A WEAK SUN was trying to burn off morning fog when Gatling knocked on the door of Eben Metcalf’s mansion on Nob Hill. He had a note ready for the houseman when he opened the door, if he opened the door. The colonel said the attorney lived alone except for the houseman.
The houseman looked at Gatling as if he might be selling stove blacking or birdseed. Fifty or so, he had a smooth, expressionless face that dared anyone to get past him.
“I’m sorry but Mr. Metcalf isn’t seeing anyone. Those are his orders. Now if you will—”
“Will you at least give him this note,” Gatling said. “I’ll wait.”
“I’m sure it won’t do any good,” the houseman said, his thin mouth in a firm line, but he took the note and closed the door in Gatling’s face.
The note read: “I am not from any detective agency, nor am I a newspaper reporter. I will not bother you again if you refuse to see me. But I urge you to give me a few minutes of your time, because the criminal syndicate headed by Wilson Murrill must be stopped. What happened to you can happen to anyone.”
Gatling had signed the note Willard Hightower.
Gatling looked at his watch: He had been waiting for five minutes. Maybe he was wasting his time. Maybe the bland-faced houseman had torn up the note without showing it to Metcalf. Sometimes servants did things like that when their employers were very sick or otherwise handicapped.
But he waited. Metcalf was all he had to work with. He had to start somewhere. The fog was settling in despite the sun. Trees dripped in the fog and the light was so thick that it might have been evening. Unseen carriages rattled over cobblestones. Then the door opened.
“Mr. Metcalf will see you,” the houseman said. It was obvious that he didn’t approve of this tall stranger with his dark, Indian looks. But something made him reconsider and he attempted to smile. A smile like that made Gatling think of undertakers and coffins. “This way, Mr. Hightower.” The houseman waved his soft, clean hand.
Gatling took off his hat and followed him into a dimly lighted study. Walls of books dominated the room, but the desk Eben Metcalf sat behind was bare except for a yellow legal pad and a jar of pencils.
“Mr. Hightower,” the houseman announced. Then he left and closed the door behind him.
Metcalf nodded to Gatling, who said, “It’s good of you to see me, Mr. Metcalf.”
Gatling knew that the attorney was in his mid-fifties, but he looked much older. His thin face was worn by grief and despair. His gray eyes were dead. He wore a red dressing gown and was carefully shaved. Gatling half expected to see bottles and glasses, but if they were there, they were hidden.
Metcalf pointed Gatling to a chair beside his desk. WHAT DO YOU WANT? he printed on the legal pad.
Gatling glanced at the door. “Can I talk without being careful, Mr. Metcalf?”
Metcalf printed, MASTERS HAS BEEN WITH ME SINCE MY MISFORTUNE. I TRUST HIM COMPLETELY. HE IS NO EAVESDROPPER. TELL ME WHAT YOU WANT.
Gatling said, “I want to know who attacked you. Who did it?”
Metcalf tried to laugh, but lacking a tongue, all he could do was make strangled sounds. The awful sounds stopped and he printed: WHAT DOES IT MATTER? YOU ARE MISTAKEN IF YOU THINK I’M AFRAID. I HAVE NOTHING TO LIVE FOR, SO WHY SHOULD I BE AFRAID? BUT IF I SAY WHO DID IT AND THEY ARE CHARGED, I WILL HAVE TO TESTIFY IN THE SAME COURT WHERE I ARGUED MANY CASES AND WON MOST OF THEM. TO SIT THERE AND GIVE EVIDENCE IN SIGN LANGUAGE AND SCRIBBLED NOTES WITH ALL MY FRIENDS AND ENEMIES WATCHING.
“You won’t have to testify,” Gatling said after he read the silent outburst of words. “It won’t go that far. I will take care of them.”
Metcalf printed, THERE IS ONLY ONE WAY YOU CAN TAKE CARE OF THEM. THAT IS TO KILL THEM.
Gatling said, “I don’t want you to know. Tell me who did it and I guarantee they won’t do it again.”
Metcalf took his time printing the answer. He looked at Gatling, trying to size him up, not because he feared betrayal, or because Gatling might be a part of the syndicate. Gatling knew that Metcalf didn’t care what happened to him now. His life was over, and one of these days he would probably blow his brains out.
Gatling didn’t know what he’d do if he found himself in the same fix. Go far back in the mountains, build a cabin, hunt and trap and stay alive? Or would he blow out his brains?
Metcalf took up the pad and printed, WHY SHOULD YOU CARE, WHOEVER YOU ARE? THE WORLD WON’T CHANGE BECAUSE OF ANYTHING YOU DO.
The attorney seemed to be under great stress, and he dabbed at his forehead with a silk handkerchief. Gatling felt he was ready to stop fighting him. What he said next had to convince Metcalf to open up and tell him what he wanted to know.
He said, “I know the world is rotten, Mr. Metcalf. Not all of it, just most of it. The men who mutilated you couldn’t exist by themselves. They exist because they are allowed to exist. Many policemen are crooked and are blamed because they can be seen, are visible. But it’s the men over them and the men over them who are responsible. Thirty years ago this city had a vigilance committee that put the fear of God into them. Not a bunch of saloon loafers, but the best men around. It worked for a while, and while it worked the rats ran for their holes. A man could walk down any street at any hour without being robbed or killed. The criminals knew they’d hang if they were caught.”
Metcalf’s pencil was poised above his pad. He looked at Gatling before he printed, JUSTICE AT THE END OF A GUN? IS THAT WHAT YOU WANT? TO BECOME A ONE-MAN VIGILANCE COMMITTEE?
Gatling said, “I’m not thinking of justice. Extermination is a better word. That’s all I’m going to tell you. You shouldn’t know because you’re an officer of the court.”
Metcalf smiled bitterly. NOT ANY MORE, he printed. I’M NOTHING NOW. I HAVE SENT MY WIFE AND CHILDREN AWAY. I DON’T WANT THE CHILDREN TO SEE ME LIKE THIS.
“Please, Mr. Metcalf ...”
Metcalf’s eyes widened with remembered horror and pain. THE SYDNEY DUCKS DID IT, he printed. THE AUSTRALIAN GANG ON THE BARBARY COAST. IT WAS DARK AFTER THE LIGHTS OF THE TRAIN. I KNEW THEY WERE SYDNEY DUCKS BECAUSE OF THEIR AUSTRALIAN ACCENTS. SPECS MARGATE IS THEIR LEADER. LEAVE NOW AND DON’T COME BACK.
Gatling was glad to leave. The meeting with Metcalf was something he didn't want to go through again. Unruffled as an Indian tribal elder, the houseman came down the stairs and showed him out.
Thinking of the despairing man in the lonely room, Gatling began to make plans for the man called Specs.
The massacre of the Sydney Ducks was front page news. One yellow journal blared, GANG MASSACRE ON BARBARY COAST/SPECS MARGATE AND HENCHMEN MURDERED. Another trumpeted, SPECS MARGATE ASSASSINATED /BLOODBATH ON BOLD STREET.
Published within hours of the killings, the newspaper accounts were garbled. The Clarion ventured the opinion that it was probably the work of a rival gang, the Irish Harps, a gang so vicious and reckless that it had been run out of New York by the older gangs with the full cooperation of the police. The Barbary Pirate, a rag that never bothered with the facts, had it on good information, provided by a surviving Sydney Duck who didn’t exist, that a gunfight had broken out at the party which had left the flower of the underworld dead or dying.
A few papers tried to be objective, but nowhere was it suggested that the massacre was the work of one man. The Chief of Police promised a full investigation, and for his part the Mayor declared, “Such lawlessness will not be tolerated in this respectable, law-abiding community.”
Gatling felt good about what he had done. For the moment, the Sydney Ducks were without a leader. The man most likely to succeed Specs, Freddie Kitchen, was dead. Next in line was Mickey “Bucko” Smith, but he was in a coma and not expected to live. Gatling wondered if Wilson Murrill would send in caretaker thugs to run the Australian organization until a new, reliable leader was chosen. That seemed likely enough. Murrill would be the first to see that a rudderless gang, made up of truly savage men, might split into factions and civil war would result. The syndicate, still not firmly in place, had been dealt a brutal blow, but Gatling figured that Murrill would have a plan for such emergencies.
It was far from over.
Gatling wished to hell he knew what Murrill looked like. As it was, Murrill could sit at the next table in a restaurant and Gatling wouldn’t know a damn thing about it. Until he got a good description of Murrill, he’d be like a man wading in a pitch-black sewer.
The night after the massacre he was walking on the docks, just walking and thinking, wondering how he would manage to get close to Murrill. So far he hadn’t a clue. It was quiet except for a few elderly whores fighting over a bottle. Sea fog made everything dark though it was only seven-thirty. He hadn’t eaten dinner yet, and was thinking about a steak when a scrawny kid stepped out of a doorway and asked him for money.
Gatling flipped him a dollar and walked on. The kid followed. Thinking he was being set up to be robbed, Gatling rounded on the kid. “What’s eating on you?” he said in a harsh voice. “You already got a dollar.”
The kid stood his ground. “You want me to go with you, mister? I’m good, mister. Give you the best time you ever had.”
Gatling raised his hand to slap the kid, then let it drop. “Get away from me, you stinking little queer. You follow me again I’ll kick the shit out of you.”
The kid wasn’t much over five feet, but his eyes snapped with anger. “You got no right to call me queer. I’m no fucking queer, you big, dumb bastard.”
Gatling wondered why he bothered talking to the kid. Maybe it was because as a kid he had worked in a whorehouse, swamped out saloons, shoveled horseshit in stables. For a while he had been part of a gang of young outlaws before he joined the Army and learned about guns.
“If you aren’t a queer whore, what are you?” he asked.
“I get paid for it,” the kid said. “That don’t make me queer. On the ship all these old guys always asked for me. They’s rich, them queers. One big old guy hurted me so bad I couldn’t take it no more. So I hid on the launch that takes the queers out and back. They’ll be looking for me, mister. I got ta find a place ta hide.”
A floating brothel for rich queers that fancied little kids! They existed—nothing so rotten it didn’t exist—but they were fairly uncommon. Gatling figured this kid to be about twelve. He had the pinched, pasty face of the slum child. If he ever ate good food it didn’t show. His eyes were as old as sin.
“Where is this ship?” Gatling asked. A floating cesspool like that might have some connection with Murrill’s syndicate.
The kid’s eyes grew wary. “You a detective?” Gatling said no and the kid seemed to believe him. “I knew you wasn’t a tec,” the kid said. “If you was a tec you’d a laughed at me. The p’lice know all about the ship. I seen the Chief of Detectives out there one time. Naw, that dumb mick ain’t queer. I ast the other kids, thinking maybe a little blackmail there. Like his mickser wife would bust a gut or maybe his head if she knowed he was getting shit on his dick.”
Gatling didn’t know if he had ever come across a kid with such a foul mouth. They learned fast, they had good teachers. “You sure it was the Chief of Detectives?”
The kid didn’t like anyone to doubt his word. “Sure I’m sure, mister. Everybody in town knows Mahaffy the Irish Gorilla. Listen, mister, buy me something to eat and I’ll tell you anything you want to know. The ship, Mahaffy, the works. I’m fucking famished.”
“Let’s go,” Gatling said. The kid might be handing him a load of bullshit, but it was worth a chance. What could he lose by feeding the little bastard!
“Not round here,” the kid said. “They know me dockside.”
In a restaurant on Pickett Street, with his face hanging over a bowl of beef stew, shoveling it in, the kid said, “No crap, mister. The name a’ the ship is the Dixon, right outside the twelve-mile limit. Coast Guard can’t touch it there. Anyhow they wouldn’t be so stupid. Steam launch takes the queers out, takes them back. Ship and launch, different crews, op’rate round the clock. ’Cept Sunday. They let us go ashore Sunday. Take us in mornings, take us back nights. Tough mugs from the ship go with us to see we don’t skip. We get ta go ta the ’musement park, shooting galleries, that kind of shit.”
“Why Sunday?”
“It’s fucking Sunday, ain’t it? Everybody gets off Sunday. Naw, that ain’t true. We never got to go ashore till that kid cut his throat. Jesus F. Christ, if you don’t think that made a stink. Little shitter was going crazy for a long time, cooped up like that. I guess the bastards that run the ship was afraid other kids’d make off with themself. Dead kids don’t make no money, though I hear some queers like to do things ta stiffs. Anyhow, somebody decides we got ta have some free time.”
“Any kids ever escape on Sunday?”
“Not a one.”
“You say you hid on the launch?”
“That’s what I done.”
The kid started on his second bowl of stew. “I hid on the launch,” he said. “Two nights ago, real late. Nobody seen me. Since then I been hiding in a cellar. Hey, that humpback waiter ain’t give me the pie yet. How about a beer? You’re having a beer.”
Gatling was aware that people were staring at them. What the hell! Just as long as nobody said anything.
“They won’t serve you,” he told the kid.
The old, stoop-shouldered waiter brought two slices of blueberry pie. The kid ate the stew and pie at the same time. Blueberry juice and gravy dripped from his chin.
“Who runs the ship?” Gatling asked.
“Two dagos,” the kid answered. “A big one and a small one. The small one is the boss and think he’s some kind of classy. The big dago just takes orders, keeps the kids in line with a strap. I hear some fat queer killed a kid before I came there. Big dago took the body over by Alcatraz where the sharks are. Feed us more dead kids, sez the sharks.”
Gatling would do it on Sunday, when there was nobody on board but the crew, maybe a few queers sleeping it off or resting after Saturday night’s high jinks. He hoped the two Italians didn’t get holy on Sunday, go to a couple of Masses, light candles in front of the Virgin, sing hymns.
The kid drank root beer and made a face. “This shit got no kick to it. Let me ast a question. Why’d you want to know all this shit? You think you got a runoff kid out there?”
Gatling looked at the wild child. “I don’t like people making money off kids. If I give you money, what’ll you do?”
“Get out a’ this town before they find me,” the kid said. “I got sucked in ’cause I had nowheres to sleep, nothing ta eat. Then I just got sucked.”
“Never mind that. Where will you go?”
“Pro’bly Los Angeles. They won’t chase me that far. Frisco’s got more starving kids’n they can use. Least it’s warm down south, don’t need no topcoat, and they’s oranges growing right by the road. One thing sure, I ain’t never coming back here.”
The waiter wanted them out of there. So did the manager, who was standing at the cashier’s desk. Gatling gave the kid fifty dollars, more money than the little bastard had seen in his life.
“Take the coast steamer,” he said. “They may be watching the depot.”
“I ain’t going ta waste money on no steamer. Anyhow, this kid’s had enough a ships.”
Gatling got up from the table. “Then walk to the next stop out of Frisco and ride the train. Pay for the ticket. Ride the rods and the hoboes will smell out your money.”
Now it was raining through the fog. The kid tugged the peak of his cap down over his eyes and turned up the collar of his shabby coat.
“Will have ta be a smart bo that takes me,” he bragged. “I still got my knife. He can wear his balls for a watch fob.”
Gatling left the restaurant and this time the kid didn’t follow. Maybe he was already trying to bribe the waiter to put whiskey in his root beer. He hoped the kid headed for Los Angeles. It wouldn’t be so good if he stayed in town and boasted about what his new big friend was going to do to the dagos. Gatling didn’t know the kid’s name, didn’t want to know. He got the feeling that this kid wasn’t long for this world. But he could be wrong. The kid might rise to the top of the cesspool to become another Specs Margate.
Sunday was four days away; Specs was to be buried on Friday. Since Specs had long fallen away from the Methodist Church, his body in its ornate casket was to lie in state in the Queen’s Garter, which was being hastily repaired. The beer garden was closed to the public, but when Gatling walked past there were all sorts of wagons out front. Carpenters, and glaziers, painters and men from mirror companies were going in and out. Gatling went into the saloon across the way and watched the Queen’s Garter from the street end of the bar.
He stretched two beers to more than an hour, but saw nothing of interest. Certainly nobody with a forked French beard. All he knew about Wilson Murrill was that he was fifty-three, had been raised by his Creole mother. The Pinkerton file said the Louisiana prison authorities did not allow prisoners to wear beards or mustaches because of lice. Once a month the convicts had their hair clipped down to the scalp. Of course he could have grown a beard since his release; his hair could be long after nearly a year on the outside.
Murrill was five-ten, but half the world was five-ten. Many men had long, thin faces and intense eyes. Across the street, a short, thickset man seemed to be in charge of repairs. He could be one of Specs’ men, he could be one of Murrill’s caretaker thugs, he could be a contractor.
Gatling walked to the old brick building the Maxim Company owned, on Quincy Street. It was out of the way and it took him a while to find it. The building, with bars on the windows and an iron door, was sandwiched between two small manufacturing companies. One made buttons, the other harness. A FOR SALE sign was nailed across the name of the original owner of the Maxim building: ELBERT PINCUS MINING SUPPLIES. It dated back to the Gold Rush of ’48.
He raised the pitted brass knocker and an eye looked at him through a peephole. He held up the key Colonel Pritchett had given him. Barking dogs scraped at the inside of the door.
“Open it then,” a voice said. Bolts went back. The voice told the dogs to heel. “Down, you mad bastards.”
Gatling turned the key in the lock, and a middle-aged man with a shotgun bolted it after him. The dogs crawled across the flagged floor and sniffed at Gatling’s boots.
The caretaker looked fondly at the dogs. “They’re crafty hounds, they know you work for the company. Leave the man’s boots alone, you slobbering creatures. Mister, I take it you want to look in the vault. It’s in the cellar. I’ll show you.”
The cellar had gaslight, a stone floor, a huge vault built into the back wall. Tons of steel and concrete had gone into making the vault. It would contain just about any explosion no matter how powerful. The colonel had repeated the combination until Gatling had it firmly in his head. Dogs and man waited for him to get the door open. He wondered what the caretaker would do if he got it wrong.
Gatling yanked on the handle and the door swung open without making a sound. The vault smelled of guns and gun grease. The Hotchkiss gun was still in its crate. A box of dynamite, with nipples and fuses, stood on the bottom shelf of a wooden rack.
Gatling was thinking the Dixon was wooden-hulled and it wouldn’t take much dynamite to sink her. He took a few more sticks than he needed. No telling when they’d come in handy.
The caretaker closed the vault and spun the lock. “You here all the time?” Gatling asked him.
“All the time, day and night. Wouldn’t do to leave this stuff unattended. If I’m asleep, the dogs will wake me. A boy from the store delivers everything I need. Never have to go out. It’s a nice, quiet life.”
“You’ve got a point,” Gatling said.
That night, eating a steak in a place called Mulligan’s, he wondered if Murrill would show up for Specs’ wake. At least one or two of the surviving Ducks had to know him; there was bound to be some resentment if he stayed away. Whatever else they were, the Australians were fierce, daring men, and too much caution in a leader, especially a leader who aimed so high, would not be respected. For Murrill that would be a serious loss of face, something that might take him down a notch or two. Yet, as the colonel said, Murrill was one of a kind and might do as he pleased.
Gatling went to Specs’ wake. Nobody had seen him during the massacre; he had been shooting from shadow into glaring light. There had been absolute panic. There was some risk in attending the wake, but he decided it was worth it. If he learned what Murrill looked like, he could make plans to kill the bastard. According to the Pinkertons, Murrill talked with some kind of Louisiana Creole accent. His mother had been a dark-skinned Creole and the boy grew up in New Orleans speaking French. Not much to go on, it was better than nothing. Dark skin—maybe—and a Creole accent—maybe. But Murrill had been behind bars for thirty years and could have lost his accent in all that time.
Gatling wore a dark gray suit, a hat, a blue shirt with loosely knotted tie. Inspecting himself in a mirror, he decided he looked like nothing in particular. That was the idea. He left the Colt .45 and the Borchardt with the machine gun. Flatfoots and bodyguards would be searching the mourners before they went in to pay their respects.
A policeman searched him, then passed him on to a bodyguard, who did a more careful job. Carriages were lined up along the street. Elegantly dressed women lifted their skirts as they stepped down. Most were escorted by older men in shiny top hats. Lined up to get in, working stiffs and their women gaped at them. It looked like some Frisco nobs were not ashamed to be seen at Specs’ big send-off. Or were afraid not to be seen.
The nobs were passed through without being searched. Standing to one side of the entrance was a powerfully built man with long arms who knew most of them by name. He was most respectful as he greeted them. Gatling knew he was Mahaffy, Chief of Detectives. The kid off the ship had called him “the Irish Gorilla” and the description was right on the nose.
Mahaffy was a killer with a badge.