Lone Star 02 (16 page)

“But that could not be your true name?” the girl wondered, confused. “If you are a samurai, you must be of noble birth?”

“I was, but I no longer use my real name,” Ki explained. He thought about how his aristocratic grandparents on both sides of the Pacific had rejected him when he was a helpless child. “I care nothing for my noble birth, and will not honor my families' names by using them. I took the name Ki when I became a samurai.”

They left the alley to hurry across a deserted lumber yard. Ki lifted Su-ling up over a low wire fence, nimbly hopped it himself, and then went with her through a small park. With a start, Ki realized that they were no longer in Chinatown. At the top of a low hill, the girl paused. She gestured down toward the wide, gaslit streets below them.

“We are very close to the waterfront,” Ki observed. “Very close to where we met, earlier this day.”

“Yes,” Su-ling sighed wistfully, turning to him. “Is it not sad? If I go any further, it will be I who am not safe.” She shrugged. “You can not exist in my world. I cannot exist in yours.”

“Su-ling,” Ki began, looking into her large, dark eyes. “It is not my world, either. I have no place ... to belong ...” Ki looked away. How could he talk about this? He had never talked about his past to anyone.

“I understand what you mean,” Su-ling coaxed gently. “You have no place to belong because you are of mixed parentage. You are unable to live in your homeland, for your blood is not pure. In America you are despised, called a foreigner, or worse, a ‘Chinee'!” She laughed bitterly. “Oh, Ki, do you not see that it is the same for me?”

“You long to be accepted as an American,” Ki said quietly. “But the Americans will not have you ...”

Su-ling nodded, looking up at him. Ki watched the glistening tears escape her large eyes. They rolled down the perfect smoothness of her cheeks.

Ki reached out to scoop her up into his arms. She trembled like a tiny bird against his chest. Ki desperately hoped she understood that he wished only to comfort her, to protect her from the world.

“My parents do not approve of my wanting a life outside of Chinatown. They wish to arrange a marriage for me. They wish our lives to be as people live them in China.” She tilted her head up toward Ki's. “They mistrust the outside world, the police, the government. They have made their wishes concerning my future clear to me. How can a daughter refute her parents' desires, and yet retain her honor?”

She tried to pull away from him, but Ki, worried that this chance might not come again, bent to kiss her. Her fragrant mouth yielded to his. Her arms wrapped tightly around him as her supple body pressed against him.

When their long kiss ended, she did not pull away, but kept her face close to his. Her eyes were halfshut, her mouth partly open. Ki ran his fingers through her shiny black hair, and then his hands moved gently over her body, caressing her firm, round bottom, tracing the curves of her hips and the swell of her warm breasts.

“Oh, noble samurai,” she breathed, even as her lips nuzzled Ki's neck. “Twice today you have saved me from harm. Are you strong enough, true enough, to save my honor as well?” Her embrace tightened as her legs parted, then locked around Ki's thigh. “If you are so strong, please fight this battle for me! I fear that my body has betrayed me, and that my womanly honor hangs by only a few silken threads.”

Ki knew she would willingly, totally, give herself to him this night. He had only to take her—and then leave her to regret and recrimination, leave her without her honor. And what would life be like without that most precious thing?

Ki kissed her one again. With his lips lingering against hers, he said, “Those silken threads shall not be torn by me this night, but one day I shall unravel them, slowly, carefully, one by one ...

Once, very timidly, Su-ling brushed her fingers against Ki's erection. “I have never
touched
a man before,” she murmured. “I—I wish you
could
be mine ...”

She pulled away from him, and stood staring down at the brightly lit streets below.

“I will see you again,” Ki began.

“No!” Su-ling said adamantly. “Once again, you must be strong for
both
of us. Ki, there is no
honor
in this. We could not be happy. I cannot go against my family's wishes. Should I do so, it would poison our union.”

Silently she began to walk back the way they'd come.

“Will you be safe, going home alone?” Ki asked uncertainly.

She turned to smile at him. “Safer than I would be, traveling home with you, Japanese,” she said wistfully. Then she blew him a kiss, and hurried back down the hill toward the small, tree-filled park.

“I
will see
you again!” Ki called after her. She did not answer. He watched until she'd disappeared among the trees.

She did not answer
me, Ki thought as he walked down the opposite side of the hill, toward the gaslit streets and the nearby waterfront.
But then again, she did not say no
...

Ki decided he would walk for a while. There was much for him to ponder. All his adult life, he had secretly loved Jessie. His love for her would continue, but it would always remain chaste.

Su-ling
... no woman had ever touched his heart the way she had. How he longed to make love to her!
All my life I have been homeless and alone,
Ki thought.
There is the Starbuck ranch, and Jessie, but they are not my own.

Ki wandered slowly down the hill. Could it be, he wondered, that in Su-ling he would find his home?

Chapter 9

Jordan Moore did not want Jessie's name to appear in the papers. He escorted her to his well-kept, four-room apartment on Clay Street before returning to the site of the murder, to wait with Shanks's body until the police arrived.

Jessie made coffee in the small kitchen, and then, despite the only moderate coolness of the evening, stoked a fire in the living room's hearth. She wanted the light and cheerful crackling of the flames for companionship, not warmth.

She sat staring into the fire for about an hour before she heard Moore's key in the lock. The slightly built detective looked haggard and worn. His tie was loosened, and his shirt front was spotted with Shanks's blood.

“How did it all go?” Jessie asked him quietly.

“About as poorly as possible,” Moore said, wincing. “They kept asking me what he—and I—had been doing there, and all I kept saying was that Shanks was there on his own time, and that I'd received a message that my partner was in trouble at that address.”

“Did they believe you?” Jessie's tone was worried.

“Oh, sure.” Moore laughed humorlessly. “And then I explained to them how if they were good, Saint Nick would bring them some clues for Christmas.” He shrugged off his suit jacket. “Excuse me while I slip into something a little less blood-stained ...”

Jessie watched the man trudge wearily into the bedroom. “The most ironic part,” Moore called through the partly open bedroom door, “is that I really don't know for sure who killed him. I mean, obviously it was one of Chang's bodyguards, but Shanks was run clear through. Chang's men would have broken Shanks's neck, or chopped him with a hatchet. They don't have much use for swords.”

“It wasn't Chang, or his men,” Jessie said.

“What?” Moore came out wearing a thick velvet robe. “What do you mean? Of course it was. Shanks was following them and got careless—”

“Greta Kahr killed him.” Jessie noticed that Moore's legs were bare between his slippers and the knee-length hem of the robe. Was the rest of him bare, as well? What a time to think about that! Jessie scolded herself, at the same time fingering the netsuke carving on the black ribbon around her neck.

“Now, why do you think it was Greta Kahr?” Moore asked her. “Wait, I'm going to fetch some of that coffee.” He returned with a mug of the brew on a tray, along with two small glasses, and a bottle of sour-mash bourbon. “I have no brandy,” he apologized. “Or rather, it's all gone. I had breakfast at home today, you see.”

“Oh, stop,” Jessie chided him, laughing. “You don't really drink all that much, do you?”

“I used to,” Moore grinned, pouring them each a bourbon. “Before I left my old profession for this line of work.”

“What did you do before?”

“I was a journalist, a police reporter, actually.” Moore sat down next to Jessie on the couch, setting their whiskey on a small table nearby. “After a few years of scribbling accounts of crimes, I realized that what I hankered to do was to solve them. I thought of joining the force. Shanks was on the force then, and he advised me against signing up. Told me I wasn't the type to take orders, told me to open up a private agency, and that he'd throw some work my way.” Moore shook his head sadly. “I sort of loved that man, Jessie. Big and dumb as he was ... there was no question that he'd become my partner once he'd retired from the department ...”

“I am so very sorry,” Jessie murmured.

Moore nodded. He took a big swallow of his drink, and kicked off his slippers, to wiggle his bare toes before the warming flames. “My dear woman, I do hope I have not offended you?” he teased. “I mean, my feet being unclothed, or unshod, as it were ...”

“I am scandalized,” Jessie pretended to huff. “But as this is 1880, and as we
are
in San Francisco, I suppose I will have to make allowances ...” She burst into giggles, picked up her glass, and knocked back her dram of bourbon.

“Damn, woman! You keep drinking like that, and next time you can just bring your own bottle!” Moore said, and drained his own glass. “Just to stay even,” he grimaced, and poured them both another. “Now tell me why you think Greta Kahr murdered Shanks,” he said.

“This afternoon—or yesterday afternoon, I suppose it is now,” Jessie said distractedly. “I mean, it must be after midnight...”

“The witching hour, but that can wait,” Moore replied. “Go on with your story.” He got up to walk over to the fireplace mantle, and extracted one of his cigars from a humidor.

“Well, I got the drop on Shanks, as I told you,” Jessie continued. “I teased him about it, telling him to be more careful. I distinctly remember saying, ‘Women are the more deadly of the species...'

Moore stood at the mantle, his unlit cigar forgotten in his fingers. “That explains what Shanks's dying words were all about,” he mused. “That stuff about how you were right, and that phrase, ‘... more deadly. ”' He took a match from a canister next to the humidor, lit his smoke, and then returned to his place on the couch. “Greta Kahr...” he grumbled, puffing angrily upon his cigar. “Oh, I can just see Shanks falling for her line, letting her get close to him ... too close ...”

“One of the Tong bodyguards must have been carrying her weapon,” Jessie mused.

“Sure!” Moore sneered. “A European-style rapier, it all makes sense. Poor Shanks!”

“That is a Prussian's sort of weapon,” Jessie agreed. She glanced at Moore, who was glowering into his drink. “One thing I'd like to know,” Jessie began tentatively. “Why didn't you tell the police of your suspicions concerning the Tong bodyguards? Was it because of me?” she softly added.

Moore looked at Jessie. Slowly his dark expression brightened into a smile. “You are so beautiful,” he said. “I'm a fool for not lying to you, but you were only
partially
why I told the police nothing. You see, with no witnesses to the murder, it would be our word against Kahr's and Chang's. Both of them have enough contacts in the city government to be able to walk away from that kind of accusation. You would have revealed yourself to your enemies for nothing.”

“So you
did
do it for me!”

“Only partially, as I said,” Moore frowned. “You see, Jessie,
I
intend to
kill
both Kahr and Chang.”

“Oh, no, Jordan,” Jessie began.

“Quiet! You don't understand,” the detective cut her off fiercely. “When a man's partner is killed, he's supposed to do something about it. That was the first thing Shanks taught me, Jessie.”

“But what good can possibly come of risking your own life to avenge—” Moore's burst of laughter stopped her. “What's so funny?” she demanded, her green eyes flashing fire.

“Of all the people to lecture me about taking the law into my own hands,” Moore gasped.

“Oh! Yes ... I see ...” Jessie blushed. “Well, just remember, you're not alone against them. You have Ki, and myself...” Once again she felt warmth suffusing her cheeks.