Quincannon

by Bill Pronzini

  Turnbuckle blinked his sad eyes, absorbing what Quincannon had said. Then he murmured, “Of course, Mr. Lyons. A terrible shock for you, I’m sure.”

  “Terrible,” Quincannon repeated. “I wonder ... I know it’s most irregular, but would it be possible for me to see him briefly?”

  “See him? Well, I don’t — ”

  “I find it so hard to believe he’s dead, murdered. If I could see him for just a minute ...”

  “The body is not pleasant to look at, Mr. Lyons. He was shot, you know, and his face — ”

  “Violent death has little effect on me,” Quincannon said. “I was raised in Indian country, as I said.”

  Turnbuckle seemed to be weakening. But he said, “The coroner, Dr. Petersen, will be here soon.”

  “I’ll leave as soon as he arrives. A minute with my poor, murdered friend. That is not too much to ask, is it, Mr. Turnbuckle? Surely?”

  “Well, I ... no, I suppose it isn’t ...”

  Quincannon stepped forward and clasped the undertaker’s hand, saying, “Thank you, sir, thank you so much,” and at the same time turning him so that they were both moving down the hallway.

  Turnbuckle led him to the door at the rear, through it into his workroom. Embalming machinery gleamed in the light from two lamps; so did the undertaker’s needles and razors and other tools of his trade, shut away inside glass-fronted cabinets. The unpleasant chemical smell of formaldehyde was strong in the room. Whistling Dixon’s corpse lay on a slab in its center, uncovered and face up, the dead eyes staring at eternity.

  “Yes,” Quincannon said, “yes, it is poor Mr. Dixon.”

  “Did you doubt it?”

  “No, no. I simply find it difficult to believe that such a fine man has been killed in such a terrible fashion. He never carried more than a dollar on his person at any time. Did you know that, Mr. Turnbuckle?”

  “I’m afraid I did not have the pleasure of knowing Mr. Dixon.”

  “Too bad. You would have admired him, just as I did. May I be alone with him for a minute?”

  Turnbuckle blinked. “Alone?”

  “If you wouldn’t mind. I’ll soon be leaving Silver City; I may not be here when you’ve made him ready for burial. I could pay my respects here and now.”

  “Well, this is most irregular — ”

  “I realize that. Most irregular. But the circumstances, Mr. Turnbuckle, the circumstances ... well, you understand.”

  “Yes,” Turnbuckle said uncertainly, “of course.”

  “A minute is all I ask. No longer.”

  “Very well, then. A minute, Mr. Lyons, no more.”

  The undertaker went to the door, glanced back at Quincannon, seemed to shake his head, and went out. Quincannon was already at the slab when the door clicked shut. Quickly he began to search the dead man’s clothing.

  The shirt pocket contained a nearly empty sack of Bull Durham, papers, and a handful of lucifers. One pocket of a faded and patched Levi jacket was empty; the other yielded a small chunk of ore that Quincannon identified as pyragyrite — the kind of silver ore that contained feldspar, mica flecks, and the reddish, almost crystalline metal known as ruby silver. Nothing unusual in a man, even a cowhand, carrying silver ore in these mountains, he thought; and from what he had learned last night Dixon had done some prospecting in his free time. He returned the chunk to the jacket and went through the pockets of a pair of equally faded and patched Levi’s.

  A clasp knife with a chipped handle. A silver half eagle that Quincannon held up to catch the lamplight, just long enough to determine that it was not a counterfeit. And a brand-new gold pocket watch, an expensive-looking Elgin with an elaborately scrolled hunting case that depicted a railroading scene. Quincannon flipped open the dustcover, read what was etched on the casing inside.

  Jason Elder — 1893.

  From the alleyway outside, just as he closed the cover, he heard the sound of a horse and buggy approaching. The Elgin watch went into the pocket of his frock coat, and not a moment too soon: the door to the hallway opened and Turnbuckle came hurrying in.

  “I’m sorry, Mr. Lyons,” the undertaker said, “but you’ll have to leave now. Dr. Petersen is here.”

  Quincannon sighed. “Of course. I do appreciate your kindness.”

  “Yes. Now if you will just come with me. ...”

  When they reached the front entrance Quincannon said, “I wonder, Mr. Turnbuckle, if you would allow me to make a small contribution to the burial fund.”

  Someone had begun to rap on the alley door to the workroom. But Turnbuckle paid no attention to that. His face showed animation again; his ears seemed to prick up like a dog’s. “Well,” he said, “well, that is hardly necessary, Mr. Lyons. But if you prefer it ...”

  “Oh, I do.” Quincannon took a five-dollar note from his billfold and handed it to the undertaker. “You will see to it that he has a nice casket, won’t you?”

  “Oh, indeed. Indeed I will.”

  Quincannon left Turnbuckle clutching the greenback. It gave him a moment of small, wry amusement to think of what Boggs would say when he encountered an expense labeled “five dollars for Whistling Dixon’s burial fund.” But it had been money well spent. If Silver City was like other frontier towns, Turnbuckle would receive a fixed sum from city coffers for the burial of men such as Dixon, men without families or estates. Which meant he would be required to itemize any contributions to the burial fund that he received, and to turn the money over to the city — and Turnbuckle had not struck him as the sort of man Diogenes had been searching for with his lantern. The five dollars would disappear. And when it did, any inclination Turnbuckle might have to mention Andrew Lyons’ curious visit would disappear along with it.

  A pair of brewery wagons, both drawn by thick-bodied dray horses, clogged the street in front of the brewery, waiting to enter the warehouse. The big doors were open and the rich, yeasty smell of beer spiced the air. It made Quincannon thirsty, but it was a thirst he ignored for the moment. The Elgin watch with its fancy case and its inscription was a conscious weight in his pocket.

  Why had Whistling Dixon been carrying another man’s watch? What was his connection to the opium-smoking tramp printer, Jason Elder?

  Chapter 6

  The newspaper office was on Volunteer Street, between Jordan and Washington. Through the front window glass, Quincannon could see a man inside at the rear, working at the bulky black shape of a printing press. The mane of hemp-colored hair identified the man as Will Coffin.

  Quincannon entered. Coffin glanced over at him, said, “Good morning,” in gruff tones, but made no move to leave his labors at the press. He seemed to be alone in the cluttered-office, with its two desks and stacks of newsprint and walls framed with past issues of the Volunteer. And judging from his tone and from the scowl that twisted his ink-smudged features, he was in a bad humor today.

  The press, Quincannon saw as he crossed the office, was an old Albion. Coffin was setting type — taking oily ten-point from the type case on its sloping frames and fitting it into his brass type stick. The smells of printer’s ink and oil and newsprint, and the pungent aroma of Coffin’s pipe tobacco, were strong in the office.

  Quincannon said, “You seem in dark spirits this morning, Mr. Coffin.”

  “I am, and with good cause. The damned heathens broke in here again while I was in Boise.”

  “Chinese, you mean?”

  “Certainly. Who else would I mean?”

  “Was anything stolen?”

  “No. But it took me two hours to clean up the results of their mischief.” Coffin glowered down at the type stick. “And as if Chinamen running amok aren’t trouble enough, I have to do all my own typesetting in order to get the next issue out on time. Damned nuisance all around.”

  “What about the compositor who sometimes works for you? Jason Elder, is it?”

  “Him,” Coffin said, as if the words were an epithet. “I went looking for him early this morning; he isn’t at that pig
sty he lives in and seems not to have been there for days. He is nowhere to be found.”

  “You have no idea where he might have gone?”

  “To hell on his opium pipe, for all I know or care. Tramp printers! Even at their best, they are notoriously unreliable.”

  “If you don’t mind my saying so, Mr. Coffin, I’ve heard it mentioned that you yourself were once a tramp printer.”

  Coffin didn’t answer immediately. The type stick was full; he justified the line and then turned to set it in the galley, completing a column. “I was much younger then,” he said. “Young men are prone to foolish endeavors. Besides, it was my father’s profession — printing, that is. He wasn’t a tramp; he owned his own printing and engraving shop in Kansas City for thirty years.”

  “An expert engraver, was he?” Quincannon asked.

  “Yes. He designed his own type face, among other things.”

  “And you inherited his talent in that area?”

  “No, not at all,” Coffin said. “I have limited abilities in the printing trade; three years of tramping from Kansas to Montana convinced me of that. Writing copy is a far better occupation than setting it, and a far more suitable one for me.”

  “I bow to your knowledge of both fields. The only profession I know well, I’m afraid, is patent medicine.”

  Coffin started to comb fingers through his hair, remembered in time that they were stained with ink, and wiped them on a press rag. He lit an already ink-smeared pipe. When he had it drawing he said, “What brings you here this morning, Mr. Lyons? No takers for your nerve and brain salts?”

  “On the contrary. I’ve already sold six cases to Mr. Judson at the Harmony Drug Store.”

  “A fruitful morning for you, then.”

  “So far as business goes,” Quincannon said. “Privately, the news is much grimmer.”

  “Yes, the murder of your friend Whistling Dixon.”

  “Then you know about that.”

  “Of course. News travels rapidly in Silver — and bad news reaches my door sooner than most. I suppose you’re wondering why I’m here setting type instead of out gathering information.”

  “I am, yes.”

  “I’ve owned the Volunteer three years and never missed a single Wednesday’s publication,” Coffin said. “It is a matter of pride with me. If I don’t spend the rest of today and most of tonight right here in the office, there will be no paper tomorrow.”

  Quincannon asked, “But have you spoken to the marshal? Do you have any further details?”

  “Is that why you’ve come, Mr. Lyons? Seeking information on Dixon’s murder?”

  “Yes.”

  “Well, I’m afraid I can’t help you. I haven’t spoken to Marshal McClew yet and I expect I know nothing more about Dixon’s death than you. And I won’t until McClew comes to see me later today. He always does in such matters, just in time for me to write my story. He enjoys seeing his name in print.”

  “I’ve heard that the Owyhees are a haven for outlaws,” Quincannon said. “Is murder common in Silver City?”

  “Not uncommon, shall we say. And that is another reason I’m here and not out with McClew. Murder, unless it happens to be of the spectacular variety, has limited news value.”

  “Yes — the shooting of a cowhand can hardly be called spectacular, can it.”

  “Frankly, no. If that fact offends you, so be it.”

  Coffin picked up a page proof he had already run off, scanned it, frowned, and then turned to one of the galleys. Quincannon watched him plug a dutchman in a poorly spaced ad, then asked, “Were you well acquainted with Dixon?”

  “I barely knew him,” Coffin answered. “I spoke to him perhaps twice in the three years I’ve been in Silver.”

  “Do you know of any friends he might have in town?”

  “No.”

  “Was he acquainted with Jason Elder?”

  Coffin squinted at him through smoke from his pipe. “What makes you ask that?”

  “Dixon was murdered and Elder seems to have disappeared. Perhaps there’s some connection.”

  “I find that unlikely. As far as I know, Elder and Dixon never met.”

  “Tell me this: If Elder worked for you only occasionally in recent weeks, how was he able to support his opium habit?”

  Coffin scowled; he had grown weary of all the questions. He said, “I have no idea. Nor do I care. Now if you will excuse me, Mr. Lyons, I have four more pages of type to set and an editorial to write.”

  Quincannon left the newspaper office, went to Jordan Street and uphill along it. He wondered if Marshal McClew had found out anything important in Slaughterhouse Gulch. But that was unlikely, if Whistling Dixon had been murdered by the gang of koniakers; they were too disciplined to leave obvious traces of themselves at the scene of a fatal shooting. Still, should he talk to McClew anyway? He decided against it. Perhaps later, but not just yet.

  Thinking was a chore, out here with the rumbling wagons and the constant noise from the mines; he let his mind go blank as he continued climbing to the upper reaches of Jordan Street. The buildings clustered up there were little more than shacks, some of them made of tarpaper and hammer-flattened tin cans — the Chinese quarter. Yellow faces replaced white; coolie outfits and straw hats replaced the conventional garb of the mining camp. Two middle-aged Chinese came down the slope toward him, both with wooden “yokes of servitude” across their shoulders, five-gallon water cans balanced on each end. Aside from the digging of ditches and the building of roads, one of the few jobs open to Chinese in these mountains would be delivering water from door to door for a few cents a day. Even more demeaning were the other tasks for which the yoke would be used: to carry slop for the hogs and buckets for the cleaning of white men’s privys.

  Near where Jordan Street petered out against the steep mountainside, Quincannon spied a small business section: a handful of stores, a pair of joss houses, some kind of meeting hall made of heavily weathered clapboard. He went along there, looking at each of the buildings. All were marked with Chinese characters; only one bore any English lettering, but that was the one he was interested in. A small sign to one side of a door hinged with strips of cowhide said GENERAL STORE, and below that, in smaller lettering, YUM WING, PROPRIETOR.

  Quincannon pushed open the door and stepped into the dark, windowless interior. The mingled scents of herbs and spices and burning joss sticks assailed him. He paused to allow his eyes to adjust to the murky light. At first he thought the store was deserted; then he realized that a man was standing motionless behind a long plank counter. The man did not move or speak as Quincannon crossed among tables laden with Chinese clothing, past shelves of pots and pans, tea, medicinal herbs, and other, unrecognizable items.

  The Chinese, Quincannon saw when he reached the plank, was fat and middle-aged, with a graying wisp of mustache and his hair braided into a long queue down his back. He stood with his arms folded and his hands hidden inside the sleeves of his black coolie jacket — an aging Buddha surveying a temple of his own construction.

  Quincannon said, “Yum Wing?”

  A small bow. “How may I serve you?”

  “I’m looking for a customer of yours, a white man named Jason Elder.”

  Yum Wing’s round, smooth face might have been a mask for all it revealed. “Why does your search bring you to me?” he asked. He spoke English precisely, with much less accent than most frontier Chinese. An educated man, Quincannon thought. And a dangerous one, if his eyes and his demeanor were accurate indicators.

  “Elder was a good customer, wasn’t he?”

  “Many fan quai are good customers of my humble shop.”

  Fan quai. Foreigners — foreign devils. Quincannon had worked among the Chinese in San Francisco; he was familiar with their language. And familiar with men such as Yum Wing, men who hated Caucasians, who pretended to be subservient to the white race while cheating and plotting against them at every opportunity. Yes: Yum Wing was a dangerous man.

>   Quincannon said, “Yo yang-yow mayo?”

  If Yum Wing was surprised that Quincannon spoke his language, he gave no sign of it. “I have opium for sale, yes,” he said in English. “Very fine opium, from Shanghai.”

  “Elder bought it from you, is that right?”

  “I have many customers for my opium.”

  “How much do you charge?”

  “Enough for one pill, two bits.”

  “You have yenshee, too?”

  “Very fine yenshee. One ounce, one dollar.”

  “How much opium a day did you sell Jason Elder?”

  Silence.

  “How much yenshee?”

  Silence.

  “Where did he get the money to pay you?”

  Silence.

  “When did you last see him?”

  “You will purchase opium? Yenshee?”

  “If you tell me where I can find Elder.”

  A small shrug. “I have not seen him in four days.”

  “Did he say anything then about leaving Silver City?”

  “I am only a humble Chinese merchant,” Yum Wing said. “Not worthy of such confidences.”

  “Have you any idea where he went?”

  “I have no idea. I have goods for sale. Very fine goods, very fine opium.”

  “Will Coffin, the newspaper editor, doesn’t think so.”

  Silence.

  “You’ve had trouble with Coffin, haven’t you?”

  “No trouble. China boys avoid trouble with white men.”

  “Not always. Sometimes they have cause not to avoid it.”

  Silence.

  It was pointless to continue, Quincannon decided. Yum Wing would not admit to even knowing Will Coffin. And if he knew why Jason Elder had disappeared, or where Elder was now, he would not admit that either.

  Quincannon said, “Will Coffin isn’t your true enemy, Yum Wing. Greed and hate are.” He turned and moved away through the dark, cramped, silent room, out into the sunlight and the throbbing noise from the stamp mills.