Land Sharks

by S. L. Stoner

  “Once all these men are aboard and you’re pulling us back to dock, make dang sure you give wide berth to that other rowboat. They ain’t going to be happy we’re carrying the first men off the Clarice. They think every man jack hitting port belongs under Mordaunt’s thumb.”

  “Mordaunt isn’t as kindly as you?” Sage’s tone was ironic.

  Pratt twisted his lips and the flare in his eyes said Sage’s jab hadn’t missed. “There ain’t no favorable comparisons to make,” Pratt said, “He’s a cold-blooded shark. Just last week his runners shot it out with a captain right here in port. Ain’t no call for that. The captain was just trying to keep his crew from deserting. Mordaunt has all sorts of angles. He forces the captains to hire his watchmen. They’re supposed to stop crimps from getting aboard, ‘stead they make it easier for ‘em. Captain won’t take on the watchman, Mordaunt’s runner waits for the sailors ashore, gets them drunk and brawlin’. The police arrest them. Captain has two choices: pay bail to Mordaunt’s police cronies or buy a whole other crew from Mordaunt. Either way, the shark makes his killing, the sailors be damned.”

  Outrage stiffened the old man’s spine so that he seemed to sit taller in the boat. For the first time, Sage felt a glimmer of respect for the ornery cuss. Pratt was looking at him steadily as he spoke, his tone somber, his voice quiet while the boat rocked with the shifting weight of the first man settling in.

  “And Mordaunt ain’t choosy about how he gets his crews. He does it all. Gets them drunk, brains them, knockout drops, some talk of even worse goings-on. He’s trying to take over all the crimping here in port. I steer clear of his men, ‘specially on dark nights.”

  The boat rocked violently as a second sailor hit the floorboards. While Sage clung to the anchor chain, steadying the rocking boat, two other sailors quickly descended the rope ladder. The rocking boat was now overloaded to the point it started shipping water. Pratt untied the anchor rope and turned to act the genial host, making a big show of uncorking the whiskey and clapping the sailors’ shoulders.

  As the last man settled, Pratt with a nervous glance at the approaching boat, shooed Sage into action. Sage allowed the river current to sweep the rowboat alongside the ship to the stern and away from the bow anchor and Mordaunt’s runners. The maneuver maybe elicited an approving glance from Pratt. The old man turned away too fast for Sage to be sure. After the rowboat cleared the ship, Sage began pulling toward the shore, the boat wallowing beneath its passengers’ weight. Despite his effort, Sage’s eyes remained thoughtfully on Mordaunt’s men. They tied their boat to the Clarise’s bow anchor and craned their necks upward to shout at the few sailors who peered down at them. Before his rowboat nudged the wharf ladder, Sage counted three men slipping over the side to drop into the Mordaunt boat. Pratt followed his gaze and, for once, he made no comment, only shook his head before recommencing his spiel to his customers.

  By the end of his second day as Pratt’s runner, Sage was desperate for a respite. Rowing the boat and trailing after Pratt on his rounds from ship to bar to boardinghouse and back again wasn’t hard work. Stifling his own retorts and shutting his ears to Pratt’s incessant insults and gabble was. The old crotchet ceased talking only to gasp for air at ladder tops or to spit a stream of tobacco juice without the least concern for its landing place. Still, Sage had to admit that old Pratt, in his way, was a fairly decent man.

  Sage surprised his mother when he stepped into the thirdfloor hallway above Mozart’s early Wednesday morning. “Good Lord, what are you doing here?” she demanded, fright giving bite to the question.

  Sage waved a vague hand in her direction. “I’ll tell you later. Is Mr. Fong here?”

  “No, not right now. He’s been sticking close, though. Waiting on Hanke I suspect.”

  “Good, I’ll talk to him in awhile. I need a few minutes of peace.”

  “Can I get you anything?”

  “Right now, what I need most in the world is silence. Just a few minutes of blessed silence.” He entered his room and softly shut the door.

  SIXTEEN

  “I THINK WE HAVE A PROBLEM with Matthew,” his mother informed Sage a few hours later when she entered his room carrying a pot of coffee.

  Sage looked up from the day’s Journal. “Why do you say that? He doesn’t know I’m here, does he? You told him I went to Seattle, didn’t you?”

  “That’s the problem. He’s convinced he spotted you earlier today down near the Couch Street wharf.”

  “Damn. I guess I didn’t duck fast enough.”

  “Oh, so he did see you?”

  “Probably. I saw him riding his bicycle and nipped into a shop but apparently not fast enough. Damn,” Sage said again, this time softly to himself. Matthew underfoot could cause serious problems in an already precarious situation.

  Just then the door opened and Fong stepped into the room, closing the door behind him. Sage noticed right away that the deep shadows under his friend’s eyes had lightened since last he’d seen him.

  “Mr. Fong, Mother just told me that Matthew might have spotted me down near the docks. Did he say anything to you?”

  Fong narrowed his eyes in thought. “He has said nothing. But that might be reason for Matthew’s strange actions.”

  “What do you mean?”

  “Yesterday, I am at river, talking to Chinese men. To learn more about shanghai tunnels. I think I see red-haired Matthew sitting on bicycle in alley. When I go closer to look, he gone.”

  “Oh, dear,” Mae breathed, “It’s dangerous for him to be wandering around the North End.”

  “It looks like the three of us better find something for Matthew to do. If I stumble over him at the wrong time, it could endanger both of us,” Sage said, feeling that old familiar tingle beneath his skin. An ignorant mistake by a naive kid could make the crimps wonder about the new man working the port, “Twig Crowley.”

  Mae’s fist hit the table making Sage jump. “I know!” she said, “We can send him out to help Grace Kincaid. She needs wood cut and clothes washed and other things done around the house. Milwaukie is a pretty far piece from the Portland waterfront.”

  “Good idea, Mother. The sooner the better,” Sage said, and meant it, fervently.

  That bothersome problem dealt with, the three turned to Fong’s discoveries about the underground and the tunnels running underneath the streets.

  “Do the Chinese use the tunnels a lot?” asked Sage.

  “Not every Chinese. Chinese opium and gambling dens sometimes down in basements. Also, when Chinese men are very sick, they stay in underground so the white men won’t deport them. Some people live there because no cheap rooms up top. It not all tunnels. Under each building are openings in basement walls. That is how, people move from under one building to under neighbor building. No tunnels there. Tunnels are only under the streets going from one block to next block.” “So, you enter by going into a building’s basement. After that, you can move through the adjacent basements in the block and use the tunnels to go under any street to the next block?” Sage said, beginning to visualize the setup. “Doesn’t everyone see what’s happening down there–not just those in the opium dens but also storekeepers who keep their goods in their basement?”

  Fong shook his head. “Every business has small area below with walls all around where nobody can go into from underground. Door kept locked. Storekeepers, opium users and gamblers usually stay inside walls. Like a little room–a cellar. Most everybody afraid of what might happen if they go out door into the underground. So everybody stay inside walls unless police raid opium den or gambling parlor. Then everybody run away through basements and tunnels. This is why some China men know underground like back of own hand. Not exactly best China men,” he added thoughtfully.

  “How many tunnels under the streets between buildings are there? How far can you travel underground?” asked Mae Clemens.

  “Underground is beneath whole North End and toward the hills as far as West 23rd Street. Also travel
two miles south to Lair Hill. But in downtown, here, not so many buildings connected to underground, mostly the old ones.”

  “Every building in the North End is connected through the tunnels?”

  “Most every one, including Mr. Solomon’s hotel.”

  “And the building owners allow this use of their property?” Sage asked. He’d never allow shanghaiing to go on beneath Mozart’s. Especially now that he knew its many ugly faces. The thought of men imprisoned in the dark space beneath his building sent a disgusted shudder through his body.

  “If building owners try to refuse, crimps cause many problems. Some building owners, they take much money from crimps for use. Sometimes they are even partners.”

  “So, everybody in the North End knows that shanghaiing is going on right under their feet?” It was hard to believe that so many people knew of the criminal activity and did nothing about it.

  The look Fong sent Sage could only be described as indulgent. “Who you think makes tunnels under street? Who you think makes sure there are openings in the walls between buildings?” He saved the most pointed question for last. “Who you think has bars set in walls between basements so crimps can build cells around them?”

  Sage sat back, rethinking that heated exchange between Gordon and Laidlaw in the Cabot Club. He remembered Gordon bragging about keeping himself apprised of North End happenings. Gordon likely owned some of those modified buildings and raked in a cut from the very operations Laidlaw wanted to destroy. No wonder Laidlaw had been so angry and his retorts so contemptuous. Given the circumstances, the British consul had been positively restrained.

  Sage shook his own head before returning to the task at hand. “Well, I’m thinking that the answer to Kincaid’s disappearance is down there in those basements. He might be alive and well, though I doubt that. But there must be other men imprisoned underground right now. That’s how the business operates. It requires a steady supply of men. We need to rescue them and kill the practice for good.”

  “Young Kincaid not alive,” Fong said quietly. “My friend in Gee Kung tong sent message by carrier pigeon. He show fisherman, Hong Ah Kay, picture of Kincaid. Hong say for sure it is man he found floating in ocean.”

  This quiet affirmation of what they’d already concluded brought Sage unexpected pain. No one said anything for some moments, but then Fong continued. “My friend say Hong Ah Kay told him dead man’s feet much sliced up, like cut by glass. Wounds many days old . . . almost healed.”

  “Sliced feet? What would sliced feet have to do with shanghaiing?” Sage asked.

  Fong shrugged. “That all pigeon paper say. Not much room.”

  “Mother, if I write a quick note, will you see that Matthew takes it to Laidlaw’s office and waits for an answer? Somehow, I think the sliced feet are significant. Maybe Laidlaw will know, or maybe Stuart Franklin can tell me, if he’s in town.”

  Mae was gone from the room less than an hour before she returned with Laidlaw’s terse answer. He read it aloud.

  “Not certain of reason for the cut feet, but Stuart may know. Expecting him tonight. I’ll send him to the nine o’clock Floating Society meeting. You can speak to him there.”

  Laidlaw’s letter also confirmed that he, too, knew about Tobias Pratt’s most notable personality trait.“Candle tallow in the ears will deaden irritating noises,” advised Laidlaw’s scrawled postscript.

  Pratt was stomping up and down the wharf and fuming under his breath, when Sage finally turned up. The ship Pratt wanted to meet had yet to drop anchor so Sage wasn’t late. That fact didn’t stop Pratt.

  “I’ve a mind to fire you,” the old man growled. “There’s a passel of other idjits just like you looking for work all up and down Burnside Street. I told you that I wanted to know where you were at all times. And what happens? Just two days into the job, and you up and disappear.”

  Sage let Pratt’s ranting roll over him. In only a few days he’d become impervious to Pratt’s never ending barbs. As they rowed out toward the ship, Sage waited until Pratt paused to spit tobacco chew into the wind. Then he squeezed in a question. “How could a shanghaied man get his feet all cut to pieces?”

  To Sage’s surprise the question rendered Pratt speechless and blanched his florid face a paler shade of pink. The old man shook his head so violently that his large lips seemed to quiver. “Don’t you ask that question of nobody else, do you hear me? That’s a real bad question to ask, and you don’t want to know the answer,” he finally said.

  Sage adopted Pratt’s ridiculing tone. “And here I’ve been listening to you telling me, for days on end, that you ain’t afraid of nothing and nobody. Hell, you just turned fish-belly white at a simple little question.”

  Pratt rose to the bait like a starving trout. “Listen here, boy, I’ve seen more in my lifetime than you’ll ever see or hope to see. Times used to be harder, and weak-kneed sisters like you couldn’t last a week in this business. Just because I know the answer don’t mean I got to tell it.”

  “So, why’s a simple question got you all shook up, then? You seem scared to me.”

  “That’s because it concerns something that is better for you not to know about and for me not to blab about. The crimps who use the glass don’t want people talking about their business.”

  “So what do they do with the glass? That’s all I’m asking.” Sage continued to push.

  Pratt darted a nervous glance around, as if afraid they’d by overheard by others floating in the vicinity. Then he leaned forward and said in a low voice, “It’s said that in the underground, men are kept in cells with no light, barely any grub or water. They’re kept there sometimes for weeks without any shoes. Broken glass is tossed around outside the cells so the men cut their feet to ribbons if they try to escape. With glass stuck into their feet like that, they can’t run.”

  Sweat sprang out across Sage’s forehead at the idea of weeks in the dark, surrounded by glass shards. Disquiet caused him to fluff his oar strokes. Pratt noticed and pounced.

  “Hah! You think you’re so smart. Cocky just like the rest of them, but I guess you know now that you got it plenty easy. You’ll keep your nose in your own business if you know what’s good for you.”

  Pratt settled back onto the bench seat, his arms folded across his chest in satisfaction. “And let’s see you put some muscle into those oars. I’m paying you to get me to that ship sometime today.”

  Sage pulled at the oars, letting Pratt’s gabbling wash over him, as his imagination wandered the underground, his mind’s eye seeing that square-jawed young face, gaunt with hunger, making a desperate effort to return to his wife and baby. And, failing, as the glass shards stabbed deep into the bottoms of his feet, crippling him, thwarting escape. Sage felt prickling behind his eyelids and bit the inside of his cheek to drive the vision from his mind.

  “Which crimp uses the glass?” he asked Pratt, in a voice that sounded steely calm to his own ears.

  Pratt spewed another stream of tobacco juice into the wind which, in turn, flung it toward Sage. He managed to duck his head in time, never losing a stroke on the oars.

  “Don’t know.” Pratt said, as his rheumy eyes involuntarily skittered sideways. He was lying. “Wouldn’t tell you if I did,” the old salt added. This time, his glare at Sage underscored the truth of that particular remark.

  Neither the Sallie soldiers’ off-key warbling nor the chaplain’s answering harangue accompanied Sage’s entrance–probably because Sage arrived late. Franklin already sat on the same rear bench. No one in the room stirred at Sage’s entrance. Without faltering his exhortations the chaplain, however, momentarily fixed his attention on Sage. Sage dipped his head apologetically and slid onto the bench.

  “I see you’re looking more like one of us,” Franklin said, acknowledging the flared-bottom dungarees and seaman’s cap that marked Sage’s transformation from the itinerant landlubber John Miner into the itinerant waterman Twig Crowley.

  “I’m working on it, thoug
h I think Pratt will deafen me before I’m done.”

  Franklin chortled softly. Obviously, he knew exactly what Sage meant. The old bastard’s endless jabber must be notorious on the waterfront.

  In a whisper, trying not to move his lips, Sage informed the other man that the body buried in Astoria was that of the missing labor organizer. “The Chinese fisherman also said that the man’s feet were sliced all over. Like he’d walked barefoot in broken glass. Pratt tells me that he’s heard tell of shoeless men held in underground cells surrounded by broken glass.” In the pause that followed that bit of information, both men stared at the floor as if it were possible to see glass shards glinting in the darkness below their boots.

  Franklin nodded quickly. “Yep, and when I’ve boarded ships there at the mouth of the Columbia, men have shown me their cut feet, some of them cut so bad they have to keep their feet bare until they’ve healed. Not that they have any choice in the matter. They got cut feet, it means they were shanghaied and delivered aboard without their boots.”

  “Who does that?” Sage asked, feeling an angry knot bunch his jaw.

  Franklin’s and Sage’s exchange seemed to distract the chaplain. For the first time, his flow of words faltered as he stared at them. Franklin smiled apologetically and waited until the chaplain regained his stride before answering, “The men and captains I talk to all claim that Kaspar Mordaunt, our self-proclaimed ‘king of the crimps,’ favors that particular tactic.”

  That name again, Kaspar Mordaunt. After what he’d been learning, Sage thought it would be pleasurable to give Mr. Mordaunt a taste of his own medicine. “God help him,” Sage muttered aloud.

  “Mr. Miner, you best not meet with me again. At leastways not out in the open like this. Somehow, my reports are still getting into the crimps’ hands, and we can’t discover who is working with them. I think I was followed here tonight.”

  “What did they look like, the men who followed you?”