The Bags of Tricks Affair--A Carpenter and Quincannon Mystery

by Bill Pronzini

  A pine tree grew close to the far end of the porch, and a tall oleander shrub grew around the corner in front; together they created a patch of deep shade. And drawn up against the railing there was a cane-bottom chair. As good a place as any to do his waiting, he decided. He positioned the chair so that it would be hidden from the street and most of the front walk. Gaunt wouldn’t see him until he reached the porch steps and started up.

  It was a fairly long wait. Now that he was here, now that the meeting with Gaunt was imminent, enough of Quincannon’s patience returned to make the waiting tolerable. The shade helped, too, holding off the sweltering heat so that his face and hands remained more or less dry. He sat quietly, his coat thrown open, now and then fingering the handle of the Navy.

  His thoughts, when he thought at all, were of Sabina. In his mind’s eye he could see her as she came stumbling wraithlike out of the fog; and later, as she lay small and pitiable in Dr. Jorgensen’s ward bed. He could feel, too, despite the heat here, the trembling of her wet and chilled body as he carried her to the buggy and when she pressed against him during the long, jouncing ride into the city. The visual and sensory memories added fuel to the hate that bubbled inside him.

  Now and then a vehicle rattled by on the street, and somewhere in the neighborhood a dog set up a desultory barking, and once he heard the sound of voices as an unseen man and a woman strolled past. Otherwise, the distant, steady pound of ore-crushing stamps at the Empire Mine was the only break in the afternoon stillness.

  More than an hour passed. He had just looked at and put away his stem-winder for the third time when he heard footfalls on the walkway. He sat forward, tensing. It was Gaunt—alone, dressed as always in black despite the temperature.

  Quincannon waited until he mounted the last of the steps before gaining his feet and saying, “It’s about time, Gaunt.”

  Gaunt was too self-controlled, too coldly emotionless, to do anything but stop and turn his head. His expression betrayed neither surprise nor alarm, nor even wariness. It was almost as if he’d expected Quincannon. As he surely had, though not this soon.

  “Well, the renowned detective,” he said in his slow drawl. “How long have you been here?”

  Quincannon had himself under tight rein as well—for the moment. “Long enough.”

  “Why? You must know that the trial isn’t until next week.”

  “The trial isn’t what brought me.”

  “No? Then what did?”

  “You know the answer to that.”

  “I’m afraid not. Suppose you enlighten me.”

  “Sabina Carpenter.”

  “Your erstwhile partner. What about her?”

  “Her sudden disappearance.”

  “Oh? Disappeared, you say?”

  “Last Friday night in San Francisco.”

  “That’s too bad. How did it happen?”

  “She was kidnapped,” Quincannon said. Rage was close to the surface now; his voice was thick with it.

  “What makes you think that?”

  “I don’t think it, I know it.” He took two steps forward, so that only a few paces separated them. “Kidnapped, locked in an abandoned building without food or water, and left there to die.”

  Nothing changed in Gaunt’s demeanor. One arm hung at his side, the other was drawn up at his middle so that the fingers just touched the flap of his coat. Armed? A hideout weapon within easy reach? Quincannon hoped so, hoped for a sudden draw. He was not sure yet what he would do. Draw himself and fire first, mayhap. Or swing the Navy like a club. Or take the hideout away from him and make him eat it.

  “How do you know this?” Gaunt’s voice was still cold, without inflection.

  “She didn’t die, Gaunt. She escaped and I found her. Yesterday afternoon.”

  “How did she escape? How did you find her?”

  “Ingenuity on her part, detective work on mine.”

  “Are you accusing me of abducting the woman? Is that why you’re here?”

  “Yes, to both questions.”

  Gaunt’s upper lip curled. “The accusation is false and slanderous besides. I was in Sacramento on Friday, consulting with an attorney named Barstow. He’ll swear to that if need be.”

  “A shyster paid to lie.”

  “Another slanderous statement.”

  “I can prove you kidnapped her.”

  “How? Did she see her abductor?”

  “He spoke to her and she recognized his voice. Yours.”

  “But she didn’t see the man, did she? And voice recognition is unreliable, the more so at night.”

  “How would you know she was abducted at night unless you abducted her?”

  “I assumed it.”

  Enough of this cat and mouse. Quincannon said in a flat, hard voice, “The building where you took her and left her to die is an abandoned boat repair shop on the South Basin marsh—property owned by your former land-swindle partner, D. S. Nickerson. He’ll testify in court that you coerced him into acting as your accomplice.”

  Gaunt’s mouth thinned to a straight white line, like a knife slash before it begins to bleed. “Damn you, Quincannon. And damn Mrs. Carpenter, too.”

  “No, damn you, you sadistic son of a bitch.”

  Long, tense seconds passed before Gaunt said, “What do you intend to do? Kill me?”

  “If you give me cause.”

  “And if I don’t? Put me under arrest?”

  “My license from the state of California gives me that authority. You’ll occupy a cell next to your sister’s until the San Francisco police can arrange for extradition.”

  Some of the ice in Gaunt’s eyes thawed. There was an edgy, poised look to him now. His right hand still rested on the front of his waistcoat, the tips of his fingers just touching the lapel of his black frock coat. Quincannon immediately swept the tail of his coat aside with his left hand to expose the holstered Navy, gripped its handle with his right—movements so swift that Gaunt had no time to react.

  “Go ahead and draw your hideout weapon,” he said. “I’d like nothing better than to shoot you dead where you stand.”

  The clash of wills continued a few seconds longer, neither man moving, their gazes locked. Then Quincannon said, “Well, Gaunt? Will you come along peaceably or—”

  Gaunt’s nerve broke. The compulsive protector, the black-hearted avenger, the man supposedly fashioned of ice and iron spun on his heel, leaped down off the porch, and ran.

  Quincannon drew the Navy and gave chase, shouting, “Stop, blast you, I’ll shoot if you don’t!”

  The fugitive paid no heed to the warning. He staggered out through the open gate, onto empty, heat-blistered Pleasant Street. There was a gun in his hand now, too, a small pistol, and he skidded to a halt long enough to turn and fire. Quincannon dodged, but the shot was wild, the bullet clipping off an elm branch twenty feet away.

  Gaunt commenced running again, plunging headlong downhill toward town. Panic made him fleet of foot, fleet enough to outrace his pursuer to a more populated area and thus endanger innocent citizens. Quincannon couldn’t let that happen. He slowed, drew a long bead between the fleeing scoundrel’s shoulder blades. But he had never in his life shot a man in the back, and he couldn’t bring himself to do so now. He lowered his aim, steadied the Navy again, and fired.

  His marksmanship was accurate as always. The bullet took Gaunt just behind the right knee, sent him yelling and tumbling onto the cobblestones. He rolled over twice before sliding to a stop in a supine sprawl. The pistol was still clutched in his hand, but he was no longer trying to use it; pain had him in too tight a grip. Quincannon ran up and kicked the weapon out of his grasp, stepped over to retrieve it, then stepped back and stood over him with the Navy pointed downward at the deep cleft in his chin.

  Gaunt stared up at him, grimacing, clutching at his wounded leg. It had been a clean shot, the slug likely shattering bone but not piercing an artery; there was little enough blood. His panic had ebbed swiftly under the lash
of agony, and the man of ice and iron briefly reemerged.

  “Go ahead, put a bullet between my eyes and have done with it. You want to, I can see it in your face.”

  Quincannon did want to—a measure of his hate for this soulless excuse for a human being. But he had never killed a man in cold blood and he was not about to start now, in broad daylight, with a handful of citizens aroused by the gunfire beginning to congregate. Nor, for that matter, would he have if the two of them had been alone together on a mountaintop or the desolate marshland at Candlestick Point. Nothing, he knew now, not even what had been done to Sabina, could ever make a murderer out of John Frederick Quincannon.

  “No,” he said, and holstered the Navy, and then caught hold of Gaunt’s coat collar and dragged his unpleasant carcass off Pleasant Street.

  26

  SABINA

  When John came to see her late Wednesday afternoon, Sabina was feeling much better. Dr. Jorgensen and his wife had kept her swaddled in blankets and pumped full of medicine that resulted in long hours of healing sleep, and when she was awake, fed her large portions of hot soup, hot tea with honey, and sugared oatmeal (which she had never liked but dutifully ate). The doctor, after his most recent examination, announced that the threat of pneumonia seemed to have passed. If her breathing and her temperature were both normal tomorrow, he said, she would be able to go home.

  But it would be another few days before she’d be able to return to her professional duties. The lacerations on her hands and the cut on her cheek needed more time to heal. She didn’t ask him if she would be fit to travel next week; she would make the trip to Grass Valley to testify at Lady One-Eye’s trial no matter how she felt. Nothing would prevent it now that she had survived Jeffrey Gaunt’s vicious attempt to silence her.

  Memories of those three terrible days of entrapment would plague her for a long time after her wounds were healed. Her first night here she’d had a nightmare in which a horde of rats pursued her through the murky confines of the building, a dream so vivid and terrifying that she’d awakened from it drenched and shaken. There would be others in the future, she knew, as there had been a succession of nightmares after Stephen was killed. But they would not continue indefinitely, any more than had the ones of Stephen calling her name as he lay mortally wounded. Knowledge that justice had been meted out to Gaunt, as it had been meted out to the bandit who’d shot Stephen, would eventually drive them away.

  But it must be the right kind of justice. And it was. John’s arrival and account of the confrontation with Gaunt at Lily Dumont’s cottage cheered her all the more.

  “I must say I’m relieved,” she said. “I was afraid that once you found him, you might be angry enough to do something rash.”

  “Shoot him down like the cur he is?” John shifted in the chair he’d drawn up next to the bed, fluffed his thickening beard. “It occurred to me more than once the past few days to do just that.”

  “But you didn’t act on the impulse, even when he panicked and fled. That is what matters.”

  “Well, you told me before I left that you had no desire for blood vengeance.”

  “Did you restrain yourself only on my behalf, or on yours as well?”

  “Both. I discovered I’m not as prone to violence as I thought I might be when I confronted him.”

  “I’m glad. If you had killed Gaunt without provocation—”

  “I would have been no better than him. Yes, I know.”

  “Justice is better served if he suffers the same fate he sought to spare his sister.”

  “Agreed. Prison is the proper place for criminals whose bags of tricks have been emptied.” John fluffed at his whiskers again. “I stopped at the Hall of Justice before coming here and filed a formal complaint against Gaunt for kidnapping and attempted murder. There’ll be papers for you to sign before extradition can be arranged.”

  “As soon as I’m able,” Sabina said.

  “Which shouldn’t be long, judging from how well you look.”

  “I look a fright and you know it.”

  “Nonsense. After what you’ve been through, you look remarkably healthy. Dr. Jorgensen tells me you have the constitution of a horse.”

  She laughed. “A horse! He did not.”

  “Well, no, not quite,” John admitted. “His exact words were ‘Mrs. Carpenter has a strong constitution.’ He also said I should be able to take you home tomorrow.”

  “Yes, he told me the same— Oh!”

  “What’s the matter?” he said, alarmed. “You’re not in pain?”

  “No, I just remembered Adam and Eve, my cats. They haven’t been fed since last Friday, they’ll be starving.”

  “Oh, but they have been fed more recently than that. I filled their bowls Sunday evening.”

  “You did?”

  “When I couldn’t find you anywhere, I suspected you’d run afoul of Gaunt … though I never stopped believing you were still alive…”

  “John, did you pick the lock on the door to my flat?”

  He confessed that he had. “An act of desperation—the slim hope of finding a clue to what happened to you.”

  “The first time you’d ever been inside. I suppose you rummaged through all my things?”

  “Of course not,” he said indignantly. “Only a cursory examination, and nothing of a personal nature. You don’t mind, do you?”

  “Since you fed Adam and Eve, no, not at all.”

  “Under normal circumstances I would never have invaded your private space uninvited—”

  “I know you wouldn’t.” She smiled to reassure him, then on impulse reached out to place her bandaged hand on his. “John … thank you.”

  “For feeding the cats? They were yowling—”

  “No, not for that. For all you did to rescue me.”

  “I didn’t rescue you, you rescued yourself.”

  “From Gaunt’s prison, yes, but I might have died anyway on the marshes if you hadn’t come when you did. Collapsed and frozen to death before I could walk out—I was at the end of my tether. Your frantic search saved my life.”

  He said in a softened voice, “There isn’t anything I wouldn’t do for you, my dear, to keep you safe.”

  Sabina squeezed his hand, paying no heed to the twinges caused by the pressure. Nor I for you, my dear, she thought.

  CARPENTER AND QUINCANNON MYSTERIES

  BY MARCIA MULLER AND BILL PRONZINI

  The Bughouse Affair

  The Spook Lights Affair

  The Body Snatchers Affair

  The Plague of Thieves Affair

  The Dangerous Ladies Affair

  BY BILL PRONZINI

  The Bags of Tricks Affair

  About the Author

  BILL PRONZINI has been nominated for, or won, every prize offered to crime fiction writers, including the 2008 Grand Master Award from the Mystery Writers of America. It is no wonder, then, that the Detroit Free Press said of him, “It’s always nice to see masters at work. Pronzini’s clear style seamlessly weaves [storylines] together, turning them into a quick, compelling read.” He lives and writes in California, with his wife, crime novelist Marcia Muller. You can sign up for email updates here.

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  Contents

  Title Page

  Copyright Notice

  Dedication

  1. Quincannon

  2. Quincannon

  3. Sabina

  4. Sabina

  5. Quincannon

  6. Sabina

  7. Sabina

  8. Quincannon

  9. Quincannon

  10. Sabina

  11. Quincannon

>   12. Quincannon

  13. Sabina

  14. Sabina

  15. Quincannon

  16. Sabina

  17. Sabina

  18. Quincannon

  19. Quincannon

  20. Sabina

  21. Quincannon

  22. Sabina

  23. Quincannon

  24. Quincannon

  25. Quincannon

  26. Sabina

  Also by Bill Pronzini

  About the Author

  Copyright

  This is a work of fiction. All of the characters, organizations, and events portrayed in this novel are either products of the author’s imagination or are used fictitiously.

  THE BAGS OF TRICKS AFFAIR

  Copyright © 2018 by Pronzini-Muller Family Trust

  All rights reserved.

  Cover art by Fred Gambino

  A Forge Book

  Published by Tom Doherty Associates

  175 Fifth Avenue

  New York, NY 10010

  www.tor-forge.com

  Forge® is a registered trademark of Macmillan Publishing Group, LLC.

  The Library of Congress Cataloging-in-Publication Data is available upon request.

  ISBN 978-0-7653-9435-4 (hardcover)

  ISBN 978-0-7653-9436-1 (ebook)

  eISBN 9780765394361

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  First Edition: March 2018