The Killing Look

by J. D. Rhoades

  “Mr. Cade,” she said. “I took the liberty of ordering breakfast. I hope you don’t mind.”

  “Not a bit, ma’am.” Cade gestured her back to her seat. “Have a seat. Please.”

  She smiled. “You first. I’ll serve.”

  Reluctantly, he took the seat opposite hers. She removed the lids from the silver serving dishes and picked up his plate. He caught a whiff of her perfume as she bent over to spoon a generous helping of eggs, bacon, and sausage onto his plate before setting it in front of him. It was as close as she’d ever been to him, and it took him a couple of seconds to realize she’d said something. “I, ah, beg your pardon, ma’am?”

  She smiled and began putting a smaller helping of food on her own plate. “I said, I trust the accommodations are satisfactory?”

  “Yes, ma’am,” he said. “Very comfy.”

  She took her seat. “Good. I keep a standing reservation here. For times…well, sometimes I need to get away.”

  He took a bite of eggs. “Yes, ma’am.” He didn’t know what else to say.

  She regarded him gravely. “And I’m sure you’re wondering if my getaways are solitary ones.”

  He’d been thinking that very thing, but he replied, “It’s none of my business, ma’am.”

  “The answer is, not always. Does that shock you?”

  Cade shook his head. “There’s not a lot left that shocks me, Mrs. Hamrick.”

  “Truly?” She stirred at her food with a fork, looking down at the plate. When she looked back up, she spoke again in a flat, dry voice. “My husband goes out and takes his pleasures whenever he wants. Why shouldn’t I?”

  Cade set his fork down. “What I’m trying to figure out, Mrs. Hamrick, is why you came down here to tell me all this.”

  She held his eyes with hers. “Because I need to get away. From John. And I don’t want to do it alone.” She stood up and walked over to him, standing close enough that he could feel the warmth of her body. “I trust I’ve made my meaning clear, Mr. Cade.”

  I guess breakfast can wait, Cade thought. He stood up as well, his napkin falling to the floor. “Maybe you ought to call me Levi.”

  CHAPTER FORTY-THREE

  They lay together, the sheets a sweaty tangle at the foot of the bed. Marjorie’s thick blonde hair was undone and spread out across Cade’s torso as she rested her head on his chest. He took a strand and wrapped it around his finger, toying with it idly. She ran her fingers gently through the dark hair on his chest and sighed with contentment. “Thank you,” she murmured. “That was just what I needed.” All of her previous reserve was gone, shed like the clothes that lay on the floor.

  “Glad to oblige,” Cade said.

  She smiled and tweaked his nipple, then began kissing his chest. “I bet I know what you’re thinking,” she murmured.

  “Yeah? What’s that?”

  She looked up at him, amusement in her brown eyes. “You’re wondering why.”

  “Why what?”

  “Why I’m here.”

  “Well,” he said, “I don’t usually like to question good luck. But this much good luck does leave me a mite puzzled.”

  She laughed, deep in her throat. “I’ll take that ‘good luck’ as a compliment. But you didn’t seem puzzled a few minutes ago.” She propped herself up on one elbow. “Is it so hard to believe I saw someone I wanted to be with and decided to make it happen?”

  He shrugged. “Now I’m the one that’s flattered. But it seems like you’re takin’ an awful risk.”

  She snorted. “I’m not afraid of John Hamrick. And you shouldn’t be either. He’s a weak man.”

  Her open contempt was making him feel uncomfortable, even as he shared it. “You don’t seem to like him very much.”

  “I don’t. I hate him.” She looked away. “Shortly after my daughter was born, he came home from one of his whoring expeditions. He brought a disease to our bed.” She saw the look on his face and hastened to add, “Don’t worry. I’m cured. After months of painful and humiliating treatment, I was cured. But I’m unable to have any more children. And I haven’t let him touch me since.”

  He whistled softly. “Yeah. I can see how that would be. So why are you still with him?”

  She was silent for a long time. “I’ve had to make compromises in my life, Levi. My mother died when I was small, and my father never remarried. Never had any sons. So, he raised me to take over his business. Taught me to be strong. To reach for the things I wanted.”

  “Seems like you do a good job at that. But why—”

  She went on as he she hadn’t heard him. “My father hadn’t been in the ground a week before the wolves started moving in. People tried to steal from me. People tried to swindle me. They thought I was weak and stupid because I’m a woman, and when I showed them I damn well wasn’t, they froze me out.”

  “Froze you out how?”

  She reached down and began picking up her undergarments from the floor. “You may have noticed, Levi, that the most successful men make their fortune with other people’s cash.” She pulled a stocking on. “The world doesn’t just run on money, it runs on borrowed money. To get that, you need credit. And when the shipping business needed capital, I couldn’t get any.” She pulled the other stocking on and looked at him. “I wasn’t a good risk, as far as the banks were concerned. I wasn’t respectable, you see. Because I was an unmarried woman.”

  “So, you got married.”

  She nodded. “John Hamrick seemed like my solution. He was charming. He was on his way up. Banks were falling over themselves to finance him.”

  “So, you married him for his prospects?”

  “For his respectability.” She almost spat the word. She shook her head angrily. “I was so stupid.”

  “No,” Cade said. “Never stupid.” He sat up next to her and put an arm around her. “Never stupid.” He sighed. “Sometimes people do things when they got their back against the wall they wouldn’t do otherwise.”

  “But you see,” she said, “I’m not so different from other women. The ones who marry for money, not for love.” Her voice caught as she said, “I used to think I was so damned special.”

  It was the first time he’d seen her vulnerable. “Well,” Cade said, “my opinion may not matter for much. But I think you’re pretty damned special.”

  She put her own arm around him and they pulled each other close. The nearness of her body was starting to have an effect on him. She looked over and noticed, then smiled with a raised eyebrow. “Again? Truly?”

  He smiled. “Hey, it’s been a while. I’m making up for a long drought.”

  She laughed. “Me, too.” She gave him a long, lingering kiss.

  “Leave the stockings on,” he said.

  ***

  “That was even better,” she whispered. She rolled off Cade and stretched out on the bed beside him.

  He was still trying to catch his breath. “Yeah,” was all he could get out.

  She reached up and stroked his chin. He really did need that shave, but the stubble didn’t seem to bother her. “What about you, Levi? What do you want?”

  He smiled. “I think I just got it.”

  She smiled back. “You know what I mean.”

  He lay back and thought about it for a while before speaking. “When I was in the Army, it was tough, sure. But it was someplace I belonged. There was work to do I was good at. It was important.”

  “But that ended.”

  “Yeah. When I went home, I thought I’d settle down, inherit my daddy’s farm, marry this girl I’d been courting before the war.”

  She propped her head up on one elbow and looked at him. “I guess it didn’t work out.”

  “No. Her family was rich. We…well, we weren’t. I thought coming back havin’ done my duty for my country would make up for it. Her daddy didn’t agree.” He stopped.

  She waited for him to go on. When he didn’t, she murmured, �
�I’m sorry, Levi.”

  He was looking up at the ceiling, his mind far away. “There was no place for me back home, either. So, like a whole lot of other people, I headed west.”

  “Looking for somewhere to belong.” She sat up.

  He regarded her soberly. “I was thinking maybe I’d found it.”

  She sighed. “You know that can’t be, Levi. I have a husband and a daughter.”

  He reached out to hold her. “To hell with him. Stay with me.”

  She shook her head and began to get dressed. “It’s not that simple.”

  He sat up and sat cross-legged on the bed. “You’ve got your own money now. You don’t need his credit.”

  She looked at him as she pulled her undergarments on. “No. I don’t. But, sad as it is to say, we need each other. As much as we despise each other, our lives are too tangled together now to unsnarl. And I have a daughter.” She laughed bitterly. “Even though it’s not his.”

  That rocked him. “Say what?”

  “Oh, she’s legally his daughter. Even though she has none of his blood, she was born while we were married. So he has certain…rights. And I’ll never leave my girl with him. Never.” Her eyes were blazing, her expression fierce. He felt something in his heart give way. She saw the look on his face and smiled before leaning over to give him a quick kiss. He reached up and pulled her more tightly to him. She finally broke away from the kiss. “Stop,” she gasped. “If we go on, I might never leave.” She took a deep breath. “Besides, I need you to get to work. To find out who it is that’s working with McMurphy to threaten us.”

  Her rejection of the idea they could be together felt like a hole blown through him, but if he couldn’t have her, he wasn’t going to let her come to harm. He put the pain away as best he could. “McMurphy,” he said. “Tell me about him.”

  She explained as she continued to dress. “John and Patrick were business partners. They were heavily invested in silver stocks. They’d made a lot of money in it. But John was getting nervous. He wanted to branch out into other things. ‘Can’t put all our eggs in one basket,’ he kept saying. McMurphy didn’t agree. He thought silver was the path to get richer and richer, faster and faster.” She was pinning up her hair. “That’s the thing about money, Levi. No matter how much it is, or how fast it comes in, it’s never enough. Some people go after money to feel safe, but even when they see how easily it can be lost, they don’t realize they’ve been wrong. They just think they need more.”

  Cade thought of the girl who cleaned the boarding house, how she claimed to have won and lost a fortune in a matter of weeks. He shook his head. The whole town was built on the illusion that money and power were forever, but it was a castle built on the shifting sands of the bay.

  Marjorie went on. “So, when they came to a parting of the ways, John and Patrick divided up the business. They’d just invested heavily in a silver strike in the Monterrey hills. McMurphy took all that stock, John took the growing real estate holdings.”

  “Don’t tell me. The silver strike went bust.”

  She nodded. “The vein played out the week after the papers were signed. Patrick showed up at the house, raging. He accused John of knowing all along that the strike was about to go bad.”

  “Did he?”

  “I don’t know, Levi. But knowing John as I do now, it wouldn’t surprise me.”

  “But you said McMurphy killed himself.”

  “That’s what we thought. Patrick’s house burned down. The police said the fire was deliberately set. The bank was foreclosing on the property, so the detectives said Patrick had burned the place down with he and his father in it.”

  Cade grimaced. “Hell of a way for a man to do himself in.”

  She was fully clothed again now, smoothing down the front of her skirt. “Truth be told, it didn’t make a lot of sense to me, either. But we trusted the police.”

  “Sure.” Cade started to dress as well. “Why wouldn’t you? They work for people like you.” He pulled his pants on and stood up. “Okay. I’ll keep looking for McMurphy.”

  She walked over and embraced him. “And if you find him?” she said against his naked chest.

  “I’ll have a word with him.”

  She looked into his face. “It may take more than a word. I need you to be sure. Sure he’ll never try to harm me or my daughter again.”

  Cade nodded. “I’ll make sure. Trust me.”

  She put her head back against his chest. “I do, Levi. I trust you completely.”

  At that moment, Cade felt ten feet tall and bulletproof. He squeezed her back, hard. Maybe she can change her mind, he thought. But it was she who broke the embrace and went to the door. She turned, her hand on the doorknob, and looked at him. “Good luck, Mr. Cade,” she said, her tone once again formal. He couldn’t read the look in her eyes, but the message in her tone was unmistakable.

  “Thank you, ma’am,” he replied.

  CHAPTER FORTY-FOUR

  He hit the streets of the Barbary Coast again, buying drinks at saloons, dance-halls, melodeons, and cheap wine shops, all the while inquiring if anyone knew of a fellow named McMurphy with a crazy street preacher for a father. The most common response from the pimps, thugs, gamblers, whores, and various other denizens of the Coast was a shrug and a bland denial of any knowledge. A few of the whores suggested various things they could do to pass Cade’s time while waiting for word of McMurphy, which Cade declined as politely as he could. A few of the people he questioned suggested, with various degrees of enthusiasm, that Cade go fuck himself. He declined those invitations as well. On one occasion, he spotted a head above the crowd and caught the characteristic rhythms of a street corner sermon, but when he got closer, the man atop his soap box was not the preacher he was looking for.

  Gradually, footsore and weary, he worked his way down toward the docks. If the rest of the Coast was a sinkhole of debauchery and misery, the waterfront area around Front and Battery Streets was the gateway to Hell itself, the saloons dirtier, the boarding houses more ragged-looking, the whores hanging out the windows calling to passersby paler, skinnier, and more broken down. The smells of horse dung, frying food, and unwashed humans filled the air, mixing with the salt-air smell from the bay. A number of second-hand clothing shops dotted the landscape, their soiled and tattered wares flapping on lines outside the doors. Sailors, alone and in groups, staggered through the streets, blind drunk in the middle of the afternoon. Some, particularly the ones walking alone, were tailed by shifty-looking characters following like ravens trail behind a marching army, knowing that there’d be good dining soon. Only once did Cade spot any sign of law and order, and that was in the form of two of the biggest policemen he’d ever seen, walking side by side, their eyes constantly moving over the scene, alert for danger. On his belt, each one carried not only the usual wooden club, but a scabbarded blade at least a foot long. Even Cade hesitated to step into some of the dives in the area, but he steeled himself and continued his search, keeping his eyes moving as if his head was on a gimbal. He spotted a couple of ruffians looking him over with appraising eyes, sizing him up as potential prey, but when he gave them a hard stare back, their gazes skittered away. He was too big, too sober, and almost certainly heeled. Not worth the effort when there were so much easier pickings among the drunk and lonely Jacks off the ships whose masts he could now see towering over some of the buildings. He recalled his conversation with Captain Alton and decided to have a look at this ship he commanded, the Marjorie Ann. He stopped a passing sailor and inquired the way to the Gold Wharf. The response was a blank look and a gabble of language he didn’t understand. He tipped his hat and moved on toward the masts.

  When he reached the dock area, he couldn’t help but be impressed by the size and variety of the fleet he saw lined up at the moorings. There were new and glistening steamships, their stacks standing tall. The masts of sailing ships—sloops, barquentines, schooners, and even one ship that looked li
ke the picture of a Chinese junk he’d seen in a dime novel—looked like the spears of a giant’s army reaching for the sky. He spotted one of the bigger sailing ships and made his way to it. As he drew nearer, he could make out the carved wooden figurehead, a sculpture of a young woman in a flowing white gossamer dress, trimmed with gold. She stood barefooted on the crest of a wave, arm extended like an admonition toward the shore. Cade drew closer. He didn’t know much about ships, but he couldn’t help but be impressed by this one. She was a little over two hundred feet long, lean and sleek as a greyhound, her bow jutting aggressively out over the water. She bore three huge masts and a baffling web of rigging. Her name was painted in gold along the bow: MARJORIE ANN. A single gangplank near the bow was guarded by a sailor seated on a wooden crate who stood up as Cade approached. He was huge, at least seven feet tall, with a bald head and a handlebar moustache that curled up at the ends.

  Cade raised an open hand in greeting. “How do.”

  The sailor didn’t speak.

  “Is Captain Alton around?”

  The sailor stared down at him impassively, still not speaking.

  “Can you tell him L.D. Cade would like to see him?”

  A voice spoke up from behind Cade. “It won’t do you any good. He can’t talk.”

  Cade turned. Alton was walking up the dock toward him, a package held in his arms. This time, he wore a long dark blue coat with shiny brass buttons instead of a suit, a captain’s gold-braided hat perched on his head.

  Cade touched the brim of his own hat. “Captain.”

  Alton nodded. “Mr. Cade.” He called up the gangplank. “It’s all right, Sorokin. He may come aboard.” The sailor glowered at Cade, but stepped aside. Cade followed Alton up the gangplank. “Sorokin’s from Russia,” the captain said over his shoulder. “He’s a Cossack. Wonderful soldiers. Brilliant horsemen, and fiercely independent. Sorokin apparently spoke out against the tsar one time too many. The secret police imprisoned him and tore his tongue out with red-hot pincers.”