S Hockensmith - H03 - The Black Dove

by Steve Hockensmith

  “Could we set the cabbage issue aside, please?” Diana said. “The real question is, what next?”

  “Ain’t no question,” Old Red replied, wiping the spittle from his cheeks with angry little swipes. “We find Fat Choy.”

  I gaped, surprised.

  The lady smirked, amused.

  Which probably says things about our respective powers of observation and deduction it would do my pride no good to dwell upon.

  So I won’t.

  “Who the hell is Fat Choy?” I said.

  “I assume that’s the name Ah Gum whispered in your brother’s ear when she kissed him,” Diana said to me.

  Gustav nodded. “ ‘Find Fat Choy’—that’s what the gal said.”

  Diana’s smirk wilted, her expression turning thoughtful. “But we know nothing about this Fat Choy . . . except that he has some kind of connection to the ‘Black Dove.’ ”

  “That ain’t all we know,” Old Red said. “He ain’t some nobody. Folks ’round Chinatown know who he is and that he’s tied in with Hok Gup and Doc Chan somehow.” He looked over at me. “Remember what the cabbage man said to you: ‘You look Fat Choy.’ ”

  I shook my head, chagrined. “I just figured it was some kinda insult.”

  “Yeah . . . for you, that’d usually be a safe enough assumption,” Gustav said.

  I puckered my lips and stuck out my tongue, but Diana cut in before I could “defend” myself again.

  “Where do we start looking?”

  “Chan’s place,” Old Red said. “If Fat Choy or Hok Gup’s been there, either one, they’ll have been seen. We need to talk to the neighbors.”

  “Let’s get to it, then.” I started back toward the street. “Hangin’ around here’s just askin’ for another bushwhackin’.”

  Diana followed, but Gustav lingered in the alley. When I turned back to see what was keeping him, he was just standing there staring at the back of Madam Fong’s bawdy house. I knew what he was brooding on, or thought I did, anyway: the brave girl who’d risked so much to help a friend . . . and was now most likely paying the price for it.

  When Old Red finally turned to leave, the blaze was back in his eyes so red hot smoke should’ve been puffing up out of his head. He moved fast, arms swinging, hurtling out of the alleyway and up the street like a locomotive at full steam. It was all Diana and I could do to keep up.

  The Old Red Express had to slow once we reached Dupont, though. The busy street’s plank sidewalks were choked with milling Chinamen, and suddenly the fastest we could manage was a shamble.

  “Ain’t nobody ’round here heard of ‘elbow room’?” Gustav grumbled as we shuffled through the throng.

  “They’ve sure as hell heard of elbows” I replied, for my ribs were sore from the pokings and proddings of more aggressive sidewalkers than we.

  We were inching past a meat market at the time, and on display out front was a disconcerting sight: a big, mud-brown fish laid out on ice . . . still breathing. He wasn’t flopping and squirming as you might expect. Instead, he just lay there gasping, his round eyes giving him a look of stunned befuddlement.

  “I know just how you feel,” I said to him as we plodded past.

  “Otto, Gustav—look,” Diana said. “Up ahead.”

  I followed the lady’s gaze.

  A dark cloud was drifting toward us—a pack of young Chinamen dressed highbinder style. The sidewalk mob parted to flow around them on either side, no one daring to so much as brush against a black sleeve.

  “Retreat?” Diana said.

  I glanced over my shoulder. The boardwalk behind us was packed so snug it would make a sardine can seem positively spacious, and the shops we were passing were jammed just as tight.

  “It’d be easier to retreat into a brick wall.” I looked ahead again—and found the highbinders no more than thirty yards away. “Look . . . we don’t know they’re comin’ for us. Chinatown’s crawlin’ with tongs, after all. Maybe them boys are Kwong Ducks, maybe they’re Kwong Geese or Kwong Hogs or Kwong Who Knows What. I say we just try to blend in and scoot by.”

  “I don’t know about the blending, but I’m all for the scooting,” Diana said.

  Old Red said nothing. He just glared at the tong men like they were something sticky, stinky, and brown on the bottom of his boot.

  And the hatchet men were watching him by now. Me and Diana, too. But though I saw curiosity and contempt in their cocky gazes, there was no sense of purpose behind it. No “A-ha! There’s those crazy white folks we’re supposed to cut into cube steak!”

  We moved aside, along with the rest of the crowd, and the highbinders seemed to find it particularly amusing that a white lady had to step into the street—the gutter—to let them by. Diana kept her eyes pointed straight ahead, staring past their sneers, while I did my best to ignore the bumps the young toughs gave me as they strutted past.

  Gustav’s best wasn’t quite good enough, though. The three of us had squeezed up single file, with Old Red in the rear, so I didn’t see what kicked up the ruckus—but there was no missing it once it started.

  One of the hatchet men went careening into his compadres like a skittle ball bowling into the pins, and in a cluster the highbinders spun on my brother shouting in Chinese. Though I knew next to nothing of their lingo, the basic message was easy enough to grasp: These were men you dared not jostle on the streets of Chinatown, even when wearing the armor of white skin.

  “Yeah, yap yap yap!” Old Red barked back at them. “Why don’t you sons of bitches go beat on a slave girl or something? You know you ain’t got the balls to fight a man in broad daylight.”

  There was a flutter of movement at the back of the pack—a couple of the highbinders seemed set on proving my brother wrong. They were reaching up under the floppy tails of their baggy blouses, and if they were pulling out flowers and chocolates, I was about to be very surprised indeed.

  “A thousand pardons, gentlemen! A million pardons!” I slapped my hands hard over Gustav’s shoulders and gave him a rough shake. “My brother here ain’t got the manners God gave a pile of manure. Nor the looks, you might’ve noticed—and I’ll admit you could say the same of me. Yessir! Rude, ugly . . . and did I mention stupid? Woo-hoo! We are a couple of dumb bastards! Then again, what would you expect from a pair of fool cowboy fan kwei, huh?”

  My performance was met, at first, with bewildered stares, but the glowers soon gave way to smiles and chortles, and the mention of “fan kwei” got a big laugh. Turns out I spoke more Chinese than I thought.

  “We are so sorry,” I said, giving the men a bow—and pushing down on Old Red’s shoulders to force him to do the same. “Y’all have a wonderful day now. Fan kwei.”

  I began moving away slowly, bowing a few more times as I pulled my brother along with me. Diana was backing away beside us, and she threw in a couple curtsies for good measure.

  “So long, boys—we know you got folks to rob and kill and such, so we won’t keep you any longer,” I said. “Good-bye!Fan kwei! Dumb-ass goddamn fan kwei!”

  The highbinders gave one last guffaw, waved a farewell, then went walking off chattering happily amongst themselves.

  “You know,” I said to Gustav, finally letting him go, “if I had me any dignity, I’d be mighty pissed at you for makin’ me throw it away like that.”

  “You didn’t have to play the buffoon,” Old Red harrumphed, stomping away up the sidewalk.

  “That’s right, Gustav,” Diana said as we started after him. “He could have just let those tong men hack you to death.”

  “Oh, no, miss—I couldn’t have done that. Then I’d never know why he’d been dumb enough to rile ’em up in the first place.” I caught up to Old Red and matched my stride to his. “I mean . . . damn, Brother. That was the kind of fool, mule-headed thing I’m supposed to do, not you.”

  “Hey, somebody had to put them smug ass—” My brother cut himself off with a quick, jerking shake of the head. “Oh, hell. You’re right. That wa
s a fool thing to do. It’s just . . .” He shot a bitter glance over at Diana. “I ain’t thinkin’ straight.”

  “That’s entirely understandable,” Diana said. “You’re not your idol—you have a heart. A friend’s been killed and his . . . wife may be in danger. Of course you’re on edge.”

  Gustav grimaced like she’d just ground her heel down on his corns.

  “ ‘Wife’ is stretchin’ things. We don’t know what Hok Gup was to Chan.”

  “Would you prefer the term ‘concubine’?” Diana replied coolly.

  “I don’t know—cuz I don’t know the why of it all yet,” Old Red shot back.

  “The how tells us why,” Diana said. “The old doctor we followed, Yee Lock, inspects prostitutes for the Kwong Duck tong, and after he fetched Chan to come look at one, Chan bought her.” She shrugged. “It’s obvious, isn’t it? Yee Lock knew Chan was in the market for a wife—a clean wife—so he found him one.”

  “ ‘In the market’ now? Right when he’s gone flat-busted broke?” Gustav turned his head to the side and spat in the gutter. “Speakin’ of which, where’d he get all that cash? You think about that?”

  “Maybe he was workin’ for one of them religious mission houses,” I suggested. “Rescue-the-fallen do-gooder types.”

  Old Red nodded. “There you go. For all we know, he was about to set the gal free.”

  “It’d be nice to think that, wouldn’t it?” Diana’s full lips puckered into a smile so tight and tart it looked like she’d just taken a big bite out of lemon. “Saving a beautiful young girl from a life of vice. It would make all this seem so much more noble than it is.”

  “There is such a thing as noble, you know,” Gustav grated out through clenched teeth. “Some folks just wouldn’t recognize it . . . cuz they’d never stick their neck out ’less they had their own secret reasons.”

  “Alright, look,” I said, “whatever Doc Chan bought Hok Gup for, he’s dead and she’s missin’. And if the girl’s not already dead herself, there’s a fair chance she will be before long. So—”

  “So what are we doin’ takin’ this goddamn Sunday stroll?”

  We’d finally come to a quiet cross street, and my brother shoved his way from the throng and headed west, toward Chan’s.

  “I’m sorry,” I said to Diana as he hustled off. “Gustav ain’t usually such a hothead. A cranky little crab, yes, but not a hothead.”

  “It’s alright. I think I’m beginning to understand him, actually.” She gazed after my brother in a way that seemed almost wistful. “He’s a man of deep feeling.”

  “I suppose . . . if you consider ‘tetchy’ deep,” I said.

  Yet I knew something deep—and dark—had indeed been stirred in my brother that morning. Something beyond the death of a “friend” we barely even knew. Just what it was, though, I couldn’t say . . . and neither would Gustav, it seemed, so long as the lady was around.

  “Come on.” Diana gathered up her skirts for a run. “Like the man said: Stroll’s over.”

  We raced after Old Red together.

  19

  ANSWERED PRAYERS

  Or, Chan’s Neighbors Don’t Listen to Us—but the Man Upstairs Does

  Being encumbered by a bustle and petticoats and shoes designed more to please the eye than support the feet, Diana couldn’t move any quicker than a sort of skipping lope. Ever the gentleman, I hung back to keep her company (and enjoy the occasional glimpse of stockinged calf flying out from beneath her bunched-up skirts).

  We lost sight of my brother within a minute.

  We knew where he was headed, though, and after a few more zigzags across Chinatown, we were back where it all began: the block where Dr. Chan kept shop. Up ahead, we spotted Old Red walking into one of the stores next to Chan’s pharmacy . . . and walking out again less than thirty seconds later. We reached his heels just as he headed into the place next door.

  Thirty seconds after that, we were back on the sidewalk. The conversation inside had gone something like this:

  OLD RED: Excuse me—

  SHOPKEEPER: No sabe Englee!

  OLD RED: I just need to—

  SHOPKEEPER: No sabe Englee!

  OLD RED: Look, we’re friends of—

  SHOPKEEPER: No sabe Englee!

  OLD RED: Well, shit.

  SHOPKEEPER: No sabe Englee!

  ME: Yeah, we kinda figured that out!

  And so it went in the next store and the next all the way to the end of the block.

  “You can’t tell me nobody ’round here speaks English,” Gustav groused as he stomped out of a butcher’s shop where the proprietor at least spared us another “No sabe Englee” . . . by pretending to be deaf.

  “They probably all do,” I said. “They just don’t wanna speak it to us.”

  “Perhaps we should try a new approach,” Diana suggested. “Something less intimidating.”

  “I ain’t intimidatin’ nobody,” Old Red said sourly.

  “Not intentionally. But these people have little reason to trust a white man. I think a more . . . genteel front might serve us better.”

  “Like a white woman?” I said.

  Diana nodded. “If I were to go in alone, I think we’d see better results. White, black, or Chinese, men accommodate a lady in ways they’d never help another man.”

  “Especially a lady as persuasive as yourself, huh?” Gustav pushed back the brim of his Stetson and rubbed his forehead. “Well . . . it’s plain we ain’t gettin’ nowhere with me doin’ the talkin’. So fine. Next place, you give it a go. We’ll be right outside, though.”

  Whether my brother was assuring her that protection would be close at hand or warning her not to get up to any trickery, I didn’t know. Nor could I tell what the lady made of the remark—she just nodded again, then crossed the street and strolled alone into a corner market.

  “How much you wanna bet she walks outta there with Fat Choy’s home address and telephone number?” I said.

  My brother shook his head. “I wouldn’t take that bet.”

  We headed across the street and made a painful stab at nonchalance while lingering just outside the market door. Gustav fished out his pipe and began sucking on it unlit, while I knelt down to tie my already firmly tied shoes.

  “So,” I said, “you admit she’s good at detectivin’?”

  “Admit it?” Old Red scoffed, practically spitting his pipe out like a watermelon seed. “I ain’t never denied it. Hell, she’s so good, I can’t believe the Southern Pacific would toss her out with the bathwater the way she says.”

  “Yeah, it’s stupid alright. I can see the S.P. firin’ Colonel Crowe—after all, the man was crazy enough to hire us, right? But why Miss Corvus would have to . . . what?”

  Gustav was giving me that hard, appraising/disappointed stare he shoots me sometimes—the one that seems to be searching for a head on my shoulders but finds only empty air.

  “I didn’t say her gettin’ the sack was stupid. I said I can’t believe it.”

  I was still parsing this pronouncement when Diana joined us outside.

  “So?” Old Red said.

  She shook her head brusquely and, without a word, swept up the street and into the next store.

  The pace picked up after that: Once again we were hopscotching our way down the block, with Diana spending less than a minute in any one shop. While she was inside utterly failing to work her womanly wiles, my brother and I continued our conversation stop-start style outside.

  “You sayin’ she still works for the S.P.?”

  “I’m sayin’ she might. It’d explain why she went to the trouble of trackin’ us down—and why she’s taken an interest in Chan’s murder.”

  “How’s that?”

  And on to the next store.

  “Could be the S.P.’s keepin’ tabs on us. After all, we know what really happened on the Pacific Express. And Doc Chan, he knew a little of the real story, too.”

  “You think the Southern Pacific Rai
lroad would give a big enough shit about nobodies like us to ‘keep tabs on us’?”

  And on to the next store.

  “Don’t forget, Brother—the lady warned us the S.P. wouldn’t like it if your book about the Express ever came out.”

  “Oh, that wasn’t a threat-warnin’, remember? It was a friendly advice warnin’.”

  “Jee-zus Key- . . .”

  And on to the next store.

  “. . . -rist. I know you have a hard time thinkin’ straight under the best of circumstances, but put you around a pretty gal and your brain twists up like a pretzel.”

  “Oh, yeah? Well, I seem to recall a certain pretty gal gettin’ a rise out of you a little earlier, if you know what I mean.”

  “She was sittin’ on my damn lap!”

  “Think that’d buffalo ol’ Holmes? No, sir. Anyhow, it ain’t only that. It’s how you been all day. There’s a big damn burr under your saddle, Brother, and it ain’t just Doc Chan gettin’ done for. What the hell is eatin’ at—?”

  And then we were done.

  “Gentlemen,” Diana said, stepping out of the dingy shop she’d walked into so very shortly before, “I beg your pardon.”

  “For what?” Old Red asked.

  “Shit,” she hissed. “That. I hope you’re not offended.”

  “Oh, don’t worry about us,” I said. “No sabe Englee.”

  “You’ve got plenty of company around here, then,” Diana said. “Or so they’d have us think. I tried everything . . . even the truth. Nothing worked. These people won’t talk to us.”

  “That’s gonna make it a mite difficult to dig us up any new data,” I said to my brother.

  He nodded, glassy eyed, as he slipped his pipe back into his pocket. “Noted.”

  “As things sit now, we could stroll right past Fat Choy or Hok Gup both and not even know it was them,” I went on. “One’s tubby and one’s a dark-haired looker—that’s all we got to go on.”

  Gustav gave me another nod with the same blank stare. Wheels were turning—but they didn’t seem to be getting anywhere.

  “Noted.”

  “It’s startin’ to feel like we’re up the crick without a paddle,” I said.