Killer Poker

Chapter 16





McKinney threw his hands up to shield his head from the chair. It crashed into him and knocked him backward in his seat. The bald man lunged across the table at him, making cards and chips fly into the air. Those big paws reached for McKinney’s neck.

Conrad headed for Table 2 as fast as he could. He had visions of that bald-headed monster snapping McKinney’s neck, making it impossible for the rancher to ever tell anything else he might know about Pamela Tarleton and her schemes.

As fast as Conrad was, Bat Masterson was equally fast, and he was closer. He reached the table a step ahead of Conrad. The gun in his hand rose and fell in a swift, chopping blow that slammed the weapon against the top of that shiny dome. The man slumped forward, senseless, his weight shaking the table as he landed on it.

Conrad grabbed the man’s collar and rolled him onto the floor, where he landed with another crash. McKinney was on his feet, and stepped toward the man, looking like he was about to kick him.

“That’s enough, Rance,” Masterson said sharply. “He’s not going to cause any more trouble.”

“The bastard like to stove my head in with that chair!” McKinney shouted. “Whatever happens to him, he’s got it coming!”

Masterson didn’t exactly point his gun at McKinney, but the barrel swung more in the rancher’s general direction. “I said that’s enough.”

Several of the Palace’s burly waiters had come rushing in at the sound of the commotion. They were behind Masterson ready to step in if needed. Conrad stood shoulder to shoulder with the famous ex-lawman.

McKinney glowered at all of them and muttered, “Fine. I just never could stand a sore loser, that’s all.” He gave Conrad an especially dark glare, as if what he had just said applied more to Conrad than any of the others.

That was puzzling, but Conrad didn’t take the time to ponder it.

The man on the floor groaned and began to stir.

“Roll him onto his back,” Masterson told a couple waiters.

When they had done that, Masterson hunkered next to the man and pressed the barrel of the gun he held against the man’s nose. The feel of that cold ring of metal made the man’s eyes widen.

“Listen to me, Hugo,” Masterson said in a calm, reasonable voice. “In a minute you’re going to get up and leave. You don’t have to apologize, and you don’t have to make any sort of restitution for the trouble you’ve caused. All you have to do is get out of the Palace and don’t ever set foot in here again, at least not while I’m here. Do you understand?”

Masterson moved the gun enough so the man could jerk his head in a nod.

“All right.” Masterson stood up and moved back but kept his gun trained on the man.

Hugo struggled to his feet, shook his head like an old bull, and turned to stumble out.

Masterson motioned for some of the waiters to follow him. “Make sure he doesn’t cause any more trouble on the way out.”

With that taken care of, Masterson holstered his gun and turned back to McKinney. “My apologies for the disturbance, Rance. Are you injured? Do you need medical attention?”

“I’m fine,” McKinney answered in a surly voice. “You should have shot that big ox, Masterson.”

Bat smiled. “To tell you the truth, I wasn’t sure I could bring him down with anything less than a Greener, and a wounded beast is even more dangerous, you know.” He turned and raised his voice. “Let’s get back to the games, gentlemen.”

Conrad went over to Table 5, where Edgar Pennyworth was standing and waiting for him. “Nothing like a little action to break up the monotony, eh?” Pennyworth asked with a smile.

“I don’t think Hugo cared for it,” Conrad said.

Pennyworth waved a pudgy hand. “Don’t worry about him. I’ve seen him around. Always a troublemaker. If Bat hadn’t stepped in, he might have broken McKinney’s back.”

That was doubtful, Conrad thought, because if Masterson hadn’t stopped Hugo, he would have. It was odd how he had almost been put in the position of protecting someone he absolutely disliked.

He and Pennyworth resumed their game. The hands went back and forth, the momentary advantage flowing to one man, then the other. As the evening progressed, Conrad slowly began to accumulate a larger pile of chips. Pennyworth’s jovial smile disappeared. He had thought defeating Conrad wouldn’t pose much of a challenge, but he was steadily being proven wrong.

Pennyworth began raising more, taking risks like a prizefighter who has grown tired and starts flailing at his opponent. Some of his gambles paid off, but more of them didn’t. He threw in five thousand at a time. Conrad matched it and upped the bet. Pennyworth called, then muttered fiercely under his breath when Conrad’s cards turned out to be better.

On the next hand, Conrad hesitated. Pennyworth saw that and attacked, not realizing he had just taken the bait Conrad laid out for him. Conrad tossed away a couple cards and drew two more, prepared to fold if necessary. But the cards surprised him and filled the inside straight he was going after. Still, he raised cautiously.

Sensing that he was about to make a recovery, Pennyworth shoved half of what he had left into the center of the table. He sat back and smiled, obviously expecting Conrad to fold.

Conrad matched the bet and raised the amount that Pennyworth had left. The older man’s shaggy white brows drew down in a surprised frown. His only choices were to fold, which wouldn’t leave him with enough of a stake to last more than another hand or two, or call.

Like a true gambler, he called. “Three aces,” he said hesitantly as he laid his cards down, hoping against hope he would somehow emerge victorious.

“Sorry, Pennyworth.” Conrad placed his straight on the table. Pennyworth stared at it, all the sparkle going out of his pale blue eyes.

Then he heaved a great sigh. “Ah, well. Can’t win them all, as the old saying goes.” He summoned up a smile. “You played an excellent game, young man.”

“Thank you.” Conrad gathered in the chips. He was glad Pennyworth was being gracious in defeat. He felt an instinctive liking for the man.

Pennyworth leaned back in his chair and raised a hand. “Oh, Bat,” he called. “We have a winner.”

Masterson came over to the table, an expression of disappointment on his face. He thought Pennyworth had won. His expression changed to one of surprise when he saw the pile of chips in front of Conrad.

“Well done.” He clapped a hand on Conrad’s shoulder, then reached over and shook hands with Pennyworth. “Thank you for playing, Edgar. It’s always nice to have a bit of class in a game. Are you going to be around to watch the next round?”

“Yes, I believe I will.” Pennyworth nodded to Conrad. “I want to see how this young man does. I suspect his next opponents won’t underestimate him as I did.”

“Probably not,” Conrad agreed with a smile. He gestured toward the chips. “You’ll take care of these, Bat?”

“Of course. What are you going to do?”

Conrad’s muscles creaked as he stood up. He didn’t know what time it was, didn’t know how long he had been playing. But it felt like a week.

“I think I could use some rest, and then maybe a big meal.”

“We can handle that,” Masterson assured him. “You can use the room you used before.”

Conrad nodded. “Thanks.”

As he started toward the door, he saw Rance McKinney sprawled in one of the armchairs, legs stretched out in front of him, a drink in his hand. Their eyes met for a second, and Conrad saw the cold hatred in the rancher’s gaze. He still didn’t have any idea what had made McKinney feel that way toward him, but he was convinced it didn’t have anything to do with the slight ruckus between the two of them at the Palace several nights earlier.

No, Conrad realized, McKinney’s attitude toward him had changed at Ellery Hudson’s dinner party, when he had found out who Conrad was.

The only reason McKinney would have to hate Conrad Browning would be if Pamela had told the rancher about him, he thought. There was no way of knowing what Pamela had told McKinney, but it couldn’t have been anything good.

More than ever, he wanted to face McKinney over a poker table. He would be betting more than money. He would be betting he could work the truth out of McKinney.





Arturo didn’t have any training to be a detective, and he wasn’t a frontiersman used to following trails. But he thought he could manage to keep an eye on one young woman.

However, the job was turning out to be more difficult than he expected. He had waited in the doorway of a building across the street from the offices of Hudson, Burke, and Hardy and watched for Rose Sullivan as people began to emerge from the building at the end of the business day. When she came out, wearing a neat hat on her blond hair, he gave her a chance to get about half a block ahead of him and then fell in behind her, staying on the other side of the street.

He needed a pipe and one of those hats like Sherlock Holmes wore in the illustrations in the stories in The Strand magazine, he thought. But such a getup would just draw attention to him, he decided, so it probably wasn’t a good idea after all.

The sidewalks were crowded. Arturo picked up his pace, thinking he should get a little closer to Rose, so he wouldn’t risk losing sight of her. The blue gown she wore was easy to see.

Of course, he realized, it was possible she would just go back to the boarding house where she lived. In which case he would follow her again when she went to work in the morning, and trail her home in the afternoon, if he needed to. If she was going to plan another attempt on Conrad’s life, sooner or later she would have to get in touch with the men who would carry out the actual attack.

Unless she had decided she couldn’t trust anyone else to do the job and planned to murder Conrad herself.

Or unless she was totally innocent, which Arturo considered highly unlikely given everything that had happened so far.

He wasn’t surprised when she turned down a side street and went into a small, rather dingy restaurant. A sign painted on one of the unwashed windows read LUIGI’S. Arturo’s mouth tightened when he saw that. Being Italian himself, he enjoyed his homeland’s fine cuisine, but doubted if a dirty little place called Luigi’s, in Denver, Colorado, would offer much in the way of good food.

The smells coming from the place as he approached it were surprisingly appetizing. He went down a shadowy alley, grimacing at the thought of what he might be stepping on, and found a door at the back. A slender, balding, sharp-featured man with a soup-strainer mustache answered his knock. Arturo spoke to him in Italian. “Are you Luigi?”

The man frowned at him in apparent puzzlement. Then his expression cleared as understanding dawned on him. He answered in English.

“You just asked if I was Luigi, didn’t you, amigo? Nah, there ain’t no Luigi. Well, there was, but he died and I bought this place from his widow after a horse fell on me down in Raton and busted my leg so I couldn’t make a hand no more. Name’s Weaver, Bert Weaver. What do you want?” The man looked a startled Arturo up and down. “You’re too well dressed to be a bum lookin’ for a handout, that’s for damn sure.”

Arturo struggled to make sense of the flood of words. “I’m sorry, I thought perhaps you were one of my countrymen.”

“You’re Eye-talian? Could’a fooled me, ace. You sound more like one of them Limeys, or some dude from back east.”

“Please,” Arturo said. “I’d like a table.”

“Sure, just go around front.” Weaver grinned. “I’ll put on my waiter hat.”

“No, you don’t understand. I’d like to slip into the dining room from the kitchen, if that’s possible.”

“Oh! I get it now. You’re trailin’ somebody, ain’t you?”

“I really can’t explain—”

Weaver held up his hands. “That’s all right, you don’t have to. You got an honest face, amigo, so I’m gonna trust you. Who is it you don’t want to see you?”

“There’s a young blond woman, very attractive, wearing a blue dress and hat.”

Weaver nodded. “Yeah, I seen her come in. She’s been here before. She’s your ladyfriend, is she, and you think she’s steppin’ out on you?”

“Hardly,” Arturo said, wondering what this former cowboy would think if he explained that Rose Sullivan might well be a professional assassin.

“Well, it’s your business, not mine. Sure, I’ll help you out. The two of us bein’ close to countrymen and all. Leastways we would be if I was really named Luigi. Lemme take a look and see exactly where she’s sittin’.”

Weaver motioned for Arturo to follow him into the kitchen, then went through a swinging door into the main room of the restaurant. Arturo indulged his curiosity and checked the pots on the stove. He was tempted to sample whatever was in them but put that idea aside when he saw a rat scurry across the floor.

The scrawny proprietor came back, limping a little on the leg that horse down in Raton had fallen on. He crooked a knobby finger at Arturo. “The lady’s sittin’ in one of the booths up front. She can’t see the kitchen door from where she is. Go out through this door and turn to your left. There’s a table where you can sit and see part of the booth where she is.”

“Will I be able to see if anyone joins her?”

“Somebody already has,” Weaver said. “A couple of tough lookin’ hombres. Are they gonna recognize you?”

“That’s doubtful.” Arturo’s pulse began to speed up. Rose was already meeting with two more hardcases, no doubt hiring them to try to kill Conrad. “Will I be close enough to hear what they’re saying?”

Weaver shook his head. “Not from that table. You’ll have to get closer. If you do, there’s a chance she’ll spot you.”

“That’s a chance I’ll have to take.” If Rose was plotting to kill Conrad, then he had to find out as much about her plans as he could. He took a deep breath and pushed through the swinging door into the main room of the restaurant.