EQMM, February 2008

by Dell Magazine Authors

  "You got a certain ‘certain others’ in mind?"

  My brother shook his head. “Not certain certain, no."

  "What is it, then? Your Holmesifyin’ givin’ you pause somehow?"

  "Nope. Just my gut.” Old Red turned to spit in the street, then squinted again at the door to the deadfall. “You know how there's certain roadhouses, certain ranches you hear whispers about. The ones the smart fellers ride around."

  "Sure."

  "Well..."

  Gustav spat again—then reached up and tugged my bowler down hard over my ears.

  "Hey!” I protested.

  My brother leaned first to the right, then to the left, examining the back of my head.

  "Naw, that won't do at all. Them little derbies ain't got enough brim to ‘em."

  "What in the world are you babblin’ about?"

  Old Red tilted my hat back so it rode up high on my forehead.

  "Your hair,” he said. “I'd try to hide mine, but that wouldn't do us no good with my moustache to give us away."

  He scowled at me a moment, then nodded gruffly.

  "All right. I reckon that just might work. It's a good thing we don't look much alike, aside from bein’ redheads."

  "Yeah, I thank the good Lord for it every day. Now you wanna tell me what you're playin’ mad hatter for? Why's it so important to cover up my hair?"

  "Cuz we ain't goin’ into that there dive together."

  "We ain't?"

  "No, we ain't. I'll go in first and do me a little scout before askin’ for ‘Johnny,’ whoever he is. Then you mosey in a little later and make like we don't know each other. If everything looks to be on the up and up, I'll take off my hat, and you can just come on over and introduce yourself. But up till then, I want you hangin’ back ... just in case."

  "Just in case what? Ain't nothin’ gonna happen to us in a saloon in the middle of the d day."

  Gustav turned toward the deadfall again.

  "We'll see what kinda day it is,” he said grimly. Then he went inside.

  I passed the next few minutes watching the half-clothed strumpets across the street try to entice passersby into their cathouse “cribs” for a little “fun.” I'm not opposed to fun on general principle—far from it—but personally I don't consider a raging case of crabs to be a barrel of laughs. I was not tempted.

  In any event, I reckoned Old Red didn't need much time for his reconnoiter: From the outside, at least, that saloon looked about as roomy as your average outhouse. You could probably scout the place out without so much as turning your head.

  So soon enough, I was striding inside ... and quickly realizing I'd been only half right. Sure, the place was small, with only five or six scattered tables, a bar barely the length of a couple coffins, and a ceiling so low it'd put splinters in my lid if I walked with too much spring in my step. But it was dark and noisy in there, too, and I needed a moment to get my bearings before I could even begin to look for my brother.

  If ever there was a tavern intended exclusively for the use of bats and hoot owls, this was it, for it was hard to believe anyone else could be expected to navigate in such a gloom. I stumbled to the bar and ordered a beer from a man I could barely see, and when he plonked it down a moment later I found it more by sound than sight.

  My eyes adjusted to the murk as I worked on my beer, though, and after a few sips I spied Old Red. He was at the far end of the bar, on the other side of a dark-suited man so broad, squat, and round he could've passed for a pickle barrel. I assumed this was “Johnny,” as he and Gustav were hunched over the bar together, sipping drinks and talking in low voices.

  My brother's Boss of the Plains was still perched atop his head.

  I nursed my beer and did my darnedest to eavesdrop. Unfortunately, the boisterous har-har-harring of the other patrons—most of them foreign sailors, local drunks, or the hoodlums who made both their prey—drowned out whatever it was Old Red and Johnny were whispering.

  After I'd been there maybe five minutes, tippling with the dainty sips of a society dame at a tea party, the bartender stopped across from me and shook a dirty finger at my glass.

  "You drinkin’ that or waitin’ for it to evaporate?"

  I scooped up my beer, poured it down my throat, and slapped a nickel on the bar.

  "Another, please."

  The barkeep filled my glass from a froth-topped pitcher that was almost—almost—as grimy as he was himself.

  "This is a bar,” he snarled, putting the pitcher down hard. “You just want something to lean against, go find yourself a streetlamp."

  I nodded and took a healthy gulp of my fresh beer. (Well, freshly poured, anyhow. It tasted so stale I wouldn't have been surprised to learn it had come to America aboard the Mayflower.) As the bartender stalked away, I sneaked a peek to my right, hoping I hadn't drawn too much attention to myself by not behaving like a boozy ass.

  Johnny was turned away from me, toward Gustav, his wide back blocking my view. As for my brother, all I could see of him was his hat. He was still wearing it, that much I could tell, but the angle of it seemed odd. It was tilted forward, the brim almost in a straight line up and down, as though Old Red was hunched over the bar to read something—which I knew couldn't be the case, since he reads about as well as a catfish plays poker.

  I was just about to lean back and try for a better look when the barkeep barked out, “Keys! Keys!"

  I followed his gaze to a scratched-up old piano at the back of the room. A gangly, unshaven old-timer was drooping on a stool beside it, head on chest, eyes closed.

  "Wake up, Keys!” the bartender roared. “Time to earn your keep!"

  "Yeah, come on!” someone shouted. “Play us a tune, Keys!"

  "How about ‘Auld Lang Syne'?” someone else called out.

  Most of the customers roared with laughter. The rest—like me—watched with wary half-smiles as Keys blinked himself blearily awake and began dragging his stool around to the front of the piano. This was apparently part of some comical custom of the place, but the guffaws had a cruel edge to them, like the cheers at a bullfight.

  The old man brought his long arms up over his head, held them there a moment, then crashed his hands down upon the keyboard.

  He wasn't just banging away, though. He'd struck a chord—one with a low, ominous tone. He repeated it twice, loud and quick, then let it float there in the air like a black cloud.

  Then came a ray of sunshine cutting through the gloom—a bright melody that echoed out of the piano ragged and off-tune yet still merrily—almost manically jaunty.

  "London Bridge Is Falling Down."

  There was more laughter, and a few men actually started to sing along. But the recital didn't last long. One quick run-through of the song and Keys was done. He dragged his stool back around to his resting spot, slumped against the piano, and closed his eyes.

  As floor shows go, it was pretty pathetic. Certainly, the Bella Union and the other big concert saloons had nothing to fear from this place. Yet the performance brought down the house: Men were still clapping and stomping their feet even as the geezer slipped back into his slumber.

  I glanced toward the end of the bar, thinking I might share a little eye-roll or shrug with my brother. But there was nothing to share ... because there was no one to share it with.

  Old Red was gone.

  Johnny was leaning over to share a whispered word with the barman, and I could finally see around his stout frame just fine. Yet all I saw was wall. I jerked my head this way and that, searching the rest of the room. In vain.

  It had been all of a minute since I'd turned to watch Keys tickle the ivories (or give them a good beating, more like), and in that time Old Red had left somehow. Yet he couldn't have gone out the front door without walking right past me, and the back door was over by the piano—I'd have seen him leave thataway, too.

  Now, my brother can be cantankerous, and I'll admit there have been moments I wished he'd just go away. But never had I ev
er dreamed he might actually up and do it—simply vanish without so much as a puff of smoke. So sudden was his disappearance, in fact, that I might have doubted my own sanity, worrying that this “Gustav” was a figment of my imagination much as my crazy Uncle Franz once befriended a potato he addressed as “Herr Berenson."

  I quickly spotted proof that I wasn't loco, though—and that something foul was afoot.

  When I glanced back where Old Red had been standing, I noticed that there were two half-full glasses on the bar next to big, burly Johnny. The barkeep picked one up, emptied it out beneath the bar, then began giving the glass a vigorous spit-shine with a filthy rag.

  If my brother had heard the call of nature and slipped off to the w.c. (or, given the character of the place, the back alley), why would the bartender be cleaning out his glass? And if Gustav had simply elected to leave, why wouldn't he have collected me on the way out?

  Which meant Old Red was gone, but he hadn't left. He'd been taken.

  I looked down at the bartender's feet, leaning forward as far as I could without tipping head over heels and landing atop his brogans. Unlikely as it was, I had to make sure Gustav wasn't down there behind the bar trussed up like a beef ready for the brand.

  He wasn't, of course. All I saw was a slop bucket, what looked like a tap handle (perhaps for the secret stock of drinkable beer squirreled away for specially favored patrons), boxes filled with assorted bottles, and—good information to have—a short-barreled shotgun just like Cowboy Mag's. It must be a regulation in The Barkeeper's Handbook, right between “Water down whiskey” and “No credit to cowboys": “Keep scattergun under bar."

  The bartender caught me gaping his way and shot me a glower so sour he could have poured it out and sold it as lemonade.

  I forced myself to smile.

  "Don't worry about me, mister—I learned my lesson.” I picked up my beer and splashed half of it over my tonsils. “Glug glug glug, right?"

  The barman didn't bother responding, which was fine by me. What I needed right then was to be ignored. I had me some heavy-duty thinking to do ... fast.

  Of course, the person best suited to bust such a puzzle was Old Red himself, and I couldn't very well consult with him on his own kidnapping. And turning to the law wasn't an option. The Barbary Coast's a precarious place for policemen, and they usually don't go there at all except in squads of ten or more. I'd probably walk a dozen blocks before I saw a single cop.

  Yet there was someone I could turn to, I realized, though he wasn't on hand, either: Mr. Sherlock Holmes. True, Gustav was the expert on Holmes, but he only knew of the man through me—I read him John Watson's tales of the great detective each and every night. Whatever my brother had heard about deducifying, I'd heard, too. It was just a matter of putting it to work.

  I closed my eyes and dredged up Old Red's favorite Holmes quotes.

  "It is a capital mistake to theorize before you have all the evidence."

  Useless.

  "Little things are infinitely the most important."

  Useless.

  "There is nothing more deceptive than an obvious fact."

  Useless ... and pretty danged silly.

  "When you have excluded the impossible, whatever remains, however improbable, must be the truth."

  Which might lead me to conclude that—as my brother could not have flown through the ceiling or dug down through the floorboards—Johnny and the bartender must have eaten him while I had my back turned.

  Useless useless useless.

  Unless...

  I had turned my back, hadn't I? And why? To watch a sorry old sot flail away at a piano—because the barkeep told him to.

  Keys's little routine might have been a distraction. But a distraction from what? He hadn't blocked anyone's view of either door. He'd just made a lot of noise.

  So maybe it wasn't the sight of something he was covering up so much as the sound. The opening of a hidden door, perhaps, or the workings of some secret mechanism.

  "Exclude the impossible,” Holmes had said. All right. If my brother hadn't been taken out to the left or the right, that left only up or down. Maybe one wasn't so impossible after all.

  I threw back my head to guzzle the last of my beer—and get a peek up at the ceiling over the spot where Gustav had been standing. There was nothing to see but rafters and cobwebs.

  I put down my glass and dug a dime from my pocket.

  "Shot of rye for the road,” I said to the bartender. Then “Dagnabbit” as I let the coin slip betwixt my fingers. After bending down to retrieve my money, I took a good look at the floor at the far end of the bar.

  When I stood up again, I was grinning—and gritting my teeth.

  "Here you go, my good sir,” I said with as much cheer as I could muster considering how much I wanted to pop off the barman's head like the cork from a bottle. I dropped the dime in front of him. “And you'll see no sippin’ from me this time, I promise you."

  Silent, scowling, the bartender thumped down a shot glass and sloshed it full of liquid the color of tobacco juice. Which was pretty much what it tasted like, too.

  I tossed it down with one swiping swig and set the glass back on the bar.

  "Keep the change."

  I got no thanks. The barkeep just snatched up my shot glass, gave it a single swipe with his ratty little rag, and set it aside, ready for the next paying customer. He was drifting back toward his big buddy Johnny as I turned to go.

  Heading for the door, I kept myself to an easy amble when what I really wanted to do was dash. It was torture not glancing back to see if Johnny and the barman were watching me—and maybe noticing the wisps of short-cropped cherry-red hair peeking out from under my bowler. But if little things are the most important, then even such a trifling show of nerves might be all it would take to arouse suspicion ... and quash what slight chance I had of saving my brother.

  I finally knew where he was, and I couldn't very well get there myself with a bucketload of buckshot in my back.

  I managed to keep my gaze straight ahead.

  The sunshine was blinding-bright when I stepped outside, but a few blinks and the ink spots disappeared. I set off down the street still keeping myself to a mosey, just in case.

  Before I reached the first corner, though, I finally allowed myself that look over the shoulder. I saw drunks, chippies, and rowdies aplenty, but no sign of Johnny or the barman.

  I spun around and hustled back toward the deadfall.

  I didn't go inside again, though. Instead, I turned down a narrow alley that ran along the side of the saloon. A dozen quick strides brought me to an angled doorway jutting out from the building—the entrance to a storm cellar. I bent down and gave the rickety twin doors a cautious tug.

  Locked. Bolted from the inside.

  I paused to consider my options ... and sighed when I realized how bad the best one stunk.

  I knocked. Lightly, politely at first, then rougher when I remembered that nobody did anything politely in the Barbary Coast.

  "Who is it?” a man called out from down below.

  I chanced an answer, praying it didn't call for a brogue or falsetto or some other giveaway trait.

  "Johnny."

  "Already?” Muffled, shuffling footsteps drew closer to the door. “Bit early, ain't it?"

  "So?” I grunted, hoping Johnny didn't have a lisp.

  The doors rattled.

  I stepped back, rattled myself but knowing there was but one way to proceed.

  "It's just that it ain't dark yet...” the man said.

  The doors began to swing open.

  "...and we've only got four EEP!"

  By the time he saw my face, my kick had almost reached his.

  As Old Red is fond of pointing out, I manage to put my foot in my mouth pretty regular-like. This was the first time I'd ever put it in someone else's, though. It didn't go in far, of course. Just enough to send the man flying back into the cellar minus his front teeth.

  I ju
mped down after him, giving him a toe to the stomach twice before he could so much as let out his first groan. He was a scrawny, grubby little fellow, and I might've felt bad about treating him so rough if not for what I spied piled up in the shadows farther back in the basement.

  Men. Four of them, splayed out on a rotten old mattress directly below the lines I'd noticed in the saloon floor—the trapdoor. From underneath, I could see the wooden slat that pulled out to drop it open and the jointed rods leading up through the ceiling, perhaps to that extra beer tap tucked away beneath the bar.

  I didn't care about the how just then, though. It was the who that truly troubled me, for stretched out atop that mound of men was my brother, his body as limp and lifeless as the barman's rag.

  I glowered down at the little fellow I'd just put the boot to and brought my foot up again without so much as thinking to do it. I can't even say what thoughts were in my head at that moment. It's as if there were no thoughts at all, just an explosion of red and black and a great, awful noise like the scream of a steam whistle. I'm not sure what I was about to do—stomp the poor pipsqueak to a pulp, I suppose. Certainly, that's what he assumed.

  "No, mishter! Shtop!” he cried out, mush-mouthed with blood. “They ain't dead! I work for the Chicken!"

  I froze with one foot hovering over the man's face, wondering if my first kick hadn't knocked something lose in his head.

  "What are you talkin’ about?"

  "The Chicken—the Shanghai Chicken! Johnny Devine! Thish ish hish plashe! We're crimpsh, not killersh!"

  I set my foot back down on the dirt floor.

  "Crimps?"

  The word tickled a memory of newspaper and magazine articles I'd read about the Coast. “Shanghai,” too.

  "You mean you aimed to sell them fellers off to crew sea ships?"

  The little man nodded. “Jusht got an order from a Norwegian whaler. A dozen men jumped ship the shecond they made port, and they need replashementsh."

  I stared hard at Gustav and the men beneath him, noticing only now the slight up-down of their chests and the raspy sound of ragged breathing.

  "We jusht drug ‘em. Laudanum in their drinksh. They wake up later with headachesh, that'sh all."

  "Yeah, sure,” I said, starting toward my brother. “Wake up on some leaky tub in the middle of the Pacific, you mean."