more good news—later you can have some beef stew and a cigar.”

“Eggs . . . ,” the man whispered. “Soft-boiled . . . with a bait o’ toast and butter.”

“Yeah, well, we don’t have any o’ that,” Langford said, rising to his feet. “Stew is good grub and it will put meat on your skinny bones.” His smile was about as sincere as the grin of a cobra studying a rabbit. “You sleep now, Bandy, and later you can talk about what you saw the day your ship was pirated.”

“Nothing . . . I saw nothing.” He groaned. “Oh, God help this poor sailorman.”

Langford gave Tone an incline of his head and stepped out of the room. When they were in the kitchen, the sergeant said, “I’m on duty tonight. You’ll have to stay with Evans.”

Tone nodded, but he wasn’t really listening. “Smell something?” he asked.

The sergeant sniffed. “What the hell? Is it Evans?”

But his disgusted expression changed to one of alarm when he saw Tone draw his guns. He sniffed again. “Where is it coming from?”

Tone had already stepped from the kitchen into the hallway. Langford’s room lay at the end of the short corridor, the door ajar.

“Did you close that when we left for the hospital?” Tone asked.

Langford shook his head. “I don’t remember.”

Warily, Tone walked to the door. He lifted his boot and kicked the door hard, then as it banged noisily back and forth, he stepped inside.

“Oh my God,” he whispered.

Then Langford was at his side. His horrified eyes moved to the bed.

“Those bastards!” he yelled. “Those blackhearted, murdering bastards!”

Willie Sullivan, his face frozen in his last agonized scream, lay on his back in the bed. Naked, the little man’s thin white body was splashed in blood, and his wrists and ankles were tied to the bedposts. The stench in the room was almost unbearable, like an overflowing outhouse in the sun. The source of the smell was Willie’s ripped open belly and the guts that had been piled on his chest.

That had been the last barbaric outrage perpetrated on the body, after he’d lost his ears, eyes and tongue.

Tone remembered the small plaster figurine that had stood on the mantel of the cottage where he’d been raised. Three monkeys sitting in a row, one covering its eyes, another its ears, the last its mouth.

See no evil. . . . Hear no evil. . . . Speak no evil. . . . Langford stepped past him and picked up the note that had been left on Willie’s chest. Without a word he passed it to Tone.

Death to traitors

“Sprague?” Tone asked.

“What do you think?”

“I think it was his doing.”

“Willie was followed here and Sprague knew what he had to tell us,” Langford said. “While we were at the hospital, they were cutting him.”

He looked at Tone. “I was wrong. That street ambush wasn’t aimed at us. Willie Sullivan was the target.”

“Not like Sprague to bungle it so badly.”

“They didn’t bungle it. The cab tipped over and they didn’t expect that. If it had stayed on its wheels, they would have had clear shots at us.”

“Then we were lucky.”

Langford nodded. “Lucky, yes.” He smiled slightly. “Maybe talking to the nuns put God in our corner. I should try to get back on speaking terms with him after this.”

He looked at Willie, a wizened wax figure who had died more horribly than any man deserves.

“My damned bed is ruined. I’ll never sleep in it again.”

Tone said, “Sprague sure spoiled Willie’s wedding plans, didn’t he?”

“Yeah,” Langford said. “Dago May will be heart-broken.”

An hour later, summoned by Langford, detectives arrived, stayed for a while, then left. Willie’s body was taken away and some profane scavengers dragged out the sergeant’s bedding, declaring that it could be washed and reused.

Through all this, Langford was unusually quiet and seemed lost in thought, his normally good-humored face fixed in a troubled scowl.

After feeding the complaining Evans, who demanded, but didn’t get, custard, Tone sat at the kitchen table with Langford. They had opened all the windows in the house, but the smell of Willie’s death still lingered.

Neither man felt like eating, so they settled for coffee and cigars.

Langford studied Tone’s face and it took him a long time to speak. Finally he did something strangely dramatic. He unpinned the silver star from his coat and laid it on the table. Beside it he placed his revolver and bowie knife.

“This has got to stop, Tone,” he said. “And the only way to stop it is to kill Lambert Sprague.”

“You’ll get no arguments from me,” Tone said.

His eyes dropped to the items on the table and Langford read the puzzlement in his eyes, because he said, “I’m not speaking to you as a representative of the San Francisco Police Department. Right now, sitting here, I’m a private citizen.”

Tone smiled slightly and said, “I’m not catching your drift, Mr. Langford.”

But Langford decided not to explain himself, at least not then. “Earlier I spoke to one of the detectives and told him I wish to have a meeting with Inspector Muldoon. I asked that Muldoon be here tonight around midnight. I’ll make sure I’m present.”