S Hockensmith - H03 - The Black Dove

by Steve Hockensmith

  If you’d known? I thought, actually angry with the lady for the first time since I’d met her. What is it you were expecting him to say?

  “You asked your question, you got your answer,” Gustav said, his eyes suddenly cold and hard as ice. He gave me a little nod, and I took my hand away. “Now it’s my turn.”

  “Yes, it is,” Diana said. “What is it you want to ask?”

  “Same thing I hoped to ask of Mahoney: Who do you really work for?”

  There was no pause for thought or drama. Just a flat answer that landed at our feet with a thud.

  “Colonel C. Kermit Crowe.”

  The Southern Pacific’s head detective in Ogden, Utah. The man who’d once hired us.

  “Oh, Miss Corvus,” I moaned. “You mean you still work for the S.P.?”

  “No, Otto—please, believe me,” Diana said, her voice taking on an edge of desperation I’d never heard from her before. “It’s like I told you yesterday: Colonel Crowe was fired by the railroad, as was I. Since then, the colonel’s started his own detective agency in Ogden, and I’m working for him again,” She looked over at Gustav. “He’s looking to hire other operatives, as well, and, of course, I recommended you. Raved about you.”

  The lady’s gaze lingered on my brother in a way my pride didn’t like. It was entirely unclear whether her “you” referred to one Amlingmeyer or two.

  “But given how things ended with the railroad, your role in the Pacific Express disaster . . .” Diana shrugged. “The colonel needs a lot of persuading.”

  “So he sent you to spy on us,” Old Red said. “Test us a little, maybe.”

  “No—I sent myself,” Diana insisted. “I was hoping Otto’s letter from Harper’s might provide new ammunition I could use on the colonel. After all, an operative writing for Harper’s Weekly—it would have been quite the promotional coup for a new detective agency.”

  “ ‘Would have been,’ ” I said glumly.

  “Yes. That was quite a disappointment—for both of us,” Diana said. “But then you told me about Dr. Chan’s troubles, and I thought that might be the opportunity I was looking for. If I could go back to the colonel and tell him you’d stood up to a tong lord like Little Pete to protect a friend . . . well, he couldn’t help but be impressed.”

  “Only things got a mite more complicated than that, didn’t they?” Gustav said.

  “Yes. A lot more complicated.”

  The lady looked down, her lips pressed into a tight, thin line. For just a moment, she looked as buffaloed as Old Red trying to work up the nerve to talk to her.

  “I hate to say it, but Chan’s death doesn’t change the situation as far as the colonel’s concerned,” she said. “If anything, it makes this an even better opportunity to prove yourselves to him.”

  “You mean all this could still land us jobs detectivin’?” I asked her.

  She watched Old Red warily as she nodded.

  “That ain’t what we got into this for,” he snipped. “It ain’t no ‘opportunity.’ ”

  “I know, I know, of course,” she said, holding up her hands. “But wouldn’t it be better if something good could come of all this?”

  “The only good I’m thinkin’ of is catchin’ a killer and maybe savin’ a young gal’s life,” my brother said.

  But then his expression brightened a smidge, and his gaze drifted off to the shadows ahead of us.

  “Still . . . whatever comes about after we get the job done, that don’t do no dishonor to the Doc, does it?”

  Neither Diana nor I answered. He obviously wasn’t asking us. He was asking himself.

  He didn’t let himself debate on it long.

  “Anyway, what are we standin’ around here for?” Old Red rumbled. It was yet another rhetorical question, and yet again I didn’t give voice to the obvious answer.

  Cuz the longer we stand around here, the longer we’re likely to stay alive.

  Such gloomy truth would only slow us down, and we had to move quick.

  Chinatown was six blocks of hell away.

  31

  BARBARIANS

  Or, The Worst the Coast Has to Offer Brings Out the Best in Me

  Between Davis Street and Montgomery, Diana was propositioned, insulted, or otherwise disrespected a dozen times. I would’ve felt bad for her if my own tally hadn’t topped two dozen. Those skin-tight short-pants I was in may as well have been a bull’s-eye on my back, and every drunk and bawd felt compelled to comment on them.

  The final straw came when a passing seaman slapped me on the ass. I returned the favor—though with a pointed toe rather than an open palm. After Old Red got the two of us pulled apart, Diana found a way to keep me out of the sights of every passing sot: The first time we encountered a candidate of ample enough proportions, she offered the man twenty dollars for his checked trousers. He happily accepted, and the trade was made.

  While I was changing in an alley, a pair of lurking footpads tried to mug me, and I had to flee with my new trousers down around my knees.

  Welcome to the Barbary Coast.

  “Can’t even hitch up your drawers in peace in this hellhole,” I groused as we set off toward Chinatown again.

  “Well, remember—the Coast’s entire economy revolves around getting a man’s pants off,” Diana pointed out.

  I forced out a feeble chuckle—the lady’s blue streak could still throw me—and changed the subject with the question I’d been too busy dodging abuse to ask up till then.

  “So what exactly are we gonna do when we get back to Chinatown?”

  “I been tryin’ to cogitate on that,” Gustav grumbled. At the time, we were passing a concert saloon in which the house band was either falling down the stairs or being trampled by buffalo, to judge by the din. “Mr. Holmes himself couldn’t put two and two together amidst all this commotion.”

  “Which is another way of sayin’ you don’t know,” I said.

  “No, I don’t know, but I’m a-workin’ on it. What have you been doin’ besides makin’ eyes at sailors?”

  He glanced over at Diana, and his glower shifted, its sour edge softening. The lady wasn’t giving my brother the jitters anymore, but for some reason I didn’t feel as pleased for him as I once might’ve thought.

  “I don’t guess the colonel would be much impressed with what we done so far,” he said. “We been at it all day and we still ain’t even laid eyes on that poor gal.”

  “Hmmm,” Diana said.

  “Hmmm?” Old Red said back, making it a question.

  “Well . . . I’m just noticing how you keep thinking of Hok Gup as ‘that poor gal.’ A helpless victim. But there is the possibility that she went along with Fat Choy willingly. She might have even helped—”

  Gustav shook his head gruffly. “Nope, uh-uh. She was happy when Chan bought her away from Madam Fong, remember? Ah Gum told us that. And the doc, he may have hit him some hard times, but he wasn’t no opium-eatin’ crook. He was a good man. After all Hok Gup had been through, she’d wanna stick with him over some no-account like Fat Choy.”

  “We think Chan was a good man,” Diana replied. “But we only knew him a few days. Can you really see into a man’s heart in so short a time?”

  “A few days?” I said. “Hell, you can know a feller your whole life and still be surprised by what he’s got locked up inside him.”

  The words came out sharper than I’d intended somehow. They had enough sting to make Old Red wince.

  “Or so I’ve been told,” I added lamely.

  “Look . . . ,” my brother began. But then something ahead caught his eye, and soon enough it had mine and Diana’s, too.

  A half-block up, four hoodlums were circling a tall, lanky man like a bunch of low-flying buzzards. They were taunting him, tormenting him with swats and kicks that teetered on the brink of an outright beating. Yet their victim never even tried to block their blows. He seemed afraid he’d just make matters worse, and as we drew closer we saw why.

  I
t was Chinatown Charlie.

  “We caught a Chink! We caught a Chink!” one of the hoodlums crowed. He had a spare cap in his hand—snatched off Charlie’s head, most likely—and he swiped at the Chinaman with it like it was a whip.

  “Trying to pass for a white man, huh?” another of the ruffians spat. He was a squat, toadlike little SOB with a puffed-out chest and eyes that burned with the yearning to hurt. “What for? So you can screw a white whore?”

  “N-no, I j-just—” Charlie stammered.

  The Toad rammed a fist into his stomach.

  The hooligans around Charlie were too busy cackling to notice me come striding up. Not a one of them even looked my way until I had the Toad by the back of the pants and a fistful of hair.

  “Johnny Clay!” I roared, marching him toward the nearest building. “I oughta tear you limb from limb for what you did to that little girl!”

  And I launched him headfirst into the wall. It was clapboard, not brick, so the man’s brains remained inside his thick skull. But that was really just a lucky break for him.

  The element of surprise—and befuddlement—worked in my favor. As their little compadre hit the ground with a splat, the other thugs could only gape at me, each of them trying to splutter out some variation on, “Wait! His name’s not Clay!” Perhaps they thought I might pause and listen.

  I did not. I moved and swung.

  The hoodlum holding Charlie’s hat instinctively brought the soft cap up before his face. As armor, of course, it was sorely lacking, and my fist drove the tweed into his teeth.

  “Musgrave, you son of a bitch!” I bellowed as he toppled backward into the gutter. “For what happened to your sweet of granny alone, you oughta swing!”

  I whipped around to face the last two hoods.

  “Stark! Roylott! You two monsters are the worst of all! A baby? A baby? How could you?”

  “Stark” and “Roylott” looked at each other, holding a silent powwow with nothing more than wide eyes and slack jaws. In less than a second, they came to a consensus and put their agreed-upon plan into action.

  They turned tail and ran.

  “Yeah, you’d better skedaddle!” I shouted after them. “And don’t let me catch you on Pacific Street again or you’ll get a lot worse than your pals here!”

  An amused crowd had gathered around by now, and a few of the nightcrawlers actually applauded. They were the self-same people who would’ve stood around guffawing as Charlie got his guts kicked out, I’m sure. But make it a fight between some white men, and they’d be happy to cheer for whoever won.

  “Thank you, thank you,” I said. “Boy, can you believe the nerve of some people?”

  And I dusted off my hands and set off toward Chinatown again.

  Old Red and Diana were waiting for me the next block up—along with Charlie, of course. As I’d hoped, they’d quietly collected him while I made a spectacle of myself. I’d tried much the same trick when facing Scientific and his highbinders earlier in the day, and I was pleased to see I could come up with a plan that worked at least half the time.

  “Thanks,” Charlie said as I walked up.

  “My pleasure. I’m just surprised you’re still alive to almost die. What happened to you, anyway?”

  “I was just about to tell the others—”

  And Charlie spun his yarn.

  He’d been waiting for us in the Plaza when Scientific (so named for the Edison-like ingenuity with which he dispatched enemies) showed up with his boys. The boo how doy dragged him away for an audience with Little Pete, during which he convinced the tong lord we were folks he should talk to, not do in. Charlie was held prisoner in the basement until Scientific had us in hand, then he was kicked out on the street—and told he should be grateful to be alive.

  He’d lurked around outside, not sure what to do, until the Chinatown Squad showed up. When he saw Mahoney cart us away, he tried to follow on foot, hoping he could bluff his way through the Coast.

  “It was dark, I’m tall, I don’t have a queue, I wear American-style clothes, I’d bought a new hat to pull down over my eyes.” Charlie shrugged, chagrined. “I thought I could pull it off.”

  “Yeah, well, I was wearin’ a highbinder’s trousers for a couple hours, but nobody mistook me for a Chinaman,” I said.

  “I know where we need to go,” Gustav announced out of the blue. “Now.”

  “Excuse me?” I said.

  “I know where Fat Choy spent the whole damn day—only I bet he’s cleared out already.” Old Red clenched his fists and grimaced, looking like he wanted to sock himself upside the head that had so miserably failed him. “Goddammit! Why didn’t I see it before?”

  “Gustav,” Diana said gently. “Just go.”

  My brother nodded, his anger simmering down to grim determination.

  “Right.”

  Ten minutes later, we were back in Dr. Chan’s shop. And Old Red, we quickly learned, had been right on both counts.

  We found Fat Choy’s hiding place—and it was empty.

  32

  OUR DARKEST (HALF) HOUR

  Or, Gustav Sheds Some Light on the Case . . . hut It Doesn’t Last Long

  We don’t even have to climb through a window to get into Chan’s store this time. The back door was wide open.

  “That was a big of clue right there,” Gustav said when he saw it.

  “Big ol’ clue as to what?” I asked.

  “Just think about it,” Old Red said, then he lit up a lucifer and crept inside.

  I tried to do as he suggested as Diana, Charlie, and I followed him into the darkened pharmacy. Yet all I could think about was whether Fat Choy was going to jump out of the shadows with a hatchet in his hand.

  Even in the puny little light of my brother’s match, I could see that the storeroom was a wreck. Every drawer, crate, and bag had been opened and upended, and the floor was aclutter with the tools of Chan’s trade: roots, leaves, nuts, powders, and assorted unidentifiable blobs that either crackled beneath my shoes or stuck to the soles.

  “Should be right over . . . hel-lo,” my brother muttered.

  He squatted down and brought the lucifer toward the floor. Or where the floor used to be, more like. The flickering little flame revealed a square-cut hole in the floorboards—a trap door.

  “Shit,” Gustav hissed as the fire reached his fingers. Fie shook out the match, plunging us into a blackness so thick you could bottle it and sell it as ink.

  A moment later, another lucifer flared to life.

  “Why don’t you just hand matches around to everybody?” I asked. “Cuz this is my last one,” my brother said. “Now shut up so I can make the most of it.”

  While I gritted my teeth and murmured curses, Gustav stuck his head and shoulders down through the trap door.

  “What’s down there?” Charlie asked. “A cellar?”

  “Yup. A small one.” Old Red pushed himself to his feet. “And that’s all, thank God.”

  “What’s He done for us lately?” I said.

  “Enough . . . for the moment. I can only think of one thing Fat Choy might have left behind.”

  Diana nodded slowly. “A body.”

  Gustav gave me a look that asked why I couldn’t be so swift on the uptake.

  “Did you see any sign Hok Gup was ever down there at all?” Diana asked.

  “All there is to see is a hole in the ground not much bigger than a owshit!”

  Old Red jerked his right hand down, and the world around us winked out.

  For the next few seconds, all was black silence as total as the dead must know.

  “So, Brother,” I finally said, “what’s an owshit?”

  “Har har,” Gustav grumbled. “None of y all’s got a light?”

  “Don’t look at me,” Charlie said.

  “We can’t,” I pointed out. “That’s the whole problem.”

  “Why don’t you have any matches?” Charlie asked me.

  “Oh, I got a bundle of ’em . . . in my
other pants.”

  Though I couldn’t see Diana beside me, somehow I could still sense the warmth of her presence, and I moved toward it.

  “What about you, miss? Got any matches tucked away in your purse?”

  “I’m afraid not.”

  “Too bad,” I said. “How ’bout a torch?”

  “Sorry, no. And no lantern, either.”

  I heard the lady’s skirts rustle as she turned away from me. Funny how we feel drawn to face people even when we’re talking to them in utter darkness.

  “Gustav,” Diana said, “how did you know about—?”

  Old Red cut her off with a shush.

  “You hear something, Brother?” I whispered.

  “Yeah, unfortunately. You,” he groused. “All day long we been out in them crowds, in all that noise, runnin’ runnin’ runnin’. This is the first peace I’ve had all day. The first chance to just think.”

  “Make use of it, then,” Diana said. “Think. We won’t disturb you . . . right, gentlemen?”

  “Yeah. Sure,” Charlie said, sounding dubious.

  “Think away,” I added.

  So there we stood, saying nothing, seeing nothing, but smelling plenty—the rotten-egg stink of gas still hung all around us.

  I pinched my nose. What else did I have to do?

  “Look, I’m sorry,” Charlie said after maybe a half minute of silence. “This is just too weird.”

  “Oh, you’ll get used to it,” I told him. “My brother keeps me in the dark all the time.”

  Old Red sighed, defeated. “Miss, I believe you had a question. May as well go on and ask it.”

  “Alright, Gustav,” Diana said. “I was wondering—how did you know about the cellar?”

  “Well, I didn’t know about it. I just deducified it.”

  “How?”

  “Oh, it wasn’t much. I feel like a danged fool for not seein’ it sooner,” Old Red said, and there was no false modesty about it. He truly was pissed with himself.

  “We been lookin’ for Hok Gup and Fat Choy pretty much all day,” he explained. “And not only ain’t we come across ’em, we ain’t found a single soul that’s seen ’em. It’s like they walked in here and just disappeared. And those two—they’re known ’round these parts, and Chinatown ain’t that big a place. Hell, Little Pete hears of every step we take, but even he can’t find Fat Choy and the gal? It put me in mind of something Mr. Holmes once said.”