Clint Adams the Gunsmith 15

by JR Roberts

  “Hopefully.”

  “And if he is, you’ve got a whole new problem.”

  “Let’s just cross that bridge when we come to it,” he said. “Too bad you can’t get a look at him before that,” she said.

  Clint sat up in his chair.

  “What is it?”

  “Photographs.”

  “What about them?’

  “He’s a U.S. senator,” he said. “There must be photographs of him somewhere.”

  “Like a newspaper?” she asked.

  “Exactly.”

  “So we go back and see Atwater?” she asked.

  “No,” he said, “we go and see Gates.”

  Chapter Thirty-Six

  Atwater looked up and saw Bellows standing in front of his desk.

  “What are you doing here?”

  Bellows sat down.

  “Adams and the girl have left the Bucket of Blood,” Bellows said.

  “So?”

  “Do you know where they are?”

  “Why would I know?”

  “We have to find out,” Bellows said. “We can’t have them running around loose.”

  “Why not? What can they do? They don’t know anything,” Atwater pointed out.

  “They know that Winston is Wirz,” Bellows said.

  “No, they know that I think Winston is Wirz,” Atwater said. “And I’m just a drunken newspaperman, remember?”

  “We should get rid of him.”

  “Kill the Gunsmith?” Atwater said, laughing. “Which of you is man enough to try that?”

  Bellows didn’t answer.

  “Look,” Atwater said, “keep an eye on me and you’ll find them again.”

  “Hey, that’s a good idea,” Bellows said. “They’ll have to come back and talk to you.”

  “If only to get me to admit I’m wrong.”

  “I’ll have Fester or Edwards watch you.”

  “Those two idiots,” Atwater said. “Whichever one it is, make sure you tell them to stay away from me. I don’t want to be seen with them.”

  “Right.”

  “Or with you,” the newspaperman said, “so get out of here.”

  “You’re a big talker, Atwater,” Bellows said, “knowing that you ain’t the one who’s gonna pull the trigger on Winston.”

  “Who knows?” Atwater said. “Maybe I am.”

  Bellows didn’t know what to say to that, so he got up and left.

  Once Bellows was gone, Atwater sat back in his chair. Something had been bothering him. Questions.

  If the government had sent Clint Adams to stop him, why hadn’t they just arrested him for threatening the senator?

  Or why not just warn the senator himself? Or bring a battalion of soldiers to San Francisco?

  He could only think of one answer.

  Adams hadn’t been sent by the government. He’d been sent by one man.

  But who?

  One man who worked for the senator? No, if Adams had seen Senator Winston, he’d know the same thing Atwater knew, that it was Wirz.

  No, Clint Adams had never seen the senator. He’d only seen the man who sent him here.

  Who was it?

  In the end, it didn’t actually matter who it was. Because it was going to take more than one man to stop Dorence Atwater.

  Chapter Thirty-Seven

  “Back again?” Gates asked as Clint and Molly entered his office. “What can I do for you this time? I was just about to head home.”

  “I need a favor, Larry.”

  “What kind of favor?”

  “Photographs.”

  “Wonderful invention,” Gates said. “What about them?”

  “I need to see some photographs of Senator Winston,” Clint said. “This is a newspaper. You must have some on hand.”

  Gates sat back in his chair.

  “Maybe I do,” he said, “but what do I get for showing them to you?”

  “I told you,” Clint said. “If there’s a story, it’s yours.”

  “That’s not good enough.”

  “What do you want, Larry?” Molly asked.

  He looked at her.

  “An interview,” he said, then looked at Clint. “With you.”

  “I told you—”

  “You don’t do interviews,” Gates said. “I know. I remember. But you do want to see photographs of the senator, right?”

  “Yes.”

  “Why?”

  Clint shrugged.

  “I’ve never seen the man before.”

  “There’s got to be a better reason than that,” Gates said. “Shall I guess?”

  “What would be your guess?” Molly asked.

  Gates pressed his fingertips together and regarded Clint for a moment.

  “How about this?” he said. “When you see a photograph of the senator, you expect to recognize him.”

  Molly looked startled, then looked over at Clint.

  “How am I doing?” Gates asked.

  “Okay,” Clint said.

  “Okay … what?”

  “You’ve got your interview.”

  Gates started to get up, then sat back down.

  “What’s wrong?” Clint asked.

  “I just thought of something.”

  “What?”

  “What happens if you end up dead?”

  “Then we both lose,” Clint said, “and you don’t get your interview.”

  Gates told Clint it would take some time to find the photographs, but Clint said they’d wait. While they waited, everyone else left for the day, until it was only Clint and Molly in the office.

  “He must be having trouble finding them,” she said.

  “Or there are so many of them,” Clint said.

  They waited awhile longer.

  “Okay,” she said, “now it’s too long.”

  “Let’s go.”

  They left Gates’s office and started walking around the building, trying to find him. They opened and closed doors on other offices.

  “A different floor?” she asked.

  “I don’t like this,” he said, putting his hand on his gun.

  Molly knew she couldn’t snake her gun from her belt as fast as Clint could from his holster, so she palmed it right away.

  “End of the hall,” he said.

  There was a door marked MORGUE.

  “Dead people?” she asked.

  “No,” he said, “dead newspapers.”

  They crept down the hall until they reached the door. Clint put his hand on the doorknob and turned it. When he opened it, he sniffed the air and cursed.

  “What”

  “That smell?”

  She sniffed.

  “I don’t—”

  “It’s blood,” he said.

  They stepped into the room. There was a light burning, though not very bright. From the glow, though, they could see Larry Gates lying on the floor, with his throat cut.

  “Damn it!” Clint said.

  “Who—” Molly started.

  “Forget it,” Clint said. “Whoever killed him is long gone.”

  “But why?”

  “The photographs,” Clint said. “I’ll bet they’re all gone, too.”

  “But who knew—”

  Clint noticed that Gates’s right hand was closed into a fist. He leaned over him, avoiding the blood on the floor as best he could, and forced the hand open. In it he found a crumpled photograph.

  “Is that—” Molly asked.

  “Yes,” Clint said. “One photograph the killer missed.”

  “Who is it?”

  Clint uncrumpled it. It was not a good photograph, and the light was too dim.

  “We’ll look at it later,” he said, putting it in his pocket. “For now let’s get out of here.”

  “What about the police?”

  “We’ll send word to them,” he said, “but I don’t want to get tangled up with them. Come on, Molly. We have to go.”

  “Funny,” she said as they hurried bac
k up the hall.

  “What is?”

  “You didn’t end up dead,” she said, “he did.”

  “But we both still lost.”

  Chapter Thirty-Eight

  Molly wasn’t comfortable with leaving the body behind and not waiting for the police.

  “Look, we had nothing to do with his murder, but the police might not see it that way,” Clint said. “And you might have to call your bosses in to get us out. And knowing your bosses—or at least some of the past bosses of the Secret Service—I know they don’t want to have to do that.”

  “You’re probably right,” she said grudgingly.

  “When we get back to the hotel, we’ll send word to the police so they can discover Gates’s body and start working on who killed him.”

  “Should we get a cab?” she asked.

  “No,” he said, “the police will be checking with every cab to see if they picked anyone up in this area. Let’s walk as far as we can.”

  “What about that photograph?” she asked. “Let’s get a look at it.”

  “Let’s walk further, then we’ll find a saloon or something to duck into, and we’ll take a look.”

  She had to walk very quickly to keep up with his long strides.

  When Clint felt they were far enough away from the offices of the Examiner, they did, indeed, duck into a small cafe. It was apparently filled with regulars, who all turned and looked at them when they entered.

  “Great,” Clint said.

  “Maybe they’re just looking at me?” she suggested.

  “That would be good. There’s a table over there,” he said, jerking his chin.

  It was not in the back of the room, but it was against one wall.

  A comely waitress with lots of blond ringlets and a low-cut peasant blouse came over, gave Clint a look up and down, and then asked, “What can I get you?”

  “Coffee for me,” Clint said.

  “And me.”

  “Comin’ up.”

  As she walked away, Molly said to Clint, “Let’s see it.”

  Clint took it out of his pocket and smoothed it out. It was not a photograph, but a clip that had been torn from a newspaper.

  “Can you make it out?”

  It was a head and shoulders shot, and beneath it were the words “Senator Harlan Winston.” It measured only about three inches by three inches and was creased in many places.

  “He had it clutched in his hand,” Clint said, “so he was definitely hiding it.”

  “But it’s all creased.”

  Clint placed it on the table and tried to smooth it out.

  “Can you recognize him?” Molly asked. “Is it Henry Wirz?”

  Clint stared at it intently. The man in the photograph was in his sixties, and even though it was a black-and-white photograph, he could see the man had white hair beneath a hat. There was also a white mustache.

  “Wirz was clean shaven,” Clint said. “This man is so much older.” He sat back, frustrated. “Damn it, Gates died for nothing. I can’t tell from this picture.”

  The waitress came with their coffee, thought about flirting with Clint, but decided against it when she saw the expression on his face.

  “Bad news, honey?” she asked Molly.

  “The worst.”

  “Want somethin’ stronger than coffee?”

  “No,” Molly said, “this’ll do for now. Thanks.”

  Clint picked up the coffee cup and absently sipped from it.

  “Goddamnit, I thought this was going to solve some of our problems,” he said.

  Molly turned the photograph around so she could look at it, but she didn’t know what she was looking at, having never seen Henry Wirz before.

  “So we’re back where we started,” she said. “We have to wait for the senator to get here.”

  “Looks like it.”

  “And what do we do until then?”

  “I’ll tell you what I’d like to do,” Clint said. “Find the sonofabitch who cut Larry Gates’s throat.”

  “That would mean going to the police and trying to help them. And we don’t want to do that,” she reminded him.

  “I know.”

  “So we’re stuck.”

  “Looks like it.”

  “Maybe,” she said, waving to the waitress, “we should have something stronger.”

  Chapter Thirty-Nine

  When they got back to the hotel, Clint had to tell Duke Farrell that Gates was dead.

  “Okay,” Farrell said, sitting behind his desk, “now you owe me an explanation.”

  Clint hesitated. How much did he want to tell his friend?

  “I’m here to make sure nobody kills Senator Winston when he comes to town next week,” Clint said.

  “What did Gates have to do with that?”

  “I needed some information on a local, another newspaperman.”

  “Who?”

  “His name’s Dorence Atwater, works for a newspaper called The Reporter.”

  “That’s a rag. Did you know Gates worked with Mark Twain?”

  “So he told me,” Clint said. “Look, we need to get word to the police, but I need to stay out of it.”

  “I’ll pass the word,” Farrell said.

  Farrell turned to Molly. “What about the Secret Service? Can they do something?”

  “The Secret Service does not want to get involved with the local police,” Molly said.

  “And who can blame them,” Farrell said. “Our police are not as corrupt as they used to be, but everything is relative. How about a drink? You both look like you could use one. I have cognac and whiskey here, or we could get beer from the bar.”

  Farrell stood up and moved to a sideboard with bottles on it.

  “Cognac for me,” Clint said.

  “Whiskey,” Molly said. She seemed more upset about finding Gates’s body than Clint was.

  Farrell poured two glasses and handed them to his guests, then poured a cognac for himself and sat back down behind his desk.

  “So we’re tryin’ to avert an assassination?”

  That sounded as good a way as any to explain everything to Farrell, so Clint said, “Yes, we are.”

  “Any idea who the potential assassin is?”

  “No,” Molly said, “we only got word that somebody was planning to try when the senator got here.”

  “So don’t let the senator come here,” he suggested. “Oh, wait, I’ll bet you’ve already proposed that and been turned down.”

  “Oh, yes.”

  “That figures. That would be much too easy an answer, wouldn’t it?”

  “For the government?” Clint asked. “Yes.”

  “So what’s your next step?” Farrell asked. “Whatever you were getting from Larry, can you get it from someone else?”

  “I don’t want to risk anyone else’s life,” Clint said. “That includes you, Duke.”

  “So you still want me to butt out?”

  “Definitely.”

  “Then what are you going to do?”

  “We were being followed for a while,” Clint said, looking at Molly. “Maybe it’s time to find out who that was.”

  “Why didn’t you find out before, when you realized you were being followed?” Farrell asked.

  “That’s a good question,” Clint said. “I think I waited too long, and suddenly they were gone.”

  “How do you intend to find them again?”

  “I’m hoping,” Clint said, “they’ll find us again.”

  Clint and Molly left Farrell’s office, and instead of going back to their room, they went to the dining room. For some reason they were both famished just shortly after finding a dead body.

  “This makes me feel like a ghoul,” Molly said, cutting into a steak.

  “People react differently to finding bodies,” he said. “Don’t feel bad. Just feed the feeling.”

  They ate in silence for a while, alone with their thoughts, before Molly asked, “How do we make them find us again, Cli
nt?”

  “I’m not sure,” he said, “but we noticed them after we talked with Atwater.”

  “So we go back to him?”

  “What else do we have?” he asked. “We know it’s Dorence who’s planning to kill the senator. We need to find out who he has helping him, and whether or not they killed Gates.”

  “Maybe hearing that Gates—another newspaperman—was killed will shake him up,” she suggested.

  “Let’s find out tomorrow,” he said.

  “So what do we do tonight?”

  “I think tonight,” he said after a moment, “I’ll take you gambling.”

  Chapter Forty

  In order to go to some of the gambling halls in Portsmouth Square, they had to buy something else for Molly to wear. There was a dress shop down the street they managed to get to before it closed. There was no time for the seamstress to make something for her, but they managed to find something hanging on a rack that would fit her.

  They took the gown back to the room. Farrell was able to supply Clint with a suit to wear. After he’d donned it, he went down to the lobby to wait for Molly. Farrell waited with him.

  “Do you think a night on the town is in order?” he asked.

  “I think she might need it,” Clint said. “I don’t think she’s found many bodies.”

  “But she’s Secret Service.”

  “I’m not sure how long she’s been in the service,” Clint said.

  “Wow!”

  They turned. It was Cal who had spoken. They followed his gaze and saw Molly coming down the stairs in the gown.

  It didn’t fit perfectly—it was a bit too small—but it certainly showed off her attributes. Her shoulders were bare, breasts pushed together and up, which seemed to embarrass her. The color of the gown—jade green—seemed to show off her skin and her red hair well.

  “I—I can’t go out like this,” she said. “I feel … naked.”

  “Wait,” Farrell said. “Cal—”

  “I got you, boss.”

  Cal reached beneath the desk and came out with a green shawl.

  “A lady left this here last week. We’ve been waiting for her to come back for it,” Farrell said. “I don’t think she’d mind if you used it.”