A Dying Note

by Ann Parker

At least she had some time to prepare.

  Antonia pulled the worn and tattered men’s clothes out from under her bed. Off came her school clothes and petticoats, and on went the trousers and shirt. She struggled back into her dress, rolled up the pant cuffs so they didn’t show, and stuffed the cuffs of the too-big shirt up into the dress sleeves. The old waistcoat wouldn’t fit underneath, and there was also the ratty jacket and the faded red cap, as well as the too-large shoes with a dime-size hole in the left sole. She bundled up everything in the jacket, hurried down the hall, through the storage room, out the door, and down the rickety steps, keeping an eye out and an ear cocked in case someone stepped out the back of the music store.

  Luckily, no one did, which allowed her to sidle past the back entrance to the old outhouse in the alley leaning hard against the rear wall. Antonia silently thanked her lucky stars they had a water closet and she didn’t have to use the musty little wooden shack. Someone had put a lock on it, but not a very good one, because Antonia was able to remove it in a jiffy. She’d explored the outhouse before. It wasn’t too bad. And it had a high shelf off to the side, perfect for stuffing her rolled-up jacket and its contents. Once that was done, she rehung the lock, but didn’t close it, and hurried up the rickety stairs to the storage room.

  It was almost sunset when Mrs. S came home. She looked tired, distracted, but the first question out of her mouth was, “How was school?”

  Antonia was happy she actually had some good news to report. “Great! Miss Pierce complimented me on my times tables memorization. And I solved all the problems she put up on the blackboard, faster than anyone else in class. And I got all the oral problems right, too!”

  Mrs. S nodded. “See what happens when you apply yourself?”

  Antonia wasn’t sure if it was because she had “applied” anything. The answers just seemed to “be there,” without her hardly thinking. Even the new multiplication problems today had not been hard. Although her classmates seemed to think they were.

  “Oh! And I was asked over to dinner tonight by one of the girls in my class, Katie Lynch.”

  Mrs. S raised her eyebrows in that way that told Antonia she’d better sound convincing when she told her story. So, she did. And it sure helped that the downstairs bell rang before Mrs. S could start asking a bunch of questions.

  “That must be Katie’s older brother, Michael,” said Antonia brightly. “Katie said he’d walk me to their house on Third and walk me home after. He’s in seventh grade. He wants to be a policeman, like his father. That’s what Katie told me.”

  Mrs. Stannert’s eyebrows rose higher at that. But once she answered the door, and Copper Mick whipped off his cap and started with his “Good evening, ma’am,” and “Pleased to meet you, ma’am,” and “Sure glad my little sister’s finally found a friend at school,” and other such blarney-blather, Mrs. S seemed to warm up. After Mick gave Mrs. S his address, she sent Antonia and him off, with the stern warning that Antonia should be home no later than nine o’clock.

  “I may not be here,” she said, “but I expect you to act responsibly and get yourself to bed at a reasonable hour.”

  “Yes’m, I will.”

  They hurried down the block until Antonia nudged Mick into a narrow slot between two buildings. “Turn here!”

  “Where are we going?”

  “You’ll see. Hurry! We don’t have much time!”

  When she finally showed him the old outhouse, he balked. “I’m not going in there. I’d rather change right here in the alley.”

  “Suit yourself,” said Antonia. “I’ll use it then. I’m gonna be quick, and you’d better be quicker, that’s all I’ve got to say.”

  She went in, closed the door, and shucked off her dress. After pulling on the rest of her disguise, she turned the dress inside out and rolled it up, so it wouldn’t gather any dust, and stuffed her dress, coat, bonnet, and shoes up on the shelf. Then she put her spectacles up there too. The last thing she wanted to do was lose those and somehow have to explain to Mrs. S. She clutched at the locket with her maman’s photograph, hanging under the men’s shirt and her camisole. She’d forgotten to take it off inside her room. I’m not leaving it in this shithouse. The locket on the braided hair chain would stay where it was, hidden and safe.

  Cap pulled low and tight to her ears, she slammed out through the rickety door to find Copper Mick, a bundle of clothes in his arms, standing there looking uncertain. His eyes widened in the near-dusk light. “Antonia? Is that you? Mother of—” He checked himself. “If I hadn’t seen you go in, I’d never guess that was you coming out.”

  “Thanks.” She added, “If you gotta call me by name, call me Tony, all right?”

  “Sure.” He looked at the yawning outhouse, said, “If you can do it, I can do it,” and plunged inside. She heard him rustling around in there, and a grumble or two emerged. “It’s dark in here. Don’t want to fall down the hole or drop a shoe or…” followed by “Stinks too. But not as bad as I thought it would.”

  “Shush,” she whispered. “Just hurry!”

  More shuffling and mumbling and eventually Mick tumbled out, disheveled and breathless, stuffing his good jacket into his knapsack.

  Antonia looked at him admiringly. “You look like a real hoodlum, Mick.”

  He glanced down at his worn trousers, nearly out at the knees. “Not sure that’s a good thing for Chinatown.”

  “C’mon, the six o’clock bells are going to ring soon. We need to be where we can watch the front door.” She led him out of the alley and to the corner of Kearney and Pine. They stopped short of the pool of lamplight and pushed themselves against the side of the building. The evening church bells started, and Antonia said, “Watch.”

  Sure enough, the door to the music store opened before the last echo died away. John Hee, with his wide-brimmed hat and a long, narrow sack slung over his back, started walking west. Mick sucked in his breath. “He’s headed toward Chinatown,” he whispered.

  Antonia shook his sleeve. “Over there. Across the street.”

  They watched a shadow detach from the gloom under a store awning. The shadow passed under a streetlamp and briefly became an unassuming man with a small beard and mustache, almost invisible in his dark coat and derby. “That’s him!” said Antonia. “The detective. Mr. Brown.”

  They watched him walk in the same direction as John Hee, staying on the opposite side of the street, blending in with all the other men in their dark suits and coats.

  Antonia tugged on Copper Mick’s sleeve again. “Come on!”

  Shadows following shadows, the two joined the thin stream of pedestrians and blended into the approaching night.

  Chapter Thirty

  Following Mr. Hee proved simple.

  He proceeded without evasion to Chinatown while de Bruijn lingered a modest distance behind, keeping an eye on the Chinese violin Hee conveniently had slung across his back. The stringed instrument, an erhu, was inside a long sack with its distinctive head and tuning pegs protruding from the top. As he slowed his pace to match Hee’s, the detective pondered what he’d uncovered about Hee and Donato earlier that day.

  The warehouse had been the focus of his interest. When he had first learned of its existence, he had wondered if some kind of smuggling might be involved. Opium, of course, was his first thought. But there were other possibilities. Artifacts and items of historical, artistic, or economic significance, for instance. It was an easy scenario to build: a ship from the Orient would arrive, carrying certain illegally obtained goods. An intermediary would be necessary to bridge the Celestial and Occidental worlds—in other words, John Hee. The goods could be stored in the warehouse and eventually displayed and sold as “curiosities” at Donato’s store. Perhaps some were spirited straight to the homes and private museums of personal collectors, willing to pay dearly for them.

  Nothing would be easier.
r />   The more de Bruijn had considered it and inquired amongst those he knew in the shadowy world of antiquities collectors, the more he became convinced that his scenario had merit. Too, there was the matter of Donato’s elevated standard of living and affluence. His ascendance to the top of recognized musical talent could account for some of his prosperity, but not all. First, he bought the store. Then, the warehouse. And most recently, the house where he lived with his sister. And he did not skimp on his wardrobe, being a regular customer at the most exclusive tailors and haberdasheries in the city, nor his priceless collection of stringed instruments.

  And he never ran a tab but paid in cash.

  For everything.

  There was also Mr. Donato’s personal life, which seemed chock-full of intrigues and liaisons with women primarily from the higher levels of society. His charm was legendary, which gave de Bruijn pause when he thought of Mrs. Stannert and Donato working in close proximity. Surely she wouldn’t inadvertently let slip that the violinist was considered a suspect in young Gallagher’s death. But as de Bruijn knew, even the most intimate of secrets fell victim to the heat of passion or the magnetism of charisma.

  De Bruijn gave himself a mental shake and refocused on Hee, who was moving through the shifting pedestrian traffic on the opposite side of the street.

  Chinatown lay just ahead. It was time to narrow the distance between himself and his target.

  Once they stepped over the invisible border into Chinatown, the streets and lanes would become more crowded, more difficult to navigate, more shadowed, more dangerous. Although de Bruijn was no stranger to this neighborhood, it had been many years since his last foray. Even though police patrolled regularly and armed officers accompanying curious visitors touring the quarter, he had to stay on his guard.

  He was alone.

  De Bruijn crossed the street and entered foreign territory.

  The lighting, the language, the scents, the buildings, the very air and ground—all shifted. The surge of pedestrians intensified, while the individuals parted around him as water around the bow of a ship. Groups huddled in the doorways and on the boardwalks, moved in and out of buildings. He passed laundries, pawnbrokers, gambling halls, clothing stores, apothecaries, and businesses with display windows crammed with miscellaneous wares, all packed as tightly as the streets.

  Between buildings, narrow, dark alleys displayed the white ghosts of garments hung to dry on invisible clotheslines. Signboards in gilt, black, and red—over doors, on window-frames, and on door-facings and on walls—exhibited the fluid slashes of Chinese calligraphy and, in some instances, the familiar English letters. Large Chinese lanterns suspended from the small, street-facing balconies of restaurants cast dim pools of light on the walkways.

  A pungent fish aroma punctuated by roast duck wafted from one eatery, soon vanquished by the sickly sweet scent of garbage and rotten-egg odor of stagnant water wafting from a narrow passage just beyond. That in turn was washed away by a cloud of warm steam carrying the biting scent of lye from a laundry. This constantly shifting olfactory kaleidoscope was blanketed with the inevitable scent of sweat and unwashed bodies accompanied by the waxing and waning floral notes of opium and incense.

  For de Bruijn, the sensory assault was a siren song, breathing life into memories he preferred stayed buried. The detective dragged his attention back to the erhu, which bobbed along as its owner wove his way through the crowd. De Bruijn slid past a group of gawkers, their guide saying, “This here sign reads Hang Hi, but means not what you might think. Instead, it is the Chinaman’s sign for prosperity.” The rest of the lesson was lost to de Bruijn as he moved on, his gaze fixed on Hee’s large-brimmed hat and musical instrument.

  An intense knot of people blocked the sidewalk ahead. Hee stepped to the side and vanished. De Bruijn hurried to the spot to find his quarry had gone into a narrow alley.

  A dark, narrow alley.

  Luckily, it appeared short and uninhabited.

  De Bruijn hesitated. Peering into the alley, he twisted the handle of his walking stick and pulled, revealing the blade hidden in the shaft of the cane.

  A shadow detached from the gloom, and John Hee’s distinctive silhouette emerged from the other end. Determined not to lose sight of his quarry, de Bruijn gripped the handle more firmly and dashed into the alley. The detective was nearly out the other side when Hee crossed Washington Street, heading toward the Chinese Theater.

  He only had time to think, ah, that explains the erhu, before a hand from behind gripped his sword arm. He tried to turn, block and parry…

  Darkness.

  A piercing screech was his route back to consciousness. That, and a voice. A child’s voice saying, “Copper Mick! Stop that! You already scared ’em away with that thing!”

  “It’s a police whistle,” said another voice, older-sounding, somehow. “We need the police.”

  He was falling, back into a dream, with no sound, no vision, only pressing pain.

  “Mr. Brown! Are you dead? Wake up! Mr. Brown!” The child’s words—he knew that voice—blasted through the mist.

  The other person said, “Look, if he’s dead, he sure isn’t gonna be able to say so, right?”

  Now a third voice chimed in, softer, older, foreign. “What happen here?”

  “John Hee! Am I glad to see you!” The child sounded relieved. “It’s me, Antonia. You gotta help us. This here is Mr. Brown, he’s a detective, and he was following you, and we were following him, and he was attacked in the alley. Mick scared ’em off with his police whistle, but that scared off everyone else too. We can’t lift him, and he won’t wake up. Look at all the blood! D’ you think he’s dead?”

  Antonia. John Hee.

  The names scrabbled through the dark of his muddled mind, reaching for the light.

  De Bruijn opened his eyes to a world he could not, for the life of him, bring into focus. A world he couldn’t even remember.

  Where am I? What am I doing here?

  The ground beneath his back was hard, lumpy, cobbled. Dampness ran around his shoulder blades. His head throbbed with a dull ache.

  Three blurry faces peered down at him. Two boys and a Celestial.

  The youngest boy yipped. “His eyes are open! Mr. Brown, I’m sorry, your cane is gone. They took it when they scarpered.”

  Who?

  He must have said it aloud, because the older boy said, “Dunno who. Muggers. Hoodlums. Cutthroats. Lucky for you all they did was bash you in the head and take your walking stick.”

  “Who are you?” He heard his own voice, thick, distant. He felt as if he had slept a long time and awakened in a strange land.

  “I’m Antonia! Antonia Gizzi!” said the young boy, no, the girl, yes, Antonia, of course. She pulled something out from under the layers of jacket and shirt.

  A locket.

  “Remember?” She swung it in his face. “You gave this to me. It was from Maman. Mr. Brown, don’t you remember anything? Did they steal your wits too?”

  It was as if his thoughts struggled through gauze, red, red as blood, embroidered over all, the finest Chinese silk gauze.

  Chinese.

  John Hee. Chinatown. San Francisco. Gallagher.

  “Ah.” The exclamation came out as a grunt. Memories returned. Where he was and what he had been doing. Following this man, this John Hee. The very man who was now holding out his hand, offering to help him up. De Bruijn lifted his head. Pain exploded in his skull. He grabbed his head with both hands, then pulled them away. They were slick with blood.

  “Come,” said John Hee. “You must go. Rest. See doctor. Where you stay?”

  De Bruijn, focused on not vomiting and keeping his head from flying off his body, could not answer.

  Antonia piped up, “He’s staying at the Palace Hotel.”

  John Hee looked from her to the boy Mick. “I cannot
go there. I must go to the theater soon, for performance. It is final act.”

  “The final act?” Antonia sounded confused.

  Mick said, “Don’tcha know, Antonia? The Chinese theater puts on plays that go on for nights and nights and sometimes months and months.”

  “I didn’t know,” she snapped, then looked down at de Bruijn. “Mick, we can’t carry him, just the two of us. We need John’s help. John? Can you help us get him to the music store? Up the stairs to where we live? It’s just a few blocks. He can rest on my bed until Mrs. S gets home, and then maybe she can call a doctor.” Antonia bit her lip. “I’m gonna catch holy heck for this.”

  John Hee said, “You two save his life with the whistle and shouting. If Mrs. Stannert give you heck, I explain, if that help.” Hee pulled a strap over his head and handed Antonia the sack at the other end.

  The erhu. For the theater. Of course.

  “I carry him to store, then go.”

  De Bruijn wanted to say Stop! John Hee, of no large stature, could not pick him up and carry him. They should find an officer instead.

  Hee turned to Mick. “Belt, please?”

  Mick unfastened and handed over his belt, holding his pants up with one hand. “I shoulda worn braces.”

  “No. This good.” Hee wrapped and buckled the belt around de Bruijn’s waist, over his trousers but under his jacket. De Bruijn, who realized he had somehow come up to sitting during all this, only wanted to close his eyes. Every jolt caused another wave of dizziness and pain.

  “Now, stand,” said Hee.

  Mick got to one side of de Bruijn, John Hee on the other. “On knees, Mr. Brown?”

  De Bruijn slowly got to his knees, the steady pull of the belt steadying him.

  Mick and Hee increased the tension on the belt and brought him to his feet. Through the fog that slowed his thinking, de Bruijn realized Antonia, hovering, was dressed in men’s clothes. They were ridiculously oversized, cuffs dragging in the filth of the alley.

  “Now,” said John Hee. “Walk. One foot, other foot, Mr. Brown. We help.”