Stringer and the Deadly Flood
STRINGER
AND THE DEADLY FLOOD
Stringer Series #8
Lou Cameron
STRINGER
AND THE DEADLY FLOOD
All rights reserved.
Copyright © 1988 by Lou Cameron.
This book may not be reproduced in whole or in part, by other means, without permission.
First ebook edition copyright 2012 by AudioGO.
All Rights Reserved.
Trade ISBN 978-1-62064-154-5
Library ISBN 978-0-7927-9072-3
Cover photo © iStockPhoto:dmathies
STRINGER
AND THE DEADLY FLOOD
CONTENTS
CHAPTER
ONE
Earth tremors went with the fog and fleas of Frisco and seldom caused as much embarrassment as the one Stringer was suffering as he crept down the boarding-house stairs by the dawn's early light. He'd had to resort to sneaking to work in the mornings ever since the gal on the second landing had taken to leaving her door invitingly open. She worked odd hours as a nude model over on Russian Hill, and if she owned any clothing at all Stringer had yet to notice. Besides, it was mighty distracting at any hour to pass an open doorway with a naked lady on the bed inside blowing violet-scented tobacco smoke and sending knowing looks his way while he had to pass as best he could.
But this particular morning, to Stringer's relief, her door was barely ajar when he got down to her landing. He could hear her purring or snoring in there. He started to ease by softlyâor tried to anyways, for just about then the city of San Francisco readjusted her corset with a mighty heave and the next thing Stringer knew he'd crashed into the room to join the gal on her bed.
She awoke to find the fully dressed Stringer across her naked lap. Sitting bolt upright, she regarded the seat of his pants with some confusion before she asked him, “I give up. Do you want me to spank you or is this a novel way of introducing yourself, Mister MacKail?”
He sprang off her and the bed, ears burning. “I suspect we just had an earthquake, ma'am.”
She shrugged her bare shoulders, “Oh, I had hoped you were just being impetuous.” Then she yawned and eyed him with renewed interest. “But as long as you're here, would you mind closing the hall door before you leap on me again? I don't think our landlady shares our, ah, Bohemian views on boarding house manners.”
Stringer didn't, either. Not because he was a prude, but because a gent who
messed
with gals where he boarded had to be at least as dumb as a gent who messed with the gals where he drew his paycheck. So he shot her a gallantly regretful smile and told her, “I got to get to work now, no offense.”
She lay back down, fully and invitingly exposed, shut her eyes again, and sighed. “My mother warned me the men I'd meet in this big, wicked city would treat me just awful. I had no idea how right her warning would turn out to be.”
Stringer agreed life in the big city could be pure hell, then got out of there before his resolve could weaken. He had to walk a full block down the slopes of Rincon Hill before his damn-fool erection calmed down enough for comfortable walking in his too-tight city pants. He hated wearing a suit to work instead of the more comfortable cowhand duds he'd been raised in. But downtown Frisco was inclined to sneer at gents dressed cow. And judging from some of the superior looks he got that morning, it didn't approve much more of a gent duded up in a soft collar and an inexpensive suit. To look at the snappy Bay Area gents on their way to work, no one would suspect the businessmen running things of late were the near-descendants of the ragged-ass '49ers and the gussied up gals who'd followed them out west to get rich.
Impervious to any stares directed his way that early morning, Stringer crossed Market Street and headed up Montgomery to the cast-iron classic front of the
San Francisco Sun.
He almost tripped over a brace of stenographers as the three of them tried to enter at the same time. One of them was at least as pretty as the gal on the second landing, and he made an effort not to picture her with her hair down and that Gibson Girl middy blouse out of the way. It wasn't easy, but a man did what a man just had to do. So he wasn't thinking dirty when he entered the frosted-glass cubicle where they kept Sam Barca, their feature editor, out of harm or temptation's way.
The crusty old editor never invited anyone to have a seat, so Stringer just hauled in a handy bentwood chair and plunked it down next to old Sam's cluttered desk. As he sat astride it, resting his elbows on the back of the chair, he said, “Morning, boss. Where were you when that earthquake hit this morning?”
Barca growled, “Right here, of course. Unlike some lazy freelance stringers I could mention, they expect me to punch that goddamned time clock out front. Besides, it wasn't much of a jolt, and even if it had been we wouldn't be running it. It's against the editorial policy of this paper to even intimate that the Golden State is subject to occasional rain or, God forbid, wobbly underpinnings.” Barca rummaged through the
clutter
on his desk. “I've vouchered that feature you did on Bully Teddy's Great White Fleet, though I had to blue-pencil a lot of your smart-ass remarks to make the piece presentable. So what are you working on now?”
“I'm stuck for a new angle on whitewashed battleships,” Stringer replied. Then he asked thoughtfully, “Did you know they built the main water reservoir of this town smack on an earthquake fault, Sam?”
Barca shrugged. “They had to build it some damned place, and I just told you we don't run earth tremor stories in the
Sun,
damn it.”
Stringer reached inside his city vest for the cowboy makings he preferred to smoke, insisting, “One of these days we're going to have to. In their infinite wisdom the city engineers laid all the water mains our fire department may ever need right across some other known faults. When, not if, we ever get a real earthquake, every fire hydrant in town figures to go out of business about the same time.”
“We're not paid to find faults in or about this fair city, damn it,” Sam Barca snapped. “Half our classified ads deal with real estate. How do you feel about doing another exposé of the goddamned
Octopus,
MacKail?”
Stringer frowned thoughtfully down at the smoke he was rolling. “I dunno, Sam. Beating up on the Southern Pacific Railroad strikes me as a mite old hat since Frank Norris wrote that book-length expose at the turn of the century and called it
The Octopus
. Made old C. P. Huntington so mad he died, they say. But I hear his nephew and only heir, Henry Huntington, has been running the family railroad pretty decent of late.”
Barca glowered with genuine distaste. “Toad squat! Creep Huntington may be dead, but the apple never falls far from the tree and the whole damned family should have been hung for murder years ago!”
As Stringer sealed his cigarette with a lick of his tongue and put it between his lips, Barca droned on, “I was about your age when I covered the Massacre at Mussel Slough for this very paper. To drum up business for his railroad, Creep Huntington lured settlers into the arid wastes of Tulare County with promises to sell 'em railroad grant land at two or three dollars an acre. Then, once he had the poor suckers there, he upped the price to fifteen to forty bucks an acre instead.”
Stringer ventured cautiously, “Nobody ever accused C. P. Huntington of being less than a hard-headed businessman, Sam. But, like I said, the man is dead.”
Barca
ignored his younger visitor's interruption as he cut back in. “So are a number of other gents, all murdered by the Southern Pacific in the Year of Our Lord 1880. When Creep Huntington sent railroad dicks under a tame U.S. marshal to evict the settlers who just couldn't pay his jacked-up prices, the battle that ensued took the lives of seven men. Most of them were settlers, and of course even the survivors had to pay up or get out in the end. I reported it when it happened, twenty years before Frank Norris got it in print. Naturally, nobody was willing to run such a story while Creep Huntington and his private army of hired guns were still holding full sway. I was mad as hell. Like I said, I was about your age then. It takes a man a while to learn he's just not big enough to change the world with his writings. The asshole who said the pen was mightier than the sword must have never worked for a publication that runs railroad advertising.”
Stringer blew a lazy smoke ring before he nodded. “Well, if you need a rehash of the Battle of Mussel Slough I reckon I can go through the morgue and see if I can come up with a new angle.”
Barca shook his head. “News that's old enough to vote is hardly news. We may have more recent crimes to pin on the Southern Pacific. I just got an interesting tip from an engineer down in the old Colorado Desert. I have it somewhere in all these fool papers. You know the area, of course?”
Stringer answered, “Only that you should cross by rail and at night if possible. It's hot as hell's hinges most of the year and boring all the time. Dead flat and covered with knee-high greasewood as far as the eye can see. I've crossed it a couple of times by rail, but it must have been a pisser to cross in the covered wagon days.”
Sam Barca nodded vigorously in assent. “It was. I crossed it that way one time. They called it the Colorado Desert then. Now they're calling it the Imperial Valley and selling it by the full section as prime farm land.”
Stringer laughed incredulously. “That's mighty wild, even when you consider bullshit artists like old Wyatt Earp have gone into California real estate of late. I've heard of quick-buck land mongers tying oranges to Joshua trees and selling the whole mess as an orange grove, but there's just no damned way to call those greasewood flats anything but pure desolation. Water holes lie sixty to eighty miles apart down there, and such water as there might be is almost too salty for a mule to drink.”
Sam Barca nodded again and growled, “I told you I once crossed that desertâ
the
hard way. Nowadays the tracks avoid the worst part, a big bare salt flat called Salton's Sinkânamed after a prospector called Salton, by the way. Some geologists hold that the entire area used to be sea bottom. They say many a seashell and an ocean's worth of salt can still be found by sort of shoving the greasewood and lizards out of the way. So that's the news angle.”
Stringer shot Barca a bemused look as he queried, “What news angle? That the dead heart of the Colorado Desert lies betwixt San Diego and Yuma, Sam? Wagon trains following the southern route reported as much back in 1849, for God's sake.”