The Dublin Detective 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 - SHREVEPORT, LOUISIANA

  FORTY-THREE

  FORTY-FOUR

  FORTY-FIVE

  Watch for

  With Friends Like These . . .

  Clint had been hoping to talk the sailors out of killing McBeth, but that wasn’t going to happen. As one gunman turned on him, he drew and fired one shot. Clint hit the man dead center, drove him back off the dock and into the water with a splash. Then Clint turned his attention to the other three men, who had charged at their target, and he could tell by the way they held their knives that they were not experienced knife fighters.

  McBeth dropped to the ground and managed to trip up two of the men. They went sprawling. McBeth disarmed the third man, then deposited him into the water. McBeth turned as one of the other men was getting up. They faced each other, each holding a knife. Then the sailor—not liking the new one-to-one odds—jumped back and ran away.

  Clint approached McBeth. “You need one of them to tell you who hired them?” Clint asked.

  “No,” McBeth said, picking up his bag. “It was the captain of this ship. He was a friend of mine.”

  “Was?”

  “Well, he tried to have me killed,” McBeth said. “I think the friendship is over . . .”

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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.

  THE DUBLIN DETECTIVE

  A Jove Book / published by arrangement with the author

  PRINTING HISTORY

  Jove edition / May 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 permission. Please do not participate in or encourage piracy of copyrighted materials in violation of the author’s rights. Purchase only authorized editions.

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  a division of Penguin Group (USA) Inc.,

  375 Hudson Street, New York, New York 10014.

  eISBN : 978-1-101-03270-1

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  ONE

  James McBeth stared down at the docks from the deck of the Dublin Queen. He stretched, trying to dispel the kink in his lower back.

  “What’dja expect,” asked Captain Angus O’Callaghan. “I tol’ ya we wasn’t a passenger ship.”

  McBeth looked at his friend and said, “I got just what I expected, you old pirate.”

  He’d had to find himself a corner in the ship’s hold to sleep in. It was cramped and damp, and if a kink in his back was the worst he’d have to deal with, he’d take it. He could have gotten pneumonia, scurvy or worse.

  “Ya better get you off this ship if you wan’ta get a room,” the captain said. “My men already know all the good places.”

  “After the hold of your ship, anything will suffice,” McBeth said.

  “Suffice,” O’Callaghan said. “If I was you, boyo, I’d watch meself wit’ them ten-dollar words ya like ta use. The Barbary Coast ain’t the place for them.”

  “I’ll keep it in mind, Angus.”

  They continued to watch as most of the crew disembarked.

  “He’s got a week’s head start on you, McBeth,” O’Callaghan said. “What makes you think you can find him . . . out there?”

  “It’s what I do, Angus,” McBeth said. “I’m a hunter of men, remember?”

  “In our country, yes,” the ship captain said. “But here?”

  McBeth looked at O’Callaghan.

  “Anywhere, Angus,” he said. “It doesn’t matter where. It’s who I am.”

  “All right,” O’Callaghan said. “We’ll be here for four days,
if you want to head back.”

  “I’m good,” McBeth said with a grin, “but I don’t think I’ll find him that quickly.”

  “What if he’s left San Francisco?”

  “I already expect that he’s left San Francisco,” McBeth said. “He knows I’m after him. He’ll go east, into this country’s wilderness.”

  “Not so much of a wilderness anymore, as I hear,” O’Callaghan said.

  “Perhaps not.”

  “You’ll have to be armed.”

  McBeth pulled aside his jacket to show the gun in his belt. It was German.

  “You’ll need better than that.”

  “I will get it,” McBeth said.

  “Well, then, I guess all that is left is for me to wish you luck, my friend.”

  McBeth turned and accepted O’Callaghan’s hand.

  “Thanks for the ride.”

  “Be careful.”

  “That’s not how I do what I do,” McBeth said, “but thanks for the sentiment.”

  McBeth walked to the gangplank, waited his turn to walk down. He hefted the bag on his back, which held only meager belongings. He would have to outfit himself, and he had planned in advance so that he had American money on him.

  When he reached the dock he turned and looked up at O’Callaghan, who lifted his arm and waved. For McBeth, it was a friend waving good-bye to another friend—and perhaps it was, but it was not the kind of good-bye McBeth thought it was.

  McBeth turned back around and looked ahead on the gangplank just in time to see the four men disembarking in front of him suddenly pivot and begin to rush him.

  From the deck of the ship Captain Angus O’Callaghan watched the four men converge on McBeth. It hadn’t been an easy thing for him to do, but he’d been paid a lot of money to make it look like McBeth had been killed on American soil during a robbery. That was why he hadn’t had him killed on his ship.

  O’Callaghan had known McBeth for a long time, so he couldn’t watch the attack. He turned and walked away.

  McBeth dropped the bag from his back. The four men faced him, one pointing a gun at the Irishman.

  “Drop yer weapon,” the gunman said.

  The other three had knives. It was plain to McBeth that was the way they intended to kill him. They didn’t want to shoot him, they wanted to make it look like he’d been knifed the minute he stepped off the boat.

  “If I drop my gun, you’ll kill me,” McBeth replied.

  “If you don’t, we’ll kill ye anyway,” the man holding the gun said. “If ye drop yer gun, ye’ve got a fightin’ chance at least.”

  McBeth thought about that for all of a second, and it actually made sense. If he tried to draw his gun, he might get one of them, but they’d surely kill him. If he dropped the weapon, they’d come at him with their knives. At least that way he’d have that fighting chance.

  “Okay,” he said.

  “Take it out with two fingers,” the man said. “Carefully now.”

  McBeth showed his two fingers, pulled his jacket aside, and drew the gun out that way, then dropped it to the ground.

  “Kick it into the water.”

  Damn! He’d been hoping he could just kick it away and then maybe be able to pick it up during the fight. Once it was in the water, it was lost to him for good.

  “Go on, boyo,” the man said. “Kick it.”

  McBeth had no choice. He kicked the gun. It skittered across the dock and splashed into the water.

  The man with the gun stepped back and said, “All right, lads. Do it.”

  More bad news. McBeth had been hoping the man would put his gun away and draw a knife. Instead, he was going to stand back and watch the other three kill him. And if, somehow, McBeth gained the upper hand, the gunman would probably just shoot him after all.

  It looked bad for McBeth either way.

  TWO

  The three sailors came at him, and he could tell from the way they held their knives that’s what they were—sailors, not killers. They’d taken this job for the money, because there were four of them. If not for the man with the gun, McBeth felt he actually would have a fighting chance against them. If he could work his way around to the man with the gun, he wouldn’t even have to take it from him, he’d just have to knock it away.

  But at the moment the other three were between him and the gunman, fanned out, holding their knives like sailors, not like knife fighters.

  He was going to have to get a knife away from one of them and risk a throw at the gunman.

  “All right, then, lads,” he said, “you heard the man—come and get me.”

  “Oh, we’ll get ya, all right,” one of them said. “That’s what we’re gettin’ paid ta do.”

  “Enough talk,” the man with the gun said. “Just do it so we can get on wit’ our leave.”

  If the three men charged him all at once, he wasn’t going to have a chance, whether they were experienced fighters or not. They’d take him down by sheer numbers.

  He was good, but in this case, he was as good as dead.

  “Hold it!”

  Everybody looked toward the voice—McBeth, the man with the gun, and the three amateur knife fighters.

  “Wha—” one of the sailors said.

  There was a man standing there, his hands clasped in front of him. He was wearing a gun and looking very calm.

  “Am I interrupting something?”

  “A murder, I think,” McBeth said.

  “This ain’t none of your business,” the man with the gun said.

  “Well, I was supposed to meet somebody down here on the dock,” the stranger said, “but it looks like they haven’t shown up. So I guess I don’t have any business of my own.” He shrugged. “I might as well get involved in yours.”

  “I don’t mind,” McBeth said.

  “What have these men got against you, friend?” the stranger asked.

  “Nothin’ that I know of,” McBeth said. “They are just bein’ paid to kill me.”

  “By whom?”

  “A friend of mine.”

  The man frowned.

  “You got weird friends.”

  “Hey!” the gunman said. “Look, boyo, you should be on your way.”

  “Wait, I’m getting it,” the stranger said. “You’re all Irish, right? Just got off a boat from Dublin?”

  “Galway,” McBeth said. “But for all I know, they might be Dubliners.”

  The three men with the knives looked confused. McBeth thought that if the stranger kept the gunman busy, he’d be able to surprise the other three, maybe shove a couple of them into the water before they knew what was happening, leaving him with only one attacker to handle.

  “Four against one,” the stranger said. “Those aren’t very fair odds. Why don’t we start with you putting the gun down?”

  “What?”

  “Put it down,” the man said. “Then you and me, we can watch your boys take on . . . what’s your name?”

  “McBeth.”

  “We can watch them take on Mr. McBeth,” the man said. “Frankly, I’m willing to bet on him. Your boys don’t look very smart.”

  “What?” The gunman was confused as well.

  “Put it down.”

  The man flexed his fingers around the butt of the gun.

  “Don’t get nervous,” the stranger told him. “You fire that thing, even by accident, and I’m going to have to kill you.”

  “I-I got my gun in my hand, friend.”

  “That doesn’t matter to me . . . friend. You’re in America now. We’re all fast-draw artists. Haven’t you read any of the books?”

  “You mean, like Wild Bill Hickok?” McBeth asked.

  “Exactly like Wild Bill Hickok.”

  McBeth looked at the gunman.

  “If I were you, lad, I’d put it down.”

  The gunman risked a look at his ship, but there was nobody watching from the deck. He licked his lips while the three men with knives turned to look at him.

  “
Kill him!” he told them as he turned his gun toward the stranger.

  THREE

  Clint had been hoping to talk the sailors out of killing the other man, but obviously that wasn’t going to happen. As the gunman turned on him, he drew and fired one shot. He hit the man dead center, drove him back off the dock and into the water with a splash.

  Clint turned his attention to the other three men, who had charged at their target. He could tell by the way they held their knives that they were not experienced knife fighters.

  He watched as McBeth dropped to the ground and managed to trip up two of the men. They went sprawling as McBeth got back to his feet and disarmed the third man, then deposited him into the water.