The Body Snatchers Affair (22 page)

“Yes?”

“It's a long story, Lieutenant. Would you mind if I told it to you in the company of Sergeant Gentry and Chief Crowley, if he's here?”

“He is. And as eager to hear your explanations as I am.”

A short time later Quincannon and the three ranking officers were once again seated in the chief's private sanctum. Crowley's round, florid face had the same haggard appearance as Price's; Gentry, too, looked as if he had had little sleep the past few days. Quincannon made himself comfortable on one of the chairs, taking time to load and light his pipe before speaking. Enjoying himself, as he always did at such moments as these.

“Well, Quincannon?” Crowley said irritably. “Don't dally—get on with it.”

He did so, though not until he had the briar drawing to his satisfaction. He began by recounting in detail the afternoon's events and reiterating the comments he'd made to Price in the muster room. The three officers listened without interruption, Crowley's expression grim, Price's intently thoughtful, Gentry's skeptical.

When Quincannon paused to relight his pipe, it was the chief who spoke first. “What made you first suspect Mock Quan?”

“His vainglorious attitude and his attempts to lay the blame for the body snatching on Little Pete, when I spoke to him at the Hip Sing Company. Later I discovered James Scarlett had been keeping company with a highborn Chinese woman named Dongmei, that she had likely been the one to introduce him to opium, and that she was a known consort of Mock Quan. It seemed likely then that he had arranged the seduction in order to force Scarlett not only to work on behalf of the Hip Sing but to do his private bidding as well.”

“You have proof of this, Quincannon?” Gentry demanded. “It seems pretty farfetched to me.”

“Specific proof, no. But Mock Quan's other actions make it undeniable that he's guilty of murder, attempted murder, body snatching, and racketeering.”

“Murder? Whose murder?”

“James Scarlett, of course.”

Crowley said, “You mean he ordered the assassination?”

“No. I mean he carried it out himself.”

“What's that? You told us before that it was a highbinder who shot Scarlett.”

Price was much quicker to understand. “Ah, you mean the assassin was Mock Quan in his coolie disguise. But how can you be sure of that?”

Quincannon told of the shooter wearing a hat with a red topknot, stating it as a known fact from the first and skipping over the manner in which he'd come to the conclusion. “That was the first time he tried to ventilate me, after he shot Scarlett.”

“For what reason? How could he have known you were hired to find Scarlett?”

“He didn't,” Quincannon said, and went on to give the theory he had broached to Sabina.

“But then when the attempt on your life failed, why didn't he try again before this afternoon?”

“He saw no need to. When I went to the Hip Sing Company the next morning, he agreed to an audience to find out what, if anything, I knew. Since I made no accusations against him, or said anything that indicated Scarlett might have confided in me, he decided I was not a threat after all—a fatal mistake on his part.”

“And Scarlett? Why was he targeted?”

“Likely because he knew too much and couldn't be trusted to keep silent. Knew for one thing that Mock Quan was behind the Bing Ah Kee snatch, the reasons behind it, and the whereabouts of the corpse. How he found out is anyone's guess; he may have been part of the takeover plot from the beginning, or may have simply stumbled on the truth. It's also possible he attempted to blackmail Mock Quan. Scarlett was corrupt enough, and foolish enough, to have thought he could get away with such a trick.”

“Sure he was,” Gentry said, “but it wasn't Mock Quan he was blackmailing, it was Little Pete. A letter from Scarlett implicating him was found on a highbinder I was forced to shoot yesterday, one of Pete's hatchet men. I saw it myself.”

“So I've been told. The letter is a forgery. Planted to throw suspicion on Pete.”

“Planted by who? It couldn't have been Mock Quan.”

“No, not Mock Quan. Although he did manufacture and plant a similar document to throw suspicion away from him.”

“Bullcrap. How do you know that?”

Quincannon explained about his first visit to James Scarlett's law offices, adding by way of a little white lie that he had had permission to do so from his widowed client. “The offices had already been searched sometime earlier that evening,” he went on, “or so I believed at the time. The job was done by Mock Quan, not to remove incriminating evidence but to leave the document I mentioned, written in Chinese and inserted in Mock Don Yuen's file.”

Price said, “Are you saying he attempted to frame his own father?”

“I am. I had the document translated and it purports to link Scarlett with Mock Don Yuen and Little Pete. Mock Quan is as vicious as they come, with no scruples whatsoever.”

“That's nothing but wild speculation,” Gentry said. “I still say Pete's the man we're after. Mock Quan is sneaky and ruthless, sure, and he probably does hate his old man, but he's not clever enough to plan a takeover on his own.”

“Agreed,” Quincannon said. “The plan wasn't his alone. He had help in its devising.”

“If he did, it was from Little Pete.”

“No, Pete had nothing to do with it.”

Crowley snapped, “Well, then, dammit? Who do you say was in it with him?”

“A blue shadow.”

“A … what? What the devil are you talking about?”

“James Scarlett said two things to me before he died outside the opium resort. One was ‘Fowler Alley'; the other was ‘blue shadow.' The plain truth is, he was as afraid of a blue shadow as he was of Mock Quan. His wife, though she had no knowledge of it when she came to me, had just as much to fear.”

“His wife? Now what're you saying?”

“An attempt was made on Andrea Scarlett's life at her home two nights ago, for the same reason I was targeted in Ross Alley—apprehension that she had been told something damning to the plotters.”

The chief sat forward, frowning. “Mock Quan tried to shoot her, too? Why weren't we told about it?”

Quincannon answered the first question, avoiding the second. “It wasn't Mock Quan who fired the shot at Mrs. Scarlett.”

“Then who did?”

“His partner in crime, the blue shadow. That is the other thing Scarlett knew that signed his death warrant—the identity of the blue shadow, the man with whom he conspired to cheat justice for accused members of the Hip Sing and who in turn conspired with Mock Quan to establish a criminal empire in Chinatown.”

“What partner?” Crowley demanded. “What does ‘blue shadow' mean?”

“It means,” Quincannon said, “a figure dressed in blue, one whose shadow looms large and has the power to strike fear into the hearts of fools and knaves like James Scarlett. Not a plain blue suit, as the partner wore in the attempted murder of my client, but a blue uniform—a policeman's uniform.” He paused dramatically. “One of the men in this room is Mock Quan's accomplice.”

All three officers came to their feet as one. Gentry aimed a quivering forefinger as if it were the barrel of his sidearm. “Preposterous nonsense! How dare you accuse one of us—”

“You, Sergeant. I am accusing
you
.”

The smoky air fairly crackled. Price and Crowley were both staring at Gentry; the sergeant's eyes threw sparks at Quincannon. The cords in the short man's neck bulged. His color had become a shade less purple than that of an eggplant.

“It's a dirty lie!” he shouted.

“Cold, hard fact.” Quincannon shifted his gaze to Price. “That's the real reason Gentry wanted time alone with Mock Quan downstairs, Lieutenant—not to make him talk, but to make sure he
didn't
talk.”

Price said sharply, “Can you prove this allegation?”

“I can, to your and Chief Crowley's satisfaction.” Again Quincannon paused for dramatic effect. Sabina was of the stated opinion that the stage had lost a splendid mustache-twirling ham actor when he decided to become a detective. Nonsense, of course, but he forgave her.

“It was Gentry, you'll recall,” he said at length, “who constantly urged you and Chief Crowley to crush Little Pete and the Kwong Dock. Gentry who convinced the chief to order the raid on Little Pete's shoe factory. Gentry who killed the highbinder during the raid.”

“Yes, by God. Right on all counts.”

“He tried to put a knife in me!” Gentry cried. “You were there, Lieutenant, you saw it—”

“I saw nothing of the kind. I took your word for it.”

“Gentry shot the highbinder,” Quincannon said, “for the express purpose of ‘finding' the bogus letter that implicated Pete. Didn't you tell me, Lieutenant, that the letter alludes to both Scarlett and Pete knowing the whereabouts of Bing Ah Kee's corpse?”

“That's right, it does.”

“Scarlett did know, and so did the sergeant. You'll also recall him saying that night that Little Pete had ‘stashed old Bing's bones in cold storage.' Yet for all any of us knew at that point, the body might have been burned, or buried, or weighted and cast into the Bay, or been subjected to any of a dozen other indignities. Why would he use the specific term ‘cold storage' unless he knew that was what had been done with the corpse?”

“Lies! Don't listen to him!” Gentry started toward Quincannon with murder in his eye. “Damn you, you're trying to railroad me!”

Price stepped in front of him. “Stand where you are, Sergeant,” he said in a voice that brooked no disobedience.

“Then there's the attempt on Mrs. Scarlett's life,” Quincannon said. “She had a reasonably good look at the man who tried to kill her and may well be able to identify him.” Another stretching of the truth, this, but one that had the desired effect on Price and Crowley, if not on Gentry. The sergeant continued to bluff and bluster.

“It wasn't me!” he cried. “She's another liar if she claims it was!”

“The shot aimed at her was fired at approximately nine
P.M.
I'll wager you weren't here at the Hall at that time. I'll also wager that you can't provide credible witnesses to your whereabouts. Other than Mrs. Scarlett, that is. Am I correct, Lieutenant?”

“Yes,” Price said, “you are. He was away on unspecified business and returned not long before you arrived.”

“Lawless business that also included the search of Scarlett's office, so as to remove and destroy any incriminating material that the lawyer might have kept there. And also to filch a sheet of Scarlett's letterhead stationery and some sort of item containing his signature—the tools with which he composed the bogus letter.”

The chief stalked around his desk, took a tight grip on Gentry's arm. “A damned highbinder no better than Little Pete or Mock Quan—is that what you are, Gentry?”

“No! No, I swear—”

“Because if so I'll see your mangy hide strung from the highest flagpole in the city.”

Gentry shook his head, sweat glistening slickly on his forehead and cheeks. “I tell you, this damned flycop is trying to frame me. There's no real proof of any of his accusations—”

“Ah, but there is,” Quincannon said. “All the evidence needed to, ah, hang your mangy hide from the highest flagpole in the city.” What he said next was partly speculation, though he was reasonably sure it was grounded in fact. “When you searched Scarlett's office, you failed to notice and remove several of his case files—cases in which your name is mentioned as a witness in his defense of members of the Hip Sing accused of gambling. In some, it was your testimony, no doubt false or distorted, that resulted in acquittal. In others, it shouldn't be difficult to prove that you suppressed evidence, suborned perjury, or both.”

Crowley said grimly, “Are those files still in Scarlett's office?”

“No. They're safely locked away in my office safe. I'll turn them over to you as soon as—”

Gentry called him a vicious name, fumbling his sidearm free of its holster. Price and Quincannon, in rapid consort, prevented him from using it. The lieutenant struck the weapon from his grasp with a fisted thump on the wrist, and Quincannon, with considerable pleasure, fetched the blue shadow a solid blow to the jaw.

While Gentry was being handcuffed by his angry superiors, Quincannon judiciously slipped out of the office and went to find a quiet corner where he could smoke his pipe and enjoy his vindication.

 

24

SABINA

The twenty-year-old Palace Hotel, also colloquially known as the “Bonanza Inn” and the “Grand Dame of the West,” was San Francisco's most luxurious hostelry, far more elegant than the older, second-best Baldwin Hotel in the Uptown Tenderloin. At the time of its construction it had had the distinction of being the largest hotel west of the Mississippi, its many features including 755 guest rooms and suites equipped with private baths, forty-five public and utility rooms, three inner courts, and five redwood-paneled hydraulic elevators referred to by the staff as “rising rooms.” Seven floors of white-columned balconies overlooked the open, glass-roofed Grand Central Court which served as a carriage entrance.

Even though she hurried as much as possible, Sabina arrived ten minutes late for the one o'clock appointment with Carson. Confiscating the $75,000 ransom money, over more of Bertram Blanchford's pathetic pleas, and then transporting it to the agency and locking it away for temporary safekeeping had taken longer than she'd anticipated.

Carson was waiting on the marble-floored promenade, next to one of the columned archways facing the circular carriageway, when she entered the Grand Court. She spied him immediately, a stationary figure among the stream of arriving and departing guests, bellboys with luggage carts, and carriage drivers and their rigs. A smile brightened his handsome face as she approached. As always, he was nattily if conservatively dressed, today in a gray frock coat with matching vest and striped trousers; the gold-headed stick he carried was tucked under one arm. Sabina's heart had skipped a beat the first time she'd seen him, and she'd felt the stirrings of excitement on each of the previous occasions they'd been together, but today she felt nothing other than a faint apprehension. Not even his blue eyes, Stephen's eyes, moved her as they had before.