“You might ask Howard.”
“And who might that gentleman be?”
“Howard Belmont. He does the same as me. Inspects the cabins and disinfects.”
“I’ll be sure to speak with him,” Riot said. Cook nodded, and started to pick up his things. Riot waited until Cook had his bucket in hand and was headed to the next cabin. “You made a sizable donation to the Society for the Prevention of Cruelty to Children a few months ago.”
Cook stopped, and those shoulders tensed. The swath above his mask turned pink. “Yes, I did. Why would you know that?”
“We’re thorough. And I think it’s notable.”
“Well, not as notable as the people who run such organizations. I think it’s real noble what those ladies do.”
“In regards to the Chinese?”
“No, sir. American children. It’s not right, them being abandoned, beaten—what have you.”
“It’s definitely not right,” Riot agreed. “Thank you for your time, Mr. Cook. If you should remember anything, please contact me.” He left his card, and left the man to his work.
“What do you think, Tim?”
“I think Zeph gave us a splinter in an ocean sort of task.”
Riot’s lip twisted ruefully. “Why don’t we split up, then.”
16
Graft and Pain
Thursday, July 16, 1896
William Cook hurried from the ferry. He had the gait of a man on a mission, and as rushed as he was Cook failed to notice his shadow.
Riot followed at a distance. He wore a bowler, and a silk waistcoat, and people parted for his confident stride. Perhaps it was the leather strap crossing his waistcoat and the telltale signs of a revolver stock.
It was nearly dark when Cook plunged into the Barbary Coast, and entered the first gambling den he came across. Riot watched the saloon for five minutes, before venturing in after. Riot knew every dive on the coast, and almost everyone who worked there. He nodded to the bouncer, and went to the bar, tossing down a nickel. The beer here was watered, and he only pretended to drink while he watched Cook lose badly at Faro. It would, he feared, be a long night.
When the game lost its thrill, Cook disappeared upstairs with a lady, and Riot turned to the bartender. “Is that gentleman a regular here?” He pushed a dollar forward to loosen the man’s tongue.
The bartender hesitated over the dollar. “You investigatin’ him for adultery?”
Riot shook his head. “Nothing so mundane, Abe. It’s more serious in nature.”
“You know I don’t rat out my customers.”
“My only aim is to find out who’s murdering children and dumping their bodies in the bay.”
Abe frowned. He was a thin, bony fellow, with a pointed chin that he tended to rub. He did so now. Riot didn’t mention the race of the girls. There wasn’t much sympathy for the Chinese in San Francisco.
“That right?” Abe asked.
“If he’s not involved, I’ll leave him be,” Riot assured.
Abe pushed the dollar back. “I don’t care for child murderers. Consider this on the house… not that there’s much. But that fellow who just disappeared with Kitty always comes in flush with cash. He makes his rounds, but he’s bad at his habit.”
“That’s plain.”
Abe smirked. “The dealers are lucky you shook the habit, A.J.”
“I never shook it. I only found more important matters. Does he have a regular woman?”
“Not that I can tell. He likes to sample all the ladies. But I reckon this is his first stop. We get a lot of fellows who are eager to get the gambling rush straight off the ferry.”
Riot inclined his head. He knew that thrill, but it wasn’t the quick money, the flutter of cards, the prestige, or thrill of winning that got his blood pumping—it was the challenge of looking into a man’s eyes and knowing in his bones when an opponent was bluffing. Riot had discovered that detective work offered far more of a challenge.
After an hour, Cook returned, and Riot resumed his reconnaissance. He trailed the man to two more dens. A quick game of dice, a poor bet on a rigged roulette table, and Cook disappeared into a Sullivan’s Alley crib. This struck Riot as odd. Cook hadn’t seemed the type of man to visit a crib whore—one of the lowest class of prostitute there was. And what was more, he was out in less than five minutes. Considering the quickness of the visit compared with the length of his stay with the last woman, Riot grew suspicious.
Cook hurried away from the crib, as if seeking to put as much distance between himself and Dupont Street as he could.
Riot eyed the three-story rookery behind the crib. White men stood at either end of the alley. Hired sentries, if he were any judge.
He had a choice to make.
Riot turned towards Cook, and quickened his pace. The quarantine officer was a safer bet. Cook hailed a cab at Jackson, and as the hack slowed to let him inside, Riot stepped up his pace, climbing in after.
“What the—”
“Mr. Cook,” Riot said in a friendly manner. As friendly as a purring panther. He pushed up the brim of his hat. “What a coincidence.”
Cook made a sudden move, but Riot was quicker, and drew his revolver in one smooth motion. “I wouldn’t.”
Cook froze, and slowly placed his hand on his thigh.
“You haven’t told the hackman where you’re headed.”
Cook remained tight-lipped, so Riot called out directions for him. Directions to the man’s home—to his wife and children. Cook squirmed in his seat.
“You didn’t make a donation to the Society for the Prevention of Cruelty to Children. Your wife did,” Riot said, as the hack rattled over cobblestones. With his free hand, Riot patted the man’s coat, and plucked out a billfold and gun. Keeping one eye on Cook, he rifled through the bills. Riot whistled low. “Five hundred dollars—far from the weekly pay of a quarantine station employee.” The cash also confirmed Riot’s suspicions. “I watched you go into that crib in Sullivan’s Alley. The Quarter loves its trapdoors and passages as much as the Barbary Coast. What tong is bribing you?”
Cook crossed his arms. He looked like a defiant six year-old.
“Mr. Cook.” Riot smiled like a shark. “I’m not above telling your wife about Kitty, or about your gambling habit.”
“I won’t say a thing,” Cook said. “I can’t. If I say a word there’ll be a price on my head, and I’ll be gunned down by a highbinder in cold blood.”
“Doubtful. Hatchet men don’t usually target white men. And it’s not like I’m asking you to testify in a court of law.” Yet, Riot added silently. “How about you just nod real easy like, if I get near to the target.”
Cook nodded.
“Would it be the Hip Yee Tong?” The Temple of United Justice mostly dealt with slavery. A twitch in Cook’s bicep confirmed Riot’s educated guess even before the man nodded.
“How’d you find me out?”
“Your pocketwatch,” Riot answered. “The house you keep. Any number of things. You practically left a trail of bread crumbs for me to follow.”
“Everyone takes bribes,” Cook spit out. “How else are we supposed to survive. Breathing in the Lord only knows what, day in and day out. I don’t have much time for this earth.”
“Question is… where you’re headed in that afterlife.”
Cook sucked in a sharp breath. “We’re both gentleman. You… you wouldn’t tell my wife? Surely?”
“Wouldn’t I?”
“Please.”
“That entirely depends on your answers.” Riot let his words sink in and his stare burrow deep. Cook closed his eyes, and nodded. “Did you recognize the girl in the photograph?”
“I don’t know. She looked familiar, but I’m not sure. I really can’t tell Mongolians apart.”
“That’s all very convenient for you, but it won’t help you. Tell me who you think she might be.”
“The girls… they stay behind—pose as sick—dressed as white women, or even
a young man sometimes. All I’m paid to do is say I’m escorting them to the receiving station on the island. But instead of doing that I hand them over to their relatives.”
“Relatives?”
Cook shrugged. “They look like kin to me.”
“Because ‘they all look alike’,” Riot quoted dryly.
“That’s right. Who am I to keep family apart?”
“Whatever eases your conscience.”
“I do as I’m told.”
“After you take the money.”
“If I didn't take their money, someone else would.”
“Who else is involved?”
“My supervisor, Mr. Quiver.”
“I see.”
It was hard to read Cook in the dark, but Riot could feel him quivering. Not with rage, but the kind of shake that made Riot fear for the man’s bladder. “This girl that you may or may not recognize, what did her family look like?”
Cook tapped his finger on his thigh in thought. “Pig-tailed, slanty-eyed, silk blouses.”
“Same fellows you get your money from?”
Cook shrugged.
“Well, Mr. Cook, you are a singularly unobservant fellow, and what’s more, you’ve been very uninformative. You haven’t told me a thing that I didn’t already know.” Riot let those words sink into the man’s thick skull. “I’m looking forward to meeting your wife.”
“Wait now.” Cook jerked, and Riot jabbed the barrel of his gun against his ribs. The man froze. “I told you all I know.”
“You’d best think harder, because earlier you said that the Chinese girls are sometimes disguised as white women. I think a Chinese man picking up a white girl would draw attention.”
Even in the dark, Riot could see the man pale. He licked his lips, and when he spoke, his voice was hoarse. “There’s usually a different lady who comes for them. American. But we only do a few like that. It’d raise suspicion otherwise. Most go through the interpreter.”
“At the customs station?”
Cook nodded eagerly. “The girls are coached with answers to give to the agents, but some agents just let them right through, as long as they have forged papers.”
“As interesting as that is, I’d like to go back to the subject you’re trying to avoid: the girls who stay behind in the cabins. Why don’t they go through the customs office? Seems easier. Why do some pretend to be sick?”
“I don’t know. I figured it was so customs doesn’t get suspicious of certain agents.”
“The bribes don’t always work?”
Cook hesitated. “I don’t know.”
“How do you know the girls are pretending to be sick?”
“They aren’t moving.”
“So they’re drugged.”
“I said they’re pretending.”
“Sounds like they’re drugged to me. Unwilling. That would certainly explain why they don’t make it to customs,” Riot said with a click of his teeth. “Or maybe too young to memorize the required information?”
“Look, I don’t ask questions.”
“I imagine not,” Riot said.
“I have a family to support.”
“And it’s far easier to go home to your own daughter and pretend those girls don’t exist.” As long as Riot walked this earth, he’d never understand men like Cook. “If a white woman is posing as their kin, who carries the unconscious girls?”
“A big chink. He has a long, thick queue. As thick as my wrist.”
“With a scar hereabouts?” Riot traced a line from the edge of his lip to his ear.
Cook nodded.
Riot had encountered the man before. A notorious hatchet man known as Big Queue in Hip Yee tong. He sometimes acted as a guard for the House of Joy. White Blossom’s brothel.
Painted ladies entertained a room full of men in the House of Joy. The women’s eyes sparkled, and their tongues dripped with smooth lies, while the men drank every drop of their act.
White Blossom stood in the center of a knot of men. She had a way about her that made every man feel special, even in a group. A brush of fingertips, a suggestive look, a flattering smile had each man believing he was the only one. It was her gift.
Riot smoothly interjected himself into the group, and wedged himself between two of her admirers, who tried to nudge him away from the object of their desire. Riot didn’t budge. He might be on the smaller side of the male sex, but he was wiry and quick, and men often made the mistake of underestimating him.
“We need to talk,” he whispered in White Blossom’s ear.
She didn’t glance at him. “I’m entertaining.”
“I’m sure you can excuse yourself.”
“I’ll call the guards,” she warned in an undertone.
“I’ll blow my whistle and summon the squad of patrolman waiting outside. Loud or quiet, Siu Lui. It’s your pleasure.”
He did not have such a squad waiting outside, but Riot could weave a lie as convincing as any madam. She chose quiet, and led the way to her boudoir. She sat down, looking like an irritated feline.
Riot did not sit; he faced her square. “You know something about the latest girl who was murdered.”
“Do I?”
“One of your women helped transport her from the quarantine station. I know you too well to believe you’re ignorant of that fact.”
She regarded him with serene patience, as if he were an unruly child. Riot forced himself to relax. He took the chair opposite, crossed his legs, and adjusted his spectacles.
The silence was broken by her smile—one tinged with sadness. “I remember how you used to sit and watch a hole as a child,” she said. “You’d sit there for hours, as still as a statue, waiting for an animal to poke its head out of its den. I liked to watch you. You were so intent, so focused, as I never could be.”
Riot didn’t say a word. He listened, and waited, making a conscious effort not to clench his jaw.
“And do you know what galled me the most was the look of utter satisfaction on your face when the animal revealed itself to take a morsel of food from your hand. This isn’t one of those times. There is no kindly creature in the hole you’re staring at.”
“This animal is killing children, Jessie.” He used the name he had called her from their childhood. If the sound of it affected her, she hid it well.
Siu Lui shook her head. “Were we any older than they were when I collected cash from my first john, or you pinched your first billfold? All for a scrap of food and one more day of life.”
“Somewhere between grass and hay still isn’t old enough. No man or woman should end up like those girls.”
“I’ve told you all I can,” she said, with an honesty that he had not seen in her since they were children.
“You haven’t told me a thing.”
“I know you’re not a stupid man. You can read more in what someone doesn’t say than in all the lies of the world. If I tell you anymore I’ll meet the same fate as those girls. But for you I’ll say it plain: look to the missions.”
Riot calmly regarded her, waiting for more.
“I remember when you used to smile, too,” she said quietly, looking at him from beneath mournful lashes. But it did nothing to humanize her. Siu Lui was surrounded by empty beauty, in a hollow home that was a mirror of her soul.
“Despite what you think of me, I’m not killing those children, A.J.”
“You’re selling them for the Hip Yee Tong.”
“I’m transporting them,” she corrected.
“Straight to the Queen’s Room,” he returned.
“I don’t work for Hip Yee. I do, however, pay them for protection, and the right to do business in their Quarter. I also pay rent to the owner of this building.”
There was emphasis on that last. Realization dawned, and Riot stood. She blew out a long breath. “You can be absolutely obtuse at times.”
“I’ve never denied that fact,” Riot said, putting on his hat.
“And A.J.?”
He paused.
“Do try to look satisfied when you leave. I wouldn’t want to spoil my reputation.”
17
Broken Silence
Friday, July 17, 1896
Atticus Riot rushed through Ravenwood’s front door to be confronted by the man himself. He was on his way out, and didn’t pause, only gestured sharply for Riot to follow. Riot turned on his heel and caught up to the limping older man in no time.
“The building owners—”
“Yes, yes,” Ravenwood huffed, as he climbed into a waiting hack. Riot stopped, stunned. “Get in, my boy.” The order snapped Riot into action. He climbed in after.
“920 Sacramento,” Ravenwood barked at the driver.
Riot looked at his partner in question.
“We’ve been summoned,” Ravenwood explained.
“We’ve been focusing on the members and contributors of the missions—”
“Not the building owners.”
“How did you—”
“It occurred to me that there was a third party we had not yet considered—the owners of the missions themselves.” Ravenwood uncurled his hand. A small bit of wood, the very same he had pulled from the fourth victim’s hair. “This is bamboo. A piece of wicker from a chair or basket. The Chinese Mission Church on Stockton and Sacramento is owned by a man who also owns a lumber yard and a basket weaving shop. A Mr. Jones. A retired physician who spent five years in Canton.”
As usual Zephaniah Ravenwood was a step ahead—without the tedious leg work and endless questioning that seemed to plague Riot. He didn’t ask how he had found all that out. Riot knew that his partner would simply wave his hand at the bit of bamboo wood, and declare it obvious.
Miss Cameron answered the door to the mission, and Ravenwood swept past the woman, stepping into the front hall. Riot nodded politely, and waited for her to invite him inside.
When the door closed, Ravenwood spun on the woman. “What is it?” No greeting, no formality, right to the point as usual.
Donaldina was familiar with the man and his eccentricities, and took no offense. Deep down Zephaniah Ravenwood cared greatly for people. Or so Riot liked to believe. Even after twenty years of working together, Riot found the man difficult to read. He was like a puzzle box.
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