Tobias blinked. “He speaks English!”
“Better than you, Wun Dan.”
“What did he call me?”
Riot decided not to translate ‘cracked egg’. Instead, he gently pushed the small boy back a step. “We can’t help you, unless you talk, Jin,” he said in Cantonese. “Every hour you stay silent is a wasted one.”
“That faan tung couldn’t find a Joss stick in a temple.”
She was angry, hurt, and fuming that Isobel had discovered her cave. Isobel was an easy target for the child to vent her rage on.
“Do you think the same of me?” he asked, as he walked closer, looking her straight in the eye.
Jin didn’t answer, but neither did she back away.
“Do you know what the tongs call me?”
She shook her head.
“Din Gau,” he said, stopping in front of her. “Do you know why?”
Jin jerked her head.
“Because they fear me.”
She might not understand kindness, but she knew fear.
“If you want my help, I expect you to make yourself presentable. Sarah will show you to the bath, and afterwards you can come talk with me. Are we clear?”
Her lips pressed into a thin line. When she jerked her head again, he turned and walked away.
“You want me to hitch up the hack?” Tim’s voice drifted from the dim interior of the stable.
“I have two legs,” Isobel said, as Riot rounded the corner. She ran straight into him, and he leaned back as her fist came up. Air brushed his cheek.
Isobel blinked. “Jesus! I’m going to put a bell on you, Riot.”
“Watson wouldn’t even tolerate that.”
“I can’t decide if I’m relieved you dodged my punch, or annoyed.”
“Both are acceptable.”
“There are some unidentified corpses that arrived at the city morgue this morning. Two men, one woman.” She stepped to the side and started towards the doors. She was bristling, charged with energy.
“A hack would be worth the wait, Bel,” he called to her back.
She stopped, thought, and turned. “In case the trail leads elsewhere.”
“Exactly.” He was more concerned about her injuries than the trail leading elsewhere, but casting doubt on her current physicality would only make her more determined to walk.
“I’ll go find Grimm,” Isobel said.
Tim glanced at him, nodded, and got to work, opening the corral door for the horse. Riot retrieved the saddle and breeching. He found the smell of leather and the weight of tack strangely comforting. It was simple and uncomplicated, something tangible to hold in his hands.
“Look, A.J., I’m sorry—for what’s it’s worth,” Tim said, slipping the bridle over the mare’s nose. “But I’d do it again. You just weren’t ready, wounded like you were. You didn’t even know who the hell I was.”
Riot busied himself with the saddle. “A part of me knew, or at least suspected. Knowing is different though.”
“So we’re square?” Tim asked.
Riot glanced at his old friend. “With a few bent edges.”
“Not as bad as the time I shanghaied you, right?”
“Don’t tempt fate, Tim.”
The old man cackled. “I got fifty dollars for your head, too.”
As Riot smoothed the horse’s coat, the edge of his lip raised. “I hated your guts for an entire year. But it was the best thing that ever happened to me.”
Tim nudged him in the ribs with an elbow. “I steered you true.”
“In a roundabout way.” It was hard to stay mad at the man who’d handed him his first pair of spectacles.
Isobel returned with Grimm, who climbed into the seat, and took up the reins. Riot opened the door for Isobel, and helped her into the carriage. “Tim, keep an eye on the place. There was a man lurking across the street—a gunfighter if I’m any judge.”
Tim grunted. “Any idea what he’s about?”
“Take your pick. He might be here for Jin, hired to kill our patient, or involved with Sarah’s uncle in some way.”
“You never could stay out of trouble.”
“And Jin’s staying in Tobias’ fort, so don’t get spooked and shoot her.”
Isobel’s brows shot up. “She is? How’d you find her?”
“I’ll explain later,” he said. “Any word on Walker?”
Tim shook his head.
“What about Freddy the horseman?”
Tim slapped his bald head. “I swear my mind is going, some days. I did actually track him down while I was out talking with Isobel’s runt. Gawd does that boy smell.”
“I pay him well,” Isobel said.
“He’s sharp, that one. I wager he’s scouting the sewers for trinkets.”
A thoughtful look came over her face.
“Anyhow, I found Freddy outside the Palm. Slick fellow, all oiled, and decked in flash. I wager he was an ex-jockey, or aiming to be by his build. So I get talking about horses, of course, and he’s bragging himself up.” Tim reached for his pipe, and knocked it against his palm, dislodging ash and dottle. “He said he knew horses, and boasted about having a ‘knack’. But when I asked him about Lee Walker, he closed up like a clam, and shot out of there real quick.”
Isobel half leaned out of the carriage. “Was it because the horse lost?”
“I don’t know,” Tim said. “But he looked uneasy to me. Made an excuse, and left real quick. You want me to poke around the race tracks?”
Riot climbed into the hack. “Make friends first. I don’t want to raise suspicion. Where there’s money, there’s men willing to kill.”
“From time immemorial,” said Tim.
“Before I go, do you have any idea what Ravenwood was doing during the Quarantine Scandal trials?”
Tim shut the carriage door. “I knew that man for forty years, and didn’t have a rat’s ass what he did most of the time.”
Isobel snorted. “Eloquent, Tim.”
“Ma’am.” Tim tipped an imaginary hat, and slapped the carriage door. “City morgue, Grimm.”
The carriage lurched forward.
Isobel was quiet as the carriage rattled over cobblestones, no doubt mulling over Tim’s conversation with Freddy the horseman. It was a new piece to add to their muddled pile, but not a significant one.
She had covered her bruised eye and split lip with makeup, and looked like a harried woman with an angry husband. Riot wasn’t her husband, but he was angry in that cold, brewing way of his. He wanted to knock down the door of that brick building, and put a gun to Parker Gray’s temple. In his younger days he might have, but experience and age had tempered his trigger-fingers.
Barely, Ravenwood grunted.
He ignored the voice, and focused on the feel of Isobel’s arm brushing his own. That was real; that was tangible.
“So you found my stray?” she asked.
“Tobias and Sarah found her, to be exact. She never left. She was hiding out in Tobias’ fort.”
Isobel closed her eyes in relief, like a silent prayer. But when she spoke, there was no warmth in her voice. “And here I thought I had the monopoly on ‘ungrateful wretch’.”
“Sorry to disappoint, Bel, but she’s not here to hear your insult.”
“I’ll make sure to repeat it when she is,” she said dryly. “Do you think she’ll still be there when we return?”
“I left her in capable hands. Hopefully the other children will ease some of her fear.”
“Unlikely.” She sucked on her bruised lip.
“Not much faith in children?”
“It’s not that,” she said. “Only that I wouldn’t trust us if I were her.”
“You trusted me,” he reminded.
“That was different. I had a blade to your ribs.”
He chuckled. “You pinned my weakness straight away.”
“I’m no damsel, Riot. Although your damn eyes were irresistible.”
“Were?”
She looked boldly into them now. Without hurry, without a flutter of unease. “Still are,” she whispered. “Are you planning on kissing me before or after our visit to the morgue?”
“Dinner, theatre, and a polite kiss doesn’t work for you?”
“Morgue, murder, and imminent danger are more my style.”
He smirked. “I had noticed.”
“Ever perceptive.” She leaned into him. “Before I drown in those eyes of yours, I was thinking that the only thing that’s keeping Jin in place is that she might not know where she is.”
“I won’t argue that.”
“Do you or Tim have any contacts in Chinatown?”
“Not directly. Informants are hard to come by in the Quarter. When a resident reports on tong activity, his neck is on the chopping block—literally. Generally informants operate through notes. When Donaldina and the Consul receive a note, they usually don’t know who delivered it.”
“Rescuing slave girls seems risky.”
“It is.” Riot thought of the Queen’s Room trap, and Mason meeting his end on the floor of a dingy hotel. Most of the time the informants were genuine, and the girls for whom Chinese residents risked their lives were indeed waiting. The risk was there, but the failure of not acting was far more keenly felt.
“From what you told me, it seems that most of the tong headquarters and leaders are known,” she said. “Why doesn’t the Consul round the highbinders up and ship them back to China for trial?”
Riot frowned, as he idly traced the pattern on his walking stick. “The former Consul General tried that very thing. As did the ones who came before. But I’d wager there’s a good number of politicians and lawmen who profit from the illegal affairs in Chinatown.”
“Never been proved?”
“A few have been caught, but they were minor cogs in the wheel. There’s the other side of the coin, too—well-meaning activists and charitable societies make a racket every time the Consul threatens to ship a highbinder to China.”
“Why would anyone want to prevent criminals from being deported back to their own country?” Her disbelief was apparent.
“Because there’s no trial—only a swift beheading.”
“Oh.”
“In my experience the vast majority of tong members join for safety,” he explained. “I’ve found three different affiliation markers on one man. A lot of men join in the hopes of being left alone. Every merchant, grocer, and ragpicker is prey to the tongs. Joining their ranks might seem like a way to escape their brutality.”
“So the Consul is tasked with cleaning up Chinatown, but his authority has been stripped away, and he has no real power to do a thing?”
“In a nutshell,” Riot confirmed. “It used to be that the Chinatown Police Squad took payouts, but Donaldina says Price is doing a fine job of stamping out blatant corruption. There’s always someone willing to take a payout on the white police force though. The Consuls generally keep their own staff of detectives and police—a sort of vigilance committee like in the early days of San Francisco. Some have even posted their own chun hungs on highbinders.”
“How’d that go?”
“It scared the highbinders for a short time, but then they came back. Boldness is their calling card,” he said. “A few years ago there was a hatchet man who walked on stage at the Chinese theatre, during a performance, and delivered a quieting dose of lead to the cymbalist—a suspected informant for the Consul. No one saw a thing, of course. If anyone had identified the shooter, they’d have been next.”
Isobel was quiet for a time, as she pondered his words. The city rolled by, and Riot watched her residents—the poor, the joyful, the desperate—each and everyone with a story of his own.
“Why a rabid dog?” she asked suddenly.
“Tongs use code words,” he explained. “A ‘big dog’ is a shotgun; a ‘puppy’ is a revolver; powder and bullets are ‘dog feed’, and ‘Let the dogs bark’ is a command to kill.”
“Ah, you’re a wild gun.”
“It seems so.”
“That explains why those men who held me didn’t want you involved.”
No criminal would. Ravenwood and Riot had both had a reputation for felling professional criminals and brutes alike.
“I see why you did what you did, Riot,” she said. “You were cornered same as me—same as Jin.”
“Only I had a number of guns.”
“As I recall, I had one too when you met me. You neatly took care of that issue, however.” She rubbed her wrist to emphasize her point. “There’s simply no justice in the courts.”
“I hope there will be one day,” he said, placing a hand over her wrist. She wore gloves, but he could feel the layer of bandage underneath.
“Hope.” It was a bitter word. “There’s something I don’t think of often.”
“You don’t hold any out for yourself?”
“I do not. Never have,” she confirmed. “Unless you count hoping I’ll go out with a bang.”
“I’d say you’re living each day like that.”
“Eat, drink, and be merry, for tomorrow we die,” she quoted.
“There’s one issue with that.”
“Only one?” she asked wryly.
“One day you’ll eat your fill, and drink yourself drunk, and wake up in the mess of your life and realize you’re still alive.”
Isobel looked into his eyes. “Is that how you feel?”
Riot took a breath. “I did. When that young hatchet man pointed a gun at my head, all I can remember is feeling a profound sense of relief. And then I came to. My life was still a mess.”
“Mess or no, I’m glad you’re alive.”
“And I’m glad you are.”
She smiled. “My mother used to say that I had a whole army of angels and saints watching over me. Maybe they kept you alive for my amusement.”
Riot laughed, the carriage rolled to a stop in front of the city morgue, and with a smile on his lips he stepped down and offered her a hand. “I live to serve.”
The city morgue was stark and solid. Not much more was needed for the dead and those left behind. Riot stepped up to the desk clerk. “My client is here to view the unclaimed,” he said in a hushed voice.
A sob tore from Isobel’s throat. It was muffled by the handkerchief she pressed to her face. Somehow she had summoned tears, smudged her makeup, and looked like a truly distraught woman. He marveled at the transformation.
“A missing loved one?” the constable asked.
“Her husband,” he confirmed.
The constable pushed a ledger towards him, and he signed his name Jack Rackham in a nearly illegible scrawl. Another muffled noise came from Isobel, but this time it sounded suspiciously like a laughing snort rather than distress.
“If you’ll sign too, ma’am.”
“Let’s not tax her anymore than necessary,” Riot said. “She’s liable to smear the ink.”
Her shoulders shook.
“Yes, of course.” The constable waved them on, and Riot offered his arm, as he led her towards a doorway.
“Rackham?” Isobel said, from beneath her handkerchief. “You’re hardly a calico, Riot.”
“It seemed fitting to keep with your pirate theme.”
“I’m thrilled you noticed.” She held his arm a little tighter.
The temperature dropped with the stairs, and the smell hit a moment later. It would have floored lesser constitutions. The unclaimed lay on the floor in two long rows. A thin sheet covered each.
A cheerful man came hurrying up. His complexion was the color of codfish and his ears looked as if they were melting. “Don’t mind the smell, Miss, or so I’m told. I’m Mr. Sims, and I’m blessed with no sense at all.” Judging from the strain put on his apron, his loss of smell had not hindered his appetite. “You can peek under the covers there. Each one is a surprise, is what I say. And don’t worry—the dead don’t feel. Right from the good book, that is. It’s the living that hurts, isn’t that
right?” He was all smiles, and led them towards the first corpse. “Good you have a friend. I’ve had some fainters. Never good on these stone floors.” As he rambled on, he swept back the first sheet, and continued, left and right, down the line of corpses, revealing each with a macabre sort of relish.
Riot glanced at Isobel, who looked as disturbed as he felt.
“It’s terrible about all these unclaimed people,” she said with a trembling voice, as she walked down the line.
“We find most of them names,” Mr. Sims said cheerfully. “Though some remain a mystery. Common in a big city such as this. People are always coming and going, with no kin to their name. Most neighbors don’t even stop to introduce themselves—not like across the bay.”
“Are you a medical examiner?” Riot asked, as he bent to get a closer look at a man with a bashed in face.
“Me?” Sims snorted. “No, I just haul bodies around, but I’ve seen a good deal. Most tell me how they die. Take that poor besotted soul there. Poison.”
“This man?” Isobel asked.
“No, that woman behind you. You can tell by the burns around her lips. ‘Course they don’t let me crack them open. Got to be a doctor for that—in the cities at least. Some towns let anyone who’s willing have a go. It’s a shame about the last coroner, though. Him being a physician and all. He was thorough, he was.”
Isobel sighed softly. Riot knew that her feelings about August Duncan were conflicted. Murder was rarely as simple as good and evil.
“What do you make of the new coroner who’s replaced him—Weston, isn’t it?”
“Hmmhmm.”
“You don’t have a high opinion of him?” Riot asked.
Sims guffawed, short and loud, but its echo lingered. “I value my job, sir. That’s all I’ll say. And you may want to put a strong hand on the lady’s arm, this one isn’t pretty.”
“Are any of the dead pretty?” Isobel asked.
“Well, yes,” Sims said. “They have a certain peace to them.” He flipped back the last sheet. And his eyes glittered, watching Isobel with anticipation. Sims had clearly spent far too much time with the dead.
“No,” she whispered. “He’s not pretty at all.” But her words were at odds with her actions. Isobel quickly bent over the corpse. Judging from the dent on the top of his skull, she had found her man.
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