Текст книги "Gangway!"

Автор книги: Brian Garfield

Соавторы: Donald E. Westlake
сообщить о нарушении

Текущая страница: 9 (всего у книги 13 страниц)

CHAPTER EIGHTEEN

    Gabe looked around at the filth in the alley. "This is kind of a tough neighborhood for you to be hanging around, isn't it?"

    "Oh I have friends just everywhere," Francis said with a private little smile, and led him into a blind pig.

    It was the seventh saloon they'd hit so far. Francis eeled through the packed crowd of sailors and thugs. The bartender looked up, Francis caught his eye, and Gabe heard the bartender's answer to Francis's question:

    "Yeah, he's here. Back there someplace. Watch you don't get trampled to death."

    Clatter of glass on glass, scrape of bootsoles and chairs, drone of hard masculine voices, odors of spilled whisky, heavy tobacco smoke and stale beer. The place had a low ceiling and the light was bad. Gabe felt constricted; he wanted out. But he followed Francis, who moved through the crowd with effortless insouciance.

    Gabe had seen a lot of dives. This was probably the lowest he'd ever been in.

    Maybe there was hope for San Francisco yet.

    Francis suddenly lifted on tiptoe, waving a hand over his head and saying, "Oh there he is. Yoo-hoo, Roscoe!"

    The burly guy at the table in the far corner lifted his head from a schooner of beer, looking a little meaner than a barracuda with a toothache. Approaching, Gabe caught his first whiff and slowed down. He closed the rest of the distance to the table with a reluctance that increased in direct proportion to the smell.

    Roscoe wore his customary vicious snarl but when he recognized Francis skipping toward him through the crowded tables he paled and looked around very quickly as if he suddenly wanted to know where the exit was, or as if he wanted to pretend he wasn't there at all.

    "Roscoe, we've been looking all over for you."

    "Yeah, yeah," Roscoe muttered. He buried his face in the glass.

    Francis sat down. Gabe hung back and tried to avoid breathing.

    "Now, Roscoe dear, do stop pushing your face in that beer a minute. We're not here to threaten you."

    Somehow Gabe got the feeling it wasn't the threat of physical violence that was making Roscoe bashful.

    Roscoe pushed his chair back. "I got an appointment."

    "We must talk with you, Roscoe."

    "Yeah. Well. Some other time." Roscoe was on his feet, edging around the table.

    Gabe could see it was impossible. Roscoe just couldn't think about business with Francis around. He reached out a detaining hand; before Roscoe could bat him out of the way, he said quickly, "I want to talk a little business… friend."

    Roscoe stopped working up his rage long enough to give Gabe a look.

    Gabe said, "Francis, don't forget that fire-alarm job you've got to do. Why don't you start on that now; I'll talk to friend Roscoe here."

    Francis nodded regretfully. "That might be best, I suppose. But don't go away, Roscoe, I'll be back, dear." He beamed with half-lidded eyes, looked Roscoe up and down, and slipped quickly away.

    They watched him go, and then Roscoe sat back down and poked his beetle-browed face into the schooner. "Need another one," he muttered. "You want something, friend?"

    "Sure. Beer."

    "You buying?"

    "Why not," Gabe said expansively.

    Roscoe waved at somebody and made hand-motions that conveyed a two-beer message. Then he sat back and glowered. "Well?"

    "I need a crew."

    "For a ship? You don't look like no ship captain to me. You look like a dude."

    "Yeah. Well I expect you and I will get that sorted out sometime. In the meantime I've got a ship and it needs eight or ten guys."

    "You want 'em crimped, huh?"

    "No."

    "Eh?"

    "They've got to be willing."

    "You want volunteers? Friend, you come to the wrong guy-"

    "Look, it's just a short trip."

    "How short?"

    "A day. Maybe two."

    "What kinda ship?"

    "Captain Flagway's boat: the San Andreas."

    "The San Andreas?"

    "It's not my fault."

    "Sheee, that tub. A lot of guys be scared to set foot on her… you never know when some timber's gonna give out from under your foot."

    "This job'll pay pretty high for just a day or two's work."

    "How high?"

    "What'll the traffic bear, Roscoe?"

    Roscoe brooded at him. "Depends, kinda. Where ya going?"

    "Away from San Francisco. Not far."

    "What's the cargo?"

    "Just a wagonload of stuff."

    "One wagonload and you need a big old tub like that?"

    "Well, it'll be kind of heavy."

    The beetling brooding stare fixed him suspiciously. "You gonna have bluebottles on your tail, right?"

    Gabe hesitated. "Well it's possible, yeah."

    It made Roscoe snort. "Sheee. That tub of Flagway's, you couldn't outrun a garbage barge in that. Cops got some nice speedy little police-boats out there in the Bay, you figure on that? How you gonna outrun them?"

    "I figured on the fog maybe."

    "No good. It don't last long enough."

    "We'll wait for a fog."

    "Not interested, friend."

    "Now that's too bad, Roscoe, I was just about to offer you the opportunity to earn yourself five thousand dollars for two days' work." Gabe started to rise. "Maybe I'll see you sometime."

    "Siddown."

    "Hmm?"

    "Well, I just had an idea, see."

    Gabe sat back down. "And?"

    "I got a brother name of Captain Percival Arafoot. You ever hear of him, maybe?"

    "Can't say as I have."

    "Hell, he's the only guy on the Barbary Coast tougher than me."

    "Is he now."

    "You disputin' that, friend?"

    "Not just now, Roscoe. Go on about your brother."

    "Well he's got this ship, see. The Sea Wolf. Now this here's a fast ship, friend."

    "Where is it?"

    "Right now? Up north someplace. What he does, my brother, he smuggles Alaska seal furs down to Seattle; that's how come he's got a fast ship. The Sea Wolf's gotta be able to outrun the Coast Guard, see."

    "So?"

    "So my brother Percival just might be interested in this little operation of yours."

    "Sounds interesting," Gabe said.

    "Course him and me, we'd want a piece of your operation. Not just a fee."

    "No deal. Five thousand for you, five thousand for him."

    Roscoe considered it.

    Gabe said, "You think you could get him down here pretty quick?"

    "If you make it worth his while. Say ten thousand."

    "Six."

    "Nine."

    "Seven."

    "Eight," Roscoe said, "and that's my last offer."

    Gabe figured maybe brother Percival would see three thousand of it if he was lucky, which would leave Roscoe with five thousand of Percival's and another five thousand of his own.

    Enough to make him happy anyhow.

    "Done," Gabe said.

    "Okay. I'll send him a telegram. Ought to reach him soon. He's due into Seattle right about now."

    "Fine… fine," Gabe said. "But I still want a crew for the San Andreas."

    "I thought I just told you…"

    "I know what you told me. But two ships are better than one in this operation."

    "You gonna tell me what it's all about now?"

    "Later," Gabe said. And left.

    From the door he looked back and saw Roscoe's eyes glinting at him over the rim of his beer schooner like a pair of gun muzzles.

CHAPTER NINETEEN

    Vangie, through dressing, got up from the bed to yawn and stretch, limbering up her body for the new day. Then, idly scratching her waist at the right side, she turned slowly to limber her mind with a daytime view of the room they'd spent the night in. She liked nice places and this was a nice place, all rose brocade and mahogany finials.

    They had to be early risers, she and Gabe, to be ahead of the hotel maid service, but it was still late enough so plenty of morning sunlight poured through the two wide windows, gleaming on the china pitcher and glistening from the tiny prisms dangling from the kerosene lamps.

    Finishing her turn Vangie looked over at Gabe, who was standing by one of the windows and admiring the silver snuffbox, turning it around and around in the sunlight. His Eastern feistiness and odd hunched way of standing, once so foreign, were dear to her now. It was hard to remember what life had been without Gabe; harder to try to visualize a future life without him. But if he persisted in this Mint business, and if he kept piling one danger atop the other…

    Well. She'd decided not to brood about that, and so she wouldn't. Walking across the room to where he was still fooling with the silver snuffbox, she said, "I was never so surprised in my life as when that went off."

    Gabe shook his head, and hefted the snuffbox-gun in his palm. "One of these days," he said, "you're going to stick your hand in somebody's pocket and blow your fingers off. Or his behind."

    "Maybe I ought to reform," she said. And she was thinking it might be worth it, turning honest, if she could get him to do the same. Keep him from the Mint, keep him from Roscoe Arafoot.

    But he said, "You'll be able to afford reform pretty soon."

    Hiding her disappointment, she nodded at the snuffbox. "You want it?"

    "No, I've got enough." He handed it to her. "Sell it," he said, "we can use the money. It can help us set up for the big job."

    "Gabe, I know you don't like me trying to talk you out of that idea, but…"

    "That's right. I don't."

    "… but I do want to say one thing. Can I just say one thing?"

    "Which thing? San Francisco's better than New York, or you can't rob the Mint?"

    "Neither."

    He gave her a surprised look.

    "All I wanted to say was, please don't have anything to do with those Arafoot brothers. They've got the meanest reputations of anybody along the coast, and they've earned them."

    "Listen, sister, I can handle any six non-New Yorkers you can name."

    "You're underestimating them, Gabe, I promise you. And even if you do get that gold, which is impossible to start with, they'll kill us all to take it away from us if they find out we've got it."

    "Look don't worry about it, Vangie. I've got everything all worked out."

    "You just think you have. You've never met Captain Arafoot."

    "I've met Roscoe. That's enough."

    "Roscoe's the kind one," Vangie said. "I really wish you'd reconsider this, Gabe."

    "Yeah, yeah," he said. But he wasn't listening. He said, "Listen, I wanted to talk to you about something more important."

    "More important? More important than trying to save your life?"

    "I know, I know." He walked away from the window, nodding, hunch-shouldered, so totally into his own head she knew it was hopeless to try to attract his attention. "I need a wagon," he said.

    She didn't realize he meant he wanted a wagon from her until he turned and looked at her and said, "Okay?"

    "Okay? What's okay?"

    "The wagon."

    She pointed at herself. "You want me to get a wagon?"

    "I need it tonight," he said. "At three a.m. Up by the Mint."

    "Gabe," she said, "I pick pockets, not livery stables."

    "Oh," he said. He seemed a bit surprised, but not very disappointed. Shrugging, he said, "I just figured you could get us anything we needed. You've been providing pretty good so far. Okay, I suppose I can go ask Roscoe."

    "Wait!"

    He glanced at her, one eyebrow lifted.

    A wagon. She thought desperately, then gave one quick nod and said, "All right. I'll do it."

    He smiled, as sunny and cheerful as the day outside. "Good girl," he said.

    "A wagon," she said. "Tonight, at three."

    He nodded and pointed skyward. "Up by the Mint," he said.

CHAPTER TWENTY

    From the main gate of the Mint the street ran downhill two or three blocks. Then it humped up over a lower hill before it swept all the way down the steep pitch to the waterfront flats, across them and out onto the New World pier. Since the New World was en route to or from Sacramento at the moment, the pier was empty.

    That little hump-actually it wasn't so little-was what bothered Gabe. Everything was downhill, except that stinking hump.

    He stood near the wall of the Mint, gazing down at the hump and past it to the rooftops beyond. Gaslights illuminated the streets and the fog was a thin mist tonight. The chill was in his bones.

    Roscoe-whom Gabe had positioned strategically downwind-said, "It's after three. Where the hell is she?"

    "She'll be here."

    "You can't trust 'em," Roscoe said.

    Francis, who stood watching between Captain Flagway and Ittzy, said, "Listen."

    "To what? The damn fog?"

    "Shut up, Roscoe dear."

    Gabe heard the slow clop of hoofs.

    "That'll be her," he said.

    The buckboard came in sight, pulled by a weary and bony horse. Vangie was driving it.

    Gabe grinned at her. "Knew you'd do it."

    Roscoe said, "Where'd you pinch the wagon?"

    Francis was stepping forward as the wagon stopped, and Vangie wrapped the reins around the brake handle. "It looks familiar to me," Francis said suspiciously.

    Gabe looked at it more closely. "Yeah. Me too."

    Vangie climbed down. It was Captain Flagway who had presence of mind to step forward, take her elbow and help her down.

    She turned and said brightly, "All right. Now you get to tell me what it's for."

    "Wait a minute," Gabe growled. "You're changing the subject."

    "I am?"

    "Vangie."

    She was all innocence. "Yes?"

    "Where'd you get the wagon, Vangie."

    "Why?"

    "Because it looks damn familiar, like Francis says. I've seen this wagon before."

    "Of course you have. You've ridden on it before."

    "Yeah. That's what I thought." Gabe threw his arms up, beseeching the sky for help.

    Vangie turned to Francis. "What's the matter with him?"

    Francis said, "Vangie."

    "Yes Francis?"

    "You hired the wagon, didn't you. You rented it."

    "Well…"

    Gabe said, "Damn it, if I'd wanted to rent a wagon I'd've done it myself! What do you think we needed you to get a wagon for?"

    "Well, you mean you actually expected me to steal a wagon right off the street?"

    "Yeah. Yeah."

    "But why?"

    "Because there's a chance there won't be any wagon to return to the owner."

    Captain Flagway looked alarmed. "Oh, my."

    Roscoe gave a disgusted grunt. "Look, what's the matter with all ya? You rented the wagon from the livery stable, right?"

    "Yes," Vangie said, still very confused.

    "You don't figure the wagon's gonna be in one piece after we do this thing tonight, right?"

    "Right," Gabe said.

    "So what's the problem? We get all done, I go down and have a little talk with the hostler. I tell him the young lady parked the wagon on the street, and some no-good backstabbin' thief stole it while she wasn't lookin.' What's the problem?"

    Gabe pondered it. "That might work all right. But we'll all have to make damn sure nobody sees our faces. A hundred people will probably see exactly what happens to this wagon."

    "So it was whoever stole it that wrecked it, that's all," Roscoe said. "Jeez, you guys worry about the weirdest things."

    Vangie turned to Gabe. "I still want to know what you're going to do with it."

    "You see this hill?"

    She turned and looked. Down, up, and down again. "What about it?"

    "Well, we need to find out if the wagon can get up enough speed from here to get up over that hump and keep on going."

    She shook her head in bafflement. "I don't understand. Don't you think the horse can pull it up over that little hill?"

    "We don't want a horse."

    "No horse?"

    "No horse. If it'll roll past that hump on its own, it'll get up ten times the speed of any horse alive when it starts down the far side. It's the only way to outrun the guys that'll be chasing us."

    "You mean you're just going to let the wagon roll by itself?" she said in awe.

    "Well, Ittzy's going along to steer and handle the brakes."

    "Oh," she said, and nodded slowly as though it all made perfect sense.

    Gabe grinned and patted her cheek, and turned away to help the others make ready. They unhitched the horse and turned the wagon around until its tailgate wasn't far from the main gate of the Mint. The guards couldn't see what was happening from their posts, although they might hear an occasional noise. But nobody was trying to break into the Mint, so they probably wouldn't get too curious.

    Ittzy got aboard and braced the wagon tongue between his knees to steer. He put one foot up against the brake handle so he could lean on it if he had to. "Okay. I'm ready."

    Gabe nodded to Roscoe. The four men got behind the tailboard-and gave a mighty push.

    The wagon rolled away. It picked up speed pretty quickly on the slope, and Gabe was grinning when it zipped through the bottom of the U and caromed on up toward the hump.

    His grin halved when he saw the wagon slowing.

    Ittzy was steering precisely up the middle of the street. It was almost half past three in the morning; there was nobody else anywhere around. But that didn't mean much now because the wagon was faltering, slowing to a speed a crippled snail could have outrun-and stopping, hesitating, pausing a long daguerreotype silent frozen pause, and then rolling back down toward the trough…

    Francis looked ready to burst into tears. Gabe felt the same way. Two blocks below them the wagon pendulumed back and forth, rolling halfway up one hill, then halfway up the other, until Ittzy at last set the brake and locked it in position at the bottom of the trough.

    "Damn it," Gabe said.

    Roscoe said, "I think maybe you need another plan, bub."

    Vangie said, "Don't give up so quickly. Good Lord, you men!

    Gabe turned an unfriendly eye on her. "Yeah? What's your idea, then?"

    "Simple," she said. "You just need more weight on the wagon that's all, to carry it over the top."

    Roscoe said, "What the hell difference that gonna make?"

    Vangie told him, "Obviously, Roscoe, you just don't understand the basic principles of mass and inertia and momentum."

    "The what?"

    Gabe said, "Well, it's worth a try. Let's lead this nag down there and lug that wagon back up."

    Roscoe said, "What do we fill it up with? We gonna go next door, get the borrow of some gold?"

    "We'll fill it up with us," Gabe said. "We must have seven hundred pounds among the five of us, let's see what difference it makes."

    Roscoe shrugged and said, "I'll try any damn fool thing once. This can't be worse than the mushroom that Mex girl give me that time."

    They all walked down the slope together, Roscoe leading the horse. Francis said to him, "What sort of mushroom?"

    "Don't ask me. Girl said it would put me in heaven, but if that was heaven I'm just as glad I'm due for the other place."

    They reattached horse to wagon, and all rode back up to the top of the hill again, near the entrance to the Mint. Then, while everybody else stayed aboard, Roscoe got off, unhitched the horse, tied it to a handy lamppost, and went back around by the tailgate. "Everybody ready?" he asked.

    "No," everybody said.

    Roscoe waited till everyone was set, with a secure grip on some part of the wagon or one another. Then he gave a strong lunging shove on the tailgate, enough to get the wagon trundling slowly forward, and leaped on board with all the others.

    Ittzy had a harder time steering with the added weight, but he managed to keep the wagon more or less in the middle of the street. Gabe watched with dubious hopes; they didn't seem to be gathering much speed at all.

    But pretty soon the wagon picked up some acceleration, then some more, and all at once they were rushing forward, swooping down the first slope much faster than before.

    "Gaaaaabe!" Vangie cried. Looking at her, Gabe saw her expression combined in the strangest way pride with alarm. He grinned at her and faced front again, into the wind.

    A real wind; the wind of their passage. The wagon was really tearing downhill now. The wheels racketed down the cobblestones; he thought for a second the whole contraption would fly apart, but in the noise, wind and rush there was nothing to do but hold on.

    The horseless wagon thundered ahead. It whammed down through the trough, whizzed up the second slope, whipped over the top without even slowing down, and gathered juggernaut speed down the second hill toward the Bay far far below…

    He grabbed Vangie, hugging her to him. Through the wind he shouted, "It works!"

    She didn't look all that ecstatically happy.

    He grabbed Ittzy's shoulder. "Okay," he yelled. "Slow us down now."

    Ittzy braced both feet against the brake handle. "It won't… I can't… it's going to…"

    Gabe and Roscoe both dived for the brake handle. Gabe almost fell off. Sparks flew from the brake shoes against the iron tires and the brake handle bent, but it didn't do a bit of good. The wagon flew. It kept going faster… and faster… and faster… Straight toward the pier…

    He had a glimpse out of the corner of his eye: Officer McCorkle, standing under a streetlight, his eyes wide open and his notebook wide open. He was shaking his head and licking his pencil.

    Gabe braced himself. He gathered Vangie to him, cushioned her with his arm and chest. "HANG ON!"

    Startled faces along the street watched as they whizzed between the dives and grog shops straight toward the riverboat pier… Vangie was shrieking, but he couldn't make out what she was trying to say until he turned his head and caught her words distinctly:

    "Make it stop! Make it stop! I just did my hair today!"

    The brake handle snapped.

    The wagon careened onto the pier, going just a little faster than a greased sled on an icy mountainside. Ittzy steered neatly around a crated cast-iron boiler. Vangie yelled something, Gabe clutched her close, Roscoe lost his footing and went tumbling around in the wagon bed. Captain Flagway started praying in Spanish, and Francis closed his nostrils with thumb and forefinger.

    Gabe stared straight ahead, and the nighttime world gradually filled with water. Black, cold, wet water.

    "No," Gabe said, very quietly and very privately. The wagon flashed right out to the end of the pier, straight out past the end of the pier, wheels spinning against air, shooting out into space as though it had been fired from a brass cannon.

    There was an instant's sense of motionlessness, as safe and solid as a hotel room, and Gabe looked around at a view of San Francisco and its Bay that he'd never had before. Then the trajectory of the wagon curved downward, and water was dead ahead, and the buckboard landed in the choppy Bay like a bartender's palm slapping down on a double eagle.

    Everybody went rolling and tumbling, joining Roscoe in the wagon bed. Gabe found himself wrapped around Vangie, the two of them pasted to the back of the buckboard seat. And already water was spurting in through gaps between the boards.

    Gabe didn't even care. Water an inch deep in the wagon and rising, and he was too happy to even notice the stuff. He struggled to his feet, pulling Vangie with him, and clutched the side of the wagon. Water was pouring in everywhere, and he had a big idiotic smile on his face. He stared uphill toward the Mint far far away and toward the horse standing alone way up there, hitched to the lamp-post and chewing away slowly in mild amaze. "It works," he said, in an awed half whisper.

    Vangie gave him a bleary look.

    "It works!" Gabe cried. He spread his arms and crowed, shouting, "I knew it would work!"

    The jumble of people on the water-covered floor around him looked up with several expressions on their faces, none of them as happy as his. The wagon steadily sank, and Gabe stood in it, looking all around at the rising perspective and grinning from ear to ear.