Black Dove (36 page)

“A race with who?” I asked.

“His boss?” asked Old Red.

The lady was able to answer us both with the same two words.

“Little Pete.”

Or, We Race the Clock to Make the Ferry, but the Clock Up and Cheats

It took a few
seconds for Diana’s pronouncement to sink in. By the time it had, my hopes were sinking, too.

“So Charlie was a spy?”

“More than a spy,” Diana said. “He’s been guiding us, using us all along.” She looked over at Gustav, her expression turning sorrowful. “We ended up working for Little Pete, after all.”

My brother gave her the slow, somber nod of a man accepting the fact of his own failure. “How’d you deducify it?”

Diana gestured back at the ever-smiling Lee Kan, who’d gone so still he could’ve been a grinning gargoyle propped up on the shop counter.

“Charlie still had money to pay
him
, for one thing. If he’d really been captured by Little Pete’s hatchet men this afternoon, like he said, would they have let him keep the fifty dollars I paid him to help us?”

She answered her own question with a shake of the head.

“I already had my suspicions before then, though. The men we spoke to in the opium dens this afternoon didn’t help us much, but they didn’t throw us out, either. That’s more than I would’ve expected, given that we were just some nosy
fan kwei
and a lowly
ki di
. It makes a lot more sense if they knew Charlie was working for Little Pete. That way, any questions they were answering for us, they were really answering for
him
.”

“Explains why Little Pete wasn’t pissed when I said no to him, too. That bounty he offered us for the gal—that was just some kinda test.” Old Red drove a fist into an open palm. “Dammit, I should’ve seen it all along.”

“You’re a natural-born detective, Gustav, but you’re not naturally devious.” Diana offered him a small, sympathetic smile. “We’ll have to work on that.”

“Why didn’t you say something about Charlie sooner?” I said to her.

“Until a minute ago, it was no more than a vague inkling. And anyway, where were we going to find another interpreter? We needed him.”

As she spoke, I noticed movement in the dim candlelight behind her. Lee Kan was edging toward a bead-draped doorway at the back of the shop.

“You goin’ somewhere?” I asked him.

He stopped, still grinning, and gave me a confused shrug.

I had an inkling of my own.

“No sabe Englee, huh?” I said.

Lee Kan nodded.

“Uh-huh. Right.” I turned to my brother and dropped my voice. “You know, just to be safe, I think we oughta wrap a rope around this little feller like we did—”

Lee Kan darted through the doorway.

I started after him, but Gustav hooked me by the arm before I’d taken two steps.

“Lemme go! We can’t have him tattlin’ to who knows who!”

“We ain’t got time to chase after him now,” my brother said. “Fat Choy gets on that ferry without us—or gets hisself bagged by Little Pete—and we’ll never find Hok Gup or know what really happened to Doc Chan.”

He steered me toward the door, and Diana fell into step behind us.

“Folks,” my brother said, “we got us a boat to catch.”

Once outside, we proceeded east at a canter. A full-on gallop wouldn’t do—not with nearly a mile between us and the Ferry House. We’d over-bake ourselves before we were halfway there.

It’s at times like these a cowboy truly misses his horse.

We could’ve headed down to Market, eight or nine blocks south, and probably hopped a trolley or hack from there. But Old Red pointed out that we likely had a war party of
boo how doy
on our trail, and the best place to shake them would be the Barbary Coast. So into the breach—and the debauchery—we headed yet again.

On our way out of Chinatown, we passed the Anti-Coolie League sandwich man, who was busy abusing any Chinese within earshot. I “accidentally” knocked him into the gutter as we whipped by.

“
Entschuldigung, Arschloch!
” I called back apologetically as we hustled away.

“You mean ‘Pardon me, sir’!” the stupid “
Arschloch
” bellowed. “You’re in America now, dammit!”

Mere seconds later, we were weaving through hoodlums, harlots, sailors, and toffs—many of whom were weaving themselves. Or staggering, anyway. In the hour or so that had passed since we’d last left the Coast, the number of drunken revelers had doubled, and the sidewalks were overflowing with people (not to mention—and perhaps I shouldn’t—puke and piss).

Our jog slowed to a walk, then a shuffle.

It was hard to gauge whether our slowed progress should have us worried, panicked, or downright suicidal without knowing the hour. Maybe we had half an hour to catch the ferry . . . or maybe it was already cruising past Alcatraz Island. So we tried asking folks the time. We were told, “Not late enough,” “Who cares?” and “Ask that bastard in the slouch hat—he just stole my watch,” before someone graced us with a straight answer.

It was eight-fifty. We had ten minutes to travel ten blocks.

“We ain’t gonna make it.”

“Thank you for statin’ the obvious,” my brother grumbled.

“Oh, I do what I can.”

“Which ain’t much.”

“You want me to do more? How ’bout if I was to pick you up and
throw
you to the—?”

“Look,” Diana cut in, pointing up at one of the wooden poles running along Pacific Avenue. “Some of these buildings have been wired for
telephone service. Maybe we could get inside somewhere and find a phone. Ring up the Ferry House and have them hold the boat.”

“That’s a mighty big ‘maybe,’ ” I said.

“Too big,” said Old Red.

“Well, squabbling’s certainly not going to get us to the Ferry House any faster.”

“Don’t underestimate the power of squabblin’,” I said. “It’s served me and my brother well enough so far.”

Gustav stepped sideways into the throng, headed for the street. “What we need to find is a . . . hel-lo.”

I heard what he was hel-loing before I saw it. It was loud enough to cut through even the din of dance-hall bands, crib girl come-ons, and cackled laughter.

The clattering whir of wheels. The heavy
clop-clop
of hooves on a city street.

A wagon was coming.

Diana and I wormed our way out to the gutter with my brother. He was looking west down Pacific, back the way we’d just come. There were no cable cars or carriages in sight—none would risk a trip through the Coast after nightfall. But the Coast being the Coast, there was money to be made if a man was willing to brave the chaos. And men being men, there were takers.

The buckboard rolling toward us was toting a dozen kegs. Some concert saloon or melodeon had raised the alarm, so here they came like the fire brigade: the beer men, making an emergency run.

Appropriately enough for beer men, they were barrel-chested. And loaded, too—as in with bullets. The fellow holding the reins was wearing a gunbelt, and his shotgun rider lived up to the name.

They were a block away, moving at a pace just shy of brisk. We had all of thirty seconds to come up with a plan.

Gustav took a stab first.

“We’ll stop ’em, then—”

“Ho! Hold on there, Brother!” I said. “You can’t move on to ‘then’ that easy. Stop ’em how? Them fellers probably got drunks flaggin’ ’em down all night. They ain’t gonna . . . Miss?”

Diana was walking out into the street.

“Stay back,” she said without turning to look at us. “Don’t let them know we’re together.”

She planted herself in the wagon’s path and waved her arms over her head.

I started toward her, but Old Red held me back.

“They won’t run down a lady . . . I hope.”

“You’d
better
hope,” I said. “Cuz if she gets hurt, I’m gonna—”

“Don’t worry. She gets hurt, I’ll do it myself.”

The driver had spotted Diana by now, and he jerked his reins to the right, trying to steer around her.

Diana put herself in front of his horses again. If he didn’t rein up, and hard, she’d be rolled out like a pie crust in five seconds flat.

The driver called out “Whoa!” and jerked back on the reins with such force I could hear the leather creaking over the rumble of the wheels. The horses whinnied and skidded over the cobblestones, and the whole kit and caboodle—ponies, harness gear, the wagon—seemed to squeeze up like a concertina.

When it all came to a stop, Diana was practically nose to muzzle with the lead horse.

“Gentlemen,” she said coolly, “thank you for stopping.”

The driver immediately launched into a tirade so larded with profanity I’m sure even the passing sailors picked up a phrase or two. The gist: The lady had just done a darned foolish thing. Why?

“I’m sorry, but it was an emergency.” Diana walked around to the left side of the buckboard—pulling the beer men’s eyes with her, away from us. “I’m in desperate need of transportation. Would it be possible to hire out your wagon? Just for a little while?”

The driver uncorked another torrent of vulgarities.

“Hold on, Aldo,” the shotgun man said. He leaned toward Diana, his scattergun resting on his lap. “How much for how long?”

“Four dollars for ten minutes.”

Once again, Mt. Aldo erupted with expletives.

“Look, lady,” the shotgun man said, “they need this beer at the Bella
Union
now
or, trust me, we wouldn’t be out here at all. We don’t have time for charity cases.”

“Ten dollars for five minutes,” Diana said.

There was no cussing this time. The haggling had begun.

As had the skulking. While the lady distracted the beer men, my brother and I crept up alongside the wagon, Gustav on the driver’s side, I on the other. I was mere steps from the shotgun guard’s back when he whipped around to glare at a gaggle of guffawing passersby that had slowed to take in the show.

“What are you laughing at?” he snapped.

“At the big son of a bitch trying to steal your wagon!” a hoodlum in the crowd crowed. And he pointed right at me.

And he was calling
me
an SOB?

I lunged and grabbed the barrel of the guard’s scattergun before he could turn around. But the beer man, alerted, had tightened his grip. I couldn’t pry the shotgun away.

The guard and I wound up playing tug of war, me trying to wrench the scattergun out of his hands, him trying to work both barrels up even with my face.

“Heeeyaaah!” someone hollered, and I heard the reins snap.

The wagon lurched forward, and the guard vaulted
upward
, launched into the air as his seat jerked out from under him. He flew over my head, landing on his back with a grunting thud—and with the shotgun still in his hands.

“Otto, hurry! Get in!” Diana called back from the buckboard as it rumbled up the street. Old Red was hunched over beside her, clutching the reins.

I sprinted after the wagon. It hadn’t worked up to much of a lick yet, and after a few long strides I was able to grab hold of the side and vault up into the bed.

“Y’all get the gun off the driver?” I was about to ask when
the pop
of a single shot offered the answer.

I felt something warm and wet down run down my ankle.

“Sweet Jesus!” I cried. “I been—”

But I hadn’t. When I looked down, I saw that it wasn’t blood soaking my foot. It was beer.

“You alright back there, Brother?”

There was another
pop
, and one of the other kegs sprung a leak.

I peeked back at the street.

“I’m fine,” I said. “But you might wanna ask again in a second or two.”

Aldo was little more than thirty feet behind us, giving chase at an awkward side-turned lope, a smoking Colt at the end of his outstretched hand. In addition to the occasional potshot, he was firing off obscenities Gatling-gun fast.

The guard was on his feet now, too, and he scampered after us, shotgun up. He couldn’t fire with Aldo still in front of him—not without peppering his pal with buckshot. But the second the two men drew even, he’d let loose.

“Can’t you get them nags goin’ any faster?”

“Not with all that dead weight back there!” Gustav hollered.

“Hey, who you callin’—?”

Pop
.

The barrel next to my head sprung a leak, and beer gushed down onto my shoulder and chest, quickly drenching me. I wriggled around to escape the cascade, ending up pressed against the back gate of the wagon bed. It felt loose, and I noticed it was held in place only by a three-inch peg on a short length of twine. The little bolt danced around in its hole, every bounce over the cobblestones threatening to pop it out altogether.

Well, isn’t that just dandy?
I thought.
If I’m not
shot
in the next minute, I’m gonna roll off the back of this buckboard like a
. . .

Hel-lo, as my brother likes to say.

I pushed myself up onto my knees and pulled the peg all the way out.

The back gate dropped open.

“Don’t do it, asshole!” Aldo screeched. “Don’t you
dare
do it!”