The Spook Lights Affair by Bill Pronzini, Marcia Muller Read Free Book Online Page B

Street beyond. A running shadow was just blending into other shadows there, heading toward the Embarcadero.
    When he reached the corner he skidded to a halt, breathing in thick wheezes. Visibility was still good; he could make out Cantwell’s thin shape less than half a block away. He broke into another run, summoning reserves that lengthened his strides; he was less than thirty rods behind when the youth crossed Beale Street. Gaining on him, by Godfrey! Quincannon raced across Beale. But as he came up onto the sidewalk on the opposite side, his quarry once more disappeared.
    Another blasted alley, this one dirt-floored, he saw as he reached its mouth. He turned into it with considerably more caution than he’d entered the previous pair. No ambush this time: Cantwell was still fleeing. Quincannon plowed ahead, managed to reach the alley’s far end without blundering into anything. There, he slowed long enough to determine that the footfalls were now fading away to his right, in the direction of Folsom Street. He angled that way, spied Cantwell some distance ahead—and then, again, lost sight of him. And when that happened, his footsteps were no longer audible.
    The restless mist was thick-pocketed that way; the side lamps on a hansom cab at the far intersection were barely visible. At a fast walk now, Quincannon continued another ten paces. Close by, then, he heard the nervous neighing of a horse, followed by a similar sound from a second horse. A few more paces, and the faint glow of a lantern materialized. Another, slender wedge of yellow appeared on the right. One of the horses nickered again, and harness leather creaked. He heard nothing else.
    He kept moving until he could identify the sources of the light. One came from a lantern mounted on a large brewery wagon drawn by two dray animals that filled the alley, the other from a partially open door to the building on the right—a two-story brick structure with an overhanging balcony at the second level. Above the door was a sign whose lettering was just discernible: MCKENNA’S ALE HOUSE.
    The wagon was laden with medium-sized kegs, which indicated a late delivery to the saloon. There was no sign of anyone human, though he could hear the mutter of voices from inside. He drew closer, peering to the right because that direction offered the largest amount of space for passage around the wagon.
    The thrown object came from his left. Quincannon saw it—one of the kegs—in time to pitch his body sideways against the ale house wall. The keg sailed past his head, missing him by precious little, slammed into the bricks above and broke apart. He threw his arm up to protect his head as staves and metal strapping and the contents of the keg rained down on him.
    The foamy brew, a green and pungent lager, drenched him from head to foot, got into his eyes and mouth and nose. Spluttering, he pawed at his face and shook his head like a bewildered bull. Once again he heard the pound of retreating footfalls, which impelled him to continue the chase. But in his haste to get past the wagon, his foot slipped on the beer-muddied ground. Down he went on his backside, sliding forward so that he was nearly brained by one of the frightened dray horses’ plunging hooves.
    The rear door to McKenna’s Ale House opened as he struggled upright and a pair of curious heads poked out. Quincannon, giving vent now to most of his vocabulary of cuss words, drew and brandished the Navy and the heads disappeared so swiftly that they might never have been there at all. He slid along the bricks, rubbing at his beer-stung eyes. The dray horses were still shuffling around in harness, though neither was plunging any longer. He finally managed to shove past them, stumbled out onto Folsom Street.
    The fog rolling up from the waterfront was as thick here as Creole gumbo. All he could hear was the ever-present clanging of fog bells. All he could see was empty damp-swirled darkness.
    Cantwell, damn his cowardly