S Hockensmith - H03 - The Black Dove

by Steve Hockensmith

  Woon hit the floorboards so hard some of them splintered under his big belly. Before he could catch his breath, I rolled out from under the table and hopped atop him, a knee in his back. If I’d had any rope on me I could’ve hog-tied him in seconds, rodeo-style, but I had to settle for pinning his arms behind him by hand.

  “Don’t bother tryin’ to buck me, Detective,” I said. “I used to bust broncs for a livin’.”

  Woon roared and writhed beneath me anyway. He didn’t have more than a few seconds of fight in him, though. Then his whole body went slack, sagging, and he seemed to spread out over the floor like a puddle.

  Still, I wasn’t about to take any chances.

  “Miss . . . my necktie . . . get it offa me.”

  To her credit, Diana didn’t question. She just wriggled her way out into the aisle, pushed herself to her knees, and got to work. Within seconds, she had the necktie in her hands.

  Old Red crawled out to join us. “I’ll take it from here, miss.”

  “Oh, no—that’s alright.”

  And she proceeded to bind Woon’s hands with a perfectly serviceable diamond hitch.

  I whistled. “Miss, by any chance have you ever worked a cattle drive?”

  Diana just smiled.

  “Kill me,” Woon muttered.

  Diana’s smile vanished.

  Woon’s face was smooshed into the floor on its side, rolls of billowing fat smothering his words, and I figured I must have misheard him.

  I leaned in closer.

  “Pardon?”

  “Kill me,” Woon said again. “You learn nothing from me. Only waste time. So kill me. Quick. And go.”

  “He thinks we killed the old man,” Charlie scoffed, stepping out from behind the counter. “Some ‘detective.’ ”

  Woon snarled at Charlie in Chinese, his normally soft voice going guttural, ferocious.

  Charlie sneered something back at him that didn’t sound any more neighborly.

  “Now just hold on a minute . . . .”

  Old Red stepped between them and crouched down to look Woon in the eye.

  “It look like I just beat a man to death?” he asked, holding up his hands. “Otto, Diana, Charlie—show the man.”

  I climbed off Woon’s broad back and waggled my gore-free fingers before his eyes. Diana showed off her dainty digits, too.

  Charlie needed another prod from my brother, but eventually he trudged over and grudgingly held up his hands for Woon. He had to step over Yee Lock’s blood to do it.

  “As I’m sure you noticed, Detective,” Gustav said, “the old-timer there died recentlike . . . and died messy. If we was the ones what done him in, either you’d see proof of it splattered all over us or you wouldn’t see us at all—cuz we wouldn’t still be lollygaggin’ ’round here just a-baskin’ in our handiwork.”

  Woon’s one upward-turned eye squinted at us dubiously. Yet the Chinaman nodded and grunted, acknowledging my brother’s logic.

  “Alright, then,” Old Red said, settling himself on the floor Indian-fashion, “now that we got that out of the way, I think this’d be a fine time for us to have a little chat.”

  Woon tried to shake his head but just managed to mash his nose into the floorboards. “Do what you want. You get nothing from me.”

  Gustav rolled his eyes and sighed. “Don’t you get it, Woon? We ain’t goin’ to torture you. We just wanna know what the hell’s been goin’ on around here. You got a side to tell, lay it out for us. If you’re in the right, we’ll let you go. Hell, we’ll help you do whatever it is you’re doin’. But if you don’t tell us . . . .”

  Old Red gave Woon a reluctant “What’s a man to do?” shrug.

  “. . . then you stay trussed up like a Christmas turkey till somebody stumbles on you here. And who knows how long that might be?”

  Woon eyed my brother a moment, then shifted his cyclopean stare to me, Diana, and, finally, Charlie.

  “What you want to know?”

  Gustav’s eyes lit up so hungrily I almost expected him to lick his lips.

  “That ‘suicide note’ you took from Chan’s pocket . . . what was it, really?”

  “It was suicide note.”

  Old Red’s excitement instantly turned to irritation.

  “Oh, come on, Woon! Remember, now—I saw you switch the note on Mahoney, and we know Chan didn’t kill himself. There ain’t no use lyin’ about it no more. For chrissake, just tell us what was on that paper!”

  Woon turned his head so he was staring straight down into the floor. He looked like he wanted to dig his way back to China.

  “It was receipt for Black Dove,” he said softly.

  “A receipt?” I marveled. “For a gal?”

  “ ‘One slave girl, slightly used,’ ” Charlie said, quoting one of my weaker wisecracks from earlier in the day. “Sure. That really is how it’s done around here.”

  Diana knelt down next to my brother.

  “What did you give Sgt. Mahoney?” she asked Woon.

  The Chinaman peeked up again. There might have been a little smile tucked into the folds of blubber around his face, it was hard to tell.

  “Laundry ticket.” He struggled to lift his hands from the small of his back. “Now . . . untie, please.”

  No one made a move to unstring him.

  “Why would you wanna swipe that receipt?” Old Red asked.

  But before Woon could reply—and it didn’t look like he was in any hurry to do so—my brother nodded dreamily and offered up an answer himself.

  “The money Chan got to buy Hok Gup . . . Chun Ti Chu gave it to him, didn’t he? That’s why you wanted the receipt. I mean, here the doc owes a pile to Little Pete, of all people, yet he’s gonna shell out two thousand dollars for a ‘wife’? That’s gonna set people to wonderin’.”

  Woon just gaped up at Gustav round-eyed and limp as a dead fish. So my brother pushed on.

  “Chun Ti Chu himself told us Chan came to see him yesterday. Seein’ how news travels ’round these parts, it’s a good bet half the Chinamen in town know about it. Feller breaks wind on Dupont and they’re pinchin’ their noses from Pine to Pacific ’fore he’s even finished. So I reckon it wouldn’t take long for folks to figure out how Chan come up with that cash.”

  Still Woon said nothing, and Old Red cocked his head to one side and leaned back as a man might when considering a pretty picture from a new angle.

  “I notice you ain’t denyin’ any of this, Woon. Good. So that just leaves the question of why. Why would Chun Ti Chu bankroll the buyin’ of a prostitute? You wanna walk outta here anytime soon, you’d best answer me that.”

  Woon turned his head again so he was looking straight down. After a moment just polishing the floor with his face, he spoke.

  “Chun Ti Chu, Gee Woo Chan . . . friends. Chan very unhappy. Face so much trouble alone. Chun Ti Chu want to help. He can’t pay debt to Little Pete. Big loss of mien tzu for Six Companies. Maybe quiet he can help Chan, though. Make so not lonely, at least. But if other men know . . . trouble. Everyone want money to buy pretty wife. Chinatown—lots men. Women, no.”

  Woon said all this so whisper-quiet Charlie had to come crouch down beside us just to hear him. When Woon was through, I looked over at our native guide.

  “That sound square to you?”

  “Well, he’s telling the truth about that last part, at least,” Charlie said. “Men come over here to make a buck, and that’s it. Most of them either don’t have wives yet or leave them back in China, so you’ve got a lot of lonely sojourners around here. If word got around that Chun Ti Chu was buying sing-song girls for his pals—buying the Black Dove. Yeah. Like he said. Trouble. The rest of it, though . . .” He shrugged. “It could be true.”

  “What about the girl, Mr. Woon?” Diana asked. “The Six Companies is offering a reward for her. Why?”

  Woon twisted his neck, trying to look at her full on, with both eyes. He couldn’t quite make it.

  “Why you think? No suic
ide. Hok Gup and Fat Choy murder Gee Woo Chan.”

  “That does it!” Gustav slapped his knees and pushed himself to his feet. “You had your chance, Woon. Now you’re gonna spend the night watchin’ a dead man go stiff.”

  “But—,” Woon began.

  That was as far as he got.

  “Bullshit!”

  My brother turned, hopped over Yee Lock’s body and stomped to the counter at the back of the store.

  “The gal ain’t got no reason to kill Chan,” he fumed, scrounging angrily behind the counter. “No money to steal, with Chan broke the way he was. And that Fat Choy ain’t exactly prime husband material for a woman tryin’ to get away from whorehouses and the like. Naw. You just wanna get your hands on her so you can keep her quiet, am I right? Am I right?”

  Woon didn’t bother answering. He just took to staring down into the floorboards again. Throw a sheet over him, and he’d have served nicely as a sofa. He sure wasn’t going to do any more talking.

  “What are you huntin’ for back there?” I asked as Old Red pulled out boxes and bags and dumped their contents on the countertop.

  “Rope, of course. Or twine or straps or a strop. Anything we can use to . . .”

  My brother turned into a statue. “Pop-Eyed Man with Box in Hand” the artist might call it.

  He was staring down at the counter, at the contents of the container he’d just upended.

  “Hel-lo” he’d usually say when greeting some new clue. But that just didn’t quite capture the moment.

  “Ho-lee shhhhit,” he said instead.

  I stood and took a step closer to get a better look. Then I took an in-voluntary step back.

  Heaped on the counter was a pile of black scorpions.

  34

  SCORPION TEA

  Or, We Visit Another Healer but Develop a Whole New Pain in the Ass

  There were six scorpinos in all. They landed in a pyramid, the one on top on its back.

  None of them moved.

  It seemed plain enough that they were dead. Yet we still gave them plenty of time to prove otherwise, staring for at least half a minute before my brother finally dared picking up the topmost by the tail.

  “Like the one from Dr. Chan’s flat?” Diana asked. “Desiccated?”

  “It’s all dried out, if that’s what you mean.”

  Gustav pulled out the small black husk he’d had in his pocket most of the day. It had crumbled down to just the abdomen and one pincer, with the tail dangling by a single scrap of papery skin.

  He held the two scorpions up side by side.

  I squinted at them from a safe distance away. “Look enough alike to be kin.”

  “Yeah,” Charlie said. “Brothers, maybe.”

  Old Red put the scorpions down amidst the jumbled whatnot he’d spread across the countertop.

  “You know . . .” He looked up and gazed around the room, taking in the assorted bins and bowls lining the little shop’s one aisle. “. . . I think I finally got a handle on what this little critter is.”

  “Seeing them in a pile like that, it’s obvious,” Charlie said.

  “It is?”

  I stared at the pile of scorpions and saw . . . a pile of scorpions.

  Unfortunately for my pride, Diana nodded and said, “Yes, I see it now, too.”

  So the only (live) people in the room who couldn’t figure it out were me and Wong Woon, and the big detective wasn’t even trying. In fact, he’d gone so still down there on the floor beside the old man it almost seemed like neither of them was breathing anymore.

  Gustav picked up a dark blob that had tumbled from one of the other boxes he’d spilled out on the counter.

  “Beetles.”

  He pointed at a bowl near where I stood. It was abrim with yellow-brown sticks sporting fuzz on both sides. It looked like someone’s mustache collection.

  “Centipedes.”

  He swung his finger to a bowl on the other side of the aisle.

  “And I don’t even know the name for them things. But they used to be alive, whatever they are.”

  Diana peered down into the bowl. “They’re seahorses. And I see dried shrimp and lizards, too.”

  “Sweet Jesus,” I said, finally making the leap—and finding that it landed me somewhere pretty unpleasant. “So them scorpions are medicine? Folks . . . eat ’em?”

  “Grind them up and drink them, actually,” Charlie corrected. “As a tea.”

  “Eat, drink, either way . . . .” I put a hand to my stomach to keep it from doing cartwheels. “I don’t like the idea of a scorpion on the outside of me, let alone the inside.”

  “I’m sure you’ve had cod liver oil,” Diana said. “And prairie oysters and fried brains. Why not scorpion tea?”

  “I don’t know. Cuz it’s disgustin’?”

  “So, Charlie,” Old Red said, “you got any idea what boiled scorpions would be a remedy for?”

  “I didn’t know they were a remedy for anything till just now.”

  Diana knelt down next to our prisoner. “What about you, Mr. Woon? Do you know?”

  The detective finally lifted his flabby face up off the floor. It was covered with dust.

  “I am not a doctor.”

  “That ain’t what the lady asked you!” Gustav snarled. “Now I’m givin’ you one last chance to get yourself back on your feet.” He snatched up one of the scorpions and shook it so hard a pincer flew off. “What would Doc Chan or Yee Lock use these little black bastards for?”

  “Ask him,” Woon said, nodding at the body curled up half a dozen feet from where he lay. Then he put down his head and went back to playing possum—or, in his case, dozing walrus.

  “Yeah, well, maybe him I can’t ask, but that don’t mean there ain’t others,” Old Red said. “Charlie—there gonna be any more of these herbal-type pharmacies open this hour?”

  “None of the respectable ones. But there are a couple that stay open all night.” Charlie glanced over at Diana. “For the right kind of customer.”

  The lady opened her handbag and fished out her bankroll—only it wasn’t much of a roll anymore. It was more like a cracker.

  “I hope nine dollars can make me the right kind of customer,” Diana said after a quick count.

  “It’ll have to,” Gustav said. “Now come on, all of you—help me find something to tether Woon proper. I ain’t gonna leave the job to no necktie.”

  After a couple minutes searching, Charlie came up with some twine that would do the trick. We used it to bind Woon’s wrists and ankles, while my tie we wound round his face for a gag.

  Woon didn’t fight us, but he didn’t help us either. Tying him was like trying to put a bathing suit on a bag of wet cement. Old Red wanted to leave him behind the counter, but after one back-breaking attempt to lift him, we gave up and left him where he was.

  He didn’t say a word through the whole sweaty ordeal.

  Not five minutes after we left Yee Lock’s, we were in an identical shop a few blocks away. The only things missing were the bodies on the floor. Everything else—the narrow center aisle, the crowded bins of dried “medicine,” the flickering light of a single candle—was exactly the same.

  The proprietor was a short, surprisingly cheerful Chinaman Charlie referred to as “Lee Kan.” At first, he’d peeked out through a barely cracked door, looking drowsy and distrustful. But the second his sleepy eyes opened wide enough to take in who we were, he smiled and ushered us inside. He and Charlie chatted casually in Chinese as we filed in, but the bantering turned to bartering quick enough.

  Considering the late hour, Charlie told us, a consultation would cost ten dollars.

  “Highway robbery!” Old Red huffed, and he started to stamp out—exactly as we’d planned if a little extra leverage was needed. (It was agreed by all that my brother was the natural choice for a show of pique.)

  As Diana and I turned to follow, Lee Kan blurted something out in Chinese

  “Wait,” Charlie said to us.
>
  The two Chinamen wrangled for a minute, at the end of which Charlie nodded brusquely and handed over five dollars.

  Lee Kan grinned and waved us further into his shop.

  “Alright—the folderol’s out of the way,” Gustav said to Charlie. “Get to askin’.”

  Charlie spoke to the healer for a moment, then turned back to my brother.

  “Alright. Show him.”

  Old Red pulled out one of the scorpions from Yee Lock’s store.

  Lee Kan’s grin turned into a grimace.

  It took the man a moment to find his tongue again, and when he did his voice was a strangled whisper. It was as if he feared not just the thing the words represented but the very words themselves. They were hoodoo words—cursed.

  He pointed at the scorpion as he talked, then held the finger aloft, plainly saying “one” or “only.” When he was done, Charlie repeated back the last two words to leave the healer’s lips: “Mah fung.”

  Lee Kan nodded. “Mah fung.”

  “Mah fung?” Gustav said.

  “Yeah, mah fung?” I threw in. I glanced over at Diana, but she didn’t seem tempted to join our quartet.

  “Old Joe,” Charlie told us. “The pox.”

  “A-ha,” said Old Red.

  “Oh-ho,” said I.

  I started to translate Charlie’s translation for the lady, but it wasn’t necessary.

  “Scorpion tea is a treatment for syphilis?” she said.

  Charlie nodded.

  Lee Kan gaped at our guide, then unleashed a gush of gibbering Chinese. Charlie tried to turn back the flood with a shake of the head and a curt, one-word answer.

  “He’s asking a lot of questions,” Charlie said.

  “Well, bully for him. But he’s gonna have to wait till we’re done.” Old Red gave his scorpion a little waggle. “Ask if he stocks these things hisself.”

  Charlie dutifully converted the question into Chinese.

  “No,” he reported after hearing through Lee Kan’s answer. “The black scorpions are special. They have to be shipped over from China. He doesn’t have any.”

  Lee Kan spoke again, unprompted. He pointed at Old Red, Diana, and me as he jabbered, his strangely sunny smile returning.