Mahoney silenced her with a mighty stomp to the floorboards. “Thompson!” He pounded his foot down two more times. “Thompson! Get your fat ass up here!”
“Coming, Sarge!” a muffled voice called from below us.
A sudden, surprising chuckle bubbled up from deep in Mahoney’s gut. The cop looked relieved, newly unburdened, like a man who’s just stepped from the privy five pounds lighter.
“You know what?” he said cheerfully. “Screw the Southern Pacific. Screw you.” He pointed his smile at Diana, and it turned so wolfish it practically howled at the moon. “All of you.”
As Mahoney spoke, a squeaking and shaking grew steadily louder, the clamor of it rising to such a pitch I almost thought I was about to experience my first California “earth-quake.” But it wasn’t the earth a-quaking—it was just the big bull from downstairs lumbering up the steps to join us.
“Yeah, Sarge?” he panted, red-faced, upon reaching the top of the stairs.
“Show these people the door,” Mahoney told him. “And if they don’t remember what it’s for, throw them through it.”
“With pleasure,” Thompson said, locking eyes on me.
I held his gaze even as I threw a question at Old Red.
“We goin’ peacefully, Brother?”
“Of course we are,” Diana answered for Gustav, already headed for the stairwell. “Good day, Sergeant. I expect your superiors will be hearing from ours very soon now.”
“And I expect my superiors won’t give a damn,” Mahoney scoffed. “This is Chinatown, lady. Nobody gives a damn.”
“I do,” Gustav said.
He hadn’t taken a step toward the stairs.
Mahoney heaved a heavy sigh. “Look, Tex, let me give you a little more friendly advice.” Then he dropped his voice to a hissing whisper that somehow seemed louder than a shout. “Get your ass out of Chinatown. Because the next time I spot you in my district, I’m gonna take that worthless S.P. star of yours and—”
The copper proceeded to conjure up an image that was, for “friendly advice,” mighty unfriendly indeed.
“Come on,” I said, laying a hand on my brother’s shoulder. “Ain’t nothin’ more we can do here now.”
Gustav let me steer him from the room, though he moved slow, peering back first at Mahoney, then at Chan. This was to be our good-by to the good doctor, I realized, and I paused to give him a farewell salute myself.
Thompson got me moving again with a prod from his truncheon.
“Well, gentlemen, I have to admit I’m impressed,” Diana said as we were herded to the first floor. “Not on the case half an hour, and already you’ve made a bitter enemy of the police officer in charge.”
“Mahoney wasn’t exactly down on one knee offerin’ you posies,” I pointed out.
Ahead of me, Old Red twisted around again for a last, long stare up the steps. A moth flying into the flame couldn’t have looked more single-mindedly mesmerized, and I almost expected him to spin on his heel and start climbing right over me and the big cop at my back.
“That idjit Mahoney’s just the beginning,” he said. “By god, I ain’t through makin’ enemies ’round here.”
His words somehow sounded like both kinds of oath at once—the kind that’s a vow and the kind that’s a curse.
As it turned out, it was to be one other thing, too: a prophecy.
10
THE ALLEY
Or, We Double Back—and Find Our Troubles Doubled, Too
As Thompson (and his truncheon) ushered us from the shop, we passed two other policemen carrying not billy clubs but a stretcher. Their police ambulance was parked out front.
Chan would be leaving soon after we did, it seemed. His destination: the morgue.
The instant Thompson sent us out onto the sidewalk (with a farewell baton-prod to the kidneys for me), my brother started pushing his way through the still milling crowd of neck-craning Chinamen. He was in too much of a hurry to offer explanations to me and Diana, so all we could do was share a shrug and follow in his wake.
Gustav turned left at the first corner, then left again to take us down an alley—the one running behind Chan’s shop, I quickly realized. I would say it was the darkest, dankest, dismalest back street I’ve ever had the displeasure to find myself in . . . but the day was yet young.
“So we ain’t takin’ Mahoney’s advice?” I said when I caught up to Old Red.
“What? Leave Chinatown?” My brother snorted. “Sure, I’ll leave . . . once I know what happened to Doc Chan.”
Diana hustled up between us.
“You’re going to sneak back in and search Chan’s flat?”
“Yup. Soon as those lawmen clear out, that is exactly what I’m gonna do.” Gustav shot the lady a sidelong glance. “ ‘Course, you need to clear out, too.”
“Oh, I’m not leaving,” Diana replied, her tone so matter of fact she might have been telling her hostess she didn’t care for another crumpet at an afternoon tea party.
“I’m sorry, miss . . . but I gotta agree with my brother,” I said. “And it’s not just cuz this ain’t no place for a lady. A man’s dead, and for all we know Little Pete himself ordered it done. If so, this business ain’t for ladies or gentlemen—not the ones that plan on keepin’ their throats unslit.”
“Then why are you involving yourselves?” Diana asked me.
“Well . . . cuz we gotta.”
I looked around her at Old Red, and he gave me a grim nod. For once, we were in complete agreement. “Cuz we gotta”—that said it all.
And apparently Diana felt the same way.
“I knew Dr. Chan as well as you two did,” she said. “So if you ‘gotta,’ then I gotta, too. And, to put it bluntly, you need me. Neither of you has my knowledge of the city—not to mention my gift for persuasion.”
“Ain’t so hard to persuade when you got yourself a badge to flash,” Old Red said, slamming to a sudden stop. As Diana and I reined up beside him, he turned and looked the lady in the eye full-on—no squirming, no blinking, no blushing. “How is it you still got your star, Miss Corvus? You said the S.P. took it back after Colonel Crowe got hisself canned.”
Diana smiled in her sly way that seemed to put you in on some joke with her—even though she wouldn’t come out and tell it to you.
“The colonel had a drawer full of Southern Pacific badges. So I borrowed one. For a rainy day. And lucky for you I did, or you never would’ve made it up to Chan’s room in the first place.”
“I don’t know if I’d call your bein’ here ‘luck,’ ” Old Red grumbled.
“Gustav,” Diana said gently, like she was calming a spooked horse, “I can help.”
Hearing his Christian name slipping so tenderly from the lady’s lips brought a blush to my brother’s face, and his gaze wavered.
“Yeah, well, maybe you could. But—”
Before he could get any further, the clatter and clop of a heavy wagon turned us all around to face the street again.
The police ambulance was pulling past the alleyway.
“Mahoney and Woon might be leaving, too,” Diana said.
“Could be,” my brother grunted.
“Well, why don’t we find out?”
And Diana marched away, moving deeper into the alley. As she went, Old Red stared daggers at her back as if she’d just planted a knife in his.
“Look,” I said, “the lady’s tied herself to us, and there’s no cuttin’ her loose if she don’t wanna be cut. Not now, anyways. In the meantime, we may as well face facts: She can help us. So what say we just get to deducifyin’, huh?”
“What do you think I been doin’?” Gustav grumbled, and he set off after Diana.
A moment later, the three of us were together outside one of the shabby back doors lining the alley. It hadn’t been hard to figure whose place it belonged to: The windows around and above it were all cracked open, and the putrid smell of gas still swirled outside.
We got ourselves a real snootful,
too, for Old Red led us straight to the nearest window and crouched down beside it. Through the smudged, sooty glass, we could see the cluttered storage room at the back of Chan’s shop.
“Best hold off a spell ’fore tryin’ anything,” Gustav whispered. “If Mahoney was to catch any of us in there . . .”
He didn’t need to say any more than that. I could still hear the copper telling us what he’d do with our badges should we cross his path again. And given the man’s temperament, I couldn’t even be sure he was speaking metaphorically.
Old Red hunkered down on one side of the window. Diana and I squatted on the other.
My brother and Diana spent the next minute with ears cocked for noises inside—while I fought to keep my eyes from straying to the lady’s decolletage.
“It’s awfully quiet in there,” Diana finally said.
Gustav’s forefinger shot to his lips. “Hush. I think I hear . . . shit.”
Then I heard it, too. Not shit, of course. An ever-growing grinding sound. And beneath it, something else.
Footsteps.
Behind us.
I murmured another word ladies are never supposed to hear. Funny thing, though—I could’ve sworn I heard Diana mutter something even worse.
I turned back toward the alleyway expecting to find Mahoney and Woon coming at us, handcuffs at the ready.
What I saw instead was a sour-faced Chinaman wearing a stained apron over his ratty tunic and trousers. Behind him was the source of the rumbling we’d heard: his pushcart.
To my surprise, I realized I knew the man, after a fashion. It was the cabbage peddler Old Red and I had so disgusted the day before.
He said something to us in Chinese, most of it gibberish to me, of course. But I did catch one phrase I could recognize, if not understand. It was the same thing he’d spat at me and my brother the day before—“fink why.”
Gustav swept off his Stetson and waved it at the man like he was shooing away a fly. “Move along. Go on. Get.”
The Chinaman did none of the above. In fact, he kept coming closer.
Diana stuffed her hand in her purse and pulled out her badge. “It’s alright, sir. We’re here on official business. No need to concern yourself.”
The man squinted at Diana’s badge, squinted at us . . . and then smiled. He had a round face and a sickly yellow-green complexion, and his big gap-toothed grin made him look like a jack-o’-lantern carved from one of his own cabbages.
“You no po-lee!” he cackled.
“Thank god,” Old Red said. “He speaks English.”
“Sort of,” I said.
“You’re right. We’re not police,” Diana told the Chinaman. “Nevertheless, we do have the authority to—”
“You no po-lee,” the peddler said again. “You want hok gup, yeah?”
“We want whati” I said.
“Hok gup,” the cabbage man said. “Black . . .” Words failed him—English ones, anyway—so he tried pantomime instead, pushing his hands together and flapping his fingers.
“Black . . . bunny?” Gustav guessed.
“Bunny?” I said. “How in the world do you get ‘bunny’ outta that?”
“Well, he’s doin’ floppy ears, ain’t he?”
“Naw. It’s more like he’s diggin’ or something.” I turned back to the Chinaman. “Black gopher?”
The peddler shook his head in frustration and brought his still-fluttering hands up over his head.
“Black bird” Diana said.
The Chinaman nodded, shooting me a glare as he dropped his hands. “Sorry,” I said. “Usually I’m pretty good at this game.”
“Hold on,” Old Red said. “This feller’s tryin’ to sell us a crow?”
Diana ignored him. “Why do you think we want the hok gup—the black bird?” she asked the cabbage man.
He pointed at the building behind us. “With Gee Woo Chan. But now . . .”
He spread his hands out and shrugged, and there was no mistaking what his gesture meant this time.
Who can say where it’s gone?
And his widening smile provided the answer.
I can.
“So . . . what is it you want, mister?” Gustav asked.
The peddler walked back to his cart and inspected his wares. After a moment’s consideration, he picked up the limpest, brownest, wormiest-looking cabbage and waved it over his head.
“You buy!”
“Well, there’s a stroke of luck, at least,” Diana said. “As extortionists go, he’s pretty cheap.”
“Brother,” Old Red said, “go buy us a cabbage—and whatever else we can get.”
“Right.”
I straightened up and went striding toward the man, digging a hand into my pocket as I went. When we were toe to toe, I offered him a nice shiny dime.
“There you are. You can keep the change—and the cabbage, too. Just tell me . . . what?”
The Chinaman was shaking his head, and he brought up his free hand and spread three fingers wide.
“Thirty cents?” I groaned. “Oh, come on. That moldy thing ain’t worth a plug nickel.”
The cabbage man shook the fingers at my face.
“No!” he barked. “Three dollah!”
“What? You can’t be serious!”
“Shut up, the both of you,” Old Red snapped in that hoarse, whispery way that cuts through you quicker than a holler—because you know folks only use it when trouble’s coming.
And trouble was coming, clomping down the stairs inside wearing brown brogans and tweed trousers. And a badge, too, I knew, though I couldn’t yet see anything above the knee.
I didn’t have to—I recognized those big, clunky shoes. They were the ones the Coolietown Crusader had been so tempted to plant up our behinds not half an hour before.
It was looking like they might get there yet.
11
HIDE AND PEEK
Or, Old Red Spots a Double Cross of Note
The cabbage man did us the favor of dropping his voice—though not his price—as Sgt. Mahoney came down the stairs inside.
“Five dollah.”
It was a whole new haggle now. The Chinaman wasn’t just peddling information (or a crappy old cabbage) anymore. He was selling silence, and it was most definitely a seller’s market.
Through the window, I could see Mahoney—or his feet, anyway—stomp down a couple more steps, then stop.
“Move it, would ya?” the copper said, twisting around to face someone at the top of the stairs. “We don’t get outside soon, I’ll never get this stink off of my suit.”
I turned back to the cabbage man, jammed my hands in my pockets, and pulled out every coin and crumpled greenback I had. It wouldn’t add up to five bucks, I knew, but I was hoping the sheer size of the wad would be too tempting to pass up.
“Here. Take it all. Just get to talkin’ quick—and quiet.”
The peddler took my money with one hand. The other he used to jab the cabbage into my stomach.
“You look fat choy,” the Chinaman said.
Then he left me holding the cabbage.
“That’s it?” I spluttered as he started pushing his cart away. “I look ‘fat choy’?”
The Chinaman nodded. “You look fat choy.”
“Well, you look like a thievin’ bastard to me,” I spat back.
There was no time to demand a refund, though. I just spun on my heel and went diving for cover with the cabbage still clutched against my gut. I landed under the open window between Old Red and Diana.
The cabbage man shambled off grinning like the cat who ate the canary—and then had the goldfish for desert.
“You’re wasting your time up there,” I heard Mahoney say. “You know as well as I do—hatchet men don’t work like this. Not even Scientific. If Little Pete finally had Chan done in, he wouldn’t be subtle about it. He’d have him hacked to death in the middle of Dupont.” The cop’s heavy footfalls started up again. “Chan killed himself, and that’s
all there is to it.”
“May-be,” someone replied. “May-be not.”
The words were heavily accented, the voice lilting—and familiar. It was Woon.
The thud-squeak-thud of footsteps on the stairs doubled, grew louder, then shifted to quieter shuffles. The two detectives were in the storage room, mere feet away from us.
“Hey,” Diana whispered. “What if they come out this way instead of out the front?”
The back door was so close, it’d smack my brother in the butt if it swung open now.
“Then we’re in a hell of a lot of trouble,” Old Red whispered back.
“Woon, listen,” Mahoney said.
His footsteps stopped.
I got set to start up my own—in a hurry.
“I know Chan was a Six Companies man,” Mahoney went on, and Diana, Gustav, and I each let out a quiet sigh of relief. “You’ve got Chun Ti Chu to answer to. Fine. Just spend the next couple days banging your favorite sing-song girl, then tell him you couldn’t dig anything up. Believe me, that’ll be a better use of your time than asking a bunch of stupid questions. Chan wasn’t murdered . . . no matter what Bullshit Bill Cody said.”
I glanced over at the man I assumed was “Bullshit Bill.” He wasn’t just keeping an ear to the window anymore—he’d leaned out far enough to get a peek inside.
I gave his leg an “Are you crazy?” swat.
He replied with a “Go away” flap of the hand.
“You right,” Woon said. “Probably.”
“Pra-bah-ree?” Mahoney sneered, mocking the Chinaman’s accent. “Jesus, Woon—you said yourself there was a suicide note. Speaking of which . . . you were gonna give that back to me, right?”
There was a brief silence before Woon answered.
“Of course.”
Then it went quiet again—so quiet I could hear the whisper that slipped from Old Red’s lips even though he didn’t put a puff of wind behind it.
“Hel-lo.”
I tried to poke up for a peep at whatever he’d seen, but Gustav laid his hand flat against the top of my boater and pushed me back down.
“Gee . . . thanks, Woon,” Mahoney said, his snide tone smearing the words like mud he was wiping on the other man’s shoes. “Now why don’t you do us both a favor? Don’t you ever—ever—try to slip anything past me again. Cuz the next time I catch you playing one of your little Chink games, I’ll break your fat neck. Sabe?”
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