The Loner: Crossfire

by J. A. Johnstone

  Turnbuckle held up a hand. “It’s not that simple.”

  It’s always that simple, Frank wanted to say, but he reined in the impulse.

  “Lannigan is going to be at a society party tonight that Conrad was also going to attend,” Turnbuckle went on. “He hoped to find out more information that way. But this morning, when one of the bodyguards I’ve hired to look out for Conrad went to the Palace Hotel, where he’s staying, Conrad wasn’t there ... and neither was the guard who was on duty last night.”

  “They might’ve gone somewhere and just haven’t come back yet,” Frank suggested.

  A weary sigh came from Turnbuckle. “I might have thought the same thing ... if not for the fact that the police showed up here with the news that Thomas Morelli’s body was pulled out of San Francisco Bay this morning. Morelli was the man who was with Conrad. He had been badly beaten, and his throat was cut. His wife knew he was working for me and told the police about it when they talked to her. The poor woman sent them here.”

  That sounded pretty bad, all right. Frank knew there was a good chance Conrad and this fella Morelli had been together. Since Morelli was dead, then ...

  Frank gave a little shake of his head. He wasn’t going to let himself think the thought that had just crossed his mind. Conrad wasn’t dead. He knew it in his heart. “What did you tell the police?”

  “That Morelli had been guarding Conrad. There was an attempt on his life as soon as he got to town.”

  “Lannigan had men watching for him, probably at the train station,” Frank said.

  Turnbuckle nodded. “That’s what we think now. We didn’t know about Lannigan at the time.”

  “You didn’t tell the police you think Lannigan’s to blame for what happened to Morelli?”

  “There’s no proof of that,” Turnbuckle said. “And I know Conrad didn’t want the police involved in the matter of the children. He thought he stood a better chance of recovering them safely himself. I knew you’d be arriving today, and I wanted to consult with you first.”

  “Why did you track me down and send me that telegram, if you knew Conrad didn’t want me mixed up in it?”

  Turnbuckle’s fist thumped down on the desk. “Because you and I are friends, Frank, and those are your grandchildren we’re talking about! It seems to me you have a right to be involved. Besides, Arturo wired me from Carson City and told me Conrad seemed to be getting more reckless and obsessed about the whole thing.”

  Arturo spoke up. “I didn’t want to go against Mr. Browning’s wishes, but the more I thought about it, the more I came to believe you could help him, Mr. Morgan. And he needed that help.” Arturo smiled. “Did you know when we first met, Mr. Browning was calling himself Kid Morgan? For the longest time I thought he was just some Western gunslinger. I had no idea he was actually a financier and businessman, and a quite successful one, at that.”

  “Back then he had put all that behind him,” Frank said. “I reckon he thought he was Kid Morgan, too. That’s who he wanted to be.”

  “But we can’t be someone we’re not,” Turnbuckle said heavily. “Our pasts won’t allow that.”

  Frank shrugged. They were drifting off the trail here. “If Conrad’s still alive, Lannigan’s probably got him stashed somewhere. You said Lannigan owns a saloon in the Barbary Coast?”

  “That’s right. It’s called the Golden Gate. What are you going to do, Frank?”

  The Drifter pushed himself to his feet. “I reckon it’s time to pay a visit to Dex Lannigan and his Golden Gate Saloon.”

  The only good thing about the pain in his head, Conrad thought, was that the dead no longer felt such agonies. That meant he was still alive ...

  Unless he had died and gone to hell for all the evil things he had done in his life.

  Even though he was no expert on theology, it seemed unlikely to him that hell would smell like rotten fish. That unpleasant odor filled his nostrils, with another smell lurking under it that might be salt water.

  He kept his eyes closed and didn’t move, making an effort to keep his rate of breathing from changing. If anyone was watching him, which certainly seemed possible, he didn’t want them to realize that he was awake.

  As he lay there, he concentrated on letting details about his surroundings seep into his mind, helping him to not think about how bad his head hurt. He was lying on his stomach, with his head turned to the right and his left cheek pressed into what felt like a hard wooden surface. That surface moved under him, not much, just a faintly perceptible rocking motion.

  When Conrad put those things together—the tang of salt water, the reek of fish, the steady movement of the boards on which he lay—he came to the inescapable conclusion that he was on a boat, lying either on deck or down in a hold. Probably in a hold, because he didn’t feel any air moving.

  Even through closed eyes all he could sense was darkness. That meant it was either still night, or the darkness was another indication he was belowdecks.

  He decided to risk cracking one eye open. He raised his right eyelid a fraction of an inch, not really enough for him to see anything but enough to let in any nearby light.

  Nothing. The blackness continued to surround him.

  If he couldn’t see anything, that meant nobody could see him. He opened both eyes. After a moment, he lifted his head. Fresh waves of pain rolled through his skull, so intense he had to squeeze his eyes closed again until the throbbing subsided. Eventually the pain lessened.

  Conrad shifted to determine if he was tied up. His arms and legs were free, which was a bit surprising.

  On the other hand, if he was locked up in the hold of a ship, where could he go?

  Shanghai ...

  The word sprang into his mind and a horrified shudder went through him. He was in San Francisco, after all. The town was notorious for all the men who had been drugged, kidnapped, and taken aboard ships bound for the Orient. By the time those unfortunates regained consciousness, the vessels were well out to sea, and they had no choice but work. If they refused, it was a simple matter for their captors to knock them in the head and toss them overboard for the sharks. Because of the destination that lay across the Pacific for many of these ships, it became common to say that a man had been shanghaied when he was drugged and forced to join the crew.

  Would Lannigan do such a thing to him? Conrad didn’t doubt for a second the man was capable of it. He might think dooming Conrad to such a hellish existence was more punishment than simply killing him. It was even possible Pamela might have come up with the idea herself when she struck her deal with Lannigan three years earlier.

  But no matter whose idea it was, Conrad knew he had to get out. He could tell by the slight motion of the ship that it was still riding at anchor, probably in San Francisco Bay. If it had already sailed, it would be moving around much more as it rode the waves. If he could get out of the hold, he could still escape before the ship was out at sea.

  He pushed himself into a sitting position and waited for the pain in his head to subside. Looking around, he searched for even a tiny crack of light that would indicate the location of a hatch. He didn’t see anything. Maybe there wasn’t a hatch that led on deck. There had to be some way into the chamber, though. A door in a bulkhead, maybe.

  Before making a move, he made sure he was alone. He hadn’t heard anyone else moving around, nor had he heard any breathing, but it was possible the men who had attacked them on the dock had thrown Morelli in with him. In an urgent whisper, he said, “Morelli! Morelli, are you there?”

  Silence was his only answer.

  But it wasn’t complete silence. Now that the pounding in his head wasn’t as bad, he could hear a faint sloshing sound—water moving around in the bilge—which meant he was low down in the ship. He heard something that might have been far-off footsteps, and a low, barely heard moan, but not a human one. That was a foghorn, Conrad realized.

  He reached out in the darkness and felt around him, searching for a bulkhead or possibly
the ship’s curving hull. When he didn’t feel anything he moved onto hands and knees and crawled forward, using his left hand for balance and keeping his right extended in front of him.

  He hadn’t gone very far when his fingertips brushed against something. At first he thought it was a wall, but in feeling around, he discovered it was a large crate.

  It gave him something to lean on as he struggled to his feet. His head spun crazily as he stood up, and for a few seconds he thought he was going to fall. Forcing himself to stand still, he took some deep breaths, and the world steadied around him.

  He swallowed the feeling of sickness welling up in his throat. Steadfastly ignoring it, he sat on the low crate for a few minutes, bracing himself with his hands on his knees.

  With the resilience of youth and the rugged life he had led the past couple years, some of his strength came back to him. While sitting there, he took stock of what his captors had left him.

  It wasn’t much. He had his boots, his trousers, and his shirt. His coat and hat were gone, and so were the shoulder holster and the .38 Smith & Wesson he had carried. His pockets were empty. No coins, no matches, nothing.

  If he was still locked up when the ship sailed, he would have no way to prove he was Conrad Browning ... not that the captain and crew would have cared, anyway. They had to know what was going on. Probably Lannigan had paid them off.

  His only chance was to get off the ship before it sailed.

  The footsteps he suddenly heard coming closer in the darkness might be the key to doing just that.

  Chapter 19

  Frank insisted on paying a visit to the Golden Gate Saloon alone. “If this fella Lannigan knows who Conrad is and has spies watching him, he’s bound to know who you are, too, Claudius.”

  “What about me?” Arturo asked.

  “You’ve got a bullet hole in you that’s still healing,” Frank pointed out. “You probably shouldn’t have traveled all the way here from Carson City to start with.”

  “The doctor assured me it would be all right as long as I took it easy.”

  “That means you don’t need to be getting mixed up in a ruckus,” Frank said.

  “Do you intend to start a ruckus in Lannigan’s saloon?” Arturo asked.

  Frank chuckled. “I’m not exactly planning on it, but you never know what’s going to happen. Sometimes I think trouble’s in the habit of following me around.”

  “Yes, I know the feeling quite well. The same thing is true of your son.”

  “I don’t doubt it. He comes by it honestly.” Frank paused. “Anyway, no offense, Mr. Vincenzo, but you don’t exactly look like the sort of hombre who’d patronize a Barbary Coast saloon.”

  “I suppose that’s true,” Arturo admitted. “But please, call me Arturo.”

  “That’s Italian for Arthur, isn’t it?”

  “That’s right.”

  “I used to know an old mountain man whose real name was Arthur, even though nobody ever called him that. He barely remembered it himself. Haven’t seen him in years. He must be dead by now. He’d be almost a hundred if he’s not.” Frank pushed those thoughts aside and got back to the matter at hand. “The chances of Lannigan or anybody who works for him knowing who I am are pretty slim. Anyway, even if somebody recognized me as Frank Morgan, not all that many people know Conrad and I are related.”

  “Pamela Tarleton did,” Turnbuckle reminded him. “There’s no way of knowing what she might have told Lannigan.”

  “That’s true,” Frank admitted, “but I’m willing to run the risk. If I can get Lannigan alone, he’ll tell us what we need to know.”

  “My God, Frank,” Turnbuckle said. “You can’t be thinking about torturing the man.”

  In a hard, flinty voice, Frank said, “This is my son we’re talking about here ... and my grandchildren. And a man who’d make a deal with a she-devil like Pamela Tarleton who brought nothing but suffering to everybody around her. I’ll do whatever I have to, Claudius. I don’t reckon it’ll come to torture, though.”

  “If it does, I don’t want to know about it.”

  “Deal.”

  Turnbuckle told him how to find the Golden Gate Saloon and described Lannigan to him. Frank said his good-byes to the lawyer and Arturo, who was going to the Palace Hotel to get some rest after the train trip from Carson City.

  Frank left the building where the offices of Turnbuckle & Stafford were located. The Barbary Coast was too far to walk in cowboy boots, he decided, so he swung up on one of the electricpowered cable cars that carried him in the right direction.

  It wasn’t the first time he had ridden one of the cars, which ran on rails and got their power from overhead cables, but it always seemed strange to him to ride in something that wasn’t pulled by a locomotive or a team of horses or mules.

  The day was far enough advanced that the fog had burned off, and as a result the view was spectacular as Frank rode the cable car over the steep, high streets. He could see the blue waters of the bay stretching out to the hills on the far side. Closer at hand were the heights of Nob Hill and Telegraph Hill, and the docks along the section of waterfront known as the Embarcadero, where ships from a score of different countries were tied up. Frank would never like big cities—he was too old and set in his ways for that—but he had to admit San Francisco was a pretty place.

  The Garden of Eden was supposed to have been a pretty place, too, he reminded himself ... but a serpent had lurked in it. The same was true there, only instead of one devil, San Francisco had an abundance of them.

  “Mister?”

  The high-pitched voice broke into Frank’s thoughts. He looked around and saw a little boy about eight years old staring at him. Frank smiled at him, emboldening the boy to ask, “Mister, are you a cowboy?”

  A nice-looking woman who was probably the boy’s mother sat beside him on the cable car bench near the pole Frank hung on to. She put a hand on the boy’s shoulder. “Jamie, don’t bother that man.”

  “It’s no bother, ma’am,” Frank assured her. To the boy, he said, “No, son, I’m not really a cowboy, although I used to be when I was younger. Some things you never forget, though, so I reckon I could still make a hand if I needed to.”

  “Then you must be a gunfighter,” Jamie said. “You’re wearing a gun.”

  “Plenty of folks who aren’t gunfighters wear guns,” Frank told him.

  “Yeah, but you look like somebody who’d be in a dime novel.”

  As a matter of fact, a number of those lurid, yellow-backed tomes had been written about Frank, or at least about somebody the authors called Frank Morgan. He had always thought the character they depicted in their yarns had little resemblance to him. But then, people didn’t read those stories because they were realistic, he reminded himself. They read them to be entertained.

  “Aren’t you a little young to be reading dime novels?” he asked the boy.

  “I try to keep them away from him,” the woman said, “but his father reads them, and of course Jamie gets his hands on them, too. He’s been reading ever since he was four. He’s very smart for his age.”

  “Yes, ma’am, I can tell that from talking to him. Listen, Jamie, I like to read, too. Always have a book or two in my saddlebags when I’m out on the trail. If you haven’t already read it, you should try a book called Treasure Island, by a fella named Robert Louis Stevenson. I’ll bet you’d like it. Got pirates and such-like in it.”

  Wide-eyed, Jamie turned his head to look up at his mother. “Pirates! That sounds great! Can I read it?”

  “I’ll see if I can find a copy for you,” she promised. She looked up at Frank. “Thank you.”

  He touched a finger to the brim of his Stetson. “Glad to be of help.” The cable car was coming up on the street where he needed to get off. “Good day to you and your boy, ma’am.”

  Frank dropped off the car as it slowed. Grant Street led off to his left. The Golden Gate Saloon was only a few blocks away.

  That meant he might
be only a few blocks away from answering the questions that plagued him.

  Where was his son?

  And what had happened to his grandchildren?

  Conrad stood up and moved toward the sound of the approaching footsteps. He barked his left shin on something and reached down to discover he had run into another crate. He made his way around it and continued moving forward with his hands outstretched in front of him.

  A moment later he touched a wall. He guessed it was the bulkhead that closed off the compartment. Running his fingers along it, he found a door. On the other side of that door, the footsteps came closer.

  Not only that, but dim yellow lines appeared along the edges of the door. Whoever was coming had brought along a lantern.

  Conrad pressed his back against the bulkhead, not knowing if the door would open toward him or away from him. If he was behind the door when it opened, that might give him a chance to jump the visitor. He’d have to be careful not to break the lantern and start a fire—

  Or maybe that would be the best thing to do, he realized. If the ship was burning, the crew probably would be too busy to pay much attention to him. As the footsteps came to a stop outside the door, Conrad set himself, his muscles tense and ready for action.

  A key rattled in a lock. Conrad took a deep breath and held it. With a creak of hinges, the door came open and light spilled into the room.

  He winced from the glare, his eyes narrowing instinctively. There was nothing wrong with his ears, though, so he heard the man on the other side of the door mutter in surprise, “What the hell!”

  The man stepped into the room, lantern held high in one hand, a heavy old revolver in the other. In the second before Conrad struck, he saw that the man wore the tight shirt and white duck pants of a sailor. Then he clubbed his hands together and brought them smashing down on the back of the man’s neck.

  The sailor staggered forward, but didn’t collapse or drop the lantern or gun. He swung around and slashed blindly with the revolver, forcing Conrad to leap back or get brained by the gun. Cursing, the man pointed the weapon at him, but Conrad charged anyway, diving under the revolver and tackling the sailor around the waist.