Bad Business Read online

  Table of Contents

  Title Page

  Copyright Page

  ONE

  TWO

  THREE

  FOUR

  FIVE

  SIX

  SEVEN

  EIGHT

  NINE

  TEN

  ELEVEN

  TWELVE

  THIRTEEN

  FOURTEEN

  FIFTEEN

  SIXTEEN

  SEVENTEEN

  EIGHTEEN

  NINETEEN

  TWENTY

  TWENTY-ONE

  TWENTY-TWO

  TWENTY-THREE

  TWENTY-FOUR

  TWENTY-FIVE

  TWENTY-SIX

  TWENTY-SEVEN

  TWENTY-EIGHT

  TWENTY-NINE

  THIRTY

  THIRTY-ONE

  THIRTY-TWO

  THIRTY-THREE

  THIRTY-FOUR

  THIRTY-FIVE

  THIRTY-SIX

  THIRTY-SEVEN

  THIRTY-EIGHT

  THIRTY-NINE

  FORTY

  FORTY-ONE

  FORTY-TWO

  FORTY-THREE

  AUTHOR’S NOTE

  PARIAH

  Concealed Weapon

  Clint heard a hammer cock, and as Adrian Webster came out the door, one shot. Then the sound of a bullet striking flesh. Clint stepped to the side, went down to one knee, and reached behind him, beneath his jacket, for the New Line. When Frank Ellington came out the door, he stopped as Webster fell in front of him. Confused, Ellington looked at Clint just as the New Line came out and lined up on him. Eyes wide, Ellington went for the gun in his belt . . .

  DON’T MISS THESE ALL-ACTION WESTERN SERIES FROM THE BERKLEY PUBLISHING GROUP

  THE GUNSMITH by J. R. Roberts

  Clint Adams was a legend among lawmen, outlaws, and ladies. They called him . . . the Gunsmith.

  LONGARM by Tabor Evans

  The popular long-running series about Deputy U.S. Marshal Custis Long—his life, his loves, his fight for justice.

  SLOCUM by Jake Logan

  Today’s longest-running action Western. John Slocum rides a deadly trail of hot blood and cold steel.

  BUSHWHACKERS by B. J. Lanagan

  An action-packed series by the creators of Longarm! The rousing adventures of the most brutal gang of cutthroats ever assembled—Quantrill’s Raiders.

  DIAMONDBACK by Guy Brewer

  Dex Yancey is Diamondback, a Southern gentleman turned con man when his brother cheats him out of the family fortune. Ladies love him. Gamblers hate him. But nobody pulls one over on Dex . . .

  WILDGUN by Jack Hanson

  The blazing adventures of mountain man Will Barlow—from the creators of Longarm!

  TEXAS TRACKER by Tom Calhoun

  J.T. Law: the most relentless—and dangerous—manhunter in all Texas. Where sheriffs and posses fail, he’s the best man to bring in the most vicious outlaws—for a price.

  THE BERKLEY PUBLISHING GROUP

  Published by the Penguin Group

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  Penguin Books Ltd., Registered Offices: 80 Strand, London WC2R 0RL, England

  This is a work of fiction. Names, characters, places, and incidents either are the product of the author’s imagination or are used fictitiously, and any resemblance to actual persons, living or dead, business establishments, events, or locales is entirely coincidental.

  BAD BUSINESS

  A Jove Book / published by arrangement with the author

  PRINTING HISTORY

  Jove edition / December 2009

  Copyright © 2009 by Robert J. Randisi.

  All rights reserved.

  No part of this book may be reproduced, scanned, or distributed in any printed or electronic form without

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  author’s rights. Purchase only authorized editions.

  For information, address: The Berkley Publishing Group,

  a division of Penguin Group (USA) Inc.,

  375 Hudson Street, New York, New York 10014.

  eISBN : 978-1-101-15160-0

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  Jove Books are published by The Berkley Publishing Group,

  a division of Penguin Group (USA) Inc.,

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  ONE

  When Clint Adams stepped off the train onto the platform in San Francisco, he missed having Eclipse underneath him. He still preferred horseback to trains. When he stepped out onto Market Street and climbed aboard the cable car, he missed his horse even more. How much longer, he wondered, until horses were totally obsolete? That wasn’t something he wanted to think about.

  In San Francisco Clint’s location of choice was usually Portsmouth Square—or just off it. He had several friends who ran hotels and gambling halls in and about the square, but that wasn’t what he was in town for this time. He got off the cable car and walked to a hotel on Powell Street, checked in, and went to his room. It wasn’t a flophouse, but it certainly wasn’t on a par with the hotels around Portsmouth Square.

  It wasn’t even as comfortable as the hotel in Chicago had been . . .

  When he got the telegram summoning him to a meeting in Chicago, he was in his hotel room in Labyrinth with a saloon girl named Maisie Wilson. Maisie was a busty blonde in her early thirties who was just passing through Labyrinth. She’d taken a job at Rick Hartman’s saloon for a few weeks, and she and Clint also decided to spend some of that time together in his room, in his bed.

  On this morning he had her on her hands and knees, lovely big, pale butt hiked in the air so he could slide his cock into her from behind. He had just pierced her to the hilt when there was a knock on the door.

  “Oh, Jesus,” she said, “don’t answer it, Clint.” She actually tightened herself around him, forbidding him to withdraw. That wonderful control of her muscles convinced him.

  From the bed he shouted, “Who is it?”

  “Uh, telegram came for you, Mr. Adams,” the desk clerk said.

  “Slide it under the door!” he yelled.

  “Uh, yes, sir.”

  He took firm hold of Maisie’s hips and went back to what they were doing . . .

  “What is it?” she asked, breathlessly.

  After they were finished, he had walked to the door and picked up the telegram from the floor. He opened it, read it, then folded it again and put it in one of the chest drawers for later.

  “Nothing important,” he said, getting back in bed with her. She cuddled up next to him, reached for his cock, and began to st
roke it. Before long he was long and hard again, and she was ready.

  “You sure it wasn’t important?” she asked, as he positioned himself between her chunky thighs. In his old age Clint was finding himself more and more preferring women with meat on their bones.

  He pressed the head of his penis to her moist pussy and said, “Not as important as this,” just as he glided into her.

  “Who’s the telegram from?” Rick Hartman asked him, later.

  “Jim West.”

  “The mystery man.”

  “Mystery man?”

  “I’ve never met him,” Hartman said. “Have you?”

  “Of course I’ve met him,” Clint said. “He’s my friend.”

  “Yeah, okay,” Hartman said. “What’s he want?”

  “He wants me to come to Chicago,” Clint explained, “check into a hotel, and meet with someone in Washington Square Park.”

  “Meet with who? Him?”

  “I don’t know.”

  “And you’re gonna go?”

  “I am,” Clint said.

  “Why?”

  “Well . . . the telegram is from Jim West, right?” Clint said.

  “And when he calls you run?”

  “Rick, there are four men who could send me a telegram like that . . . no, sorry, five men who could send me a telegram like that and I would respond to it, no questions asked. Or come running, as you said.”

  “Lemme guess,” Rick Hartman said. “Jim West, Bat Masterson, Wyatt Earp, um, oh, yeah, Talbot Roper, and . . . who?”

  Clint smiled at his friend and said, “That would be you, Rick. You.”

  When Clint arrived in Chicago, he’d checked into a hotel on East Chicago Street near Washington Square Park. Even then he’d found himself missing the time he spent on horseback. But the request for him to come to Chicago was urgent and did not allow for him to ride there from Texas.

  He was on the second floor, and as he looked out the window he marveled at how Chicago was growing. It was too big—too many high buildings, too many people, too many things like elevators and telephones.

  He had a meeting set for later that day, and after the meeting he hoped to leave Chicago and get back to the West. He had no idea the meeting would take him directly to San Francisco for another meeting.

  But first, the Chicago meet . . .

  He freshened up, left his hotel, and walked down the street to Washington Square Park. He didn’t know who he was going to be talking to, so his instructions were to simply walk until he was contacted. If he wasn’t contacted, he was to come back the next day, at the same time, and walk some more. He was guaranteed the meet would take place either the first day or the second.

  He was hoping for the first.

  TWO

  Clint only had to walk about a mile before a man approached him. He recognized the man immediately. It was not James West, of the Secret Service.

  It was William Pinkerton.

  Since the death of Allan Pinkerton in 1884, William and his younger brother, Robert, had been running the Pinkerton Detective Agency.

  Pinkerton extended his hand.

  “Hello, Mr. Adams.”

  “William.” The two men shook hands.

  “Can we walk?” Pinkerton asked.

  “Sure,” Clint said. “I’m enjoying the exercise.”

  “I’m sorry for all the secrecy,” Pinkerton said, as he fell into step with Clint. “We really didn’t want anyone to see you coming into the office.”

  “We?”

  “My brother, Robert, and myself,” William said.

  “So Robert knows about this meeting?”

  “Robert, me, Jim West . . . and now you.”

  “And how many know what this meeting is actually about?”

  “Robert, Jim, myself . . . and soon, you.”

  “As soon as you tell me, right?”

  “That’s correct.”

  William was tall, dark-haired, in his forties, and easily matched strides with Clint as they walked through the park. It was spring, and mild, but he was wearing a long coat. Clint wondered if he was armed beneath it. Because he was walking the streets of Chicago, and not Dodge City, Clint had left his holstered Colt back in the room. Instead, he had his little Colt New Line tucked into his belt at the small of his back.

  “Well,” Clint said, “I’m all ears.”

  “What?”

  “It’s just something I heard once,” Clint said. “It means I’m listening.”

  “Adams, I know you weren’t fond of my father.”

  “I didn’t like him,” Clint said, “but I respected old Allan.”

  “When he died,” William said, “my brother and I suspected foul play.”

  “That makes sense,” Clint said, “what with everything he did in the war and all the criminals he’d put away since. But . . . I heard he fell, bit his tongue, and eventually succumbed to gangrene.”

  “Hell of a way for a great man to die,” William said, shaking his head.

  As Clint had said, he’d respected Allan Pinkerton for everything he’d done with his life. But he wouldn’t have gone so far as to call him a great man. He kept his opinion to himself, though.

  “What’s this got to do with Allan’s death?”

  “Everything,” William said. “I’ve been contacted by someone who says he has information about my father’s death.”

  “Information?”

  “Proof,” William said, “that he was murdered.”

  “And do they know who murdered him?”

  “I don’t know,” William said. “What I’ve told you is all I have, except for one other thing.”

  “What’s that?”

  “They want to meet . . . in San Francisco.”

  “So go and meet them.”

  “I can’t,” William said.

  “So send one of your men.”

  “My brother doesn’t agree that we should commit company resources to this.”

  “What your brother doesn’t know won’t hurt him,” Clint said.

  “No,” William said, “since our father died we’ve worked hand in hand to build this agency, to make it even bigger than our father did. I can’t go behind his back.”

  “Wait a minute,” Clint said. “You said he knew you were meeting me today?”

  “Well . . . I may have lied about that.”

  “Then you’re going behind his back to contact me.”

  “Well, yes . . . but I can’t go behind his back to send one of our men to San Francisco.”

  “Or go yourself.”

  “Right.”

  “So you’re asking me to go.”

  “Yes.”

  Clint stopped walking. William continued on for three steps before he stopped and turned.

  “Why would I do that?” Clint asked.

  “Why would you come here?” William asked. “All the way to Chicago to meet with some unknown someone? On the word of Jim West.”

  Clint stared at him.

  “That’s why you’ll do this.”

  Clint stared at the man, then asked, “When’s the meet?”

  THREE

  On the word of Jim West . . .

  . . . Clint ended up in San Francisco, in a saloon that looked like it belonged on the Barbary Coast, not Market Street. The wooden floor was covered with sawdust. There were stuffed fish on the walls, along with nets and ropes and other fishing equipment.

  Clint went to the bar and ordered a beer. It was surprisingly good.

  “The owner a fisherman?” he asked.

  “Used to be a sailor,” the bartender said. “Gave up the sea and opened this place, but I think he must miss it.”

  “Looks like it.”

  “New in town?” the barkeep asked. He was tall, thin, in his fifties with some loose skin under his chin that jiggled when he talked.

  “Just got in,” Clint said. “Staying in a hotel down the street.”

  “Lookin’ for anythin’?”

  “
Anythin’?”

  “Girl,” the man said, “two girls? An old lady, maybe? A boy?”

  “No, thanks,” Clint said. “I get my own women.”

  “Suit yerself.”

  Clint’s instructions were to come to this saloon, have a beer at the bar, and wait to be approached. As with the walk in Washington Square Park, if no one approached him the first day, he was to come back.

  Nobody came up to him the first day . . .

  On the second day a girl approached him, but she was selling something—herself.

  On day three he entered and walked to the bar. This was it for him. If no one came up to him, he was checking out of his hotel and into a place in Portsmouth Square to do some gambling. Just so the trip wouldn’t be a total loss.

  “Hey, buddy,” the bartender said. “Back again? Beer?”

  “Sure.”

  The beer was his only consolation. It was ice cold and very good.

  “You wouldn’t be lookin’ for a game, wouldja?” the barman asked.

  “What makes you think that?”

  “Well, you ain’t lookin’ fer a girl,” the man said. “I saw Lorie talkin’ to ya yesterday, and ya didn’t go with her.”

  “What if all I’m looking for is a beer?” Clint asked.

  “Then ya wouldn’t be comin’ here for it,” the bartender said. “There’s plenty of other places in San Francisco to get beer.”

  “Yeah,” Clint said, “but this is good beer.”

  “Well, yeah, you’re right about that.”

  “What about the owner?” Clint asked. “Does he ever come around?”

  “Few times a week,” the bartender said.

  “What’s he do when he’s not here?”

  The bartender shrugged.

  “I work for him, but we ain’t friends,” he said.