S Hockensmith - H03 - The Black Dove

by Steve Hockensmith

  “Look,” I said, “even if Diana is keepin’ secrets, then you oughta be happy as a damn clarn—cuz now you got yet another puzzle to play with. And I’ll tell you how to solve this one, too: Coax some answers out of the lady. Be pleasant. Sly. Smooth. You know . . . not an asshole.”

  “Try to sweet-talk her, you mean?”

  “Oh, hell no!” I hooted. “Leave that to me. All you gotta do is be civil—which I know poses quite the challenge for you, but I think you can pull it off if you truly try. Sooner or later, Diana’ll let down her guard, and then you’ll get your chance to find out what she’s really up to.”

  “Oh, now you’re just humorin’ me.”

  “Absolutely. But that don’t mean I ain’t right.”

  “Yeah,” Old Red sighed. “Could be.”

  “Alright, then. That’s that.” I clapped my hands together and gave them an eager rub. “Now if you care to accompany me, I have a few errands to run ’fore we head back to the Cosmo for the night.”

  “What sorta errands?”

  “Well, first, I gotta get me a new hat.” I took off my ruined derby and ran my fingers over the bristly tuft of hair atop my head. “Then I wanna see if there’s a barber can do something with this barbecued fore-lock of mine. Might just get myself a shave while I’m at it. And I do believe it’s about time I took myself a hot bath. Could probably use me some new cologne to cover up the smell of Doc Chan’s liniment, too . . . .”

  “Brother,” Gustav said, shaking his head, “what you really need they don’t sell in stores.”

  With that, he trudged off toward our hotel, leaving me to dandify myself alone. When I returned to our room a few hours later, as slicked up as an otter’s ass, I found him asleep on the bed, the newest issue of Harper’s steepled on his stomach. The magazine featured a new tale from Johnny Watson, “The Resident Patient,” and Gustav had drifted off while studying on the illustrations. Apparently, my brother found a mere drawing of Sherlock Holmes to be more inviting company than his own flesh-and-blood brother.

  I didn’t mind, though. Old Red’s hell to duds-shop with—he considers anything fancier than denim work-pants and a checked shirt foppish. And as for hats, nothing but a white Boss of the Plains will do.

  But me, I’m more a when-in-Rome sort of fellow. And when in Frisco, men trade in ten-gallon hats for something more on the order of two quarts. Which is why I’d decided to buy my first boater.

  When I woke up the next morning, I found my brother holding the flat, disc-ish hat gingerly, balancing it on the tips of his fingers as if it had been woven from poison ivy instead of straw. He was fully dressed, and he had the alert, up-and-at-’em bearing of a man who’s had his morning coffee.

  “I reckon I oughta congratulate you,” he said when he noticed my opened eyes.

  “Yeah?” I whispered hoarsely. Before I’ve had my first cup of Ar-buckle, that’s about as articulate as I get.

  “Yeah. I didn’t think you could find a lid that’d make you look more nitwitted than that of bowler did. But you managed it somehow.” He put the straw hat back atop our bureau, where I’d left it the night before, then grabbed his Stetson and plopped it on his head. “Anyways . . . come on. Gotta get a move on or we’ll miss our ferry.”

  “Alright, alright. And here I thought I’d be the one draggin’ you off to—” I pushed myself up to a sit and gave the air a quizzical sniff. “Whoa. Did I spill my . . . ? Oh. Ho ho ho.”

  “What’s there to ‘ho’ about?”

  “You, as a matter of fact. You threw on a splash of my cologne, didn’t you?” I leaned toward him, squinting up at a scrape on his cheek due east of his mustache—which was as neatly trimmed as I’d ever seen it. “And I do believe you’re freshly shaved. Hmmm. Spit-shined your boots, too, I see. Well well well, how ’bout that? So you decided to ladle on a little charm, after all.”

  “I ain’t aimin’ to charm nobody.”

  “Oh, please, Brother. It’s plain as day. The only thing missing’s a pink carnation in your lapel . . . which we can buy on the way to the ferry, if you like.”

  “Now, hold on. It’s not that I . . . well . . . a man can’t . . . you know . . .”

  Old Red snatched up my trousers and threw them into my face.

  “Shut up and get yourself dressed, would you?”

  Thirty minutes later, we were on our way across the Bay on the nine o’clock ferry. There wasn’t much chop to the waves that morning, yet my brother’s face quickly went so sweaty and pale you might’ve thought we were on a raft riding out a typhoon. I helped him keep his spirits up and his gorge down with yet another rereading of “The Resident Patient.”

  Old Red regained his color, if not his composure, when we got off the boat. As promised, Diana was waiting for us outside the Ferry House, and the mere sight of her brought a blush to his cheeks and a knot to his tongue.

  “Good morning, gentlemen,” she said as we walked up.

  “Good mornin’ to you, madame,” I replied, tipping my hat with a jaunty flip of the wrist. “If I may say so, you are lookin’ truly radiant this morning.”

  Gustav forewent the flattery, merely brushing a finger over his hat brim and mumbling something that sounded like, “Gmornuh.”

  “Good morning. And thank you, Otto.” Diana looked up at the scorch-mark on my forehead, which had lost most of its scarlet glow. “You’re looking rather less radiant, actually—for which I’m sure you’re grateful.”

  “Very. I don’t know what Doc Chan put in that glop of his, but it sure helped me heal up in a hurry. Good thing, too.” I flicked the rim of my boater. “These here straw hats may be all the rage, but it feels like I’m wearin’ a wicker basket on my head. Like to rub my head raw if that burn was still botherin’ me. But I reckon a little discomfort’s the price one must sometimes pay for dressin’ à la mode, am I right?”

  Old Red gave his eyes such a roll he probably got a good look at his own brain.

  “Why, Otto—I had no idea you were interested in fashion,” Diana said.

  “Oh, there’s more to read in Harper’s than detective yarns, y’ know.”

  “Well, I applaud you for expanding your horizons. And what’s more—” The lady looked up at my straw hat and nodded. “I like it. It makes you look very . . . modern.”

  “I’m mighty pleased to hear you say that, miss. Cuz some of your less-sophisticated, stick-in-the-mud types ain’t got no appreciation for ‘modern’ finery.”

  I waggled my eyebrows at my brother.

  “I got better things to think about than hats just now,” he growled. “Of course,” Diana said. “We can catch a streetcar to Chinatown over this way.”

  She started toward East Street.

  My brother and I didn’t follow her.

  “Uhhh,” I said.

  Diana stopped. “Gentlemen?” Her gaze slid over to Gustav. “Oh. I’m so sorry. I forgot about your . . . condition. We can walk to Chinatown.”

  “My ‘condition’?” Old Red rumbled, momentarily managing to meet Diana’s eyes with a here-and-gone, peek-a-boo glance. “I ain’t got no ‘condition.’ I just don’t like ridin’ nothin’ that ain’t got reins I can hold in my own hands. But I’ll be god . . .” He spluttered to a stop, gave his head a bitter shake, then started again. “I’ll be goll durned if I’m gonna make a woman walk a dozen blocks out of her way. Come on.”

  He marched away toward the street.

  Before Diana and I hustled off after him, I noticed the lady’s lips slip to one side into a smirk. It was as if my brother had just passed some secret test she’d set for him—or failed it, perhaps.

  One cable car after another went trundling away down Market, and if we’d taken one it would’ve been simplicity itself to hop off at Dupont and shoot north up to Chinatown. But Diana insisted on another route: straight over from East Street on Clay. It was a heck of a lot more direct, and a hell of a lot more scenic—the “scenery” consisting of the unbridled debauchery of the Barbary C
oast.

  The first time I’d walked through the Coast, I’d heard a conductor shout, “All out for the whorehouse!” as his streetcar slowed to a stop before a particularly grandiose bagnio. Everyone aboard had hooted and guffawed—for they were all men. Diana’s presence put the kibosh on any such antics now, however, and all but the most brazen sports who hopped on and off our car did their best to keep their backs to her.

  For her part, Diana didn’t gaze upon the Coast’s drunken sailors, dive saloons, melodeons, macks, and prostitutes with anything that looked like disgust or even curiosity. She remained so unruffled by the iniquity around us, in fact, that her very indifference began to feel like another test. Back on the Pacific Express, before we knew she was an S.P. spy, we’d gone out of our way to shield her from every sight or situation we deemed too frightful for a female. Would we try to play white knight now?

  Old Red was certainly white enough for it . . . as in “white as a sheet.” He was clinging to the nearest railing so tight it’s a wonder the brass didn’t break off in his grip. He was in no shape to stand up for propriety, for he hardly seemed capable of standing up at all.

  Which left it to me to prove that chivalry wasn’t dead—even though I had the feeling Diana would gladly drive a stake through its heart herself.

  “Why is it,” I asked after we’d traveled a block in awkward silence, “that I feel like you’re just sittin’ there waitin’ for me to say, ‘This ain’t no place for a lady’?”

  “Perhaps because I am,” Diana replied. We were sharing a seat, and as she swiveled around to face me fully, her thigh brushed up against mine. Even through all her soft lady’s skirts, I could feel the firm flesh of the woman beneath. “After all, you have said it to me before.”

  “Yup. And you sure didn’t like hearin’ it. But I reckon it was true enough when I said it. Just like it’s true now.”

  “Oh?”

  Diana arched an eyebrow and tilted her head, the look warning me like the clitterclatter of a rattlesnake’s tail: Watch your step. She’d been posing as a suffragette when we’d first come across her, and I wondered now how much of a pose that had really been.

  “What is the place for a lady, then?” she asked me. “The drawing room, the kitchen, the nursery—and nowhere else?”

  “I ain’t sayin’ that. But ladies, you know . . . they just belong . . . somewheres decent.”

  Diana turned toward the street again just as we rolled by what was obviously a bordello, since the girls leaning out the windows to taunt passersby were already (un)dressed for work.

  “Well, there’s not much decent around here, I’ll grant you. Yet I see lots of ladies.”

  “You know them gals ain’t ladies.”

  “They’re women. They’re here.” Diana looked at me again, a low-burning fire in her eyes that I realized now was always there, just waiting for someone or something to stoke it up white-hot. “If you don’t think a ‘lady’ has the strength to even pass through a place like this, how is it they have the strength to survive it?”

  Old Red had been riding alone in a seat on the other side of ours, saying nothing and seemingly seeing nothing, just hanging on for dear life. I’d almost forgotten he was there at all until he swiveled around to speak to us.

  “They don’t always survive it.”

  And he quickly turned away again.

  Whatever reply the lady might have made was cut off by the sound of catcalls from the sidewalk. A throng of jeering men—plainly a gang of the young street toughs the local papers had dubbed “hoodlums” for no reason anyone could adequately explain—had encircled a lone Chinaman. They’d already upended the basket of washing he’d been carrying, and now they were pushing him this way and that, sending him flying from man to man like the pigskin in a football game.

  On the Chinaman’s face was a look of hopeless terror. No one would come to his aid, he knew, and his only hope was that the “hoods” would tire of abusing him before his brains were beat out.

  He and his tormentors slid past us like the scene from a diorama—a hellish vision close and real, yet untouchable, too.

  “Well,” my brother muttered glumly, “we must be gettin’ close now.”

  And indeed we were. Less than a minute later, we were back in Chinatown—and once the streetcar went cling-clanging away, we were almost the only whites in sight.

  What few of us were around, the Anti-Coolie League’s sandwich man was trying to scare away, for he was once again out ranting about “the heathen Chinee.” When he spotted me across the street, he grinned and waved a pamphlet over his head like a little flag.

  “Hey, friend! You read this yet?”

  I smiled and nodded.

  “Gehen Sie sich bumsen!” I called to him cheerfully.

  Diana gave a little mock gasp. “Otto—such language!”

  I blushed so fiercely it felt like someone had wrapped a hot towel around my face. “Don’t tell me you sprechen the Deutsch.”

  “No. But I’m fluent in obscenity.”

  Old Red turned and gave the lady the most level gaze he’d yet directed her way.

  “Would you like me to demonstrate?” she said to him.

  “Naw . . . that ain’t necessary,” my brother mumbled, spinning away quick.

  Diana narrowed her eyes ever so slightly, and I couldn’t quite decide if she was looking upon Old Red with wry fondness or noting with satisfaction the effect she could have on him.

  “This way,” Gustav said, hustling north up throng-choked Dupont toward the relatively deserted side street that was home to Chan’s shop.

  Only when we got there this day, Chan’s street wasn’t deserted at all. A milling, murmuring crowd was clustered in a clump about halfway down the block.

  “Awww, hell,” Old Red groaned.

  “Is that—?” Diana began.

  I didn’t hear the rest. I was already sprinting ahead, making a beeline for something I hadn’t once seen in Chinatown till just then: a policeman. I pushed through the mob to get up close.

  “Hey! What’s goin’ on here?”

  The copper gave me a long, sleepy-eyed sizing up before deigning to reply.

  “Some Chink killed himself, that’s all,” he said in a voice that sounded like a yawn. “The quack who ran this place.”

  And he jerked his blue-helmeted head at the shop behind him—Dr. Chan’s pharmacy.

  8

  CHAN

  Or, We Nose Around for Answers and Don’t Like What We Sniff Out

  I took a step toward the door.

  The policeman sidestepped to block me.

  “Where do you think you’re going?”

  “Inside,” I said.

  I started to move around him.

  The copper moved, too.

  “No, you’re not.”

  “Yeah, I am.”

  I tried to get around him again. He was a big fellow, tall as me and almost as broad, but he could move fast. We bumped together this time, the big brass buttons of his frock coat gouging into my chest.

  “Look, I know Dr. Chan,” I said. “He’s a—”

  I almost made the mistake of saying “friend of mine,” which would’ve guaranteed we d never get through that door. Fortunately, Diana closed my mouth before I could put my foot in it.

  “Officer,” she said, snaking through the crowd with Gustav behind her, “we need to speak with whoever’s in charge here.”

  She plunged a hand into her drawstring purse, fished out a smallish, golden-brown doodad, and pushed it up under the copper’s bulbous nose.

  His eyes bulged.

  Old Red’s eyes bulged.

  My eyes bulged.

  The doohickey was a Southern Pacific Railroad Police badge.

  “We’re here to consult with Dr. Chan on important S.P. business,” Diana said. “If something’s wrong, we need to know what. Our superiors will expect a full explanation.”

  The big copper’s eyelids went droopy with disdain. “Oh, they
will, will they? And they’d be expecting it horn you, little missy?”

  “Indeed, they would.”

  The policeman shook his head and snorted out a grunt of a laugh.

  His condescension was all for show, though. In California, the Southern Pacific gets what the Southern Pacific wants, from the governor’s mansion all the way down to the harness bull in Chinatown.

  “Hey, Sarge!” the cop shouted over his shoulder. When he didn’t get a response, he took a step backward into Chan’s shop and tried again at twice the volume. “ Sarge!”

  Toward the back of the store was a narrow, doorless pass-through, and the sound of footsteps thumped out from somewhere beyond it.

  “What?”

  A head poked out—bald, blocky, sharp-edged. Paint it red and it could’ve passed for a stack of bricks.

  “Got some S.P. pussyfooters out here, Sarge. Say they had business with the Chink. Now they wanna see you.”

  “Sarge” craned his thick neck to peer at us around the bull’s bulk. The sight of Diana, so fetching in her white summer dress, and Old Red, so outlandish in his white Boss of the Plains, slapped surprise across the man’s slab of a face. He recovered quick, though.

  “Let ’em through.”

  And he disappeared with another clomp-clomp-clomp.

  The big copper stepped from our path and waved us past.

  “S.P. or not, hayseed,” he hissed as I followed Diana and Gustav inside, “next time, you ask.”

  “Hayseed?” I thought. But I’m wearing a boater.

  As we hurried up the center aisle of the store past bins and baskets of roots, pods, and mysterious blobs, Old Red glanced back at me. He gave his head a little jerk forward, toward Diana, his eyebrows up high.

  See? he was saying.

  I replied with a coy shrug.

  See what?

  My brother shook his head and looked away.

  I knew exactly what he was “talking” about, though. If the Southern Pacific had canned Diana, why was she still running around with an S.P. badge?

  It was a question I preferred to put off . . . partially because I wasn’t sure I’d like the answer.

  As we neared the back of the store, I noticed a pungent odor—a reek that, at first, I assumed was the product of the foulest flatulence my brother had ever unleashed when not on the cattle trail. (Feed a fellow nothing but beans for a few weeks, and eventually he gets to out-odoring the cows.) Yet as the smell grew stronger, I realized that even with a bellyful of beans, beer, and jalapeno peppers, no mere man could produce such a smell.