Ralph Compton - Bounty Hunter

Night came to the Barbary Coast and the old round of business, pleasure, folly, vice and violent crime went merrily on.

Already, and still before six o’clock, two Frenchmen got into a duel with rapiers over the favors of a whore. The fight ended with a skewering, a dead man and the sobbing victor dragged off to the calaboose. In the basement of the La Scala Hotel on Drum Street, a man named the Shanghai Chicken, who fancied himself a prizefighter, took on a pugilist by the name of Soapy McAlpine. Before a well-heeled crowd, the Shanghai Chicken was defeated in eighteen rounds. Minus part of his nose and right ear—the other was badly chawed—he later claimed he lost the fight because Soapy landed an illegal low blow that “damn near exploded my balls.” But all would have ended peacefully enough had not the Shanghai Chicken’s sweetheart, perhaps fretting over possible damage to a part of her lover dear to her, obtained a revolver from behind the bar of the Sailor’s Haven tavern and proceeded to demonstrate her annoyance at Soapy by pumping three bullets into his brisket.

As John Tone prepared to leave Langford’s house, Soapy was languishing at death’s door in St. Mary’s Hospital while his unrepentant assailant sat in her police cell and sang the latest hit ballad, “After the Ball,” to all who would listen.

“I’ll walk with you, Tone,” Langford said. He seemed uneasy, a man who was not at peace with himself. “When we reach the waterfront, we’ll go our separate ways.”

Tone shouldered into his peacoat. “Pity, isn’t it, how things work out. We know who the criminals are, what they’ve done, yet we can’t just go and arrest them or rid the city of their shadows permanently.”

“It’s how the law works.”

“I know, and as I said, it’s a pity.”

“What we face is the scum of the earth, rich enough to hire expensive lawyers and have friends in high places,” Langford said. “It’s a stacked deck.”

“Tonight we’ll get rid of one of them, and maybe a lot more,” Tone said. “By midnight, Lambert Sprague will be burning in hell.”

“It has to be done, Tone. Isn’t that right?”

“We’ve already gone through that. Yes, it has to be done.”

Langford tugged at his tunic irritably, his face haggard, fighting his own private war. “Damn, my uniform doesn’t fit. It’s uncomfortable, like it was made for somebody else.”

Smiling slightly, Tone said, “Yeah, and your tin star has lost its luster.”

The big sergeant’s eyes were bleak. “I’m hurting here. Inside me, something’s hurting real bad, like the croup.”

“It’s called a conscience. All good men have one.” Tone pulled on his watch cap. “Walk with me, Thomas.”

Tone and Langford parted ways on Pacific Street, where there was now a large police presence following the death of Muldoon. They had spoken little to each other. All the words they might have exchanged had already been said.

The sergeant had contented himself with a handshake and a whispered “Good luck,” which Tone had acknowledged with a slight smile and a nod.

Now he made his way toward Sprague’s house, walking through a noisy throng of people under a cloud-streaked moon rising slowly in the sky.

Keeping to the shadows, Tone strolled past Sprague’s house. The front door was shut and he saw no sign of guards or any other activity. He felt a pang of unease. Had the meeting been cancelled?

Tone walked another fifty yards, then stopped. Across the street an alley was a beckoning rectangle of darkness. There were few people about this far from the waterfront dives, and he sprinted across the road and into the narrow passageway.

After standing still for a few moments for his eyes to become accustomed to the alley’s deeper darkness, Tone followed the passage until it fed into a dusty gravel lane. He turned to his left to get behind Sprague’s house, his way lit by the waxing moon. Here no tumbledown shacks lined the lane; in their place were large houses with well-cared-for yards that ended in whitewashed fences.

Every room in Sprague’s house was ablaze with light. Tone stepped over a fence and warily walked closer to the rear of the building, gun in hand. He found a circle of shadow under a tree and studied the windows one by one. Nothing moved behind them. Then a man in a white chef’s coat and tall hat appeared at a window to the left of the rear door. He opened the window wide, breathed deeply, and disappeared again.

Tone smiled. If the window stayed open, it would provide his access to the building. But now was not the time. Let the guests arrive and get settled; then he’d make his move.

His eyes searched the house again, hoping for a glimpse of Sprague. But the man was nowhere in sight.

Crossing the street again, Tone took up a position in a doorway where he could cover the front of the building without attracting too much attention.

For an hour, people came and went on the street; then, just as Tone was giving up hope, a cab pulled up to the door and stopped.

Three men got out, two of them making an elaborate show of deferring to the third, a large man with a brutal face and a neck as thick as a ship’s hawser. All three were welcomed into Sprague’s house by a pretty girl in a maid’s uniform and then the cab pulled away.

Over the next ten minutes, all five of Sprague’s guests arrived and Tone recognized the banker and slave dealer Edward Hooper, who pulled up in his own private carriage.

He looked up and down the street. There were no police in sight, since most of them were concentrated in busy Pacific Street. Two Chinese men, bamboo poles over their shoulders, weighted at each end with heavy wicker baskets, were trotting toward him, their faces hidden in the shadow of coolie hats.

Tone ignored the men and plotted his next move. He would return to the lane and then—

The razor-sharp knife edge pressed against his throat numbed Tone’s brain into immobility.

“Do not move, Mr. Tone,” a Chinese voice whispered in his ear. “You stay away from Sprague house tonight.”

The second man stepped in front of Tone and unbuttoned his peacoat. Tone tried to struggle free, but the knife dug deeper. “Very sharp, cut throat real nice,” the voice in his ear said again.

The second man removed Tone’s guns from their holsters, then raised his head to the moonlight.

Tone recognized the handsome features at once. It was the Tong leader, the man who called himself Weimin.

“Come with me, Mr. Tone,” he said. “We must get away from here.”

The pressure of the knife edge lessened on his throat enough for Tone to say, “I’m here to kill Lambert Sprague.”

Weimin smiled. “Sprague is not at home. We must go now.”

Seeing Tone’s reluctance, he said, “Why would Lambert Sprague buy half a ton of gunpowder in Chinatown? For fireworks, you think?”

The knife blade scraping against his skin, Tone turned his head and looked at Sprague’s house. From inside he heard music and talk and the languid laughter of heavy-lidded whores.

Now the full impact of the danger dawned on John Tone.

“Let’s get the hell out of here!” he said.

He and the Chinese men had only gone a few steps when the ticking time bomb that was Sprague’s house exploded into thunderous flame.

The force of the blast slammed Tone onto his face and as he lay stunned on the sidewalk, fiery debris rained down on him like molten lava from an erupting volcano. A heavy steel I beam, about ten feet long, torn loose from its mountings, clanged onto the road just inches from his legs. The beam bounced high into the air, then crashed, cartwheeling, through the front window of a house opposite.

Above the roar and crackle of the flames, Tone heard women and children shriek inside the building, then nothing.