S Hockensmith - H03 - The Black Dove

by Steve Hockensmith

  Apparently, Woon nodded to show he had indeed sabed (whatever that meant) for Mahoney said, “Good. Now come on. I’ve wasted enough time here already.”

  I braced again to make a break for it, maybe lob the only weapon I had—my cabbage—at Mahoney’s head. But the sound of footsteps that followed faded away quickly. Woon and Mahoney were headed out through the front of Chan’s shop, not the back.

  Old Red finally let me stand up now, and I took a look in through the window. The storeroom was empty but for the boxes, bins, and crates stacked up here and there.

  “Well, ‘Bill’—whadaya make of all that?” I said.

  “Ain’t got enough data for theorizin’,” my brother muttered.

  “Perhaps. But we do have some data,” Diana said. “Whatever it was you saw in there, for instance.”

  She pivoted to peer into the storeroom, the move bringing her shoulder to shoulder with me. For the next few seconds, my shoulder was very happy indeed.

  “Yeah, Brother,” I said. “What was you hel-loin’?”

  Gustav’s gaze went faraway, fuzzy. For a man who said he wasn’t ready to theorize, he sure seemed to be doing some awful deep thinking.

  “Woon. He didn’t give that phony ‘suicide note’ back to Mahoney,” he said slowly.

  “Sure as heck sounded like he did.”

  Old Red shook his head slowly. “He gave Mahoney something, but it wasn’t the same paper I found on Chan. It was smaller. Didn’t have no fold to it, neither.”

  “And Mahoney didn’t notice the difference?” I asked.

  My brother hacked out his usual little cough of contempt—“Feh!”

  “Woon could’ve handed over a slice of ham and that fathead wouldn’t have noticed the difference,” he said. “Still, he had Woon pegged on at least one thing: The man’s workin’ his own side of the fence. Got something to do with that ‘Shun Tea-Chew’ and ‘Six Companies’ Mahoney was yappin’ about, most like.”

  Gustav cleared his throat and looked at his toes—a sure sign that his next words were directed at Diana.

  “Seems like I’ve heard of ’em both somewheres, too, but I can’t quite recollect how . . . .”

  Diana smiled primly, looking like a schoolmarm savoring the opportunity to remind her pupils who has all the answers.

  “If you’ve heard of one, you’ve heard of the other,” she said. “The Six Companies is an association of Chinese businessmen that acts as a sort of local government. Around here, the president of the Six Companies may as well be the mayor—and the current president’s name is Chun Ti Chu.”

  “Sure. I remember now,” I said. “Chu pops up in the papers sometimes. Law and order type. Tong fighter. The only Chinaman powerful enough to stand up to Little Pete.” I shook my head. “Poor Doc Chan. If he got caught up in some kinda feud between this Chu feller and the tongs—”

  “Don’t kick that pony up to a gallop just yet,” Old Red cut in. “We ain’t even got the bridle on.”

  I whistled and gave Gustav an admiring nod. “That’s a good one, Brother. Real quotable-like. How long you been waitin’ to spring it on me?”

  Old Red gave me a glare so sharp you could shave with it.

  “I’m gonna go make me a reconnoiter,” he growled. “You just stay here. And stay quiet . . . if that’s something you’re capable of.”

  He pushed the window up higher, then swung up a leg and slipped over the sill. Diana and I watched side by side as he crept through the clutter to the pass-through separating the storage room from the rest of the shop.

  “Thank you for standing up for me a few minutes ago,” Diana half-whispered to me. “With your brother, I mean.”

  Awww, let her stay—we can’t get rid of her anyway. That’s all I’d really said to Old Red. It didn’t strike me as much of a stand. It barely amounted to a crouch.

  Still, who was I to turn away the lady’s gratitude?

  “You’re welcome,” I whispered back. “Usually, Gustav takes what I say with a grain of salt the size of a Conestoga wagon. I’m pleased he listened for once.”

  Inside, Old Red peeped around the pass-through into the rest of the store. When he’d satisfied himself that Mahoney and Woon were gone, he turned and tiptoed toward the stairs without so much as a glance over at us.

  “You can be honest with me, Otto,” Diana said. “Why does my presence put your brother on edge so?”

  I snorted out a chuckle as Gustav disappeared up into the stairwell.

  “Miss, that man wakes up on edge. Goes to bed on edge, too. Dreams on edge, for all I know. You shouldn’t take it personal.”

  “There you go again,” Diana sighed theatrically, mock-exasperated. “Trying to protect my delicate female sensibilities—when I don’t have any. Your brother doesn’t like me, that’s obvious. I’m simply curious as to why.”

  I turned away from the window and leaned back against the building. The cheap, rotten wood seemed to sag under my weight, and I straightened up again for fear I’d crash right through the wall.

  “It ain’t that he don’t like you,” I said (or maybe lied—I wasn’t sure myself). “It’s just that he’s got his head so filled up fulla mysteries and murder and whatnot it makes him a mite mistrustful. And your bein’ a gal don’t make it any easier for him to let down his guard.”

  “Why’s that?”

  “Oh, now you’re the one bein’ coy,” I chided her. “It’s hard for Gustav cuz he’s a man and you’re a woman. He ain’t spent much time around lady-folk the last few years. Gals . . . they jangle him up a bit, that’s all.”

  “Well, I suppose that’s something else your brother has in common with his hero,” Diana said. “Though Mr. Holmes wasn’t so much ‘jangled’ by women as disdainful of them. In fact, there were always rumors that his lack of interest in the fair sex extended to . . . well . . .”

  Diana didn’t come right out and say it, of course, but she gave me the kind of look that puts the word in your head.

  Sex.

  “Whoa, there! You sayin’ Sherlock Holmes was . . . ?”

  I squinted one eye and waggled one hand.

  Diana shrugged. “People will gossip . . . .”

  “Well, it ain’t nothin’ like that for Gustav,” I insisted a little too loudly for a fellow who was still supposed to be laying low. “Like I said, he’s just skirt-shy. Bein’ around a pretty woman—especially one with a little culture to her. It’s kinda embarrassin’ for him. On account of he’s . . . y’ know . . . .”

  “Illiterate” seemed like such a harsh brand to burn onto a man as sharp-witted as my brother, and I groped around for a better word. But the only substitutes I could think of were “uneducated” or “ignorant,” neither of which struck me as much of an improvement.

  I settled on “got his limits.”

  Diana arched an eyebrow at me. “I’ve met many a man with ‘limits,’ Otto. Believe me—most of them don’t let it scare them away from women.”

  “Oh, I know the type,” I said, tempted (as a man of limitations and little fear of females) to dare a wink. Somehow, I managed to restrain myself. “But that just ain’t Gustav’s way. He’s always been bashful . . . and mopey . . . and cantankerous. Of Casanova himself wouldn’t have got so much as a peck on the cheek if he’d been saddled with all that.”

  “So Old Red’s never even had a sweetheart?”

  I pushed my boater up high and gave my head a scratch. “You know, miss . . . you sure are askin’ a lot of questions about my brother.”

  Diana chuckled softly. “Once a detective, always a detective, I suppose. I’m sorry if I seem nosy.”

  “Oh, don’t apologize.” I flashed her my most dazzling grin—the one designed to blind women to all the faults they’d otherwise see in me. “I’d just like it a lot better if you was askin’ questions about me.”

  Before the lady could either slap me or laugh, Gustav came tromping down the stairs and walked to the window.

  “Alright—it’s c
lear. You may as well get in here.”

  “Ladies first,” I said to Diana.

  “Oh, no,” she replied. “Vegetables first.”

  And I finally remembered I still had a rotten cabbage tucked under one arm.

  “Why, thank you,” I said, and I opened the window wider (to accommodate my broader backside) and clambered inside with as much grace and dignity as I could muster. Which wasn’t much.

  “Why are you still luggin’ around that damn cabbage?” Gustav asked.

  “Cuz it cost me every cent I had, that’s why. I ain’t just throwin’ it away.” I held the cabbage up as if admiring its wilted splendor. “He could be our mascot. We’ll call him . . . Old Green.”

  My brother just shook his head and walked away, leaving it to me and Old Green to help Diana through the window. By the time I had the lady settled both feet on the floor, Old Red was already halfway up the stairs again.

  Diana and I set off after him through a chest-high maze of boxes and crates. The Chan I’d known had been exceptionally tidy, ever neat and proper in dress and deportment. So it struck me as strange that he’d keep his storeroom in such a state. It made me wonder if the man’s outward orderliness had been mere facade—a cover for a messier, murkier soul lurking within.

  We found the body gone when we got upstairs, of course. What’s more, the blanket that had been beneath it was gone, as well. It was as if the police had simply wrapped Chan up like a Mexican burrito rather than bother with a sheet or shroud.

  Gustav pawed over the bed a moment, then dropped to all fours and began searching the floor in Holmes’s hound-dog style—nose down, ass up. It made for quite a sight, but Diana didn’t waste more than a second’s worth of smirk on it. Instead, she commenced her own search, moving to the corrugated paperboard boxes pushed against the wall.

  “These are stacked neatly enough,” she said. “Not like that mess downstairs.”

  “Already noted,” Old Red said gruffly.

  Diana started flipping the boxes open. In the first were stacks of carefully folded socks and underwear. The next contained similarly trim piles of shirts. The next, suit clothes.

  “Chan only moved here recently,” Diana said. “He didn’t even have time to unpack.”

  “Already noted,” Old Red said.

  “His old place must’ve been a heck of a lot bigger—even boxed, his stuff fills this dump up.” I looked over at my brother, who was crawling around Chan’s bed, eyes down. “And just so’s you know, I wasn’t notin’ that tot you. It was for myself.”

  “Noted,” Gustav said.

  Bent over as he was, his backside presented an awfully tempting target for my boot-toe. So I removed myself from temptation by drifting off to the kitchenette adjoining the main room.

  Tucked around the corner was a luxury I hadn’t expected to find in such dilapidated digs as this: a water closet complete with commode and sink. It wasn’t just a surprise—it was a blessing, for I’d begun to hear the call of nature so loud it was a wonder it didn’t deafen me. I left Old Green on a countertop and slipped inside.

  I couldn’t close the door behind me, though. If I had, the tiny privy would’ve gone blinding black, leaving me nothing to aim by. And for all I knew, there was still enough free-floating gas in the place to barbecue the lot of us should I fire up a light. So I had to ask Diana to plug her ears for a moment while I saw a man about a dog.

  “Don’t worry, Otto,” she called back from the other room. “I grew up around men, most of whom weren’t nearly as gentlemanly as you. Believe me, I’ve overheard a lot of conversations about dogs. I won’t be offended. In fact, from now on, both of you should feel free to piss, cuss, belch, fart, or pick your nose whenever the urge arises. You don’t have to keep apologizing.”

  “Uhhh . . . is there anything we’re not allowed to do?” I managed to ask despite a jaw that had practically dropped into the commode.

  “You two don’t chew tobacco, do you?”

  “No, miss,” I heard my brother answer, his voice so low I half-suspected he’d crawled under the bed to quietly die of embarrassment.

  “Good. Now that’s a disgusting habit.”

  Despite Diana’s dispensation to be as crude as I pleased, I gave the toilet-chain a yank before taking leave of my morning coffee. As I stood there staring down, I noticed a wastebasket shoved into the gray shadows beneath the sink beside the John. A crumpled-up newspaper lay atop it in a way that seemed altogether too . . . something. Once my bladder was totally tapped, I buttoned myself up and bent myself down.

  The newspaper had been wadded, but only enough so as to fit snugly across the top of the ash can. When I plucked the paper out, I saw what it was meant to cover: jagged pieces of painted porcelain and, curling out from beneath the largest shard, what looked from above like a small length of dark rubber or rope. I reached down and pinched the coiled whatever-it-was betwixt my forefinger and thumb.

  It felt surprisingly brittle, and as I drew it out into the murky light, I saw that there was something large and blobby attached to the other end. I had it halfway to my face before I realized what it was.

  I don’t know what a man with the proverbial tiger by the tail is supposed to do. But I can sure tell you what a fellow with a scorpion by the tail does, whether he wants to or not.

  He screams.

  12

  THE CRITTER

  Or, Chan’s Flat Yields Yet Another Stiff

  “What? What?” Old Red shouted as he dashed into the kitchenette.

  “That! That!” I shouted as I dashed out of the WC.

  I spun around and pointed at the privy floor.

  “Hel-lo! Is that a—?”

  “It sure as hell is!”

  Diana crowded into the cramped room behind my brother.

  “Don’t get too close, miss,” I said to her between panting, panicked breaths. “That there’s a—”

  “I know what it is.” The lady leaned forward, squinting at the floor. “Only that one looks dead.”

  Indeed, the scorpion was laying just where I’d dropped it.

  Perfectly still. On its back.

  My brother bent over and crept up cautiously until he was crouched down over top of it.

  “Yup. Dead.” Gustav glanced back at a me. “You probably scared the poor thing to death with your shriekin’.”

  “Be fair enough if I did. That ugly SOB like to scare me to death first.”

  Old Red reached down, picked the critter up by one of its big pincers, and brought it to eyeball level. If scorpions know how to play possum, this one had just tricked its way close enough to my brother’s face to give him a sting on the nose.

  It was no trick, though. In fact, the scorpion remained so unnaturally stiff, I started to wonder if it had ever been alive in the first place.

  Up till then, all the scorpions I’d run across (and from) had been a mustardy yellow—the better to blend in with sand and desert rock. But the one Gustav was holding now wasn’t just twice as large as any I’d ever laid eyes on, it was a dozen times darker. The only place this fat black bastard would blend in was a nightmare.

  “That thing even real?” I asked.

  “Yup,” Old Red said. “Been dried out, though. Ain’t much more than husk now.” He held said husk out to me. “Wanna see for yourself?”

  “I been seein’. It’s touchin’ I ain’t so keen on.”

  “May I?”

  Diana stepped forward and plucked the critter from Gustav’s fingers without waiting for an answer.

  “Doesn’t look like any scorpion I’ve ever seen,” she said, holding it straight up by its tail like it was a candied apple on a stick.

  “And just how many have you seen?” my brother asked her.

  “A few. There was a time I had to check my shoes for them every time I got dressed.” She handed the scorpion back to him. “What do you think it means?”

  “Maybe somebody was tryin’ to sic it on Chan,’ I suggested. “Only the gas ki
lled it first.”

  Old Red shook his head. “This thing ain’t just dead. Its leathered. Gas wouldn’t do that.”

  “Then maybe it’s the ‘hok gup’ that peddler feller spoke of. Could be he wasn’t talkin’ about a black bird at all. He was talkin’ about a black scorpion.”

  Diana put her hands together and fluttered the fingers over her head, just as the cabbage man had down in the alley. “Scorpion?”

  “Alright—that don’t wash, neither,” I conceded. “So let’s try this on for size. It’s like them five orange pips from the Holmes tale. You remember, Brother. What was that one called?”

  “You mean ‘The Five Orange Pips’?” Gustav sighed.

  “Yeah, right, anyway—maybe that’s the kinda thing we’re lookin’ at here. It’s a threat. Only not from the Ku Klux Klan, like in the story. From the tongs.”

  It was my best theory yet, I thought, but Old Red just waved it away like it was more stink from the gas pipes.

  “I’ll tell you exactly what this means,” he said, giving the scorpion a little shake. “It means Chan had a dead scorpion in his jakes. And that’s it until we round us up more data. Now . . . where was it you found this? I assume it wasn’t just sittin’ on the crapper readin’ the paper.” He threw a little sidelong peep in the general direction of Diana’s knees. “By your request, I ain’t apologizin’ for that remark.”

  “Noted,” Diana said.

  I stepped closer to the privy and pointed at the wastebasket under the sink.

  “It was in there. Looked like someone tried to cover over the top, so I got to scroungin’ around to see what I could see. Found Blackie under some busted-up pottery or somesuch.”

  “Busted-up pottery?”

  My brother pushed his way past me, knelt down next to the ash can, and took a look at the jagged pieces of brightly colored porcelain inside. They didn’t come from any plate, that was for sure—there were too many bulges and ripples to them.