Gabriel's Fate Read online

  Juniper’s eyes had begun to leak, and she drew a handkerchief from her pocket and dabbed at them. “She loves you. She won’t admit it, even to herself, but she does.”

  Unable to speak for a couple of seconds, Gabriel gaped at the little lady perched on the chair. Juniper nodded, and Gabriel found his voice. “I—ah—I love her, too.”

  She gave him the sweetest, saddest smile he’d ever received from anyone. “Of course, you do. I’ve known it for weeks. Every time the two of you are together, the magic is palpable. I’ve seen it in the cards from the moment we met in that awful little train station in Texas.”

  “Laredo,” Gabriel murmured, feeling a trifle numb.

  “Is that where it was?” Juniper peered at him, but didn’t seem to see him. “I’d forgotten.” To Gabriel, it looked as if she was staring into the past. She rose from the chair. “You know, I’ve been too unhappy recently to read the cards for you and Sophie, but I believe I will now. Maybe they’ll give me some hope.”

  If they didn’t, Gabriel didn’t want to know about it. “Well, ma’am, I reckon I’d best be off, then. I—well, I’ll find her. Somehow, I’ll find her.” He hoped to hell that he’d find her before she found Hardwick. Or, if he was too late for that, he prayed he’d get to her before the police did.

  “I go with you.”

  Dmitri hopped down from the chair, stuck his soft cap back onto his head, and marched to stand beside Gabriel, who said, “I guess that’s all right.”

  “I go,” Dmitri repeated, obviously not caring if Gabriel wanted him along.

  “Please be careful, both of you.” Juniper rose and clasped her hands in a beseeching gesture at her waist. “I’ll be praying for you. And for Sophie.”

  Gabriel supposed a prayer or two couldn’t hurt any. He tipped his hat. “Thank you, Miss Juniper.” And there, he thought as he closed the door behind himself and Dmitri, is a genuinely good woman. He wished he could get hold of Sophie and make her study her aunt for a few decades; she could learn a lot from Miss Juniper.

  “Try Wong’s,” Dmitri said as soon as they’d reached the staircase leading to the street.

  Gabriel squinted at him. “Wong’s? What’s Wong’s?”

  “Hotel. Grant Street. Chinatown. Huffy stay there once. I remember.”

  “Thank God somebody can remember something,” Gabriel muttered. “Can we walk, or should we get a cab?” San Francisco was an admirably walkable city, but Gabriel’s legs were so much longer than Dmitri’s, he hesitated to suggest walking.

  “We walk,” said Dmitri, thereby further securing Gabriel’s approval and appreciation.

  Without wasting lung power on an answer, Dmitri set off at a fair clip, down Market Street. Gabriel followed, also without wasting breath. Uphill and downhill they walked, and it wasn’t long before they reached Grant Avenue. Gabriel recalled when he first visited San Francisco, some fifteen years before, the street hadn’t been renamed in honor of the former president, but had struggled along as Du Pont Avenue. The change in its name hadn’t altered anything else about it from the looks of things.

  He had a particular fondness for San Francisco, probably because of its exuberance. He wondered if he could talk Sophie into settling here. “Criminy, what’s the matter with me?”

  He realized he’d spoken aloud when Dmitri turned and said, “You want me to say?”

  “No. Sorry. I, uh, stumbled,” he muttered, wishing that were all that was wrong with him.

  Hell. Now why in the name of thunder was he even thinking about settling down with Sophie? Anywhere? Unless she was even more of a fool than he already knew himself to be, he had no business thinking about Sophie at all, except as a problem to be taken care of.

  He and Dmitri fairly sprinted up a long, steep hill, and he decided it would behoove him not to think about Sophie at all. He could think about—what?

  Cigars! Yes, indeed. He could think about how extremely glad he now was for his father’s strict edicts against smoking and drinking. He’d chafed under those rules as a lad, but he appreciated them now. Why, if he’d taken to smoking, Gabriel was positive he’d be winded long before he’d reached the crest of this hill.

  Dmitri paused at the peak of the hill and pointed. Gabriel paused, too, and looked. Chinatown. There it was, spread out below in all its mysteriousness and inscrutability. Although, Gabriel thought acidly, he doubted that the Chinese were any more inscrutable than any other race; it was only that white people weren’t accustomed to the Chinese culture.

  Not that any of that mattered. “Glad it’s summertime,” he murmured as he and Dmitri set out, trotting down the hill.

  Dmitri nodded. “Light.”

  Succinct, but accurate. It was almost seven o’clock in the evening. As difficult as finding Sophie was sure to be this evening, if they’d tried to do the same thing in the wintertime, they’d not only have ignorance and uncertainty, but darkness working against them. At least, with the sun still up, they could see where they were going.

  The smells of Chinatown always made Gabriel feel a little wistful, although he couldn’t have said why. Perhaps they rekindled boyhood fancies about traveling to exotic ports. The odors of fish and rotting vegetable matter mingled with incense, roasting meat, ginger, sandalwood, and other intriguing scents. Combined with the singsong of Cantonese being spoken, shouted, and sung from all directions, the overall effect jarred a person out of the humdrum. Pleasantly. He wished he could enjoy it. Perhaps he could. Later.

  “Where’s this Wong’s that you talked about?”

  “Follow me.” Dmitri didn’t even turn around, but kept marching down Grant Avenue.

  Gabriel followed, dodging pushcarts, vegetable stands, boys with long poles balanced on their shoulders, old men, young men, and even a securely guarded woman. Gabriel tried not to stare. She looked so—so—well, she didn’t look American. Surrounded by bodyguards, she must be some rich Asian gent’s special honey, because she was dressed to the teeth in embroidered silk, and her face was as perfect and impassive as a doll’s. He knew her life probably wasn’t a bed of roses—she was a slave, after all—but the vision she conjured in his mind’s eye was remote and romantic.

  He chided himself. Romance was for fools, and he had a job to do here and now.

  Wong Ching’s hotel was a small affair, inconspicuous and well kept. Gabriel sucked in a deep breath and prayed hard before he knocked at room number ten, which, he had been assured by the front desk clerk, was at present being rented by Emerald Huffy.

  The front desk clerk had told the truth, and—glory be to everything Gabriel had ever not prayed to before in his wasted life—Huffy was in. He squinted from the dim interior of the room at Gabriel’s face, looking almost as impassive as the singsong girl had.

  Gabriel didn’t hem and haw. “Where’s Sophie Madrigal?”

  Huffy tried to close the door, but the flat of Gabriel’s hand prevented him from doing so. The click of Gabriel’s gun dissuaded him from attempting any further obstructive behavior. He said in a voice like sandpaper, “Who the hell are you?”

  “Never mind who I am. Where’s Sophie?”

  Huffy’s squint traveled from Gabriel to Dmitri and back again. He seemed to relax a little bit, evidently taking comfort from seeing the Russian in Gabriel’s company. “How the hell should I know?”

  “Don’t be coy, dammit. Where’s Hardwick? She’s going to be where he is.”

  Still squinting, Huffy frowned at Gabriel and didn’t answer. Gabriel shoved his gun into Huffy’s gut.

  Huffy shrugged. “Hell, she don’t pay me to get kilt for her. Hardwick’s at Chang’s. On Washington and Brennan.”

  Juniper had been right. It did begin with a B. Gabriel let the hammer down on his Colt, nodded once, and turned abruptly. He didn’t wait to see if Dmitri followed him, but strode away from Huffy’s door. He heard the door click behind him and realized Huffy could have shot him in the back if he’d been of a mind to do so.

  But Huffy was
n’t the sort to run risks or to shoot people for no reason. Gabriel suspected about the only incentive that would move Huffy to action would be cold, hard cash.

  Sophie’s cash had paid for information, but it hadn’t bought her Huffy’s loyalty. He felt sort of sick as his stride ate up the sidewalks of San Francisco, Dmitri’s much smaller boots tapping out an accompaniment at his heels.

  * * * *

  “Dammit, it’s getting dark. Why can’t she do these stupid stunts of hers in the morning?”

  Gabriel didn’t expect Dmitri to answer him, so he wasn’t disappointed when the little man kept his own counsel. They’d been roaming the streets for what seemed like his whole life. The long summer evening was fast fading into night, and they hadn’t found her yet. Nor had they found Hardwick, who wasn’t in his room when they’d knocked. Nobody knew where he’d gone.

  Maybe that was lucky. Maybe Sophie hadn’t found him, either.

  Gabriel didn’t much believe in luck, however, and Sophie had been in San Francisco hours longer than he and Dmitri had. She could have found and killed Hardwick and right now be languishing in some shabby San Francisco police station. Gabriel wondered if she’d tell the police anything if she did get arrested.

  He had to stop thinking about Sophie being arrested. For all he knew, Juniper was right and people’s thoughts could affect the universe. Damn, he really was going crazy.

  Strings of Chinese lanterns swayed above the streets over their heads, and weird music drifted out of a Chinese theater as he and Dmitri passed. Gabriel had been in San Francisco a few years ago during the Chinese New Year’s celebration, and he was grateful now that there were no firecrackers going off. If he had to put up with firecrackers as well as his current state of nervous anxiety, he’d probably crack up and kill somebody.

  “We’d better check the alleyways,” he muttered to Dmitri.”You know how much she loves to take Hardwick down dark alleys.”

  Dmitri nodded and darted between two buildings. Shoot, was that an alley? Gabriel followed, and realized that Chinatown was truly a maze of bizarre walkways. This one was barely wide enough for him to pass along, but he could tell it was used regularly. A sickly sour-sweet odor that he recognized as opium drifted out of a window, and he grabbed Dmitri’s shirt back. “Wait up. I don’t think she’d go to an opium den, do you?”

  The Russian shrugged. “What about Hardwick?”

  Right. Hardwick was a low-down, scum-sucking son of a bitch. He drank like a fish. Who could say he didn’t also smoke opium when he had the chance? And if Hardwick went there, Sophie would follow if she could. Damn. Gabriel didn’t want to go into an opium den. And he sure as the devil didn’t want Sophie to go into one.

  “I go,” said Dmitri, either sensing Gabriel’s reluctance, or realizing one could do the deed more quickly than two.

  Gabriel silently blessed him as he waited in the dark walkway, feeling creepier and creepier as the minutes crawled by. But Dmitri rejoined him eventually—probably not more than ten minutes after he’d left him—shaking his head. Well, good. They didn’t have to spend any more time in this foul place. He felt more comfortable walking down Grant, even though he knew Sophie would surely take Hardwick someplace considerably darker and less populated.

  The street was crowded, and Gabriel noted with interest that there were very few white people still out and about in this neighborhood after dark. Probably afraid of the Tongs or the so-called Yellow Peril. Gabriel wasn’t worried about that. His own race generated plenty enough peril without borrowing trouble from the Chinese. All he had to do was look at Sophie, if he ever doubted it.

  He’d give his eyeteeth to look at Sophie right this minute. But he didn’t see her anywhere. He and Dmitri tried every dark alley and space between buildings they passed by, and still she eluded them. Gabriel’s fear that she’d been arrested began to gnaw at his innards like a termite on dry wood.

  Fighting off despair, he forged ahead, looking, peeking, peering, hoping, even praying. Fog had begun rolling through the streets, making Gabriel think of some kind of unholy miasma as it curled around his feet and fuzzed his vision.

  Damn it all to hell, he didn’t need fog and darkness. Sophie was crazy enough on her own. She didn’t require help from above to make his life miserable.

  He had followed Dmitri down a foul-smelling alleyway to where a wall blocked their passage, and had turned around to head back to Grant when he nearly jumped out of his skin. Dmitri had grabbed the back of his jacket and was hissing at him.

  “Wait.”

  Gabriel spun around, his heart pumping wildly. “What is it?”

  Dmitri held a finger to his lips. “Shh. I think I hear her.”

  God, God, please let him be right. Gabriel told himself to calm down and take it easy. “Where?”

  Instead of answering, Dmitri went to the wall, which was about four feet high and made of crumbling blocks, and pulled himself up. He grunted as he flopped onto his stomach on top of the wall, and his feet stuck out like those of a puppet. Gabriel squinted into the darkness and strained his ears to hear what Dmitri had heard.

  By thunder, he was right! At first all Gabriel could detect were a couple of voices; no words could he distinguish. And then Hardwick’s voice, whining and unhappy, penetrated the fog, the darkness, and Gabriel’s black worry.

  “God damn it, it wasn’t my fault!”

  “No? My son is dead, Mr. Hardwick, and you shot him. Whose fault is it?” Sophie’s voice was as cool and collected as if she was asking about train schedules or the price of cabbage.

  “Nobody’s!” Hardwick cried. “It was an accident.”

  “Oh, no, Mr. Hardwick. I don’t think so. It was your drunkenness, capricious nature, and heedlessness that killed Joshua. I, on the other hand, am going to kill you on purpose.”

  Gabriel’s skin crawled to hear her sound so pleased with herself.

  “Shit, lady, you’re crazy.”

  Gabriel couldn’t see them, but they were there. Somewhere. He vaulted over the wall and left Dmitri to scramble over on his own as he raced towards the voices.

  “I’m not crazy, Mr. Hardwick. Merely determined to put your worthless life to an end.”

  “No.” Hardwick began to blubber. “Please no.”

  Gabriel was running full tilt when he realized there was a gap in the buildings, and Sophie and Hardwick were at the end of another short walkway opening onto Grant. How had he and Dmitri missed it? Traffic rumbled by on the busy thoroughfare not ten yards away. The activity and light of Grant didn’t penetrate to where Sophie and Hardwick stood, though. Gabriel could hardly make them out as he grabbed the edge of a brick building and hurled himself around the corner, making a powerful lot of noise.

  Sophie spun around and saw him, her eyes huge. Gabriel thought she swore, but only heard her say, “Stay back, Gabriel.”

  “Like hell I will.”

  “I mean it. I’ll shoot you, too, if I have to.”

  “Jesus H. Christ, Sophie, maybe you are crazy.”

  Weeping in earnest by this time, Hardwick whimpered, “She is. She is.”

  “Shut up,” Gabriel told him savagely. “You deserve to die, but not like this.”

  “Yes, he does. I’m going to kill him. Now.”

  And turning to face Hardwick once more, Sophie lifted her gun. Hardwick screamed and covered his head with his arms. Gabriel dove for Sophie.

  He didn’t see what happened, but he heard the gun go off, sounding like a cannon blast in the confined space. He heard another scream, which he thought came from Hardwick. Then he went down hard, an excruciating pain searing his upper arm.

  God damn. Had she shot him? That would be just like her, dammit. “Gabriel!” Sophie sounded panicked.

  He stayed down, unsure what to do, and not sure he could do anything anyway. He heard heavy, unsteady steps pounding past him as he lay face down on the pavement. Where the hell was Dmitri?

  “Stop!” Sophie screamed.

  C
ripes, what now? Cautiously, Gabriel lifted his head to see what in blazes was going on. Hardwick was running, staggering a little, toward Grant, and Gabriel thought he saw blood dripping from him somewhere.

  Oh, there was Dmitri. About time. As Gabriel tried to shove himself to his feet, the little Russian barreled into Hardwick, sending him reeling out onto Grant. Sophie had by this time knelt beside Gabriel.

  “Oh, Gabriel, what did I do? Oh, Lord, please don’t die! Please don’t die. I love you so much!”

  Oh, yeah? Well, that was pleasant news, although he wasn’t sure he’d live to appreciate it.

  He lifted his head higher, squinting at the lights on Grant and trying to perceive what was happening with Hardwick and Dmitri. Hardwick backhanded the midget and lunged forward. “Oh, shit,” Gabriel whispered, realizing what was going to happen about a second before it did.

  “What?” Sophie asked, her voice shaking. “What is it?”

  Too horrified to speak, Gabriel pushed himself to his knees and pointed.

  He heard a soft cry from Sophie as she, too, watched the coach, pulled by four matched and beautiful blacks, roll into Ivo Hardwick and knock him flat. One scream came to them from Grant Avenue, and two of the horses clattered over Hardwick’s body, followed by two of the carriage’s wheels.

  Gabriel turned and saw that Sophie, still kneeling on the filthy pavement, was staring with horror at the accident site. He tugged her into his arms, and she buried her head against his shoulder. There. That was better.

  Dmitri, who had been flung aside by Hardwick into one of the brick buildings, struggled to his feet. He, too, watched the awful scene on the street.

  Gabriel shut his eyes. “Well, Sophie Madrigal, you got your heart’s desire. I guess it wasn’t exactly the way you’d planned it.”

  Sophie didn’t say a word because she was too busy crying. That was all right with Gabriel. He still wasn’t sure about his own physical condition. He thought she might have shot him in the arm, although if she had, why had Hardwick been bleeding? He didn’t much want to release Sophie, but he did squint down at his arm. Well, hell, he didn’t see any bullet holes. Actually, his arm didn’t hurt much anymore, either. He wiggled it experimentally. Not a twinge. Hmmm.