Hart the Regulator 9 Read online

  Fowler shook his head.

  ‘Three dollars. You don’t want to pay that go somewhere else!’

  Her nose was broad and flat while the rest of her face were those of a white woman. She flicked her gaze from one man to the other and crossed one arm beneath her breasts.

  ‘Two dollars,’ she said.

  Fowler shook his head.

  ‘Two …’

  ‘More.’

  ‘More?’

  ‘Maybe five. Ten.’

  Her eyes were wider now and a sharper fear was rising inside her. She thought of calling out, but knew no one would come to her aid. She wondered how far she’d get if she ran and knew the answer only too well. The knife was below her pillow and she could slit the tall one’s throat before he could draw his gun. That still left the other, the one with the beard. She sat slowly down on the bed, allowing her left hand to slide cautiously towards the soiled pillow.

  ‘What you want to do?’

  Fowler looked back at her, waiting.

  ‘No pain. And no animals. I won’t do anything with animals. Go down the street. There’s a girl does it with a mule. Go …’

  ‘Where’s Robert?’ Hart asked quietly.

  It was as if he’d shouted full in her face. She rocked back on the iron bed and gripped the mattress tight.

  ‘Where is he?’ asked Fowler from the doorway.

  ‘Who?’

  ‘Robert MacPhail.’

  ‘I don’t know who …’

  ‘Don’t lie!’ Fowler came forward from the doorway and she saw what might be her only chance. Her fingers darted for the knife as she leapt to her feet. Like a wildcat she sped at Fowler, the sharp blade aimed upwards to the exposed inches of flesh below his beard. She hadn’t anticipated that such a clumsy-looking man would be able to move so fast. Fowler weaved the top of his body sideways as his arm slammed upwards against her elbow. The knife drove wide of his head and he punched underneath it, his fist thumping into her ribs below the heart. All the wind went out of her as he careened back towards the bed and rolled across it, the knife thrown from her hand.

  When she crawled to her knees at the far side of the bed she found that she was staring down the barrel of Hart’s gun.

  Fowler waited for her to regain her breath and she crouched there like a caged creature, making hissing sounds as she stared back at him with hate brimming through her.

  ‘Okay, Wes.’

  Hart uncocked the pistol and returned it to his holster. Fowler set one of his boots on the edge of the bed and gave himself a drink from the flask. He offered it to the girl and she spat back at him. Fowler put the flask slowly back into his pocket and showed her ten dollars.

  ‘We’ll find him. We found you and we’ll find him. All it’ll take is time. You help us the money’s yours and we find him faster. If you don’t …’ He glanced round at Hart suggestively. ‘You were with him for quite a time. Maybe you still are. Maybe you’re doin’ this …’ Fowler looked around the room with clear distaste ‘… for him.’ He shrugged. ‘I don’t know. I just want to see him, talk to him. Nothin’ more.’

  The girl’s breathing was returning to normal. Her fear was fading now and so was her reluctance to talk. The affection she had for the boy was strong, but so was the lure of ten dollars. And maybe more.

  ‘Why you want Robert?’

  Fowler breathed out a sigh. He knew he was there. ‘His mother wants to see him.’

  ‘He hates her.’

  ‘It’s that way sometimes with kids. He’ll get over it.’

  She shook her head. ‘He hates her.’

  ‘Why?’

  ‘You don’t know?’

  ‘No.’

  Her hand reached towards the money. It occurred to Fowler that he’d spent most of his time giving out cash to people but he didn’t care; it was Mrs MacPhail’s money and not his. He let her take five dollars and held on to the rest.

  ‘Because of his father,’ she said.

  ‘His father’s dead.’

  Again she shook her head. ‘No.’

  ‘Who says?’

  ‘Robert.’

  ‘It gets that way with kids, too. He’ll get over that as well. Maybe.’

  ‘He’s alive. Down south of here. Salinas. Somewhere there.’

  Fowler sat on the bed and she backed away. ‘You told him that. You told him because you knew he wanted to find his father and you wanted to get him out of Frisco. You made it up.’

  ‘No!’

  ‘Sure you did.’

  ‘No, Robert, he …’

  They were interrupted by an angry shout and a man who came crashing through the door wielding a club. He was wearing a thick blue sailor’s jacket and had a woolen hat pulled down over his head. He could have been the girl’s pimp or a regular customer who’d lost his patience with the length of time she was taking. His mouth opened to yell something and the club began its upward swing. Hart swiveled on his left foot and hammered the barrel of his Colt against the man’s forearm. Metal crunched against bone and the shout of anger was transformed into a scream of pain. Hart seized him by the back of his coat and threw him against the side wall, making the thin shack shudder. The intruder’s head jolted backwards and Hart pulled away the woolen hat before slamming the reversed butt of the pistol on to the top of his skull.

  It was all over inside a minute and the Apache girl could do nothing but stare in surprise. Fowler, too, was pretty admiring.

  ‘Know him?’ Hart asked, the man in a heap on the floor.

  The girl’s face was wide with concern. ‘He owns this place. Many places.’

  ‘You were workin’ for him?’ asked Fowler.

  ‘Sort of.’

  ‘No more you ain’t.’

  He was on his feet and had hold of her arm. At first she struggled but there wasn’t any point. When he came round he was likely to take his temper out on her like he’d already done a few times before. And now they’d found her, these two weren’t about to let her go.

  ‘Where we goin’?’ asked Hart, looking past the edge of the tattered curtain into the street outside.

  ‘We can’t take her back to the hotel, that’s for sure.’

  ‘You don’t have to take me anywhere!’

  ‘We still got business to settle,’ Fowler snapped.

  ‘How ’bout a bar?’

  Fowler shrugged. ‘Sure.’

  The heap on the floor groaned and shifted a little until Fowler planted a kick alongside his temple and after that he was still again.

  They hustled the girl out of the crib between them and headed towards Broadway. There was a small bar that Fowler visited from time to time; fair bourbon and better-than-average steaks, a piano player who didn’t play too fast and who had a fine rolling left hand. The Irish barman threw a drunk off the back table and wiped it down for them, bringing Fowler his bourbon before asking the others what they wanted. He gave the girl’s appearance – her face and her scanty clothes – a couple of glances but they didn’t rate more. He didn’t stay in business minding other folks’ affairs.

  Fowler took a good pull at his drink and leaned heavily forward, asked the first question.

  Chapter Ten

  The way the girl told it, Robert MacPhail had gone as far undercover in San Francisco as he could. Worried that his mother would do right off what she’d finally got round to hire someone to find him and drag him back—the kid had burrowed deep into the city’s rotten underbelly and stayed hid. He’d made a living as best as anyone could. When the little money he’d been able to steal had run out, he’d resorted to the usual ways of putting food in his mouth and keeping some kind of shelter over his head. Some nights that didn’t matter a damn and Robert would sleep in the open on the damp wood of the wharfs or join others in the furled sails of boats anchored in the bay. When the weather got rough and the mist came in thick off the ocean it was different and he went the round of flophouses and shanty towns along with every other drifter there was.

/>   That was how he’d met the girl. She woke up one morning with cramp along one leg and her neck stiff from a draught and found someone’s body squashed up against hers. Not in any kind of sexual thing, simply another person searching for warmth. She’d dragged her leg out from underneath his and sat rubbing life back into it; spoken to him when’d he woken up and the two of them had set off to steal bread from one of the bakeries without discussing it first. They simply did it because it seemed the thing to do.

  They were together a couple of weeks and somehow ran into the man with gray hair Hart and Fowler had already run down. He offered them the use of an old mattress on the floor of his room and the girl had questioned him about how they were going to pay him for it – knowing that in their world like any other no one gives anything for nothing – guessing what his answer would be. She figured he’d want to spend time with her and if not with Robert, who was certainly good-looking enough for any man whose fancies were set that way. But taking part wasn’t what he wanted.

  Exactly what he did want he explained to the girl one time when Robert was out trying to sell a watch he’d lifted from someone’s pocket the previous evening.

  What he wanted to do was watch. Not openly, not with the boy knowing. Only when they got tight up against one another and the two of them got hot and the boy got hard, then all she had to do was find a way of sliding the thin blanket off the pair of them without Robert realizing.

  That was all: that was what the girl did, not minding the harmless old man’s snatch of pleasure as Robert spent himself on the dark honeyed skin of her belly.

  They would have been there still if Robert hadn’t swung his head round too fast and seen the eyes watching them, eager and excited in the close stink of the small room.

  It had been all the girl could do to prevent Robert from beating the man to a pulp. And by that time, he was anxious to move on anyway, more and more certain that his mother had lied to him all those years before; all the more certain that his father was alive. Not just alive, but close. He had nothing to go on other than his feelings—until he overheard a woman talking about a drifter she’d run across down Salinas way who’d given her the best time she’d had in years. A good-looking gambler who’d drunk champagne out of her shoe and insisted on lifting her on top of the piano and accompanying himself while he sang a serenade; a lover who had the energy of a man ten, fifteen years his junior and who had the manners to finish last and with a smile still on his face; a man who said his name was Jordan MacPhail.

  The girl had wanted to leave the city anyway and she’d persuaded Robert that he ought to head south for Salinas right away; that the two of them ought to go together.

  Okay, Robert had agreed, that’s what we’ll do. But we’ll do it right. We’ll be ready. So they’d both stolen and hustled as many hours of the day as they could, the girl pulling in as many men as she could and stealing from their pockets even as they were bent drunkenly over her.

  When are we leaving? had been her impatient question, morning after morning as Robert counted their stake.

  And one more day, one more night, had been his reply.

  She saw her escape in sticking with him and waited for him to say the word. If he did, she never heard it. Robert snuck away in the middle of the night and took every cent that they’d scraped together with him. All he left her was a pair of worn-out boots and some extra space on the floor.

  Fowler and Hart listened to the story and looked at her, arms resting on the table. In her face a mixture of pride and pain. She was half Apache, half white. Neither wanted her. It was doubtful that she was much more than sixteen years old.

  ‘What’ll you do?’ Hart asked. ‘You goin’ to go find him?’

  ‘What for?’ she spat back. ‘So’s he can run out on me again? Take what I got an’ run?’ She wiped the back of her arm across her mouth. ‘It ain’t so great down there anyway. I’m better off stickin’ where I am.’

  Fowler grunted.

  Hart thought of the crib where they’d found her, with the tin bowl and strip of muddy oilcloth and the semen-stained bed; he remembered the dirty rooms and the open cesspools swimming with disease and the naked kids playing in puddles of excrement; remembered the whores’ customers in dress suits and the gilt-framed oil paintings and a dinner served on bone china plates and eaten with solid silver knives and forks. He couldn’t look the girl in the face any longer. He stood up and went over to the curved bar and drank whiskey too fast until Fowler had slipped some of Lydia MacPhail’s money into her small brown hand and she’d gone back out into the street.

  Still he didn’t go back to the table. Not till he’d drunk enough to clear all those things from his mind. Clear them or smear them into such a muddle and mess that he didn’t recognize them anyway. Fowler didn’t ask him about what he’d been up to, just nodded and tipped the bourbon bottle over his glass and had one more. And one more. And one more. By the time the barman got to wondering if they were intending leaving or simply sliding under the table to be swabbed up in the morning with the vomit and sawdust, both men were only barely able to stand unaided.

  The air was surprisingly cold outside and most of the clamor of the night had faded. The street was ridged and uneven and they began to walk downhill, using one another for support, the breeze clearing their minds just enough for them to know which direction they wanted.

  Fowler grumbled something about setting out for Salinas at first light and Hart half-thought that was a pretty stupid thing to be saying.

  That was when he saw them: strung out across the road from sidewalk to wall. Not moving, simply standing there, hands pushed down into belts or the tops of their pants—those hands that weren’t occupied with other things. The couple of street lights still working picked out young faces, a few beginning to show the first signs of a beard or a thickening of hair across the upper lip. They were not moving. Nonchalant. Light glinting on blade or broken sword, an open razor and the barrel of a gun.

  Not moving.

  Hart shook Fowler and watched the detective’s eyes open and blink and close again as he slumped forward and would have fallen there in the street if Hart hadn’t caught him.

  Not moving: one of them threw back his head and laughed, high and wild like a young jackal.

  Hart turned his head and saw more of them had silently slipped into position behind. Six or seven spread wide in a curve across the street.

  Not moving.

  ‘Fowler! Wake the hell up!’

  The heavy body shook itself and eyes peered dimly out, vaguely aware now of what was going on.

  ‘Give ’em some money,’ said the slurred voice. Throw ’em your gun. Maybe they’ll let us through.’

  ‘Like hell!’

  ‘What else you goin’ to do? Fight ’em all?’ Fowler started laughing, lurching away from Hart across the street, arms flapping from his sides. ‘Gonna fight ’em all, huh? All these fine young men? That what you’re gonna do, huh? Huh?’

  Hart gazed at Fowler in disgust till the same boy’s laugh slashed across his attention. The larger bunch of them were starting to move slowly forward, the rearguard remaining where they were. He could see their faces more clearly now, see that they ranged in age from sixteen or seventeen down to eleven and twelve. Faces that were thin with hunger and eyes that were mean and old ahead of their time. Twenty yards off now and starting to tighten their formation, closing in. Hart saw a patched leather vest, worn cotton shirts, again the flash of the razor blade and the jagged edge of an old seaman’s sword tight in some kid’s bony fingers.

  ‘Give ’em everythin’ you got!’ called Fowler, his drunken body staggering this way and that, haphazardly towards them. ‘Give it to ’em! Every damn thing! Let ’em have it!’

  Suddenly he was no longer rolling and his voice was no longer slurred. He straightened and his pistol was clear of his pocket and the first crack of gunfire stopped the gang in its tracks, one of them staggering back with a slug high in his chest.


  Hart threw back the Indian blanket and revealed the sawn-off at his belt. The line of kids started yelling and clamoring and rushed towards the two of them. Hart pulled the Meteor up from his belt and rested the barrel over the curve of his left arm. He waited until a bunch of them were no more than ten yards off before squeezing back on the triggers. Ten-gauge shot carved into a welter of arms and legs as from the corner of one eye Hart saw Fowler snap off a couple more shots before pistol-whipping one of the marauding kids to the ground.

  Hart tossed the shotgun into his left hand and swerved round in a crouch. The Colt sped into his hand and he dropped two of the rear group and narrowly missed a third before they turned tail and fled up the street.

  He sensed someone closing on him fast and swung the shotgun back round, catching the kid along the jawline and splintering the bone. A razor came for his head and he ducked back from its vicious swing, firing the Colt from close range. The impact of the, bullet hurled the boy into the air and before he landed in a sprawling heap, Hart had dropped the pistol into its holster and snapped the shotgun open, thumbing fresh shells down into the chambers.

  Fowler broke a kid’s arm by slamming the back of the elbow down hard against his thigh and holding on tight. The broken length of sword clattered to the ground and Fowler rolled the youth away and stood straight.

  Hart had the shotgun leveled and ready but there wasn’t anyone else to use it on. Apart from the dead and the crying, the street was empty again.

  He slotted the weapon back down into his belt and swung the blanket back to cover it. ‘Had me fooled good,’ he said.

  ‘Meanin’ what?’

  ‘Figured you drunk out of your head for sure.’

  Fowler shook his bear-like head and growled: ‘Drunk! Course I was drunk! You don’t reckon I can fight like that when I’m sober, do you?’

  Hart shook his head and stepped over a writhing body, following the detective down the hill towards the center of the city.

  ~*~

  The first glimmer of light through the hotel window assaulted his eyes. The space between his head throbbed like a hollow drum and his mouth tasted like a three-month saddle blanket. When anything of any clarity occurred to him it was that Fowler woke up in a state like that most mornings of his life: as a thought it wasn’t very profound but it gave him a shade of satisfaction.