No Accidental Death

by Garrett Hutson

  And two years before, Doug had made the acquaintance of an honest detective at the West District police precinct.

  On Sunday morning, the area was relatively quiet. They could still hear the rumble and boom of artillery fire around Japantown, but an extra couple of miles in distance had reduced it to a low intensity, like thunder from a storm that was still far away. Chinese-owned businesses were mostly open, and a fair stream of Chinese customers came and went, but there were few cars on the streets, and the sidewalk was mostly empty as they approached the three-story red-brick building. Most westerners in the area were still holed up at home after a long night of partying to excess. It was the Shanghai way.

  A white police corporal sat at the elevated desk in the main lobby of the station, and he greeted them upon entry in the thickest cockney accent Doug thought he’d ever heard, each of the vowels bending painfully on its way out of his mouth. “Good mornin’, sir an’ madam. Whot can I do for ye?”

  “I’m looking for Detective Sergeant Wallace,” Doug said, removing his hat. “Is he working today, by chance?”

  “You mean Detective Inspector Wallace, sir?” the corporal asked. “He ain’t in today, but if it’s in regards to a case he’s workin’, I can get a message to ‘im right quick for ye.”

  “That would be fantastic, thank you. Please tell him Douglas Bainbridge came to see him, and it’s in regards to a homicide investigation.”

  “Whot investigation is it, sir?”

  Doug hesitated. “I’d rather not say, if you don’t mind. It’s not a case that he’s working on, so please let Detective Inspector Wallace know that I’d like to consult with him.”

  “He won’t like not knowin’ whot it’s about.”

  “Please just give him the message for me,” Doug said, and then thought to add, “And please remind him that I worked with him on the Tim McIntyre case a couple of years ago. He’ll remember that.”

  “I will, sir. How can he get ‘hold of ye?”

  “He can leave a message for me at this number.” Doug gave the phone number for the navy’s office on the Bund.

  “Very good, sir, madam. G’day to ye.”

  Lucy took his arm as they exited the police station, and turned left toward Bubbling Well Road. “What now?”

  “I think Wallace will get in touch. And I think he’ll be willing to give me information, once I explain it’s for a homicide that’s only outside of their jurisdiction on a technicality. He’s an honorable policeman, he’ll be glad to help.”

  “And if he isn’t?”

  Doug took a deep breath, steeling himself. “Then I’ll have to ask Jonesy if he can dig up the information I’m looking for.”

  “That might be easier to begin with,” Lucy said as they rounded the corner, and began walking east up Bubbling Well Road, toward the eponymous bubbling well that attracted tourists during happier times.

  “I wouldn’t say that,” Doug muttered.

  “Don’t be such a fuddy-duddy,” she said, swatting at his hand. “I don’t know why you have such an animosity toward Jonesy. He’s a perfectly friendly fellow, he knows what he’s doing—and if you don’t mind me saying so, the two of you actually work quite well together.”

  He did mind her saying so, but he wasn’t about to tell her that.

  “I think you should call Jonesy anyway, whether this Detective Inspector Wallace gets in touch with you or not,” Lucy continued with her unwelcome opinion. “I’ll wager he can dig up more information for you than the police will.”

  “Why do you think that?” Doug frowned. “What’s in it for him?”

  “Why would there have to be anything in it for him?” Lucy asked, a sharpness coming to her voice.

  “He’s got his own professional responsibilities. And depending upon what we learn, I may not want him printing any of it in a news story. So then, he’s got no incentive to help me, and it would be a waste of his time.”

  “He’d do it out of friendship for you, Douglas Bainbridge.”

  “We’re not friends.”

  “The hell you aren’t!” Lucy snapped. He was surprised by the harshness of her retort, though he’d long since learned not to be shocked by her language.

  “Why do you say that?” He stopped and dropped her arm, turning toward her with a deep scowl.

  “Hasn’t he always helped you before?” She crossed her arms. “He hasn’t always been allowed to print what you’ve learned together, if you’ll recall. But he continued to help you, anyway. Given the number of years he’s offered help, I’d say if that’s not friendship, then I don’t know what is.”

  Doug knew better. “It’s not friendship. It’s Jonesy having ulterior motives, and impure intentions.”

  Lucy laughed.

  “It’s not funny.”

  “Yes, it is. Don’t be so uptight. Doug, do you have any idea how many times I’ve gotten favors from men because they found me attractive? It’s harmless, and it gives both parties a little something they want—you get information, he gets the pleasure of working closely with you. What on earth is wrong with that?”

  “You wouldn’t understand.”

  “Oh, yes I do!” She folded her arms again and glared at him. “Women deal with that from men on a daily basis. Yes, daily. You learn how to tell who’s just a harmless crush, and sometimes you indulge them a little if it gets you something you need. And let me assure you, Douglas Bainbridge, that any crush Jonesy may or may not have on you is one hundred percent harmless. He may have a gruff exterior, but underneath it all I have no doubt that Mr. Arthur Jones wouldn’t hurt a fly.”

  He sulked in silence for a moment. She’d never heard Jonesy making all those suggestively teasing comments he was so good at. Still, she had a point, and perhaps he was overreacting. “Let’s find a phone and give him a call.”

  There was a phone booth at the next block, and Doug placed a nickel in and asked the operator to connect him. The line rang ten times, and the operator told him in a Chinese accent that Mr. Jones did not answer.

  “He’s not home,” Doug said, hanging up the receiver and retrieving his nickel.

  “Try him at the AP,” Lucy said. “Isn’t someone always there?”

  Doug had the operator place a call to the Associated Press office downtown, and the call was answered on the second ring by the gruff voice of their editor.

  “Hello, Mr. Wainwright, this is Doug Bainbridge. We’ve spoken before. I’m calling for Jonesy—has he been in today, by chance?”

  “Morning, Mr. Bainbridge. Jonesy stopped in briefly this morning to file a story, but I have no idea if he’ll be back today or not. I can put a message in his box, but he may not get it ‘til tomorrow.”

  It was worth a shot. “Yes, tell him I called, and ask him to call me at my friends’ place, where I’m staying since they evacuated Hongkou.”

  Wainwright snorted. “I’m in the same boat myself. What’s the number?”

  Doug gave Kenny and Abbie’s phone number, thanked the editor, and hung up.

  “Well, that’s that,” he said to Lucy. “I can try him at home again in a while. In the meantime, I need to go aboard the Valparaiso for a little while—do you have anything you want to do downtown while I’m on-board?”

  “I can come up with something. For how long, though?”

  “Less than an hour, probably.”

  **

  Jonesy stood in the middle of an angry Chinese mob blocking Honan Road in Hongkou, a few blocks north of the bridge. They moved slowly southward, toward Soochow Creek, trailing a trio of thin men in dark tunics and conical hats who pulled along a muscular young Chinese man with short buzzed hair, dressed only in a white loincloth of the type one saw on Sumo wrestlers in Japan.

  A young woman in dark trousers and white tunic, with hair no longer than chin-length, marched in front of them, chin out, shouting while pointing backward at the young man in the loincloth.

  Jonesy couldn’t understand a word that anyone around him was say
ing—though fluent in Pidgin, he only knew a handful of words in Shanghainese—but he recognized a lynching when he saw one.

  They passed in front of the Temple of the Queen of Heaven, and everything slowed. The bridge was just ahead of them. The mob’s movement reduced to a snail’s pace, and Jonesy had to shuffle his feet along as those behind pushed against him. He was bigger than anyone around him, so he felt no danger of being trampled, but more than a little claustrophobic.

  “Mista Jonesy! Mista Jonesy!”

  He could barely hear his name shouted over the angry clamor of the mob, but he looked to his left at the familiar figure of Li Baosheng standing on his toes at the gate to the temple, waving his arm.

  Jonesy pushed through the crowd—easier said than done, even with his height and bulk helping him, and it took a couple of minutes to get there. He breathed a sigh of relief when he broke through to the narrow wedge of open space at the entrance to the temple.

  “Hiya, Mista Jonesy,” Bao said.

  “Hi Bao. Are you stuck here?” Jonesy nodded toward the mob that completely blocked the way back to Charlie and Boa’s apartment building.

  A dark cloud seemed to fall over Bao’s face, and he didn’t answer right away. “I visited the temple.”

  “Do you know what’s happening?” Jonesy asked, using his elbow to point toward the prisoner.

  Bao nodded. “The girl say he is a Japanese spy. He say he is not. She say she saw him talk to Japanese officer two times this morning. He say they come to him and ask him question.”

  “And what about all of these?” Jonesy said, waving his arm above the heads of the shouting spectators.

  “They yell, ‘Death to traitors,’ and ‘Kill the spy.’”

  Typical. Jonesy grunted, and jotted a few notes in his notebook.

  The three men in conical hats forced the young man in the loincloth onto his knees on the pavement at the edge of the bridge. Then one of them pulled a pistol from his dark trousers, placed it against the back of the young man’s skull, and fired.

  Blood and brains sprayed onto the pavement from a great hole where the young man’s forehead had been. His body slumped onto the ground.

  The crowd roared its approval.

  The three men in conical hats lifted the body by its arms and legs, and swung it over the side of the bridge into the filthy water of Soochow Creek.

  The spectacle over, the crowd began to slowly disperse.

  Jonesy’s throat constricted, and he looked away. He’d heard rumors of other lynchings in Hongkou over the last twenty-four hours, of accused spies and saboteurs. But this was the first one he’d witnessed, and it turned his stomach. He knew how these mobs operated, the spread of hysteria, and he knew the odds were better than fifty-fifty that the young man had been innocent.

  Not that it mattered much now.

  “Bao, I think you and Charlie might be better off leaving Hongkou for a little while,” he said, removing his hat long enough to wipe the sweat off his brow with his soiled handkerchief.

  The strange cloud seemed to fall over Bao’s dark eyes again.

  “Has anyone been bothering you?” Jonesy asked, concerned.

  Bao nodded in silence, and then his eyes suddenly welled over in tears, and he began to sob.

  It was an unusual display for a Chinese person; public displays of emotion—aside from the mob anger they’d just witnessed—were almost unheard of among the Chinese outside of a funeral procession. Stoicism in public was highly valued.

  Jonesy put his arm around Bao, and steered him inside the temple, away from prying eyes on the street. The last thing he wanted was for some passerby to think Bao was grieving for the young man who’d just been summarily executed as a spy.

  “What is it?” Jonesy asked softly when he’d maneuvered Bao into a quiet corner of the temple’s outer courtyard.

  “I don’t know where Charlie is,” Bao said, his crying having devolved into sniffling. He wiped at his eyes with a rough swipe of his wrist. “He was at work downtown when the Japanese ordered foreigners to leave Hongkou. I talked to him on the telephone that night, he rented a bed in a hostel near the theater. Then the bombs fell on downtown next day, and I haven’t talked to him since.”

  Jonesy’s heart sank. The second bomb on Saturday had landed at the Great World Amusement Center entertainment complex—less than a block from the theater where Charlie Ford worked. If Charlie had been killed or injured in the blast, no one would know to get word to Bao.

  He put his hands on Bao’s shoulders, and leaned close to look in his eyes. “Listen—I’m going to escort you back to your building, and make sure nothing happens to you. Then you’re going to pack a bag, and I’m going to get you out of Hongkou. We’ll go downtown and look for Charlie together, ok?”

  Bao sniffled, and wiped at his nose with the back of his hand.

  “OK?” Jonesy repeated.

  “I can’t go home.”

  Jonesy’s eyes narrowed, and his stomach muscles tensed. “Why not?” he asked, though he suspected he knew the answer already.

  “Saturday morning, Mr. Hwang tell me I have to leave. He won’t let me stay in our flat if Charlie not staying there, too. He said it was Charlie’s flat, and I am Charlie’s guest.”

  Jonesy felt the anger bubbling up in his chest, and he took a deep breath and forced it out hard through his nose, his mouth clenched in a tight line.

  “We’re going back there right now, you and me, and I’m going to make Mr. Hwang let you in so you can pack a bag. Then we’ll go downtown and find Charlie. OK?”

  Bao nodded, still sniffling a little. “Okey dokey, Mista Jonesy,” he said in a small voice.

  Jonesy took Bao by the arm, and marched him north a few blocks to the intersection at Huang Lei Road, and then east a block and a half to the building. He entered the ground floor laundry shop where Mr. Hwang stood behind the counter, placing folded clean laundry into a hamper for pick up. He bowed to Jonesy, but his face went stony when he saw Bao standing behind.

  “Mr. Hwang, we’re here so that Bao can collect some of his things. I need you to get me the key that you took from him, so we can get into the apartment.”

  Mr. Hwang made a slight bow of the head, but his expression remained stony. “I cannot do that, Mr. Jones,” he replied in slow, careful English. “The apartment is leased to Mr. Ford, and he is not staying there right now, because of the evacuation of foreigners from the area. I cannot hand out the key without Mr. Ford’s authorization.”

  Jonesy marched around the counter. After what Hwang had pulled last year with Wong Mei-ling, Jonesy had no patience for him. He grabbed the diminutive middle-aged landlord by the collar, and smacked him hard up the side of his head. “I’m not asking permission. Now where is that key?”

  Mr. Hwang didn’t answer quickly enough, and Jonesy slapped him up the side of the head again, even harder this time. Then he shook him by the shoulders. “Get me that key!”

  “I will get the key,” Mr. Hwang said, and Jonesy stopped shaking him. “It is in my office, come with me.”

  Jonesy unholstered the pistol he kept hidden under his suit coat, and pointed it at the middle-aged proprietor. “Don’t even think about getting that gun we both know you keep in your desk, Mr. Hwang. Just the key, nothing else.”

  Mr. Hwang’s lips pursed, but he bowed and turned away, marching into his office with Jonesy following right behind, gun in hand.

  Mr. Hwang stopped at his desk and opened a drawer. Jonesy cocked the gun, an audible reminder not to try to pull a fast one. The proprietor exhaled hard, hesitated a second, and then handed a brass key to Jonesy. Jonesy slipped it into his pocket.

  “I’ll hold onto this for Bao,” he said, backing up slowly, keeping his pistol leveled at Mr. Hwang’s chest. “We’ll go up there for a few minutes, and then we’ll be out of your hair. As long as you don’t pull any funny business, we’ll do our business and leave—but if you call the police on us, I’ll destroy that apartment before the
y take us away, understand?”

  “I understand, Mr. Jones,” Mr. Hwang said, but didn’t bow.

  Jonesy nodded and backed out the office door. He didn’t turn around until he was all the way out in the shop beside Bao. “Come on, let’s hurry,” he muttered. They exited the store and rushed up two flights of stairs.

  “Only take what you need,” Jonesy said after unlocking the door and standing aside for Bao to hurry inside. He glanced across the hall at Doug Bainbridge’s apartment, and wondered if maybe he should have demanded that key, as well. It would be a nice gesture to bring some of Doug’s belongings to him.

  Nah. Knowing him, he’d probably get mad that I’d looked at his underwear. Uptight bastard. The thought brought a smile to Jonesy’s lips.

  Ten minutes later, Bao shuffled toward the door, lugging two large suitcases.

  “How much you got there, partner?” Jonesy asked with a chuckle, taking one of the suitcases, surprised at its heft.

  “My clothes, and some personal things I want to keep.”

  Jonesy couldn’t fault him. Bao had no way of knowing if he’d ever get to come back for anything else. “Let’s get going. The sooner we get outta’ here, the better.” They hurried back down the stairs, each carrying a suitcase.

  When they got to the bottom of the stairs, a crack of gunfire to their right made Jonesy’s ears ring, and the wood splintered on the wall to their left, inches in front of Bao. Jonesy spun and fired without a second thought, and his bullet slammed into Mr. Hwang’s chest.

  The diminutive proprietor fell backwards into the open doorway of his shop, blood pooling behind him. His gun clattered onto the floor at the base of the stairs.

  A wave of panic tore through Jonesy, and he stood rooted in place for a second. What had he done? Then a cold judgment settled over him. This was what Hwang deserved, after what he’d done to Wong Mei-ling. But another second later, the panic returned with a vengeance.

  “Let’s get the hell out of here!” Jonesy shouted, grabbing Bao by the arm and running out the front door.

  They didn’t stop running until they rounded the corner onto Honan Road. When Jonesy slowed to a walk, he whispered to Bao, “Act normal.”