Black Dove

ALSO BY STEVE HOCKENSMITH

Holmes on the Range

On the Wrong Track

STEVE HOCKENSMITH

ST. MARTIN
’
S MINOTAUR
NEW YORK

This is a work of fiction. All of the characters, organizations, and events portrayed in this novel are either products of the author’s imagination or are used fictitiously.

THE BLACK DOVE
. Copyright © 2008 by Steve Hockensmith. All rights reserved. Printed in the United States of America. No part of this book may be used or reproduced in any manner whatsoever without written permission except in the case of brief quotations embodied in critical articles or reviews. For information, address St. Martin’s Press, 175 Fifth Avenue, New York, N.Y. 10010.

www.minotaurbooks.com

Library of Congress Cataloging-in-Publication Data

Hockensmith, Steve.

The black dove : a Holmes on the range mystery / Steve Hockensmith.—1st ed.

    p. cm.

ISBN-13: 978-0-312-34782-6

ISBN-10: 0-312-34782-0

1. Cowboys—Fiction. 2. Brothers—Fiction. 3. Private investigators—Fiction. 4. Doyle, Arthur Conan, Sir, 1859-1930—Influence—Fiction. 5. Triads (Gangs)—Fiction. 6. San Francisco (Calif.)—Fiction. I. Title.

PS3608.O29 B63    2008
813'.6—dc22

2007039976

First Edition: February 2008

10   9   8   7   6   5   4   3   2   1

FOR MAR, FOREVER

Or, Killing Time

I don’t know who
first said, “Good things come to those who wait.” I just hope it’s not in the Bible, as blasphemy’s hardly the best way to begin a new book. Still, it must be said: Whoever it was, Ben Franklin or Bill Shakespeare or Moses, he was a god damn dolt.

Which puts me and my brother in good company, actually, for we are god damn dolts ourselves.

“Wait here,” we’d been told. So there we waited, though surely we’d seen nothing that day that might suggest good things would be coming
our
way anytime soon. Quite the opposite, in fact.

We were, after all, poking our noses into a murder in what some would consider the most sinister section of the world’s wickedest city—Chinatown in San Francisco, California. Why, in hindsight, “god damn dolts” doesn’t even do it justice. For stupidity such as we were displaying, there are no fit words in the English language, and the best I can do to sum it up is pause here to spit.

“You really think we’re gettin’ anywhere with all this?” I asked my brother a few minutes after our host hurried from the room, leaving us alone.

“Even if we ain’t, we are,” Gustav said—and said no more.

And folks call the
Chinese
inscrutable. When my elder brother’s got his mind fixed on a mystery, there’s just no scruting the man.

Take what he was doing just then as a for instance—scuttling across the floor on all fours. A person not in the know might’ve assumed he was succumbing either to some kind of conniption or the sudden, inexplicable conviction that he was, in fact, a cat.

Me, I knew better. What Gustav believed himself to be was a detective—one modeled upon
the
detective. And if the late, great Sherlock Holmes would get to wriggling around on rugs whenever he searched a room, why then, my brother just had to go and do the same.

“ ‘Even if we ain’t, we are?’ ” I said to him. “Sweet Jesus—your answers are harder to figure than most people’s questions.”

“Look,” Gustav growled as he crawled along, his nose so close to the floor it could almost plow a furrow in the plush red carpet, “we didn’t have no choice but to come in here and see what could be seen. If it don’t pan out, at least we can check it off the list and get to huntin’ for clues elsewheres.”

“You got a particular ‘elsewheres’ in mind?”

Gustav picked up a tiny puff of white fluff, sniffed it, then tossed it over his shoulder and got back to eyeballing the floor.

“Nope. But don’t you worry. We’ll pick us up a new trail soon enough. We done touched a nerve here.”

“Oh, well, then—my faith has been restored. If gettin’ on people’s nerves is all it’ll take to crack this case, then indeed the right man is on the job.”

My brother scowled at me over his shoulder, but before he could reply in kind, one of the room’s two doors swung open, and a pair of Chinamen came striding in. They were dressed identically in loose-fitting black blouses and trousers, with flat-topped, round-brimmed hats upon their heads.

We’d never laid eyes on either fellow before, but we’d seen their like a lot lately: They were highbinders, hired killers working for Chinatown’s “fighting tongs.”

“You know,” I said under my breath, “if this is that new trail you promised, I don’t think I care to follow it.”

“Me, neither,” Gustav said, pushing himself up off his knees.

There was even less to like a moment later, when the room’s other
door—the one my brother and I were darting toward at the time—flew open, and two more highbinders stepped inside.

Of course, there’s another name for such thugs as we were facing, one you’ve most likely run across in newspaper or magazine stories: “hatchet men.” And if you’ve ever wondered whether Chinatown outlaws are slapped with that handle for the obvious reason, I can provide an authoritative answer for you based on what happened next.

They are
.