Free The Loner: Crossfire by J.A. Johnstone

the ivory token.
    He was in a place called Spanish Charley’s when he got his first break. The bartender, who wasn’t Spanish at all but rather a fat blond Dutchman, had professed never to have heard of Floyd Hambrick, and he didn’t blink at the ivory token.
    Conrad still had it lying in the palm of his hand, along with some coins, when one of the women who worked in the place sidled up beside him. “Ooh, you’ve been to the Golden Gate.”
    Conrad looked over at her and revised his original opinion. Despite the painted face and the low-cut dress that revealed her breasts to the upper curve of her brown nipples, she wasn’t a woman but rather a girl, no more than fifteen or sixteen years old.
    He swallowed his disgust that a girl so young would be working in a place like that and put a leer on his face. It was probably what the girl was used to. He hadn’t missed what she’d said. “The Golden Gate, eh?” he repeated.
    “ Sí. ” The girl, at least, was Spanish, or Mexican, more likely. Maybe a descendant of one of the proud Californio families that had settled the area long before any gold-seeking Americans arrived. “The nicest place down here. Or so I have heard. I have never been there.” Her blush was visible even with her dusky skin. “It is not a place for one such as I.”
    “Don’t say something like that, darlin’. You’re worthy of going anywhere you want to go.”
    The bartender rested a hand with fingers like sausages on the hardwood. “Where she’d really like to go is upstairs with you, mynheer. Ain’t that right, Carmen?”
    The girl batted her dark eyelashes at Conrad. “ Sí. I mean yes.” With a noticeable lack of enthusiasm, she pushed her breasts against Conrad’s arm and cocked a hip so it pressed against his, though without any real urgency.
    “She will cost you only a dollar, mynheer ,” the Dutchman went on.
    Conrad pretended to think about it. The girl—Carmen, the bartender had called her, but more than likely that wasn’t her real name—was the first person he’d encountered who admitted to knowing anything about the carved ivory token. He wanted to talk more with her, and some privacy would probably make the conversation more productive.
    With pretended reluctance, he slid a silver dollar across the bar. The coin disappeared into the Dutchman’s fat fingers. “She better be worth it,” Conrad said.
    “Oh, she will, she will,” the bartender promised. “Won’t you, Carmen?”
    “You will never forget me, señor.” The girl linked her arm with his. “Come with me.”
    She led him toward a staircase on the other side of the room. Conrad looked up at the second floor and saw a large number of rooms arranged along a balcony.
    They were rooms only in the strictest sense of the word. Thin wooden partitions a foot short of reaching the ceiling separated them, and curtains closed off the front. The room where Carmen was taking him wouldn’t provide much privacy, but it would be better than nothing.
    She kept bumping her hip against him, seemingly out of habit, as they went upstairs. When they reached the balcony, she led him to the nearest room where the curtain was pushed back, but he steered her toward one farther along that had an empty room on each side.
    “You’re going to be yelling in pleasure,” Conrad told her with the leer still on his face. “We don’t want to disturb anybody else.”
    “Oh, señor, I am sure I will be,” she said listlessly. She didn’t argue as Conrad took her into the room and jerked the curtain closed.
    As he turned toward her, she had already reached down and grasped the hem of her dress to pull it over her head. “Wait a minute,” Conrad said. “Just hold on.”
    Carmen frowned at him in confusion. “You do not want me to take off my dress?”
    “Not just yet. Why don’t you sit down?”
    She shrugged and sank onto the narrow bed. It was little more than a cot, and it was the only piece of furniture in the room other