Lone Star 02 (11 page)

Chapter 6

The girl occupied Ki's thoughts all the way back to the Palace Hotel. He avoided the main entrance, on the New Montgomery Street side of the block-square building, for it was always jammed by carriages waiting to drive right into the hotel's massive central lobby, dubbed the Grand Court.

The Palace was seven stories high, and contained eight hundred rooms. The Grand Court atrium soared for the entire seven stories, was ringed with the bannistered galleries of each floor, and was crowned by a roof of frosted glass. At one end of the Grand Court was a renowned restaurant, and at the other end was the carriage park. In the middle area were tables, leather chairs, and potted palms. Uniformed waiters hovered, ready to fetch drinks from the hotel's bar.

This was where Jessie, Ki, and Jordan Moore had arranged to meet. Ki saw Moore sitting in an armchair, almost lost behind the lush green fronds of a palm tree. As usual, Moore's suit was impeccably tailored, and of a somber shade of black, but this time his silk tie was bright red. On the table beside him was a drink, and one of his long, slender cigars was smoldering in the ashtray.

“I am sorry to be late,” Ki began, but then froze. He stared at Moore's grim expression, at his white-knuckled grip upon the arm of his chair. The investigator's normally sparkling green eyes were now deep, dark pieces of jade.

Just then, Moore noticed Ki. “Now don't get excited,” he cautioned.

“What has happened to her?” Ki rushed forward.

The slight detective jumped to his feet, raising his hands before him as if to deflect Ki's charge. “She's all right! Now take it easy, friend.
I
didn't do anything!”

Ki made a huge effort not to reach out and shake the man. Instead, he clenched his teeth and asked once again, “What has happened to Jessie?”

“First off, she's upstairs in her room, changing her clothes, all right?” When Ki nodded and seemed to relax, Moore breathed a sigh of relief. “Good! I always have the feeling you're about to punch a hole through something, and I never want it to be me.”

“Tell me everything,” Ki demanded.

“Certainly,” Moore agreed. He pointed to the chair next to his own. “Sit down, order a drink, and I'll start from the beginning.” Signaling the waiter, he asked Ki, “What will you have?”

“Scotch, neat,” Ki told the waiter, who glided off to fill the order.

“Straight Scotch?” Moore couldn't suppress his mischievous smile. “What happened to green tea?”

“I am only half Japanese,” Ki said evenly. “Anyway, Scotch became very popular in Japan, once the British began importing it. I myself developed a taste for it after I'd come to this country.”

“Not very spiritual,” Moore teased.

“Ah, but I regret that I am
not
very spiritual, friend Jordan.” Ki showed his teeth. “I get impatient with chatter. I punch holes through things. Tell me what has happened!”

Moore told him. Ki kept silent through most of the detective's narrative, interrupting only when Moore mentioned that the razor-wielding assailant had knocked Jessie down.

“You'd said she was not hurt!” Ki snarled.

“She's not,” Moore said quickly. “When she came in here, I was already waiting. Her clothes were soiled, but there wasn't a mark on her.” He finished telling Ki the rest of it, and then paused. “Look, he's dead. You can't kill him again. It's over, and Jessie is all right.”

“It is my sworn duty to protect her,” Ki said.

Moore nodded. “As a samurai. Yes, I know that, Ki. You see, I took the liberty of asking Arthur Lewis a few questions yesterday, just after I'd met you and Jessie.” Moore's expression was sincere. “I hope I have not offended you.”

Ki pondered it a moment, and then shook his head. “Given our situation, it is appropriate that you would want to know more about me. There is nothing Arthur could have told you that could compromise my privacy. I take no offense.”

Moore nodded. He said nothing, and kept his expression neutral.

“We must find out who hired this assassin,” Ki mused. “Was it the cartel, or the Tong?”

Moore shrugged. “What difference does it make?”

“It matters to
me,”
Ki said intensely. “Someone has sent a death to dog Jessie's footsteps. I will discover who has done this, and send a death to them.”

Moore shivered. “We'll do what we can,” he said placat ingly. “And Jessie wants to know, as well, but we'll just have to see. She did the right thing in not waiting around for the police to arrive.”

“The authorities might have given her trouble?” Ki asked.

“This is San Francisco, my friend,” Moore scolded humorously. “We're not in some territorial cow town. We don't just plop our dead
banditos
into Boot Hill. There's also the question of publicity. A police officer arriving on the scene would have tipped off whatever city desk is paying the most these days. There would have been reporters flocking to the scene. Somebody of Jessica Starbuck's stature becoming involved in a shooting—well, you can imagine the headlines. ”Beautiful Heiress Kills Would-Be Robber“—all that publicity would certainly hamper our cause.”

“Is there nothing we can do to discover the identity of the assassin's employer?” Ki asked.

Just then, Jessie joined them at their table. Ki peered anxiously at her while Moore busied himself rounding up a third chair. She was wearing a different dress from the one she'd had on that morning, and was carrying a small leather case under her arm. Ki was greatly relieved to see that she was smiling.

He stood up to meet her approach. His voice was thick with the emotion he usually claimed to disdain. “It is a great dishonor to me.”

Jessie took several quick steps forward, to rest her head against his chest. “You can't be everywhere at once,” she murmured, trying to comfort him.

Ki smiled down at her upturned face. His arms were dangling at his sides. He could feel Jessie's warmth where she touched him, at his knees and stomach and chest. He could smell the fragrance of her hair.

It would be so simple to kiss her now, Ki thought. So natural to embrace her.
Gently, firmly, Ki moved Jessie back a bit, so that they were no longer touching. He made a pretense of carefully tilting her head this way and that, examining her face to see if she'd been injured, so that his maneuver would not seem so awkward.

“No damage done,” Jessie chuckled. “None that you can see, at any rate.” Actually, she'd suffered a slight bruise on her cheek where the man had hit her, but she'd thought to cover it with face powder, more out of consideration for Ki's feelings than from her own vanity. That's what made them a team. “Now then, if one of you gentlemen would order me a rather unladylike amount of brandy, I'd be very appreciative.”

After they were seated, and her drink had been served, Jessie asked, “Tell me what I've missed.”

“Like you, Ki wants to know who the dead man worked for,” Moore began. He pulled out his notebook and began to jot reminders to himself. “I'll ask Arthur Lewis to use his contacts to keep your involvement out of the papers. As the head of Starbuck operations in this area, he ought to have a few favors he can call in. I have some connections with the police department. I can get some information on the dead man that way.”

Ki shook his head. “If he is a professional, he will not have evidence upon his body implicating his employer.”

Moore nodded, sighing. “That's true. Look, both of you, you've got to face the fact that he's dead, so he can't tell anything.”

“I didn't want to kill him,” Jessie said dejectedly.

Moore was amused. “Could have fooled me,” he smirked.

“I'm serious,” Jessie scolded. “Honestly, Mr. Moore—”

“Jordan,” Moore corrected her.

“Jordan, then ...” Jessie rolled her eyes in exasperation. “You are the most infuriating man! You refuse to view me as anything but a woman—”

“A beautiful woman,” Moore admonished.

Jessie chose to ignore that last remark with everything but her smile. “I only had two rounds in my derringer. After wounding him with the first, I tried to get him to surrender, but he was still full of fight, and so close to me with that razor of his ... I only had that one shot left, I couldn't risk not shooting to kill.”

“It does sound like you know how to use a gun,” Moore said in obvious admiration.

“I do, and if anybody else tries what that fellow tried, I don't intend to depend on my little derringer,” Jessie declared adamantly. She picked up the leather case she'd brought and unclasped it, to show both men what was inside.

“My word!” Moore laughed. He reached into the case and pulled out Jessie's revolver. It was a double-action Colt, finished in slate gray, with grips of polished peachwood.

“My father taught me how to shoot,” Jessie explained. “He used a double-action Colt .44, just like yours, Jordan, but his didn't have a sawed-off barrel, of course.”

“Of course,” Moore mimicked teasingly, but he was genuinely impressed.

“Anyway,” Jessie continued. “A .44's recoil is too much for my hand, so my father had the Colt factories in Connecticut modify this pistol for me. The cylinder is chambered for .38 shells, but mounted on a .44 frame, so the recoil's been reduced considerably, and it's fast and accurate.”

A passing waiter frowned at Moore, who realized that waving a gun around the lobby of the Palace was probably going to get him a stern talking-to from the house detective.“Here,” he said, handing the pistol back to Jessie. “You'd better put that back where I found it.”

Jessie carefully tucked her Colt back into its case. “My point is that if I'd had this, I could have taken that man alive.”

“I believe you,” Moore said, his expression sympathetic. “But my point is that the man's dead. In a city the size of San Francisco, it is not at all uncommon for thugs like that to lie in wait for passersby. It happens all the time in the seamier sections of the city, and even here, in the better parts, an alley can be a tricky place.”

“But how would just
any
thief know my name?” Jessie asked.

“He may have heard Shanks address you,” Moore offered. “That's my guess. In any event we can't expect the police to dig too far into this. It happens too often, I'm sorry to say. You've heard of the Barbary Coast, right? That's the honkytonk section of town, where the sailors go to frolic. The whiskey sold on the Barbary Coast will make you blind. Knife fights there are so common that the police themselves carry blades, because they can get them out faster than they can their revolvers. We may never know if the man who attached Jessie was an assassin, as Ki calls him, or just a thug looking for a bankroll or jewelry to pawn, and willing to kill to get it.”

“But you will try to find something out?” Jessie urged.

“I will.” Moore smiled. “I might even have something by tonight.”

“You'll get in touch with me immediately, of course?” Jessie asked.

Moore shrugged, the smile still on his face. “I just don't know if I'll be able to remember,” he teased. “You know, the safest thing for you to do, Jessie, is to have dinner with me this evening. That way—”

Jessie's laughter drowned out the rest. “Please stop! I'd be delighted to have dinner with you. Your company is reason enough ...”

“I've got something of interest on Commissioner Smith,” Ki said pointedly. He hauled out the duty sheet, the matching crate duty number stenciled onto the splinter of wood, and the sample of opium, telling them both how he'd come by the evidence.

Moore was impressed. “If you don't mind, Ki, I'd feel better if this stuff were locked up in Arthur Lewis's safe in the Starbuck Building.” When Ki agreed, Moore promised to hand-deliver the items to Lewis. “Arthur is going to be anxious to get moving on his plan to discredit Smith,” Moore confided to Jessie. “This sort of evidence is what he's been waiting for. The newspapers would love to get hold of dynamite like this.”

“Tell Arthur not to do anything until he hears from me,” Jessie said. “We're not yet ready to move against the cartel, and that's the root of our problem. If we act against Smith now, the cartel will simply put a new man in his place. Nothing would be solved.”

“I agree,” Moore said. “And so will Arthur, when he hears your reasoning.” The detective paused, to glance at Ki. “There's one last thing troubling me. The men on the cartel's clipper got a good look at you, Ki, as did Commissioner Smith. They're sure to report their setback to their boss, Greta Kahr. I think that it's a safe bet you've made yourself some real enemies. They'll try and retaliate. Now Jessie's armed, and she'll be with me tonight, but that'll leave you all alone. If you're intending to go out, I think my partner, Shanks, should tag along.”

Ki held up his hand. “I appreciate your concern, Jordan, but I'm afraid that Shanks would be more of a hindrance than a help.”

“Well, then,” Moore sighed in resignation, “suit yourself...” He placed some money on the table to cover the cost of their drinks, bowed to Jessie, and said, “I'll call for you at eight?”

Jessie smiled, watching as Moore gathered up Ki's evidence on Smith. The detective tipped his derby a final time, and went on his way.

“What a fascinating man!” Jessie breathed.

“Skinny,” Ki muttered.

Jessie turned toward him. “What?”

“Nothing.”

“I hope you won't mind dining alone?” she asked.