by Jake Logan
“Yes, of course.”
“You must be Captain Reilly,” Sir William greeted. He thrust out his hand. The police officer glared at him and did not shake his hand.
“You one of them lawyers who think the Cubic Air Ordinance is a crock of shit?”
“I have no idea what you mean. I am not a lawyer.”
“Then why are you here?” The captain was a bulldog of a man, with fierce eyes and a beetle brow. He had ample red hair that he had worked into long sideburns and a bushy mustache to go with the curly mop top.
“I have some knowledge of the Orient and might help find what transpired last night.” Sir William stepped to one side to get a better look at the prisoner. “I say, this one seems to have expired.”
“He croaked,” the captain said. “We got three more.”
“What have you discovered?”
“Can’t make head nor tail out of what they’re yammerin’,” the captain said. “They’re speakin’ Chinee, though it ain’t what most of the others here in San Francisco talk.”
“Cantonese rather than Mandarin,” Sir William said thoughtfully. “It is as I suspected. Most Chinese sailors are from the southern provinces.”
“We want to find who paid them to bust in like that and try to steal your jade. Already we got four complaints going all the way up to the mayor’s office about this. They scared some mighty powerful gents in the city.”
“I am sure,” Sir William said dryly.
Tess felt faint from the smell and the sight of the body. The sailor was slumped down in a chair where he had been tied. The steady drip of blood from his face into his lap and onto his legs showed he had not been dead long. Otherwise, the blood would have coagulated.
“Get your notebook, my dear,” Sir William said airily. “It is time to ask questions.”
“You want her to see?” The captain was as skeptical as the desk sergeant had been about Tess’s witnessing how they questioned their prisoners. And with good reason, if death was a common part of the interrogation.
“Why not? They’re only Celestials, after all,” Sir William said.
The captain shrugged and wiped his bloody hands on his uniform.
“This way, then,” he said.
Tess followed reluctantly. She was both repulsed and drawn by the squalor in the cell block. It was the only time she had witnessed such debasement and made her wonder about the sights Sir William had endured on his travels throughout the world.
“This one looks to be the ringleader,” Captain Reilly said. “Wake up there, boyo.” He rattled the cell door hard enough to get the attention of the Chinaman inside. Tess saw bruises and more than one cut on his face.
“Has he been questioned already?” she asked.
“Naw, that was what he got for resistin’ arrest last night. I wanted to get something on him from the others ’fore gettin’ down to serious questionin’.”
“I see,” she said. She stared at the man and details from the prior night worked their way back into her memory. This was the man the elegantly dressed Chinese lady had glared at and mouthed a word to.
Captain Reilly opened the cell and stepped inside.
“He’s harmless. He was cowed last night. Once their spirits are broke, the Chinee are as docile as—”
“Sung,” Tess said. “Sung.”
The prisoner reacted as if he had stepped on a rattlesnake. He shot from the chair, lowered his shoulder and caught the captain in the midriff. Tess heard the air gust from the policeman’s lungs. Even Sir William was taken by the surprise attack. The Celestial shoved the explorer out of the way, stared hard and hot at Tess, then swung around and slammed the cell door. She heard it click. Both Sir William and Captain Reilly were locked inside while she stood with the escaping prisoner outside the cage.
“Wh-what are you going to do, Sung?” she added what must be the man’s name in an attempt to slow him. The police station was filled with armed officers. They could stop Sung if she could slow his escape.
“Guards!” bellowed Reilly. “Prisoner on the loose!”
Sung reached through the bars, grabbed the captain’s jacket and pulled hard enough to smash his head into the iron door. Reilly sank to the floor, unconscious.
“Run, my dear. Don’t let him take you alive!” Sir William stepped away as Sung grabbed for him. The sailor backed off, glared at Tess again, then squared his shoulders and strutted down the corridor as if he owned the place. He turned a corner and vanished from sight. Tess heard a struggle and then nothing.
“Get the keys. Free us!” Sir William was agitated now.
Tess cautiously went down the corridor and peeked around. A policeman lay flat on his back, knocked out. The rear door to the jailhouse swung open and a key in the lock showed how the Celestial had escaped. Tess looked over her shoulder and saw a thick knot of police crowded in front of the cell. The turnkey was working to open the cell door and let out his furious captain. Blood trickled down the police officer’s scowling face. Sir William strolled out as if he were on an afternoon jaunt.
“Aren’t you frightened, Sir William?” she asked when he came up. “That man is dangerous.”
“No more dangerous than others I have confronted in my years of roaming the entire world,” he said. His eyes darted about as he took in the scene. “This looks to be jolly good sport.”
“What?” Tess could hardly believe her ears.
“We can track the brigand through the streets, just as if he were a wild animal in the densest jungles of Borneo. When I bag him, it will be a great victory.”
“You’re going to shoot him?” Tess had a wild image of Sir William gunning down the Chinese sailor and then mounting his head on a wall somewhere.
“If circumstances so dictate. Come along, my dear. We have much to do.”
“We didn’t learn anything from him, and the police beat that one poor man to death.”
“Poor man? Ha! Hardly. He would have snuffed out your life like a flickering candle flame if the opportunity had arisen. Society is better off without such ferocious, immoral animals.”
Tess trailed her employer, uneasy at the continuing allusions to hunting and game in the wild.
“Back to my hotel, driver,” he snapped. He hopped into the carriage and let Tess fend for herself getting in. Barely had she settled down when the carriage lurched forward. The driver whipped the horse to move at close to a gallop. He had worked for Sir William long enough to know the explorer’s quicksilver moods and profit by them.
“What shall we do?” Tess looked at Sir William. He was lost in thought.
“Track him. We don’t have beaters, and there are no native gun bearers available. Curse civilization!”
“The police are hunting for him,” Tess pointed out. All around galloped officers on horseback, spreading the word about an escapee from the jail. The policemen had to know by now that Sung had disgraced their captain by locking him up in his own cell. Some would secretly rejoice at this, but no one would openly mention it.
“What do they know? They let him escape, didn’t they?”
“If he goes to Chinatown, he will disappear.”
“Ah, is that what the police think? They will cordon off the yellow section of town to prevent our escapee from reaching what looks to be safety?”
“I would suspect so,” Tess said.
“But he is not of this town. He is a sailor. He will return to the sea. We begin our hunt along the Embarcadero.”
Tess said nothing more. She had seen how many Chinamen worked as cargo handlers. If Sung—and she was sure that was his name—did not go to Chinatown, then he could as easily blend in among the dockworkers.
They returned to the hotel where Sir William changed into clothes better suited for the jungles of India. Reluctantly, Tess went along, staying close to the carriage as he drove this way and that for more than an hour before finally admitting he could not track his quarry.
Tess avoided him the rest of the day because
of his foul mood.
Sung stepped out into the bright California sunlight and turned his sallow face to the sky. It felt good to be out of the foul-smelling jail cell. He rubbed his knuckles. He might have cracked one when he struck the policeman guarding the rear door to the jailhouse. A powerful blow had been necessary to keep him from crying out and alerting the others. As it was, Sung heard the clamor inside as the police captain raised the alarm.
Sung wished he had killed the man for what he had done to Ju Ling. Sung had listened to the blows and Ju Ling’s outcries turn from defiance to begging for mercy. Not once did the beating let up. Sung knew the precise moment when his friend had died. There were not even tiny moans of pain, but the meaty thunks of a club hitting flesh had continued.
He walked down the block until he was out of sight of the police station, then broke into a trot. As it was, the sight of a running Chinaman drew attention. He slowed and kept to the alleys and smaller streets that were not as well patrolled by the police. Always he kept his goal in front of him: the harbor.
When Sung reached the Embarcadero he walked slowly, hunting for a dinghy or rowboat carelessly left untended. More than once he looked up at the junk bobbing serenely on the waves in the bay. Returning to his ship was as sure a death as remaining in the police cell, but duty forced him to such a fate. He had sailed as a pirate most of his life and had fought fierce battles. Twice he had almost died, but always his opponent went down with his sword through his gut.
Sung resigned himself to dying now because he had failed his captain.
Not seeing a boat suitable for stealing, Sung went down to the shoreline and estimated the distance he would have to swim. Two miles. Not so much, although the water was freezing. He shivered, took a deep breath, then made a clean dive into the choppy waves. He went down low, the cold sucking away his energy and then surfaced. With a slow, steady stroke, he began swimming.
By the time he reached the junk he was almost blue from cold.
“Captain,” he cried as he crawled over the railing and flopped on the deck. He rolled onto his belly and banged his forehead against the deck he had never expected to see again.
“Sung,” Lai Choi San replied. She wore her ship’s gear now, having carefully packed the white satin dress and the emerald green shawl in her cabin. She looked more regal in the padded jacket, cotton pants and knee-high black leather boots. She wore a broad belt woven from hemp with a dagger and a thick-bladed Chinese sword dangling at either hip. “Why have you returned?”
“To report, mistress,” he said. He did not look up. The deck was no fit study, but he dared not look upon her wrath.
“Then do so. Why did you fail?”
Sung babbled out his tale of not expecting so many guards at the museum and then continued with how Ju Ling had been killed by the police just before his own escape.
“I do not care about Ju Ling or you,” Lai Choi San said angrily. “The jade crown is all I want. You failed.”
“I did, Captain. I failed. The entire crew failed.”
“Do not blame them,” Lai Choi San snapped. “You are first mate. It was your responsibility to recover the jade crown.”
“I failed.” He banged his head three times on the deck, kowtowing to her.
“I should carve out your foul, cowardly heart and toss it to the sharks.”
“Give me your dagger, Captain, and I will do it.”
He reached out without looking up.
“I do not want your vile blood befouling my blade,” she said.
Sung remained silent. Sweat puddled on the deck under his face although the day was cold and he was drenched from his swim.
“Your life is forfeit, Sung.”
“Yes, mistress.”
“But that is too good a fate for you. I should have you flogged to death. Or pulled behind our ship all the way back to China, but there is no way of knowing when we will return because you did not get the jade crown.”
“I will drown myself now, mistress.”
“You will do no such thing,” Lai Choi San said angrily. She glared at the prostrate man. “Rather than punish you, I will let you live with your guilt. You will not fail me again.”
“No, Captain, I will not!”
Lai Choi San made a dismissive motion with her hand. Sung hurried away belowdecks, and she walked to the railing and stared at the ships docked along the Embarcadero. Beyond those ships in the city lay the crown of the Jade Emperor. She had failed to get it once. There would be no failure a second time.
6
Slocum stared at the Sum Yop headquarters building and shook his head in wonder. There was no way this side of hell he could get inside again. Even if he did, there was no way of knowing where the body of Ah Ming’s father might have been stashed. He heaved a deep sigh. There was no way of knowing if the other tong had even moved their rival’s body into the building or had dumped it into the bay.
Using Ah Ming as translator, he had questioned three of the On Leong hatchet men who had spied on their enemies. They had seen the old man’s body in the street before being driven away by the huge army of killers that had poured from inside the headquarters. After that, no one belonging to the On Leong tong had seen Ah Ming’s father.
Slocum wished he had brought a pair of binoculars to better study the guards on the roof. He caught sight of two or maybe three men patrolling there. They held the high ground. The next tallest building was a good story shorter and across the street. While the street was not broad, using a grappling hook and rope from another rooftop would be impossible. Scaling the sheer wall might be possible, but Slocum saw men loitering in the street who would raise an alarm. They might not be Sum Yop but they would certainly be curious why a white man was poking around with rope or ladders.
More dynamite would blow a decent-sized hole in the wall, but he had done that once. Going to the well twice with explosives would spell his end. Ah Ming had explained that the Sum Yop leader, Little Pete, was a cunning, sly man. From the touch of awe that mingled with the greater contempt when she spoke, Ah Ming considered Little Pete a worthy adversary.
Slipping back into shadow, Slocum hunted under a pile of garbage in the alley until he found a cellar window for the store directly across the street from the Sum Yop command post. Using the butt of his six-shooter, he knocked out the glass in the window and squeezed through the small opening. The cellar was musty and filled with cobwebs, but Slocum cared less about the owner’s sanitary policies than he did about the drains.
He heard rats scurrying about and chittering frantically just below a drain grate in the floor. Memory of the rats nipping at his flesh came back to haunt him. Slocum swallowed his distaste—maybe even outright fear—and pulled up the grate. The stench from the sewer below gagged him. He pulled up his bandanna and used it to filter the air. When he dropped into the sluggishly flowing muck below, he was glad he was wearing high-top boots. There was at least a foot of sewage.
Following the tunnel to what he reckoned to be the center of the street, he quickly found himself in utter darkness. Knowing it was dangerous but having no other choice other than retreating, he lit a lucifer and held it up for light. The sudden flare might set off the gases rising from the sludge. He was lucky and did not blow himself up.
But his luck ended there. A quick examination showed that the sewer into the Sum Yop building had been bricked up. He kicked at the wall and discovered it was sturdier than the sewer pipe around it. After burning his fingers on three lucifers, he retreated through the cellar and back into the alley.
The Sum Yop headquarters across the street mocked him.
“Nothing’s invincible,” he told himself. In spite of his self-assurance, Slocum saw no way to breach its defenses. Even if he got in, how would he find a corpse? If he found it, how would he get it out?
And why the hell were the Sum Yop hatchet men intent on keeping a dead body from proper burial?
Slocum sat on a crate just inside the alley and glared at
the Sum Yop building. He tried to figure how many men were inside and could not. The guards pacing along the street changed every few minutes, but there was no mistaking the fact that they were guards. Seldom had Slocum seen such alert sentries.
He shook himself off and knew he had to get cleaned up after the short sojourn into the sewers. With a single glance backward, he left behind the Sum Yops and headed for a bathhouse he knew just outside of Chinatown. At the moment, he’d had his fill of yellow faces all glaring at him with hatchets in their hands.
As he made his way through the street he noticed posters glued to walls and even wrapped around a lamppost. Slocum tugged at one and pulled it down.
BEHOLD THE SPLENDOR OF CHINA!
IMPERIAL JADE BROUGHT BACK BY
THE FOREMOST EXPLORER OF HIS DAY
SIR WILLIAM MACADAMS
The fine print told of his exploits in China and the South China Sea and conveyed the explorer’s knowledge of those cultures so much that Slocum folded the broadside and stuck it into his pocket. He needed an expert who spoke his language. Sir William Macadams looked to be just the man.
Slocum felt better than he had in months. The bath had gotten off the worst of the grime, and he had paid an extra ten cents not to use the prior bather’s water. That had been a wise decision. While he soaked in the hot water, Slocum had the proprietor wash his clothing and get the sewage off his boots. All that Slocum had retained while taking his bath was his gun and gun belt holding spare cartridges, which stayed close at hand.
He had bathed and gotten a bite to eat and actually thought the future looked brighter now that he had arrived at the small museum south of Mission Dolores near the edge of town. Colorful banners fluttered in the breeze and large posters proclaimed this to be the foremost display of imperial jade in the world. Slocum wondered about that, but exaggeration always made for a good story. More than once around a campfire he had spun tales that stretched the truth. Just a little.