The Spook Lights Affair (4 page)

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The Bucket of Beer Saloon was a typical waterfront watering hole tucked in among the dingy warehouses strung along lower Clay Street—smoky and poorly lighted, decorated with seafaring impedimenta and redolent of beer, tobacco, and close-packed humanity. The usual sifting of sawdust shared the floor with a rank of none-too-clean spittoons. There were less than a dozen customers on this night, most of them bellied up to the long bar—all male except for a plump and painted soiled dove trolling for a customer and having no luck. She spied Quincannon as he entered, sidled over to him.

“Foul night, ain’t it, dearie?” she asked hopefully.

“It is that.”

“Kind of night it takes more than liquor to warm a man’s cockles.”

Quincannon allowed as how his were warm enough as they stood.

“Pity. You’re a fine-looking gent, you are, just the sort little Molly likes.”

At a guess, “little” Molly weighed in the neighborhood of a hundred and fifty pounds. “Some other time,” he lied. “I’m here on business tonight, with a lad named Bob Cantwell. Know him, Molly?”

Her rouged mouth pinched into a lemony pucker. “Know him and wish I didn’t. Cheapskate. Won’t never even offer to quench a lady’s thirst.”

“Is he here now?”

“Oh, he’s here. Don’t know him, eh? Buy a lady a whiskey to keep off the chill if I point him out?”

The only coin Quincannon had in his pocket was the second silver dollar. His thrifty Scot’s nature rebelled at yet another overly generous outlay, but he pressed the coin into Molly’s moist palm anyway; a prostitute was as deserving of his largesse as the crone at 209 Spear, if not more so. Her eyes widened and she favored him with a crooked-toothed smile and an effusive, “Oh, what a gent you are, sir!” After which she aimed a pudgy arm at a man seated alone at a table next to a glowing potbellied stove. “That’s him, Bob Cantwell,” she said, and hurried off to the bar.

Bob Cantwell was a scrawny individual in his early twenties, the owner of sparse sandy hair and a skimpy mustache to match. He sat slump-shouldered inside a heavy corduroy coat, staring morosely into a tankard of grog—the look and posture of a man drowning his sorrows. The empty chair opposite the real estate salesman scraped as Quincannon pulled it out far enough to accommodate his bulk.

Cantwell cast a startled look at him across the table. “Here, what’s the idea? I don’t want company—”

“Bob Cantwell?”

“What if I am? Who’re you?”

“My name is of no consequence to you. My business is.”

“What kind of business?” Cantwell asked warily.

“Not the police kind. You’ve no worries there, Bob.”

“Well, then? What do you want?”

Quincannon said, “Charles Riley tells me you have information regarding the Wells, Fargo Express matter.”

The sudden change in Cantwell’s demeanor was little short of miraculous. The undernourished frame jerked upright, the sandy mustache bristled, the pale blue eyes glittered with sudden avarice. One hand reached across the table as if to pluck at Quincannon’s coat sleeve, stopping just short of its mark.

“And if I do?” he said in a lowered voice. “It doesn’t come free.”

“Little does in this world. What is it you know?”

“Plenty. Plenty. How much will you pay?”

“That depends on the information. How much do you think it’s worth?”

Cantwell leaned forward, the pale eyes taking in the expensive cut of Quincannon’s greatcoat and custom-made derby. While he was scrutinizing, his other hand plucked items from his pocket that made audible clicking sounds. There was no hint of moroseness left in him now; he fairly quivered with greed. It had been financial sorrows he’d been drowning in his grog: a lack of sufficient funds to indulge his gambling vice, no doubt. The clicking of the pair of dice in his hand had what might be described as an eager sound.

“Two hundred dollars,” he said. “Cash on the barrelhead.”

Quincannon shoved back his chair, got to his feet, and started to turn away.

“Wait! Wait! What I know is worth that much. Every cent of it.”

“Yes? What do you know?”

“The name of the holdup man.”

“That’s not worth two hundred.”

“And where you can find him and the money. That
is
.”

Quincannon sat down again. “I’ll pay half your asking price.”

“No. Two hundred or nothing—”

“Nothing, then.” He stood back up.

Cantwell said quickly, “You’re not the only one interested. Somebody else will pay two hundred.”

“Charles Riley wouldn’t pay it. No one else will, either, or you and I wouldn’t be having this conversation.”

The dice clicks grew agitated. Anxiety visibly leavened the lad’s greed; he could see his much-coveted cash windfall slipping away. “All right, sir,” he said. “All right. I’ll settle for one hundred.”

Quincannon reoccupied the chair, hitching it around toward Cantwell—to get closer to the warmth from the stove, but the youngster thought otherwise. He scooted his chair away the same distance, as if he were afraid of an attack. Cantwell was a coward, among his other shortcomings. Quincannon grinned at him, a fierce grin that was half wolf, half dragon. He took his time loading and lighting his stubby briar, then removed a greenback from his billfold and flattened his palm over it on the table, leaving a portion free so that Cantwell could make out the denomination.

“Say! That’s only twenty dollars.”

“The rest when you’ve told me what you know.”

“How do I know you’ll pay me?”

“You’ll get nothing if you don’t talk. Except maybe a cuffed ear.”

Cantwell swallowed, took a quick drink of grog, and swallowed that. “You won’t tell anyone the word came from me?”

“Not if what you tell me is the truth.”

“It will be. I swear it.” After a furtive glance around, even though no one in the smoky room was within listening distance, Cantwell leaned forward and again spoke in an undertone. “Jack Travers.”

The name was unfamiliar to Quincannon. “Local?”

“No. From Los Angeles.”

“How do you know him? As a confederate?”

“No! I’m not a crook, I’m a respectable citizen.”

Claptrap, Quincannon thought. “Then how do you know him?”

Cantwell hesitated. Then, “Jack Travers is my cousin.”

“And how do you know he’s the Express bandit?”

“He … bragged to me about it. A holdup that would put him in clover for the rest of his life.”

“But not specifically the Wells, Fargo job, eh?”

“No. But it couldn’t be anything else. Jack was too excited, and there has been no other large robbery recently. Besides … he’s been in trouble with the law before. He spent a few years in prison for armed robbery.”

“When did he do his bragging? Before or after the deed?”

“Before,” Cantwell said. “A week before. He came to my lodgings one night. I hadn’t seen him in years, since I moved to San Francisco, but he knew that I work for a real estate firm. He demanded I fix him up with a place where he could … hole up for a while.”

“And you did his bidding for a price.”

“No, sir. He threatened me into it.” Cantwell’s mouth quirked bitterly. “Jack’s half again my size and a damned bully. He … well, he used to beat on me when we were kids.”

That explained why Cantwell was willing to sell out his cousin. Money the primary reason, revenge the secondary. The little poltroon was too cowardly and too afraid of Jack Travers to try cutting himself in for a percentage of the stolen loot, yet too hungry for cash to feed his gambling habit to have turned Travers in to the coppers. A contemptible Judas whose price had been halved to one hundred pieces of silver.

“Where’s the hideout, Bob?”

“Why do you want to know? If you’re not a policeman, what are you? A Wells, Fargo detective?”

“My business is none of yours.”

“But you are planning to arrest him?”

“Likewise none of your concern. Answer the question.”

Cantwell gave his lips a nervous licking. “You won’t tell him I told you? You won’t say anything about talking to me?”

“Nary a word. Now where can I find him?”

“A cottage on Telegraph Hill. Drifter’s Alley, off Filbert below Pioneer Park. The alley’s a cul-de-sac, with just two cottages and a vacant lot between. He’s in the second.”

Quincannon knew the approximate location. He nodded, and then asked, “Have you been to see your cousin since the robbery?”

“Why would I? I want nothing more to do with him. He can rot in jail or in hell for all I care.”

“Then how do you know he’s still in the cottage?”

“He must be. Jack said he’d need the place for some time, to let things cool down, as he put it. And he hasn’t returned the key.”

Quincannon considered. Hearsay and speculation—a thin brew for one hundred dollars. On the other hand, he had no better lead and there was enough tantalizing circumstantial evidence in Bob Cantwell’s story to make it worth following up.

He took his hand off the twenty-dollar greenback. Cantwell snatched it up instantly and made it disappear. The dice in his other hand rattled greedily as Quincannon removed four more twenties from his billfold, folded the notes, passed them over. How long Cantwell remained in possession of his newfound wealth depended on the whims of Lady Luck: he would be in a dice game within minutes of their parting. Which was immediate, Quincannon having nothing more to say to the little weasel. For the nonce, anyway.

He was now out a considerable amount of cash—one hundred and two dollars, to be exact—and his night’s work had only just begun. If it developed that Jack Travers was not the Wells, Fargo Express bandit, the money he had just handed over would eventually be recovered even if he had to take it out of Bob Cantwell’s hide a dollar at a time.

4

QUINCANNON

Only the western slopes of Telegraph Hill were habitable; the hill fell away so steeply to the east that there were no streets leading up, just foot trails and a scattered few wooden stairways. Although it was much the more difficult route, Quincannon chose the eastern ascent because it was not far from the Bucket of Beer and because a cab ride around to and up Dupont Street, the hill’s main thoroughfare, would have taken twice as long as an uphill climb on foot.

The fog had thinned somewhat along the Embarcadero and on the lower section of Broadway, but it closed in around him like cotton batting as he hiked up the long wooden stairway from Montgomery Street. It was a potentially treacherous climb at night in weather such as this, there being no streetlights above Montgomery and the steps, more than two hundred of them, being wet and slippery; he clung to the railing with his left hand, his right perched on the butt of his Navy. But he met no one on the stairs, no one on the footpaths above. He knew the area well enough, and a good thing else he might have gotten lost in the misty tangle leading up to Pioneer Park.

When he reached the hill’s summit, he was barely winded. He might have been nearing his fortieth year, but he kept himself in prime physical condition through regular wanderings around the city by shank’s mare. Nor was he much aware of the night’s chill and damp. Nothing warmed his blood like the prospect of a confrontation with lawbreakers, the more so when a substantial reward was at stake. Like his detective father before him, John Quincannon thrived on the hunt.

The fog was so thick here he could barely make out the tall signal-pole from which the city’s time ball fell each noon to tell mariners and residents that the sun was crossing the meridian. It took him a little time to find his way to the five-foot stone wall that marked the park’s perimeter, and to skirt it until he reached Filbert Street. Below him, then, he could make out faint glimmers of house lights through gaps in the wind-driven whorls of mist. The cobblestones were littered with bits and pieces of refuse, and as he hurried along, the old rhyme about Telegraph Hill flicked unbidden across his mind.

The Irish, they live at the top of it,

The Italians, they live at the base of it;

And old tin cans, and kettles and pans,

Are scattered all over the face of it.

Drifter’s Alley was half a block downhill. If he hadn’t known its location, he might have missed it: there were no streetlights here, the signpost at the intersection was obscured, and the alley’s narrow mouth yawned as black as the devil’s fundament. The lane was unpaved; even though he moved slowly, he stumbled once on the uneven ground, muttered a curse under his breath when he nearly lost his balance. He might have been moving through a sinuous gray vacuum, for the only sounds were the distant fog warnings from the big bass diaphone on Alcatraz. Nor were there any lights to guide him.

Ahead the first of the two cottages took shape. Dark, dilapidated, its chimney canted at a drunken angle from a sagging roof. Untenanted, possibly abandoned. He passed it by, moving abreast of the vacant lot. The lot’s expanse was choked with weeds and debris, bordered on its far end by a high, broken black wall that materialized into a clump of pepper trees. The second cottage was invisible behind them.

Quincannon left the narrow roadway, angling into the lot toward the copse. The mist muffled the sounds of his progress; he could scarcely hear his own footsteps. The pungent pepper scent sharpened as he moved in among the trees. Through an opening between two of them, then, he could make out the second cottage.

He stood there for a time to tab up the place and get the lay. It was another ramshackle specimen as forlorn-looking as the first, with no lamplight showing and no sign of activity inside or out. Either Jack Travers was already in bed asleep, an unlikely prospect at this early hour—it couldn’t be much past nine o’clock—or else he was a night creature, like the vampires of legend, and out somewhere spending a portion of his ill-gotten gains. If the former, Quincannon would surprise him in his bed, put the grab on him, and if necessary, do a bit of skull-dragging to lay hands on the stolen Wells, Fargo money. If the latter, he would search the premises for the green-and-greasy, and whether he found it or not, await Travers’s return.