The Case of the Deadly Desperados (10 page)

Ledger Sheet 23

OIL LAMPS ON THE TABLES
& walls gave the dining room of the Colombo Restaurant a pleasing golden glow. It smelled of cabbage & roast pork & also of wood smoke from the cherry-ripe cast-iron stove in one corner. The room was full of tables & every seat was occupied. Most of the men were bearded. There was a comforting sound of cutlery on china when I first entered, but then it grew quiet as the diners stopped eating & turned to stare at me.

I had changed into a new outfit.

I thought, “Maybe they don't serve people dressed like this here at the Colombo Restaurant.”

My suspicion was confirmed when a Mexican boy carrying empty plates stood before me.

“Get out!” he said. “Chop, chop! You can't come in here!” He made a flapping motion at me with his free hand.

I stood firm and in a low voice I said, “I am looking for Belle Donne. I have an important message for her.”

The young waiter stared hard at me for a few moments, glanced around at the diners, then nodded. “Follow me,” he said. “We have a special room for women and children.” Then he added in a low voice, “Next time you come here, use the side entrance by the privy.”

I followed him across the crowded dining room and through a door into another, smaller dining room, also lit by a few oil lamps & warmed by a wood-burning stove. There was a family of six at a rectangular table & a woman in black who sat alone at a small round table.

Still holding the dishes, the young waiter showed me to a small square table in one corner by an east-facing window & a potted fern. It was warm in there & I sat down gratefully.

The young waiter said, “Wait here. I will get the proprietor and owner, Mr. Titus Jepson.”

A moment later he returned. “Mr. Jepson says that any friend of Belle's is a friend of his. What would you like to eat?”

“I have just eaten,” I said. “But I am partial to black coffee.”

The waiter nodded. “Coming right up.”

While I waited, I studied the other people in the dining room. The blond family were talking to each other in a foreign language. They looked & sounded like Olaf, the bully from Temperance. From this I deduced they were Swedish. They were of solid build & had heads shaped like dice.

The woman in the corner reminded me of my teacher in Dayton, Miss Marlowe. But Miss Marlowe is pretty & this lady was plain. She was crinkling her nose at me to make Expression No. 3: Disgust.

The kitchen door opened & a redheaded man poked his head out & looked at me for a while. Then he retreated.

A few minutes later the redheaded man reappeared with a wedge of white-frosted chocolate cake and a thick china mug of black coffee. He put them both on the table and then took a seat opposite me.

“My name is Titus Jepson,” he said. “Owner and proprietor of this establishment.”

He was plump and wore a greasy white apron. From these clews I guessed he was the chief cook as well. “Gus tells me you're American,” he said. “In spite of your getup. And that you know Belle?”

I nodded and looked down at the piece of cake.

It looked good.

It made me think of the cake sitting at home. The cake with the chocolate frosting & licorice writing that Ma Evangeline had baked. My birthday cake that nobody would eat. I could hardly believe it was still my birthday. In the past four hours I had witnessed my foster parents' death & rid on top of a stagecoach & hid under the skirts of a Soiled Dove & been robbed & been shot at, too.

“Go on and have some,” said Titus Jepson. “The cake is on the house. Like I told Gus, a friend of Belle's is a friend of mine.”

I took a forkful and lifted it to my mouth. Then I hesitated.

What if Titus Jepson was in cahoots with Walt and knew who I was?

What if the cake was poisoned?

Had I learned nothing from my time in Satan's Playground?

I lowered my fork.

“Don't you like chocolate?” said Titus Jepson.

“I love chocolate.”

“Then why don't you eat it?”

I said, “I am afraid it might be poisoned.”

Titus Jepson chuckled. “That cake ain't poisoned and I'll prove it.” He pinched off a portion and ate it. “That there's my special Comstock layer cake. Chocolate with a ledge of silver frosting.” He grinned & showed a missing front tooth. “Course the frosting's not really silver. It's icing sugar flavored with vanilla, you bet.”

I took a bite.

It was delicious.

Maybe even better than Ma Evangeline's cake.

Titus Jepson said, “The frosting is supposed to represent the silver under the mountain. You can probably guess that I am a Uniledgarian.”

I said, “Beg pardon?”

He said, “A Uniledgarian is a person who believes in One Ledge.”

“Everybody talks about ‘ledges,'” said I, taking another bite. “But I don't understand what a ledge is.”

“Why, a ledge is a vein of silver, only it's more like a sheet than a vein. Some people around here adhere to the doctrine of multiple ledges, like a little stack of pancakes that have fallen over. But most of us believe there is one single ledge under this town, like the frosting in your cake.” Titus Jepson pointed a chubby finger at my cake & he said, “May I?”

I did not know what he meant, so I said, “Yes?”

Titus Jepson made his right hand into a fist & shmooshed my piece of chocolate cake.

I looked at the shmooshed cake in dismay. I had been enjoying it.

I said, “You shmooshed my cake.”

Titus Jepson said, “Imagine that cake is the mountain. Mount Davidson.”

I said, “I was enjoying that piece of cake.”

“I'm glad to hear that,” he said. “Now, imagine that the vanilla frosting is a big deposit of silver ore.” He took my butter knife & scraped the frosting off the top & put it on one side of the plate. “Not that top frosting. The frosting inside. The frosting
between
the layers. That is the ledge, the Mother Lode.”

I nodded.

“Of course that silver is mixed with quartz and other trash, and you have to pound it and treat it and amalgamate it before it becomes silver, but it's there.”

I looked at my piece of cake & nodded again.

“See how the frosting between the layers is thin in some places but thick in others? Because I shmooshed it?”

I nodded.

“And see how even though it's all shmooshed around it is still connected, despite the various dips, angles, spurs and variations?” He held up the plate & showed me. “Still connected, do you see?”

I did not understand all his words, but I clearly saw what he meant.

“Yes,” I said.

Titus Jepson put down the plate & picked up the knife. He used it to make three small dents in the top of the shmooshed cake. “These are various ravines in Mount Davidson,” he said. “That one is the Ophir Ravine.” Then he took my coffee cup & poured a little dribble of coffee on it. “And that there is a little stream that trickles down through the Ophir Ravine. It is called the Mexican Stream because in the early days of this city two poor Mexican brothers lived there and the stream was on their property. They traded their water for a few feet of a mine called the Ophir and they called their section of the ledge the Mexican Mine. It turned out to be the thickest part of the frosting ledge. Those two poor brothers sold it a few years later and now they both have mansions, you bet.”

Titus Jepson picked up a knife & carefully cut a small section out of my cake, then held it up on the knife. “I own three feet of the Mexican Mine and it provides some mighty tasty income.” He popped the segment of cake in his mouth & ate it.

I also took a bite.

“Sorry I shmooshed your cake,” said Titus Jepson. “Would you like a fresh piece?”

“No, sir,” I said, taking a forkful of the Mother Lode. “It is just as good shmooshed as it is puffy. And now I understand what a ledge is.”

Titus Jepson nodded and smiled. “Now that I have told you something, you can tell me something in return. What has Belle done now?”

I guess I should have figured.

In return for a piece of Comstock Layer Cake—and a lesson on the geography of the region—Titus Jepson wanted information about Belle Donne.

“Is Belle your daughter?” I asked.

Titus Jepson looked at me with Expression No. 4: Surprise. “Dog my cats, no! She is going to be my wife.”

“Your wife?”

“I hope so. I want to make an honest woman of her and marry her,” he said. Then he looked down at the table and scraped at a bit of dried egg with his thumbnail. “But she has a bad habit,” he said.

I said, “I crack my knuckles sometimes. Ma Evangeline says that is a bad habit.”

Titus Jepson shook his head & looked up at me. I saw that his eyes were moist. “Not that kind of habit,” he said. “I'm afraid she is in danger of becoming a Dope Fiend.”

“What is a Dope Fiend?” I asked.

“Opium Smoker,” said Titus Jepson. “Every time Belle gets a few dollars she goes down there to Chinatown and has a pipe. I have tried to get her to quit but it is no good. I don't think she'll ever change.”

I nodded wisely. Ma Evangeline always told Pa Emmet that his pipe was a bad habit.

At that moment we heard a commotion from the room next door.

“Where is she?” yelled a voice, muffled by the door between us. “When I find her, I am going to gut her like a pig.”

I choked on my mouthful of cake.

Whittlin Walt had found me once again.

Ledger Sheet 24

BEFORE I COULD BOLT
for the exit, the door of the Private Room for Ladies & Children burst open & in came Whittlin Walt & his pards.

Luckily, I had stopped by Isaiah Coffin's Ambrotype & Photographic Gallery before coming to the restaurant and I had adopted a new disguise, that of a Celestial. I was wearing loose blue pantaloons and a shirt with toggle buttons and also a flat straw hat with a false pigtail attached. I had looked myself over in the mirror and I judged that my “muddy complexion” made this my most convincing disguise so far.

Walt would not give me a second glance. He was looking for a little girl in pink calico and a bonnet.

Or was he?

“Where is she?” yelled Walt again. He was waving a Bowie Knife as long as my forearm. “Where is Belle Donne? They said she would be here!”

“Oh!” cried Titus Jepson, jumping up from my table. “Oh my!”

“You!” said Walt, grasping a fistful of Jepson's apron and pulling him close. “Where is Belle Donne? They told me she eats here regular.”

“I don't know!” cried Titus Jepson.

“Do you know who I am?” said Walt.

“No,” stammered Titus Jepson.

“My name is Whittlin Walt. You tell me where to find that girl or I will start cutting off your fingers and toes!”

“No,” said Titus Jepson. “Please, no. I'm very attached to my digits. I don't know where Belle is. I swear!”

The Mexican waiter was standing to one side watching. He was clenching & unclenching his fists. The blond family and the woman in black were staring wide-eyed.

“Talk!” said Walt. He grabbed Titus Jepson by the wrist & pulled him over to my table, which was the nearest. I shrank back against the wall. Walt pushed Jepson's plump hand flat on the tabletop & brought down his Bowie Knife.

Titus Jepson screamed as the tip of his left pinkie finger flew up into the air. It dropped down onto my plate, right among the crumbs and frosting.

The woman in black began to scream & the blond children were crying.

A pool of blood was spreading on the table.

“Now talk!” said Walt, holding up his bloody Bowie Knife. “Or I will keep whittling away at you and finally
I will show you that nothin' can happen more beautiful than death
.” He laughed, as if he had said something funny.

“I'll talk!” screamed Titus Jepson. “I'll talk!”

“Where is Belle?”

“She is probably down in one of them Opium Dens in Chinatown.”

“Which one?” said Walt, letting his knife hover over the ring finger of Jepson's left hand.

“Ah Sing!” said Titus Jepson. “She usually goes to Ah Sing.”

“I know Ah Sing,” said Extra Dub. “It is down there on F Street. Little coyote hole in the mountain.”

Walt nodded and spat some tobacco juice onto the floor. “See?” he said. “That wasn't so hard, was it?” He wiped his knife on the seat of his pants and said to his pards, “Come on, boys. Let's pay a visit to Chinatown.”

“No!” sobbed Titus Jepson. “Don't hurt Belle. Please don't hurt my Belle.”

But they were already heading out the side door.

As they left, Extra Dub pointed his Colt's Navy Revolver at the ceiling and fired a shot. Its loud report made my ears ring & caused flakes of plaster to rain down on us. It set off a new wave of screaming.

Titus Jepson was gasping & weeping & shaking his head. “Oh no!” he cried. “They'll carve her up. My poor Belle.”

I stood up.

So far Walt and his pards had called the shots.

It was time for me to do something apart from running away.

“Don't worry,” I said to Titus Jepson. “I will find Belle first and I will warn her.”

Titus Jepson looked down at me with a blotched and tearful face.

“If you help Belle,” he said, “I will give you discounted meals here till the end of time.”