Black Dove (32 page)

“Trying to pass for a white man, huh?” another of the ruffians spat. He was a squat, toadlike little SOB with a puffed-out chest and
eyes
that burned with the yearning to hurt. “What for? So you can screw a white whore?”

“N-no, I j-just—” Charlie stammered.

The Toad rammed a fist into his stomach.

The hooligans around Charlie were too busy cackling to notice me come striding up. Not a one of them even looked my way until I had the Toad by the back of the pants and a fistful of hair.

“Johnny Clay!” I roared, marching him toward the nearest building. “I oughta tear you limb from limb for what you did to that little girl!”

And I launched him headfirst into the wall. It was clapboard, not brick, so the man’s brains remained inside his thick skull. But that was really just a lucky break for him.

The element of surprise—and befuddlement—worked in my favor. As their little compadre hit the ground with a splat, the other thugs could only gape at me, each of them trying to splutter out some variation on, “Wait! His name’s not Clay!” Perhaps they thought I might pause and listen.

I did not. I moved and swung.

The hoodlum holding Charlie’s hat instinctively brought the soft cap up before his face. As armor, of course, it was sorely lacking, and my fist drove the tweed into his teeth.

“Musgrave, you son of a bitch!” I bellowed as he toppled backward
into the gutter. “For what happened to your sweet of granny alone, you oughta swing!”

I whipped around to face the last two hoods.

“Stark! Roylott! You two monsters are the worst of all! A baby? A
baby
? How could you?”

“Stark” and “Roylott” looked at each other, holding a silent powwow with nothing more than wide eyes and slack jaws. In less than a second, they came to a consensus and put their agreed-upon plan into action.

They turned tail and ran.

“Yeah, you’d better skedaddle!” I shouted after them. “And don’t let me catch you on Pacific Street again or you’ll get a lot worse than your pals here!”

An amused crowd had gathered around by now, and a few of the nightcrawlers actually applauded. They were the self-same people who would’ve stood around guffawing as Charlie got his guts kicked out, I’m sure. But make it a fight between some white men, and they’d be happy to cheer for whoever won.

“Thank you, thank you,” I said. “Boy, can you believe the nerve of some people?”

And I dusted off my hands and set off toward Chinatown again.

Old Red and Diana were waiting for me the next block up—along with Charlie, of course. As I’d hoped, they’d quietly collected him while I made a spectacle of myself. I’d tried much the same trick when facing Scientific and his highbinders earlier in the day, and I was pleased to see I could come up with a plan that worked at least
half the
time.

“Thanks,” Charlie said as I walked up.

“My pleasure. I’m just surprised you’re still alive to almost die. What happened to you, anyway?”

“I was just about to tell the others—”

And Charlie spun his yarn.

He’d been waiting for us in the Plaza when Scientific (so named for the Edison-like ingenuity with which he dispatched enemies) showed up with his boys. The
boo how doy
dragged him away for an audience with Little Pete, during which he convinced the tong lord we were folks he should talk to, not do in. Charlie was held prisoner in the basement until
Scientific had us in hand, then he was kicked out on the street—and told he should be grateful to be alive.

He’d lurked around outside, not sure what to do, until the Chinatown Squad showed up. When he saw Mahoney cart us away, he tried to follow on foot, hoping he could bluff his way through the Coast.

“It was dark, I’m tall, I don’t have a queue, I wear American-style clothes, I’d bought a new hat to pull down over my eyes.” Charlie shrugged, chagrined. “I thought I could pull it off.”

“Yeah, well, I was wearin’ a highbinder’s trousers for a couple hours, but nobody mistook me for a Chinaman,” I said.

“I know where we need to go,” Gustav announced out of the blue. “
Now
.”

“Excuse me?” I said.

“I know where Fat Choy spent the whole damn day—only I bet he’s cleared out already.” Old Red clenched his fists and grimaced, looking like he wanted to sock himself upside the head that had so miserably failed him. “Goddammit! Why didn’t I see it before?”

“Gustav,” Diana said gently. “Just
go
.”

My brother nodded, his anger simmering down to grim determination.

“Right.”

Ten minutes later, we were back in Dr. Chan’s shop. And Old Red, we quickly learned, had been right on both counts.

We found Fat Choy’s hiding place—and it was empty.

Or, Gustav Sheds Some Light on the Case . . . hut It Doesn’t Last Long

We don’t even have
to climb through a window to get into Chan’s store this time. The back door was wide open.

“That was a big of clue right there,” Gustav said when he saw it.

“Big ol’ clue as to what?” I asked.

“Just think about it,” Old Red said, then he lit up a lucifer and crept inside.

I tried to do as he suggested as Diana, Charlie, and I followed him into the darkened pharmacy. Yet all I could think about was whether Fat Choy was going to jump out of the shadows with a hatchet in his hand.

Even in the puny little light of my brother’s match, I could see that the storeroom was a wreck. Every drawer, crate, and bag had been opened and upended, and the floor was aclutter with the tools of Chan’s trade: roots, leaves, nuts, powders, and assorted unidentifiable blobs that either crackled beneath my shoes or stuck to the soles.

“Should be right over . . . hel-lo,” my brother muttered.

He squatted down and brought the lucifer toward the floor. Or where the floor used to be, more like. The flickering little flame revealed a square-cut hole in the floorboards—a trap door.

“Shit,” Gustav hissed as the fire reached his fingers. Fie shook out the
match, plunging us into a blackness so thick you could bottle it and sell it as ink.

A moment later, another lucifer flared to life.

“Why don’t you just hand matches around to everybody?” I asked. “Cuz this is my last one,” my brother said. “Now shut up so I can make the most of it.”

While I gritted my teeth and murmured curses, Gustav stuck his head and shoulders down through the trap door.

“What’s down there?” Charlie asked. “A cellar?”

“Yup. A small one.” Old Red pushed himself to his feet. “And that’s all, thank God.”

“What’s He done for us lately?” I said.

“Enough . . . for the moment. I can only think of one thing Fat Choy might have left behind.”

Diana nodded slowly. “A body.”

Gustav gave me a look that asked why
I
couldn’t be so swift on the uptake.

“Did you see any sign Hok Gup was ever down there at all?” Diana asked.

“All there is to see is a hole in the ground not much bigger than a
owshit
!”

Old Red jerked his right hand down, and the world around us winked out.

For the next few seconds, all was black silence as total as the dead must know.

“So, Brother,” I finally said, “what’s an owshit?”

“Har har,” Gustav grumbled. “None of
y
all’s got a light?”

“Don’t look at me,” Charlie said.

“We can’t,” I pointed out. “That’s the whole problem.”

“Why don’t
you
have any matches?” Charlie asked me.

“Oh, I got a bundle of ’em . . . in my other pants.”

Though I couldn’t see Diana beside me, somehow I could still sense the warmth of her presence, and I moved toward it.

“What about you, miss? Got any matches tucked away in your purse?”

“I’m afraid not.”

“Too bad,” I said. “How ’bout a torch?”

“Sorry, no. And no lantern, either.”

I heard the lady’s skirts rustle as she turned away from me. Funny how we feel drawn to face people even when we’re talking to them in utter darkness.

“Gustav,” Diana said, “how did you know about—?”

Old Red cut her off with a shush.

“You hear something, Brother?” I whispered.

“Yeah, unfortunately.
You
,” he groused. “All day long we been out in them crowds, in all that noise, runnin’ runnin’ runnin’. This is the first peace I’ve had all day. The first chance to just think.”

“Make use of it, then,” Diana said. “Think. We won’t disturb you . . . right, gentlemen?”

“Yeah. Sure,” Charlie said, sounding dubious.

“Think away,” I added.

So there we stood, saying nothing, seeing nothing, but smelling plenty—the rotten-egg stink of gas still hung all around us.

I pinched my nose. What else did I have to do?

“Look, I’m sorry,” Charlie said after maybe a half minute of silence. “This is just too weird.”

“Oh, you’ll get used to it,” I told him. “My brother keeps
me
in the dark all the time.”

Old Red sighed, defeated. “Miss, I believe you had a question. May as well go on and ask it.”

“Alright, Gustav,” Diana said. “I was wondering—how did you know about the cellar?”

“Well, I didn’t
know
about it. I just deducified it.”

“How?”

“Oh, it wasn’t much. I feel like a danged fool for not seein’ it sooner,” Old Red said, and there was no false modesty about it. He truly was pissed with himself.

“We been lookin’ for Hok Gup and Fat Choy pretty much all day,” he explained. “And not only ain’t we come across ’em, we ain’t found a single soul that’s seen ’em. It’s like they walked in here and just disappeared. And those two—they’re known ’round these parts, and Chinatown ain’t
that big a place. Hell, Little Pete hears of every step we take, but even
he
can’t find Fat Choy and the gal? It put me in mind of something Mr. Holmes once said.”

“I figured it would,” I said. No way my brother could talk this long about a deduction without roping Holmes into it somehow.

Gustav didn’t even slow down to growl at me.

“ ‘When you have excluded the impossible, whatever remains, however improbable, must be the truth.’ ”

“Which could mean Fat Choy stuffed the Dove in a basket and flew off the roof in a hot-air balloon,” I said.

My brother
did
growl now.

“Hey, I’m just sayin’—that has got to be the dumbest pronouncement ol’ Holmes ever made.”

“It got us here, didn’t it?” Old Red snapped.

“But how?” Diana asked. “I still don’t see it.”

And she did dearly want to see. I could hear it in her voice. She wanted to learn, and she thought my brother, of all people, could be the teacher.

He seemed inclined to agree.

“First off, you gotta think back to this morning,” he lectured in a pontifical sort of way. “We was told both the front and back doors of this place was left open when Chan killed himself. Now, as suicides by stinkygas go, that makes no sense on the face of it. It was almost as if someone
wanted
the gas to be noticed. Wanted someone to come inside, find the body, and get the gas shut off. Well . . . why?”

“Because he’d still be hiding inside,” Diana dutifully said, the star pupil finishing the schoolmarm’s thoughts.

“Exactly. Then there was the willy-nilly way all the boxes was stacked up back here. Upstairs, the place was packed solid, but neat. The doc was an orderly man. So why would his storage room be like a damn corn maze? Could be there was something bein’ hid. But I didn’t put it all together till Charlie said he hoped he could pass for white at night. Got me to thinkin’ maybe Fat Choy was waitin’ for nightfall, too. He’d have Dr. Chan’s clothes to pick through. And remember—”

“Chan’s spectacles were missing,” Diana said.

“Yes, indeed. From here on in, we gotta figure Fat Choy’s in disguise.”

“He’s more than that,” I said. “Doc Chan’s chest armor and gun was gone, too. The man’s ready for trouble.”

“And he’s gonna get it,” my brother said.

“But, Gustav . . . .”

Diana sounded hesitant, and I knew what was coming next—the student was about to question the teacher’s sums in front of the whole class.

“Doesn’t all this strike you as a rather sophisticated plan for an opium-addicted street thug?”

“Low-born don’t mean no-brain,” Old Red replied, giving the lady a taste of the vinegar he usually bottles up just for me.

“No, she’s right,” Charlie threw in. “Fat Choy’s no moron, but to come up with something this tricky . . . ? I mean, it seems so—”

“
Scientific
,” I finished for him.

“Actually, I was going to say ‘clever,’ ” Charlie said.

But it was my answer that hung in the air for a long, silent moment, dangling like the proverbial other shoe. I couldn’t help thinking it was going to drop sooner rather than later—on us. And maybe squash us like bugs.

“Is there a
reason
we’re still standing here in the dark?” Charlie finally said.

“Sure,” I told him. “We don’t have the slightest inkling where we oughta go from here. Am I right, Brother?”