Read Till the Butchers Cut Him Down for Free Online

yet.”
    “Best for last.” Taking hold of my shoulders, he turned me until I faced the hilly area to the west. “See those rails?”
    They were rusted and weed-choked. “Uh-huh.”
    “They join the old Southern Pacific line at a tunnel in the Bayshore district. Through that tunnel, south down the Peninsula,
     then a quick jog east, and it’s clear tracks all the way to Chicago and other transfer points.”
    I stared along the rails, envisioning the journey he described. I’d never seen the tunnel, but I’d been aware of its existence
     as well as that of another near Potrero Hill, both over a hundred years old. San Francisco’s location behind a ridge of hills
     at the tip of a long narrow peninsula had always made for problematical rail access and, in part, had contributed to our port’s
     decline.
    “So what about the tunnel?” I asked.
    “Trouble is, it’s outmoded. Railways started double-stacking ocean-freight containers years ago—saves time and money—but the
     tunnel’s not large enough to accommodate them. So it seems to me that deepening it is the key to keeping at least part of
     the waterfront in maritime use. I’ve worked a deal with the Southern Pacific and the port where I’ll match funds and take
     responsibility for having the work done.”
    “How much will that cost you?”
    “Oh, six mil, give or take.”
    “My God.”
    “It’s nothing. The return on investment’ll wipe out the cost in no time.”
    It all sounded so plausible—or would have, had anyone but Suitcase Gordon proposed it. Or was I underestimating him?
    Finally I said, “Okay, you’ve filled me in on the history of Golden Gate Lines and your plans for it. But aside from the incident
     at Miranda’s, which could have just been a mugging that got out of hand, you haven’t given me much proof that somebody’s trying
     to kill you.”
    “Come on.” He started toward the waiting JetRanger.
    I hesitated, then followed. There was a definite danger in associating with Suits: what if he succeeded in training me not
     only to refrain from asking questions but also to take orders?
    * * *
    “It happened approximately the way Mr. Gordon described it to you.”
    I caught a note of reserve in Dick Farley’s voice and glanced up at the manager of the Jack London Terminal on Oakland’s Inner
     Harbor, which handled Golden Gate Lines’ freight. Under the rim of his hard hat, Farley’s weather-browned face was expressionless.
    Suits had had Josh Haddon set the helicopter down there half an hour before, then made me don a hard hat and dragged me along
     a pier to Berth Three, where the office said Farley could be found conferring with one of his longshoremen. Ostensibly the
     purpose of our visit was so Farley could tell me in his own words about the accident two weeks before when Suits claimed he
     was almost killed by a wrench falling from a crane offloading GGL’s
Napa Harvest.
But Suits hadn’t let the man talk, had instead described the incident himself in dramatic detail. He’d just reached the story’s
     culmination—“Only grazed my shoulder, but it hurt like hell for days. All I could think was that it could’ve been my head,
     split open like a ripe melon!”—when a beeper in the zipper pocket of his sweatshirt went off and he excused himself to find
     a phone.
    Now Farley and I were walking back along the pier toward the terminal offices. To our left towered the curving white sides
     of a vessel laden with stacked containers; to our right lay an enormous expanse of concrete where more containers, semitrailers,
     forklifts, and cranes were parked. The roar of diesel engines and the creak of heavy equipment drowned out all but the loudest
     voice. I raised mine and shouted, “Approximately?”
    Farley nodded.
    I waited until we’d come out of the hard hat area, took mine off, and shook out my hair. It fell neatly to my shoulders, just
     as the stylist who had shorn my former long tresses over a month ago had