Where Cowards Tread (Ravenwood Mysteries #7)

by Sabrina Flynn

  “But I told Ella to stay away from that girl. Why aren’t you out looking for Ella?”

  Isobel took a patient breath. “A number of agents are searching for her, as well as the police department, Mrs. Spencer,” she explained for the second time. “I only wondered if Ella might have confided in Madge about any suspicious people following her. That sort of thing.”

  “Oh, dear. I knew it. I know something bad has happened to her.” Mrs. Spencer’s ‘knowing’ seemed to border on a kind of twisted hope.

  Isobel tried another line of questioning, but Mrs. Spencer was either blind to her daughter’s activities or didn’t want to voice what Ella had been up to. Before leaving, Isobel replaced the photographs, and was left wondering if she even knew what her own daughters were up to.

  21

  The Tailors

  Sao Jin was burning and shivering all at once. Her stomach felt like it was twisted around a piece of coal. She walked in a daze, barely aware of her feet touching the ground.

  In the early morning fog, the Quarter was transformed from festive and sinister to dreary gray. Men still warmed themselves around burning barrels as they had the night before, but most went about their business. Storefronts were thrown open, lumber wagons trundled up and down narrow streets, and laborers balanced heavy loads on their shoulders with poles, while children giggled with delight around a toy merchant. Chinatown was awake with scents of incense and too many bodies living together.

  Jin balled her fists inside her pockets. She felt exposed in the light even though she wore a wool suit and a cap, stolen from Isobel. Her braids were concealed and her eyes were hidden by the brim of her cap pulled low. She had a newspaper bag slung over her shoulder, and to the casual glance she looked like any other newsboy roaming San Francisco.

  Jin glanced over her shoulder. She had hitched a ride on a wagon, ridden two different cable cars, and walked a good mile in a tangled pattern. She didn’t see Grimm in the mass of people. He should stand out in the sea of queues and quilted coats, but Grimm was like a ghost haunting her every step. Why was he following her?

  She clenched her teeth, and turned randomly down an alleyway. Brick and timber buildings and laundry-draped balconies blocked out the sky. The alley was crammed with people wearing wide hats and somber faces.

  Jin stepped into a doorway to wait, watching as men passed by, searching for her ghost. But she didn’t spot him. Worse, she’d begun to attract notice—a dangerous thing in the Quarter. Stepping from the doorway, she rejoined the flow, weaving her way through the crowd.

  As she passed a dark opening, she spotted a group of men gathered at a dead end, their gazes trained on a brick wall plastered with posters. Angry at herself for running away the night before, she boldly stepped into the crowd to see what was happening.

  No one stopped her. No one even seemed to notice her. Snippets of gossip touched her ears: whispers of plague, of white conspiracies, of murder.

  As Jin read the notices on the wall, her stomach lurched. Some were challenges between hatchet men. Others were Chun Hungs—contracts for killing: assassination of tong members; of factory workers; of businessmen; the Consul General; white policemen. And one contract for Din Gau—Atticus Riot. For murder, theft, and destruction of property.

  Jin’s heart skipped, and then her eyes fell on another name: Wu Lei Ching. Fox Spirit. Isobel Amsel. Her crime: dishonor and humiliation of an honored man.

  Fear was quickly replaced with rage. Her hands curled into fists. What lies, she thought. The chun hungs were issued by Hip Yee—the Temple of United Justice—the tong that had held Mei and her captive. They dealt in slavery. The “theft” was most likely Mei and herself. But the bit about humiliation had her stumped.

  Jin tugged on the tunic of an elderly man. “Sir, what does ‘humiliation of an honorable man’ mean?”

  The man’s dark eyes darted side to side, then he bent his already bent frame to speak softly. “The white woman cut off Big Queue’s queue.” The man seemed to like saying it, his eyes dancing with amusement.

  Jin’s eyes widened. She knew that name. Big Queue was a dangerous hatchet man, and cutting off a man’s queue was akin to castration.

  Feeling suddenly exposed, Jin slipped out of the alleyway and didn’t breathe until she got to wider streets.

  She set her sights on her goal—the same street where she had frozen the night before. Home. But her old home didn’t conjure warmth. It made her tremble with memories.

  Jin wasn’t sure if she should call them memories. They were more like faded impressions: her father’s cheerful voice as she rode on his shoulders, the whisper of a kiss on her unmarred cheeks, his smile when he’d bent to give her a balloon from a merchant. And her mother—her laugh, the scent of jasmine and honey, and her light feet and loving arms. There were her stories, too, of dragons and river spirits, but she could not remember the words, only the images they conjured.

  Jin wandered through the wider streets, one knife tucked up her sleeve and the other pressed against her lower back. With the plague in remission, at least according to the newspapers, the tourists had returned.

  Streetcar-like wagons, full of ladies and gentlemen, had come to gawk at “Celestials,” paying guides to take them to opium dens, joss houses, and locales with exotic foods.

  Jin wished she could return to the warmth of her family. Or even see the Quarter through the eyes of white tourists, with wonder and excitement. When she looked up at the windows and balconies draped with lanterns, banners, and laundry, she wondered how many children, like her, were trapped in hell under a two-faced silk-clad woman with a ready whip.

  Jin clenched her jaw and turned a corner. A few men watched her as they sat against a wall, smoking their pipes. She didn’t know her way around these streets. The expanse between her birth parents and her adoptive parents seemed a lifetime. Years trapped behind doors, behind walls, in trunks, and under floorboards. That had been her life in Chinatown.

  Jin tried to remember where her feet had taken her the previous night, the intersection where she’d spotted her home. Walking too quickly would draw attention. Hesitating would draw even more. So she walked with the purpose of a boy delivering a message, even though every step was full of uncertainty and fear.

  A large building brought her up short. Three stories high, festooned with banners and lanterns, and with a three-tiered balcony on the front. The theater. Jin remembered that. Yes, this was where she’d started last night, and then she’d gone down the street. A snippet of memory added to her disorientation. Silk. Piles of it. A needle and thread.

  Jin froze with realization. Her bahba and mahma had been tailors. They lived close. Had they made costumes for the theater?

  She walked past the theater, a joss house, and a restaurant. Two doors farther down she stopped as she had the night before. Men bumped past her, their long queues nearly dragging on the ground.

  The storefront was no longer a tailor, but an herbalist shop. In her mind’s eye, she saw a little girl playing with a wooden duck in front of the store. And then her eyes were drawn to the door.

  Jin turned and bolted, with no idea where she was going. Just away. Far away from the store and the ghost of a happy child.

  22

  Middleman

  San Francisco was reaching for the sky, and an army of human ants were climbing up its scaffolding. One laborer, somewhere between boy and man, had a board on his shoulders with a curve cut out for his neck. Some forty bricks lay stacked on the board as he carried them across the yard.

  Riot flicked his gaze over the laborer noting calluses, rough hands, the way his neck bent slightly forward, and the musculature of a sixteen-year-old who carried stacks of bricks all day. A scarf was tied around the laborer’s neck to prevent chaffing, and a cap was pulled low against the light. Dark circles ran under his eyes. He walked up to the scaffolding where another laborer began plucking the bricks off the tray and tossing them upwards to the next tier. One brick after a
nother, trusting that his fellow worker would catch each missile.

  When the tray was emptied the boy walked back towards a waiting wagon. Riot intercepted him there.

  “Scottie Barnes?”

  The boy eyed Riot sideways. “I’m busy.”

  “I can see that. And exhausted, by the look of you.”

  “Get off.”

  The boy turned, the tray snug around his neck, as a man in the wagon began loading more bricks onto the board. With every tier, the boy winced.

  “I’m a persistent fellow. I think you’ll want to talk to me alone.”

  “You a copper?”

  “I’m a detective.”

  The man in the wagon faltered.

  Riot glanced up at him. “You’re not in trouble. Neither is your brickyard.”

  The man kept stacking.

  “I don’t have to talk to you,” the boy said.

  “No, but I’ve a mind to keep you company the rest of the day if you don’t.”

  “And what if I drop this right here, and dirty those fancy duds of yours?”

  “Considering the bruises you earned from your fight last night, I’d say that would be a bad idea.”

  The boy glared. “What do you want?”

  Riot held up a silver dollar. “Information.”

  Silver glinted in the mist. The boy took over one more load of bricks, then announced he was due a break. Riot stood by as Scottie drank from a canteen. Then he held out his hand.

  “After I get my information.”

  “I can only stall so long before the foreman starts screaming.”

  “Last night, a fight started and you were part of a group that was arrested for public drunkenness and disorderly conduct.”

  “What of it? Nothing wrong with it.”

  “Someone hired you and your friends to start a ruckus.”

  Scottie shrugged massive shoulders. “He paid our fines, too.”

  “Who hired you?”

  “The fellow paid for our silence.”

  Riot wove the coin between his fingers. The boy watched, mesmerized. “Will he know who talked out of a group of twenty?”

  Scottie spat on the ground, and took off his cap, running a hand through his hair. “I ain’t no rat.”

  Riot turned his hand over. A second coin appeared, the two silver dollars sitting in the palm of his hand.

  The boy reached for the coins, but Riot closed his hand.

  “We were roaming the Barbary Coast well into the bottle, and some fella comes up and says he’ll pay us to start a fight. So we did,” Scottie said quickly.

  “What did this fellow look like?”

  “Had a mustache.”

  Riot waited.

  “Look, that’s what he had. A bowler hat, rough sort, long mustache, sideburns down to his cheeks, and a cigar. He looked like a boxer.”

  “Brown hair? Scarred knuckles?”

  “That’s him.”

  A muscle in Riot’s jaw flexed. He handed the boy his coins.

  That description could fit a number of men, but the coincidence was too much for Riot to swallow. His hand tightened around his walking stick, and he went off to search for Montgomery Johnson.

  23

  Dead Ends

  Isobel always expected to get struck by lightning when she set foot inside a church. A side effect of having a Catholic mother who used God as a threat rather than a balm. Only it had backfired with Isobel and Lotario. The twins decided early on that they were doomed, so why not go out with a bang.

  Logic laughed at Isobel, but still that lingering doubt remained, and she held her breath as she stepped over the threshold.

  No strike of lightning. Just music. Isobel passed a sign that read Ladies’ Aid Social. The pews were empty, so she followed the music to one of the large parlors. A small musical group was performing for the ladies—a flutist, a violinist, and a singer with more spirit than talent.

  Isobel eyed a buffet table set with finger foods, and then the ladies in attendance. From the state of their clothing, a good many were there for aid.

  A white-haired man in a clerical collar spotted her lingering near the food. He approached and whispered, “You’re welcome to sit and eat.” He motioned to an empty chair.

  Isobel showed him her card, and nodded towards the back. He hastened from the room, likely looking for any excuse to escape the vocalist.

  “Reverend West,” he introduced, shaking hands in the universal way every priest and reverend does, one hand to shake, and the other to place warmly on top of the newcomer’s hand. Do they learn that in seminary school, Isobel wondered.

  “Isobel Amsel. I’m here about a girl who attends your church. Elouise Spencer.”

  The name brought recognition to his blue eyes. “Sweet girl. I’m surprised she’s not here today.”

  That surprised Isobel. “Was she here often?”

  “Was?” Concern entered his voice. He was a sharp man.

  Isobel pondered her slip. Did she share Mrs. Spencer’s worry deep down? She shook the feeling away. “Ella’s gone missing. My agency was hired to find her.”

  “That’s horrible news,” West said.

  “Do you know a man by the name of John Bennett? He claims to be a preacher of some sort.”

  “Here?” West asked in surprise.

  “I don’t know.”

  “Bennett. Bennett. Well, he’s no minister here. I don’t recall Ella mentioning him, but one of the ladies may know. I wondered why Ella wasn’t at church on Sunday. I assumed Mrs. Spencer was ill again.”

  “She is ill,” Isobel said. “The family seems to be in a bad way.”

  West nodded in agreement. “The congregation has been sending meals to the home, but… Mr. Fletcher said it was no longer needed.”

  “It is needed,” Isobel said. “And more.”

  West frowned. “He is a proud young man, I’m afraid.”

  “And his mother is suffering because of it.”

  “I’ll check on them today,” West assured. “It’s difficult to accept help at times.” He glanced at those gathered. “So we offer it in a different guise.”

  “Does a girl by the name of Madge Ryan attend your church? She is a friend of Ella’s.”

  Again, he shook his head. “I’m sorry. I don’t recognize that name. Ella attends with her mother. And she comes for the literary meetings… a book club of sorts. She often chooses books from the public library.”

  The free food was likely a bonus for Ella, to what was mainly a chance to escape the house. “Did you ever see her with a man? He may have looked like this, but older.”

  West studied the sketch that Sarah had drawn of Ella’s father. But West only shook his head. Another dead end.

  It turned out Menke’s Grocer had Madge Ryan’s address. Mr. Menke indicated that the family had an unpaid tab, and wondered if Isobel could somehow get them to pay. She told him she’d try if he would give her the address. But as she stood in front of the run-down building with its patchwork of windows, she held out little hope.

  A band of scruffy children loitered outside, and a group of leering men stood across the street with nothing but idleness in their eyes. She expected to be surrounded at any moment and jostled in a classic thievery ring. They had the look of hoodlums, some obscure mutation of the word “huddle ’em” which was a favored tactic of thugs of about a decade or so earlier. They would shout “huddle ’em” before surrounding a victim and robbing them in the confusion.

  She hoped the practice had fallen out of style in the neighborhood.

  Isobel walked up the creaking stairs and entered a tilted rookery. Some unidentifiable carpet crunched under her shoes. It was dark and moldy and she was glad there hadn’t been any gas laid. The whole tottering building would likely go up in flames.

  Madge Ryan’s family lived in a section of rooms. This wasn’t compartmentalized living quarters with separate bathrooms like Isobel’s Sapphire House, but a hodgepodge of flimsy wooden walls and fa
bric doorways. She thought this might have been a warehouse converted into apartments.

  She walked to the second floor, and knocked on a door with a faded number five etched into dented wood.

  The door was wrenched open, and a gust of gin and fury hit her full force. “You ungrateful—”

  The woman cut off. Red hair framed a face lined with contempt and a cheek covered in bruises. A shawl was draped over the woman’s shoulders and she wore a thin blouse that had seen better days.

  “Isobel Amsel. Mrs. Ryan?”

  “What’d you want?” the woman drew herself up and closed her shawl, smoothing the faded blue material. With every word a new gust of gin-infused air blew towards Isobel. Somewhere in the background an infant wailed.

  “Who’s that?” a man hollered from the background. “I told that landlord I’d pummel him next I saw him.”

  Mrs. Ryan turned slightly. “It’s some high-and-mighty lady.”

  A man stomped into view. Tall, black-haired, with a pockmarked face and coal-stained clothes. His knuckles were bandaged. He smiled at Isobel, displaying tobacco-stained teeth. “Won’t you come in, Miss.”

  Isobel glanced at Mrs. Ryan. The woman cursed under her breath, and walked away from the door, heading for a gin bottle. It was nearly empty.

  The infant’s cries went unanswered.

  It was a single room. The squalling infant lay in a drawer; its bedding, at least, was clean. The single bed was unmade, the pillow and blankets dingy with sweat. A small kerosene stove sat on a battered cupboard with tin plates and cups.

  “What can we do fer you, Miss?” the man asked.

  “I’m looking for your daughter, Madge Ryan.” Isobel presented her card. The lady snatched it and squinted, but the man tore it from her hands. “As if you can read. Says she’s a detective.” The man looked her up and down, slowly. And laughed, elbowing Mrs. Ryan.

  “Are you Mr. Ryan?” Isobel asked.