Black Dove (24 page)

“It’s a reward notice: one thousand dollars for information leading to the Black Dove and Fat Choy.”

I whistled. “A thousand bucks? Them Ducks are gettin’ desperate.”

Charlie shook his head. “That’s the strange thing about it. It’s not the Kwong Ducks offering the reward.”

“Oh?” Gustav’s ears pricked up so quick it’s a wonder they didn’t knock off his hat. “Who is it, then?”

“The Six Companies.” Charlie waggled a thumb over his shoulder. “That comes from Chun Ti Chu himself.”

“Chu?” I said. “I thought he was supposed to be your respectable, pillar of the community type. Why would he be stickin’ his clean nose into a low-down dirty mess like this?”

It was Charlie I was asking—and my brother who did the answering.

“I been ponderin’ on that quite a spell already,” he said. “And I reckon it’s about time we up and asked him.”

Or, We Try to Pull a Fast One and End Up Looking None Too Swift

“About time we up
and asked him’?” I said to my brother. “Just like that? We simply waltz in and grill the most powerful man in Chinatown?”

Charlie clasped his hands together again yin-yang style. “Don’t forget Little Pete.”

“Right, right,” I said. “One of the
two
most powerful men in Chinatown.”

Charlie nodded his approval.

“Why not?” Old Red said. “Chun Ti Chu’s obviously got some of his own head mixed up in this here herd. ‘Chan was a Six Companies man.’ That come right outta Mahoney’s mouth when we was eavesdroppin’ on him and Woon, remember? And the way Mahoney talked, it sounded like Woon was a ‘Six Companies man’ hisself.”

“If you’re talking about Wong Woon, you’re right,” Charlie said. “He’s a ‘Chinatown special’—a private detective on the Six Companies payroll.”

“Really?” I said. “He sure seemed awful cozy with the Ducks when we seen him at Madam Fong’s a while back. Birds of a feather, looked like to me.”

“Naw.” Gustav shook his head. “That wasn’t cozy so much as
courtesy—the kind yink might show yank whenever the two ain’t tryin’ to tear each other apart.”

“Well, what was he doin’ there, then?”

“Lookin’ for Hok Gup, of course, Why do you think that re-ward poster just went up? Woon’s been tryin’ to track her down for Chu, only he ain’t had any better luck than us.”

“So Chu wants the girl . . . because she’d know who killed Chan?” Diana said.

My brother shrugged. “Maybe. But I’m startin’ to think this crick runs a mite deeper than that.”

“I’m startin’ to think this crick’s the Mississippi,” I said. “Or maybe just Shit Crick, pardon my French.”

“That would be ‘
Merde
Crick,’ ” Diana corrected.

Charlie gave us what I assume was his “oh, those inscrutable white folks” look.

“So,” he said, “you plan to just march into Six Companies headquarters and demand that Chun Ti Chu tell you why he wants the Black Dove?”

“Nope. We’d best go about it more sneakylike than that.” Gustav sighed. “ ‘Course, ‘sneakylike’ ain’t exactly my line . . . .”

He turned to Diana and said no more. He didn’t need to.

He was handing her the reins. And she took them, too—as well as his Stetson, which she plucked right off his head.

“Alright, boys. I’ll show you how to do sneaky.” She turned to Charlie and snatched away his cap with her other hand. “But first—let’s go shopping.”

Fifteen minutes later, we were marching into the offices of the Chinese Consolidated Benevolent Association, a.k.a. the Six Companies. “We” didn’t include Charlie, though. Being a known (and obviously less than beloved) character thereabouts, he was waiting for us a couple blocks away . . . wearing my brother’s white Boss of the Plains.

And another thing about that “we”—it’s not Otto Amlingmeyer, Gustav Amlingmeyer, and Diana Corvus it refers to. No, it was three newspaper reporters who came barging into Six Companies H.Q. that afternoon: John Lestrade of the
Chronicle
, Jabez Holmes of the
Examinery
and Hatty Adler of the
Evening Post
.

These newshounds were foaming at the mouth over a tip they had (supposedly) just received. Dr. Gee Woo Chan, prominent Chinese physician and survivor of the infamous Pacific Express disaster, had been found murdered that morning. The reporters requested—nay
demanded
—that Chun Ti Chu himself comment on this heinous crime and the bloody smear it left on Chinatown’s already rather soiled reputation.

Most of the talking was done by “Miss Adler.” The slight, carrot-topped “Holmes” and the strapping, dashing “Lestrade” (who kept his own hair underneath a tweed cap pulled down almost over his ears) limited themselves to ejaculations of the “Yeah!” and “You tell ’em!” variety (it having been determined by the lady that they spoke with too much “twang” to be believable as big-city reporters).

The first obstacle we faced—a pop-eyed, middle-aged, clerk-ish fellow seated at a desk in the building’s smallish lobby—slowed us about as much as a tumbleweed slows a stampede. Diana had barely launched into her harangue before he hopped up and scurried away, the silk of his loose trousers
shush-shush-shushing
as he hustled through a nearby doorway.

An eerie silence fell over the place akin to the quiet of a church come any day but Sunday. With its mixture of ornate woodwork, stained glass, desks, and filing cabinets, the Six Companies office came off as both exotic and mundane—half-temple, half-shipping office. The clerk we’d encountered could’ve returned carrying lit incense for the altar or forms for us to fill out in triplicate, and either way it would’ve fit.

As it was, he returned with neither.
Shush-shush-shush
and there he was again, a younger, mustachioed Chinaman at his side.

“Hello,” the young man said. “I understand that you—”

“You’re not Chun Ti Chu,” Diana snapped.

“No. I’m—”

And that was as far as he got. Diana tore into him about the power of the press and the precarious position of the Chinese community and the manifest folly of denying us an interview with Chun Ti Chu (since we’d just make up our own quotes if we didn’t get to talk to the man face to face).

The new fellow lasted longer than his predecessor. Maybe all of ten seconds, even. Then he, too, turned and
shush-shushed
away—though at least he had the courtesy to say, “A moment, please,” before he left.

“He fetchin’ Chu?” I asked our other host, who watched us nervously from the doorway as if afraid we might make off with his fountain pens or paperclips.

“No sabe Englee,” he said with a little apologetic bow.

“Oh, yeah? Then I guess you won’t mind if I call you a lyin’ son of a bitch, will you?”

I eagle-eyed the Chinaman for any sign he understood, but all he did was offer me a miserable shrug.

“I think this one actually means it,” my brother said.

“Good.” I turned to Diana and went on in a whisper. “Seems to me these Chinese fellers wouldn’t know a ‘twang’ from a stutter from the strummin’ of a banjo, seein’ as half of ’em don’t even speak the lingo. So how is it they’re gonna pick out our accents? And no offense, but I don’t think they’re gonna pay us much mind with a woman doin’ the talkin’. Now if
I
was to start doin’ the jawin’—”

“We stick to the plan,” Old Red cut in, his voice quiet but firm. “We’re just here to help prime the pump, Brother. Don’t you worry about the lady. She can get what we need without givin’ nothing away. Just remember what The Man said.”

“The Man said a lot of things,” I pointed out.

Gustav jerked his head at Diana. “About . . . you know.”

“Oh.” I rolled my eyes. “That.”

“Let me guess,” Diana whispered. “You’re referring to Mr. Holmes’s belief that women are ‘naturally secretive’?”

Old Red gaped at her. “Well, I’ll be . . . .”

“And I will be, too . . . .” I muttered once I’d picked my jaw up off my chest.

“I brushed up on my Watson before coming to see you yesterday,” the lady explained. “You can understand why that line stuck in my head, I’m sure. It’s so patently ludicrous. Men keep just as many secrets as women . . . wouldn’t you say, Gustav?”

“Well, miss,” my brother drawled, “I’d say that depends on the man and depends on the woman. Take yourself, for—”

Before he could finish, the younger Chinaman returned.

“Follow me, please.”

Diana flashed me a triumphant smirk, and I conceded with a bow and an arm outstretched toward the doorway.

“Ladies first.”

“And sometimes best,” Diana said.

She sauntered off after the Chinaman.

The young man ushered us back to an oaken office door so dark and heavy-looking I imagined it would take a team of Clydesdales to pull it open. It was the kind of door that told you not just anybody was allowed to walk through it—though that’s precisely what we did.

Chun Ti Chu smiled at us pleasantly as we walked in. Half the man’s grin was hidden, though—he was pressing some kind of silver doohickey against the side of his head. It almost looked like he was trying to iron his round face flat.

After a couple blinks, I recognized the thingamabob as the businessend of a telephone. Chu said a few words into it in his native tongue, then returned it to its cradle on a desk so large it would need but a little scaffolding and a rope to make do as a gallows. He nodded at the young man, who backed out of the room quickly, closing the door as he went.

“Ahhh,” Chu began, pushing back from his desk and coming to his feet. He wasn’t tall, but the straightness of his spine created the illusion of a height he didn’t have. He was broad-chested, too, but not big or fat. Overall, he seemed exceptionally
solid
, as if beneath the shiny, soft silk of his tunic he was pure granite. He was wearing a brimless, beanielike black cap, and the close-cropped hair around it was granite-gray, too.

It was no wonder Chu had come to be yin to the tong’s yang. He was like one of those town-square local-hero statues come to life.

“Dr. Gee Woo Chan is dead,” Diana shot at him before he could bow or hold out his hand or offer us cigars or kick us in the shin or whatever it was he customarily did when greeting reporters. “Any comment?”

All three of us whipped up our notebooks and pencils (freshly purchased from a stationer’s around the corner) and held them at the ready. We probably looked like a firing squad lined up before Chu as we were, but the man wasn’t any more fazed than that statue would’ve been.

“Gee Woo Chan was a good man,” he said, speaking slowly. He had a strong accent, but the words came out with just enough space in between
to let you decipher one before he moved on to the next. “An important member of the community. His passing brings much sorrow.”

“And what of the rumors that he was murdered?”

Chu pressed his lips together and tilted his head ever so slightly to one side, giving Diana the exact same look of weary disappointment my dear old
Mutter used
to throw my way whenever I slacked off on my chores.

“There are always rumors,” he said.

We dutifully scribbled this down (even Old Red, who truly was just scribbling). Then we stared at Chu over our notebooks, waiting for more—which didn’t come.

“So you’re satisfied it was suicide?” Diana pressed.

“Gee Woo Chan recently suffered a great loss of
mien tzu
,” Chu replied. “He ‘lost face,’ as we Chinese say. He borrowed certain valuables that he could not return—”

“The Chinese antiquities he took to Chicago for the Columbian Exposition,” Diana said. “The ones that were destroyed when the Pacific Express crashed.”

Chu nodded. “That is right. It was in the newspapers, wasn’t it?” The nod abruptly gave way to a doleful shake. “That only added to Gee Woo Chan’s shame. He had guaranteed the items’ safe return with his own money. He was forced to forfeit everything he had built over the last nine years.”

Old Red cleared his throat—his prearranged signal to Diana to follow up on what had just been said. Of course, Chu had just said plenty, so the lady had to do a little guesswork as to what had caught my brother’s ear.

“The last nine years?” she ventured.

Gustav pretended to jot something down in his notebook—another signal. Diana had guessed right.

“Yes,” Chu said. “Gee Woo Chan first came to America in 1884, part of a commission dispatched by the emperor himself to survey the World’s Fair in New Orleans. When the time came to leave, Gee Woo Chan refused to go. He had fallen in love with this country, and he sacrificed much to remain here, but he worked hard and invested wisely and did well.”

Chu took a thoughtful pause. When he continued, he spoke with the
tone certain men get when talking about missionaries, reformers, suffragettes, or the merely cheerful—folks they consider unrealistic fools.

“That is why the Exposition in Chicago meant so much to him . . . why he made such efforts to make the Chinese exhibition a success. Anti-Chinese feeling is on the rise again. Gee Woo Chan thought he could help Americans learn to respect our culture and traditions as much as he respected theirs.”

Chu offered us a tight-lipped smile that seemed more rueful than amused. Thinking you could convince people to shed their prejudices might be a joke, but it’s surely not a funny one.