by J. D. Rhodes
Eventually, they reached the top of Sacramento Street. The crowds became even thicker, but by now nearly all the faces were Chinese. None of them were what could be called friendly.
“Sir,” Cade said, “not meanin’ to question your instructions, but it might aid me in my job if I knew exactly what we’re doin’ here. It looks like we’re about as welcome as a rattlesnake at a prayer meetin’.”
“That’s exactly the point,” Hamrick said. “I mean to show these people that I’m not to be intimidated.” To Cade’s horror, he stood up. “Here I am!” he shouted. “John C. Hamrick! Still here! Come after me, if any of you are man enough to do it in daylight!”
Cade was so shocked, he lost all decorum. “For God’s sake, man, have you lost your damn mind? Sit the hell down!”
Hamrick ignored him. “Here I am! Or can your kind only attack women and children in the dead of night?”
Most of the people in the street were looking at Hamrick uncomprehendingly, as if he’d suddenly began cutting flips like a circus acrobat. But a few apparently understood and were scowling at them. One young man moved toward the carriage and made as if to grab the reins. Cade had his Navy revolver halfway out of its shoulder holster before an older man grabbed the younger one by the back of his jacket and pulled him back into the crowd. Finally, Hamrick ran out of wind and sat back down, breathing heavily.
“Well,” Cade said as calmly as he could, “did that make you feel better?” He looked back. Apparently, it hadn’t. Hamrick was looking vacantly out of the carriage as if he didn’t see the crowd. Finally, he spoke, barely loud enough to be heard over the hubbub of the crowd.
“I never thanked you sufficiently for saving my wife and child the other night.”
“Part of the job, sir,” Cade said.
Hamrick went on as if he hadn’t heard. “That gave me time to summon the police.” He looked back at Cade. “That’s where I was. I went to get help.”
“Yes, sir,” Cade said. “I understand.”
Now he did understand. He recalled Mrs. Hamrick’s angry words from the top of the staircase. Where were you? she’d shouted. And, Cade imagined, quite a few other things before. Hamrick’s wife had made him feel like a coward. Well, he probably was a coward, but no man could stand being called out on it, especially in the presence of other men. He’d stormed out, determined to show he wasn’t white-livered, and he’d decided to do it in the most reckless way possible. Cade had seen that sort of nonsense in the war, too, from young officers anxious to show they weren’t soft.
It was hard to think of a better way to get good men killed.
“You ready to go back, sir?” Cade said. He was looking for a place to turn around. Most of the side streets he could see were little more than narrow alleys, and he had no wish to get bottled up in one of those boxes, as pretty a spot for an ambush as one could pick.
“Yes,” Hamrick said. “But not home. The Coast.”
Cade gritted his teeth. He didn’t much feel like waiting around outside another whorehouse for Hamrick to get his wick dipped, and his mind kept going back to the house on the hill. “Yes, sir,” he said. As they reached a wider spot in the street, Cade prepared to turn the team around. That’s when he spotted the tall man.
He was a white man, downright pale in fact, dressed all in black, with an unruly mop of gray hair sticking out at odd angles from his head. And he was tall. Freakishly tall, standing over the circle of Chinese surrounding him like a giant. As the carriage drew closer, Cade could see he was standing on a box. He was giving some kind of speech, waving his arms and declaiming something Cade couldn’t make out. He held a black hat in one hand that flapped limply as he tried to use it to point with. Suddenly, Cade recognized the parson he’d met on the day he signed up with Hamrick. The words became clearer as he approached.
“The heathen raged,” the old man shouted, his voice dry and rusty sounding. “The kingdoms were moved,” he raised his arms heavenward, “then the Almighty uttered his voice, and the earth melted.”
Cade stole a glance at the crowd to see how they were taking the sermon, particularly the bit about heathens. They didn’t seem to mind; most of them were grinning, enjoying the show put on by the crazy old white man. The old parson dropped his arms in a dramatic gesture, looking about him for the amens or applause he clearly expected. They didn’t come. The crowd stirred restlessly, waiting for more of the show.
Cade called out. “I don’t think they savvy your lingo there, preacher.”
The parson turned. His eyes widened in amazement. “You!” He pointed one long, bony finger at the carriage. The crowd turned, interested in this new act in the show. Cade touched his finger to the brim of his hat in respect.
The old man’s finger never wavered, and Cade realized he was looking past him at Hamrick seated in the carriage. “John Hamrick!” he yelled in a voice suddenly stronger, given backbone by rage.
“Who the hell is that?” Hamrick said.
“I seen him before,” Cade said. “He spoke to me on the street.” Before Cade could go on, the parson hopped down off the box and advanced on them. The crowd parted before him, whispering excitedly among themselves. The man didn’t seem to be armed, but Cade wasn’t taking any chances. He drew the Navy revolver, but held it loosely by his right leg. The crowd pulled back at the sight, but they didn’t bolt. They were still too riveted by the drama playing out in front of them. The sight did stop the old man’s advance, but he wasn’t backing down. He took a stance in the road, the finger still pointed like a rifle barrel.
“John Hamrick!” he bellowed again.
“Preacher,” Cade called out, “I’m gonna ask you to step back.”
The preacher didn’t. “Your day is coming, John Hamrick! A day when your money and gunmen will not avail you!” He raised his eyes to the sky. “The days shall come upon thee, that thine enemies shall cast a trench about thee, and compass thee round, and keep thee in on every side.” He dropped his gaze again to regard Hamrick with baleful, red-rimmed eyes. Flecks of spittle were gathered at the corners of his lips. “They shall lay thee even with the ground, and thy children within thee; and they shall not leave in thee one stone upon another; because thou knewest not the time of thy visitation.”
“Shut up, you old fool!” Hamrick shouted back, but he couldn’t keep the tremor out of his voice.
“Easy, sir,” Cade urged. “I’ll handle this.” But the old man seemed to have finished his oration. He’d replaced his hat on his head and was trudging back to his box, which he picked up in one hand. Without looking back, he walked over to the wall of a nearby establishment, the nature of which Cade couldn’t tell from the Chinese characters hung on a banner over the nearby door. He placed the box against the wall and sat on it. It was low enough that the old man’s bony knees were higher than his waist. He slumped down like that, his arms between his spread legs, his head hanging. He looked like a marionette with the strings cut. The crowd of Chinese looked at him for a second, some of them looking back and forth between the old man and the carriage, waiting to see what else might be going to happen. When nothing did after a few moments, the crowd began to disperse. Cade looked at the preacher. He didn’t want to leave the old man here, possibly helpless. But he didn’t think Hamrick would take kindly to offering him a ride.
“Cade,” Hamrick barked. “Let’s go.”
Shaking his head, Cade got the carriage turned around and headed back toward the Barbary Coast. He hoped whatever knocking shop Hamrick decided to patronize would offer him a beer. It had been a hell of a day, and it wasn’t even lunchtime.
CHAPTER TWENTY-EIGHT
McMurphy was laid out on a moth-eaten chaise longue in a narrow space too small to be called a proper room. A curtain separated his tiny cubicle from a darkened corridor lined with identical spaces, each one housing a man like McMurphy.
A candle flickered on a splintered wooden table next to him. He was staring into the fla
me, as transfixed by the glow as any moth. The opium was wearing off, and he was starting to feel the craving for another pipe, spurred by the return to reality.
The Chinese had failed him. The raid on Hamrick’s home had been a fiasco, thanks to the interference of the gunman Hamrick had in his employ. And he didn’t know how to reach the head of the tong to complain. He was almost tapped out, with nothing to show for it. But he had enough for another pipe. McMurphy fumbled in his pockets for the coins that would buy him a little more time when he didn’t have to think about his situation.
But when the pinched-faced old Chinese man who ran the “resort” pulled back the curtain, it wasn’t to offer him more opium. “You go now,” the man snapped.
McMurphy looked up, his eyes bleary. “What?”
“You go now,” the man insisted. “Your father.”
McMurphy struggled to his feet. “What about my father?”
“He in the street. Acting crazy. You go get.” He scowled and shook a finger at McMurphy. “Your father. Your duty.”
McMurphy’s face grew hot with shame. The old man’s wrinkled face was full of contempt. Shame turned to anger. He wasn’t going to be talked down to by a Chinaman. An opium seller, at that.
“Now listen here, you…” he began.
The old man cut him off by calling out a word he didn’t understand. The person who came to the door of the cubicle seemed to, however.
He was the biggest man McMurphy had ever seen, easily seven feet tall, and as broad as an ox-yoke. He was blonde, square-jawed, and carrying a heavy wooden cudgel in one huge hand that he tapped meaningfully into the palm of the other.
“You go now,” the old man said again, his arms folded across his chest.
“Fine,” McMurphy snarled. The old man and his giant blond enforcer stood back as he stumbled, still unsteady on his feet, out into the corridor. They followed him down the hall, up the stairs, and to the front door. As McMurphy stepped out, he saw his father, sitting on a box, head down between his knees. The passing crowd of Chinese paid him no more notice than they did the rain barrel a few feet away.
McMurphy turned back to the old man. “What’s the problem here?” he demanded. “He’s just sitting there.”
“Now. He was out here shouting and fighting with another white man. You take him home.”
McMurphy’s father raised his head. McMurphy could see he’d been crying. “I saw him, son.”
“Saw who?”
“Hamrick. Hamrick and his hired killer.”
McMurphy stared at him. “Hamrick? Hamrick was here?”
His father shook his head sadly. “I tried, son. I tried to warn him.”
“You two!” the old man called out. “Go now!”
McMurphy’s anger boiled over again. “Listen.” He stepped toward the old man, but stopped as the big white man came out to stand beside him. “I have a message for your boss.”
The man blinked. “Boss?”
“Yes. The head of the Green Dragon Tong.”
The old man looked stunned for a moment, then burst out laughing. “Green Dragon Tong?” He shook his head. “I don’t know no Green Dragon Tong.” He made a shooing motion with both hands. “You crazy. You go and don’t come back.” As if to emphasize the point, the big guard started for McMurphy.
McMurphy’s father put his hand on his shoulder. “Come on, son,” he said quietly.
McMurphy looked him in the eye and saw that, for the moment, the madness had subsided. It would be back, he knew, but he wasn’t going to let one of these increasingly rare interludes go to waste. He put his hand on his father’s. “Okay. Okay.” But he couldn’t resist one last parting shot. He looked at the old Chinese. “Tell him now. McMurphy paid him. Paid him well. And he wants what he paid for. Tell him.”
The old man merely shook his head in disgust and bafflement, turned away, and went back inside, the blond guard following. The door slammed shut decisively as McMurphy and his father trudged away.
***
This particular opium den was not, as McMurphy assumed, under Kwan’s control. But in the crowded environs of Chinatown, word traveled fast. The old man told the story of the two mad gwai loh to the woman who swept up. She told her cousin who worked in the noodle shop where she fetched lunch for herself and the other workers. They were overheard by a carpenter who was on his way to place his daily bets at one of the gambling halls that were controlled by the Green Dragon. And so it was that, before McMurphy and his father had made the long walk to their boarding house, word had reached Fang, the younger Kwan brother, who went upstairs to tell his brother Lee.
“So,” the elder brother said, “now we have a name.”
The White Orchid spoke up from a chair across the room. “But not the name of the real enemy.”
Fang looked at her with irritation. He could never understand why Lee took so much stock in this woman’s counsel. Of course, she had a fearsome reputation, but there were plenty of people who could wield a knife. He wondered, not for the first time, if his older brother was sleeping with her, and that’s what had softened his head. He turned back to his older brother. “Say the word,” he said, “and this McMurphy is a dead white devil.”
Lee shook his head. “He’s a loose thread. We need to pull on him and see what comes loose.”
The White Orchid stood. “I’ll fetch him.”
“No,” Lee said. “Whatever we find out from this McMurphy won’t be believed by Hamrick.” He tapped his fingers on the desktop for a moment. “Bring me this man Cade.”
CHAPTER TWENTY-NINE
Fang scowled. “Cade? What good will he do?”
But it was The White Orchid who answered, nodding. “If we take Cade, and return him unharmed, it will show Hamrick both that he cannot stop us and that we mean him no harm. And we can set Cade to finding out what we need to know.” She bowed deeply. “Very clever, Great One.” With a contemptuous smile at Fang, she left the room.
Fang’s face was hot with rage. “She flatters you. Is that why you let her speak as if she was an equal?” He leered at his elder brother. “Or does she do other things for you?”
Lee’s face was like stone. “She does as she’s ordered, Younger Brother,” he said, placing extra emphasis on the last two words. “And her counsel has never failed me.”
Fang looked as if he’d been slapped in the face. “There was a time when you said the same thing of me.”
“Your advice has always been wise as well. But lately, I think it’s been clouded by greed.”
“Money is power, Elder Brother. And power is safety. The proposition…” He stopped at a raised hand from Lee.
“We’re not going over that again, Younger Brother. We grow richer every day on gambling and opium. To expand into the importation of women is unnecessary, and would bring us into conflict with the Hip Yee Tong.”
“We can beat the Hip Yee,” Fang said. “Easily. The white policemen we pay could be persuaded to wipe them out for just a little more money.”
Lee shook his head. “No doubt. But war is bad for business.” He stood. “The white devils have a fable about a tortoise racing a hare. The tortoise wins because the hare becomes overconfident and wastes his time and energy, while the tortoise concentrates on his task.”
Fang rolled his eyes. “That’s a stupid story. Even the Americans don’t believe that anymore. Growth is everything here. Growth and gold.”
Lee nodded. “And that is their weakness. Let’s not let it become ours.”
Fang bowed. “I have to get back to work.”
His brother nodded. “Slow and steady, Younger Brother.”
As Fang left, he couldn’t help feeling sad about what he had to do. He did truly love and respect his elder brother. But he was becoming an old man before his time, hidebound and sluggish. And in America, the slow and steady didn’t just lose the race. They got devoured whole.
***
Samuel me
t them at the back door as Cade brought the carriage around. Cade answered his questioning look with a shake of his head that said not just yet.
Hamrick strode into the house without speaking. Samuel began helping Cade unhook the horses from the carriage. “What happened?”
Cade shook his head. “Damn fool wanted to prove a point to the Chinese, I guess. Took us down to Chinatown and started hollering and puffing out his chest like he was daring someone to put a bullet in it.”
Samuel blew out his breath. “That’s not really what I’d call sane.”
“Me either.”
They put the horses away, rubbed them down, and fed them. Cade gave each one an extra pat on the muzzle. They really were some of the finest animals he’d seen.
Inside the house, Bridget had left them a late lunch, a half each of cold baked chicken with sides of spuds and green beans, the plates covered to await their arrival. A basket of rolls sat on the center of the table next to a pair of pitchers, one of water and one of beer.
As they took their seats, Cade said, “I guess with just the two of us, we need to set a watch schedule.”
Samuel tried to speak through a mouthful of chicken, then swallowed and began again. “I could take nights, and you days?”
Cade shook his head. “A sentry on duty too long is gonna lose his concentration. Especially at night.” He sighed. “Supposed to relieve a sentry every couple of hours, actually. But neither one of us will get any damn sleep that way. Let’s try four on and four off.”
Samuel looked dubious, but nodded.
They finished the meal in silence. By the end, they were stuffed and contented, and platters, bowls, and pitchers were empty. They were collecting dishes when Mrs. Hamrick appeared in the kitchen door. “Mr. Cade,” she said, “may I have a word?”