“Yes,” she said from where she stood in the middle of a short row of tables being carried away. Two of the young men doing the carrying were Will and his brother. Upon seeing Clint, Will nodded once. Slapping the boy on the shoulder, Henrietta said, “Get back to what you were doing. That goes for all of you. And as for you,” she said while approaching Clint, “get down here so I can get a better look at that mess you call a face.”
“It’s not as bad as it looks,” Clint said as he stooped down so the short woman could put her hands on his cheeks.
“That’s only because the last time you got your face messed up, it was a whole lot worse.” Leaning back just a little, she asked, “Why are you smiling?”
“Because this time I gave a whole lot better than I got.”
Henrietta smiled as well before letting go of Clint’s cheeks so he could stand fully upright again. “Well, at least that’s something.”
“What’s going on here?” he asked while nodding at the short procession of tables headed toward the back of the room.
“We’re opening a storeroom in the back and turning it into a parlor for faro and private card games,” she told him. “In place of those tables up front, we’re going to be getting a roulette wheel. Should be arriving on the stage later today or tomorrow.”
Leo poked his head out from his office. He barely got a chance to nod to Clint before he was needed to oversee the placement of tables in the next room.
“How’s he doing?” Clint asked.
Taking a quick glimpse toward the office, Henrietta was just in time to see Leo’s back as he started issuing orders to the boys moving his furniture. “A little better. At least he’s not moping so much. All things considered, I’d say it’s a good improvement in a short stretch of time.”
“Yeah, well, we don’t have much time to work with. I’m going to have a word with him.”
“Are you going to tell me what happened to your face or not?”
“Not,” Clint said. Before she got too riled up, he added, “I’ll tell Leo and he can tell you. When he does, I’m sure you’ll understand why I’m in a hurry.”
“I suppose that’ll do for now.” Fortunately for Clint’s sake, she became distracted by an argument that sparked up between two gamblers at a poker game near the stage.
Madeline was up there practicing, and when a bottle was thrown by one of the gamblers, she quickly stepped down and rushed over to Clint. “Mr. Adams,” she said while hurrying to catch up to him as he crossed the main room. “Mr. Adams, please can I just have a moment?”
Clint stopped at the bar and turned to her. “What’s on your mind?” he asked.
“I want to thank you for what you’re doing. I know the things Mr. Voss has been saying about me.”
Clint had to think for a moment before he chuckled and said, “Oh, you mean Westin. It’s difficult to think of him as a mister.”
“Yes, well, he’s a terrible man who looks at me like I’m a slab of beef on his plate. I shudder to think,” she continued while actually shuddering, “what he would ever do to me if I took him up on his offer.”
“Has he actually made the offer directly to you?”
“Yes. He told me I could come and work for him if I wanted to make more money. All I’d need to do is stop by his place over on Bale. Lord only knows what would happen if I ever went there.”
“What place on Bale?” Clint asked.
“I think that’s where he’s staying. All I know for certain is that I can’t go anywhere with him, and even if I held out for a while on my own, it would only be a matter of time before he tried something even bolder.” Madeline’s features may have been delicate, but she showed a strength deeper inside when she added, “If he can’t get me, he’d just go after someone else. I can’t allow that to happen.”
“Well, neither can I,” Clint assured her as he put his hands on her shoulders while looking her straight in the eyes. “Westin is already on the run. He just doesn’t have anywhere to go yet. Before long, all you’ll need to worry about is that pretty voice of yours.”
Madeline smiled at that. “If there’s anything you need me to do, just say so.”
“All I need is for you to tell me exactly where Westin told you to go on Bale Avenue if you wanted to find him.”
THIRTY-TWO
Clint walked into the storeroom as Will and his brother were coming out. Stepping aside so another young man could get past him, Clint looked around at a dusty room with cobwebs hanging from the rafters. It was twice as long as it was deep and had enough room to comfortably fit another two or three tables before becoming cramped.
“I didn’t even know this room was back here,” Clint said.
“Well, what the hell would you know?” Leo replied. “You barely been here for a week or so.”
“Fair enough. How’s the hand?”
“Lighter than it used to be.”
Clint put his hands in his pockets. “So I guess you’ll have to call for reinforcements if someone orders two fingers of whiskey?”
Leo wanted to be angry, but he just couldn’t keep it up for long. Finally, he shook his head and muttered, “Damn it all to hell.”
Clint walked up to him and gave him a pat on the back. “I know exactly what you mean. This isn’t the sort of thing you expected you’d have to deal with when you decided to open your own saloon.”
“Yeah, but what do I know? I thought the Dig Dog was a good name for the place.”
“Maybe you should leave the bigger decisions to Henrietta.”
“Not a bad idea.”
“And neither is this,” Clint said as he looked at the tables that were sloppily arranged on the unswept floor. “More gambling means a bigger house cut. And it seems you’ll have something else to offer that’ll make this place stand out.”
“Please, Clint. Don’t try to make me feel better. You’ve obviously got something to say, and it ain’t about the new card room.”
“You’re right about that.”
“And,” Leo said in the silence that followed, “you’re not too eager to tell me whatever it is you got to say.”
“Right again.”
“So just spit it out. My patience with pretty much everything has worn a bit thin.”
Unable to come up with a better way to phrase it, Clint said, “Your problem with Westin may be bigger than we thought.”
“We?”
“I told you before that I’m involved in this,” Clint said.
Leo nodded before asking, “How much bigger?”
“I did some poking around and found one of Westin’s men. The bald fellow. He was at Miss Tasha’s.”
“Not too surprising. She runs the cheapest whores in town.”
“He was there for more than just the whores,” Clint continued. “Miss Tasha is the one behind Westin for certain. She’s getting her place set up to take over as much of your business as she can after you’re gone.”
“That’d make her the one who wants to use my place for a warehouse for whatever contraband she wants to smuggle and as a front for the girls she wants to turn into slaves?”
“Partly. This is where things go from bad to worse.”
Leo pulled in a deep breath and let it out with a huff. “Don’t bother with the sweet talk,” he said. “Just spit it out.”
“Miss Tasha isn’t working alone. In fact, I’m thinking she’s actually working for someone else.”
“Who?”
“An associate of Ki Dhang.”
Leo’s head hung forward like a puppet that had just gotten its string cut. “What the hell would Ki Dhang want with me? Or is this just another way for God to punish Leo Parker for some crime I committed in another life?”
“It may not be as bad as all of that.”
“Ki Dhang is one of the richest men in New M
exico,” Leo said. “He can snap his fingers and put a bullet into anyone he chooses. I mean, it was bad enough that my stepbrother had anyone at all backing his play. Now he’s got Ki Dhang on his side?”
Leo paced the room. Every step he took brought another emotion to his weary face. “Why the hell didn’t Ki just buy me out? That’d be a deal anyone could live with. Instead, he’s got to go through all this trouble just to use me as a front for God knows what? That don’t even make sense!”
“Exactly!” Clint said. “That doesn’t make sense. I spoke with Ki Dhang for just a minute or two, and I could tell he doesn’t do anything if it doesn’t make sense. I’ve got a real good idea of what’s going on, but I need to make certain, and once I do, this whole house of cards is going to fall.”
Leo had been staring at the floor, taking in what he was hearing. As he watched the barkeep slowly nod, Clint wondered what was going through his mind. If he wasn’t willing to go any further, there wasn’t a good reason for Clint to do more than see to Madeline’s safety. If Leo was ready to see this through to the end, then that was a different story altogether. Clint didn’t have to wait long to know which way the pendulum was swinging.
Looking up and wrapping his good hand around his bad one, Leo asked, “What do you want from me?”
“Things could get messy,” Clint told him. “Messier than they’ve been so far. When your fingers were taken from you, that was meant as a taste of how bad things could get if—”
“I know what it was meant to tell me,” Leo snapped. “I got that message real good. What I asked is what you want from me.”
“I need you to keep an eye on Madeline just in case someone tries to take her the hard way. Be ready with that shotgun and keep your eyes open for the next day.”
“Just one day?” Leo asked. “What happens after that?”
“One way or another, by that time this mess should be sorted out.”
Leo didn’t say anything after that. He didn’t have to. The steely look in his eyes told Clint that he was in for the whole ride. Clint just had to make sure that ride didn’t take them both to a shallow grave.
THIRTY-THREE
When Clint entered the Tiger’s Paw this time, the entire place felt different than it had on his last visit. While there were fewer customers at the moment, the intensity at each table could be felt like a thick haze that stuck to his skin. Every breath he pulled into his lungs was tinged with exotic scents and flavors. Some of those came from the food that was being carried from the kitchen, but the rest drifted out from the pipes and cigars that were the stock-in-trade of any opium den.
The women who approached him weren’t familiar. That didn’t stop them from wrapping themselves around Clint’s arms and rubbing his back while purring into his ear. “Welcome to Tiger’s Paw,” one of them said in a thick Chinese accent. The other woman spoke a different language to him, which wasn’t nearly as interesting as the way she chewed on his earlobes between every other word.
“Where’s Jade?” Clint asked.
“Not here,” the first girl replied. “We take care of you just fine.”
“I want to see Ki Dhang.”
The second girl laughed while snaking her hand between his legs. “She thinks you want him instead of us,” the first one explained. “I think you or Ki Dhang are not like that.”
It wasn’t easy to disentangle himself from the women, and many parts of him didn’t want to succeed, but Clint managed to do so anyway. Holding the first one at arm’s length, he said, “I’m not here for entertainment. I want to see Ki Dhang and I want to see him now. It’s important.”
When the second woman tried to press against him again, the first stopped her with a sharp stream of Chinese words. Shrugging, the second woman wandered off to find someone else to seduce.
“Mr. Dhang is very busy,” the remaining woman said.
“Tell him Clint Adams wants to talk to him about someone who might be looking to stick a knife in his back.”
“He does not like to be misled,” she warned.
“I’m not misleading anyone. Just go and tell him.”
“Very well. It’s on your head.”
Even though he wasn’t about to give in to the advances of those women, that didn’t stop Clint from enjoying the view as they walked away. Their dresses were so tight that they could very well have been painted onto their bodies, and both women knew exactly how to move within them. Less than a minute after the first woman had disappeared from sight, she returned to motion for Clint to meet her near the bar.
When he was close enough, she said, “Mr. Dhang will see you. This way.”
She took him upstairs once again to the second floor. Ki Dhang sat at the same table where he’d been gambling the first time Clint had met him, but on this occasion he sat alone. There was a plate of noodles in front of him and a cup of hot tea in his hand.
“Minh says you have something important to tell me,” Dhang said as Clint approached his table. “Something about a traitor among my men. Know that I do not take such threats lightly.”
“I would think not,” Clint replied. “Especially when it’s someone who seems to be fairly close to you.”
“And who would that be?”
“The old man who sat in that chair the last time I was here,” Clint said while pointing to the spot where the angry man had been on his previous visit.
Ki Dhang scowled. “No matter what insults he may have hurled at you, that does not give you the right to make such an accusation.”
“This doesn’t have anything to do with the fit he threw when I came to see you last time. I’ve been insulted by much fouler mouths than his.”
“He is Chow Sun. Does this name mean anything to you?”
“No.”
“If you knew anything about the largest smuggling operation to cover Korea, China, and these United States, then you would not only know of Chow Sun but you would tremble at the mention of his name.”
Clint couldn’t imagine trembling after hearing any man’s name. Telling Ki Dhang that, however, would have surely just put them at cross-purposes. Even though there was less than a handful of others sitting at different tables on that floor, Clint lowered his voice so their conversation wouldn’t carry any farther than necessary. “With all due respect, I didn’t come here just to throw around empty words.”
Dhang nodded once. “Go on.”
“I was over at Miss Tasha’s to pay a visit to one of the men who I had a score to settle with. He and a man by the name of Westin Voss are trying to run the man who owns the Howling Hound out of Larga Noche.”
Dhang shrugged as though he’d just been told about where a group of ants had decided to march next.
“This man I visited,” Clint continued, “told me he was working on behalf of Miss Tasha herself. Turns out that she’s got a partner as well and he’s the important gentleman we were just discussing.”
“Chow Sun?”
“That’s right. He and Miss Tasha are working together to move some business of their own into town. Now if you already knew about this, then I apologize for stirring anything up without cause. Since none of them seemed too happy to be found out, I was guessing they were playing things close to the vest.”
Pushing away his noodles and dabbing at his mouth with a linen napkin, Dhang squared his shoulders while studying Clint carefully. “What sort of business are they starting?” he asked.
“Smuggling, for a start. They also want to bring girls in through here before sending them who knows where.”
“As slaves?”
“That was my understanding.”
Dhang snarled a string of words under his breath. Even though Clint couldn’t understand them, he could tell they weren’t of the friendly variety. “I must make certain of this,” he said while standing up and placing his hands upon the table.
<
br /> “Can’t say as I blame you.”
“If you are lying, there will be consequences.” Smiling politely, Dhang added, “But that does not mean you are to be treated as anything but my guest. You will be shown to one of my finest rooms, where you will wait in comfort for me to return.”
“Why don’t I just meet you back here?”
Dhang clapped his hands together once, which summoned a pair of burly gunmen to stand behind Clint on either side. “Go and await my return,” Dhang said in a tone of voice that left no room for debate.
THIRTY-FOUR
Clint was shown into a room on that same floor, just down a short hallway with only two doors. That room was furnished with a couple of padded chairs, an expensive-looking washbasin centered upon an inlaid table, and a bed with a canopy that nearly reached the ceiling.
“If you are thirsty,” the large man said as he pulled open a cabinet filled with liquor bottles.
“What if I feel like stretching my legs?” Clint asked. “Mind if I take a walk outside?”
“Mr. Dhang will only be a few hours.”
“A few hours?”
“You will wait here.”
“Now just hold on a second!” Clint said. Before he could finish, the man held out a thick paw of a hand.
“Your gun. Give to me, please.”
“I’m not handing over my gun.”
“Then I will take it from you.”
Clint had sized up the man in front of him after a few seconds. Maybe the Colt could be taken from him by force and maybe Clint could keep that from happening. Either way, fighting with one of Ki Dhang’s men wasn’t exactly a good way to get on the big man’s good side. Since he was already in this far, Clint eased the Colt from its holster and handed it over.
“Now let me look for anything else.”
Since he’d come along this far, Clint raised his arms over his head.
“Wise choice,” the burly escort said.
Clint let out a strained breath. “We’ll see.”
A Different Trade Page 12
