1882

By Robert P. Fitton

It was a time when liars were heroes and killers walked free. Jake McBride is a San Francisco assistant district attorney who watches the killer Johnny Rheingold go free on a technicality. Mr. Melbourne offers Jake a chance to bring Rheingold to justice in the Old American West. Jake becomes Marshal Jake McBride from Brinson, Nevada. The adventure begins when silver on the way to the U.S. mint in Carson City disappears from Overland Train 924 outside Brinson. John Rheingold arrives in town on the evening stage and the quest for justice begins.

• Language: English
• Publisher: Xlibris US
• Release date: Jan 28, 2013
• ISBN: 9781479781836

Robert P. Fitton

Robert P. Fitton grew up in small town America with an appreciation history. Summers were spent in North Easton, Massachusetts, often competing in baseball and other sports. With television’s increasing infl uence, Fitton reveled in the 1960’s Star Trek and The Twilight Zone programs. On cold winter nights he pointed his telescope skyward and dreamed of traveling to the stars or back through time. He graduated with honors from the University of Massachusetts at Amherst, concentrating in American History and political science. After graduation but he added numerous literature courses, including the study of science fi ction, and began writing science fi ction and time travel stories. Fitton resides on Cape Cod and continues writing new and exciting time travel and science fi ction novels.

Book preview

1

San Francisco, California

June 17, 2012

2:15 PM

It was a time when liars were heroes and killers walked free. Jake splashed cold water over his sweaty face and peered into his chestnut eyes in the smudged men’s-room mirror. His auburn hair, tinged with red strands, floated over his forehead. As assistant district attorney, he had pleaded his case perfectly in front of a sympathetic jury, yet the trial left him with deepening circles ringing his bloodshot eyes. He cupped his hands in stark the frosted wind light. Then he doused his face again.

Even the local and cable reporters said he had convinced the jury that Johnny Rheingold had committed murder. Johnny arrived at Marina Green Park in a red Lexus 350. Seven minutes before, he had left the Quick Serve holding a 20-oz. cup of Cold Harbor coffee and walked under the camera across the concrete to his convertible beyond the pumps. Two pedestrians, women just over twenty, were returning from dancing at Tempuro’s. Usually they walked along Van Ness Avenue, but tonight, they were trying to hide from two inebriated guys from City College. They witnessed Johnny run the Lexus through the Market Street traffic light at 12:14 a.m. on May 21, 2010.

At 11:45 p.m., Mary Jo Simmons dropped off her fiancé Tom Dunbar at the entrance of Marina Green Park. They argued about Dunbar waking her from a deep sleep to head to the park. His nervousness prompted him to fear for his life. She had surmised that a month had passed since Dunbar received the first heroin shipment to their apartment off Twenty-First Street. Yet the rumor on the street involved a hijacked shipment of heroin worth millions from Southeast Asia and someone named Josh Gordon. Dunbar knew about the boatload of heroin off Stinson Beach. Everyone had kept quiet except Dunbar. He threatened to talk to Jake’s office. Alby and his investigators could not locate Johnny, but Jake thought John Rheingold went by the name of Josh Gordon. On May 20, Johnny told Dunbar he wanted to see him.

Four 9mm, 125-grain, hollow-point jacketed bullets entered Dunbar’s body. Johnny carried a 9mm that night, stolen from an off-duty cop in Stafford’s Saloon on Sixteenth Avenue. Three people witnessed the fight in the alley. The cop, Sergeant Hancock, lay dead on the pavement, and his gun had disappeared after the fight. Johnny placed four bullets matching the hollow points—purchased at Info Ammo in Alameda—in his gun earlier that evening.

A straggler named Fred Early, forty-five years old, living at the YMCA, staggered along the bay near the boathouse. He heard four gunshots along the water where the extra boats were moored. Early covered his head and hid under a boat until the cop car’s red-and-blue lights flashed around the marina. Then he crawled out and walked over to Dunbar’s body in the gazebo. Early spent the next fifteen minutes telling the cops he did not fire the gun, but they kept him in the cruiser because he heard the shots.

Johnny’s prowess in driving the Lexus three hundred miles to Brinson, Nevada, irked Jake. He deposited the Lexus inside his friend Maguire’s auto body shop, where they disassembled the car and crushed it in a Reno junkyard. Harry Maguire blabbed about the escapade to his drinking buddies. Word got back to San Francisco. The cops had him downtown within twenty-four hours. Then he vanished.

Not long after Maguire’s disappearance, Lieutenant Scott Dooley called Jake in his office. Dooley, a loudmouth cop with twenty-five years of street experience, liked doing things his way. He assembled the case against Johnny in less than a week. Jake wanted a methodical approach that made sure everyone told the truth about what they saw that night Dunbar was murdered.

Lieutenant Dooley enjoyed driving by and then following those he was about to arrest. That brought him to near the freeway on a Sunday afternoon. Johnny played first base in a softball game in Ocean View Recreation Park. Dooley found a seat along the first baseline and taunted Johnny for five innings until Johnny leaped the fence. Four teammates pulled him away from Dooley. Dooley might not have jeopardized the case had he not produced his badge for the umpires. Johnny then hired pricy L.A. lawyers, headed by legal legend Sam Turner. In court Turner’s team of slick city boys pounced on Dooley’s ballgame stunt.

Jake kicked the bathroom floor and pounded his fist on the peeling plaster. At first he believed Johnny would spend the rest of his life in prison. Turner’s attorneys destroyed Dooley on the stand, and the jury knew it. Now, at twenty-seven years old, he feared losing his first case. The deranged legal system favored a man who had ruthlessly gunned down Dunbar. Judge Mackenzie would enforce the law.

Johnny is a damned killer. What kind of justice is that?

Then he heard a voice.

There is no justice here.

Jake circled the painted blue stalls. Okay, there’s no one in here!

He moved to the window and pushed it open. The traffic sounds and cooler city air filtered inside. Cars slowed in a rush-hour crunch, people crossed the busy streets, and the inner city traffic formed a mass of red lights and blaring horns. He took a deep breath and turned.

A darkened corridor extended to a hazy light source within the tiles and chipped plaster. A bearded, rotund man in a vested brown tweed suit held a silver pocket watch in his pudgy hand.

Who the hell are you? The man produced a quixotic smile, and his azure eyes gleamed. And how can there be a passageway in the wall?

Why not?

I didn’t see any corridor here.

Then you were not looking, sir.

I repeat my question: Who the hell are you?

I am Mr. Melbourne.

O… kay. Jake laughed and shook his head. I’ve finally cracked. Two and a half years, a perfect record… Now I lose my first case and start hallucinating.

Melbourne’s voice had a credible smoothness, laced with great emotion, I assure you, Mr. McBride, what you are seeing is real. I apologize if I have startled you. I know you’re under tremendous pressure by losing this case.

How do you know anything about me? And how do you just show up here? Come on.

Letting Johnny go free is not right.

Jake gestured toward the corridor. Judge Mackenzie will have no choice.

Not in this reality.

And Johnny has the drug money to pay them all. Listen, I have to get back upstairs and then I’m calling a shrink.

Melbourne tucked his watch into his vest pocket. He squinted and pressed his lips together before he spoke. I understand your apprehension… I want to offer you a deal.

What?

"I’ve been watching from the shadows of your life. I know the intensity of your commitment to the truth, your integrity, and your quest for justice. What will happen in Mackenzie’s courtroom in the next half hour is not justice. It’s a mockery. I can assure you of that."

Have I lost my mind?

Not at all. You have to appreciate I cannot let you inside until you have accepted my terms. Again, please forgive my suddenness and my intrusiveness.

Jake smiled and tightened his red tweed tie. I’m getting out of here. I have to get back to court.

I can arrange for you to bring Johnny to justice.

Jake turned and faced Melbourne back in the strange corridor. In case you hadn’t noticed, I’m an officer of the law—not a vigilante.

You’re a man who wants justice. I have the ability to bring people into situations where, using their own abilities, they can seek the justice not offered in this life.

"I am losing my mind. Good-bye, Mr. Melbourne."

Jake spun on the slippery men’s room floor and stormed by the white ceramic sinks. He pushed open the swinging door. The corridor chatter and confusion overtook him. The reporters turned in unison and descended upon him. They stuck a plethora of microphones in his face.

Mr. McBride, any chance the judge will change his mind?

No comment.

Do you think this is fair? asked the stringy-haired Cara Connolly from Channel 8.

Jake looked back toward the men’s room door. Melbourne’s image inside the wall corridor remained in his thoughts, and his words about justice bounced around Jake’s brain. No, Cara, I don’t think this is fair.

Can we quote you on that? she asked, pencil in hand and ready to inscribe his words in her notebook.

Any luck in finding Mr. Rheingold?

Jake slowly shook his head.

Would you indict Rheingold?

I would if we could find him.

Jake veered left up the spiraling marble staircase to a rotunda with a mosaic floor. Around the rim, marble Greek statues stood like guardians outside the courtroom as huge murals from American history led to the varnished courtroom doors.

Alby’s forehead wrinkled against his disheveled gray hair. I wish I could have uncovered more, Jake. I’m sorry.

Nothing we can do about it, Alby.

"The guy is a lowlife scum. All I keep hearing is about his rights. What about Dunbar? He’s dead."

Jake bit his lower lip. The sunlight pierced the open venetian blinds and cut across the voluminous courtroom. Judge Mackenzie’s empty bench, bordered by huge, fluted white pillars, loomed over the shiny defense table twenty feet away. Johnny had not returned to the courtroom, but his leather-clad girlfriend stretched out in the seats behind the defendant’s table. Her long, perfectly formed legs extended toward Jake, and the deep scent of Pizzazz perfume surrounded the courtroom. She had the sly look of a cheap street-walking slut. You lost the big one, Jakey Boy.

Jake’s eyes swept across her sheer silk blouse and leather skirt. You’d be best to stay away from him, Pam, before you get yourself into any more trouble.

Some part of him regretted sleeping with her. Her brushed mascara and sultry green eyes cast a seductive lure Jake still found arousing. She spoke in a low direct voice. "You call me… Mr. District Attorney."

Alby pushed Jake up to the prosecutor’s table. His young assistants, glum and silent, looked up to him. He pursed his lips and said nothing. Letting them down added another aspect to this travesty. The heavy wood side doors opened, and three bailiffs brought Johnny into the courtroom. A wide smile covered Johnny’s thin face, and his blue eyes focused on Jake. He puckered and sent a kiss in Jake’s direction. A pewter cross earring swung from his ear above a clump of sinewy brown hair dangling down his neck. Jake read his lips: You’re a loser, Jake.

Son of a bitch, Jake replied, continuing the silent dialogue.

Johnny tilted his head back and laughed. Even Sam Turner, his silver-haired lawyer, a man about to launch a campaign for governor, had a grin on his pockmarked face. The chamber doors opened, and everyone stood when the white-haired Judge Mackenzie shuffled to the bench. The gavel banged against the wood and echoed about the courtroom. Jake’s mind focused on Dunbar’s autopsy photos. He glanced over at Bart Bowers, the FBI agent involved in tracking Johnny’s drug activities. Bowers gritted his teeth as he shook his bald head.

For five minutes, Mackenzie’s strained voice pronounced Johnny the victim because of Dooley’s attack at the ball field. Mackenzie always told Jake he did not relish sending criminals back to the street. He chastised Dooley but never condemned Johnny. When the judge finished, Bowers stood and turned like a military man toward the courtroom doors. The judge’s gray eyes moistened as Bowers exited to the rear. Jake and Bowers had eleven witnesses and a cruiser surveillance camera. Yet, in less than hour, Johnny would be free.

2

Coltraine’s Health Club

San Francisco, California

June 17, 2012

2:15 PM

Jake swung the racket and sent the little black ball careening off the wall. Jim Coltraine blasted it back. Jake cocked his arm quickly and missed. The sweat dribbled down his temples. He clamped his eyes. The anguish had intensified after Johnny left in the limo. His game was off.

Coltraine scooped up the ball and faced him. You and I have been buddies for twenty years, Jake. You all right?

I’d like to say I’m all right. He looked into Coltraine’s sharp brown eyes. What do you do when somebody like Johnny is on the streets after committing murder? I don’t know what to compare it to. Would be like someone refused to pay the bill at your restaurant and then the courts sanctioned it.

Except it was murder. Coltraine squeezed the black ball with his left hand. I think you have to let time take care of it.

Time, come on… I’m never going to get over this.

You will. He dropped the ball onto the glossy wood floorboards. What about Pam—she keep calling you?

Getting involved with her was a mistake. She swore she hadn’t seen Johnny in months.

Coltraine stroked his scruffy mustache. Woman is poison. I wouldn’t believe anything she says.

You have no idea what that woman can do.

Coltraine nodded and raised his brows. He put his hand on Jake’s shoulder. You want another game?

I may hit the showers, said Jake as he rubbed his eyes.

I’m going to get a little more exercise. I’ll join you in a few minutes.

Good. Let’s stop by the restaurant later and have a drink.

Sounds good. Coltraine bounced the ball and lobbed it forward. Don’t worry, Jake. You’ll straighten this thing out.

We’ll see. I think I’ll get on the Kawasaki and just keep riding, Jimmy.

Coltraine put his hand on Jake’s shoulder. Jake lowered his head and wandered toward the locker room. Maybe at some remote location, he could clear his head and let the Johnny thing settle in his mind. He waved his key over the beam, and the door opened. His cell phone buzzed inside the locker ahead. After fumbling, he pulled open the metal door, but the phone had stopped ringing.

He plopped himself on the center bench, and sweat rolled down his cheeks. The phone rang again. He scooped it from his bag.

Jake… Alby.

What’s the good news, Alby?

I don’t have good news.

Lay it on me.

Johnny—he’s on the run again. Jake, he…

Jake squeezed the phone and started along the locker room benches.

What the hell did he do now?

Levi Hansen. Shot from behind and then in the head. He’s at Bancor Hospital. I know Johnny was involved.

Levi’s worked for you for over a year.

He was running down the connection with Johnny along the docks. Levi got too close.

Jake fell onto the bench and put his head in his hands.

You there, Jake?

Yeah, I’m here.

You want me to do anything?

Change the system. I don’t believe this. The bastard has no damned conscience. And he gets away with murder and hijacking sixty million in heroin. And now he’s at it again.

Somebody’s got to plug him, Jake. Track him down and plug him. That’s the only way.

I’m hitting the showers, Alby. I’ll call you.

He pushed the yellow button and set the phone back in the sport bag. The shower area rumbled. Brightened steam swirled inside and leaked into the locker room.

What’s going on in there?

Some kid must have turned on all the showers. Jake stomped into the haze and clenched his fists. Hey, one shower at a time.

Melbourne called out from the fog, Levi Hansen just died at Bancor Hospital, Jake.

I’m losing my frigging mind.

The mustard tiles along the shower wall spread like an invisible zipper. Down the same wood-paneled corridor, the midsized Melbourne—in a lighter vested suit, silver watch chain draped from his vest pocket—stepped to the foggy edge of the showers. An empathetic smile trickled up his bearded face. I think you want justice.

Maybe.

I can offer you justice, Jake.

Okay, said Jake, looking back toward the empty locker room. I’ll bite. How are you going to offer me justice?

Melbourne motioned toward a spacious room, also wood paneled, with a silver framed painting of a clown above a marble fireplace. "I invite you to accompany me into the Nexus House. Under your own accord,