A Dying Note

by Ann Parker

  She tucked the list away in her satchel. “I promise you I will not put myself in a situation I cannot handle.” She thought of her pocket revolver, safely secured in the drawer of her nightstand, loaded and ready for use.

  “I’m sure you won’t, Mrs. Stannert. You are a woman of common sense.” Haskell glanced at the city directory. “My guess is Abbott is no longer with us. I’ll do a little asking around for you, but I suspect if you do find an address for him, it’ll probably be in Laurel Hill Cemetery.”

  “Perhaps.” Inez picked up her umbrella and prepared to leave. With luck, the cards will break my way and I will find out if any of this has anything to do with Jamie’s death.

  Chapter Twenty-nine

  Before Antonia had left for school that morning, Mrs. S had said, “Well, you are certainly cheerful today. Your catarrh nearly gone?”

  “Uh-huh.” She felt better, her head and nose hardly stuffy at all.

  So she was in a good mood when she spotted Patrick May, the tall negro boy with reddish hair who delivered their laundry and was one of Mrs. Stannert’s piano students. Mrs. S had let her hang around a few times during his lessons. He was really, really good. Mrs. S said so, and Antonia, after hearing him, thought so too.

  He was walking ahead of her down Kearney, toward Market, hands in his pockets. She quickened her pace, calling, “Hey, Patrick!”

  He turned around and looked kind of surprised to see her. He waited until she caught up then said, “Well, hello, Miss Gizzi.”

  “Well, hello, you can call me Antonia.” She fell in step beside him. “Where you going?”

  “Going to catch the horsecar on Market to get back to my ma and aunt’s laundry. I have a brick wall to build. Where are you off to? School?”

  “Yep. Lincoln School, the other side of Market. Is it all right if I walk with you a ways?” She was curious about him, and this was the first time she’d been able to talk with him.

  He looked at her oddly. “You sure that’s a good idea, Miss Gizzi?”

  “I’m not Miss Gizzi, I’m Antonia. You keep calling me that and I’m gonna call you Mr. May. And sure I’m sure. It’s just a little ways. Besides, I wanted to tell you,” now she felt awkward, “you sure do play the piano nice. I wish I could do the same.”

  “Well, maybe you just need to ask your aunt to give you lessons.”

  “She’s tried. I’m all thumbs and no music sense, she says.” Then she said what popped into her mind. “Don’t you go to school? There’s a school for nig—” She stopped herself. Mrs. S had said niggers wasn’t a good word to use, was like a slap in the face, no matter what she’d heard in the back alleys of Leadville. “For negroes?”

  “Oh, I’m done with schooling. Learnt my ABCs and my numbers and that was it. Have to help my ma and aunt at the laundry. They need a man around to help out.”

  She looked at him doubtfully. He was big, really tall, and probably strong, but he sure wasn’t no man yet. “So, where’s your laundry?”

  “Way south of Market on Berry Street. By the Mission Creek canal and the wharves. Where the schooners and such bring in lumber, bricks, and hay. Not a place you’d want to go, Miss Gizzi.”

  “Maybe, maybe not, Mr. May.” She decided right then and there to ask Mrs. S to take her there someday. “What do you do at the laundry?”

  “I do the heavy lifting, the deliveries. Fetch and carry.” He grinned. “Whatever they tell me to do, basically.”

  “How do you practice your music? Do you have a piano?”

  “No piano. Sometimes…”

  “Sometimes what?”

  “Well, next door, they sometimes let me use their piano. When no one else is.”

  She wanted to ask what this place was, but he looked so uncomfortable she decided not to. Instead she asked, “D’you play by yourself? Or with others? D’you have any friends down there on the wharf?”

  He laughed. “You are full of questions, aren’t you? The piano, I usually play alone. Sometimes, though, I’ll go see Black Bill and we’ll play our mouth harps, when I have a little space of time.”

  She wrinkled her nose. “Black Bill?”

  “’Cause of his skin, you know. He’s like me.”

  She looked at him and said, “You’re not black. You’re more…tan.”

  “Well, I s’ppose most folks wouldn’t make that fine distinction. They look and they see what they want to see.”

  She nodded, thinking back. “You know, where I used to live, there was Coffee Joe. He ran a, uh, saloon.” She wasn’t sure if he’d be shocked she’d know that, but then plunged on. “And at school, some of the kids call me a gypsy, ’cause of my skin. When I lived in Colorado, some of the boys gave me the nickname Deuce because of my eyes. But I didn’t mind that. It wasn’t like they were teasing.”

  “Your eyes?”

  She pulled off her tinted spectacles and lifted her face so he could see her eyes from under the bonnet.

  “Ha! First time I’ve seen someone with two different eyes like that. One blue and one brown. How’d that happen?”

  She shrugged and put her spectacles back on. “My maman, that is, my ma, she had the same kind of eyes. People used to call her a witch, say she was cursed. All because of her eyes.”

  “Huh. Well, like I said. People look, and they see what they want to see. And then they don’t look any further.”

  She nodded vigorously. “Say, I’d sure like to hear you and Black Bill sometime. Especially if you play the mouth harp as good as you play the piano.”

  He laughed. “The dump at Mission Creek is no place for someone like you, Miss Gizzi.”

  “The dump? He lives at the dump?”

  “Yep. He’s not quite all…” Patrick tapped his forehead. “He’s a rag-picker, digs through the garbage lookin’ for stuff to sell, and sometimes begs along the wharf. I sneak him a little food now and again, when my ma and aunt aren’t looking. He has himself a little tent out in the dump, with a raggedy flag planted right outside. He fought in the war. Union side, of course. Says he paid his dues, and he claims that little spot of land on the dump as his rightful due payment from the U. S. of A. for services rendered. Well, he don’t say it like that, but that’s the idea.”

  So, this Black Bill fought in the war. That meant he was old.

  “Do you have friends that live down there?”

  “I’d say Black Bill is my only friend, actually. I’m too busy working, and there’s not a lot of my kind down there.”

  She stopped. “Mr. May, I guess I’m not ‘your kind’ either, but we’re both different, right? That’s a kind of a kind. So, I’d be honored if you’d count me as your friend. I’ll be your north of Market friend, and Black Bill can be your south of Market friend.”

  “That’s good of you, Miss Gizzi.” He sounded amused, like he was humoring her.

  “I mean it.” She insisted. “Copper Mick at school is the only friend I have. He’s got red hair, that’s why he’s called that. Well, because his pa’s in the force, too. Anyway, if we’re friends now, that’ll mean we both have two.”

  He grinned. “All right then.”

  “We’re friends now, so you can call me Antonia.”

  “Well, all right then, Miss Antonia.”

  “And someday I want to hear you and Black Bill play the mouth harp.”

  “Maybe someday.”

  “Goodbye, Mr. Patrick.”

  Turning on Market, she headed toward school, happier than she’d been in a long time.

  Two friends!

  Maybe San Francisco wasn’t so bad after all.

  After classes, Antonia hopped down the steps of Lincoln School, thinking her meeting Patrick May must’ve been a lucky thing, because the day had only gotten better from there. She couldn’t wait to tell Mrs. S what Persnickety Pierce had said. Her teacher had actually c
omplimented her! In front of the class!

  Yep, things were definitely looking up. Now, if she could just help Mrs. S work out what happened to Jamie Monroe, everything would be hunky-dory.

  A familiar voice behind her said, “There you are!” and next thing, Copper Mick was beside her, a big grin on his face. “I’ve got news for you,” he announced.

  “And me for you,” said Antonia. “You first.”

  “Where are we walking?” He looked around. “This may take some time.”

  “Where do you live?”

  “Down Third Street a bit. A few blocks.”

  “Can we walk over there so I can see your place? And then we can turn around and walk up toward the music store.”

  “Well, sure. I don’t see why not. Except my sisters might make pests of themselves if they see us, so let’s go down Fifth and take a side street.”

  They started walking, putting Lincoln School behind them.

  Mick started. “Well, I did like you said, and asked my pa about the Long Bridge murder, kinda suggesting the little kids at school were talking about a boogeyman under the bridge had done it.”

  “And?” Antonia prompted.

  “And he said, nah, it wasn’t nothing of the sort. Just some poor bloke who was in the wrong place in the wrong time.”

  “What else?”

  “And I asked if he was working the case to find who did it. He said he had been at first but was called off the case. Politics, he said. Which would explain why he was grumpy a couple days ago. Then he said things changed and he’s now working it ‘on the side.’ He was even cheerful about it but warned me not to tell Ma because she’d have his hide.”

  “Anything else?” Antonia bounced on her toes a little, impatient to tell him her plan, as they stepped off the walkway to cross the street.

  “Yep. You’re gonna like this, I’ll bet.” Mick stuck his hands in his pockets, trying, Antonia guessed, to look casual, but obviously bursting to tell her something.

  “Well?” she prodded.

  “He said he’s making progress and might even be making an arrest soon.” The freckles on his face crinkled up with his smile. “He told me to keep it under my hat. So you gotta keep it under your bonnet as well, all right?” He reached out and tugged on her bonnet brim, dragging it down over her eyes and nearly dislodging her spectacles.

  She pushed her hat back up and wished she was tall enough to yank down his cap in return. “Wow. I wonder who he thinks it is.”

  “He said he thinks a local. I suppose that could be almost anyone. Some hoodlum, or cutthroat, maybe a rag-picker or two-bit thug.”

  Antonia stopped dead in her tracks realizing something she hadn’t thought of before. “Or maybe a Chinaman,” she whispered. John Hee.

  Mick had kept walking as he was talking but now stopped and backtracked. “A Chinaman? What made you think of that?”

  “Remember I talked to you about Mr. Brown, the private detective who’s trying to figure out who killed Mr. Monroe? Well, last night I heard,” she hesitated, “overheard him and my aunt, Mrs. S, talking about who might’ve done it.”

  “Suspects!” Now Mick sounded really excited. “And they think a Chinaman did it?”

  “Not Mrs. S, but the detective hinted around that he thought so.” She took a deep breath. “The music store where we live and my aunt works. There’s a Chinaman who works there, too. Repairing instruments and doing other stuff. His name is John Hee.”

  Mick looked confused. “This Mr. Brown suspects him? Does he live down by the wharves around Mission Creek? Why doesn’t he live in Chinatown?”

  “The music store has a warehouse down there. Anyhow, Mr. Brown was suggesting…” she was squirming a little now “…that maybe John Hee had something to do with Mr. Monroe’s death. But I’m with Mrs. S on this. I don’t think he did it.”

  Mick looked doubtful. “I dunno. The stories I hear about Chinatown, and the tongs, you don’t want to get on the wrong side of them.”

  “Well, Mr. Brown said he’s going to follow John Hee tonight and, I guess, try to find out more about him. So, Mick, you and me are going to follow them and see what’s up.”

  “Into Chinatown?” He sounded really surprised now.

  “Have you been there before?”

  “Well, sure. The boys, you know, we go there sometimes on a bit of a dare. But you, you can’t go, you’re a girl.” He stopped. “Sorry, Antonia. I don’t mean no disrespect.”

  “I’ve got a way we can do this,” she said, determined to say her piece. “And there’ll be two of us, and you’ll be with me, and no one will recognize me.” She thought of the men’s clothes she’d worn as a newsie in Leadville, when she pretended to be a boy. The clothes she’d snuck out of her storage room trunk and stuck under her bed to be ready for tonight.

  She continued, “So, this is what we’re gonna do. What’s the name of your sister who’s in my class?”

  “Who’s your teacher?”

  “Persnickety Pierce.” She bit her lip. “I mean, Miss Pierce.”

  He snorted. “Persnickety Pierce. That’s a good one. Did you make that up?”

  She nodded.

  “That’d be Katie.”

  Antonia flashed on a redheaded girl with a face covered with freckles and two braids that always seemed about to unravel.

  “She can be a bit of a prissy missy,” he added. He slowed to a stop and pointed. “See that two-story house about halfway down across the street with two girls on the stoop? That’s our place. My brother Daniel—he’s the street patrolman you met—lives on the top floor, with his missus and baby, and my ma’s sister and gran. The rest of us live on the bottom floor.”

  Antonia noticed the house had flower boxes along the bottom windows, and looked clean and nice. Mrs. S, if she ever saw it, would approve.

  She said, “Now let’s walk back toward the music store.” They turned around and headed toward Market Street. Antonia continued, “I’m gonna tell Mrs. S that Katie invited me to your house for dinner tonight. One reason I want to see your place is so I can say I walked there with her after school and it’s not far away.”

  “Uh, this might be hard to get Kate to agree to. She’ll want to know what this is all about, and why you’re coming over, and—”

  “I won’t be coming over,” said Antonia. “It’s a ruse.” She liked how the word ruse sounded. It sure sounded better than saying they were going to lie.

  “And,” she continued, “you’re going to tell your parents that one of your friends asked you over for dinner, and that you’re gonna stay a while afterwards and help him with whatever you’re studying now in class.”

  “Geography,” said Mick absently, his eyebrows creased in a frown. “So, you won’t be at my home having dinner, I won’t really be helping a friend with homework, instead we’ll be trailing a detective who’s trailing a Chinaman?”

  “Right!” Antonia was proud of herself for coming up with this devious plan. “And since John Hee leaves work at six, you better come over at, say, five-thirty to walk me to your home for dinner.”

  “Oh yeah?” He looked a little taken aback at that. “Why?”

  “Well, Mrs. S isn’t gonna let me just waltz around downtown on my own after dark. But if she meets you—and I just know you can do all the ‘hello, ma’am, nice to meet you, ma’am’ proper talk—she won’t mind.”

  “I can do that.” He looked down at his school garb. “If we’re going to be sneaking around Chinatown, I can’t wear this.”

  “I have it worked out. Bring a rucksack with the kind of clothes you want to wear. If she asks, you can say it’s books or last minute groceries for dinner or something. But I don’t think she’ll ask you. Once we leave, I know a place right close by where you can change clothes. No one will know.”

  “And what about you?” He looked
her up and down, from her ruffled bonnet and lace collar to her plaid skirt and proper boots. “What are you going to do?”

  She grinned. “Don’t worry about me. Once you’re changed, I’ll do the same. You’ll see.”

  Once they got close, Antonia showed him the door next to the store, the one that led up to where they lived. “Just ring the bell. But don’t be later than five-thirty.”

  Mick nodded and glanced up at the sky. “I’d better skedaddle then. I sure hope you know what we’re doing here. I don’t like lying to my parents. My da, he’s got a nose for liars.”

  “Well, look at it this way. You are helping a friend…me! And it’s even with geography of a sort. You’re going to get us around Chinatown, and that’s something I sure couldn’t do on my own. It’ll be an adventure, Mick. And we’ll be helping my aunt, and maybe helping find a killer, or at least narrowing the suspects, because it’s not John Hee. He’s innocent, I’m sure.”

  Mick left at a trot, and Antonia continued to the door leading upstairs after glancing in the store window. Mr. Donato was there, talking with Mr. Welles, who was frowning. He was one sourpuss, that Mr. Welles. But when she’d said that to Mrs. S, Mrs. S had just said he was a family man with a lot of responsibilities, which he took very seriously. “Unlike some men I’ve known,” Mrs. S had muttered under her breath, and Antonia had wondered if maybe she was thinking about Mr. Stannert back in Leadville.

  Just then, John Hee came out from the repair room. It looked like he was showing Mr. Donato a strange, almost-a-violin-but-not-quite sort of instrument. Not wanting to be caught staring through the window, Antonia scooted off to the living quarters.

  She was a little disappointed that Mrs. S wasn’t there, as she wanted to blather out her story, her ruse, while it was all still fresh in her mind. What would she do if Mrs. S didn’t come back in time to meet Copper Mick? She’d have to write a note, leave, and hope for the best, hope that Mrs. S wouldn’t be mad that she, Antonia, had gone off without checking with her first.