Текст книги "Gangway!"
Автор книги: Brian Garfield
Соавторы: Donald E. Westlake
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CHAPTER FIVE
Gabe watched the water go by. How could there be so much water in the world?
"There it is," the girl said.
He went on peering droop-lidded at the water. Whatever it was, he didn't see it. "Where?"
"Not down there. Over there. San Francisco!" She made it sound like a fanfare of cornets.
He lifted his head-it weighed a ton-and saw one of the world's biggest small towns. "Oh, that's fine," he said. "That's just dandy."
"We've got tall buildings and everything," she said, on the defensive again.
"You do not. You have short buildings on tall hills. There's a difference."
"We've even got a cable car."
"A what?"
"Never mind. You'll see."
If he lived that long. He collapsed over the rail, wishing he were dead.
But he still had one eye on that gold shipment to the Mint.
The riverboat docked, not without much wrenching and heaving. At long last, clutching Vangie's arm Gabe tottered ashore.
"There now," she said. "Isn't it better to be on dry land?"
Dry land. He lifted one foot and studied his shoe with disapproval. "In New York," he said, "we think of mud as something we like to get rid of."
It made her angry again. "You should just have stayed in New York," she told him.
Gabe looked around. "I know I should have."
It was bleak to look at. From Chicago west the climate had at least been sunny. Sunny all the way to Sacramento and even sunny on the riverboat. But here the clouds seemed to be attached to the tops of the hills. Everything was grey and dreary. It matched Gabe's mood. Fifty-five cents in his pocket and nobody waiting to meet him except some "associate" of Twill's. You could bet there wouldn't be any help forthcoming from that quarter.
The passengers had gathered their luggage and there was a stream of people moving past Gabe and the girl and on in toward town. Hansoms and victorias were drawn up to meet the more important arrivals. The waterfront streets were jammed with a traffic of pedestrians, horses and wagons. Narrow streets, he noted with approval. Almost narrow enough to qualify as city streets. At least they weren't like those half-mile-wide flats of rutted dust that passed for streets in the towns he'd passed through the past five days.
It was about six o'clock and the sun would be up for another two or three hours, which didn't matter much because the clouds blotted it out completely, obscuring the tops of the hills and sending wispy tendrils down toward the Bay. Gaslights and oil lamps were lit everywhere along the streets. It was freezing goddam cold for August.
Horse-drawn trolleys clanged past along the waterfront and there was a swaggering mass to the crowd that shifted like heavy liquid through the alleys, streets and piers. Forty or fifty ships were lined up along the Bay shore, smokestacks and masts making a forest along the docks; there was a great deal of racket. It wasn't busy enough or loud enough to make him feel at home, but at least it wasn't quite as bad as what he'd been braced to find here.
He began to look at faces. He had no way of knowing who Twill's associate was but, if it was somebody Twill knew well enough to trust, it might just be somebody recognizable. Not that Gabe expected to recognize him as an individual, but he might spot the type. You didn't see many Hell's Kitchen mugs around here.
But there were too many faces flowing past. None of them drew his attention. Was Twill's man somewhere in the crowd, just watching? There was no reason to expect the man to make himself known. Then again there was no reason not to. The guy might very well come up to Gabe and drop a few words of warning.
But nobody did.
Vangie was starting off. "Well? You coming?"
"Just a minute." He turned and looked back down the pier toward the riverboat. He hated the riverboat so that wasn't what he was looking at; if he never saw the New World again it would be far too soon.
What he was interested in was the gold. The big guys were unloading it from the deck. There was a wagon drawn up by the freight gangplank and he could read its sign from here: UNITED STATES MINT. Half a dozen horseback guards. The big guys were bringing the stuff down a box at a time, the same way they'd done the reverse in Sacramento. As the pile on deck diminished and the pile in the wagon grew, the number of big guys with each pile shifted accordingly. In the end almost all the big guys were on the dock, standing in a circle around the wagon, shoulder to shoulder, rifles ready for the Battle of Gettysburg.
He turned back to Vangie at last and asked half absent-mindedly, "Where is this Mint anyway?"
She pointed up the nearest hill. "Up there."
It was at the very top, shrouded in the mist that hung from the underbellies of the clouds. But up there along the incredibly steep cobblestoned street, past many blocks of stores and saloons and houses and hotels, he had a vague grey picture of a huge forbidding fortress, a structure of stone-block and iron gates and castle turrets like the Manhattan Armory.
He must have grunted because Vangie said, "What about it?"
"Just interested."
"You wouldn't be thinking about trying to steal one of those gold shipments, would you?"
"I wouldn't dream of that."
"That's good. Just take another look at those toughs and their rifles."
It wasn't hard to take another look at them. It would have been harder not to, since the gold wagon and its escort were at that moment rumbling right past them. Mounts had been brought for the big guys, and they were twice as big on horseback as they had been before. One of them-the guy Gabe had talked to in Sacramento-gave Gabe a quick cold glance as he rode by. The mud flew, the wagon rattled and the hoofs thundered. The wagon this time was drawn by at least twenty teams, and it was easy to see why: If that high hill had been any steeper it would have been a cliff.
Vangie had been watching him while he'd been watching the gold, and now she said, "And don't think about trying to break into the Mint."
"Mmm?"
"It can't be done."
"You mean nobody's done it."
"I mean it can't be done." She turned. "Come on, will you?
"Where?"
"My belly feels like my throat's been cut. And as for you-you've just got to be hungry after all the food you left in the Sacramento River."
"Now that you mention it…"
They moved into a narrow street, getting jostled. Something like grey smoke began to drift down off the rooftops, obscuring their view of things. "What's going on? Something on fire?"
"Shh!" Vangie clapped a finger to Gabe's mouth. "Don't say fire around here. Ever. Unless you mean it."
"But that stuff…"
"That's just the fog coming in."
It was coming in mighty fast. He could hardly see the end of the street, only a block away. "This happen often?"
Defensively she said, "From time to time."
"What's that mean?"
"Well," she said reluctantly, "maybe once or twice a day."
"A day?"
"We don't mind it."
"Every day?"
"You get used to it."
"All year round?"
She said desperately, "We like the fog."
"All right then, tell me this. Does it ever get any warmer around here?"
"Once in a while. From time to time."
"You mean once or twice a day?"
"Well, maybe once or twice a year." She added quickly, "But it never gets much colder than this either."
"I don't see how it hardly could." He shook his head. "And you call this a city."
Just the same at least there was life teeming around them. The narrow street was overflowing with toughs, brassy girls and drunken sailors. Among the buildings Gabe could see, two out of three were Melodeons and Saloons. The rest were whorehouses, opium dens, Cheap John clothing stores, shipchandlers and the kind of boarding houses where you kept your boots on when you went to bed to make sure nobody stole them. It was a neighborhood not altogether unlike Hell's Kitchen; even if it was a pretty limp imitation, it did show some promise.
You didn't even have to guess at what the shadier emporiums were. They all had frank signs. Ye Olde Whore Shoppe. Ye Blinde Pigge. They didn't leave a whole lot to the imagination. Or maybe they did: It was doubtful most of the passersby could read.
Vangie was leading him around another corner, and Gabe was damned if she wasn't leading him right back down to the docks. "Now what?"
"I've just got something to take care of, over on the next pier."
"Take care of what?" But he trailed along onto the pier, and he saw through the descending mist a variety of gaudily painted signs announcing that ships left this spot for such destinations as Alaska, San Pedro, Panama, and New York.
An ocean going paddlewheel steam packet was tied up at the berth. For a panic-stricken moment Gabe was terrified that Vangie was going to lead him straight on board the damn thing. But she stopped just inside the pier entrance and leaned down to lift the lid of a wooden box. Evidently it had been nailed into place on the boarding.
The box was a cube about a foot in every dimension. There was a slot in its lid, like a ticket-taker's box, and on a stake above the box was a prettily lettered sign:
DID YOU FORGET
TO LEAVE YOUR HOTEL KEY
AT THE DESK?
LEAVE IT HERE!
A Service of the San Francisco Hotel Assoc.
From her enormous shoulderbag Vangie took a small key. It unlocked the padlock on the key box. She lifted the lid and removed the three keys that reposed in the box. Each key was attached to a wooden tag bearing the name of a hotel and a room number.
She closed the box and locked it, putting the three wood-tagged keys into her bag. "Okay, we can go now."
Gabe walked back up the street with her. "The San Francisco Hotel Association," he said. "You're the San Francisco Hotel Association."
"Well, you know lodgings are terribly expensive."
"Uh-huh. And your parents live in San Francisco, and someone stole all your money, and you were stranded up the river, and you'd never ever picked anybody's pocket before, ever."
Vangie shrugged evasively and went on up the street with a cheerful grin. Her body swung alertly and the huge pocketbook flew from her little shoulder.
She was damned pretty. Gabe found himself thinking it might be fun to show her around New York. She'd probably fit right in back there, which was something he hadn't expected from any Westerner.
She paused to look back at him. "You coming?"
"Oh, yes," he said. "I'm coming."
He caught up with her and this time they walked directly into the city. They passed a Melodeon on a corner. Someone had splashed a huge X of red paint across its lurid poster of cancan dancers, and hung on the door a wooden shingle with CLOSED painted on it in the same vivid red paint.
The sign on the corner was wreathed in fog but there was a gas street lamp next to it and Gabe could make out the printing. It seemed very important to know that they were at the intersection of Sansome and Pacific Streets. Not that Gabe would ever find it again without a guide. But he liked to know the names of places where there might be opportunities. And Pacific Street looked like such a place. Jammed from sidewalk to sidewalk with moving bodies, most of them unsteady on their feet. And it wasn't even sunset yet.
"Pacific Street," he murmured.
"We call it the Barbary Coast."
"Is that right. What's that mean?"
"I don't know. But I heard a politician say it's the most vice-infested square mile of corruption in the world." She said it with a note of triumph which Gabe didn't miss; suddenly she turned and jabbed a pretty little finger into his chest. "Nobody's ever said that about New York. Hah!"
"Only because New York's bigger than a square mile. We like to spread the joy around a little."
"Oh you're so smart." She lifted her chin and swung away toward a side street.
"Where you going?" He had an instant's panic.
"You wait there," she said.
"For what?"
"Don't you want dinner?"
"We both know my stomach's empty."
"Well, we won't get much for fifty-five cents."
"You mean I'm the only one you hit on that boat?"
She frowned for a moment. "I guess you must have distracted me. But anyway, you wait right here. I'll be back."
And she drifted away into the crowd.
It wouldn't do, he thought. He wasn't going to have a wisp of a girl picking pockets to feed him. It might be standard behavior out here, but back East where men were men…
Pacific Street ran down from where Gabe stood to a flight of slippery stone steps that gave onto a crude little pier. Both sides of the street were lined with casinos, grog shops, whorehouses and a variety of dives the nature of which was fairly easy to ascertain from a quick study of the people emerging from them. The opium dens were particularly easy to spot that way. Nearby he spotted a Melodeon with a huge poster, eight feet square, the better to illustrate the full proportions of the two very fat lady dancers whose forms were artistically painted above the words THE GALLOPING COW and THE DANCING HEIFER. The whole of it, like the other signs he'd seen, was X-ed out with a huge slash of red paint. Why were all the dance halls closed? It could hardly be for lack of potential business, he observed; the street was teeming with drunks just begging to be separated from their money.
The smells were thick and multifarious, the noise close to earsplitting. It was hard to stand in one place without being whacked and jostled; Gabe faded back against the face of MME. HERZ'S CLOTHING EMPORIUM, which was possibly the most disreputable Cheap John shop he had ever seen.
He remembered briefly the panic that had jabbed him when he'd thought, for an instant there, that Vangie was just going to turn away and leave him in the street. What a ridiculous way for a full grown man to behave. But still, it was the first time in his memory that he'd been in a city where he didn't know every alley and every doorway.
City? Not really. I mean look at these buildings. Not a substantial-looking structure in the lot. Everything was woodframe; it had all been built in a hurry out of green lumber. Everything was splintered, warped, the paint weathered. A sulfur match and one good breeze and the whole thing would go up in smoke.
Was that why she'd got so upset when he'd mentioned fire?
His speculations were interrupted by the arrival of two burly guys who came meandering along, glanced at him, stopped to give him a second look, went past him, stopped to give him a third look, turned around, came back to him, and eyed him up and down.
One of them licked a thick avaricious lip and said, "Howdy there."
"Hi."
"You lost, friend?"
Right there he knew it was time to get alert. He pushed his shoulder away from the wall so he could stand up straight; he spread his feet a little and gave himself maneuvering room. "No. I'm just waiting for somebody."
"That so," one of the burly guys said. "You're from the East, huh?"
"Damn right I am."
The two guys were starting to move around. One of them sort of turned left, and the other sort of turned right. Like the revolving wooden ducks he'd seen in shooting galleries. They kept shifting, and Gabe had to keep moving around too because otherwise one of them would have got behind him.
"Just get to town, did you?"
"Yeah."
You learned in Hell's Kitchen not to let a stranger get around behind you. You learned that right away, by the age of five, because if you didn't there wasn't too much chance you'd see the age of six. But also there was the matter of being polite. You should face the person you're talking to.
"Well what do you think of our fair city, friend?"
"It's all right," he said without much enthusiasm as they figure-eighted around the sidewalk.
"All kinds of interesting things to see in Frisco," one of the burly guys said.
"All kinds," the other burly guy murmured. His teeth flashed in what he evidently thought was a friendly grin. Gabe had seen some of Twill's toughs grin like that.
Maybe that was it. Twill's associate? Nobody had said anything about two associates. But that didn't mean anything. An associate could have an associate, couldn't he?
"Look, are you guys looking for somebody in particular?"
They both stopped figure-eighting around him long enough to look at each other and then look back at Gabe. "Huh?"
"Sorry. My mistake maybe."
The two guys were a little confused but they regained their footwork quick enough. One of them said, "Listen, there's lots of fascinatin' things to see in Frisco. What say you come on along with us; we'll show you the sights. How about it?"
"Thanks just the same. Like I said I'm waiting to meet somebody."
"Well you've been waiting quite a while. Maybe your friend's decided to stand you up, friend."
"I'll just wait a while longer and see."
"Wouldn't take long to see the best part of Frisco. It's all right around here."
Gabe put his hand in his hip pocket and clutched the knuckle-duster, out of sight of the two guys. "Thanks just the same," he said again, and he put an edge on his voice this time while he inspected them more closely. They both looked like the sort who lit sulfur matches on their jaws, but there was a little difference here and there. The one who did most of the talking was slightly higher and wider than the other one. He was also somewhat gamier-a fact to which the breeze attested every time Gabe got to his leeward side. In fact, he smelled like either a whole buffalo herd or a wolf that hadn't been rained on in three months. If he took a bath he'd be about twelve pounds lighter; if they didn't they'd soon be after him to pay real estate taxes on all that dirt.
The dirt was caked in his hair, crusted on his skin, imbedded in his clothes. The closer Gabe looked at him the more awed he became. This was definitely the filthiest guy he'd ever seen, and he'd seen them pretty filthy.
The reason he had time to scrutinize them both was that they had stopped pressing him in order to stand and stare at the vicinity of the front door of Mme. Herz's Clothing Emporium behind him. Their expressions changed, and Gabe turned to see what it was they were looking at.
Nothing. Or anyhow next to nothing. The guy who was emerging from the door and looking furtively over his shoulder was not exactly designed physically to strike terror into the hearts of men. In fact he was about the puniest specimen Gabe had seen since he'd stepped ashore.
"Ittzy Herz," the gamy guy whispered in awe. "Look at that, will you? Right out in bare-ass daylight!"
"Jeez, he must've slipped his leash."
Ittzy Herz's face looked as if it could hold a three-day rain. He was a little sorrowful sparrow with no shoulders and a caved-in chest. He had no visible chin. He was dressed in a little round hat and a cheap black suit that looked as if its seams would come apart any minute. His eyes looked like repositories for the anguish of the ages. Gabe had seen a look like that once in the hollow eyes of a ninety-six-year-old slum priest. Maybe you got to feeling that way and looking that way after you'd seen ninety-six years worth of disappointment and had finally come to the conclusion that there was nothing you could do about it.
The only trouble was, Ittzy Herz wasn't ninety-six years old.
In fact it wasn't clear whether he was even old enough to vote. Maybe it was just his diminutive size, but he looked nineteen.
None of which explained why the two tough guys were regarding him with such undisguised awe.
Ittzy Herz either ignored their stares or didn't even notice them. Probably the latter, Gabe judged; the little guy didn't seem to be aware of anything around him at all.
Ittzy Herz turned away from them and walked sorrowfully up the street. When he had gone out of earshot Gabe said, "Who is that guy anyway?"
"You never heard of Ittzy Herz? He's one of the world-famous sights of San Francisco."
The tough seemed to be draping his arm in friendly fashion around Gabe's shoulders. Gabe shifted away, and the guy moved with him. Gabe kept his hand on the knuckle duster in his pocket. He didn't want a donnybrook with these guys-he wasn't sure he could stand the smell-but he was ready if one came. He said, just to keep the conversation friendly, "What's he world-famous for?"
"Just watch him. You'll see."
Gabe moved out of the encircling grasp and looked up the street. Ittzy Herz was leaving the curb to cross the street. A dilapidated junk cart was coming down the street above him, but Ittzy Herz had plenty of room to get across the street ahead of it. But two things happened. First Ittzy's little round hat fell off, and Ittzy bent down to pick it up. Second a piece of white paper blew across the street under the cart-horse's nose, causing it to shy, rear and bolt.
Suddenly the junk cart was a runaway, and Ittzy was square in its path. Gabe stiffened involuntarily, but behind him he heard the gamy guy's unruffled chuckle.
Ittzy Herz didn't even seem to see the cart thundering down at him. He merely stepped aside to avoid dirtying his boot in a horse pie on the cobblestones. It took him to the left a pace. At the same time the cart horse, for no discernible reason, jerked to Ittzy's right and bolted past him up onto the curb, scattering panic-stricken pedestrians like a fox chasing chickens in a barnyard.
Eventually the cartman brought the runaway under control. A lot of people picked themselves up and dusted themselves off and shook their fists and hollered at the cartman.
Not Ittzy Herz. He didn't seem to realize what a close call he'd had. He was still walking across the street, without hurry. And as he reached the sidewalk a woman leaned out a second story window and knocked a flowerpot off the sill with her elbow. Gabe opened his mouth to yell a warning because the flowerpot was on a collision course with Ittzy Herz's head.
But somebody had left a bucket on the sidewalk, so that Ittzy Herz had to walk around it. As he did the flowerpot clanged into the bucket, and he strolled on unscathed. Not merely unscathed; he also seemed totally unaware that anything out of the ordinary had happened.
"You just can't beat that little son of a bitch," the gamy guy said with unconcealed admiration.
"I don't get it," Gabe said as the partner eased in closer and hugged his shoulders.
"Old Ittzy," the gamy guy said, "he's the luckiest son of a bitch ever born. You know one time he fell out of a third story window up at the Odeon, and there just happened to be a hay wagon going by, and he just happened to land in that nice soft hay?"
"Hell that's nothing," the partner said, "I heard a guy tried to roll Ittzy in Dead Man's Alley, but a boa constrictor grabbed the guy just before he was about to sap Ittzy on the head."
Gabe said, "A boa constrictor?"
"Yeah, some clown had it in a circus wagon, and it escaped that night. They found it next morning wedged into a hole in the back fence. Seems it couldn't fit through because it had this huge lump in its middle, where it swallowed the guy that'd tried to roll Ittzy."
"Nobody's tried to lay a finger on Ittzy since then," the gamy guy said. He was around on Gabe's other side and getting closer. Gabe's nostrils wrinkled.
The partner said, "I'll tell you, friend, Ittzy's so lucky his mother keeps him locked up in a room in the back of the store here. She charges people twenty-five cents just to look at him through a hole in the door."
"And people pay it," the gamy guy said. "They figure maybe a little luck'll rub off on them too."
Gabe was trying very hard not to breathe at all. "Kind of stuffy right here, wouldn't you say?" And he shook off the partner's arm, took two quick paces out to the edge of the curb, and dragged in a deep breath while he was upwind of them.
The two guys looked at each other. The gamy guy shrugged, the partner nodded. Then the gamy guy pulled a sack out from under his coat. "You know what I got in this sack?"
"It looks empty to me," Gabe said.
"Well just take a closer look."
"GABE!"
They all three looked up, startled. Here came Vangie. She was waving a wallet in front of her as if to shoo away horseflies. "You two get away from him. Get away! Go on git!"
The two guys looked at each other. The gamy guy shook his head, the partner shrugged.
Vangie hurried across the street. "Go on. On the run, before I call the police."
"Yeah," the gamy guy said, "that'll be the day." His lip curled. "This dude belong to you, Miss Kemp?"
"Yes. And I'll thank you to keep…"
"All right… all right. We'll do you a little favor this time." The gamy guy stuffed the empty sack back under his coat and made as if to tip his hat but only tugged at the brim a little. He said to Gabe, "All right, friend, we'll take our leave. But a word of advice-you hang around this female, you better count your fingers every time she touches your hand." And the two of them turned and sloped off.
Gabe felt a lot better without those birds crowding him the way they had. He said, "What was that all about anyhow?"
"Roscoe and his partner? They're crimps."
"Crimps? What's that?"
"They shanghai people. To get crews for the ships."
Gabe paled. "To go on the ocean?"
"An awful lot of sailors jump ship when they get to San Francisco," she said. "They all want to head for the gold fields. So the ships need crews, and that means there's good money to be made in crimping."
"Oh, I couldn't take the ocean," Gabe said.
"Good thing I came back when I did." She seemed calmer than necessary, under the circumstances. Handing him the wallet she'd been brandishing, she said, "Here. Now come buy me dinner."
