The atmosphere in the conference room crackled with expectation and hope. What had almost seemed like a lost cause was coming together. Three pairs of eyes trained on the giant wall map, traveled west toward the Pacific Ocean, and focused on the port city of San Francisco.
In the elevator that took him down to the street for his walk to the Brown Palace, Bell felt jubilant. Win, lose, or draw, the end of the game was in sight. Granted, it was still hazy and indistinct, but the cards were finally falling in Bell’s favor. His thoughts turned to Rose and he found himself wondering for the hundredth time what connection she had with the Butcher Bandit.
What woman could be close to a man who murdered women and children? He began to believe that she might be as rotten as the bandit, if not more so.
BELL STEPPED from the Brown Palace elevator and walked to his suite. He pulled the key from his pant pocket and inserted it in the door lock. Before he could turn the key, the door slipped open a crack. The latch had not been fully engaged when the door had been closed.
Bell paused and tensed. His first thought was that the maid had forgotten to close the door and spring the bolt. It was a logical assumption, but an inner wisdom made him suspicious. The perception of something being not quite right had saved him on more than one occasion.
Bell had made many enemies during his years as a detective with Van Dorn. Several of the men he had captured and seen tried and sentenced to prison had vowed they would come after him. Three had tried and two had died.
If someone was waiting for him inside his room, it wouldn’t be with a gun, he reasoned. Gunshots would echo throughout the hotel and bring a dozen staff running. For a criminal to escape from the ninth floor, he either would have to wait for an elevator or run down the stairs, neither a good choice for a successful escape.
Bell was aware that he was probably overexaggerating the threat, which could very well be nonexistent. But he hadn’t survived this long without a suspicious mind. If someone was waiting inside his suite, he thought, they would do their dirty work with a knife.
He removed his hat and dropped it. Before it hit the carpet, his derringer was in his hand, an over-and-under, two-barrel, .41 caliber small handgun that packed a surprisingly heavy punch at close range.
Bell waggled the key in the door as if he was turning the lock. He pushed the door open and hesitated, staring around the foyer of the suite and the living room beyond before he entered. The smell of cigarette smoke greeted his nostrils, confirming Bell’s suspicions. He only rarely smoked a cigar and then only with brandy after a gourmet dinner. With the derringer in hand, he stepped into the suite. Death, like a third man, was waiting inside.
A man was sitting on a settee reading a newspaper. At Bell’s approach, he laid the paper aside and revealed a face as ugly as sin. The black hair was greasy and slicked flat. His face looked like it had been stomped on by a mule, and he had the body of a state fair prizewinning boar. His eyes were strangely soft and friendly, a guise that fooled many of his victims. Bell was not fooled; he could see the man had the strength to spring like a tiger.
“How did you get in?” Bell asked simply.
The stranger held up a key. “Skeleton key,” he said in a voice that came like a rock crusher. “I never leave home without one.”
“What is your name?”
“It won’t matter if you know my name. You’ll never get a chance to use it. But since you’ve asked, it’s Red Kelly.”
Bell’s photographic memory shifted into gear and the recollection of a report he’d once read came back. “Yes, the infamous Red Kelly, boxer, Barbary Coast saloonkeeper, and murderer. You fought a good battle against world champion James J. Corbett. I once studied a report on you in the event you ever wandered beyond the California border. This is a mistake on your part. You have protection from crooked politicians that keeps you from getting extradited for crimes in other states, but that won’t help you in Colorado. You’re subject to arrest here.”
“And who is going to arrest me?” said Kelly showing an expanse of gold teeth. “You?”
Bell stood loosely, waiting, and expecting a move from Kelly. “You wouldn’t be the first.”
“I know all about you, pretty boy,” said Kelly contemptuously. “You’ll bleed just like the other poor slobs I’ve put in the grave.”
“How many detectives and police?”
Kelly grinned nastily. “Three that I can remember. After a while, the numbers began to fade.”
“Your days of murder are over, Kelly,” Bell said calmly.
“That’ll be the day, pretty boy. If you think you can bully me with that popgun in your hand, you’re wasting your breath.”
“You don’t think I could kill you with it?” Bell said.
“You’d never get the chance,” Kelly retorted coldly.
There it was. Bell caught it instantly. The sudden shift in the eyes. He swung into a crouch and, in the blink of an eye, aimed and fired a shot into the forehead of the man who was creeping up behind him from where he’d been, hidden by a curtain. The report reverberated out the open door and throughout the atrium of the hotel.
Kelly glanced at the body of his henchman with all the interest of a horse that had stepped on a prairie dog. Then he smiled at Bell. “Your reputation is well founded. You must have eyes in the back of your head.”
“You came to kill me,” said Bell evenly. “Why?”
“It’s a job, nothing more.”
“Who paid you?”
“Not necessary for you to know.” Kelly laid aside the paper and slowly got to his feet.
“Don’t try for the gun in the belt behind your back,” Bell said, the derringer as steady as a branch on an oak tree.
Kelly flashed his gold teeth again. “I don’t need a gun.”
He sprang forward, his powerful legs propelling across the room as if he had been shot from a cannon.
What saved Bell in those two seconds was the span between them, a good eight feet. Any less distance and Kelly would have been all over him like an avalanche. As it was, Kelly struck him like a battering ram, a glancing blow that knocked Bell sideways over a chair and onto the grass green carpet. But not before he pulled the trigger of the derringer and sent a bullet into Kelly’s right shoulder.
The brute was stopped in his tracks but did not fall. He was too powerful, too muscular, to fold with a bullet that did not penetrate his heart or brain. He contemplated the spreading of crimson on his shirt with the detached look of a surgeon. Then he grinned fiendishly. “Your little popgun only holds two bullets, pretty boy. Now it’s empty.”
“I wish you would stop calling me pretty boy,” said Bell, leaping to his feet.
Now it was Kelly’s turn to reach behind his back and retrieve his Colt revolver. He was just bringing it level to pull the trigger when Bell hurled his derringer like a baseball pitcher receiving the signal from the catcher to throw a fastball. At four feet away, he couldn’t miss. The little gun, solid as a piece of quartz, thudded off Kelly’s face just above the nose and between the eyes.
Blood gushed from the gash and quickly covered the lower half of Kelly’s face. The blow staggered him more than the slug in his shoulder. There was no gasp of pain, no bloodcurdling cry. He made no sound other than a great sigh. The gun was still in his hand, but he did not lift it to aim. He couldn’t. Bell put his head down and charged the strong man like a porpoise into a great white shark, accelerating with every step, thrusting his head into Kelly’s stomach with all his strength. The ex-boxer merely grunted and brushed Bell away, throwing him halfway across the room with a strength nothing less than phenomenal.
Bell crashed into a wall with a crunch that forced the breath from his lungs. If the impact had been any harder, he’d have been in traction for two months. But his bone-jarring charge had not been in vain. During the collision of his one hundred eighty-five pounds against Kelly’s two-fifty, he had snatched the revolver from the hand of the killer.
There was n
o command to cease another assault, no “Stop or I’ll shoot.” Bell had been through the mill and knew you don’t waste words on a killer dead set on sending you to a marble slab at the county coroner’s. He had no illusions about beating Kelly in a man-to-man fight. The murderer was stronger and more ruthless. Bell barely got off two shots before Kelly recovered enough to reach out and grasp Bell around the neck with the ferocity of a gorilla, his massive hands choking the life out of the detective. He fell against Bell, pressing him into the carpet, his massive weight crushing Bell’s torso and pinning his arms so he couldn’t fire the Colt again. Kelly squeezed calmly and purposely, as though the bullets he had taken were a mere annoyance.
Bell couldn’t move, and there was no reaching up in an attempt to pull off the fingers digging into his neck. Kelly’s strength went way beyond Bell’s. Bell didn’t doubt that he wasn’t the first man Kelly had strangled. Unless he did something very rapidly, he wouldn’t be the last. Blackness was edging his line of vision, and getting darker by the moment.
What stunned Bell more than the realization that he was only seconds away from death was what happened to the two bullets he had pumped into Kelly. He was certain he had struck the Goliath in the body. Bell looked up into two eyes that were as dark as evil and the blood that had turned the lower face into a horrific mask of crimson. What was keeping him alive, why wasn’t his strength ebbing? The man wasn’t human.
Then, perceptibly, Bell felt the pressure begin to ease slightly. Rather than try to pry the hands from around his neck, Bell reached up and embedded his thumbs in Kelly’s expressionless eyes, knowing it would be the final move before darkness closed over him. In a violent, corkscrew motion, Bell twisted his body out from under Kelly.
The big boxer groaned and covered his eyes with his hands. Unseeing, he crawled toward Bell, who kicked out viciously, catching Kelly in the stomach. Only then did he see the two bullet holes seeping blood through Kelly’s shirt below the rib cage. What kept him going? Bell wondered. He should have died before now. But, instead, Kelly reached out and grabbed Bell by the leg.
Bell felt himself being pulled across the carpet, now stained and soaked with Kelly’s blood. He lashed out with his free foot. It bounced off Kelly, who acted as if he never felt it. The grip on Bell’s calf tightened. Fingernails dug through his pants into his flesh. He was pulled closer to Kelly, seeing an agonized face, the eyes glaring with hatred.
It was time to end this ghastly fight. Bell’s right hand still held the Colt. With deadly calm, he raised the barrel until the muzzle was only inches from Kelly’s face, deliberately pulled the trigger, and sent a .44 caliber bullet into Kelly’s right eye.
There was no terrible scream or horrible gurgling sound. Kelly exhaled an audible gasp from his throat and rolled over on the carpet like some great beast in its death throes crumpling to the earth.
Bell sat up on the floor and massaged his throat, panting from the exertion. He turned his head and stared at the doorway as men came rushing into the suite. They stopped in stunned shock at the sight of the sea of blood and the great hump of a man whose face was unrecognizable because of the bloody, congealing mask. The face looked particularly grotesque due to the gold teeth showing through the open lips that slowly became coated red.
Kelly had died hard, and for what? Money? A debt? A vendetta? Not the latter. Bell had never launched an investigation against the Barbary Coast giant. Someone must have paid him to kill and paid him extremely well.
Bell wondered if he would ever know the answer.
THE NEXT MORNING, Bell stepped out of the big porcelain bathtub, toweled off the water that dripped down his body, and gazed in the mirror. His throat didn’t look pretty. It was swollen, with purple bruises so obvious that he could see the shape of Red Kelly’s fingers where they had dug into his flesh. He put on a clean white shirt and was pleased to see that the high, starched collar, though it chafed his tender skin, covered the bruises.
They weren’t the only purplish green marks on his aching body. He had several from falling over the chair, and from being thrown across the room and into the wall by Kelly’s brute strength. They were tender to the touch and would not fade anytime soon.
After dressing in his trademark linen suit, Bell left the hotel and stopped off at the Western Union office and sent a telegram to Joseph Van Dorn that told of the attempt on his life. When he came slowly through the door of the office, Agnes Murphy openly stared at him. She stood up with a look of motherly concern in her eyes. “Oh, Mr. Bell. I heard about your unfortunate incident. I do hope you’re all right.”
“A few bruises, Agnes, nothing more.”
Curtis and Irvine heard his voice and came from the conference room, followed by Alexander from his office. Both agents vigorously shook his hand—a bit too vigorously, Bell thought, wincing at the discomfort that traveled over his aching body. Alexander merely stood back, as if he was a spectator in an audience.
“Glad to see you alive and kicking,” said Curtis. “We heard it was quite a fight.”
“It was as close as I ever came to buying the farm,” said Bell.
“After talking to you over the phone,” said Curtis, “I wired your identification of Red Kelly to our San Francisco office. They’re going to check out Kelly and any of his clients who might have wanted you eliminated.”
“A terrible thing,” Alexander said without emotion. “Unthinkable, that someone would attempt to assassinate a Van Dorn agent.”
Bell gave Alexander a long hard look. “I can only wonder how Kelly knew where I was staying.”
“Kelly was a well-known crime boss on the Barbary Coast in San Francisco,” said Irvine. “Could any of your former friends who you put in jail or friends and families of those who were executed because you arrested them be from San Francisco?”
“None that I can name,” answered Bell. “If I had to make a guess, I’d have to say the Butcher Bandit was behind it.”
“Knowing you were on the case,” said Irvine, “he’d certainly have a motive.”
Alexander said, “We won’t rest until we get to the bottom of this.” To Bell, his words rang hollow. “I can’t tell you how glad I am that you are alive and well.” Then he turned and walked back to his office.
As soon as he was out of earshot, Bell said, “Another nail in the coffin, gentlemen. The key to the bandit’s whereabouts is San Francisco.”
18
WHEN BELL, IRVINE, AND CURTIS STEPPED OFF THE ferry from Oakland and entered the huge Ferry Building, they found themselves in a three-story-tall hall with repeating arches and skylights overhead. They exited onto the Embarcadero, at the foot of Market Street. While Irvine and Curtis went to hail a motor cab, Bell turned and looked up at the two-hundred-forty-foot clock tower, modeled after the twelfth-century Giralda bell tower in Seville, Spain. The long hands on the expansive dial read eleven minutes past four.
Bell checked the time on his watch and duly noted that the ferry building clock was one minute fast.
Because of the huge crowds in the terminal after pouring off four ferryboats at the same time, the agents were unable to find a free motor cab. Bell stopped a horse-drawn carriage, haggled a price with the driver, and commandeered it to carry them to the Palace Hotel on Montgomery Street. As they settled in the carriage, Curtis spoke to Bell.
“How do you plan to handle the Van Dorn San Francisco office?”
“We’re having dinner with the district director. His name is Horace Bronson. I once worked with him in New Orleans. He’s a fine fellow and very efficient. When I sent him a telegram, he wired back and offered every cooperation in his power. He promised to send his agents out to obtain the names of people from gun dealers who might have purchased a thirty-eight-caliber Colt automatic.”
Irvine rolled an unlit cigar around in his fingers. “On my end, I’ll start with the Cromwell and Crocker banks and see if they can help trace any of the stolen currency serial numbers.”
Bell said to Irvine,
“You might check out the other major banks, too, such as Wells Fargo and the Bank of Italy, in case any stolen bills might be in their possession. If the bandit is from San Francisco, it stands to reason he’d have passed them around town.”
“We have our work cut out for us,” said Curtis. “I’ll see if I can’t track down the O’Brian Furniture car.”
Bell stretched out his feet in the carriage and said, “After we meet with Bronson, I’ll write out news releases about the fake currency shipment to the San Miguel Valley Bank in Telluride and prevail upon the editors of the city’s major newspapers to run the story.”
The carriage reached the magnificent Palace Hotel and turned into the Garden Court, the hotel’s elegant carriage entrance that was commanded by seven stories of gleaming white marble balconies with over a hundred ornamented columns. Light from above filtered through a huge stained-glass-domed skylight.
Bell paid off the coachman as porters took the luggage inside. The three Van Dorn detectives walked into a vast, majestic lobby. After registering, they went up to their rooms in a redwood-paneled hydraulic elevator. Bell arranged for the rooms to be joined together to create a large suite.
“Tell you what,” said Bell to Irvine and Curtis. “It’s almost five o’clock, so nothing can be accomplished today. Let’s get cleaned up. Then we’ll go out, have a good meal, get a good night’s sleep, and start beating the bushes first thing in the morning.”
“Sounds good to me,” Irvine said, his stomach growling, since they had eaten nothing in the last eight hours.
“What have you got in mind for a restaurant?” asked Curtis.
“Bronson is a member of the Bohemian Club. He’s arranged for us to eat with him in their dining room.”
“Sounds exclusive.”
Bell smiled. “You don’t know how exclusive.”
AT EIGHT O’CLOCK, the men exited a motor cab at the Taylor Street entrance of the powerful and elite Bohemian Club. Founded in 1872 as a gathering place for newspaper journalists and men of the arts and literature, its members included Mark Twain, Bret Harte, Ambrose Bierce, and Jack London. Over the years, powerful and influential men who made up the business elite of the city joined and soon became the dominant group. No women were allowed, and wives and unmarried guests of the members had to enter through a back door.