Lost Among the Angels (A Mercy Allcutt Book)

by Duncan, Alice

  It was fine with me if they didn’t want me around. By that time I was rethinking my desire to be a part of any action that might involve gunplay. Casually putting the teacup down—I am proud to announce that my hand did not tremble the least little bit—I made my way to the front door. The man who’d frowned at me continued to do so. I felt his eyes boring into my back as I left the shop, and it was a most uncomfortable feeling, I can tell you. My shoulder blades itched and my breathing was unsteady.

  I confess to sucking in a deep breath as soon as I was out the door, although I knew it was too soon to celebrate. My job wasn’t over yet. On knees that felt as if they’d been sculpted of aspic, I walked across the plaza toward the noodle shop.

  What happened next I couldn’t have anticipated if I’d been given a year to contemplate possibilities, although I’ll keep it in mind when I start writing my novels. Out of nowhere, somebody rushed up and grabbed my arm. I’m pretty sure I screamed, since I was already in a state of anxiety due to the brutes in Mr. Li’s shop, although I don’t remember doing so.

  I do remember whirling around, sure my accoster would prove to be the frowning man.

  You can imagine my astonishment when I discovered Mr. Hiram Godfrey clinging to my arm. The expression on his face looked like one of pain, although, to judge by what he said to me, I guess it was ardor.

  “Miss Allcutt! Mercy! You must come with me. I adore you. I love you! We can be married right away!”

  Trying to shake him off, I cried, “Stop it! Let me go, you murdering fiend!”

  I was terrified lest this interruption of our carefully laid plan would spell its failure. If I could help it, Mr. Hiram Godfrey, mad murderer that he was, wouldn’t thwart our purpose.

  Mr. Godfrey did not release me. He looked mighty puzzled, however, when he said, “Murdering fiend? What do you mean?”

  I kicked him hard in the shin with my sensibly shod foot. He released me then. He also clutched his shin and started hopping around the plaza on his other foot, looking rather like an overweight flamingo, since his face had turned a brilliant red by that time. “Why did you do that? Don’t you know that I love you?”

  Forsaking caution as well as an answer, I raced to the noodle shop, hoping that if the criminals in Mr. Li’s shop saw me doing so, they’d chalk up the cause to Mr. Godfrey’s assault. Which it was, primarily.

  By the time I reached the noodle shop, I was in such a panic, I wrenched the door open and practically fell inside—right into Ernie’s arms. He propped me up and said, “What the hell?”

  “It’s Mr. Godfrey!” Reminded of the original purpose of this trip to Chinatown, I added, “And the men went into Mr. Li’s shop!”

  I know I was being almost incoherent, but darn it, I was in a real state by that time and believe my lapses might be excused. As uniformed policemen poured out of the noodle shop, Ernie and Phil exchanged a look of surprise.

  Phil said, “You take care of Godfrey. I’ve gotta be in on the arrest.”

  “Right.” Squinting down at me as if he suspected I’d lost my mind in the excitement of the moment, he said, “What’s this about Godfrey?”

  “He’s there,” I cried, pointing in the general direction of the plaza. “He grabbed me! He said we had to get married!”

  Ernie’s squint got narrower. “Geez, the guy really is nuts, isn’t he?” He yanked the door open and rushed out.

  I wasn’t sure how to take that, but it didn’t seem to be the right time to ask how Ernie had meant his comment. I hurried after him, eager to see Mr. Godfrey arrested and locked up for the brutal murder of June Williams.

  Fortunately, in the several seconds it took to achieve the above results, Mr. Godfrey hadn’t gone anywhere. In fact, he’d sat on a bench in front of the good-luck pond that was in the middle of the plaza, rubbing his shin. His piggy eyes, when he lifted them from his trousers, conveyed an expression of hurt bewilderment until Ernie reached him. Then he looked up and smiled at him. Really, the man was truly mad!

  “Hello, Mr. Templeton,” said Mr. Godfrey, nodding at Ernie as if he hadn’t recently murdered anyone or just assaulted me on a public plaza. “I’ve been meaning to get to your office. I owe you some money.”

  “Yes,” said Ernie, standing before him and looking down at him, his fists on his hips. I had sort of expected him to grab him, or at least point a gun at him. Instead, he said, “Hiram Godfrey, you’ve really got to stop expecting every woman you meet to marry you.”

  Mr. Godfrey’s smile faded and the hangdog expression returned to his chubby features. “You mean Miss Allcutt doesn’t want to marry me, either?”

  “I’m afraid not,” said Ernie, much more gently than I believed was called for.

  “Ernie,” I said, “what are you doing? Do you realize this man just attacked me?”

  “Attacked you?” Mr. Godfrey said in a hurt voice. “But I thought you wanted to marry me.”

  It was my turn to put my fists on my hips, only my voice was anything but gentle when I spoke next. “What in the world made you believe that?”

  “But you were nice to me.”

  “I’m nice to everyone.”

  “Oh.”

  I turned to Ernie. “Aren’t you going to arrest him?”

  “Arrest me?” Now Mr. Godfrey appeared alarmed. Past time, if you ask me.

  “Sorry, Mercy, I’m not a cop. Besides, we have some real criminals to pick up now, it looks like.”

  I realized his gaze was fixed on Mr. Li’s shop. “But …” I didn’t get to finish my sentence because suddenly shots rang out. The front window of Mr. Li’s shop exploded, sending a spray of glass out onto the plaza. I said, “Oh!” and covered my head with my hands, although I’m not sure why. Shock, I guess. What I should have done—and what I’ll try to remember to do the next time I’m in the vicinity of a gunfight—was to flatten myself out on the ground. Getting one’s clothes dirty was a much more pleasing alternative to getting drilled by a stray bullet. Ernie told me that later, and quite sarcastically, too. I didn’t appreciate his tone of voice, but I did understand and agree with the sentiment.

  He didn’t speak in that moment. What he did was grab me around the waist and hurl me to the ground, landing on top of me. He said later that he was covering my body with his so that nobody in my family could accuse him of putting me in harm’s way, but I honestly don’t believe that. I think he has the instincts of a gentleman, no matter how hard he tries to pretend he doesn’t. His first impulse is to protect a person he perceives might be in danger. His impulse didn’t prevent me from ending up with torn garments and skinned knees (and you should have seen my stockings!) but I didn’t blame him for those minor casualties. I thought he was sweet. I’d have told him so, but I sensed he wouldn’t have appreciated it.

  Before I had gathered my wits together, Ernie shouted, “Stay there!” and he took off, crouched over and running, toward the shop.

  I shrieked, “Ernie! Get back here, you idiot!” but I didn’t mean it. The idiot part. The getting back there part I meant with all my heart.

  “Miss Allcutt!” Mr. Godfrey, who, I discovered, was on his stomach on the plaza alongside me, said. “Are you all right?”

  “Of course, I’m all right! Stay away from me, you maniac!”

  “But …”

  I’m not a fool. Nor am I stupid. I didn’t want to get myself shot. However, I was absolutely dying (so to speak) to know what was going on in the shop. And I also didn’t want to remain lying next to a man whom I believed to be a cold-blooded murderer. Therefore, I decided not to perform a citizen’s arrest on Mr. Godfrey—he was ever so much larger than I and probably would have objected if I’d tried—but crawled on my hands and scraped knees to the shop, trying to stay behind things such as the wishing well, a restaurant sign, a potted plant, etc., on my way.

  Before I got there, the shop’s front door slammed open, and one of the two Italianate gentlemen, the one who’d frowned at me when I’d seen him entering the sho
p a while back, pelted out onto the plaza, a gun in his hand. His attention was riveted on the shop, so he didn’t see me there on my hands and knees. It was but the work of a second to scoot myself directly into his path.

  It hurt like mad when he ran into me, but the result was most satisfactory. He went sprawling, his gun flew out of his hand and went spinning across the plaza, and he said, “Damn!” a second before he said, “Ow!”

  The next thing I knew, I’d been grabbed around the middle and all but heaved out of the way. I feared at first that it was the first man’s partner who’d handled me so roughly, but then I saw Ernie hurl himself on top of the fallen man and deduced it had been he.

  Hoping like mad that nobody else would fire any more bullets at anybody, I decided the most prudent thing to do would be to secure the first man’s gun. When I got to my feet, I was horrified to see that Mr. Godfrey had anticipated me. He held the gun via a finger poked through the trigger guard and was looking at it as if it were a poisonous serpent.

  Terror seized me. Then I remembered that, according to Mr. Godfrey, he wanted to marry me. Men didn’t shoot women they wanted to marry, did they? Several newspaper articles and June Williams flashed before my mind’s eye, but I thrust them aside. Ernie and the police obviously needed help. “Give me the gun, Mr. Godfrey. Please,” I added because I can’t seem to help myself. All that breeding, I guess.

  “But …”

  Sternly, I said, “Now! That’s evidence in a police investigation.” I was proud of myself for thinking of that line.

  He said, “Oh. Okay.”

  And, by gum, he handed me the gun! It was very heavy. I’d never held a gun before, and handled it gingerly. I didn’t touch the trigger.

  “Damn it to hell, Mercy Allcutt, give me that gat!”

  It was Ernie, who’d wrestled the criminal to a position of surrender and snapped handcuffs on him.

  I didn’t understand. “What gat? What’s a gat?”

  “Damn it, give me the damned gun, you idiot!”

  “Curse it, Ernie Templeton, I saved you from being killed! Don’t you dare swear at me! And don’t call me an idiot, either.” But I handed him the gun.

  He took a deep breath, yanked the criminal to his feet, and said tightly, “Thank you. You helped a lot. And you’re not an idiot.”

  I sniffed.

  At that moment, two uniformed policemen exited Mr. Li’s shop. Between them, handcuffed and being held in a mercilessly tight grip by the police, was the second man. Phil came out of the shop, holding Mr. Li’s arm. Poor Mr. Li, while I agreed with Phil that he didn’t deserve much sympathy, was clearly in a state of abject terror and agitation. The poor man was actually shaking with fright.

  By that time, we’d drawn quite a crowd, including Mr. Godfrey, who still hung around. I’d expected him to escape ere this, but I guess he didn’t have the sense to realize he oughtn’t remain where there were police available to arrest him for June Williams’s murder. Phil spotted him, and leaving Mr. Li to another policeman, came over to talk to him.

  “You’re Hiram Godfrey?”

  Mr. Godfrey nodded.

  “Come down to the station with us. I need to ask you some questions about June Williams.”

  With a sigh, Mr. Godfrey said, “Yes, I meant to do that sooner. Can I get a ride with you?”

  “Sure.”

  Well, thank God for that! At least somebody was going to interrogate the man who’d brutally murdered that poor girl. When I thought that I might well have been his next victim, my blood ran cold.

  People were milling around, all talking amongst themselves, mostly in Chinese, although a few tourists were clumped here and there. Mr. Li, still in police custody, spoke to a fellow shopkeeper, I presume about his shop because the man took a key from Mr. Li and went to lock it up. Mr. Li seemed extremely dejected when the police led him away. The two Italian men appeared more annoyed than dejected.

  I was about to seek out Ernie and ask him what we needed to do next when he walked over to me. “You look like hell, Mercy. I’m sorry you scraped your knees when I threw you down.”

  Those weren’t exactly the words I’d been hoping to hear from him, but they brought my mangled condition to my mind. Glancing down, I realized that my brown cotton suit’s skirt had sustained a rip, probably from when my knee struck the concrete floor of the plaza, and that blood ran down my shins. My stockings were a total loss. Instead of taking Ernie to task, I sighed. “I guess so.”

  “Want me to take you home so you can get yourself doctored up?”

  “Oh, no, you don’t! I was instrumental in the capture of that vicious criminal, Ernie Templeton, and I’m going to see him charged. Booked. Whatever the term is.”

  For a second or two, I thought he was going to blow up at me, but he controlled himself. In actual fact, after his initial reaction to my demand, which entailed tight lips, a hideous frown, and a deeply furrowed brow, he grinned. Then he took that blasted flask from his pocket, uncorked it, and swallowed some of its vile contents. Right there on the plaza in Chinatown, in front of God, half the Chinese population of Los Angeles, and the Los Angeles Police Department. Not to mention me. “Okay. You can wash up at the department, I guess. They have iodine there, too. And bandages.”

  “Thank you.”

  I was grateful that Phil had Mr. Godfrey ride in the front seat with him, because I certainly didn’t want to sit next to him. Ernie and I shared the Ford’s back seat. The drive to the police station took only a couple of minutes, since it was right there near Chinatown. The two gunmen, who arrived in a marked police vehicle, were led into the station by the uniformed policemen, and we followed with Mr. Godfrey. It seemed to me that Phil and Ernie were treating him with alarming negligence, considering he had murdered an innocent woman. Then again, I knew they both maintained that they weren’t sure who had murdered June Williams. I guess they didn’t want a suit for false arrest or something filed against them. I still thought they should have been more vigilant.

  We went into the same large, busy room that we’d visited before with Barbara-Ann Houser and her mother. People were smoking and walking and talking, and I saw that Phil and Ernie got admiring nods and several comments from other officers present when they spotted the two gangsters. That made me feel good. Evidently the police had been looking for those men before this.

  Phil gestured at me to take a chair on one side of his desk, and nodded to Mr. Godfrey to take the one on the other side. Ernie hauled over another chair, set it near mine, and straddled it.

  “Take ’em to booking, Sullivan,” Phil said to the same man who’d escorted Mr. Li on our prior visit. “Then come back here. I might need you to pick up Babs Houser and the kid.”

  That caught my attention. “Why do you need Mrs. Houser? You’re not going to charge her with anything, are you?”

  Phil eyed me speculatively. “You don’t think she was involved in this?”

  Bridling, I said, “I sincerely doubt it. Why, she was held hostage, wasn’t she?”

  Ernie took over from Phil. “Yeah, but her boyfriend was in it up to his eyeballs. She was only kidnapped when Matty blew the dough on the ponies.”

  I believe that meant he gambled the money away on horse races. “But she didn’t say she was involved in the crime itself. In fact, she seemed rather irritated with Mr. Bumpas. I mean Matty.” Drat my upbringing!

  “You expect her to confess to being involved with a dope ring?” Ernie chuckled.

  I felt stupid and naïve, but I pursued the subject not because I cared much about Babs Houser, but because I had formed a fondness for Barbara-Ann, a girl with spunk and grit, two qualities I admired and even wanted to emulate. In a way. “Just because a woman has poor taste in men and doesn’t have sense enough to leave one when he pursues a criminal life, doesn’t mean she’s actually involved in the criminal activity,” I pointed out, believing it a valid argument and worth consideration.

  The glance exchanged by Phil and Ernie let
me know they didn’t share my sentiments. Feeling rather as if my back were to a wall, I said desperately, “But what about Barbara-Ann? You can’t arrest her mother! What would the poor child do?”

  Ernie shrugged, again reminding me of Barbara-Ann herself. “She does okay on her own, it looks like to me.”

  Horrified, I cried, “But she’s only twelve years old!”

  “Don’t worry, Miss Allcutt. We don’t plan to arrest Babs Houser,” Phil said, relieving my mind considerably.

  I frowned at Ernie to let him know I didn’t appreciate his attitude about what I considered a serious subject. He only grinned and took out his flask again. I watched, disgruntled, as he took a swig. Honestly! Right here in the police station.

  Mr. Sullivan came back at that point, and clapped Ernie on the back. “Still sucking on that flask, are you, Ernie?”

  Grinning up at him, Ernie said, “Can’t seem to shake the habit, Sully.”

  Mr. Sullivan winked at me, probably because I was gazing at Ernie and him with patent disapproval writ large on my countenance. “Don’t worry, ma’am. It’s only apple cider.”

  “Don’t tell her that!” Ernie cried, either honestly aghast or faking it very well. “She thinks I’m a lush!”

  I’m pretty sure my mouth fell open in surprise. Surprise quickly transformed into indignation. Since Ernie was still holding the small flask, I whipped out a hand and grabbed it from him. He tried to snatch it back, but I was too quick for him and held on tight. When I sniffed its contents, I realized that Mr. Sullivan was right. Ernie had been sipping apple cider out of that blasted flask! I glared at him. “Do you mean to tell me you’ve been pretending to be drinking spirits ever since the day I first walked into your office?”

  Ernie held up his hands, palms out. “Not I. I never told you what was in that flask, did I?”