GATLING HAD TO stand in line with the common folks. Once inside, though, he could stay, provided he wanted to drink. The bar was open and the regular bartenders and waiters were back on the job. Specs lay in state in a bronze casket on a trestle where the big banquet table had been. He had taken most of the bullets in the chest; two bullet holes in his face had been puttied and painted over. The undertakers had done a fine job and Specs looked better than he had in life. Men stood three-deep at the bar and all the tables were occupied and it must have been the biggest night the Queen’s Garter had seen since it opened.
Chinamen and men who looked Irish were there, and many thugs from other gangs. A woman in a red dress lifted her veil and bent over the casket and kissed Specs on the cheek. She was led away by her escort, an old gent with a silver-headed cane.
Gatling fought his way to the bar and got a stein of beer, then stood in back of the bar drinkers where he could watch what was going on. The master of ceremonies bounced out onto the stage and told the crowd to get ready for the famous Queen’s Garter Girls, the most high-spirited, high-kicking dancing girls in San Francisco or anywhere else. The band blared, the crowd applauded.
A piano player with the usual straw hat, candy-striped shirt, and sleeve garters took over after the dancing girls left the stage. He kept things lively with a medley of breakdowns and syncopated marching tunes.
A drunken Irishman said to Gatling: “Tis a wonder ol’ Specs don’t raise up and do a Negro strut.”
Gatling moved away from him. Chief Mahaffy came in and gave the place the once-over. Five men got up from their table and went into Specs’ office, behind a red curtain. Mahaffy went in after them. None of the five men was five-ten—they were taller or shorter—but maybe Murrill was in there, waiting.
About ten minutes later, a man who was obviously a detective came in and asked a waiter where Mahaffy was. Gatling was close enough to hear what he said. The detective was flushed and nervous. Somebody answered the detective’s knock, Mahaffy came out of the office, and the detective whispered in his ear. His face turned black with anger and he followed the detective outside.
Gatling nursed his beer until the five men came out of the office. The last man reached back to turn off the light. No Wilson Murrill. Gatling went back to his basement.
Going out to eat before Mulligan’s closed for the night, he learned why Mahaffy had left the wake so abruptly. Morning newspapers were already on sale. The first one he saw was headlined: FAMOUS ATTORNEY MURDERED/METCALF’S KILLER ARRESTED. The story went on to say that Eben Metcalf, one of the city’s leading lawyers, had been shotgunned to death in his bedroom on the previous evening. A young patrolman, J. F. Finn, had heard the shotgun blasts and tackled the killer before he could get away. The killer, Giuseppe DiSalvo, identified from a letter in his pocket, was subdued and taken into custody after a fierce struggle during which he suffered a number of head injuries inflicted by Patrolman Finn’s nightstick. DiSalvo, who spoke with a pronounced Italian accent, was now lodged in the city prison. Mr. Metcalf’s houseman, Michael Masters, was missing and was being sought by the police.
Metcalf was dead. The houseman had listened at the door. The blank-faced sneak had been planted there by Specs Margate. That had to be it. No one had seen Metcalf for months, but the houseman had stayed. It was a soft job and he handled the money. Metcalf had trusted him. After he’d told the Ducks about this stranger who came out of nowhere, he’d panicked and run. He had listened, then pieced Metcalf’s printed papers together, then hurried over to the Queen’s Garter with the news. Now he was in hiding or at the bottom of the bay.
Giuseppe DiSalvo was no Australian; he had arrived after the massacre, had been put to use. Murrill must have insisted that DiSalvo be sent to finish the job on Metcalf. Ripping out Metcalf’s tongue was crazy stuff, Old Country stuff. Murrill would regard the whole thing as unprofessional, even though the Ducks might argue that mutilating Metcalf would frighten every attorney in San Francisco, everyone who had resisted them in the past.
Gatling knew he was no longer a face in the crowd. Murrill knew what he looked like. A spy as sharp-eyed as Masters would describe him down to the last detail. All that was missing was his name. From now on he could wear different clothes, try to change his appearance, but the basic description remained.
Word would go out to the police and the gangs; his description would be passed on to every bartender, hotel clerk, barber, waiter, and whore in the city, and they’d all be looking for him, thinking of the big reward.
In a way, he was glad it was out in the open. Fact was, it was only a matter of time before somebody got onto him. The kid could give him away for the reward or by talking too much. And when the trombonist sobered up he might have some memory of the sunburned stranger who listened so intently.
He knew he should leave Frisco by any means open to him. Where would he go? If Murrill was in town for Specs’ funeral, there was nothing to be gained by going somewhere else. And he knew they’d be searching all over. All he had in his favor was they had his description, surely a good one, but no photograph.
He would go to the funeral, but keep far away from the gravesite and use binoculars. That wouldn’t work if they had the entire cemetery covered with spotters. Scouting from the roof of a nearby building was a possibility. But he didn’t know where the cemetery was. Like as not, it would be located in open country.
On Thursday, the afternoon papers reported that Giuseppe DiSalvo was going to plead innocent by reason of insanity. His lawyer, Bertram Abernathy, whose statement to the press was backed by the head of St. Martin’s Insane Asylum, stated that his client was seriously deranged—he heard voices—and was not responsible for his actions. Abernathy said he would petition the court to declare DiSalvo incompetent and order him confined to St. Martin’s for an indefinite period.
Or until they let him out the back door, Gatling thought. He wondered what had happened to the young bluecoat who bagged the Italian killer. No doubt he would be regretting it along about now. Probably no way he could have known the killer was “protected.” But they’d come down hard on him just the same.
It must have galled the shit out of the big-time police, the syndicate men in the department, when the young patrolman brought in DiSalvo, all bloody and dirty and confused. What was happening here? the Black Hander would be asking himself. What happened to the guarantee that the Black Handers could do as they pleased as long as the police were paid off.
Gatling could just about see Giuseppe with the handcuffs on, telling the desk sergeant that it was all a big mistake. But once DiSalvo was booked on suspicion of murder, there wasn’t much they could do about it. Later there would be whispered conferences; what in hell were they going to do?
But, even in San Francisco, murder was murder. A prominent attorney couldn’t be murdered and forgotten. In the end, it was up to the lawyers and the judge.
Gatling was sure they would find an understanding judge.
Late that night he took a cab to a street within a mile of the cemetery. It was dark and the driver didn’t get a good look at him, not that he did anything but yawn. Gatling walked the rest of the way.
The street was lined with new frame houses with picket fences and ratty little gardens in front. Fog dulled the few streetlights; trees dripped along the unfinished sidewalk.
He climbed over the cemetery gate. It was a small cemetery, but in the dark it wasn’t easy to find the freshly dug grave with the name MARGATE lettered on a cardboard sign. No buildings were near the cemetery, not even a house. A stone mausoleum with slit windows with glass in them stood a few hundred yards away. He forced the lock with the burglar’s jimmy and went inside, pulling the bronze door closed behind him. There were racks with spaces for eight coffins. Only one space had been filled. A faint, musty smell hung in the air.
He looked at his watch. Three o’clock. Nine hours to wait before they buried Specs at noon. He stretched out in one of the vacant racks and went to sleep.
Dim light awakened him. Eight-fifteen. Men were talking not too far away, and when he went to the window he saw cemetery workers cutting grass and raking gravel. Two gravediggers leaned on their shovels while they smoked.
He cleaned the binoculars and put them on the edge of the window. It was raining. Here and there puddles had collected. He hoped it would clear by noon.
Eleven-thirty. A lot of men in dark suits and slickers came into the cemetery and walked around. They fanned out from Specs’ grave and took up positions along the fence. They went by the mausoleum without checking the door. If one of them came back and found the lock broken, Gatling knew he would have to kill himself. He could shoot it out, but he couldn’t win. What they’d do, if they caught him, would be a lot worse than what they did to Metcalf.
Drawn by black horses with purple plumes, the hearse arrived at five minutes to twelve. The driver and the man beside him wore top hats, black and silver coats, black trousers with a silver stripe down the leg. Carriages followed, so many that those in back had to be left outside the cemetery gate. Accompanied by a tall man with white hair who might have been the Chief of Police, Mahaffy walked stiffly to the grave and stood with his hands clasped in front of him.
Gatling moved the binoculars so he could see the other mourners. He spotted the thickset man who had bossed the beer garden repairs. The thugs with him marked him as one of them. The woman in the red dress and the old man with the silver-headed cane were there. Thuggish-looking men walked to the grave in separate groups. Gatling knew the newspapermen by the notebooks they carried.
Several hundred people listen to three speakers. Kind words were being said about Specs. Last to speak was some kind of minister. Dressed all in black, he read or pretended to read from a Bible. The woman in red had to be kept from jumping into the grave after the coffin was lowered.
And then it was over.
Gatling was ready to give it up when he spotted a dark-faced man at the back of the crowd. Four men were with him. Gatling hadn’t seen him earlier because people were in the way. Now they were drifting away and for an instant Gatling got a good look at him. No forked beard, but his face was long, thin, dark. He could be Murrill, he could be the businessman who rented tablecloths to the Queen’s Garter. But the men with him were thugs; they had the stamp of the lawbreaker. They had a thuggish arrogance about them, a kind of swagger even when they were standing still. Then the thin-faced man turned quickly as if he sensed he was being watched. Gatling saw him disappear into the crowd, but there wasn’t a thing he could do about it.
He waited until the last carriage left.
Walking down to Fremont’s Wharf on Sunday morning, while it was still dark, Gatling knew that Murrill would be pushing hard for his capture. He’d push harder when he heard what happened to the Dixon. It had to be making money hand over fist; its destruction would cause a great loss of income. Obviously the syndicate would survive without it, but if he hit the syndicate long enough and hard enough, the cracks would begin to show.
Murrill wouldn’t want him killed until he’d been put through the wringer. It would never occur to someone as arrogant as Murrill that a man alone would set out to destroy him. From Murrill’s point of view, it would have to be a great conspiracy.
Five sticks of dynamite with fuses attached, bound together with adhesive tape, were inside Gatling’s shirt. Enough explosives to blow the old schooner to bits. The Dixon would sink in minutes. The men on board would go up with the ship. Those who jumped overboard would be eaten by sharks.
At seven o’clock he heard the steam launch coming in through the fog. The light was thick at that hour and the fog made it worse. If he could have picked a time, he would have made it three hours earlier. But if he didn’t go out on the launch, the only alternative was to row twelve miles in thick fog. Even if he wanted to row that far, how in hell would he explain the need to rent a rowboat so early on a chilly, gray Sunday morning?
The launch came in at reduced speed, then cut engines, bumping gently against the rope cushions that hung down from the dock. The kids on board cheered as a crewman jumped to the dock and secured the mooring lines.
Two men led the boys ashore; two more followed them. The boys were in high spirits, pushing and hitting and cursing. One of the men, a big Italian, warned them to be quiet.
“I break-a you ess you don’t-a stop-a shout,” he roared, wading in with a leather strap to restore order. A mean-looking kid, older than the rest, called him a dirty dago garlic wop, and was beaten savagely. Finally the kids and their keepers moved away from the dock.
By then Gatling was on board, flat under a tarpaulin that covered a stack of life preservers in the stern. The crewman cast off the lines and the launch headed out to sea, the chug-chug of its engine muffled by the fog. Up ahead a steamship was moving at a fair clip. The launch rocked in its wake before it outdistanced it and vanished.
The steam launch was manned by two sailors off the ship. “I’m ready for a second breakfast,” one of them said. “How’s about you?” The other man said he sure as hell was, and that was the only conversation they made all the way out to the ship.
They were hailed before they got close and they shouted back. After securing the launch with a few quick movements, they climbed on board. There were no sounds except footsteps pacing back and forth.
Gatling left the Colt .45 on the launch, then slipped over the side into chilly water. The sea was calm. Holding the cluster of dynamite sticks above his head, he swam one-handed along the side of the ship. He reached up as high as he could and fastened the dynamite with tape. He waited until the crewman up above reached the farthest point of his pacing before he took a sulphur match from his cap, struck it on dry wood, and set fire to the fuse. He was back in the launch, cutting the mooring ropes, before the fuse burned down to half its length.
The man on deck opened fire when Gatling let the launch drift before he started the engine and roared away from the ship at full throttle. A hard turn of the wheel and the launch was heading straight for shore. The man on deck continued to shoot without hitting anything.
When the dynamite exploded it made a dull orange flash in the fog, followed by a sound like rolling thunder. Long gone from the ship, Gatling felt the force of the explosion. For a few minutes there was shouting and a bell rang furiously. Then it got quiet and the ruffled sea was again as smooth as slate.
Just five sticks of dynamite had sent the Dixon to the bottom. The explosion was powerful enough to have been heard on shore, but when the searchers came they would find nothing but floating timbers. It might puzzle the Coast Guard, but Wilson Murrill would know. And if he got angry enough, he might get careless.
Gatling made good time, but didn’t take the launch to Fremont’s Wharf. Somebody was always about, even on a drizzly Sunday morning. At least the bums would be stirring, mumbling and scratching, with their tongues hanging out for the first drink of the day. He turned the launch and chugged along until he spotted a rotting wooden pier with weeds growing on it. Beside it was a waterlogged hulk that had sunk at its moorings with only the deck, wheelhouse, and masts above water. Gatling ran the launch in close, climbed up on the worm-riddled deck, and went ashore.
A derelict sleeping in the wheelhouse peered out through a broken side window and ducked back out of sight.
Gatling changed his clothes while coffee cooked on the gas stove. He didn’t like gas-stove coffee because it didn’t have a touch of woodsmoke in it. After he fixed a roast beef sandwich, he took the coffeepot off the stove. He was hungry after a satisfying morning’s work.
He walked up to the Telephone Exchange on Market Street and paid for a call. Beside the cashier was a clockwork timer that measured the length of the calls. The cashier took his money and reminded him that if he talked too long he would have to pay extra.
“Step into booth number three and I’ll ring you when it’s ready,” the cashier said.
Gatling opened the door to a wood and glass box that was too small for his size. Using the telephone was a fairly new thing, but there were people, mostly businessmen, who did it all the time. A businessman who didn’t have a telephone in his office was old-fashioned, too stingy, or too poor. The police had telephones, so had the newspapers. Gatling was telephoning a newspaper.
A bell rang and Gatling took the receiver off the hook. He had to put his mouth close to the part you talked into.
“Clarion, Steadman speaking,” a gruff voice said. “Something I can do for you? This is the crime desk. Murder and mayhem. If it isn’t news with the bark on, I don’t want it ... Sorry, my friend, you’ll have to speak up. This is a lousy connection. What was that you said?”
Gatling was calling Steadman because he remembered something he’d written about the Gold Street Massacre, so called. The man’s writing style was rough and slangy, nothing like the laborious drivel that appeared in most of the other papers. He seemed more interested in getting at the truth, risky though that might be, than turning out the usual bullshit.
Gatling raised his voice. “Let me talk first,” he said. “You can ask questions when I finish. I’m the man who killed Specs Margate.”
Steadman laughed. “You’re the fifth to confess since it happened. How did you do it? Snake venom, strangulation, or maybe you threw him out a window?” Gatling told him to shut up. Then he told him exactly how he did it. The knotted rope, the grapnel, breaking open the trapdoor, the escape into the alley.
None of this information had been released by the police. It hadn’t appeared in the newspapers.
“Go on,” Steadman said. He yelled at someone who was making too much noise.
Gatling said, “A few hours ago I blew up the schooner Dixon, anchored outside the twelve-mile limit. A new criminal syndicate headed by a Wilson Murrill operated a male brothel on the ship. Small boys, some as young as ten or twelve. Mahaffy, Chief of Detectives, gave it protection. Mahaffy was seen on the ship by one of the kids who knew him by sight.”
The reporter slid right past Mahaffy. “Who the hell is Wilson Murrill? I know every criminal in Frisco and his name doesn’t ring a bell. Are you sure of your information?”
Gatling said, “Murrill comes from New Orleans. He did thirty years in Anglo Prison for murder. You can check. His father was John Murrill, who tried to organize the Natchez Trace gangs back in the thirties. Caught and hanged. Now his son, Wilson, has been organizing all the Southern and Western city gangs and doing a good job of it. Until I showed up, Frisco was very good to him. Still is in lots of ways.”
“I still don’t know him,” the reporter said. “A criminal syndicate in Frisco! What syndicate?”
“You must have heard something,” Gatling said.
Steadman got foxy. “All right, there have been rumors. A word here, a word there, but nothing concrete. Still rumors. You say this Wilson Murrill has taken over, is taking over our homegrown gangs?”
“With the help of Black Handers from New Orleans. A new Italian organization, criminals from Sicily ... You heard of it. Good. Now you’ve got to listen carefully. The kids off the Dixon are in the city right now. A day off from dropping their pants. They’ve got four thugs watching them so they won’t run off. Can you do anything for these kids? They can’t go back to the ship. Where will they go?”
Steadman didn’t like being boxed into a corner. “What can I do? I’m just a hired hand here.”
“Not exactly,” Gatling said. “People read what you write. People respect you.” Gatling hadn’t the faintest idea what people thought of Jonathan Steadman. “Can you get these kids’ story in the paper by this afternoon? Get the public worked up about the plight of these homeless and abused lads? Make the Mayor and the Chief of Police take some kind of action? Frisco has a cast-iron stomach, but there must be a limit to what it can swallow without throwing up.”
“You put me in an awful bind,” the reporter complained. “It’s not up to me. The publisher has to decide.”
“Murrill won’t sue the Clarion if that’s what you’re thinking of. The paper can run a disclaimer in a box by itself, stating that the story is an accurate account of an anonymous telephone call. You can swear to that.”
Steadman cleared his throat and a sound like a sudden burst of wind came over the wires. “I wasn’t thinking about legalities,” he said. “I was thinking Murrill will kill me if he’s as bad as you say he is.”
A young policeman came in and spoke to the cashier. They laughed together and the flatfoot went into the long room where the operators sat in their high chairs.
“Murrill won’t kill you,” Gatling said. “When was the last time you heard of a reporter being killed for something he wrote? Even Murrill wouldn’t go that far.”
Steadman yelled for a little goddamn quiet. He was taking out his anxiety on somebody who couldn’t yell back.
“Easy for you to say,” he told Gatling. “Besides, it’s kind of a crazy story.”
“Didn’t I give you the Specs story straight?” Telephones had their uses, but were no good if you wanted to shake a man until his teeth rattled. Be patient, Gatling told himself. The man is nervous, so be patient.
“Nobody said you didn’t.” Steadman wanted to be the fastest pencil in the West. Now somebody was calling his play and he wasn’t so sure of himself. “It’s true we did hear some of the stuff you mentioned. The grapnel, the rope, so on. But Chief Mahaffy advised—warned—us not to print it. Mahaffy is a grafter, of course he is, but he gives us tasty dirt from time to time. Not about the gangs. Other dirt. Usually dirt about some honest man who likes liquor or women more than he should. The point is, we don’t want the Chief to get too mad at us.”
Gatling gave it another try. Now all the telephone call boxes were occupied and people were standing in line. An old man took out his watch and pointed to the time. Gatling ignored him.
“Mahaffy won’t be Chief of Detectives much longer,” Gatling said. “The dirt’s going to come out and he’ll be up to his neck in it. The Chief of Police may survive, Mahaffy not a chance. They’ll see him as a liability, an embarrassment, and let him go under. May not happen for a while, but it’s coming.”
“How can you be so sure?”
“I’m sure. Mahaffy is cunning, but he’s also stupid. Trouble with him is he thinks he can get away with anything. Only a stupid, arrogant man would let himself be seen on a ship like the Dixon. One last time. Will you print the story or not?”
Steadman took a deep breath and let it out. It sounded like a blacksmith’s bellows. “I’ll talk to the editor and he’ll talk to the publisher and the publisher will talk to his lawyers. It may not be easy to round them up on a Sunday morning. I promise I’ll do the best I can.”
Gatling was curious. “It doesn’t seem strange to you, talking to a mass killer?”
“Not a bit. I talk to killers all the time. I can’t tell you how many hangings I’ve attended. Many murderers are pretty nice fellows when they aren’t burying their wives in the cellar.”
“Thanks for listening to me,” Gatling said. “Goodbye, Mr. Steadman.”
“Hey, wait a minute,” the reporter said. “I don’t suppose you’d want to give your name.”
“Sure,” Gatling said. “It’s Pro Bono Publico.” Which was about all the Latin he knew.
Steadman laughed. “Call anytime, Mr. Publico.”