The Loner: Crossfire

ivory Golden Gate token was among them. The bartender couldn’t help but see it, but he didn’t react in any way as far as Conrad could tell. The man scooped up the twentyfive-cent coin Conrad dropped on the bar and drew the beer from a big keg. He used a paddle to cut off the head and slid the big glass in front of Conrad.

“Seen Floyd around tonight?” Conrad asked.

“Floyd who?”

“Hambrick. Floyd Hambrick.”

The bartender frowned and shook his head. “Don’t believe I know the gent.”

“Sure you do. He said he always drinks here.”

“Maybe he does, but I don’t know him by name, mister. What’s he look like?”

Conrad didn’t have Hambrick’s description. Turnbuckle’s source inside the police department hadn’t been able to come up with anything except the name. Conrad just shook his head disgustedly. “Ah, never mind. I’ll just have a look around.”

“You do that.”

Conrad picked up his beer and moved off into the crowd. He circulated for a few minutes, then set the schooner on an empty table and slipped out a side door. He wanted to keep a clear head, so he couldn’t be guzzling down suds every place he went. One of the saloon’s customers would snatch up the schooner and polish off the beer, probably by the time Conrad reached the street.

Over the next hour, the scene in the Bella Grande was repeated with minor variations in half a dozen other saloons. If anybody knew Floyd Hambrick, they weren’t admitting it. Nor did anyone react when Conrad flashed the ivory token.

He was in a place called Spanish Charley’s when he got his first break. The bartender, who wasn’t Spanish at all but rather a fat blond Dutchman, had professed never to have heard of Floyd Hambrick, and he didn’t blink at the ivory token.

Conrad still had it lying in the palm of his hand, along with some coins, when one of the women who worked in the place sidled up beside him. “Ooh, you’ve been to the Golden Gate.”

Conrad looked over at her and revised his original opinion. Despite the painted face and the low-cut dress that revealed her breasts to the upper curve of her brown nipples, she wasn’t a woman but rather a girl, no more than fifteen or sixteen years old.

He swallowed his disgust that a girl so young would be working in a place like that and put a leer on his face. It was probably what the girl was used to. He hadn’t missed what she’d said. “The Golden Gate, eh?” he repeated.

“Si.” The girl, at least, was Spanish, or Mexican, more likely. Maybe a descendant of one of the proud Californio families that had settled the area long before any gold-seeking Americans arrived. “The nicest place down here. Or so I have heard. I have never been there.” Her blush was visible even with her dusky skin. “It is not a place for one such as I.”

“Don’t say something like that, darlin’. You’re worthy of going anywhere you want to go.”

The bartender rested a hand with fingers like sausages on the hardwood. “Where she’d really like to go is upstairs with you, mynheer. Ain’t that right, Carmen?”

The girl batted her dark eyelashes at Conrad. “Si. I mean yes.” With a noticeable lack of enthusiasm, she pushed her breasts against Conrad’s arm and cocked a hip so it pressed against his, though without any real urgency.

“She will cost you only a dollar, mynheer,” the Dutchman went on.

Conrad pretended to think about it. The girl—Carmen, the bartender had called her, but more than likely that wasn’t her real name—was the first person he’d encountered who admitted to knowing anything about the carved ivory token. He wanted to talk more with her, and some privacy would probably make the conversation more productive.

With pretended reluctance, he slid a silver dollar across the bar. The coin disappeared into the Dutchman’s fat fingers. “She better be worth it,” Conrad said.

“Oh, she will, she will,” the bartender promised. “Won’t you, Carmen?”

“You will never forget me, senor.” The girl linked her arm with his. “Come with me.”

She led him toward a staircase on the other side of the room. Conrad looked up at the second floor and saw a large number of rooms arranged along a balcony.

They were rooms only in the strictest sense of the word. Thin wooden partitions a foot short of reaching the ceiling separated them, and curtains closed off the front. The room where Carmen was taking him wouldn’t provide much privacy, but it would be better than nothing.

She kept bumping her hip against him, seemingly out of habit, as they went upstairs. When they reached the balcony, she led him to the nearest room where the curtain was pushed back, but he steered her toward one farther along that had an empty room on each side.

“You’re going to be yelling in pleasure,” Conrad told her with the leer still on his face. “We don’t want to disturb anybody else.”

“Oh, senor, I am sure I will be,” she said listlessly. She didn’t argue as Conrad took her into the room and jerked the curtain closed.

As he turned toward her, she had already reached down and grasped the hem of her dress to pull it over her head. “Wait a minute,” Conrad said. “Just hold on.”

Carmen frowned at him in confusion. “You do not want me to take off my dress?”

“Not just yet. Why don’t you sit down?”

She shrugged and sank onto the narrow bed. It was little more than a cot, and it was the only piece of furniture in the room other than a small, rickety-looking table. The light came from gas fixtures hung over the balcony. Their glow spilled over the short partitions, making the room a little dim, but Conrad had no trouble seeing the puzzled expression on Carmen’s painted face as she looked up at him.

“What is it you wish me to do?” she asked.

“I thought we’d talk for a few minutes first. I like to get to know a girl before I—”

“Then you are an unusual man,” Carmen said. “Most men don’t want to know anything about me.”

“I’m not like most men. You should know that because I have that token from the Golden Gate, right?”

She nodded. “Oh, yes, only the best people go there. Well, the best people for this part of town, anyway. I have heard there are crystal chandeliers. Is this true?”

“I never paid that much attention to the lights.” Conrad dodged the question.

“And a long bar made of the finest mahogany. I would love to see it.”

“I’m sure you will, one of these days. Maybe I’ll take you. How’d you like to go sporting in there on my arm?”

“Oh, senor, that would be wonderful.” She sounded more like she meant it. She started to push her dress off her shoulders, obviously figuring she would disrobe in the other direction, since he’d stopped her from pulling the garment over her head.

“Hold on, hold on. It’s been a long time since I’ve been there. The Golden Gate’s on Kearny Street, right?”

Carmen shook her head. “No, no, on Grant, near where the Chinese live.”

“Oh, yeah, that’s right. On Grant Street. I told you it’s been a long time.”

Carmen reached for her dress again. “Please, senor, if we do not do what we came up here for, I will get in trouble.”

“I never said we weren’t going to.”

“But I am only allowed so much time with each customer—”

Conrad took the token from his pocket and held it up. “You have to show one of these before they’ll let you into the place, right?”

“Into the private rooms on the second floor, yes, or so I have heard.” Carmen frowned again. “But you would know that, if you have been there.”

“I just wasn’t sure what the procedure was now, since I’ve been gone for a while.”

His explanation didn’t lessen the suspicion in her eyes. She stood up suddenly. “Did you bring me up here because you like me, senor, or because you are some sort of spy?”

“Spy?” Conrad repeated. “That’s crazy. I just—”