The Body Snatchers Affair

by Marcia Muller

  “Wait! We haven’t finished—”

  “Ah, but we have. I mustn’t tarry; more of the game may be afoot tonight. Bonne chance, dear lady.”

  And he was off, moving with surprising speed and agility into the shadows. Sabina briefly considered trying to follow him, but as elusive as he was, and with her clothing hindering her own movements, she had little chance of keeping him in sight. And even if she caught up with him, he wouldn’t tell her any more than he already had.

  She made her way back through the park to the waiting hansom, concern vying with anger and bewilderment. Hidden secrets. Blackmail. Something called the Gold King scandal. Whatever all of that had to do with Carson she meant to waste no time in finding out.

  Competent detective, indeed!

  12

  QUINCANNON

  During his years as a Secret Service agent and subsequently as a private investigator, Quincannon had developed contacts with an array of individuals on both sides of the law. The one he counted on most was Ezra Bluefield, the owner of a Barbary Coast deadfall called the Scarlet Lady, but Bluefield’s influence and knowledge didn’t extend to Chinatown. Nor did that of any of the shady characters who were constantly on the earie for bits and pieces of information to sell. And since he himself had had little enough involvement in Chinatown affairs until the present Scarlett case, he knew no one within that close-knit, stoic community whom he could approach directly for the address of James Scarlett’s lady friend, Dongmei.

  His only alternative, then, was another evening’s prowl through Chinatown, this time in the sections in which the area’s multitude of bagnios flourished. Even with the lingering threat of tong violence, white men bent on amorous adventure in Oriental parlor houses and cribs, like those foolishly bent on gambling and whoring in the dangerous Barbary Coast, would be in sufficient enough supply so that he would not attract attention. The right amount of money could buy anything from the flower willows and madams, including the type of information he sought.

  There were dozens of cribs on Jackson and Washington Streets, and in Bartlett, Brooklyn, China, and other dingy alleys throughout the Quarter. Most were small, crowded one-story shacks that catered to men of all races, occupied by girls who spoke no more English than the sly come-ons they’d been taught: “China girl nice! You come inside, please? Your father, he just go out!” Quincannon avoided these. None of the crib girls was likely to know where a courtesan of some standing resided alone. A much better bet was one of the parlor houses that catered to wealthier customers.

  These were reputed to be lavishly furnished establishments staffed by attractive tarts richly dressed, seductively perfumed, and often quite young. The first one he entered, on Waverly Place shortly past seven-thirty, lived up to that reputation. But it was also one of the smaller houses, with four to six flower willows, all of whom were busy, as early as it was; two men awaited their turns in the incense-clouded parlor. When the middle-aged Chinese madam refused to talk to him, he tried casually questioning the men. That bought him nothing but head shakes and muttered negatives.

  His luck was no better at the next parlor house he visited, nor at any of the half-dozen others large and small on Waverly and in Ross Alley that followed. None of the women or their clientele knew or admitted to knowing Dongmei. By the time he left the last of these “palaces of joy,” he was beginning to think, ruefully, that he’d erred in assuming James Scarlett’s mysterious lady friend was a courtesan.

  Who and what was she, then? Not a shopgirl or other woman of lower caste, certainly. In order to afford the luxury of living alone, she would have to be the daughter or mistress of a highborn and influential Chinese. Mayhap one of the elders in the Hip Sing Company? That not only seemed possible but likely. If it was Dongmei who had started Scarlett on his opium addiction, as their client had suggested to Sabina, it might well have been at the behest of Bing Ah Kee, or Mock Don Yuen, or Mock Quan, in order to entice the attorney into providing his legal services to the tong.

  Well and good, if this reasoning was correct. Find Dongmei and more than just the whereabouts of Scarlett’s private papers stood to be learned. But finding her was still the problem. How to go about it now?

  One possibility was Police Lieutenant William Price. As head of the Chinatown Squad, the “American Terror” had files on members of all those engaged in smuggling, gambling, and other criminal activities. If Dongmei was in fact related to one the Hip Sing leaders, information about her might well be included in the Hip Sing file.

  On the chance that Price might still be found at the Hall of Justice, Quincannon made his way there by trolley car and shank’s mare. The effort paid dividends; the lieutenant was in fact still on duty, he was told at the front desk, and could be found in the basement assembly room. This was where the booking station and the odious cells of the city prison were located. He jostled through the usual crowded mix of coppers, handcuffed prisoners, attorneys, and bail bondsmen and entered the assembly room.

  Here he not only found Price but evidence that the Chinatown flying squad was being mobilized. The room was strewn with coils of rope, firemen’s axes, sledgehammers, artillery, and bulletproof vests similar to the coats of chain mail worn by the boo how doy.

  “What’s all this?” he asked the lieutenant. “Preparations for a raid on Chinatown?”

  “Preparations only, for now. Tomorrow…” Price shrugged wearily. He looked as if he hadn’t been to bed since their last meeting, which was probably the case. The fact that he’d nibbled a corner of his mustache into a ragged line indicated how worried he was. “Chief Crowley’s orders.”

  “I thought it was settled that the strategy was to wait before sending out the flying squad.”

  “It was and should continue to be, as far as I’m concerned. But Gentry is still pressing for a raid on Little Pete’s shoe factory. The mayor’s office, too—demands for action, as if that would prevent rather than trigger a tong war. The chief hasn’t given in yet, but the order to begin mobilizing indicates which way he’s leaning.”

  “There’s nothing you can do?”

  “Not tonight. He’s gone to consult with Mayor Sutro. I’ll have another talk with him in the morning, but unless there are new developments between now and then I expect to be overruled.” Price scrubbed a hand over his craggy face, pinched at the bags under bloodshot eyes. “What brings you here this time of night, Quincannon? I don’t suppose you’ve found out anything pertinent or you’d have said so by now.”

  “Nothing worth sharing just yet,” Quincannon hedged. “I was hoping for a look at your file on the Hip Sing.”

  “Why?”

  “To see if there is anything that might help explain Scarlett’s murder.”

  “There isn’t. I’d have spied it myself if there was.”

  “I’d appreciate a look anyway.”

  “Reaching for straws? Your own investigation at a dead end?”

  “Only for the time being.”

  Price considered, chewing at the ragged corner of his mustache. At length he said, “Ordinarily I wouldn’t allow an outsider access to my files. But you’re no run-of-the-mill flycop, you’ve been square with us so far, and you do have a vested interest in this business. Do I still have your promise to turn over anything important you might learn?”

  “You do.”

  “Immediately?”

  “Immediately.” A stretching of the truth, perhaps, but not an outright lie.

  “Very well, then.”

  They rode the elevator upstairs to Price’s small, cluttered office. His Chinatown files were in a locked steel cabinet; he opened it with one of the keys on his watch chain, removed the Hip Sing file, relocked the cabinet, and sat down behind his desk before relinquishing the thick accordion folder. He kept a watchful eye as Quincannon paged through the various dossiers, reports, and other papers. Like all policemen, his trust of nonmembers of the force extended only so far.

  It was in the Mock Quan dossier that Dongmei’s
name first appeared. She was indeed the daughter of a highborn Chinese, Wong Fu, one of the Hip Sing elders, and a known consort of Mock Don Yuen’s rascally son. Quincannon then found a separate, single-page dossier bearing her name. It gave her age as twenty-two, yielded a Clay Street residence address, and offered an unsubstantiated opinion that her favors were granted to men in a position to benefit the Hip Sing. He scanned through a sheaf of arrest records, all of the names evidently those of highbinders and other low-level tong members. Dongmei’s was not among them. Nor were Mock Quan’s or Mock Don Yuen’s.

  The last of the dossiers he examined pertained to James Scarlett’s legal manipulations for the tong. It told him nothing he didn’t already know. Dongmei’s name was not mentioned there, either.

  “Well, Quincannon?” Price asked when he closed the file and handed it back across the desk.

  He had assumed a frustrated expression while reading and now allowed it to deepen. “Nothing enlightening, I’m sorry to say.”

  “Everything in this file is strictly confidential. You’ll remember that, I trust?”

  “Of course, Lieutenant. You have my word on it.”

  “Beat it, then. I still have a report to write before I can put an end to this long damned day.”

  Outside in the misty darkness, Quincannon considered the advisability of returning to Chinatown to call on Dongmei tonight. And decided against it. The hour was late and it was likely she would refuse to open her door to a stranger … if in fact he was a stranger to her. He stood a better chance of gaining an audience come morning.

  Despite the potential flying squad raid on the morrow, he was in reasonably good spirits as he headed home. His day, despite its drawbacks, had been more productive by far than Price’s. The connections between Dongmei and James Scarlett, Dongmei and Mock Quan, indicated he was on the right track. It seemed even more likely now that Mock Quan had had one hand, if not both, in the Chinatown intrigue. What was still unclear was the motive for Scarlett’s murder, the extent (if any) of Mock Don Yuen’s involvement, and the significance (if any) of “blue shadow” and Fowler Alley. There were other murky factors still to be clarified as well, among them whether or not he, too, had been an intentional target of the ambush outside the Cellar of Dreams.

  Ah, but it was only a matter of time now until all became clear. He could feel it in his bones. When one of John Frederick Quincannon’s investigations reached such a certain point, as this one had, a successful outcome was quite literally money in the bank.

  13

  SABINA

  Sabina didn’t sleep long or well that night. Too many things weighing on her mind, made even more acute by the odd and disturbing meeting with the would-be Sherlock Holmes. She disliked using makeup as so many other modern women now did, but the dark circles under her eyes required an application of powder and a touch of Pan-Cake. Adam gobbled his breakfast before streaking for the window she left partially open for him to come and go, but she had little appetite herself—a certain sign that she was out of sorts. But her determination to get to the bottom of the Blanchford case and the situation with Carson and the English poseur’s insinuations about him hadn’t waned; if anything, it was even stronger this morning.

  Before going downtown to hunt the additional information she needed, she felt obligated to stop at Elizabeth Petrie’s flat to see how Andrea Scarlett was faring. Much better, it seemed; Elizabeth had taken her well in hand, and the ex-police matron’s strong, motherly influence had eased her fears considerably. The two women had struck up a bond over their shared interest in needlecraft, as Sabina had hoped they might. Elizabeth was teaching her charge some new sort of stitch whose intricacies went well beyond Sabina’s limited knowledge of sewing. Fortunately, her upbringing, though it had emphasized the usual woman’s homemaking role, hadn’t excluded a broader, more sophisticated education.

  Once downtown, her first stop was the building on Commercial Street that housed the Morning Call. Founded in 1856, it was generally the least guilty of the city’s sheets of inflammatory yellow journalism, and often ran articles on such topics dear to Sabina’s heart as the abuses of women. Still, it was not altogether a paragon, on occasion joining the Examiner and others in reporting drunken escapades, sexual misconduct, political hijinks, and the alleged evils of the “heathen Chinee.” One of the two employees she’d come to see, society editor Millie Munson, with whom she’d formed a friendly relationship, was not at her desk. She was due back shortly, however, Sabina was told.

  The other casual acquaintance was present—Ephraim Ballard, the old man in a green eyeshade who presided over the Call’s morgue. Despite his age, Ballard’s memory was both prodigious and reliable. “The Gold King scandal?” he said in answer to Sabina’s question. “Why, sure, I recollect it. Mostly happened in Amador County … let’s see, about eight years ago. Had to do with the high grading of gold ore. You know what that is, high grading?”

  “Yes. Was the story well covered in the Call?”

  “It was, on account of a local bigwig being mixed up in it.”

  “Do you remember his name?”

  “Kinney. George M. Kinney. An investor and former Gold King Mine stockholder who’d fallen on hard times.”

  The name was unfamiliar, thankfully. “I’d appreciate it if I could look at the requisite back issues.”

  “No sooner asked than done.”

  It took Mr. Ballard only a short time to locate the issues. The first one, dated July 11, 1887, broke the story under bold black headlines.

  GOLD THIEVES UNMASKED

  Half a Million Dollars Stolen from Gold King Mine

  Prominent Local Investor Among Dozen

  Implicated in High Grading Scheme

  Sabina read quickly through the list of names of the other men involved. Artemas Sneed, a foreman at the mine, had been a ringleader along with the local investor, George M. Kinney, who was believed to have masterminded the scheme. The mine owners and the authorities had been alerted by an anonymous letter from a dutiful if diffident citizen who had stumbled on the high grading by accident, and the subsequent roundup of gang members had been rapid and sweeping.

  Theft was a constant problem in the gold-mining industry, the account stated, though never before on such a large organized scale as this, for the Gold King Mine had been a multimillion-dollar producer of gold, one of the largest in the Mother Lode, employing hundreds of workers. The thieves had not resorted to the most common method of removing stolen high grade from the depths of the mine—the concealment of chunks of gold-rich ore inside lunch pails, double or false-crowned hats, long socks or cloth tubes hung inside trouser legs, and/or pockets sewn into canvas corset covers worn beneath the shirt. Rather they had used tube mills, short lengths of capped iron pipe with a bolt for a pestle, to pulverize chunks of rich ore into gold dust, which was much easier to smuggle out.

  Subsequent issues carried more details about the high-grading operation, the recovery of some of the stolen gold, and the individuals involved. The trials in Amador County were covered in detail, the convictions and sentences imposed on the gang members ballyhooed as examples of swift criminal justice. George M. Kinney and Artemas Sneed received the stiffest prison terms, ten years in San Quentin each.

  When Sabina finished reading, she sat thinking for a time. Although Carson Montgomery’s name had appeared nowhere in any of the news stories, could he still have been involved and somehow escaped the fate of the others? By his own admission he’d roamed the Mother Lode during the 1880s, plying his trade in mines in several counties; the Gold King Mine in Amador could have been among them. And there was his reticence in talking about that period in his past. Yet she had a difficult time envisioning a man of his wealthy family background joining a gang of gold thieves … unless he’d been forced into it for some reason. And why had the bughouse Sherlock specifically mentioned Artemas Sneed, out of all the other known gang members?

  She asked Mr. Ballard about Sneed, but he knew nothing o
f the man beyond his part in the high-grading operation. Which meant, given his infallible memory, that Sneed’s name had not been mentioned in the Call since 1887. He did recall that George M. Kinney’s health had failed rapidly after his incarceration and that he’d died in prison of pneumonia in 1892.

  Puzzling and disturbing, all of this, to say the least.

  Millie Munson was at her desk when Sabina returned to the city room. She was a tall, thin, rather plain woman who looked more like the popular conception of a schoolmarm than a society editor—a position she hated, but worked at diligently because it was one of the few opportunities for a woman journalist. In private, she had once referred to herself as “a semirefined upstart from the Arizona desert who can shoot the eye out of a rattlesnake at fifty paces.” She was also an excellent observer who seemingly knew everything that went on among the city’s upper echelons, and not above gossiping about it.

  “What brings you here?” she asked, drawing Sabina to the chair beside her desk. Her brown eyes twinkled. “It wouldn’t be to make an announcement, I suppose?”

  “Announcement?”

  “About you and Carson Montgomery. My spies tell me you’ve been stepping out with him.”

  Sabina managed a smile. “We have only had a few dates, Millie. Our relationship hasn’t gone beyond the casual stage.”

  “But it might yet, hmm? Carson would be quite a catch.”

  “I imagine he would.” She chose her next words carefully. “He’s not only handsome and well bred, but evidently a man of high moral character.”

  “That he is. Though I’m sure he, like most men, has done his share of wildcatting.”

  “But committed no blemishes on the family escutcheon?”

  “Nary a one I’m aware of. If your feelings for him do lead to an engagement, you’ll be sure to let me know right away so I can break the news in my column?”