No Accidental Death

by Garrett Hutson

  The corner of Jonesy’s mouth twerked with amusement, and his green eyes laughed at Doug’s discomfort.

  “You don’t seem surprised.”

  Jonesy shrugged. “I’m not. Why should I be?”

  “Why shouldn’t you be?”

  Jonesy shook his head and gave him a ‘tisk-tisk’ sort of frown. “How many men are on your ship?”

  “A little over three hundred.”

  Jonesy nodded with a triumphant half-smile. “Then I guarantee you fifteen of those men are fooling around with each other on a regular basis. A dozen at the very least.”

  Doug let out a snort and shook his head. “You don’t know what you’re talking about.”

  “Of course I do,” Jonesy said, puffing up a little. “I’ve been around the block a few hundred times, you know.”

  Doug tensed, and frowned. “I don’t need to hear about your experiences, Jonesy.”

  The reporter rolled his eyes. “Then stop doubting what I tell you, and I won’t have to say how I know. Deal?”

  Doug closed his eyes, took a deep breath. “I apologize. Your estimate seems a little high, that’s all.”

  “It’s not,” Jonesy said, crossing his arms. “I know what I’m talking about, I’ve been observing this for more than twenty years. If you put the Venus de Milo and Michelangelo’s David in a room, and paraded twenty-five random men in front of them, odds are one of the fellas is gonna stare more at the David than at the Venus. And for sailors, it’s more like one out of twenty.”

  Doug frowned. “Why aren’t sailors the same as other men? What are you implying?”

  “Take it easy,” Jonesy said, holding his hands up. “Just think about it a minute—sailors spend months at a time out to sea, with no women. They know this going in; it ain’t some secret no one tells recruits. Sounds like paradise to me.”

  Doug narrowed his eyes and arched an eyebrow at Jonesy’s jocular expression, and the reporter’s smile faded as he shook his head. “Don’t get all uptight, now. In all seriousness, it sounds like paradise to a lot of eighteen-year-old boys who like looking at the David more than the Venus, who dream of a way out of their claustrophobic little towns where anything and everything they do eventually gets back to their mother. I know—I left my hometown when I was eighteen, for the bright lights of Detroit. Other boys like me choose the sea instead.”

  Doug took a breath and changed the subject. “Can we get back to what happened at Commander Rose’s house?” He resumed his narrative.

  Jonesy interrupted with more questions a moment later.

  “Back up a little—you said he was in his bathrobe?”

  “That’s right.”

  “And the girl was there the whole time.”

  “Yes.”

  “Hmmm,” Jonesy said, scribbling a note in his pad. “Very intimate. How old do you think the girl really was?”

  Doug shrugged. “I don’t know—I would have said sixteen or seventeen, except she was dressed like a woman. I might be off by a little.”

  “So possibly fifteen?”

  Doug cringed. He’d meant off by a little the other direction. “I don’t know.” That couldn’t be. It just couldn’t. But then, maybe that was what Nick was blackmailing Commander Rose about?

  “You didn’t see any papers out?”

  Doug shook his head. “The house was spotless.”

  “Tell me everything you can remember about the room.”

  There wasn’t that much more to tell. The furniture had looked brand new, but otherwise was unremarkable.

  Jonesy finished scribbling in his notepad, then snapped it shut and put it in his jacket pocket. His hand came back out with a cigar, which he lit with a match.

  “Seems pretty obvious your boy Rose is into something illegal, and gets paid well for it.” Jonesy blew a stream of smoke into the air. “Probably the girl is, too—unless she’s part of his payment for keeping quiet.”

  Doug arched one doubtful eyebrow and cocked his head. “You think you can find out what?”

  Jonesy chuckled without sound, and took another puff of his cigar. “Yeah, I think so. I got sources with their ear to the ground in some of the seedier parts of town. Whether it’s dope, or guns, or girls, you can’t move anything in this town without people hearing about it. The question is always whether they’re willing to talk, or too scared to open their mouths.” He paused, and then shrugged. “But I’ve got back channels in lots of places. Give me a week.”

  A week! Doug’s heart sank. It had already been four days since they’d found Nick’s body. He could almost hear the clock ticking.

  “Hey, these things can’t be rushed,” Jonesy said, as if he’d read Doug’s mind. “But trust me. I’ll find the skeletons in his closet. And I won’t use your name.”

  **

  D.I. Wallace called Doug’s office that afternoon.

  “None of those I-talian sailors you asked about has a gun registered in the International Settlement—but that don’t mean they ‘aven’t got an unregistered Colt .45 stashed somewhere. They’re I-talians, after all.”

  Doug chose to ignore the ethnic stereotype. It had been a long-shot, anyway. “And the Shanghai residents?”

  “Miss Lola Cunningham, American, age twenty years, is the registered owner of a .32 caliber Colt Pocket Hammerless—so that ain’t the gun you’re looking for. Miss Tatiana Petrova, stateless, age twenty-four years, is the registered owner of a brand new .32 caliber Walther PPK, just imported earlier this year. Nice weapon, that—but also not the gun that fired your bullet. I’m sorry, Mr. Bainbridge.”

  “Don’t be sorry, you eliminated two of my six suspects.”

  Wallace snorted. “Glad to be of help. But don’t rule out an unregistered gun. There are thousands of those hiding around Shanghai. Maybe tens of thousands.”

  But if Lola and Tatiana had legally registered pocket pistols, they were hardly likely to also have illegal unregistered guns. But Doug kept that to himself. “Understood. Thank you, Detective Inspector.”

  **

  “I got your note,” Doug said, taking a seat opposite Lucy at the tea house on Soochow Road South. “I take it you didn’t want to talk in front of Kenny and Abbie?”

  “I found out where Lola and Tatiana live,” Lucy said, her eyes glowing with excitement. “I spent most of the day in the neighborhood around The Jade Dragon. I figured Tatiana would stand out in a crowd, tall as she is, and I’d catch a glimpse sooner or later. Sure enough, I spotted her going into a Chinese grocery about four o’clock. When she left, I followed her home.”

  “Did you talk to them?”

  She shook her head. “I didn’t have an excuse to. I’ve got to approach this just so, or it won’t work. But I did talk to the landlady.” She leaned forward, and the excitement on her face was contagious, even though Doug didn’t need this information anymore. “A young white man matching Nick’s description, in a white sailor’s uniform, showed up at their building late last Wednesday night—so probably Thursday morning—stumbling drunk and shouting Lola’s name from the street. The landlady said he was really loud, and woke up the whole block.”

  “What happened?” Doug asked, his heart picking up speed, unable to resist the drama even if it wasn’t relevant anymore.

  “A whole bunch of people shouted at him to pipe down, but he kept calling Lola’s name. Then Lola leaned out her window and spoke with him.”

  “What did they say?” Doug asked, pulled in.

  Lucy shrugged. “The landlady said they were speaking English, she didn’t understand a word. But Lola wasn’t happy, that was clear. She left him out on the street. But his is where it gets really interesting.” She leaned in. “He came back the next night, around the same time, drunk and shouting Lola’s name again. Only this time, a couple of other men in the same uniform ran up to him a minute later, took him by the arms, and dragged him away.”

  Doug’s pulse quickened. “Did she say what they looked like?”

  Lucy
smirked. “She said they were white men, but that’s all.”

  Doug leaned back, smile fading. “It doesn’t matter, anyway.”

  She cocked her head. “Why do you say that?”

  He explained what Wallace had told him.

  Lucy shrugged. “I said before, they strike me as more likely to have hit him on the head with something heavy than to have shot him.”

  Doug nodded in agreement. “That’s two off the list.”

  Still, he was intrigued by the news that two other seamen had pulled Nick away the second night he showed up at Lola’s building—the night before he was killed. Why two, and not all three of his buddies? And which two? Probably Chet Heiselmann and Roger Aikins, since Ben had said he didn’t know exactly where Lola lived.

  Unless Ben had lied.

  **

  The four of them stood at Kenny and Abbie’s front window, looking out over Soochow Creek toward Hongkou, and the areal battle taking place over the northern part of the city. The sudden noise had pulled them away from the dinner table, and they watched the sky, transfixed.

  Chinese fighter planes swooped out of the low clouds, seeming to appear out of nowhere, firing machine guns at the ground in Japantown, and at the naval vessels just beyond. Then they pulled sharply upward, making for the safety of the cloud cover. Japanese anti-aircraft guns around Japantown spit fire into the sky whenever Chinese planes appeared, raining pieces of flak onto the areas west of Japantown—onto Doug and Lucy’s neighborhood.

  Doug thought of Mr. Hwang and the other Chinese residents of his building, and a chill went up his spine.

  “I guess it was a good thing they evacuated you,” Kenny said, awkwardly patting Doug’s back.

  “Yeah, I guess so,” Doug said. The Chinese residents of the area were sitting ducks. Bao was safely ensconced at Jonesy’s apartment uptown, but Doug thought of Chen Gwan and others he knew from the neighborhood. He said a little silent prayer that they were huddled up somewhere safe.

  “How likely is it that something will come over to our side of the creek?” Abbie asked, sounding worried. “Should we go to the cellar until this is over?”

  “The planes are staying away from the line of the creek,” Doug said, his eyes locked on the skies over Hongkou. “Their line of attack seems to be a quarter-mile to a half-mile north, and the flak guns are firing that direction as well. As long as that pattern holds, we’re safe here.”

  He hesitated to express his lone concern, not wanting to frighten them. But then he decided it was better to voice it and let them decide for themselves. “The only danger would be if those flak guns managed to hit a Chinese plane and send it spiraling out of control. If that happened, there’s no telling what direction it might fall. It would probably land somewhere in those neighborhoods across the creek—but there’s a small chance it could crash over here.”

  “That frightens me,” Abbie said, leaning into Kenny, who put his arm around her. Her voice was shaky.

  “An awful lot of unlikely things would have to happen in sequence for that to happen,” Doug said, trying to reassure her.

  Lucy looked at him, and the expression on her face said that she wasn’t buying it, either. “If this goes on much longer, Abbie and I will take Margaret to the cellar to wait it out. You fellows can do whatever you think best.” Her tone was cold, edgy, in a way that took Doug aback.

  “If it does, we’ll go down with you,” he said.

  A moment later, the right wing of one of the Chinese airplanes exploded as it ascended back toward the clouds, hit by flak from an anti-aircraft gun. The plane rolled toward its right, and plunged toward the river.

  A few seconds later, it splashed into the river midway between a Japanese destroyer docked at the shore, and the heavy cruiser Izumo anchored mid-river.

  Too bad it didn’t take out one of the Japanese ships when it went down, Doug mused.

  Abbie shuddered. “Oh, that poor pilot!” She buried her face in Kenny’s chest. He put both arms around her and held her tightly.

  The flutter of a white parachute caught Doug’s eye, and he pointed at it through the open window. “Look, he ejected before it crashed.”

  They watched him drift down toward the Kiangse Road Bridge, which spanned the creek a couple of blocks to their right. The lines of his parachute got tangled on the edge of the bridge, and they could see the pilot’s form dangling below, legs kicking.

  “Is he alright?” Kenny asked—rhetorically, Doug assumed, but he shrugged anyway.

  “That was too close for comfort,” Abbie declared. “I’m getting Margaret.”

  “I’ll go with you,” Lucy said, and followed Abbie toward their hall.

  “We’ll join you in a few minutes,” Doug said to Lucy’s back.

  He and Kenny watched the pilot dangling from the bridge, unable to free himself. It was something to do to avoid giving voice to the danger that pilot represented to their own safety and tranquility.

  “I hope he’s alright,” Kenny said a moment later, breaking the tense silence.

  “I’m sure he will be.”

  An ambulance pulled onto the bridge a moment later, lights flashing, and stopped south of the position where the pilot’s parachute was caught.

  “They’ll take him to the General Hospital,” Kenny said, sounding relieved.

  Doug wondered why Kenny was so concerned about this random stranger. Then he supposed it was just transference so he didn’t have to think too much about how that plane might have spiraled their direction instead.

  Abbie and Lucy reappeared, Abbie carrying Margaret wrapped in a blanket, and the amah Changying trailing behind. “We’re going to the cellar now. Are you done watching the battle?” Abbie’s words were sharp-edged, and from the corner of his eye Doug could see Kenny cringe.

  “We’re all going,” Kenny said.

  **

  Thursday, August 19

  The next day, the Royal Navy provided several destroyers to carry an additional 1,400 British and commonwealth citizens—mostly women and children—downriver to Wusong, where the giant steamship Empress of Asia was anchored in the Yangtze, waiting to take them to Hong Kong.

  Abbie arranged for her and Margaret to board one of the destroyers. Doug and Lucy joined Kenny to see them off.

  Kenny kissed Abbie’s cheek, but she didn’t kiss him back. And she had deliberately given him her cheek when he leaned down to kiss her. Doug saw the brief crestfallen look on Kenny’s face, but then his friend kissed the top of Margaret’s head, and he took several seconds to stroke her little pink cheek before he stepped back and waved goodbye.

  “Cable me when you get to Hong Kong,” he said to Abbie, and then awkwardly leaned in to give her cheek another kiss.

  “We’ll be fine. And I’m sure we’ll be back soon.”

  Lucy and Doug took turns kissing Abbie’s cheek and wishing her a safe and comfortable journey.

  “I’ll be a nervous wreck until Kenny hears you’ve gotten there safely,” Lucy said.

  A sad smile came to Abbie’s lips. “We’ll be completely safe. It’s a British ship, and no one would dare even come close to it. I’ll write you both while I’m away, I promise.”

  She picked up her suitcase in her free hand, and carried Margaret up the gang walk to the waiting destroyer.

  Doug, Lucy, and Kenny waited on the shore, none of them speaking, watching the British seamen preparing the ship for departure. Passengers were only allowed a small stretch of rail to look back at Shanghai, and Abbie quickly disappeared in the crowd.

  The navy ship left a short time later, picking up speed as it cruised down the Huang Po toward Wusong and the Yangtze.

  Kenny turned to Doug and Lucy, a forced smile on his face. “Well, then,” he said with false cheerfulness, clapping his hands together. “That’s one less thing to worry about, eh?”

  “That’s exactly how we should look at it,” Lucy said, but her voice and her face belied her worry.

  Kenny nodded, but h
is look of false cheer faded. Finally he sighed. “Now what?”

  19

  The narrow stone street through the medieval-era buildings of the Old Quarter was packed with afternoon shoppers stopping at the open stalls lining both sides. Jonesy knew he stood out as the only white face in the crowd, but at least it was a crowd. Aside from the periodic rumble of airplane engines passing by a half-mile away over the Huang Po, you would hardly know there was a war going on.

  He slipped down an even narrower side street, whose entrance might be missed by anyone not familiar with it. Smelly dark water ran down a gutter in the center of the alley, and young boys wearing next to nothing tossed rocks at it from open doorways. They giggled and disappeared any time it splashed muck and filthy water onto a random passerby.

  Jonesy steered clear.

  He took the next left down an identical back alley. He nodded to two old women who stopped their conversation in Shanghainese to stare at him. Perhaps a hundred yards farther, the alley rejoined the busy market street, but Jonesy stopped several yards short of it, at the side door into a shop on the corner. He slid behind the tattered blue curtain that hung the length of the door.

  He nodded to the teenage boy stacking crates on the shelves of the dimly-lit storeroom. The boy stopped his work, and opened a wooden door at the back of the room. He motioned for Jonesy to follow.

  Jonesy’s pulse quickened—it always did, even after all these years—and he followed the boy into the square, windowless room. The boy struck a match and lit a kerosene lantern on a small wooden table, said something in Shanghainese, and backed out, closing the door.

  Jonesy counted the seconds and watched the shadows of the lantern flame on the wall. Forty-five seconds, that was his guess.

  The door opened fifty-two seconds later, and in strode the tall, thin figure of a middle-aged Chinese man in tattered working man’s clothes—ragged dark blue trousers and faded gray tunic—but with the straight carriage and purposeful stride of a boss, not a worker.

  “You asked to speak with me, Jones Arthur,” the man said in accented English. He was the only person in Shanghai who never called him Jonesy.