Land Sharks

by S. L. Stoner

  Not long afterward, Mordaunt’s outraged protestations echoed in from the courthouse’s marble hallway. “I’ll have your damn job. I’m a precinct man. You embarrassed me in front of my friends. I’ll have all your jobs, by God. Just see if I don’t!”

  When he entered the courtroom and saw those assembled, Mordaunt’s ranting stopped abruptly. Catching sight of James Laidlaw, Mordaunt allowed his lip to curl and he hissed, “This time, Laidlaw, you’ve gone too far.” A rustle coming from the rear bench caught Mordaunt’s ear, and turning, he saw Sage. Although Mordaunt’s face paled, he still shot a venomous look toward Sage before he turned to face the judge.

  “I trust that you are through with your tirade, Mordaunt?” The judge spoke in a chilly but mild tone. Mordaunt clamped his mouth shut.

  The judge continued, “Mr. Mordaunt, we have witnesses who will testify under oath that you ordered five men and a boy shanghaied and delivered onto the deep-water vessel Calypso this very night. They will also testify that you admitted you were responsible for the death of Mr. Joseph Kincaid and another man named Amacker. You further admitted in their presence that you ordered the beating death of a man named Stuart Franklin. Finally, if it becomes necessary, they will also testify that you personally authorized and ordered the death of one,” here Judge Berquist looked down at a paper before him, “Twig Crowley. What do you say to these charges, Mr. Mordaunt?”

  Mordaunt stood mute, a stunned look on his face as he struggled to reconcile what he believed should have happened with what must have actually taken place. Finally, in a choked voice, he asked, “Where are my men?”

  “Your men,” Judge Berquist told him, grimness deepening his voice, “await you in jail.” Minutes later, Hanke grabbed Mordaunt’s elbow and led him out. Hanke looked so proud that Sage feared the sergeant’s chest might pop the brass buttons off his uniform. Sage waited until the sounds of their exit died away, then he and his mother slid from the back bench and left the building. Once outside, Sage sucked in the fresh air, placed his mother’s hand on his forearm and set off toward Mozart’s.

  Late the next morning, Sage climbed the granite steps to Lucinda’s door, a bouquet of yellow roses in one hand. He’d decided it was time to repair the damage his absence had probably caused their relationship. Regret filled Elmira’s face when she swung the door wide and saw who stood on the step. “Oh, Mr. Adair,” she said, her brown eyes softening with sympathy, “Miz Lucinda’s not here. She’s been gone a few days now.”

  “Gone? Gone where?”

  Elmira looked distressed. “She’s traveling on the train to Chicago with a friend.”

  “A friend? A woman friend, you mean?”

  Elmira slowly shook her head from side to side, “No, Mr. Adair.”

  Sage looked across the street into the yellowing leaves of the park, feeling a flick of autumn’s cooler air hit his face. He turned back to Elmira and asked softly, “Well, Miz Elmira, when is it that you expect to see Miz Lucinda back from her trip?”

  “I’m sorry, Mr. Adair, but when they left, she didn’t say when they’d be coming back. Miz Clara’s running the house until then. If Miz Lucinda comes back at all.”

  As Sage descended the steps, the door behind him clicked shut softly, as if Elmira wanted not to let the sound of the closing door increase his pain. He walked up the street, flowers dangling bloom-end down from his hand, painful emotion grabbing hold of his thoughts with a brutality that caused his step to falter. So he’d gone and done it. He’d let someone special, someone he needed, slip through his fingers. He couldn’t blame Lucinda. His mother had warned him. If you care about someone, if you love someone, you have to show it. Now, in his arrogant conceit, he’d lost Lucinda. His fault, no one else’s.

  He dropped the flowers into the lap of a homeless woman, who sat on the sidewalk with her back against the wall, her face upturned to the sun. He didn’t pause to see her reaction.

  TWENTY NINE

  WHEN HE TOLD HIS MOTHER about Lucinda’s departure from the city, she neither chastised him nor said she’d warned him. She merely squeezed his shoulder and left him to brood alone. Fong resumed his place in their lives, acting as though nothing had happened. Sage, still miserable over losing Lucinda, spent his time alone, readying his rooftop garden for winter by trimming branches, clipping rose hips and filling the planter boxes with a thick layer of hay.

  A week later Mae Clemens held an intimate dinner party, closing Mozart’s for the occasion. Fong spoke for the first time about how he came to be in the underground in time to aid Sage and Sergeant Hanke. In front of everyone–Ben Johnston, Angus Solomon, James Laidlaw, Sergeant Hanke, and a heavily-bandaged, stiffly-moving Stuart Franklin–Fong said, “Mrs. Clemens is very determined lady. She came to provision store and told me Mr. Adair need help. So, I have a talk with my pride. I think Mr. Adair a very good friend, and it would be wrong to turn my back.”

  Puzzlement wrinkled the face of everyone except Mae Clemens and Sage. Fong saw the puzzlement and hurried on, saying nothing whatsoever about LaRue and Sage’s role in the man’s departure from Portland.

  “She tell me of plan to trap the shanghai men. We decide it would be better if we find holding pen in afternoon and already be there. I meet with Mr. Laidlaw and he agree. He also thinks that someone needs to be there writing down what people say. He talked to Mr. Johnston and to Sergeant Hanke, so in the end the underground was full of people. It was hard to keep them all quiet when we are waiting. This time Sergeant Hanke,” Fong tilted his head toward the big policeman, who blushed, “finally got a hiding job where he could make plenty of noise.”

  The others laughed. They had either heard, or heard tell of, the deafening snores coming from the supposedly drugged men inside the holding pen, snores that covered up the advance of Fong and his men.

  “It looks like Mordaunt and his men will either hang or spend the rest of their lives in prison, with much credit due to Mr. Johnston.” Laidlaw said. “His newspaper has made the entire town sit up and take notice. No way they can sweep the whole affair under the table.” Laidlaw raised a glass of wine to Johnston, who returned the gesture, displaying to one and all the ink stains on his cuff.

  Hanke gave his information next. “The plywood factory’s manager hasn’t escaped. He’s going to spend time in court trying to explain his role in the kidnapping of Amacker and Kincaid. Those Gray’s Harbor runners, Krupps and Bendt, have loyalty toward no one but themselves. Ten minutes of questioning and they were telling how they met with the factory manager for the job and went back later to get paid off once they’d delivered Kincaid aboard ship.

  “That manager was stupid. He conducted the transaction right in his office. The office clerk remembers the two shanghaiers coming in. He’s more than happy to testify. He liked Kincaid, spoke a piece at his memorial service and didn’t like the manager at all. The entire factory shut down for Kincaid’s memorial service. The factory owner paid for it, gave Ms. Kincaid money and fired the manager. We haven’t been able to pin anything on the owner. But then, you always got to wonder. After all, he hired the man. Must have liked how the manager thought to keep him on.”

  Sage knew about the factory shutting down for the memorial service. He and his mother drove to Milwaukie to attend the event. They’d wanted to pay their respects and to take one last look at Kincaid’s wife and child before they left with her inlaws. It had been a gratifying experience. The heartfelt tributes from Kincaid’s coworkers sent tears running down the faces of his parents. They stood flanking Grace Kincaid, their arms holding her tightly throughout the entire service.

  As for Grace, she’d taken Sage’s hand and said, “Mr. Miner, I will be forever in your debt. You said Joey hadn’t left Faith and me and then you proved it. She’ll never know her daddy but she’ll always know he never wanted to leave her. That he died trying to get back to her and to me.”

  “The real crooks in this,” Johnston’s voice interrupted Sage’s thoughts, “Mordaunt’s finan
cial backers, are slinking about town, trying to act as if they knew nothing of his doings.”

  “So that means Earl Gordon is going to escape responsibility for his part in Mordaunt’s land shark operation?” Sage asked.

  Laidlaw raised an eyebrow and cleared his throat.“What was it that you told me Mr. Fong here likes to say, Adair? Something about how floating in life’s current can turn up unexpected things?” Sage nodded, despite the inaccuracy of the paraphrase.

  Laidlaw didn’t keep them waiting. “You told me that Earl Gordon’s son owed Mordaunt money. It turns out Mordaunt wasn’t the only crimp the boy owed. The night of Mordaunt’s arrest, Gordon’s son disappeared from Erickson’s. Gordon hired Dickensen detectives, but they couldn’t find him. Word around the harbor is that the boy is now somewhere out in the Pacific Ocean, on the Calypso no less, hauling lines and lifting sails. I must admit that the idea tickles my ironic funny bone. He was well on his way to becoming a blowhard like his father.”

  The thought crossed Sage’s mind that if the pampered Gordon heir survived, the hard work might mold him into a better man than his father. “Does Gordon know they shanghaied his son?” Sage asked.

  The Scotsman’s watery blue eyes held a subdued twinkle. “Let us just say that the information was conveyed to him–so he knows. I suspect this is the first time in Gordon’s life that money can’t soothe his discomfiture or relieve whatever guilt he is capable of feeling. He is looking pretty bleak these days—lost quite a few pounds. Not the same man at all.” Laidlaw did not try to suppress the satisfaction in his voice.

  Sage thought of Grace Kincaid and of little Faith who would grow to womanhood never knowing her father. But still, she would hear stories about the loving, brave, unselfish man he’d been. There was satisfying irony in the fact that one of the men ultimately responsible for the continued existence of the shanghaiing business, Earl Gordon, was now feeling a measure of the torment Grace Kincaid had suffered. For a brief moment, Sage sensed that there was a pattern to Life’s currents. A pattern that surfaced, rippled and changed things before vanishing as if it had never existed. He hoped so.

  At the evening’s end Sage watched out the window as Matthew darted around the corner to waylay the departing Hanke. The boy looked at Hanke in the same way he had once looked at Sage.

  At the touch of a warm hand on his shoulder, Sage turned to see his mother. “I guess you know that Matthew’s switched his hero-worship to our Sergeant Hanke since you didn’t want the boy to know the role you played in his rescue,” she said.

  “Thank God,” Sage said fervently. “Being someone’s hero is a real burden because there always comes that day when they discover you are somewhat short of perfect.” Sage looked around the dining room. “Where’s Mr. Fong?”

  “Upstairs, in the attic, I think,” she answered, understanding.

  Fong sat cross-legged on the floor. The hatchet lay before him, its steel edge glinting in the candlelight, its wooden handle satin smooth from those years of use that Sage didn’t want to think about.

  For some minutes Sage said nothing and merely sat beside the other man, gazing at the weapon, wondering how to begin this conversation. Eventually he cleared his throat to say, “You know, Mr. Fong, LaRue may survive his whaling trip and turn up here again–he’s ornery enough. You might get another chance at him.”

  “Ah,” Fong said, his tone mildly resigned, “If LaRue does return, I will not be the same man I was a few weeks ago.” Sage turned his head to look at the other’s profile. He saw nothing there to explain what Fong meant. He saw only that serenity that he’d never be able to emulate.

  Fong spoke again, “Sometimes a man is lucky. He has friend who is like calm pond is to crane. Smooth water of pond is sometimes mirror of crane’s truth and sky in which he flies.”

  Fong reached out a hand to clasp Sage’s wrist. “You are such a friend. You make me see that my actions do not match my words, my Way. I almost step away from promise I made to my uncle’s spirit that day in the desert when I thought LaRue was dead. You save me from mistake. I am most grateful,” he said.

  Sage covered Fong’s hand with his own. Then, when the intensity of the moment became overwhelming, he retreated into the familiar, “Which wise and illustrious Chinese sage blessed us mortals with that pond saying?”

  Fong turned to look at him. A smile slowly spread across his face, “Fong Kam Tong,” he said, tapping his chest with two fingers and lowering his eyes modestly.

  THE END

  Historical Notes

  Although this is a work of fiction, it relies on a number of historical facts, a few of which include the following:

  In 1887, thirty-one Chinese gold miners were murdered on a sandbar beside the Snake River. Their bodies were hacked into pieces and tossed into the water. There were six white murderers. The stories about what really happened vary. One version names Homer LaRue as one of the ringleaders, asserting he absconded with the gold and was never brought to justice. Out of the remaining five men arrested for the crime, one never went to trial, two escaped jail and the other three were found innocent by a white jury although they had confessed to the crime.

  The story of Fong’s San Francisco days was somewhat inspired by the tong highbinder life of Eng Ying Gong. Boo how doys who survived their days of violence with gun and hatchet were allowed to “retire” from their respective tongs and live in peace. Hong Ah Kay was, in fact, a Chinese poet living in the United States during this time period.

  For many years the British consul, James Laidlaw, collaborated with the Norwegian and other foreign consuls to put Portland’s crimps out of business. The powerful of Portland opposed their efforts for the reasons stated in the preceding fictionalized story. In the end it was the steamships, with their need for fewer but more highly skilled men, along with the unionization of the sailors, that finally put an end to the practice.

  The Seaman’s Friend Society did work in tandem with the foreign consuls to get laws passed that would outlaw crimping and its darker companion, shanghaiing. One of their members, R. M. Stuart, kept notes of the interviews he conducted after rowing out to intercept ship captains whose ships were waiting to cross the Columbia River bar. Contemporaneous writings of the Society record the suspicion that the chaplain of the Society might have been supplying information to the crimps.

  The letter attributed to Stuart Franklin’s younger brother is a verbatim excerpt of one actually written by Frank B. Richardson to his grandfather in 1888. Shortly after writing the letter, young Richardson’s ship sank to the bottom of the South Atlantic with all hands reported lost.

  Bunco Kelly was a Portland crimp. He did deliver a number of dying men on board a departing ship. The men had drunk what they thought was alcohol, only to die of formaldehyde poisoning. There was also a crimp named Kaspar Mordaunt although he operated out of San Francisco. Finally, strange as it may sound, one of Portland’s crimps shipped out his own son when he came up one man short of providing a full crew.

  Researchers believe that the worst crimps, also known as land sharks, used the interconnected basements and tunnels beneath Portland for both jailing and then transporting men to the waterfront. The Chinese, however, were even more familiar with the underground. In addition to operating opium and gambling dens there, its dusty darkness was also where they nursed their sick and dying. They were forced to do so out of the very real fear that reports of Chinese deaths from disease would touch off wholesale deportations. Lastly, as their numbers in Portland grew to being the second largest in the country, some Chinese were forced to live in the underground because those few buildings in which they were allowed to reside became excessively overcrowded.

  Much of the Columbia River cannery work was divvied up among the various Chinese tongs. Only the members of the designated tong could work in the canneries controlled by that tong. Chinese working in the canneries generally refrained from talking to white men except through their English-speaking “China boss.” This w
as true even though some spoke English as well or better than their China boss. They did this because the European-Americans in the surrounding communities, along with the police force, tended toward periodic and violent anti-Chinese sentiment. This threat led the Chinese cannery workers to adopt the tactic of limiting their interactions with whites.

  When the exclusive Portland Hotel opened for business, one of its drawing cards was that its dining room service was supplied by exceptionally well-trained African Americans imported from the Carolinas. One of these men did, in fact, establish a hotel for black railroad porters. Many of the Portland Hotel’s skilled, hardworking men, started other side businesses. In time, their families became the nucleus of Portland’s black middle class.

  Sage’s boss in the labor movement, Vincent St. Alban, is modeled after Vincent St. John whom many workers called “the Saint” because of his kindliness and bravery. He eventually became one of the founders of the Industrial Workers of the World organization, its members known as the Wobblies.

  Countless men and women died in the United States because they spoke up for the right to have unions and engaged in a sixty-year-long fight for an eight hour work day.

  About the Author

  S. L. Stoner is a native of the Pacific Northwest who has worked as a citizen activist and as a labor union and civil rights attorney for many years.

  Acknowledgments

  I want to start by thanking the readers of Timber Beasts. Their enthusiasm and support for this series encouraged Sage to keep adventuring and fighting the good fight.