Black Dove (15 page)

Or, I Use My Powers of Persuasion to Talk Us
into
Trouble

The highbinders across the
street didn’t seem to spot us trailing the old-timer. They just stood there on either side of their stoop like a couple pillars with nothing to hold up.

All the same, it wouldn’t do to dawdle around gawking at them. So Gustav, Diana, and I turned and moseyed back the way we’d just come. The leader of the Salvation Army band watched warily as we drew closer, and he didn’t bother asking if we’d seen Jesus this time.

“Sorry, maestro—still no sign of Him,” I said as we ambled past. “Looks like you might need to get up a search party.”

“Otto,
please”
Diana chided me. “If He is around here somewhere, we’ll need His help.”

“You’re right about that,” Old Red said sourly. “We can’t learn nothin’ out here. We gotta get inside.”

“You mean into the house?” Diana asked. “If the old man sees you two, there’ll be a lot of explaining to do.”

“We got no choice. Grandpa’s the only trail to follow, so . . . we follow it.”

My brother looked over at Diana. He and she were almost exactly the same height, and the gaze they shared now was as even and steely-steady as the iron girders of a modern metal bridge.

“Just me and Otto,” Gustav said. “You know what sorta place that most likely is.”

“A whorehouse, you mean?”

My brother flushed. Yet for just a fleeting flash, a gone-in-a-wink instant, he didn’t look embarrassed by the lady’s language. He looked
hurt
.

He snapped the expression away with a curt nod, like shaking out a tablecloth to clear it of crumbs.

“Yup. That’s what I mean. If it is a cathouse, they’re used to fellers like us tryin’ to get inside. But you try to go in there with us . . . ? Uh-uh. Even in a town like Frisco, that’s gonna turn heads.”

“ ‘No place for a lady,’ huh?” Diana said.

“Now, look, miss . . .,” I began.

“Don’t bother, Otto. This time, I’m inclined to agree.” Diana sighed. “So . . . what shall I do in the meantime? Darn your socks? Bake a cake?”

“You could go home,” Old Red said.

Diana smiled grimly. “Other than that.”

“Maybe you could do a little shoppin’,” I suggested.

The lady gave me an “I
hope
you’re joking” glower.

“I got the feelin’ you’ll be needin’ a mournin’ dress pretty soon now,” I explained.

“Ah.” She reached over and gave my arm three light little pats. “You two know how to take care of yourselves. You’ll be fine, Otto. I’m sure of it.”

“Miss, I’ve said it before and I’ll say it again—you are the best liar I ever met.” I took the liberty of gently placing
my
hand on
her
arm for a moment. “And it’s much appreciated.”

“Alright, alright,” Gustav grumbled. “Enough gum flappin’.”

“Get yourself somewhere safe,” I told Diana as my brother and I turned to go.

“You can count on me,” she said.

Old Red and I were already a dozen strides away before it struck me what a cryptic response this had really been.

“I wonder . . .”

“Don’t try to figure her out,” Gustav said. “You’ll just sprain something.”

“Maybe you oughta take your own advice. After all, back at Chan’s place, it
was you
who got all—”

“Oh, for God’s sake, Brother,” Old Red snapped. “We got more important things to worry about just now.”

He was looking up ahead, at two of those “more important things”: the hatchet men on either side of the door we had to get through . . . somehow.

As we drew closer, we once again passed that hymn-blasting brass band, now solemnly oompah-ing the life out of “What a Friend We Have in Jesus.” This time, the bandleader gave me a glare that told me he had it on good authority I was going to hell. Which wasn’t news to me. Gustav and I were practically there already.

“Let me do the talkin’,” I said as we stepped around a puddle that seemed to be blood garnished with a liberal sprinkling of teeth.

“What kinda play you gonna make?”

“Damned if I know.”

The highbinders finally took notice of us as we started across the street, monitoring our approach with apathetic, slack-jawed, sidelong glances. Whatever we might prove to be, they clearly had no doubt they could handle it.

“Don’t worry, though, Brother,” I said under my breath. “I still got a whole five or six seconds to come up with something.”

Five or six seconds later, we were a mere five or six steps from the highbinders and I
still
didn’t have a plan. So my mouth just took matters into its own (figurative) hands.

“Ooooo, yessir!” I heard myself hoot. “This must be the place!”

I gave Gustav a boisterous slap on the back and tried to go breezing between those guards just as the geezer had a few minutes before.

The highbinders stepped together like gates slamming shut in front of us.

Old Red and I skidded to a stop.

“Pardon me, gents. But this is a”—I winked and let out a loud
meeoww
—“ain’t it?”

The smaller of the two highbinders—a young, round-faced fellow working so hard to look tough he should’ve been chewing nails—just
said one word. It was the kind of thing that wouldn’t usually roll trippingly off a foreigner’s tongue, but he seemed to have had plenty of practice with it.

“Exclusive.”

“Exclusive?” I grinned. “Well, of course it is! We wanted to rub shoulders with the riffraff, we’d take our trade to the competition.”

“
Exclusive
,” the highbinder said again.

“Believe me—I don’t doubt it,” I replied. “Like I said, that’s why we’re here. You see . . . this place come recommended.”

I gave the guards a moment to ask me by whom, but they didn’t bother. Which was fine, actually, as it gave me time to reach around and pull a name out of my ass.

“Cathal Mahoney told us to come here. That’s
Sergeant
Mahoney to the likes of you. He said we’d be treated right. I’d sure hate to have to tell him otherwise.”

The highbinders’ eyes widened. I suspect my brother’s did, too, but fortunately the guards weren’t paying him any mind just then.

“You wait,” said the talker of the two, and he turned and went inside.

The other highbinder took a slight step to his left, the better to block us now that his compadre was gone. He made for quite an effective fence standing there, arms and legs akimbo, fearsome scowl freshly replastered over his surprise.

“Lovely weather we’re havin’, ain’t it?” I said to him.

He didn’t so much as blink . . .
for a full minute
. Really. Old Red and I couldn’t do much in the way of speaking with the hatchet man there in hearing (and hacking, stabbing, and shooting) range, so we had nothing to do but stand there timing him.

Now, certain folks are heartbreakers, some break promises, and others are ever breaking wind. Me, I’m an incorrigible breaker of silences.

“You know, them outfits y’all wear look mighty comfy,” I said to the highbinder, pointing at his slack black tunic. “They come in any other colors?”

The Chinaman didn’t deign to answer.

“Cuz I wouldn’t mind gettin’ me some duds like that,” I went on. “For lollygaggin’ around of a Sunday afternoon. You know. Like a proper
English gentleman.” I waggled my eyebrows at my brother. “Know what I mean?”

Gustav most certainly did—I’d ribbed him more than once about Holmes’s habit of lounging about in his “dressing gown.”

“I’m sure our friend here don’t care how you dress yourself any more than I do,” he snipped at me.

Translation:
Don’t annoy the man, ya idjit
.

As you’ve no doubt noted already, there’s something else I like breaking whenever possible: my brother’s balls. It’s a compulsion I can’t always control, like the urge some fellows feel to drink or gamble or run around pretending they’re a “consulting detective.”

So I turned back to our “friend” and said, “I like the man’s look is all I’m sayin’. Only I’d wouldn’t want my jim-jams quite so drab. No offense intended.”

But offense finally taken, it seemed. The Chinaman reached behind his back to grab for something tucked away under his tunic.

Old Red and I stepped backwards off the stoop, sliding away together like the tide going out. If there was to be gunplay, we’d have to sit it out—on the shooting end, anyway. Being shot we could do just fine.

We’d lost our Peacemakers back on the Pacific Express, you see, and never got around to replacing them.

I suddenly regretted the time and money I’d spent the night before to buy myself a new
hat
.

But the hatchet man never even noticed how spooked he had us. He was too busy pulling out a small pouch—from which he produced a pile of business cards.

As he rifled through the cards, my brother and I slid forward again, gaping at each other all the while.

When the highbinder found the card he wanted, he held it out to me. The writing on it was mostly Chinese, but there was an address printed in English.

“My cousin, Wing Sing. Tailor. Show this, he give good price.”

“Thank you, friend,” I said, pocketing the card. “I’ll look him up once we’ve—”

The door behind Wing Sing’s cousin swung open, and the other hatchet man rejoined us on the stoop.

“Inside.”

He jerked his head back at the door. Beyond it was a hallway so murky-dark it could have been the mouth of a cave.

“Inside?” I said to my brother.

Outside
had suddenly struck me as the safer (not to mention saner) place to be.

Gustav eyed the hallway unhappily. Yet he nodded all the same.

“Inside,” he said.

So in I went.

Just as I crossed the threshold, the brass band up the street broke into a wheezing, heaving rendition of “Wretched, Helpless, and Distrest,” without a doubt the most dismal dirge ever to blacken the pages of a hymnal. Preachers like to talk about “the good news,” but there’s precious little cheer in that song. All it speaks of is doom.

I had to wonder if the bandleader knew something we didn’t. Like maybe we’d be seeing Jesus pretty soon now, after all.

Or St. Peter, anyway.

Or, A Soiled Dove Gives Us the Bird

There was no need
for the highbinders to lead the way. There was but one way to go—straight ahead.

Inside, we found no foyer, no stairs, no adjoining rooms. Just a narrow, shadowy corridor leading to another door a short distance away. Crimson-tinged light bled through into the darkness from the door’s every edge, giving the end of the passageway an eerie reddish glow.

The hatchet men let me and Gustav start toward it, then pulled the door to the stoop closed, and rode drag on us, tight. Their presence at our heels seemed to cut us off from our each previous step and cancel out everything that lay behind us, so that the steps ahead were all that remained of our world.

That world was shrinking fast. When there were but a few steps left to it, the door at the end of the hall swung open, and light flooded into the corridor.

For a moment, I could see only the outline of a woman before us. It was quite the outline, too: short in stature but long on curves. The woman’s hair was done up in a big bun, adding one more bulge to her already shapely form—an onion atop the hourglass.

“Welcome, gentlemen. I am Madam Fong.”

My vision unblurred, and I found myself face to lovely face with a Chinese woman dressed in a flowery blouse and silky-black pantaloons. To call her beautiful would do her a disservice. She was a goddess, albeit one who was enough the mortal to age. There was the slightest sagging to her smooth crescent chin; the beginnings of a droop to her puckered, painted lips; lines around her almond eyes even the most skillfully applied talcum couldn’t quite hide.

You could see her years
in
her eyes, too. Not that they were cloudy or crossed or bloodshot. They just seemed dulled somehow, as if from overuse. They were
eyes
that had seen too much.

She stepped back and swept out an arm, ushering us into a perfumed parlor room that was one-third Xanadu, one-third Sears & Roebuck, and one-third dirty postcard. There were low-slung divans piled high with embroidered pillows, wicker armchairs with cushions that looked so soft a man might sink into them like quicksand, and everywhere—
everywhere
—ashtrays, picture frames, figurines, and other assorted trifles crafted from teakwood, bamboo, or porcelain. (No obsidian-black birds, though, I noted.)

Plush red carpet covered the floor, pink paisleyed paper was plastered to the walls, and nailed up willy-nilly was “art” that . . . well, suffice it to say, the pictures alternated between nature scenes and scenes of a nature that would make a sailor blush.

But perhaps the room’s most notable—and fortuitous—feature was what
wasn’t
there: the old-timer.

“Please. Make yourselves comfortable,” the madam said as Gustav and I shuffled into the room. Her accent wasn’t as thick as some we’d heard that day, yet her words came out clipped and curt, as if she had to spit them out one letter at a time.