Dry Rot

by S. L. Stoner

  Sage’s blood surged to an instant boil but he forced himself to move casually toward the door, pausing only after he’d opened it. He turned to lock eyes with O’Reilly. “No man was ever so much deceived as by himself,” he said, paraphrasing Grenville, and had the satisfaction of watching confusion replace the smirk on O’Reilly’s face.

  s s s

  Ben Johnston was at The Journal’s offices, hard at work. With events unfolding at such a rapid clip, timing was now crucial. It took only a short explanation before Johnston agreed to print the list of bridges needing repair and the fact of Bittler’s firing in the next day’s newspaper. “So long as one of my reporters confirms dry rot in a few of them,” Johnston cautioned, always the ever-vigilant guardian of The Journal’s reputation. Sage didn’t mind. Since there was already one toadying newspaper in town, it was important that The Journal retain its reputation for carefully verifying its facts.

  s s s

  Sage arrived at the bricklayers’ hall just before three o’clock that afternoon. All was in readiness for the Mackey strikers. In short order, over thirty men gathered. Their facial expressions ranged from weary despair to mulish obstinance. Still, they listened as Sage talked and within a few minutes, smiles had transformed their faces.

  “Don’t you think the police will come drive us off?” asked one doubter.

  “By the time Mackey thinks to send for them, it will be too late. He’ll have recognized that he’s boxed in and if he raises a ruckus, he’ll lose control over who finds out.”

  “Well, I, for one, don’t see how doing this can hurt us any. Leastways, we’ll be doing something different for a change. We won’t be down at that darned mill wading through the mud,” said another man, reaching for one of the stakes. “Let’s start to work, men,” he urged.

  With murmurs of assent and shuffling of feet, the men moved forward, their rough hands picking up the tools of their trade and setting to work. Henry took charge with renewed vigor, vowing all would be ready by six o’clock the following morning.

  Back out on the street, Sage’s worry now centered on the next task before him. Failure of that task meant he would be no closer to finding Mackey’s murderer and Leo would be much closer to hanging. He was still mulling over the various approaches to take when he reached Fong’s provision shop.

  Mrs. Fong stood behind the counter, waiting on two black clad men. All three looked toward the door, and in the dim light Sage saw the men’s eyes narrow and their stances stiffen. Mrs. Fong spoke rapidly in Chinese—the tone of her voice permitting no opposition. The two men nodded and headed out the door, giving Sage a wide berth where he stood idly fingering a stack of linen handkerchiefs.

  Once the street door snapped shut, Mrs. Fong came from behind the corner, her face weary. She led him to the living quarter’s door, gestured him through it, and shut it behind him.

  His mother was dozing in a hard-backed chair beside Herman Eich, her head hanging forward. The silence was no longer laden with the ill man’s labored breathing. Sage squinted,

  his heart lurching when he failed to detect a rising of Eich’s chest. He stepped carefully toward the cot, trying not to wake his mother. If Eich was dead, she’d know soon enough. Sage laid the back of his hand against Eich’s cheek and felt warmth. Eich twitched under the touch and relief whooshed out of Sage, so loud that his mother stirred.

  “Oh, it’s you. Herman’s doing much better. I think we’re through the worst,” she said.

  “That’s great news,” he said, squeezing her shoulders. “Has he said anything more?”

  “Not since you came last time. I expect he’ll be awake come morning. You come back tomorrow.”

  In whispers, Sage told Mae about his confrontation with O’Reilly and about the strikers’ activity at the bricklayers’ hall.

  “You’ve done good, Sage. The trick will be forcing Earl Mackey to act before he has time to scheme a way out.”

  “I plan on hitting his front porch right after the paper comes out. Fact is, I figure on being his very own personal paperboy.”

  s s s

  Leaving the shop minutes later, Sage took up a post on a nearby street corner. He jumped when Fong’s voice sounded next to his ear, “Right on time, Mr. Sage. Good trait, timeliness. But, there remains problem—still not much good at being alert.” Sage whirled around to see Fong’s black clad figure already striding toward an alley where there’d be a stairway down into the underground. As he followed the black-clad figure, Sage knew for certain that he was in for more hours of Fong’s “alertness” training. He felt his forehead contract in anticipation of

  Fong’s deadly accurate punches.

  The cellar stairs ended in an opium den. A few dim candles revealed the dark forms of men lying atop ranks of short wooden bunks stacked three-high against the cellar walls. According to Fong, the shortened bunks forced the smokers to lie on their sides so they wouldn’t choke on their own vomit. Apparently opium rendered people unconscious and sick at the same time. Thankfully, only dreamy murmurs sounded in the cloying

  smoke, along with the burble of water pipes and the scrape of Sage’s boots.

  As he dogged Fong’s silent heels the length of the room, Sage sensed heavy-lidded eyes following their passage. His skin crawled at the mental image of a sharp knife hurtling through the air toward his back. Once they’d passed through another door and into the underground proper, Sage released the breath he’d been holding.

  Fong paused and whispered,“Sorry, Mr. Sage. This is quickest way to holding cell.”

  “That’s all right,” Sage whispered back. Traversing the opium den’s gauntlet took the edge off whatever anxiety he felt upon entering the underground’s musty darkness. Still, for a moment, the familiar fear jittered through him. Not because of the shanghaiing experience. No, his fear originated years ago, when he was nine years old and a coal mine explosion buried him deep inside a mountain’s dark heart.

  Fong waited quietly as Sage quickly took himself through the mental paces he’d recently developed to counteract this old fear. He listened to the scuffling sounds of life overhead. Next, he breathed slowly through his nose and relaxed until the thudding race of his heart subsided. When Fong struck a match to a kerosene lantern, Sage felt no overwhelming rush of relief. Instead, he found himself more than ready to move deeper into the underground. He found himself eager to confront the two men who’d attacked him and Chester. They held secrets he wanted to learn. Tonight was the best and, maybe, last opportunity to prove Leo innocent of the old man’s death.

  TWENTY EIGHT

  Sage stepped carefully, trying not to stir the decades-old dust beneath his feet. He kept his breath shallow and breathed through his nose because he didn’t know what was in that dust. Once, Fong told him that many of Portland’s Chinese willingly entered this underground to die if they became seriously ill. They hid here to avoid discovery, tended to by other Chinese who rightfully feared Chinese illness being used to justify wholesale deportations. He worried whether deadly disease vapors, like consumption, still lingered in the dust. Not knowing the answer, Sage kept his mouth clamped shut.

  Ahead, Fong moved confidently forward, his hand satiny gold in the light of the lantern he held aloft. Minutes later they passed, without stopping, the vague forms of the cousins guarding the two captives. By now, Sage knew that the two men in the holding cell probably sensed a lightening of the darkness—although not quite enough to trust their eyes. Next, they’d start to believe that someone approached, their stomachs beginning to knot as their staring eyes confi med that the light was real and growing stronger. A single question would torture them a thousand times a second: Did salvation or danger approach?

  Sage tapped Fong’s shoulder to make him stop and turn. “I need your advice. How is the best way to play this?” Sage asked, his voice low.

  “Ship name of Reefer is in harbor. Men call it a ‘demon ship,’” Fong answered in a whisper.

  “Why a ‘demon ship?’
”

  “There was bad storm at sea. Ship lost rigging and drifted many days. All provisions gone very soon. Many died,” Fong answered.

  “That happens to a lot of ships in the Pacific.”

  “Ah yes, that is true. One difference, about this ship. When Reefer reach port, survivors not look hungry.” He paused to let the import of his statement reach fruition before continuing, “The same men still on board. No other captain want to hire them. Reefer ship is short many sailors. Much talk in North End about what happen to missing men. Two in cell probably hear talk about it.”

  Fong bared his teeth in a humorless smile before starting forward once again.

  They neared their destination. The lantern light shone on a pair of white-knuckled hands wrapped around the cell bars and on a brand-new nickle-plated padlock. The most disturbing thing about this cell was that it had been deliberately constructed as part of the building’s original brick foundation. A few months ago, Sage wanted to demolish it. He’d thought its destruction might ease Matthew’s nightmares. Once Matthew regained his equilibrium, however, Sage reluctantly abandoned that idea at Fong’s urging, “Mister Sage, we may need cell sometime. Cousins and I keep watch and free every man kept here. Pretty soon shanghai men not use it.”

  A few feet from the cell, Sage took Fong’s lantern and stepped forward. He stood in front of the bars and raised the lantern to illuminate his face clearly.

  A wheezing voice growled from just inside the bars. “God damn it! Didn’t I tell you we got kidnapped because of the Mackey job? That son-of-a-bitch ain’t no shanghaier. I told you it weren’t no damn shanghaiing!”

  “Don’t be so quick to celebrate, my man,” Sage said. “As a matter of fact, the strikers ain’t been paid for weeks and it just so happens that a friend of mine is trying to crew a ship. He’s paying top dollar, especially for men of your ample stature. Maybe you two have heard of her—the Reefer?”

  From deeper inside the cell, beyond the light’s edge, the second man, more than likely “Whiny,” whimpered.

  s s s

  An hour later, Sage and Fong made their way aboveground. The Reefer threat did the trick. Claiming they’d signed on only to cause a little fright, they started talking without further encouragement. Their protestations corroborated O’Reilly’s claim that he’d given them instructions not to kill anyone. Wheezy, a Californian named James Parks, spoke most convincingly on that point.

  “Hell, I knew how much chloroform I gave you. We even punched out a knothole to make sure you’d hear us jawing. With that Chester guy, we was only going to chloroform him and dump him in a boxcar heading east.” Parks’ offended churlishness gave his words a ring of truth. He claimed their plan at Bittler’s house was to stand at the bottom of the stairs hollering “fi e” until the Bittlers stirred. Once they knew the family was awake they planned to toss their match and leap out the front door. Of course, they didn’t seem to think their treatment of Herman Eich was anything worth mentioning. Sage said nothing to them about that near-fatal attack. The ragpicker was safer if they believed him dead, or at least unconnected to the strike.

  They’d also confi med that Sage was correct about O’Reilly and about their own involvement in the strike. They identifi d O’Reilly as the one who’d sent the message luring Lockwood out of his house. The purpose of that tactic was to give them an opportunity to jump him when the streets were empty. They’d admitted to dropping the kerosene can over the fence into Lockwood’s backyard. And, it was Parks who’d told the police he’d seen Leo with the kerosene can near the fire.

  The two speculated that they’d missed ambushing Lockwood either because he arrived early and killed Mackey or else because he’d gotten there late, seen the fire and snuck away. Either way, he’d sidestepped walking into their trap. As far as they were concerned, the Mackey fire was unexpected and unwelcome. On this point, they were convincing. Their jaws dropped and their faces flushed with anger when Sage accused them of Abner Mackey’s murder. Their indignation seemed genuine.

  Sage reached the street, checked his pocket watch and saw that it was nearly midnight. Despite the late hour, he needed Philander Gray to help him decide what to do with the two miscreants. So, Fong headed east across the river with a message for Philander while Sage strode westward, once again looking for Sergeant Hanke. The plan was for everyone to meet up at the hotel where Chester and Stuart had holed up. Fong’s cousins would escort James Parks and his partner through the underground to the same hotel.

  By one-thirty in the morning, Philander held two confessions, each bearing an illiterate man’s mark in lieu of a signature. Sergeant Hanke was escorting Parks and his partner to yet another cell, this one in the city’s jail. Sage felt no hatred toward James Parks and his sidekick. Given land and seed money, both men might have been contented farmers. Truth was, poverty tended to push moral choices further from a poor man’s reach. Still, the little discomfort he felt about the fate of Parks and his friend dissipated when he remembered Herman Eich’s flushed face and Chester’s unstinting bravery even as he faced down that whirring bandsaw blade. Herman and Chester, after all, knew poverty too, yet they’d both chosen to lead honorable lives, making the moral choice time and again.

  Sage and Philander stood in the lobby of the shabby hotel, conversing softly. The night clerk slept, his cheek resting on his crossed forearms, a newspaper draped over his head to block the light.

  “This new information means we’ll be able to delay Leo’s trial for a few days,” Philander said. “But, we won’t be able to win his freedom or stop the trial. Passion is still running too high over Abner Mackey’s murder. To appease the public’s anger and thirst for revenge, the police need some poor guy in jail and going to trial. In the social circles that count politically, people considered Abner Mackey a likable old gentleman. I plan to ask for a bail hearing in light of those two men’s confessions. I predict, however, that the judge isn’t going to release Leo because he admits he was at the scene of the fire. So, Leo’s not in the clear, yet. You still need to find the real murderer.”

  Sage sighed, weariness had settled in, making his bones ache. “I was afraid you’d say that.” He slapped his workingman’s cap onto his head. “Well, right now I’ve an early morning visitation to orchestrate. Once that’s over, I’m going after Mackey’s killer.” He paused to ask a final question, “How many days’ delay in the trial hearing is the judge likely to give you?”

  “Three if we’re lucky, more likely two. That prosecutor is eager to strut his stuff,” Gray replied.

  s s s

  The press room still radiated heat from the night’s print run. Unexpectedly, Johnston stood just inside the door, ready to hand Sage a freshly printed and rolled newspaper. He further surprised Sage by following him out of the building.

  “What a minute,” Sage protested, raising a hand to stop Johnston from proceeding. “No need for you to go. You know, if things go our way, you can never report this story.”

  Johnston’s lips spread in a wolfish smile. “I remember that little fact. But I recall you saying that, at one point, Mackey is likely to look out the window and see the picketers. I suspect he’ll pucker up even more if he sees me out there reading the placards and interviewing the men.”

  Sage saw the potential impact of Johnston’s idea immediately. He chuckled and cuffed the newspaper publisher’s arm, saying, “All right, then! We’ll take you up on your offer and many thanks to you!”

  s s s

  The morning air was dry, still and tingling cold. The sky overhead was an unblemished vault of icy blue. A good omen, Sage told himself as the cable car clanked jerkily upward, hauling the strikers and their hand-printed picket signs into the hilltop neighborhood with its ostentatious mansions. The strikers’ party spirit coaxed smiles from the sleepy domestics riding the cable car on their way to work in those mansions.

  Earl Mackey’s huge house loomed a few blocks east of the cable car stop. Its squat Corinthian pillars suppo
rted the broad, east-facing porch anchoring the top of a brick-paved circle drive. On either side of the porch, small-paned windows flamed orange with the rising sun. As Sage studied it, he thought it was big enough to make a decent orphanage.

  While the workers stayed gathered a few houses down, just out of sight, Sage headed up the drive accompanied by Chester. They mounted the front steps. Sage slapped an open palm against the mahogany door. A few minutes of that noise and Mackey himself opened the door wearing his bathrobe and a snarl.

  “Just what in God’s name are you doing, pounding on my front door this early in the morning?” he demanded, his jowls quivering.

  “Just delivering your paper, Mr. Mackey,” Sage said, doffing his workman’s cap.

  Mackey reached out stubby fingers to snatch the proffered paper even as his face registered recognition, “Say, I know you bums! You better get the hell off my property or I will see you thrown in jail! You’re those damn strikers!” He started to shut the door only to have Sage’s quickly inserted boot prevent its closure.

  “Funny you mentioning jail,” Sage said. “You ought to glance at that newspaper headline, Mackey, before you brush us off.”