Bad Business

by J. R. Roberts

  “Where were you two?” he asked his inspectors.

  “We were pursuing other leads, sir,” Burns said.

  “What leads?”

  “We decided to split up, work the three murders as if they were separate.”

  Hargrove looked at Clint.

  “You sure you’re not a detective? You talk like one.”

  “I have a lot of friends who are detectives,” Clint said, “and lawmen.”

  Hargrove stared at the three men in turn, then asked, “Okay, whaddaya got?”

  “What do you mean?”

  “I mean, you’ve got something,” Hargrove said, “I can see it.”

  He looked at Burns.

  “I was working Eddie MacDonald,” Burns said. “I found out he had partners.”

  “Who?”

  “The Garvins.”

  “Partners in a dump like that?”

  “Look at all the paperwork in these files,” Clint said. “They were partners with a lot of people.”

  “Like who?”

  “Peter Forrest.”

  “Dead,” Burns said.

  “And Paul Kingsforth.”

  “Dead,” Logan said.

  “And Eddie MacDonald,” Hargrove said, “also dead. Do they have any partners who are still alive?”

  “Yes,” Clint said, “a lot.”

  “Well, I guess they should be warned,” the lieutenant said, “if these people are going around killing their partners.”

  “We don’t know that, yet,” Clint said.

  “What?”

  “They could have a partner who’s killing their partners.”

  “Like I said,” Hargrove responded, “what’ve you got?”

  “Something I still have to check on,” Clint said. “And then I may have all of the answers.”

  Hargrove regarded him curiously.

  “You know, by rights what I should do is take away your gun and put you in a cell.”

  “But you won’t because you believe me, right?”

  “I believe you about him,” Hargrove said, “but not necessarily her.”

  “Look,” Clint said, “all we need is for Burns and Logan to go and get Harold Garvin and bring him in.”

  “And you?”

  “I told you,” Clint said. “I have one more thing to do.”

  Hargrove took a deep breath and blew it out.

  “Okay,” he said, “but I’m not going to lose my job over this. Come back to me with something solid, or I’m tossing you into a cell, Gunsmith or no Gunsmith.”

  “I’ve got it,” Clint said.

  “Okay, then let’s get out of here.”

  Outside Hargrove told them all to be in his office in two hours.

  “I don’t get it,” Inspector Logan said, as his boss walked away.

  “Don’t get what?” Inspector Burns asked.

  “Adams,” Logan said, “why didn’t you just walk away, make it look like they shot each other?”

  “Because they didn’t,” Clint said, “and that wouldn’t solve anything.”

  Both men stared at him.

  “And the man in the hardware store knew I was here,” Clint said.

  “Okay,” Logan said, “that makes sense.”

  “You sure you don’t want one of us to come with you?” Burns asked.

  “No,” Clint said, “I want to do this part alone.”

  “What about Walter Trench?” Logan asked. “I couldn’t find anything on the Pinkerton.”

  “Did you talk to his partner?”

  “Can’t find her.”

  “Okay,” Clint said, “I’ll talk to her.”

  “You think Trench was involved with all this?”

  “I think we’ve linked all the other murders,” Clint said. “Why not his?”

  “You gonna make it to the boss’s office in two hours?” Burns asked.

  “I’ll be there,” Clint said.

  “Okay,” Burns said, and then to his partner added, “let’s go get the husband.”

  FORTY-TWO

  Clint entered the House of Cards and went right to the bar. Business was starting to pick up as gamblers who had jobs during the day joined the gamblers who had no jobs.

  “I need to see your boss,” he said to the bartender, Wesley.

  “He’s in his office.”

  “Okay, thanks.” Clint started away, then stopped short. “Is he alone?”

  Wesley shrugged. “As far as I know.”

  Clint decided to chance walking in on Frank Ellington interviewing a prospective female employee.

  He walked down the long hall to the office and knocked on the door.

  “Come in.”

  He opened the door and stuck his head in. “You alone?”

  Ellington laughed from behind his desk.

  “Come on in, Clint.”

  Clint entered, then closed the door behind him. He wondered if Harold Garvin had gotten to Ellington with news.

  “How goes your business in San Francisco?”

  “It’s starting to come together,” Clint said. “Just today I killed two people.”

  “Is that a fact?”

  “Yep,” Clint said. “You’ll be interested to know one of them was Zack Bolden.”

  “Why would that interest me?”

  “Because you told me Zack Bolden was already dead, remember?”

  “Oh.”

  “And the other one might interest you, too,” Clint said. “A partner of yours.”

  “Partner?”

  “Christine Garvin.”

  Ellington’s eyes went wide.

  “You killed Christine?”

  “Had to,” Clint said. “She was trying to kill him.”

  “What about—”

  “Harold? He ran off. The police are tracking him down, now.”

  Ellington didn’t look happy.

  “Don’t look so worried,” Clint said. “The police don’t need Harold to tie you to the Garvins and to the murders.”

  “What are you talking about?”

  “They’ve got the contracts,” Clint went on, “the partnership agreements linking the Garvins to House of Cards Holding. That’s you, right?”

  Ellington frowned unhappily.

  “It’s over, Frank,” Clint said. “You’ve been killing or having your partners killed. I’ll bet we find papers linking you to Peter Forrest, Paul Kingsforth—what about Adrian Webster? Was he next?”

  “No,” a cultured voice said from behind him, “you are next, Mr. Adams.”

  Clint stiffened. “Adrian?”

  “I have a pistol pointed at your back.”

  “Where did you come from?”

  “A little hallway behind that wall,” Ellington said. “It’s my back way out, but you couldn’t see it when you walked in. When you knocked, Adrian ducked back there.”

  Clint felt his gun being lifted from his holster. Going to the warehouse had been the first time he’d worn the holster in San Francisco. It had saved his life twice already that day.

  Funny, third time was usually the charm.

  Not today.

  FORTY-THREE

  “What do we do with him?” Ellington asked.

  “Take him down the back,” Webster said, “and get rid of him.”

  “I’ll have Kenny—”

  “No,” Webster said. “No Kenny. We do this ourselves, to make sure it’s done right. Killing Trench was sloppy, just as killing Kingsforth was. Adams, here, did us a favor if he really killed Zack and Christine. That only leaves Harold.”

  “And maybe Harold will take the fall for it all,” Ellington said.

  “Maybe,” Adrian said. “That’s good thinking. But right now we need to get rid of Mr. Adams.”

  Ellington opened the top drawer of his desk and took out a Colt. He stood up and tucked it into his belt.

  “What would Rick say, Frank?” Clint asked.

  “Leave Rick out of this, Adams,” Ellington said. “He does business his way, I
do it mine. Now move.”

  Clint turned. Adrian Webster was smart enough to move away from him. He jerked the gun toward the hidden doorway and Clint moved.

  “Takes us to a back door,” Ellington said, from behind. “Nowhere to run when we get outside, if that’s what you’re thinking.”

  That wasn’t what Clint was thinking. He was thinking about the New Line tucked into the small of his back. He just needed some space to make the move. Drawing from behind your back needs more elbow room than drawing from a holster.

  When they reached the door Webster said, “Open it, and step out.”

  “Business is starting to pick up,” Ellington said. “Nobody inside will hear anything.”

  Clint considered pressing the matter in the hall, but they were keeping their distance. He opened the door and stepped out.

  He heard a hammer cock, and as Adrian Webster came out the door, one shot. Then the sound of a bullet striking flesh. Clint stepped to the side, went down to one knee, and reached behind him, beneath his jacket, for the New Line. As Ellington came out the door, he stopped as Webster fell in front of him. Confused, Ellington looked at Clint just as the New Line came out and lined up on him. Eyes wide, Ellington went for the gun in his belt.

  Clint pulled the trigger on the New Line three times, because it was a .32 and Frank Ellington was a big man.

  He wondered how he would tell Rick Hartman that he had killed his friend.

  Clint collected his gun from Adrian Webster’s body. Kat Crawford came walking over, her gun still held out in front of her.

  “Did they kill Walter?” she asked.

  “Yes,” Clint said, “they had him killed.”

  “By who?”

  “We may never know that,” Clint said, “but whoever did it was like the trigger on a gun. It was these two men who pulled the trigger.”

  “Why?”

  “They were trying to take over.”

  “Take what over?”

  “All the businesses they were partners in,” Clint said. “They’ve been killing all their partners, starting with Paul Kingsforth two years ago.”

  “How can you prove it?”

  “Paperwork,” Clint said, “and the partner who’s left, Harold Garvin. I don’t think it’ll take too much to get him talking.”

  “So what do we do?”

  “I have an appointment with the police,” Clint said. “You come with me and we’ll lay it all out.”

  “What do we do with them?”

  “We just leave them here,” Clint said. “The police will collect them.”

  “So it’s all over?” she asked.

  “It’s over,” he said, “except for the explanations.”

  Lily would have to be told that her husband was partners with the others—if she really didn’t know. Either way she’d be in business for herself from now on.

  They turned and started walking away from the bodies to the street.

  “Hey,” she said, stopping.

  “What?”

  “What about Allan Pinkerton’s death?” she asked. “Weren’t we supposed to find something out about that?”

  “No,” Clint said, “I don’t think we were. I think that whole story was just a way to get me here.”

  “Doesn’t that make you mad?” she asked. “Being used like that?”

  “Oh, yes,” he said. “It does; it makes me very mad.”

  But that was something he was going to have to deal with later.

  AUTHOR’S NOTE

  Portsmouth Square (Chinese: 花園角) is a one-block park in Chinatown, San Francisco, California, that is bounded by Kearny Street on the east, Washington Street on the north, Clay Street on the south, and Walter Lum Place on the west.

  There was the Parker House, originally built by its owner, Robert A. Parker, as a hotel, but quickly converted to a casino as the gambling craze swept San Francisco. A large room downstairs contained three tables for faro, two for monte, one for roulette, and a seventh for any other game desired. Professional gamblers paid ten thousand dollars a month for the privilege of conducting their games in this room. A smaller room behind the bar went for thirty-five hundred dollars a month. Jack Gamble, an appropriately named sporting man, leased the entire second floor for sixty thousand dollars and outfitted all the rooms for games of chance. It was estimated that at the peak of the California Gold Rush upward of half a million dollars was stacked on the tables of the Parker House on any given day.

  Flanking the Parker House on either side were two other famous resorts, Samuel Dennison’s Exchange and the El Dorado Gambling Saloon, owned by partners James McCabe and Thomas J. A. Chambers. Other houses on Portsmouth Square were the Verandah, the Aguila de Oro, the Bella Union, the Empire, the Arcade, the Varsouvienne, the Mazourka, the Ward House, the St. Charles, the Alhambra, La Souciedad, the Fontine House, and the Rendezvous. As indicated by the several French names, some of these establishments were owned and operated by gambling syndicates from France, a country long known for its love of gaming.

  Watch for

  PARIAH

  337th novel in the exciting GUNSMITH series

  from Jove

  Coming in January!