The Bughouse Affair q-2

by Bill Pronzini

  The pickpocket’s destination was of no surprise to Sabina. A professional thief operated in more than one venue, and while there were plenty of potential marks at the Chutes, the Cocktail Route was a virtual dip’s paradise.

  From the Reception Saloon on Sutter Street to Haquette’s Palace of Art on Post Street to the Palace Hotel Bar at Third and Market, the influential men of San Francisco trekked daily after five, partaking of fine liquor and bountiful “free lunches.” More like banquets, these lavish tables consisted of cheeses, platters of sausages and salamis, hams, small sardines, pickles, green onions, and rye and pumpernickel breads. Later came the hot dishes; terrapin cooked in its shell with cream, butter, and sherry being the most favored of all.

  It was along this route that friends met, traveling in packs like so many well-trained-and sometimes ill-trained-dogs. In the various establishments, business was transacted and political alliances formed. Women were not admitted, and often, Sabina’s cousin Callie had told her, messenger boys scampered to take notes to wives waiting at dinner that stated that their husbands would be “unfortunately detained” for the evening. The festivities often continued with lavish dinners and, for the recklessly adventurous and immoral, visits to the Barbary Coast or the parlor houses in the Uptown Tenderloin, followed by stops at the Turkish baths and culminating with breakfast-and more champange, of course-at various restaurants throughout the city.

  As a respectable woman, Sabina had had no chance to frequent such establishments, but she had ample knowledge of them from Callie and from John’s tales of the days when he had been a hard-drinking Secret Service operative unabashadly savoring the liquors and fine wines, the rich foods and seductive women of this glittering city.

  The hatpin woman was now well into the crowd on Montgomery Street-known as the Ambrosial Path to cocktail hour revelers. Street characters and vendors, beggars and ad-carriers for the various saloons’ free lunches, temperance speakers and the Salvation Army band, all mingled with well-dressed bankers and attorneys, politicians and physicians. The men called out greetings, conferred in groups, some joining, some breaking away. Conviviality was in the air. It was as if these men had suddenly been released from burdensome toil-although many did not reach their offices until late morning and then indulged in long recuperative luncheons.

  Sabina made her way through the Ambrosial Path throngs, never losing sight of the pickpocket’s blue hat, brushing aside the importunings of a match-peddler. The woman moved along unhurriedly, scanning for marks as she had at the Chutes, and after two blocks turned left and walked over to Kearney Street at the edge of the Barbary Coast.

  There the gaslit street scene was even livelier. Saloons, shooting galleries, auction houses, discount clothiers, and painless dentists lined the block; gaudy signs proclaimed PROF. DIAMOND, COURSES IN HYPNOTISM and THE GREAT ZOCAN, ASTRAL SEER and DR. BLAKE’S INDESTRUCTIBLE TEETH. And there were sellers and pitchmen of all sorts-fakirs, snake charmers, news vendors, organ players, matrimonial agents, plug-hatted touters of Marxism and Henry George’s Single Tax. The only difference between the pitchmen and a pickpocket or footpad, Sabina thought, was that they employed quasi-legitimate means to relieve individuals of their money.

  Her quarry continued to walk at a leisurely pace, stopping once to finger a bolt of Indian fabric and then again to listen to a speaker extol the dubious virtues of phrenology. Momentarily she lost her in the crowd, then spotted her again edging up close beside a gentleman in a frock coat. Hurrying, Sabina drew near just as the man cried out and bent over at the waist, his silk hat falling to the sidewalk.

  The crowd swarmed around him as he straightened, his face frozen in a grimace of pain. Sabina, elbowing her way forward, saw him reach inside his coat, and suddenly anger replaced pain. “My gold watch,” he shouted, “it’s been stolen! Stop, thief!”

  But no one was fleeing. Voices rose from the group around him, heads swiveled in alarm and confusion, bodies formed a moving wall that prevented Sabina from reaching or pursuing her quarry.

  When she finally extricated herself, the blue hat was nowhere to be seen. The pickpocket had found an ideal mark, struck, and swiftly vanished into the crowd.

  4

  QUINCANNON

  The house at the upper westward edge of Russian Hill was a dormered and turreted pile of two stories and some dozen rooms, with a wraparound porch and a good deal of gingerbread trim. It was set well back from the street and well apart from its neighbors, given seclusion by shade trees, flowering shrubs, and marble statuary. A fine home, as befitted the likes of Samuel Truesdale, senior vice president of the San Francisco Maritime Bank. A home filled with all the treasures and playthings of the wealthy.

  A home built to be burglarized.

  Thirty feet inside the front gate, Quincannon shifted position in the deep shadow of a lilac bush. From this vantage point he had clear views of the house, the south side yard, and the street. He could see little of the rear of the property, where the bulk of a carriage barn loomed and a gated fence gave access to a carriageway that bisected the block, but this was of no consequence. The housebreaker might well come onto the property from that direction, but there was no rear entrance to the house and the night worker’s method of preferred entry was by door, not first- or second-story windows; this meant he would have to come around to the side door or the front door, both of which were within clear sight.

  No light showed anywhere on the grounds. Banker Truesdale and his wife, dressed to the nines, had left two hours earlier in a private carriage, and they had no live-in servants. The only light anywhere in the immediate vicinity came from a streetlamp some fifty yards distant, a flickery glow that did not reach into the Truesdale yard. High cirrostratus clouds made thin streaks across the sky, touching but not obscuring an early moon. The heavenly body was neither a sickle nor what the scruffs called a stool-pigeon moon, but a near half that dusted the darkness with enough pale shine to see by.

  A night made for burglars and footpads. And detectives on the scent.

  A raw wind had sprung up, thick with the salt smell of the bay, and its chill penetrated the greatcoat, cheviot, gloves, neck scarf, and cap Quincannon wore. Noiselessly he stomped his feet and flexed his fingers to maintain circulation. His mind conjured up the image of steaming mugs of coffee and soup. Of a fire hot and crackling in his rooms on Leavenworth Street. Of the warmth of Sabina’s flesh on the scant few occasions he had touched her, and the heat of his passion for her …

  Ah, no. None of that now. Attention to the matter at hand, detective business first and foremost. Why dwell on his one frustrating failure instead of contemplating another professional triumph? Easier to catch a crook than to melt a stubborn woman’s resistance.

  A rattling and clopping on the cobbled street drew his attention. Moments later a hack, its side lamps casting narrow funnels of light, passed without slowing. When the sound of it faded, Quincannon grew aware of another sound-music, faint and melodic. Someone playing the violin, and reasonably well, too.

  He listened for a time, decided what was being played were passages from Mendelssohn’s Leider. He was hardly an expert on classical music, or even much of an aficionado, but he had allowed himself to be drawn to enough concerts to identify individual pieces. Among his strong suits were a photographic memory and a well-tuned ear.

  More time passed at a creep and crawl. The wind had died down some, but he was so thoroughly chilled by then he scarcely noticed. Despite the heavy gloves and the constant flexing, his fingers felt stiff; much more time out here in the night’s cold, and he might have difficulty drawing his Navy Colt if such became necessary.

  Blast this blasted burglar, whoever he was! He was bound to come after more spoils tonight; Quincannon was sure of it, and his instincts seldom led him astray. So what was the yegg waiting for? It must be after nine by now. Wherever banker Truesdale and his missus had gone for the evening, chances were they would return by eleven. This being Thursday, Truesdale’s prese
nce would surely be required tomorrow morning at his bank.

  Quincannon speculated once more on the identity of his quarry. There were scores of house burglars in San Francisco and environs, but the cleverness of method and skill of entry in this case narrowed the field to but a few professionals. Of those known to him, the likeliest candidates were the Sanctimonious Kid and Dodger Brown. Both were suspected to be in the Bay Area at present, but neither had done anything to attract attention to themselves. In any case, the swag seemed to have been planted for the nonce, since none of the stolen items had surfaced. Likely the thief’s plan was to dispose of it all at once, in a bundle, after he had gone through most if not all of the six names on the target list.

  Quincannon relished the prospect of convincing him otherwise, almost as much as he relished the thought of collecting the fat fee and bonus from Great Western Insurance.

  The violin music had ceased; the night was hushed again. He flexed and stomped and shifted and shivered, his mood growing darker by the minute. If the burglar gave any trouble, he would rue his foolishness. Quincannon prided himself as possessing guile and razor-sharp wits, but he was also a brawny man of Pennsylvania Scots stock and not averse to a bit of thumping and skull dragging if the situation warranted.

  Another vehicle, a small carriage this time, clattered past the property. Shortly a figure appeared on the sidewalk, and Quincannon tensed expectantly-but it was only a citizen walking his dog, and soon gone.

  Hell and damn. Had he been wrong that the burglar would strike again so soon? Or been wrong in his choice of the Truesdale home as the next probable target? Both were possible, though it was already a surprise to him that the yegg hadn’t chosen the banker’s vulnerable home as one of his first three objectives.

  Ah, but he wasn’t wrong on either count. That became evident in the next few seconds, when he turned his gaze from the street to the inner yard and house.

  Someone was moving over there, not fifty yards from Quincannon’s hiding place.

  His senses all sharpened at once; he stood immobile, peering through the lilac’s branches. The movement came again, a shadow drifting among stationary shadows, at an angle from the rear of the property toward the side porch. Once the figure reached the steps and started up, it was briefly silhouetted-a man in dark clothing and a low-pulled cap. Then the shape merged with the deeper black on the porch.

  Several seconds passed. Then there was a brief flicker of light-the beam from a dark lantern such as the one in Quincannon’s pocket. This was followed by the faintest of scraping sounds as the intruder worked with his tools.

  Once again stillness closed down. The scruff was inside the house now. Quincannon stayed where he was, marking time. No light showed behind the dark windows. The professional burglar worked mainly by feel and instinct, using his lantern sparingly and shielding the beam when he did.

  When Quincannon judged ten minutes had passed, he left his hiding place and cat-footed through shadows until he was parallel with the side porch stairs. He paused to listen, heard nothing from the house, and crossed quickly, bent low, to a tall rhododendron planted alongside the steps. Here he hunkered down on one knee to wait.

  The wait might be another ten minutes; it might be a half hour or more. No matter. Now that the crime was in progress, he no longer minded the cold night, the dampness of the earth where he knelt. Even if Truesdale owned a safe not easily cracked, no burglar would leave premises such as these without spoils of some sort. Art objects, silverware, anything of value that could be carried off and eventually sold to one of the many fences operating in the city. Whatever this lad emerged with, it would be enough to justify a pinch.

  Whether Quincannon turned him over to the city police immediately or not depended on the scruff’s willingness to reveal the whereabouts of the swag from his previous jobs. Stashing and roughhousing a prisoner for information was unethical, if not illegal, but Quincannon felt righteously that in the pursuit of justice, not to mention a substantial fee and bonus, the end justified the means.

  His wait lasted less than thirty minutes. The creaking of a floorboard pricked up his ears, creased his freebooter’s beard with a smile of anticipation. Another creak, the faintest squeak of a door hinge, a footfall on the porch. Now the burglar descended the steps into view-short, slender, but turned out of profile so that his face was obscured. He paused on the bottom step, and that was when Quincannon levered up and put the grab on him.

  He was much the larger man, and there should have been no trouble in the catch. But just before his arms closed around the wiry body, the yegg heard or sensed danger and reacted-not by trying to run or turning to fight, but by dropping suddenly into a crouch. Quincannon’s arms slid up and off as if the man were greased, pitching him off balance. The housebreaker bounced upright, swung around, blew the stench of sour wine into Quincannon’s face while at the same time fetching him a sharp kick on the shinbone. Quincannon let out a howl, staggered, nearly fell. By the time he caught himself, his quarry was on the run.

  He gave chase on the blind, cursing sulphurously, hobbling for the first several steps until the pain from the kick ebbed. The burglar had twenty yards on him by then, zigzagging toward the bordering yew trees, then back away from them in the direction of the carriage barn.

  In the moonlight he made a fine, clear target, but Quincannon did not draw his Navy Colt. Since the long-ago episode in Virginia City, when he had accidently caused the death of a woman and her unborn child, and suffered mightily as a result, he’d vowed to use his weapon only in the most dire of circumstances-a vow he had never broken.

  Before reaching the barn, his man cut away at another angle and plowed through a gate into the carriageway beyond. Quincannon lost sight of him for a few seconds, then spied him again as he reached the gate and barreled through it. A race down the alley? No. The scruff was nimble as well as slippery; he threw a look over his shoulder, saw Quincannon in close pursuit, suddenly veered sideways, and flung himself up and over a six-foot board fence into one of the neighboring yards.

  In a few long strides Quincannon was at the fence. He caught the top boards, hoisted himself up to chin level. Some fifty yards distant was the backside of a stately home, two windows and a pair of French doors ablaze with electric light; the outspill combined with pale moonshine to limn a jungle-like garden, a path leading through its profusion of plants and trees to a gazebo on the left. He had a brief glimpse of a dark shape plunging into shrubbery near the gazebo.

  Quincannon scrambled up the rough boards, rolled his body over the top. And had the misfortune to land awkwardly on his sore leg, which gave way and toppled him to his knees in damp grass. He growled an oath under his breath, lumbered to his feet, and stood with ears straining to hear. Leaves rustled and branches snapped-his man was moving away from the gazebo now, toward the house.

  The path was of crushed shell that gleamed with a faint, ghostly radiance; Quincannon drifted along parallel to it, keeping to the grass to cushion his footfalls. Gnarled cypress and thorny pyracantha bushes partially obscured the house, the shadows under and around them as black as India ink. He paused to listen again. There were no more sounds of movement. He resumed his forward progress, eased around one of the cypress trees.

  The man who came up behind him did so with such silent stealth that he had no inkling of the other’s presence until a hard object poked into and stiffened his spine, and a forceful voice said, “Stand fast, if you value your life. There’s a good chap.”

  Quincannon stood fast.

  5

  QUINCANNON

  The man who had the drop on him was not the one he’d been chasing. The calm, cultured, British-accented voice, and the almost casual choice of words, told him that.

  He said, stifling his anger and frustration, “I’m not a prowler.”

  “What are you, then, pray tell?”

  “A detective on the trail of a thief. I chased him into this yard.”

  “Indeed?” His captor sou
nded interested, if not convinced. “What manner of thief?”

  “A blasted burglar. He broke into the Truesdale home.”

  “Did he, now? Mr. Truesdale, the banker?”

  “That’s right. Your neighbor across the carriageway.”

  “A mistaken assumption. This is not my home, and I have only just this evening met Mr. Truesdale.”

  “Then who are you?”

  “All in good time. This is hardly the proper place for introductions.”

  “Introductions be damned,” Quincannon growled. “While we stand here confabbing, the thief is getting away.”

  “Has already gotten away, I should think. If you’re what you say you are and not a thief yourself.” The hard object prodded his backbone. “Move along to the house and we’ll have the straight of things in no time.”

  “Bah,” Quincannon said, but he moved along.

  There was a flagstone terrace across the rear of the house, and when they reached it he could see people in evening clothes moving around inside a well-lighted parlor. His captor took him to a pair of French doors, ordered him to step inside. Activity in the room halted when they entered. Six pairs of eyes, three male and three female, stared at Quincannon and the man behind him. One of the couples, both plump and middle-aged, was Samuel Truesdale and his wife. The others were strangers.

  The parlor was large, handsomely furnished, dominated by a massive grand piano. On the piano bench lay a well-used violin and bow-the source of the passages from Mendelssohn that had been played earlier, no doubt. A wood fire blazed on the hearth. The combination of the fire and steam heat made the room too warm, stuffy. Quincannon’s benumbed cheeks began to tingle almost immediately.

  The first to break the frozen tableau was a small, round-faced gent with Lincolnesque whiskers and ears that resembled the handles on a pickle jar. He stepped forward and to one side so that he faced the Englishman. If the fellow was an Englishman. Quincannon was not at all sure the cultured accent was genuine.