by S. L. Stoner
“Let them think he is still in that shack for a few hours more,” Sage said. “It’s certain they won’t check on him tonight and probably not first thing in the morning either. My guess is that they plan to untie him later, leaving the impression that he wandered out, fell down and the cold killed him. We’ve time to warm him up a bit before moving him to a safer place.” Sage looked across the cot to where Fong leaned against the wall, his face shadowed.
Fong straightened and stepped forward. “He is safest if we hide him in Chinatown. No one look for him there,” he said decisively. His lips stretched in that humorless expression that Sage thought of as Fong’s “hatchet man” smile as he added, “They too afraid to look there, I think.”
Sage gratefully agreed. He liked Fong’s solution because he’d been unable to conceive of a way to slip an unconscious man into Mozart’s this close to daylight.
“Best we unload Mr. Eich’s cart, wrap him in blankets, cover him with tarpaulin and roll him to provision store,” Fong suggested.
The decision made, the three quickly unloaded the cart and made a cushioned nest using Daniel’s bedroll. Once they’d swaddled Eich in blankets and pillowed his bandaged head, they pulled the tarpaulin over him and tied it down. Daniel stepped between the shafts, angrily rebuffing Sage and Fong’s offer of assistance.
“This is my job. I owe him,” Daniel said, snatching up the shafts and charging forward, his body at a slant. The cart’s wheels started creaking toward Chinatown just as dawn cracked over the mountains and the rain let up.
EIGHTEEN
Sage stumbled up the two flights of stairs to the top floor of Mozart’s, his legs wobbly as a rubber stick from all those hours of sliding up and down muddy slopes. Sleep came instantly and so deeply that the sun was down to within a finger’s width of the western ridge when he awoke.
Mae Clemens sat in the rocking chair beside his bed, mending in her lap, eyes closed, a gentle snore warbling in her throat. In repose, her strong profile always reminded him of a figurehead gracing a sailing ship prow. Her bones were hewn strong, not delicate, giving her face a powerful presence rarely displayed by other women. “Would she not have made an admirable queen?” he softly quoted Conan Doyle to himself.
Knowing she hated to wake and find him watching her, he reached out to jiggle her knee. She awoke instantly, grabbing her mending and feeling for her dropped needle even before her eyes opened completely.
“Keeping me company, Mother?” he asked.
She swiftly spooled her thread, tucking the needle into its wind. “Well, you seemed to be sleeping dead to this world and I wanted to talk to you as soon as possible,” she said, her tone complacent, now that she had things under control. “I asked Mrs. Bittler for time off to pick up my belongings. That nasty Mr. Bittler will complain if I take too long returning.”
She moved her head and the white bandage plastered to the far side of her face so grabbed Sage’s attention that he heard nothing more. He rolled out of bed and reached for the bandage.
Her hand flew up to knock his aside. “Don’t be touching that bandage, it’s not staying stuck on too good,” she said.
Sage rocked back on his heels. “Well, tell me what happened,” he demanded. “Why are you all plastered up? Take a tumble? Hit your own self out of pure contrariness?”
He was out of her reach and back sitting on the bed before her half-hearted swipe could connect with his ear.
“That’s why I waited here for you to join the living,” she said.“Someone took a shot at Horace Bittler yesterday evening— right through the dining room window. I was there, bringing dinner bowls to the table and a piece of flying glass hit me.”
“Someone shot through the closed window? The bullet hit any piece of our Mr. Bittler?”
“Nope. The shot landed wide of its mark. Whoever that shooter was, he murdered a perfectly good French vase and drilled a big hole in the wall flocking. Bittler dove to the floor while his wife and daughters screamed and bolted out the room. Now, the entire household is acting crazy, just like bottled bees on a hot day. Forced me to think up an excuse so’s I could clear out for a few minutes of peace and quiet.”
“What kind of work are you doing for them?”
“I cook mostly and perform a little bit of hand holding. Bittler’s wife is one of those nervy types trying to live above her background. Not a bad sort. She’d rather help me in the kitchen than sit in the parlor making polite conversation with gaggles of snooty callers.”
Sage leaned back against the bed’s headboard. “So, as I suspected, Bittler has reason to be worried that someone might try to kill him,” he mused aloud.
“Well, Sage, if this nick on my face has any worth at all, it’s to confi m that someone is inclined to shoot bullets in Bittler’s direction.”
“So what’s he like?”
“It’s no exaggeration to say that the man acts as though the sun comes up just to hear him crow. He’s a darn bully too. You’d think there was strings fixed to his wife’s and daughters’ body parts the way they twitch whenever his royal highness is at home. I don’t like being around the man, although he’s not said more than a few words to me.”
“He’s not entirely stupid, then. Probably he daren’t say ‘boo’ to you, for fear of how you’ll react,” Sage teased. “Sounds like a real likable fellow, though. I don’t suppose you’d listen to reason and not return to his house?”
Mae gave an exaggerated smile and said with simpering ladylike sweetness, “Why, certainly I’ll stay home. About the same time you start staying here at Mozart’s to greet the customers instead of gallivanting around getting your head thumped and, I hear tell, stumbling around dark ravines.”
“Mr. Eich’s feelings are going to be hurt when he learns you think we should have left him to freeze in that shack—especially seeing as how he seems rather taken with you.”
Color flooded her cheeks. “Hush. You won’t tell Mr. Eich any such thing, if you know what’s good for you. That’s not what I meant and you know it!” She tossed her mending into a wicker basket, stood up quickly, heading for the door. “Oh, by-the-bye, Mr. Fong is out and, since I’ll be returning to the Bittlers, you best plan to take yourself downstairs. You’re in charge of the supper hour.” The smile she tossed back at him was more in the nature of a smirk.
Sage groaned. Life would be so much easier if St. Alban didn’t insist they operate an upper class restaurant as a way for him to insinuate himself into the ranks of the city’s wealthy men. God knows, neither of them needed any more money. The interest alone on the investments of his Klondike gold strike yielded enough for them both to live most comfortably. Times like tonight, what he needed most was to talk to Fong but that was impossible if he was greeting patrons at the restaurant’s front door. It was like being a juggler with one too many balls in the air. Leo was in jail for murdering Mackey. Three men were stalking Chester, Eich and himself—the very same men he believed killed old man Mackey. Bridge collapses were imminent. The strike was tottering on its last legs and new crises kept popping up like mushrooms in a Northwest rainforest.
s s s
Midway through the supper hour, Sage won partial deliverance from his frustration when Fred T. Merrill ambled through the door. The bicycle magnate paused in the archway between the foyer and the dining room, surveying the gas-lit elegance of Mozart’s damask tablecloths, delicate glassware and gleaming silver. “Don’t usually like to eat in places like this,” he said to Sage by way of greeting. “My constituency is working class and they don’t take kindly to the idea that I might be living high on the hog.”
Sage laughed. “Well, if they are worried about you spending their tax dollars in Mozart’s, I’d be delighted to provide you a meal on the house. I owe you that.”
“Oh, Lord, no!” Merrill said, wagging an admonishing finger in the air. “That’d be even worse. As a matter of honor, I never take a cent from anyone. Take you for instance. You serve me a nice meal here in your fine
restaurant free of charge, and I don’t know but what next week, or next month, or next year, you’d be knocking at my door asking me to help with your business license or some such thing. Nope, Fred T. Merrill stands on his own two feet. He’s beholden to no one. I intend to pay tonight.” Here he leaned closer and lowered his voice, “But, really, I’m just here to talk to you, Adair. I’ve already eaten my supper, all I want is some coffee. Are you available to talk a bit?” he asked in a normal voice while straightening and raising an ironic eyebrow at the sight of the nearly empty dining room.
Sage laughed. “You’re a perceptive man. It is a slow night. Let’s find you a seat and I’ll turn my greeting duties over to a waiter so we can sit and talk.” He led Merrill toward the small table beneath the musician’s balcony where the strains of a Mozart string piece would cover their conversation.
When Sage returned from appointing his replacement, he found Merrill sipping coffee from a china cup.“Fast service here, Adair. I hope you don’t take offense at what I said. It’s just that the people I represent suffer most from the lack of money. Truth be told, when I spend top dollar for a meal in a place like this, the darn stuff just sticks in my throat. Guess it’s the sight of too many mothers touching opium-soaked rags to their babies’ lips to stop hunger pangs. Can you imagine? That darn opium is cheaper than food!”
Sage merely nodded his understanding even though he wanted to confide that he’d seen more than one baby soothed with opium and more than his share of poverty’s other equally appalling sights. He held his tongue because of Merrill’s expansive personality. Merrill wasn’t the kind of man able to hold onto a confidence. Not because Merrill was an idle or malicious gossip. It was more that Merrill’s passionate pursuit of his own goals might render him careless with other people’s secrets. He was a man who was likely to get so caught up in telling a story to make a point that he forgot he wasn’t supposed to share certain aspects of that story.
Merrill didn’t seem to sense Sage’s reticence because he jumped quickly to the point of his visit. “After you and Johnston visited the other day, I started thinking about our city engineer. It occurred to me that this elevated road situation presents the opportune time to ask the council to reevaluate whether to continue Mr. Bittler’s services.
“I thought you said that all of the council members supported his appointment?”
“Well, that’s mostly true. You recall, I am sure, that Mayor Rowe lost his seat last July and so now there’s a new mayor, George Williams. No question about it. Williams is a political machine man but, the important thing here is that the political machine Williams rides is a different one than Rowe’s. And, none of my fellow commissioners will sacrifice himself for Bittler. ‘Lily-livered’ is too kind a description of their level of courage. We expose what Bittler’s done to the public and I guarantee they’ll keep their traps snapped shut.”
“So how can a machine politician like Williams be of any help?”
“First, Williams is not beholden to the same group of thieves and grafters. Second, and more important, you recall that amendment to the Oregon Constitution that just passed? The one giving us the right to initiative and referendum? Well, it passed by 62,000 votes to less than 5,000 votes.”
Sage nodded and Merrill continued, “The folks behind that little effort are the same ones who elected Williams, and those folks expect to see the City Hall swept clean. These falling bridges are a perfect opportunity for Williams to make them happy with a decisive hit ‘hot from the bat.’”
“What is it that you want me to do?”
“Well, here’s my thinking. You said that a bridge man inspected a few elevated roadways and compiled a list of those in bad repair. I’m thinking that if that same man inspects a good number of the city’s bridge trestles, and if you give me a list of all the dangerous ones he finds, I’ll make doubly darn sure Williams takes a gander at that list on the quiet.”
“Just giving Williams the list is enough to spur him into acting against Bittler?”
“Naw, if he’s going to step out and make a big fanfare of saving everybody’s lives and rooting out the graft, he’ll want some proof. My thinking is that we give him the list, we take him to one of the really bad bridges and show him the dry rot. He’s older than Methuselah so we’ll need to find a bridge that’s easy to climb under. Anyway, if he’s convinced there’s a serious problem, he’s in a position to make a big show of firing Bittler and hiring a new engineer who will confirm the rest of our findings.”
“Sounds like a workable plan, provided Williams has the interest and guts to take on Mackey. Let me make arrangements with Chester, my bridge man. Can you get me a list of the recently repaired elevated trestles in the city? You do that and I’ll see to it that they get inspected.”
“I just happen to have a friend in the city contract office. So, I expect the list will be in your hand first thing tomorrow morning,” Merrill promised.
“But who is going to pay for the repairs to the roadways?” Sage asked.
Merrill sighed. “That’s a more ticklish problem. The city is in deep financial difficulty. Our budget’s only $75,000 a year. That amounts to $23,000 less than it was eight years ago. Yet, Portland’s population has doubled in those same eight years. We’re the third fastest growing city in the country. It’s so bad that Williams is even talking about increasing the fines on the brothels and gaming houses, though why we just can’t license them I don’t know.” Here Merrill’s lips twisted ruefully. “Actually, I just told you a lie. We start licensing them and the whole bribery corruption schemes associated with those establishments will go away. Licenses or fines, though, we’ll still be short. All thanks to the monied interests who don’t want to see their taxes go up and to heck with the good of the city and everyone else. They want to reap the majority of benefits and none of the costs.”
“I suppose, if Bittler admitted accepting bribes from building contractors, they’d be forced to pay a fine and fix the bridges or maybe even go to jail,” Sage said.
“That outcome’s as likely as a wax cat surviving hell. Even if the city fires Bittler, he’ll be able to find a job pronto quick working for one of the companies that’s been bribing him. That’s the way the old boys work. Start out with one of the city bureaus, prove yourself helpful and you move up and out. Your next job, you’re sitting pretty with one of the private firms, making more money, working a whole lot less and setting up city contracts for your new boss. Leaves you plenty of time for gentlemen’s recreations, like golf or snooker at the Cabot Club. Anyway, there is no way that Bittler is going to turn on Earl Mackey, if that’s what you’re thinking.” Merrill’s mouth twisted as if the cream had soured in his coffee. “You ask me, the both of them are crooked as a barrel of fish hooks and twice as chummy,” he said.
Sage persisted, the beginnings of an idea becoming a full-blown plan.“But, let’s just say Bittler signed an affidavit admitting wrongdoing. Is that enough to force Mackey to fix the bridges?
“An affidavit might be just the thing, depending on the judge and who he’s beholden to. It’s mighty hard to find justice in a town controlled by veteran hobnobbers.” Merrill looked at Sage with narrowed eyes. “Adair, I see from the glint in your eyes that something’s took hold of your mind. Don’t think of using physical force to make Bittler confess to taking bribes. He’ll just deny it once he’s free of you.”
“Physical force,” Sage laughed, glee taking hold. “Nope, I hold no intention of using physical force. Quite the opposite in fact,” he assured Merrill.
s s s
Chester and Stuart greeted Sage with hearty backslaps when he appeared at their door. Obviously, their confinement was beginning to chafe. “Sam, I keep telling Stuart he needn’t stay inside to keep me company,” Chester said, “but the fool thinks I’m the type of guest he has to entertain. He won’t even let me stay by myself.”
“Aw, it’s raining outside anyway. I don’t need any more soaking, I had my share of tha
t wet stuff when I was rowing the river,” Stuart responded.
“Well, gentlemen, there may be a little chore for you to do, starting tomorrow afternoon, though I can’t guarantee you, Stuart, that the rain won’t soak you through and through,” Sage said and saw their weathered faces brighten.
“Tomorrow, I’ll send you a list of all of the recently repaired bridge trestles in the city, the ones over the ravines and marshes. Chester and I already inspected some of them. But the plan is to examine all of them.
Anticipation made their eyes dance. “By golly, it’s about time we got a job to do!” Chester chortled with a gap-toothed grin that made a man grin right along with him.
“It’s going to be a treat being outdoors and doing something worthwhile for a change. This sitting around heah in this small, stuffy box is getting mighty tiring,” Stuart chimed in.
Sage fixed a stern eye on the semi-invalid.“Now, Stuart, you are not, under any circumstances, to climb down under those bridges because, if you re-injure yourself, your doctor will tar and feather me.” Sage faced Chester, “You hear what I’m saying, Chester? You make sure that Stuart stays up top. His job is to write down everything you tell him about the bridge’s problems.”