Oddments (2 page)

He hid his edginess from the other three men present in the chief's office by carefully loading and lighting his favorite briar. One of the men he knew well enough, even grudgingly respected; this was Lieutenant William Price, head of the Chinatown "flying squad" that had been formed in an effort to control tong crime. He had mixed feelings about Crowley, and liked Sergeant Adam Gentry, Price's assistant, not at all. Gentry was contentious and made no bones about his distaste for flycops.

Short and wiry, a rooster of a man in his gold-buttoned uniform, Gentry watched with a flinty gaze as Quincannon shook out the sulphur match. "Little Pete's behind this, sure as hell. No one else in Chinatown would have the audacity to
order the shooting of a white man."

"So it would seem," Quincannon allowed.

"Seem? That bloody devil controls every tong in the Quarter except the Hip Sing."

This was an exaggeration. Fong Ching, alias F.C. Peters, alias Little Pete, was a powerful man, no question—a curious mix of East and West, honest and crooked. He ran several successful businesses, participated in both Chinatown and city politics, and was cultured enough to write Chinese stage operas, yet he ruled much of Chinatown crime with such cleverness that he had never been prosecuted. But his power was limited to a few sin-and-vice tongs. Most tongs were law-abiding, self-governing, and benevolent.

Quincannon said, "The Hip Sing is Pete's strongest rival,
I'll grant you that."

"Yes, and he's not above starting a bloodbath in Chinatown to gain control of it. He's a menace to white and yellow alike."

"Not so bad as that," Price said. "He already controls the blackmail, extortion, and slave-girl rackets, and the Hip Sing is no threat to him there. Gambling is their game, and under Bing Ah Kee there was never any serious trouble between them. That won't change much under the new president, Mock Don Yuen, though it could if that sneaky son of his, Mock Quan, ever takes over."

"Pete's power-mad," Gentry argued. "He wants the whole of Chinatown in his pocket."

"But he's not crazy. He might order the snatching of Bing's remains—though even the Hip Sing aren't convinced he's behind that business, or there'd have been war declared already—but I can't see him risking the public execution of a white man, not for any reason. He knows it'd bring us down on him and his highbinders with a vengeance. He's too smart
by half to allow that to happen."

"I say he's not. There's not another man in that rat-hole of vice who'd dare to do it."

Quincannon said, "Hidden forces at work, mayhap?"

"Not bloody likely."

"No, it's possible," Price said. He ran a forefinger across his thick moustache. He was a big man, imposing in both bulk and countenance; he had a deserved reputation in Chinatown as the "American Terror," the result of raiding parties he'd led into the Quarter's dens of sin. "I've had a feeling that there's more than meets the eye and ear in Chinatown these days. Yet we've learned nothing to corroborate it."

"Well, I don't care which way the wind is blowing over there," the chief said. "I don't like this damned shooting tonight." Crowley was an overweight sixty, florid and pompous. Politics was his game; his policeman's instincts were suspect, a failing which sometimes led him to rash judgment and action. "The
boo how doy
have always left Caucasians strictly alone. Scarlett's murder sets a deadly precedent and I'm not going to stand by and do nothing about it."

Gentry had lighted a cigar; he waved it for emphasis as he said, "Bully! Finish off Little Pete and his gang before he has more innocent citizens murdered, that's what I say."

"James Scarlett wasn't innocent," Price reminded him. "He sold his soul to the Hip Sing for opium, defended their hatchet men in court. And he had guilty knowledge of the theft of Bing's corpse, possibly even a hand in the deed, according to what Quincannon has told us."

"According to what Scarlett's wife told my partner and me," Quincannon corrected, "though she said nothing of an actual involvement in the body snatching. Only that he had knowledge of the crime and was in mortal fear of his life. Whatever he knew, he kept it to himself. He never spoke of
Little Pete or the Kwong Dock to Mrs. Scarlett."

"They're guilty as sin, just the same," Gentry said. "By God, the only way to ensure public safety is to send the flying squad out to the tong headquarters and Pete's hangouts. Axes, hammers, and pistols will write their epitaphs in a hurry."

"Not yet," Price said. "Not without proof."

"Well, then, why don't we take the squad and find some?

"Evidence that Pete's behind the killing. Evidence to point to
the cold storage where old Bing's bones are stashed."

"Pete's too clever to leave evidence for us to find."

"He is, but maybe his highbinders aren't."

"The sergeant has a good point," Chief Crowley said. "Will, take half a dozen men and go over those places with a fine-tooth comb. And don't take any guff from Pete and his highbinders while you're about it."

"Just as you say, Chief." Price turned to his assistant.

"Round up an interpreter and assemble the men we'll need."

"Right away." Gentry hurried from the office. Quincannon asked through a cloud of pipe smoke, "What do you know of Fowler Alley, Lieutenant?"

"Fowler Alley? Why do you ask that?"

"Scarlett mumbled the name after I carried him out of Blind Annie's. I wonder if it might have significance."

"I can't imagine how. Little Pete hangs out at his shoe factory on Bartlett Alley and Bartlett is where the Kwong Dock Company is located, too. I know there are no tongs headquartered in Fowler Alley. And no illegal activity."

"Are any of the businesses there run by Pete?"

"Not to my knowledge. I'll look into it."

Quincannon nodded, thinking: Not before I do, I'll wager. He got to his feet. "I'll be going now, if you've no objection."

Chief Crowley waved a hand. "We'll notify you if you're needed again."

"Will you bring Mrs. Scarlett word of her husband's death?"

"I'll dispatch a man." The Chief added wryly, "I imagine she'd rather not hear it from you, under the circumstances."

Quincannon said, "I expect not," between his teeth and took his leave.

The law offices of James Scarlett were on the southern fringe of Chinatown, less than half a mile from the Hall of Justice. Quincannon had visited the dingy, two-story building earlier in the day, after leaving Andrea Scarlett with Sabina. The place had been dark and locked up tight then; the same was true when he arrived there a few minutes past midnight.

He paid the hansom driver at the corner, walked back through heavy shadows to the entranceway. Brooding the while, as he had in the cab, about the incident in Ross Alley. How had the gunman known enough to lie in ambush as he had? If he'd been following Scarlett, why not simply enter the opium resort and shoot him there? Witnesses were never a worry to highbinders. The other explanation was that it was Quincannon who had been followed, though it seemed impossible that anyone in Chinatown could know that Carpenter and Quincannon, Professional Detective Services, had been hired by Mrs. Scarlett to find and protect her husband.

Then there was the fact that the assassin had fired three shots, the last two of which had come perilously close to sending Quincannon to join
his
ancestors. Poor and hurried shooting caused by darkness? Or had he also been a target? Something about the gunman fretted him, too, something he could not quite put his finger on.

The whole business smacked of hidden motives, for a fact.

And hidden dangers. He did not like to be made a pawn in any piece of intrigue. He liked it almost as little as being shot at, intentionally or otherwise, and failing at a job he had been retained to do. He meant to get to the bottom of it, with or without official sanction.

Few door latches had ever withstood his ministrations, and the one on James Scarlett's building was no exception. Another attorney occupied the downstairs rooms; Quincannon climbed a creaky staircase to the second floor. The pebbled-glass door imprinted with the words
J. H. Scarlett, Attorney-at-Law
was not locked. This puzzled him slightly, though not for long.

Inside, he struck a sulphur match, found the gas outlet—the building was too old and shabby to have been wired for electricity—and lit the flame. Its pale glow showed him a dusty anteroom containing two desks whose bare surfaces indicated that it had been some while since they had been occupied by either law clerk or secretary. He proceeded through a doorway into Scarlett's private sanctum.

His first impression was that the lawyer had been a remarkably untidy individual. A few seconds later he revised this opinion; the office had been searched in a hurried but rather thorough fashion. Papers littered the top of a large oak desk, the floor around it, and the floor under a bank of wooden file cases. Two of the file drawers were partly open. A wastebasket behind the desk had been overturned and its contents gone through. A shelf of law books showed signs of having been examined as well.

The fine hand of a highbinder? Possibly, though the methods used here were a good deal less destructive than those usually employed by the
boo how doy.

The smell of must and mildew wrinkled his nostrils as he crossed to the desk, giving him to wonder just how much time
Scarlett had spent in these premises. The office wanted a good airing, if not a match to purge it completely. Scowling, he sifted through the papers on and below the desk. They told him nothing except that almost all of Scarlett's recent clients had been Chinese; none of the names was familiar and none of the addresses was on Fowler Alley. The desk drawers yielded even less of interest, and the slim accumulation of briefs, letters, and invoices in the file drawers was likewise unproductive. None bore any direct reference to either the Hip Sing or Kwong Dock tongs, or to Fong Ching under his own name or any of his known aliases.

The only interesting thing about the late Mr. Scarlett's office, in fact, was the state in which Quincannon had found it. What had the previous intruder been searching for? And whatever it was, had he found it?

Sabina was already at her desk when he arrived at the Market Street offices of Carpenter and Quincannon, Professional Detective Services, at nine A.M. She looked bright and well-scrubbed, her glossy black hair piled high on her head and fastened with a jade barrette. As always, Quincannon's hard heart softened and his pulses quickened at sight of her. A fine figure of a woman, Mrs. Sabina Carpenter. For a few seconds, as he shed his derby but not his Chesterfield, the wicked side of his imagination speculated once again on what that fine figure would look like divested of its skirt and jacket, shirtwaist and lacy undergarments....

She narrowed her eyes at him as he crossed the room. "Before we get down to business," she said, "I'll thank you to put my clothes back on."

"Eh?" Sudden warmth crept out of Quincannon's collar. "My dear Sabina! You can't think that I—"

"I don't think it, I know it. I know
you,
John
Quincannon
,
far better than you think I do."

He sighed. "Perhaps, though you often mistake my motives."

"I doubt that. Was your sleepless night a reward of that lascivious mind of yours?"

"How did you know—"

"Bloodshot eyes in saggy pouches. If I didn't know better, I'd think you had forsaken your temperance pledge."

"Observant wench. No, it was neither Demon Rum nor impure thoughts nor my misunderstood affections for you that kept me awake most of the blasted night."

"What, then?"

"The death of James Scarlett and the near death of your most obedient servant."

The words startled her, though only someone who knew Sabina as he did would have been aware of it; her round face betrayed only the barest shadow of her surprise. "What happened, John?"

He told her in detail, including the things that bothered him about the incident and the speculations shared with the three police officers. The smooth skin of her forehead and around her generous mouth bore lines of concern when he finished.

"Bad business," she said. "And bad
for
business, losing a man we were hired to protect to an assassin's bullet. Not that you're to be blamed, of course."

"Of course," Quincannon said sardonically. "But others will blame me. The only way to undo the damage is for me to find the scoundrel responsible before the police do."

"Us to find him, you mean."

"Us," he agreed.

"I suppose it's back to Chinatown for you."

"It's where the whole of the answer lies."

"Fowler Alley?"

"If Scarlett's mutterings were significant and not part of a hop dream."

"You said he sounded frightened when he spoke the name. Opium dreams are seldom nightmares, John. Men and women use the stuff to escape from nightmares, real or imaginary."

"True."

"Scarlett's other words—'blue shadow.' A connection of some sort to Fowler Alley?"