The first thing Pete made from it, of course, was a cringe, a gasp, and a (Chinese) curse. The Dodger, meanwhile, made a beeline for my brother.
I pushed myself off my saddle warmer and stumbled to Gustav’s side. But by the time I got my feet planted (and my head to stop swimming), he didn’t need me there. The hatchet man’s charge was called off by a fresh peel of laughter from his master.
“Oh, I like this cowboy! He is crazy!” Little Pete giggled, playfully wagging a finger at Old Red. “I just wonder”—his tone suddenly sharpened, and he turned a look on his henchman that could’ve made a gelding out of a stallion—“how he is allowed so close to me without his pockets searched?”
The Dodger went skulking back to his place beside Pete’s throne, while I hobbled to the divan and slumped next to Diana again.
“So?” my brother said. “That mean anything to you?”
“Mean? It is a scorpion.” Little Pete pitched the dried husk back to my brother. “What does it mean to you?”
“Not all I’d like it to . . . yet.” Gustav stuffed the brittle little critter back in his pocket. “But this much I do know now: Doc Chan wasn’t done in cuz some hophead hatchet man was jealous. This whole thing with the gal—the Black Dove, Hok Gup, whatever you wanna call her. It runs a lot deeper than her and Chan and Fat Choy. Which is the real reason I’m here talkin’ to you, ain’t it? A feller like you don’t bother with the likes of me just to amuse himself, no matter how you might play-act it. You got some kinda stake in this, and I’m wonderin’ what it is.”
Little Pete nodded, still looking plenty amused, play-acting or not.
“In Chinatown, I have a stake in everything.”
“Including Hok Gup?” Diana asked.
“Of course. What the stake is, though . . . ?” Little Pete gave the lady a head-shaking shrug. “I don’t even know. But Madam Fong and Kwong Ducks want the girl. Chun Ti Chu want the girl. So I must have the girl. If Six Companies say she is worth one thousand dollar, then maybe she is worth two thousand, or five thousand, or ten thousand.”
He looked away for a moment, his gaze moving to the empty show-cases that once housed ancient treasures of the Orient.
“Maybe she is priceless,” he said, his tone turning strangely melancholy.
Then he brought his eyes back to my brother, and there was no emotion in his voice whatsoever—just the cold sound of a businessman talking trade.
“But two thousand dollar is what I offer you, cowboy. You are crazy, but you are clever, too. Maybe you find Hok Gup. You do, you bring here. I give you two . . . thousand . . . dollar.”
Now, two thousand dollars wasn’t just twice what the Six Companies was offering. It was twice the money my brother and I had earned in five years of drovering—and about two thousand times what we had left of it.
So did I think about what that kind of cash could do for us? I’m proud to say I did not.
Which isn’t to say I thought Gustav shouldn’t accept the man’s offer. A yes would get us out of there. A no, though—that would get us nothing but trouble.
You might assume a wily fellow like my brother would know that—and he probably did, down deep. Up top, though, he was pissed, and it was his up top that did the talking.
“You go to hell.”
“Probably,” Little Pete said, looking unperturbed—perhaps even pleased—by Old Red’s answer. “Only you go first, you are not careful.”
He turned then, saying something to the Dodger in Chinese, and the highbinder moved toward us.
“My friend Scientific will show you the way out,” Little Pete said, nodding at the Dodger.
“ ‘Scientific’?” I asked.
“ ‘The way out’?” asked Gustav.
“You’re letting us go?” asked Diana.
“Yes,” Little Pete said, answering all our questions at once. “Go. And good luck. Or perhaps I should say . . . fat choy.”
He started to smile at his own little funny, but his lips never made it to full curl. They froze halfway up, then drooped downward into a frown.
Then I heard it, too. A muffled thumping coming through the door. It had a rhythmic quality to it—one-two, one-two, one-two—like men driving railroad spikes or chopping together at a big tree.
Little Pete muttered something under his breath, and the Dodger (a.k.a. Scientific) nodded brusquely and slipped a hand under his tunic. It was my fervent hope that he was just scratching at a sudden itch.
Here was a man who could bust through doors with a fist and snuff out my lights with a foot. What he could do with an actual weapon I did not want to see.
And I didn’t. The thumping gave way to a splintering sound, then shouts, then screams, then pounding feet.
A moment later, the men with axes rushed in.
28
FACE
Or, An Old Acquaintance Returns with a New Axe to Grind
The axe men were an entirely different breed from the hatchet men with whom we’d been tangling that day. To a man, they wore cheap suits and bowlers and bushy black mustaches.
Oh, and they were white, to boot.
A pair came bursting into Little Pete’s parlor, axes at the ready, and past them we could see more swarming up the stairs.
“We found ’em,” one of the men said. “Get Mahoney.”
His partner lumbered back out shouting, “Sarge! Hey, Sarge!”
“You’re with the Chinatown Squad?” Diana asked the fellow who’d stayed behind.
“Lady . . . ,” he said.
His eyes drifted over to me—and the black knee-pants straining at the seams to contain my manliness—and all the wind went out of his lungs.
“It’s a long story,” I said. “You were sayin’?”
“Lady,” he began again. “We are the Chinatown Squad. All of us. You don’t raid Little Pete’s place without bringing every man Jack.”
“You no raid Little Pete at all, Wood-a-gate!” Scientific snapped.
The copper—“Woodgate” I took his name to be—jerked his head at the doorway.
“Try telling that to him.”
Then he took a step toward the nearest glass case—the one that held the dragon-bedecked fan, the only item left from Little Pete’s collection of ancient Chinese bric-a-brac.
“Alright, we gotta make this look good . . . .”
He hefted his axe up high.
“Don’t you dare!” Little Pete roared.
And that’s when Woodgate did something truly shocking, something my brother and I have just about never seen a lawman do.
He listened.
“Fine,” he said, lowering his axe. “But you know how it is. I’ve gotta use this on something.”
He started toward the divan Diana and I were sitting upon.
“Hold on there, now!” I protested. “You can’t bust up the glass, so you gotta give us the chop?”
“Get up,” Woodgate barked, already bringing the axe up again.
Our butts were barely clear of the cushion when the blade came swinging down to give the back of the divan a whack.
Within half a minute, the settee was nothing but kindling and scraps of fabric. Little Pete and Scientific just stood by and watched Woodgate work, obviously disgusted but making no move to interfere. In between lops, I heard more hacking and crashing out in the hallway—as well as the softer thuds of axe handles on flesh and the piercing cries of men in pain.
“Shouldn’t we take to our heels while we can?” I whispered to Old Red and Diana. I nodded at Woodgate as he knocked over an end table and began stomping it to pieces—but only after getting a curt nod of approval from Little Pete. “I don’t mind dangerous, but now things are gettin’ downright bee-zarre.”
“We stay,” Gustav said. “Or I’m stayin’, at least. If you two wanna get out while you can, you just—”
“You were right the first time,” Diana cut in. “We stay. After all, we can’t leave before we’ve talked to—”
“Well, ho
wdy howdy howdy . . . if it’s not my favorite railroad dicks and dickette!”
Sgt. Cathal Mahoney came strutting into the room, a grin slicing into his big, pink, baked ham of a face.
“Mahoney,” Old Red grated out by way of greeting.
Diana opted for honey over vinegar.
“Ah, our knight in shining armor—or tweed, anyway.”
Mahoney gave her a bogus-bashful shrug. “Just doing our job. You folks alright? Cuz I heard . . . .”
He finally noticed there was something a mite irregular about yours truly south of the border.
“Say, Tex . . . what happened to your pants?”
“Nothin’. I’m just goin’ through a growth spurt.”
“And we ain’t from Texas,” my brother added sourly.
Mahoney looked at Gustav as if he’d just announced that iced cream gives him gas and his favorite song is “Yankee Doodle.”
“Do I give a damn?” he said.
And then Little Pete was on him, striding over to shake a long finger an inch from the cop’s bulbous nose.
“You go too far, Mahoney! You may have one, two supervisors back you! You may have money back you! But I got City Hall! I got the machine!”
The sergeant slapped Little Pete’s hand away, snarling out a three-word phrase of which I will only transcribe one, as no printer would dare set the other two to paper anyhow.
“—you”
The insult brought Scientific charging in, but Mahoney never so much as glanced in his direction. The highbinder stopped short, clenching his fists in impotent rage.
“You’re the one who went too far,” Mahoney said to Little Pete. “Chasing white people around the Plaza in broad daylight? Even the cops in your pocket couldn’t ignore that.”
He shot a glare at Woodgate, who’d been lingering silently near the showcases as if he wished he could climb inside and join Pete’s collection.
“The Panic woke people up again, Petey,” Mahoney went on. “All the bribes in the world won’t save you and your kind this time.”
“Ha!” Little Pete spat. “You talk about bribes? How you like your new boat, Mahoney? How your wife like her new—?”
Mahoney hit him so hard the Chinaman’s queue whipped around and bopped the side of the sergeant’s face.
Before Little Pete even hit the floor, Scientific was on Mahoney, delivering a kick across the chest that sent him stutter-stepping backwards. The cop tripped into Little Pete’s throne-chair and flew back into the seat, his eyes wide with surprise.
Scientific moved up fast, spun himself sideways, and leaned back on one foot, just as he had before delivering the kick that had cleaned my clock so thoroughly. He was going to flatten Mahoney’s nose—or crush his throat.
“Stop,” Woodgate said. Calmly, coolly, not shouting.
Which is maybe what turned the highbinder around. A man that collected at such a moment must have good reason to be. And Woodgate had excellent reason indeed: He’d traded his axe for a short-barreled Webley Bulldog pulled from a shoulder-holster.
Scientific planted his kicking foot back on the carpet.
“He didn’t have a choice, Sarge,” Woodgate said as Mahoney pushed himself out of Pete’s seat. “You popped his boss right in front of him. Big loss of face. He had to do something.”
“Sure. I get it.” Mahoney took a step closer to Scientific. “Honor.” And he gave the boo how doy such a wallop to the stomach I almost expected to see his fist pop out the other side clenching the Chinaman’s spine.
The fleet-footed highbinder could have easily sidestepped Mahoney’s gut-punch. Yet he just stood there and took it—though the standing part didn’t actually last long. The hatchet man grunted and doubled up and hit the floor beside Little Pete.
But even that wasn’t enough for Mahoney.
“Well . . . what . . . about . . . our . . . honor . . . you . . . yellow . . . bastards?” he huffed out, getting in a savage kick with each word. Scientific took the first four. Little Pete the second quadruple set.
“Sweet Jesus, Mahoney . . . ,” I said hoarsely. I couldn’t rate Pete too high as a host, and my brain was still bouncing around inside my skull on account of Scientific, yet it gave me no pleasure to see the two of them stomped like grapes.
Beside me, Diana flinched with each kick.
Old Red looked disgusted, too, but there was more to it than that. His face had that intent, squint-eyed look he turns on folks at times—the one that suggests a man’s merely gauze or fog he might see right through if only he finds the right angle on him.
Mahoney was oblivious to it all. He was enjoying himself too much.
When he was done, he squatted down over Scientific, and for a second I thought he was actually going to spit on him.
“How’s your ‘face’ now, asshole?”
The only answer he got was groans.
Mahoney turned toward Diana and straightened his necktie. “I’m sorry you had to see that, miss.”
“I am, too,” the lady said.
“Come on.” Mahoney held a hand out toward the door. “Let’s get you folks out of here.”
Diana, Gustav, and I started trudging out slowly, still stunned, and the sergeant moved in to hustle us along like a cowboy rounding up strays.
“What about them?” Woodgate said, nodding at the moaning men curled up on the carpet.
“What do you mean, ‘What about ’em?’ ” Mahoney snapped back. “Haul ’em in.”
“You know Little Pete’s got the sharpest shysters in town. They’ll have him out in an hour.”
Mahoney whipped around and stalked back toward the other cop.
“Dammit, Woodgate! Who do you take your orders from?” He shook a thick finger at the lumpy pile of bloodied silk that was Little Pete. “Him or me?”
“You, Sarge,” Woodgate answered quietly.
But his eyes had a different reply—a question that flared there, un-spoken yet so obvious even I could hear it loud as thunder. I glanced at my brother, and the piercing way he was still peering at Mahoney told me it was echoing through his mind, too.
Who do you take your orders from, Sarge?
29
QUESTIONS
Or, Once Again, We Sow Data and Reap Nada
As Mahoney herded us from the room, Diana turned for a last look back at Pete and his little lackey. They were still on the floor in twin heaps, but at least said heaps seemed to be breathing.
Mahoney took the lady firmly by the arm and steered her toward a wide, red-carpeted staircase just outside the door.
“Don’t shed a tear for the likes of them,” the copper said, practically dragging her down the steps. “Believe me—they wouldn’t think twice about selling your pretty, pampered self into white slavery, if they thought they could get away with it.”
“Well, thank goodness ‘the Coolietown Crusader’ was here to protect the virtue of the white race,” Diana replied tartly, and she yanked her arm from his grasp.
Mahoney glared at her with pucker-faced fury, but he said nothing. He just glanced back to make sure Gustav and I were following and kept on stomping down the stairs.
As we left, I got to set eyes for the first time (consciously, anyway) on the rest of Little Pete’s H.Q. It looked like it had been a mighty impressive place . . . before the cyclone hit. The ornate lamps and wall hangings and stained glass that hadn’t yet been busted would be soon enough, for the Chinatown Squad was laying into everything—including several boo how doy.
When we were halfway down the stairs, a particularly unlucky hatchet man went tumbling past us. He rolled to a stop at the feet of a cameraman setting up a portrait: two grinning coppers brandishing their axes, a cringing, bloody-nosed highbinder in handcuffs between them.
“Hey, watch it, would you?” one of the policemen shouted up the steps. “You almost knocked over the man from the Morning Call!”
“Oopsy daisy!” someone called out from behind us, and another Chinaman came thumping down th
e stairs.
The lawmen all laughed.
Outside, it was raining wood—chairs, tables, idols, and even axe-smashed desks were being pushed out second-and third-story windows. Blue-suited street bulls patrolled the edges of an onlooking mob, but they didn’t have to work too hard to keep the gawkers back. Wrong place at the wrong time, and you’d end up with a two-by-four through the brainpan.
As we stepped outside, a ripple of titters spread through the crowd—and sudden chills ran through me. Night was falling, and those little britches I was squeezed into didn’t do a thing to keep out the cold.
“Over here,” Mahoney said.
He led us toward one of three boxy wagons lined up along the street. Each had windows cut into the sides over the words S.F. POLICE PATROL. Two of the wagons were packed peapod full of grim-faced boo how doy. The third was empty—until Mahoney waved us inside.
Once we’d climbed in, the sergeant rapped his knuckles on the low ceiling. A uniformed policeman up top roared out “Coming through!” and gave the reins a snap without even waiting for the crowd to clear.
Clear it did, though, and we managed to roll away from the curb without crushing anyone under hoof or wheel. Which struck me as sheer luck. The cobblestones clattering away beneath us could have been Chinamen’s breaking bones for all Mahoney or his driver seemed to care.
“Cute little soapbox ya got here, Sarge,” I said, leaning over sideways to keep my head from bouncing up through the roof. “Whose idea was it to put wheels on it?”
Old Red saved Mahoney the trouble of ignoring me by changing the subject himself.
“Where you takin’ us?”
Mahoney rolled his eyes. “Unbelievable. No thank you? From any of you? Alter the Chinatown Squad just saved your skins?”
“They were letting us go,” Diana said.
“Please. If they told you that, it was only because they wanted you to let your guard down.”
“Guard down or up, it would’ve made no nevermind,” I said. “They coulda killed us any ol’ time . . . but they didn’t.”
Mahoney gave me an “awww, pshaw” swipe of the hand. “That just means Little Pete thought you could be of use to him somehow.”
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