Dimly he heard the girl talking to Gabe, extolling the wonders of San Francisco: two thousand saloons and blind pigs, she was saying, or one for every seventy-six inhabitants. There were three thousand Chinese girls in the city, she said, who had been imported as bordello slaves by the vice lords of the Chinese Tongs.
She went on in that vein. Francis hardly understood her point; it seemed in execrable taste, but what could one expect after all? The Lord knew that Francis had tried to instill an appreciation of the finer things in this wilderness encampment, but it was hard going-ever so hard.
He leaned forward again, waited for a pause in the girl's recital of the less appetizing local statistics, and then said, "Well, Gabe old cock, it really is wonderful to see you again."
"Yeah."
"You've come out West to make your fortune, I bet."
"You bet."
"Well, I've never regretted coming out, I can tell you that." Francis smiled in easy self-deprecation and said, "Not that I've become one of your local millionaires, don't get me wrong."
"I wouldn't do that," Gabe said.
"But the city itself," Francis said, "is tres jolie. And the people… well, there are rough edges to them, of course, but deep down they're really quite a tolerant lot. Far more so than back East."
"Yeah."
"I have been making my living," he said, emphasizing the past tense, "as a designer. Fashion, you know."
The girl's smile thawed a little. "Ladies' fashions?"
"In a way," Francis told her. "Designs for the theater, you know."
She looked more and more interested. "The theater?"
"The cancan shows, in fact," Francis said. He said it proudly, though he knew there were those who misunderstood the visual element in the cancan shows, and thought of them as nothing but unredeemed sex. He himself knew better and was prepared to defend the shows at the drop of a sneer.
But the girl didn't sneer. Leaning closer she said, "That must be real interesting," and Francis realized that, like most women, this girl Evangeline was stage struck.
"Oh, it is," Francis said. "Or it has been, at any rate. Unfortunately the Philistines just closed us again. They do that every so often." To Gabe he said, "You may have seen the posters X-ed out all over town."
"Yeah, I think I did." Gabe was spending most of his time looking around the room, waiting for his drink; it was the girl who was doing the listening.
Nevertheless, it was to Gabe that Francis preferred to address himself. "This city," he said, "is full of gambling, harlots, swindlers, and an array of vice you wouldn't believe, Gabe. I mean, it's absolutely wide open. Not that I object personally; I mean, live and let live is my motto. But every once in a while the city fathers go on a puritan spree, announcing they're going to clean up the whole city and turn us into some sort of Boston or something-and what do they wind up doing? They close the cancan shows!"
"Yeah," Gabe said, looking around the room.
"Even out on the frontier," Francis said sadly, "men are full of hypocrisy."
"Yeah, probably."
At that point the waiter finally came back with the drinks and thudded them onto the table, one by one. Then he stood there waiting.
Francis looked at Gabe and saw Gabe looking back at him. He looked at the girl, and she too was looking at him. Even the waiter was looking at him.
"Oh, dear," Francis said.
"I thought so," the waiter said.
Francis felt terribly embarrassed. "Gabe, I thought… Well, I did tell you we'd been closed down, I thought you understood, uh…"
Gabe said, without expression, "You don't have any money."
"I've been in dreadful financial shape these past few weeks."
"Right," the waiter said. He started putting the drinks back on the tray.
"Hold it, you," Gabe said. He produced a wallet from his overstuffed pockets, turned it around a bit in his hands as though unfamiliar with how to get into it, and then slid a bill at the waiter. Francis caught a flash of a five-dollar greenjacket.
After the waiter had made change and gone heavily away, Francis said, "The worst of it is, I wouldn't be in this awkward condition if it weren't for some utter scoundrels who lied to me."
"Is that so," Gabe said.
"But it did seem such a marvelous opportunity at the time," Francis insisted. "I couldn't pass it up, you know. I mean, you could actually see the glinting veins of it on the surface of the shaft wall."
The girl gave him a look. "You bought a gold mine."
Francis nodded. "Like a fool I trusted them. Well, one in particular. I couldn't believe that after… well, I just didn't think he'd treat me that way."
"They'd salted it?"
"Not really. They'd played the mine out, that's all. A few traces of gold left, but they'd emptied out all the worthwhile ore. It's nothing but a gutted hole in the hillside now. And like a fool I sank all my savings in it, only to find it's as empty as a drummer's promises."
Gabe lifted his glass and Francis caught a hard gleam in his eye. "Anyhow," Gabe said, "here's to gold. Lots of gold."
"Oh my, yes," Francis agreed.
The girl gave Gabe a bit of a mulish look, he noticed, but she drank.
Gabe leaned closer to Francis. "Listen, do you know many guys around this burg?"
"Why old cock, I know everybody, just everybody."
"Well, I'm looking into something big, and I might need some good people to help out."
Francis smiled. "Just like the old days."
"Um," said Gabe.
The girl gave Gabe a suspicious look and said, "Is it still that same idea?"
"Sure," he said. "I didn't use it up yet."
"Well, I wish you would," she said. "You're just going to go along bullheaded and not listen to anybody else that knows more about things around here than you do. The first thing you know you're going to get yourself in a lot of trouble."
Gabe tucked his head down in like a man who's made a conscious decision to be stubborn and said, "I know what I'm doing."
Alarmed on Gabe's behalf, Francis turned to the girl and said, "Is it really dangerous?"
Now she too was looking stubborn. "Dangerous," she echoed. "It's goddam stupid, is what it is."
"We'll see about that," Gabe said.
Francis touched the girl's wrist. "My dear," he said, "you can't stop a man if he's determined to go ahead and do something. Believe me I've tried, and it just can't be done."
"Don't I know it," she said. "You can talk yourself blue in the face."
"Exactly," Francis said, in long-suffering sympathy.
Their eyes met, with identical rueful expressions. They lifted their Pink Ladies and smiled at one another in perfect warmth and understanding. She was, he realized, much better than he had at first thought.
Across the room a cattleman in a huge hat turned his head and spat something into a bell-mounted brass-bellied spittoon. The clang echoed throughout the ornate room. Francis winced.
Gabe said, "Francis, you want to keep in touch with me."
"Where are you staying?"
Gabe and the girl looked at each other. Francis couldn't quite fathom the expression that passed between them. Finally Gabe said, "Well we'll be around, one place and another. Where can I reach you?"
"I have a room on Kearny Street. Twenty-eight and a half. I have the entire top floor."
The girl said, "I imagine it's fixed up grand."
"Well, a few touches perhaps."
Gabe was pouring himself another whisky, distracted evidently by private thoughts. Francis sought to revive the conversation; gold had been mentioned and he wanted to dwell on that, but there was something else to be covered. "You certainly are a long way from home, old cock," he said.
"Yeah. So are you."
"To be sure. The difference being, I can go back."
He let it drop in a very casual tone, watching closely as Gabe picked it up and examined it.
Finally Gabe said, "I don'
t believe it."
The girl looked at him. "You don't believe what?"
Gabe ignored her. He put his glass of whisky down and faced Francis with an I-should-have-known nod. "So Twill got in touch with you."
"I've never been so surprised as when I got his telegram," Francis said. "I mean, he's hardly my type, old Patrick Twill." He screwed up his face and shivered. "Fat ugly old…"
"Twill," Gabe said, pronouncing the word as if it were chipped out of hard steel.
Francis turned both palms up on the table. "I thought I should be open and aboveboard about it, Gabe old cock. I'm not concealing anything from you."
"What about it then?"
"He wired me. Just said he wanted to know if I was still in San Francisco, because there would be a bit of money in it if I replied to his wire. So I did, seeing no harm in it. Behold, there came a second telegram from Twill. He wired me twenty-five dollars, of which I was sorely in need at that particular juncture. He said I would receive an additional fifty dollars if I would watch for your arrival and wire him as soon as you appeared."
"And?"
"And what?"
"That's not all of it, Francis."
"Well, there was only one further instruction. If you left San Francisco with any evident intention of returning East, I was to wire him again and advise him of your approach. For this of course I would receive a further reward."
"And did you wire him when I arrived?"
"Certainly. I watched the arrivals today and saw you come ashore. I went to the telegraph office immediately and sent the wire. Unfortunately by the time I returned to the docks you had disappeared, and I've been looking for you ever since."
"To tell me about Twill?"
"Well, not entirely. I mean you are one of my very dearest friends, old cock."
"Yeah."
"Have I done something wrong?"
"I guess not," Gabe said. "But one of these days I'm going back East, Francis, and I'm going to jerk that Persian carpet right out from under Fat Pat Twill. When I do I don't want any telegraph messages going out to warn him I'm coming back. You got that clear?"
"Well, I…"
"You'll be rich enough by the time I leave," Gabe said, "that you won't need any crumbs from Twill. I promise you that."
"Rich? Me?"
"We're all gonna be rich. You just stick by me and get ready to jump when I say frog."
The girl, as if to head off Gabe from a topic she disliked, said quickly, "This Twill-who's he?"
"Just a guy," Gabe growled.
Francis smiled. "He's better known as Boss Twill, king of the underworld on the West Side of New York."
She turned to lay her hand across Gabe's arm on the table. "So that's why you left New York. You were in danger from this big shot. You're not really going back there?"
"When I'm ready," Gabe said. He seemed to be trying to lift his glass, but the girl was holding his arm down. He turned a glare on her. "Look, nothing you can say or do is going to change my mind, so forget it." He swiveled the glare toward Francis and Francis sat a little lower in the chair. "And you. Some associate."
"Associate?"
"Never mind," Gabe said. "Look, are you in or out?"
"In what?"
"With me. To get rich. Or are you satisfied being Twill's errand-boy associate for twenty-five bucks a telegram?"
Francis really didn't have to consider it very hard. He was getting very sick and tired of living on the economic fringes. Gabe had talked about gold; Twill hadn't mentioned anything of the kind.
He said, "Well of course I'm in, old cock, if my talents can be employed profitably."
"Okay. I'll be in touch." And abruptly Gabe got to his feet, lifted the girl out of her chair, and steered her toward the door.
CHAPTER NINE
As they went out, Vangie looked back from the door at the thin fey dude smiling at them from the table, waving his Pink Lady with cool insouciance. He had been a surprise to her, in a lot of different ways.
On the street she said to Gabe, "I like your friend."
"Urn," he said.
"I didn't think I would at first. But he's really kind of nice."
"Urn," Gabe said. He stood there squinting down the street as though he wasn't really a part of this conversation.
Vangie studied him, thinking he had to be a more complex character than she had at first supposed. Not a simple Eastern roughneck after all, if he had artistic friends like Francis Calhoun. "I'm surprised you and he are such good friends," she said.
"Yeah," Gabe said. "It kind of surprised me, too."
"I bet his flat is lovely."
"Yeah. Probably. Listen, what about that hotel room?"
"We've got one place left to try," she said. "If that's no good we can go back down and check the keybox again."
"That's fine," he said. He didn't sound as if he meant it.
***
"What's the matter?"
"The thought of going all the way down to the docks and then all the way back up these hills again."
"You'll get used to it."
"Not me," he said. "I don't intend to stay here long enough to have to."
It troubled her the way he kept talking like that. She didn't quite know why but she didn't want to lose him. She wondered if, when the time came, he'd ask her to go back to New York with him. And if he did, she wondered if she would. She felt about New York roughly the same way he felt about San Francisco.
She took him around the corner into Powell Street and waited for the cable car; when it came clanging by they got on it and rode up toward Nob Hill. She explained the cable car to Gabe; he didn't seem overcome by enthusiasm-he kept looking back from the open platform down the steep hill and making remarks about what would happen if the cable car slipped off its rails and cable.
It was one of the small exclusive Nob Hill hotels she was heading for, and she didn't hold out much hope. But she took Gabe there anyway, left him again at the stairs, and walked down the corridor boldly enough. At first this kind of thing had terrified her, but she'd learned it was easy enough to avoid trouble by acting sweet and innocent. She had the key to the wrong room-they must have made a mistake at the desk. That was all there was to it.
Still, there was always that second's hesitation just before inserting the key in the lock.
But this time she forced herself to act without a pause. She was aware of Gabe's eyes on her from the other end of the corridor, and her feelings for him seemed to have deepened in a way that amazed her.
She opened the door, stepped quickly inside, and found the room empty. She checked the closet and under the bed, and found no luggage; so they hadn't rented it again. She went back to the door and signaled to Gabe to join her.
He came hurrying on tiptoe and whispered when he got to her, "Is it okay?"
"It's fine," she said, in a normal voice. "Come on in."
He came in and looked around, and it seemed to her she could detect disapproval in his expression. It was true it wasn't a very good room, definitely one of the cheaper accommodations in this hotel-very small, with a pockmarked brass bed that looked more than ordinarily lumpy, and a narrow window that looked out on nothing but another wall half a dozen feet away. The porcelain pitcher and bowl were both cracked, the dresser drawers were missing half their handles, and there wasn't so much as a throw rug on the wide plank floor.
"It isn't much of a room," she said, suddenly awkward and sheepish with this fellow she'd met only today, even though this was hardly the first time she'd been alone in a hotel room with a man.
"It's all right," he said, shrugging and moving to look out the window.
"I'm sorry it doesn't have a view," she said. "I'll try to do better tomorrow."
He nodded, turning away from the window. "Yeah, I'd like that," he said. "I'd like a view."
"You would?"
"Yeah. A view of the Mint."
Feeling both irritated and disappointed, she said, "Aren't you ever going
to give that up?"
"Not for a second," he said. He shucked out of his coat and hung it neatly on the back of the room's only chair. "In fact," he said, "you can take me up there and show me the place. Do they have tours for the public, anything like that?"
"Gabe, I wish you'd…"
"Do they?"
She sighed and nodded. "Yes."
"Good."
"Maybe it's just as well," she said. "You'll see for yourself it's impossible to break in there."
He grinned as though he didn't believe it. "Then I'll give up, won't I?"
"I don't know. Will you?"
He came over, still grinning, and touched the line of her jaw with two fingertips. His finger pads were smooth and soft, not like the horny calluses of most men out here; though the feeling couldn't be described as feminine either. Touching her that way, still grinning, he said, "You seem to be fretting over me."
She felt foolish and more than a little weak. "Damn it anyway, Gabe," she said, and tried to turn her face away from his touch.
"Vangie?" His fingers slid along the line of her jaw, under her ear, and pushed into her hair, insistent and yet gentle. His fingers and palm cupped the back of her head, enmeshed in her hair, and drew her slowly but unresistingly forward until their lips touched.
It was a long kiss but not a violent one. She wanted to reach up and put her arms around him, but she held back, afraid of being too easy, boring him, or scaring him away. When at last they separated, she whispered, "It wouldn't be the first saddle I've known, Gabe."
His voice more hoarse than usual, he said, "Did I ask you?"
"No. But I wanted you to know."
"Neither one of us wants to waste time on a greenhorn," he said, drawing her close again. This time her arms reached up and wrapped around him.
CHAPTER TEN
The Mint hulked on its hilltop in the light of the evening sun.
At the window of their new hotel room Gabe stood sizing it up like a trainer of circus animals peering through the bars at a tiger he isn't sure he can handle.
Gangway! Page 6
