by Will Rayner
“So?”
“So, remember Pete McNully, the kid reporter?” T.J. continued. Sam Flood’s brow wrinkled. “Mixed up with Harry Bridges, that waterfront business two years ago,” he said.
“That’s him He’s a scribbler for the Examiner now. Wrote a feature for the Sunday paper a couple of weeks ago on Manilatown, on how the Filipino community is struggling to adjust to the fact their homeland has been granted commonwealth status.”
Sam’s brow wrinkled again. “Ah yes,” he said after a pause. “It became law last year, I believe. Now the federal government is planning to repatriate thousands of Filipinos. And its relevance would be—”
“Its relevance would be that McNully will have contacts. He could point us at the right people. Who to talk to, who not to talk to. Give us background stuff. At any rate, I gave the paper a call and left a message. He comes on shift at ten o’clock.”
Sam gave his son an approving nod. “That’s good thinking,” he said. “The Filipinos were allowed to come here after the Spanish-American War. There are thousands of them in California alone, I’m told.”
“And became migrant workers in the valleys, according to McNully’s story,” T.J. said. “So where do they come when there are no crops? Good ol’ San Francisco.”
“Along with tensions and undercurrents of hostility that we should try to avoid,” Sam said. “Your Mr. McNully may certainly help us in that regard.” He reached for his mail. “Have you finished your report on Mr. Baggett?”
T.J. chuckled inwardly. Always business with the Old Man. “On my desk, ready to go to Agnes,” he said.
McNully called a few minutes past ten. “Hi, Petey,” T.J. said. “Say, that was a swell story you wrote on Manilatown a little while ago.” T.J. knew enough newspaper idiom to describe an article as a story. “Very interesting yarn. It sort of ties in with something we’re working on.”
“A case?” T.J. sensed suppressed excitement in McNully’s voice along with his pleasure at being given a compliment.
“Yeah, a case. You wanna come over and have a chin-wag about it?”
McMully came right over. He sat down and nonchalantly crossed his legs. He’s put on weight, T.J. thought. Eating regularly, not like his days with the longshoremen. Bargain-store clothes but they fit him okay. “Got a hot story for me, I hope,” the reporter said.
“Not right at the moment,” Sam said. “We’d like you to give us a hand on a case we’re pursuing.” He filled his pipe and lit it.
T.J. got out his Old Golds and offered McNully one. “Yeah, it’s a caper involving a missing babe who’s holed up somewhere in Manilatown,” T.J. added. “We think maybe you can give us the lowdown on that part of town.”
Sam Flood almost smiled. He knew Thomas’s pulp magazine jargon was strictly to impress the reporter, but he felt it was an indication his son’s happy-go-lucky style had almost returned to the level it had enjoyed before his bride’s death.
McNully shifted uncomfortably in his chair. “I wouldn’t want to reveal my sources,” he said.
“Of course not,” Sam soothed. “We’re not after your sources. What we need is your expert appraisal of the neighborhood.”
“Well, that part of town is a very closed society. There are enough whites on the streets, but you get the feeling you’re not welcome. Funny thing. A few people asked me if I was working for Mr. Crespo.”
“Who’s this Crespo bird?” T.J. asked.
“I have no idea. When I said I was from the Examiner, they made themselves scarce pretty quick. I got the brush-off sometimes but I found enough people willing to talk. It is in many respects a fractured community, with no real leadership. Many Filipinos are still resentful that they weren’t given full independence right after the Spaniards were defeated.”
“Did you spend much time at the International Hotel?” Sam asked. Neither he nor T.J. had ever been inside the hotel, but they knew it was mostly occupied by Filipinos.
“Ooh, that’s a creepy place,” McNully said. “I interviewed a couple of people in there and I didn’t enjoy it much. It smelled funny. The lights were very dim. People sleeping in the corridors. If you’re going to visit there, you’d better be careful.” The prospect of being privy to a dangerous mission had him tingling a little bit.
“Did you ever come across a Manuel Santiago?”
“The dancer?” McNully replied.
Pay dirt. Sam and T.J. looked at each other. By unspoken agreement, they decided not to bring up taxi-dancing,
“That sounds like our Manuel,” Sam said drily.
“Just where does he dance, exactly?” T.J. asked.
“On the street, in the middle of the street, right in front of the International Hotel, usually,” McNully said. “Stops traffic. He’s quite a good dancer. Now and then, he grabs a woman from the crowd and gives her a few whirls.”
“How old would he be?”
“Gee, it’s hard to tell with these other … uh … races, but I’d say in his mid-30s,” McNully said. “Older than the other Filipino men on the street.”
“What do they do, just walk up and down?” Sam asked.
“Sometimes. Mostly they hang out around the hotel.”
“You didn’t put Manuel the dancer in your story,” T.J observed.
“Well, I had a word limit. And he really wasn’t part of the story. The community itself was the story – their dilemma over whether to go back to their old home or stay in their new home.”
“And you did a good job of it, kid,” T.J said. He did, too, he told himself. Young Peter was a good writer.
Chapter 8
The Floods parked on Kearny just past the Hall of Justice and walked up to Jackson. The squat shape of the International Hotel was on the corner and dancing in the street outside the entrance was none other than Manuel Santiago. Had to be him. To make sure, T.J. gestured toward the dancer and asked a bystander: “Ain’t that Manuel?”
“Yep. Sure can hoof it, can’t he!”
“What do you think, the old, quiet, street removal technique?” T.J. asked his father.
“Should work,” Sam said. They waited until Santiago had finished prancing, then moved in beside him as he reached the sidewalk. Deftly, they maneuvered him through the onlookers and into the hotel lobby. T.J. had quietly taken his Detective Special out of its holster and gave Santiago a poke in the ribs. “Feel that rod, pal?” T.J. whispered. “I bet it ain’t the kind you’re used to.”
“You live here, don’t you, Mr. Santiago?” Sam asked. “Where’s your room?”
Santiago was struggling without success to free himself from T.J.’s iron grip on his arm. “Yeah, sure, first floor, right down the hall,” he said. “Who are you guys? You ain’t cops.” They slipped past sleeping forms on the threadbare carpet until Santiago reached his room. The door was unlocked. Inside, Santiago asked once again: “Just who are you?”
“We are the bad guys,” T.J. said. “We are worse than the bad guys.”
“We are aswangs,” Sam added, invoking the name of mythological Filipino shape-shifters. He had looked them up in Collier’s.
Santiago goggled. Aswangs? Despite his veneer of North American sophistication, the legends of his Philippines homeland could still send a chill down his spine.
T.J. shoved Santiago onto the only chair in the room and looked around. A single bed, a dresser, a closet. A rickety table. An open valise was on the table, half-packed. “Taking a little dancing tour, are we, pal?” he asked. Santiago didn’t answer.
“Mr. Santiago, we are looking for two missing women,” Sam said. “One is named … ah … Tawny, and the other is named Sharon. We believe you can tell us where they are.”
“Never heard of them,” Santiago muttered.
“C’mon, sunshine, you can do better than that,” T.J. said. He gave Santiago’s arm a painful twist. The Filipino gasped.
“Our sources tell us you know Tawny quite well,” Sam continued. “They say you and Tawny sort of … went away
… together. Please do not try to evade responsibility, Mr. Santiago,”
There was no answer. T.J. gave the arm another twist.
“I can’t tell you,” Santiago gasped. “I promised.”
The two Floods looked at each other. “He knows where they are,” Sam said.
“Damn right he does,” T.J. answered. He handed his gun to his father. “If he moves, plug him,” he said. Sam blinked but took the Detective Special and aimed it professionally at Santiago. T.J. took one of the soiled sheets off the bed and ripped it into two strips. The cheap cotton gave way easily. T.J. used one strip to tie Santiago’s hands together behind the chair. The other, he used to bind Santiago’s ankles. Then he took his gun back. “Better take station out in the hall, pop,” he said. “Make sure nobody disturbs me while I talk to Fred Astaire here.”
Sam left promptly. He knew his son was prone to violent behavior from time to time and did not want to be a part of it. “Alone at last,” T.J. said to his captive. He laid his piece carefully on the table and removed Santiago’s shoes. Expensive, he noted. The Filipino wore no socks. T.J. picked up his gun and gently tapped the bony arch of each bare foot with the butt. Santiago winced and squirmed.
“What I’m gonna do, pal, is play a little tune on your happy feet with my heater,” he said. “Pretty soon you won’t be able to put these fancy shoes on because your feet will be kinda mushy.” He gave each foot another tap, somewhat harder this time.
Manuel Santiago was yellow. The weaker sex was his specialty. He had no trouble pushing females around, and bending them to his will, but when threatened by any aggressive male, he looked for a way out. The way out here was to tell these two strangers what they wanted to know. “All right, all right, I’ll tell you,” he whined. “Please don’t hurt ne.”
T.J. opened the door a crack. “Our dancing demon here is ready to spill his guts,” he said.
Sam came in and leaned against the door. He said one word: “Well?”
“They’re at Mr. Crespo’s house,” Santiago said. “All the girls are there.”
“Address,” T.J. rapped.
“It’s at 300 Union Street.”
“What do you mean by ‘all the girls’?” Sam asked.
“Mr. Crespo collects girls. We deliver them there for him.”
Collects girls? Each of the Floods pondered that for a minute. What had they stumbled on to? “What does he do with these girls?” T.J. asked.
“Dunno. We just collect them. Not all the time, though.”
“What does this Mr. Crespo look like?” Sam asked.
“He’s white, like you. Not so old. A little taller.”
“Is he at this address now?”
“No, sir. He’s in Honolulu. Took the China Clipper.” Santiago’s tone was wistful, as if he wished he could be on the big flying boat, heading for Manila.
“Now, that wasn’t so tough, was it, Man-u-el,” T.J. said. He stretched out the name slowly, emphasizing each syllable. “We’ll be leaving now. You just relax for a while. And you won’t try to call anybody on Union Street, will you? If you do, we’ll come back and we’ll be really mad then.” The Filipino shook his head mutely.
“Let’s scram,” T.J. told his father. They left Santiago struggling with his bonds and quietly slipped out of the International Hotel.
Walking to the car, T.J. asked, “Aswangs? What the hell are Aswangs?”
“Philippines mythology. They are creatures who take the form of humans during the day and turn into monsters at night. I told you Collier’s would be a good investment.”
T.J. slid in behind the wheel and thought for a moment. “Three-hundred-block Union,” he said. “That’s Telegraph Hill. Not easy to get there, which is probably why ol’ Crespo picked it.”
“Yes. I’m not sure Kearny goes all the way up the hill,” Sam said. “It would be wise to avoid driving through Manilatown at this time, anyway.”
T.J. wheeled the Essex back down Kearny, turned right at California and right again on Stockton. That had them driving up Union Street from the west. The address turned out to be an Edwardian mansion at the crest of the street. They cruised by slowly. T.J. reversed direction on the other side of the Montgomery Street intersection and rolled back down Union. He reversed direction again, parked down the hill well short of the address, pulled on the emergency brake and just sat there. They had a good view of the three-storey mansion. Sam filled his pipe and lit it. T.J. fired up an Old Gold and cracked the driver’s side window for ventilation. The narrow street was quiet. There were a couple more Edwardian structures on the block; one appeared to be converted into flats.
“Great view from the top of the hill,” T.J. said.
“Yes, good views and relative inaccessibility made this an exclusive part of town. It was pretty much spared during the earthquake and the big fire so there’s still some interesting old homes up here.”
They sat and smoked and waited and watched. Waited for what? Some sort of activity. Perhaps another delivery of females, or an indication the ones already in the house were about to be moved. “We’re gonna have to at least knock on the door eventually,” T.J. said.
“Yes, but not until we have a solid reason to gain ingress.”
He means ‘entrance’, T.J. told himself. “Yeah, I know. A reason to get in and a reason to stay in. Why doesn’t somebody drive up with another load of frails and solve all our problems.”
“Women as a commodity,” Sam said in an offhand murmur, almost as if he were talking to himself.
T.J. picked up on it. “Enforced prostitution?” he asked. “Not in this town. Cathouses are Packy Shannon’s game. This is not his style; he lures the chicks in, he doesn’t snatch them.”
“An alternative hypothesis would be white—” Sam broke off his thought. “Oh, oh,” he said. “I think we’re going to have some company.” They were parked in front of a slightly smaller mansion and now an elderly woman had opened her front door. She came down the steps and walked toward them. Sam rolled down his window and gave her a friendly smile.
“Good afternoon, young lady,” he said.
The woman tittered. “Don’t you go buttering me up, mister. Are you the police? Are you watching Mr. Crespo’s house? He’s out of town, I believe.”
“We’re private investigators, ma’am. We very much would like to know what’s going on inside Mr. Crespo’s house. There is a young girl missing.”
The woman gave a moue of concern. “I would not be surprised one bit if she’s in there,” she said. “I’ve seen them taking the young things in there, late at night, with their big, shiny limousines. They think everybody else is asleep, but I’m not. My arthritis, you know.”
“Ma’am, we’ve not been properly introduced. I am Mr. Samuel Flood and this is my partner, Mr. Thomas Flood.”
“And I am Mrs. Stanford Parmalee. The widow Parmalee. This is very exciting. Do you think those women will come to harm?”
“We are sure of it.”
“Oh, dear. Can’t you call the real police?”
“They won’t respond because of mere suspicion,” Sam said. “There must be concrete evidence.”
T.J. had been looking at the Crespo mansion. There’s somebody on the second floor,” he said. “I saw a curtain twitch.” He rolled his window all the way down and took a deep sniff. “I smell smoke,” he said. “Don’t you smell smoke, Mrs. Parmalee?”
The air around the Essex’s windows was redolent with the aroma of burning tobacco. The widow Parmalee was a quick study. She took a deep sniff herself. “Yes, I smell some, too,” she declared.
“Perhaps you should nip inside and call the fire department,” T.J. said.
“Oh yes, oh my. Perhaps I should,” she said, and hurried toward her front door.
Still pretty agile for someone her age, Sam thought. Mid-70s, perhaps ten years older than me. “Tell them there’s people on the second floor,” he called after her.
He and T.J. got out of the car and crossed
Union Street. They stood on the sidewalk until they could hear the sirens as the fire engines labored up the hill. Then they moved closer and waited by the door until the first engine arrived.
“This one here, boys,” Sam said to the fire captain, pointing. “Somebody smelled smoke, maybe around the back.”
“And we heard there might be some people caught on the second floor,” T.J. added.
The captain sniffed. “I can’t smell anything,” he said. “Who are you gents?”
Chapter 9
A good question, one which neither Flood was inclined to answer in detail at the moment. Therefore, a certain degree of misdirection was indicated. Evasion, without exactly telling a whopper.
“We’re from across the street,” Sam sad, pointing to Mrs. Parmalee standing in front of her house.
The captain looked at Sam for a long moment. “Well, let’s find out what’s going on,” he said at last, and turned toward the front door. He pulled the ornate bell pull three times. They could hear the bell ringing inside, but nobody came to the door. The captain pounded on the heavy oaken door. They were loud, professional thumps; he’d done this before. No response.
“Axes,” the captain said tersely. Two firemen stepped forward and started swinging at the juncture of the door handle and the doorjamb. It gave way reluctantly, but finally the captain could kick the door open. Inside, on the left was a large, curving staircase. The main hall stretched away into dimness, with closed doors on one side. There was no smell of smoke.
“’Kay,” the captain said. “Young Jones, you check around the back. Clint and Leroy, find the basement. The rest of us will check these doors.”
Sam and T.J. crowded in behind the firemen, uncertain about what to do next. Then everyone heard the slamming of a door upstairs. A short, swarthy man appeared at the top of the staircase. H was dressed in grey coveralls and holding a large shotgun. He ran halfway down the staircase and pointed the weapon at the crowd below. “Go away or I shoot,” he cried. His voice had a slight accent, but the message was clear.
