Hart the Regulator 9 Page 7

  ‘Enough.’

  ‘We want—’

  ‘You’ll take what you get supposin’ you’re lucky enough to get anything at all. Now make up your damned mind cause this stench is gettin’ up my nose and I’m likely to throw up any minute.’

  ‘Okay,’ said the man, ‘tell us what you wanna know.’

  ‘Out here?’ said Fowler. ‘Where everyone can see what you’re gettin’ for informing?’

  The camp leader gave one shrug of shoulders that were beginning to go to fat and turned around, pushing his way through the three taller men and leading everyone towards a shack over by the back boundary.

  There was little to tell that it was any different from the rest, save that there was more tin than wood in the construction and the side wall was painted with the name Deke in foot-high letters.

  ‘That you?’ Fowler asked, nodding.

  ‘Yeah,’ said the man and swatted at a sallow-faced woman who could have been any age between eighteen and thirty-five, clearing her out of the way. She ducked inside and immediately was greeted by the sound of children’s voices, demanding food with all the blind insistence of birds in a nest.

  Fowler told him what he wanted to know and Deke listened carefully, the three who formed his private army craning their necks to hear. But when Fowler had finished, the man’s face stayed blank until he’d scratched at his stubble and the spots that blotched his nose and cheeks for long enough to make something up. It was so obvious that Fowler shut him up with a shout of barely suppressed anger and told him if he wasted his time with stupid lies the money would disappear out of the camp with him and straight away.

  Deke moaned and cursed but stopped bothering to lie. He admitted he hadn’t seen anything of a kid who looked like Robert MacPhail hanging out with any Indian girl. Then he hunched his shoulders forwards and tried not to hear the clamor that was going on behind him, his woman trying to quieten down the kids’ hunger.

  Hart half-turned slowly and then made the rest of the movement fast. Three strides took him to the back of the adjoining shack and he seized tight hold of the arm of the kid who’d been following them. The kid kicked out as he was lifted off the floor, one of his feet landing low in Hart’s stomach. Hart continued to shake him until a rusty blade fell from one of the kid’s hands. Hart stared long enough into his face to make him look away and then dropped him heavily enough to wind him.

  ‘Get him out!’ called Deke to one of his men, and the youngster was hauled to his feet and dragged screaming across the dump.

  ‘How ’bout the money?’ Deke said, traces of self-pity showing through the bragging voice. ‘I told you all I could.’

  Fowler’s hand was still in his pocket and the shrill shouts of the children still came from the inside of the shack. He pulled out the bills and tossed them down into the man’s lap. A thick-fingered hand covered them almost before they’d landed.

  ‘Let’s get the hell out of here,’ said Fowler under his breath, turning towards the entrance to the dump and gesturing for Hart to follow. ‘Ain’t long before they realize that ain’t all I got on me an’ there’s about enough of ’em to get it, guns or no guns.’

  They walked out through the shacks as steady as they could, refusing any temptation to hurry and paying as little attention as they could to the men and women and kids who held out their hands and begged for food or money.

  Hart turned at the entrance and saw that Deke had come some yards of the way after them but no further. Fowler called him to hurry. He hesitated a moment longer, wondering why the tall man with long hair and black eyes wasn’t with the rest. Then he strode after Fowler and discovered the answer. Somehow the man had cut through the shanty town and made it out onto the winding road that led up from the wharf. He stood blocking their way, his eyes darker and more alive than ever, the wind off the ocean blowing his hair out in a black halo around his head. It wasn’t easy to decide if he looked more evil than insane.

  Chapter Eight

  He was still hanging onto the length of timber he’d been threatening to use as a club back inside the shantytown, only now it tapped against the outside of his leg harmlessly. He didn’t seem to have any other weapon, nothing that was stopping Hart and Fowler from simply pushing past and carrying on their way—nothing save the expression in his eyes, the sense about him of something strange, something other.

  ‘What you want, feller?’ asked Fowler, letting it be seen that his hand was back in his pocket and wrapped around the grip of his gun.

  ‘Talk.’ The answer was fast, breathless, accompanied by a worried glance over towards the camp.

  ‘What about?’

  ‘Kid.’

  ‘What kid?’

  ‘You said. In there. Kid.’ Another worried look sideways, worried and hasty.

  ‘What kid?’

  His eyes blazed. ‘You said. Kid with fair hair. Girl.’

  ‘What about him?’

  The wood held fast against his leg. ‘I know.’

  Fowler pulled from his pocket not the pistol but a few dollar bills. The effect was almost the same. ‘Tell me,’ Fowler said, but he was already backing away, more frightened of Deke and his particular form of primitive retribution than anything else.

  ‘Come,’ he said over his shoulder, speaking through a flurry of dark hair. ‘You follow.’

  Fowler shrugged at Hart, turned quickly the other way as a shouting set up at the other side of the dump. He nodded and Hart confirmed it and they both set off after the tall man who was half-running down towards the wharf. Short of the bay he turned sharp left, almost as quickly right and then left again, wanting to be certain that if Deke was following they had lost him. Ten minutes on he leaned against the wall of a warehouse and breathed: ‘Twenty dollars.’

  Fowler shook his head abruptly and his hand sliced the air in a brisk cutting gesture. ‘Five.’

  The dark eyes dilated. Fingers scratched against the planking. ‘Ten.’

  ‘Five.’

  The sickly stink of rotting tomatoes slid out from the warehouse.

  ‘Five.’ agreed the man. ‘Now.’

  ‘No. Later.’

  Hart watched the eyes begin to roll and thought that the detective had pushed too hard, stood too firm. But the man pushed himself off the wall and carried on in his previous direction, now quicker than ever, causing Fowler to trot. Within a hundred yards the detective was blowing hard and the air scratched up from his lungs angrily. Hart ran on ahead and grabbed the man by his shoulder, telling him to slow back down.

  He shook his head so that his hair flapped like wings.

  ‘Lose him,’ said Hart pointing back, ‘you lose your five dollars.’

  He slowed down. He led them into a run-down area back of Market Street, already beginning to fall down through natural decay aided by earthquake and fire. A sign, brightly painted and stuck in a mound of bare earth, proclaimed Pleasant Valley with hopeless optimism. They were on the block between Second Street and Third, a row of cheap hotels and rooming houses that made anyone who wasn’t broke or desperate quicken his pace and avert his eyes.

  The feller leading them slowed down.

  Stopped.

  His index finger pointed towards a buckled door partly covered with flaked yellow paint like it had some virulent fever. There was a pane of glass above the door that was thick with dust and dirt and cracked like a spider’s web. The sign hanging alongside declared Bay Hotel but the stench of the street blocked out the smell of the ocean.

  ‘He’s here?’ Fowler demanded.

  The man’s hand was out for his five dollars.

  ‘Is he here?’

  ‘Five.’

  ‘The kid first.’

  The eyes came suddenly open and Hart got ready to grab him, thinking he was about to take off down the street.

  ‘Top floor. He was there. Man with gray hair.’

  ‘What damned man with gray hair?’

  ‘They were there.’

  ‘When, for
God’s sake?’ Fowler reached up his hands and grasped his greasy shirt.

  ‘Upstairs. Top floor.’

  ‘I said when, you shit, not where!’

  He shook him some more and the feller looked down on him curiously as if whoever was being shaken was someone only distantly connected with himself. Hart wondered if he’d been taking peyote or something else.

  ‘Is he there?’ Fowler tried again, loosening his hold, shaking his head. The effort of keeping up made him cough again and he rubbed his throat below his beard.

  ‘Is the kid up there?’ asked Hart. ‘Up on the top floor?’

  ‘You said five dollars.’

  ‘An’ you promised the kid.’

  ‘Five dollars.’

  ‘Aw, Jesus!’ said Fowler, and stuffed the bills into the man’s hand. Immediately the fingers closed round them and he bolted between Hart and Fowler and down the street, making a right at the first intersection.

  Hart sighed and looked towards the hotel door. ‘What d’you think?’

  ‘I think we just got suckered out of five dollars.’

  But he pushed open the door nevertheless.

  ~*~

  The stairs lacked a banister rail, they were loose and creaked each time either man set down a boot; more than one tread in every four was missing. The doors to the left off each landing were padlocked on the outside or wedged shut with pieces of wood and tied with thin rope. When they arrived on the third floor they were almost used to the stench of cabbage and vomit, stale air, cats’ piss and sweat.

  A body lay against the landing wall, wrapped in a torn blanket, with a couple of fingers and a patch of brownish hair poking out. Hart leaned over it and lowered his head and heard faint breathing, the thinnest wheeze from the blanket-covered mouth.

  Fowler was examining the four doors. Three were locked, the fourth was open by six inches. Fowler glanced round to make sure that Hart was covering him and then used his foot to swing it back wide enough to be able to step through.

  Both men waited and nothing happened.

  Fowler shrugged and Hart drew his Colt and stepped inside. The air was thick and clogged with something he couldn’t immediately identify. And then he looked across at one of the three beds shoved up against the walls and he could.

  Everything that could have been stripped from the body had gone. A badly stained pair of long Johns and one wool sock without toes or a heel were all that remained. Scabbed blood was thick down the side of the face that showed and Hart was pretty certain that more would have coagulated underneath, sticking him to the striped mattress. His legs were thin as his arms should have been, the arms little more than faintly pigmented skin stretched across bones. From the way his mouth was open and the lips swollen and purple, somebody had been ransacking his mouth for a trace of gold in his teeth.

  Old bruises clung to his chest and the insides of his legs like sores that no longer had the strength to fester.

  Fowler gazed down at him for just long enough and then turned away, pulling the flask from his pocket. He took a couple of good swallows before passing it over to Hart but by then the flask was more or less empty.

  ‘How old d’you reckon he was?’ Hart asked.

  Fowler didn’t want to look again. ‘’Bout the right age.’

  ‘But it ain’t him?’

  Fowler gave a quick shake of the head. ‘Let’s get out of here.’

  They were leaving the room when they heard footsteps coming up the stairs. Right and left of the landing they waited, guns drawn. The man who showed at the head of the stairs and turned back fast was thin like a half-starved dog and wore a bandana knotted around his head, holding down a ravaged mess of gray hair.

  ‘Hold it!’ called Hart and took a couple of strides towards the end of the landing.

  The gray-haired man stopped and slowly turned. His tongue toyed nervously with the edges of his lips. He couldn’t take his eyes off the dull shine of the Colt’s barrel.

  ‘Who are you?’

  ‘Never mind.’ Hart motioned him back on to the landing and he came slowly enough, watching the gun all the while.

  He saw Fowler standing close by the open door and instantly began: ‘Ain’t nothin’ to do with me. Never even took nothin’ from him. Least, not less’n you count an old shirt he was wearin’. Not much left to it and what there was all bloodied up, you know, but I guess I’ll find a use for it. Sell it so’s I can …’

  He fell quiet under Fowler’s bearded stare.

  Hart moved in close at back of him, the Colt back in its holster.

  ‘Where’s MacPhail?’

  He jerked his head a little at Fowler’s gruff question, but nothing more.

  ‘Robert MacPhail.’

  ‘Robert?’

  ‘Sixteen. Sandy colored hair. Maybe freckled skin.’

  ‘What d’you say his name was?’

  ‘Robert MacPhail.’

  The gray head shook some. ‘Never knew ’bout the last part. Just Bob. Bobbie she called him.’

  ‘She?’

  ‘The girl.’

  ‘Indian girl?’

  Another shake of the head, surprise that the stranger in the shabby suit should know so much. ‘Part Apache she said. Pretty damned proud of it, too, though what she got to be proud of bein’ an Indian for I couldn’t never see.’

  Hart eased off the wall. ‘Where are they?’

  He turned and looked at him with empty eyes. ‘Been gone these two, three weeks.’

  ‘You ain’t lyin’?’ said Fowler.

  ‘Me? Not me. What reason’d I have for lyin’?

  Fowler gestured towards the door of the open room and the man set up his hand and shook his head vigorously. ‘I said, I ain’t got nothin’ to do with that. Nothin’. He kicked his toe down on to the boards and his eyes blinked faster. ‘You ain’t the law, are you?’

  ‘Sort of,’ answered Fowler.

  ‘Reg’lar law?’

  ‘Regular enough.’

  He lifted his head and breathed deeply through his mouth, drawing in all the smells of the building like he was used to them and they gave him some kind of nourishment.

  ‘What you want Bob for?’

  ‘His folks want him.’

  ‘Never said nothin’ ’bout no folks.’

  ‘Talk much, did he?’

  ‘Not much. Him an’ the girl, they whispered together times. Never knew what about.’

  ‘When you did hear ’em, what’d they talk about? They say anythin’ ’bout what they did? When they wasn’t here.’

  The man thought a few moments, his mouth working silently as he did so, as if rehearsing the words. ‘Bob, he was lookin’ for somethin’. Never did get it clear what. Somethin’, though.’

  ‘You got no idea what?’

  ‘Not a one.’

  ‘And the girl. What did she talk about?’

  ‘Never said much. ‘Cept to cuss. Cussed good for a girl. Good enough for any man. Tongue like a viper.’

  ‘That all? Just cussin’?’

  ‘She was onto Bob time to time.’

  ‘What about?’

  ‘Tryin’ to get him to leave Frisco. Go south. Bobbie, Bobbie, she’d say, let’s cut out of here and head out down towards the border.’

  ‘Reckon that’s what they did?’

  He shrugged his thin shoulders. ‘Who knows? Bob, he always told her it wasn’t time yet.’

  ‘What d’he mean by that?’

  ‘Hadn’t found what he was lookin’ for, that’s what I always figured. Whatever that was.’

  ‘An’ that’s how they spent their time? Searchin’ for some damn thing you don’t know ’bout?’

  ‘When they wasn’t doin’ what we all got to do.’

  ‘Like what?’

  The man looked at Fowler with surprise. ‘Hustle some money. Get somethin’ to eat. Drink. Get through another day. What else?’

  ‘How’d they do that?’

  ‘What Bob done, I don’t know. Stole w
hat he couldn’t find, I guess. Sure was too proud to beg.’

  ‘And the girl?’

  ‘She done what girls always do.’

  ‘That what she done for you to let ’em sleep in your room?’

  The man shifted sideways, avoiding the detective’s eyes. He wet his lips and scratched the back of his head through the bandana. A couple of gray hairs fluttered on the still air.

  ‘They let me watch ’em. His voice was so low that neither man heard what he said.

  ‘Speak up,’ said Fowler. ‘What the hell you say?’

  ‘I said ... I said, they let me watch ’em.’

  ‘Watch?’ echoed Hart, uncertain.

  The man’s face shifted sideways. ‘Yeah, you know, when they was on the mattress and, well, doin’ it, they let me watch. Didn’t mind. Didn’t do ’em any harm now did it. Roof over their heads. I never asked ’em nothin’ towards the rent. Not a dime.’

  He looked first at Hart then at Fowler, as if expecting them to voice some approval for his generosity. He was wasting his time. Fowler told him to open up whichever room was his so’s they could take a look. Two mattresses were close together on a bare floor and not much else.

  ‘Sure you ain’t seen ’em since you said?’ asked Fowler again out on the landing.

  ‘Honest, mister. Wish I had. Good kid, was Bob.’ He nodded affirmation. ‘Good damned kid.’

  His eyes searched Fowler’s face in expectation. Fowler shoved a couple of bills down into his hand without looking.

  Then he pushed past him and went down the stairs as fast as he dared without punching them through. Hart followed close behind, as eager as the detective for what south of Market passed for fresh air. Whoever had been stretched out on the landing under the old blanket had either carried on sleeping through their questioning or simply died. Either way, there wasn’t anyone around to give a damn.

  ‘Where to now?’ asked Hart as soon as they hit the street.

  ‘Shit!’ growled Fowler. ‘I’m goin’ to fill me my flask and empty it again before takin’ a bath an’ washin’ off as much of this stink as soap an’ hot water’ll shift.’

  ‘What then?’

  ‘We get out on the tenderloin and foul it up all over. That’s what. Less you got a better idea?’