The sailors wearing their dress-blue uniforms came off the Union battleship with lively steps. Laughing and joking and looking expectantly toward the shore, they went down the pier to The Embarcadero. The whores knew of the ship’s arrival and waited bedecked in brightly colored clothing. The women went forward to meet the sailors and worked through them like a fish seiner. Few sailors escaped the women’s perfumed net.
Errin and Levi halted and backed against the front of a building to let the throng of seamen and whores pass. When the last pair had disappeared into the night, the two men moved on.
“That fellow can tell us where Mattoon’s saloon is,” Errin said. He gestured at a spindly, dapperly dressed man watching with a pleased expression after the whores and their catches. The man was a pimp, of that he was certain for he had seen a hundreds of them on the streets of London and Liverpool and knew their distinctive manners. The pimp would know every inhabitant of the street and most everything that happened on the waterfront.
They crossed the street and stepped upon the sidewalk beside the pimp. Errin caught the man by the shoulder with an easy grasp. “Friend, where can I find Brol Mattoon’s Porpoise Saloon?”
The man looked Errin and Levi up and down evaluating their clothing, and then cocked his thin face to regard them. “No need to go there for women,” the pimp said. “I can help you find the prettiest ones, any color, black, brown, red, or white and each one willing to satisfy two men about the city that I can see you both are.”
“We’re not looking for women,” Levi said. He wanted to find Mattoon quickly.
“But I can get ...”
Errin clamped hard on the man’s shoulder, digging in with the bony ends of his fingers and thumb. The man winced with pain. “Listen, pimp, we’re in a hurry,” Errin growled and leaned close. “I asked you a simple question, now where’s Mattoon’s Porpoise Saloon? Answer quick or I’ll break your head against the wall of this building.” He dug deeper into the man’s shoulder.
The pimp shrank under Errin’s hurtful grip. “Down that direction five blocks,” he said and pointed with his free arm along the street weakly lit by gaslights. “Just beyond Vallejo Street.”
“Have you seen Mattoon tonight?” Errin asked in the off chance the man had.
“Not tonight.”
“All right. Now get on your way.” Errin released the man.
The pimp hastened off.
* * *
Levi and Errin checked the Porpoise Saloon through the door that opened out onto The Embarcadero. The saloon was huge and jam-packed with patrons. Large chandeliers, each holding several lighted oil lamps, hung from the ceiling and cast a yellow illumination down on the drinking, gambling throng. The broad center of the place held many tables, every one full. A bar crowded with men standing elbow to elbow lay on the right. At the far end of the saloon was a raised platform where a band consisting of a drummer, a fiddler, and a man pumping an accordion played for half a score of dancing, promenading couples. Several men and saloon girls were on the upstairs balcony and watching down at the main floor.
“I hope the bastard’s here,” Levi said.
“We’ll soon know,” Errin said and moved through the door.
They made their way across the room and shoved up to the bar. One of the men pushed aside, turned and glared at them. When he saw their taut, angry faces, he looked away.
“A cold beer,” Errin told the bartender. “And one for my partner.”
“Have you seen Mattoon?” Levi asked the man as he turned away.
“No. Sometimes he don’t come, and when he does it’s always late. But if he comes, he’ll sit at that big table over there near the wall.” The man made a halfhearted gesture with his hand.
The table was at least twice as large as any of the others and set off by itself. Three men with mugs of beer in front of them sat talking among themselves. All were dressed in the clothing of waterfront workers with billed seamen caps. A saloon girl came past and spoke and smiled at one of the men. He said something in reply. The woman laughed and walked off swinging her hips.
The bartender returned with the beer. Errin handed him some coins. “I reckon those fellows at the table keep order in the saloon?” he said.
“They do the bouncing, except when Mattoon’s here. He’s a brawler and likes to use his fists. And he’s good with them.” The bartender moved away in response to a call from down the bar.
“Didn’t you tell me Mattoon’s men threatened to burn us out if we didn’t pay?” Errin asked Levi.
“Among other ways to hurt us.”
“Men who own things that’ll burn shouldn’t threaten others with fire. This place is made of wood. Let’s look around back there in the rear.”
Carrying their beers, Levi and Errin moved slowly away from the bar and made their way past the card tables to a partially open doorway in the rear wall of the saloon. They glanced about at the patrons and found none were paying them any attention. At the big table, Mattoon’s men were talking to a woman.
Errin looked through the door and saw a stairway leading down, to a basement storeroom he judged. “I’ve got an idea,” Errin said to Levi. “Stop anyone who tries to come down after me.” He thrust his mug of beer into Levi’s hand.
“How?” Levi asked.
“You’ll think of a way.”
Errin stepped to the door and shoved it wide. He started cautiously down, his path lighted by a lantern hanging from one of the joists of the main floor above. He reached the bottom and peered around. Numerous bottles of whiskey were stored on shelves along three walls. Kegs of beer were stacked along the fourth wall.
In the center of the basement, four pairs of wooden posts spaced some eight feet apart were set solidly in the hard dirt floor. Wrist manacles were fastened to one post of each pair, and leg manacles to the opposite posts. Between the posts, the dirt floor was worn and scuffed. Errin knew the posts for what they were, prisons for men. The seaports of England had their share of shanghaiers. Many of the shanghaiers there, like Mattoon obviously was here, chained their victims between posts and in this manner held them captive until they were forced onto some outgoing ship. Damn foul business.
He began to grab bottles of whiskey, and breaking off their necks by smashing one against another, poured the highly flammable contents on the remaining bottles stored in the basement. Then from a bottle, he dripped a stream of the liquid to the bottom of the steps leading up to the main floor of the saloon. To lengthen the time period of his fuse, he took a sheet of newspaper found in a comer on the floor and twisted it tightly lengthwise. He placed one end on the whiskey-soaked earth. The other end was lighted with a match. He hustled up from the basement.
He slowed at the top of the stairs, and leaving the door open, stepped out into the saloon. He took his beer from Levi.
“What’d you do down there?”
“Started a fire.”
“What’s there that’ll burn?”
“Gallons upon gallons of whiskey.”
“That damn stuff will explode when it gets hot,” Levi said anxiously. “Best we get out of here.”
“Don’t be in a hurry. We’ve got too be sure the fire happens. We want Mattoon to know we were here.”
“How’re we going to let him know that?”
“Why we’ll tell the bartender as we leave,” Errin said with a chuckle.
Levi looked to see if Errin was joking, and saw he was deadly serious. He went with his wild friend as they wound their course slowly back to the bar.
“Another pair of cold beers,” Errin told the bartender.
“Right.”
The beer came and Errin paid. He lifted his mug to Levi and winked. “Here’s to a hot time in the old town tonight.”
They watched across the milling crowd of men and women to the doorway leading to the basement storeroom.
“Soon now,” Errin said in a voice that only Levi could hear. “I think it’ll take about two or three minutes for the unopened bottles to get hot enough to explode.”
A tendril of gray smoke drifted out of the basement door in the rear wall. It stretched and floated up toward the saloon’s high ceiling. More smoke poured into the saloon until there was a small cloud near the door. The fire was now burning too strongly to be put out. The real inferno should soon erupt.
“Bartender,” Errin called along the bar, “I think something is burning there in the back of the saloon.”
The bartender hastily looked. “Sure as hell ‘ppears so,” he said. He hurried out from behind the bar and roughly shoved a path to the back of the saloon. He disappeared into the smoke now spewing strongly from the doorway. An instant later he plunged back into view. “Get over here,” he shouted at the men at the big table and motioned frantically for them to come.
Several patrons had noted the bartender’s actions and had followed him with inquisitive eyes. Now they saw the smoke streaming into the saloon.
“Fire!” a woman screamed in a high, scared voice.
The shock of the call rippled through the crowd. All voices died. The music ceased. Silence fell everywhere, and held for a stunned second. Then a mighty roar of shouts of “FIRE” rang against the rafters. A stampede started for the front entrance.
“What now?” Levi asked.
“We should roust out all the lovers upstairs that didn’t hear the alarm,” Errin said, nodding at the second floor where the women had bedrooms. “We don’t want to let anyone get hurt except Mattoon, or his men.”
They mounted the stairs to the balcony and moved along flinging open the doors to the saloon girls’ rooms. Three were locked and these they kicked open. “Get out,” they told the startled, naked occupants. “The saloon’s on fire.” The men and women snatched up their clothing and fled.
Levi and Errin followed the fleeing people down from the balcony. As they reached the main floor, the building shook with a violent explosion. The chandeliers jumped on their chains and swung violently. A fraction of time later, an even larger explosion crashed and the floor buckled and heaved upward. Errin and Levi were flung roughly against the wall.
Errin straightened and looked at Levi. His comrade was getting to his feet. He seemed to be unhurt. “Run for it!” he shouted.
The two men darted from the building. The roof collapsed with a crash at their heels. They pulled up quickly in the edge of the throng of people who had escaped the saloon before them.
“So much for a job well done,” Errin said to Levi.
“So good that it almost got us,” Levi said.
Errin looked around at the crowd that was shocked to silence by the suddenness of the fire and explosions. Where was the bartender? He saw the man standing with two of Mattoon’s other men and staring woefully at the demolished building. As they watched, flames broke into view licking up through the jumble of beams and boards and broken furniture. Smoke and sparks spiraled skyward.
Errin moved to stand beside the bartender. “Exploding whiskey makes a hell of a fire,” Errin said.
“Yeh,” said the bartender. Then he quickly looked at Errin. “What do you know about the fire? Who are you?”
“Tell Mattoon that Scanlan and Coffin were here.” Errin pivoted about and followed by Levi, went into the crowd.