The Bags of Tricks Affair

by Bill Pronzini

  The onlookers began to stir and murmur. Play at the few other open gambling tables suspended for the moment. Nearly everyone in the cavernous room stood or sat watching the two women. Even McFinn, leaning against one of the roulette layouts, was temporarily motionless.

  “Well, dearie,” the Rose said, “three handsome jacks.” She tapped her hole card. “Is this the fourth I have here? It may well be. What do you think, Lady, of my having the jack of diamonds?”

  Quincannon was sure that this innuendo was intentional. But whatever Lady One-Eye thought of the remark, she neither reacted nor responded.

  “Or it may be another ten. A full house beats a straight all to hell, dearie. If you even have a six or an ace to fill.”

  “Bet your jacks,” Lady One-Eye said in her soft, cold drawl.

  The Rose separated four blue chips from her small remaining stack, slid them into the pot. “Two hundred says it makes no difference if you have a straight or not.”

  “Your two hundred, and raise another two.”

  Voices created an excited buzz, ebbed again to silence. Neither of the women seemed to notice. Their gazes were fixed on each other.

  “A bluff, dearie?” the Rose said.

  “Call or raise and you’ll soon know.”

  “Four hundred is all I have left.”

  “Call or raise.”

  “Your two hundred, then, and my last two hundred.”

  “Call.”

  The pile of red-and-blue chips bulged between them. The crowd was expectantly still as the Rose shrugged and turned over her hole card.

  The queen of hearts. No help.

  “Three jacks,” she said. “Beat ’em if you can.”

  Her one good eye as icy as any Quincannon had ever seen, the Lady flipped her hole card. And when it was revealed in the glistening mirrors, a triumphant shout went up from her champions.

  Ace of clubs to fill the straight.

  The pot and all of the Rose’s table stakes were hers.

  2

  QUINCANNON

  For the next half hour Quincannon was busy attending to the unquenchable thirst of the Gold Nugget’s steady stream of customers. But not so busy that he was unable to maintain his observations.

  The Saint Louis Rose, after fending off a pair of drunken sports who considered her fair game, slipped quietly out of the hall. Lady One-Eye gathered her winnings, turned the chips over to her taciturn brother to be cashed—all the while keeping watch on her husband. Jack O’Diamonds made no further move to Lily Dumont’s faro bank, nor did he approach his wife. Instead he bellied up to the bar at Quincannon’s station and called for a brandy.

  The Nevada City saloonkeeper, Glen Bonnifield, took this opportunity to stalk to Lily’s table, lean down with his face close to hers. Their conversation was brief and clearly heated. To end it Bonnifield slapped the table hard with his open hand—as a substitute for slapping Lily, Quincannon thought—and then swung away, back past the bar. His eyes met Diamond’s in the mirror; the two gazes struck sparks, but neither man made a move toward the other. Bonnifield stalked to the front entrance and was gone.

  Quincannon served Jack O’Diamonds his brandy. “Your wife had a fine run of luck tonight, Mr. Diamond.”

  “My wife’s luck is always fine.” The gambler didn’t sound as pleased about it as he might have. Jealousy? Compared to Lady One-Eye’s skill with the pasteboards, honest or not, his own was mediocre.

  “And your luck with Lily Dumont? How has that been?”

  The comment, delivered casually, produced a tight-lipped glower. “What do you mean by that?”

  “No offense, sir. I was asking if you’d won or lost at faro.”

  “I didn’t play faro tonight.”

  “Mr. Bonnifield seemed to think you did,” Quincannon said blandly, “and that you spent a great deal of time at Lily’s table. So did Mr. Gaunt.”

  “I don’t care a tinker’s damn what either of them thinks.” Jack O’Diamonds fingered his flashy diamond stickpin, downed his brandy at a gulp. Then he, too, left the Gold Nugget—alone, and still without speaking to his wife.

  Jeffrey Gaunt, clad in a rusty black frock coat, striped trousers, and string tie, sidled up to take his brother-in-law’s place at the bar. He was a year or two younger than Lady One-Eye, clean shaven except for a thin shoelace mustache, his face and body as gaunt as his name, his black hair combed flat to his skull and glistening with pomade. His only distinguishing feature was a deep chin cleft the size of a thumbprint.

  “What’s your pleasure, Mr. Gaunt?” Quincannon asked.

  “A glass of water.” The man’s Southern drawl was even more pronounced than those of his sister and Jack O’Diamonds.

  “Just that?”

  “Just that. I don’t take strong spirits.”

  “Nor do I, sir. I only serve them.”

  “I noticed you talking to Jack O’Diamonds. What about? He seemed agitated.”

  “I asked if he’d won or lost at faro tonight. He said he hadn’t played.”

  “And the question upset him?”

  “No, sir. It was my mention of Lily’s swain, Mr. Glen Bonnifield.”

  “What about Bonnifield?”

  Quincannon set the glass of water on the bar in front of Gaunt. “He seemed to think Mr. Diamond has been spending a great deal of time at the faro bank.”

  “Did he now.” The ice-blue eyes narrowed into a steady stare. “And what did you say to that?”

  “Nothing, sir. It’s none of my concern.”

  “That’s right, it isn’t. I’d remember that if I were you.”

  Gaunt drank his water, set the glass down sharply, and ambled off to join Lady One-Eye. Bad blood between him and his brother-in-law because of what was going on between Diamond and Lily Dumont? Quincannon wondered. Maybe so; the pair seldom spoke to each other in public. A potentially volatile situation, in any case, though whether or not it was relevant to the investigation remained to be seen.

  Lady One-Eye, meanwhile, had stepped down off the platform, approached Lily Dumont, and engaged her in a brief, heated discussion just as Bonnifield had. Lily’s reaction to whatever was said to her was to call the Lady an unladylike name, in a voice loud enough to cause a commotion among the miners seated at her bank. Lady One-Eye responded by making a warning gesture with her gold-knobbed cane before limping away. She then left the hall in the company of Gaunt and the bouncer assigned by McFinn as escort and bodyguard.

  Quincannon decided he’d had enough of bartending for tonight if not for the rest of his life. He hung up his apron, donned his long coat and derby, helped himself to a cheroot from a vase on the bar, and went to pay Lily a visit of his own.

  She was shuffling and cutting a full deck of cards for placement in her tiger-decorated faro box; the cards made angry snapping sounds in her slim fingers. She, too, was a complete opposite of Lady One-Eye. She had flaming red hair, a temper to match, and the hot sparking eyes of a gypsy. Fire to the Lady’s ice.

  “Trouble with Her Majesty?” Quincannon asked with mock sympathy.

  “Her Majesty. Hah! I’ll tell you what that female is.” Which Lily proceeded to do in language that delighted some and shocked others among the miners seated at her table.

  “A cold and jealous woman, all right,” he agreed.

  “Threaten me, will she? I’ll fix her first. I’ll rip out her other eye and turn her into Lady Blind.”

  “Why did she threaten you?”

  “Never mind about that.”

  Quincannon bent toward her and said in a lowered voice, “I wonder how long she and Jack O’Diamonds have been together. They seem a mismatched pair.”

  “Too long. And ‘mismatched’ is putting it mildly. God knows what he ever saw in her even before she lost her eye.”

  “Poker winnings are more attractive to some than a pretty face.”

  “Well, that’s why he stayed with her as long as he has. But maybe not for much longer.”

  “Oh?
He wouldn’t be planning to leave her, would he?”

  “That’s none of your business.”

  “Is it any of yours, Lily?”

  “Miss Dumont to you. My business is mine, no one else’s.”

  “Not even Glen Bonnifield’s?”

  “Leave the lady be, mister,” one of the miners snapped. “Be gone with ye so she can deal her cards.”

  And take your hard-earned money, Quincannon thought. But he only shrugged and turned away.

  As he made his way through the crowd toward the front entrance, he spied Amos McFinn hurrying to intercept him. He pretended not to see the nervous little client; he had no interest in answering another “Anything suspicious?” or similar question yet again. He managed to make good his escape before McFinn got close enough to ask it.

  It was some past midnight now, and even though thick July heat blanketed the town during the day, snow still mantled the Sierras’ higher peaks and the mountain air held a faint chill after nightfall. The continual beat of stamps at the massive Empire Mine southeast of town all but drowned out the throb of piano and banjo music from inside the Gold Nugget and other gaming halls and saloons nearby.

  At this hour there was but a small amount of foot and vehicle traffic on the steep slope of East Main Street, its expanse more brightly lit now that electric lamps had replaced the old gas ones. A far cry from the boom years of Grass Valley and Nevada City following the 1851 discovery of gold in quartz ledges buried beneath the earth, when thousands of gold seekers, camp followers, and Cornish and Irish hardrock miners had clogged the streets day and night. Now the Empire was the only major mine still in operation, with shafts sunk as deep as seven thousand feet below the surface.

  On Quincannon’s first visit here, some eight years ago, the town had still retained some of its wide-open Gold Rush flavor. Now nearly all the rough edges had been buffed down and rounded off. This was fine if you were a law-abiding, church-going citizen with a family to raise and support. But tame places were not for John Frederick Quincannon. He would rather walk the mean streets of a hell-roaring gold camp or those of the Barbary Coast.

  He paused on the boardwalk to light the cheroot he had appropriated. He seldom smoked cigars, preferring shag-cut loaded into his stubby briar pipe, but free tobacco, if it was of decent quality, had a greater satisfaction than the paid-for kind. Then, instead of heading to his lodging place, the Holbrooke Hotel, he walked down to the town’s other main thoroughfare, Mill Street. The only lit building along there was the Empire Livery Stable. He saw the night hostler working inside as he passed—and no one else after he turned uphill on Neal Street.

  A building boom had taken place in Grass Valley since his last visit. Formerly the town had consisted of simple wood-frame structures common to boom camps, those used for commercial purposes bearing false fronts. Now there were two-story Italianate and Queen Anne–style homes and not a few front-gable cottages with facing verandas.

  One of the Palace’s bouncers had told him that Lily Dumont lived in a cottage on Pleasant Street, just off Neal. He found the address with no difficulty. The cottage was not one of the larger front-gable variety, but a small frame building of no more than three rooms, tucked well back from the street in the shade of a pair of live oaks. The neighborhood was a good one, and by the light of stars and a rind of moon he could tell that the cottage and its gardens were well set up. Much too well set up, he thought, for a woman who operated a faro bank to afford on her own. He wondered if Glen Bonnifield had an investment in the property as well as in the fair Lily.

  The cottage’s curtained windows were dark; so were those in the two nearest houses. He shed the remains of his cheroot and walked softly around to the rear. The back door was not locked. He entered, struck a match to orient himself and to show him the way into the front parlor.

  An oil lamp with a red silk shade sat atop a writing desk. He lit the wick, turning the flame low, and by this light he searched the desk. There was one bottle of ink, but it was blue, not green. Nothing else in the desk held any interest for him.

  He carried the lamp into Lily’s bedroom, where he found further evidence of financial aid: satin dresses, a white fox capote, an expensive ostrich-feather chapeau. But that was all he found. If Lily had written the threatening note, she had either done it elsewhere or gotten rid of the bottle of ink she’d used.

  Quincannon returned the lamp to the writing desk, snuffed the wick, then followed the flicker of another match to the rear door. He let himself out, shutting the door quietly behind him.

  He was just turning onto the path toward the front when the first bullet sang close past his right ear.

  He threw himself to the ground, an immediate reflex action that saved his life: the second bullet slashed air where his head had been, thudded into something behind him. The booming echo of the shots filled his ears. He reached under his coat for his Navy Colt, then remembered he hadn’t worn it because of his bartending duties; instead he’d armed himself with the same type of double-barreled Remington derringer Sabina carried, an effective weapon at close quarters in a crowded room but with a range of no more than twenty feet. He rolled sideways, clawing the derringer free of his pocket, half expecting to feel the shock of a bullet.

  But there were no more rounds fired. The thick branches of an oleander shrub ended his roll; cursing under his breath, he shoved away from the evergreen and then lay flat and still, the derringer held up in front of him. He peered through the darkness, listening.

  A brief, faint sound that might have been retreating footsteps. Then silence.

  He pushed onto his knees. Lamplight suddenly brightened one of the windows in the house next door; its outspill showed him that the yard and the street in front were now deserted. He got quickly to his feet, careful to keep his head turned aside from the light. A face peered out through the lamplit window and a voice hollered, “What in tarnation’s going on out there?” Quincannon didn’t answer. Staying in the shadows, he ran ahead and looked both ways along Pleasant Street.

  His assailant had vanished.

  “Hell, damn, and blast!” he muttered angrily to himself. He slid the derringer back into his pocket, hurried to Neal and around the corner before any of Lily’s neighbors came out to investigate.

  Grass Valley a tame place now, its streets safe at night? Bah! There was still plenty of hell left in this town. The question was, had this particular hell been directed at him or someone else?

  * * *

  The Holbrooke Hotel, a two-story brick edifice, was Grass Valley’s oldest and finest hostelry. Presidents Grant, Harrison, Cleveland, and Garfield had purportedly stayed there during visits to California; so had Gentleman Jim Corbett. And so had the notorious Mother Lode highwayman, Black Bart—one fact that the management chose not to advertise. If any of the hotel’s distinguished guests had ever wandered uphill to Texas Johnny’s Golden Gate Brothel, a nearby attraction in the old boomtown days, this fact was also held in discreet confidence.

  The dimly lit lobby was deserted when Quincannon entered. He climbed the staircase to the second floor, went around the corner past number 8, his room, and stopped before number 11 at the rear. Light showed in a thin strip beneath the door. He knocked softly. It was no more than five seconds before the latch clicked and the door opened.

  He said, “Ah, the lovely Saint Louis Rose.”

  “Hello, dearie,” Sabina said.

  3

  SABINA

  She caught hold of his coat sleeve, tugged him inside, and quickly shut the door. She still wore her outlandish Saint Louis Rose costume, all except for the red wig which caused her head to itch, but she had scrubbed off the hideous rose-colored lip rouge and removed the false eyelashes. Her long black hair, uncoiled and combed out, drew and held John’s admiring gaze. It was the first time he’d seen it that way, she realized, for she always wore it rolled and fastened with a jeweled comb at the agency and on their social outings.

  “You’re late, John. I e
xpected you an hour ago.”

  “I’ve been to Lily Dumont’s cottage.”

  “Have you now. For what purpose?”

  “Not the one you’re thinking. She’s still dealing faro. And she has too many admirers already.”

  “Jack O’Diamonds as well as Glen Bonnifield. And I’ll warrant Diamond is more than simply an admirer.”

  “My thought exactly.”

  “Lady One-Eye is also aware of it.”

  John nodded and fluffed his beard. Or attempted to, the habitual gesture being stayed somewhat by the fact that it was no longer as thick and bushy as a freebooter’s; he had trimmed it for his role as a mixologist. Sabina rather preferred it this way. It had a softening effect on his features, made his dark eyes less fierce.

  “Trouble there, do you think?” he asked.

  “Of one kind or another. Lily Dumont is a dish to tempt any man, especially one with a block of ice for a wife.”

  “I prefer loud and bawdy redheads, myself.” He gave her a broad wink. “Come over here, Rosie, and give us a kiss.”

  “I will not. Stand your distance.”

  “The Saint Louis Rose is no more likely than Lily Dumont to refuse a handsome, devoted gent a kiss. Or anything else he might want.”

  “Perhaps not. But Sabina Carpenter is and you know it.”

  “At least for the nonce.”

  “John…”

  “I was only having a innocent bit of sport with you, my dear.”

  “Innocent, my eye.”

  John sighed and went to sit on one of the room’s plush chairs. He gazed wistfully at his partner in Carpenter and Quincannon, Professional Detective Services. One thing you could say for his tastes, Sabina thought. He was far more attracted to a mature, well-bred woman with more than a dozen years of experience as a detective, half of those with the Pinkerton Agency’s Denver office, than he was to the likes of Lady One-Eye and the Saint Louis Rose. Still …

  “What did you mean by loud and bawdy?” she demanded. “Do you think I overplayed my role tonight?”

  “Well … perhaps a touch.”

  “I thought my performance was rather good.”