Black Dove (12 page)

The cabbage man shook the fingers at my face.

“No!” he barked. “Three
dollah
!”

“What? You can’t be serious!”

“Shut up, the both of you,” Old Red snapped in that hoarse, whispery way that cuts through you quicker than a holler—because you know folks only use it when trouble’s coming.

And trouble
was
coming, clomping down the stairs inside wearing brown brogans and tweed trousers. And a badge, too, I knew, though I couldn’t yet see anything above the knee.

I didn’t have to—I recognized those big, clunky shoes. They were the ones the Coolietown Crusader had been so tempted to plant up our behinds not half an hour before.

It was looking like they might get there yet.

Or, Old Red Spots a Double Cross of Note

The cabbage man did
us the favor of dropping his voice—though not his price—as Sgt. Mahoney came down the stairs inside.

“
Five
dollah.”

It was a whole new haggle now. The Chinaman wasn’t just peddling information (or a crappy old cabbage) anymore. He was selling silence, and it was most definitely a seller’s market.

Through the window, I could see Mahoney—or his feet, anyway—stomp down a couple more steps, then stop.

“Move it, would ya?” the copper said, twisting around to face someone at the top of the stairs. “We don’t get outside soon, I’ll never get this stink off of my suit.”

I turned back to the cabbage man, jammed my hands in my pockets, and pulled out every coin and crumpled greenback I had. It wouldn’t add up to five bucks, I knew, but I was hoping the sheer size of the wad would be too tempting to pass up.

“Here. Take it all. Just get to talkin’ quick—and quiet.”

The peddler took my money with one hand. The other he used to jab the cabbage into my stomach.

“You look fat choy,” the Chinaman said.

Then he left me holding the cabbage.

“That’s it?” I spluttered as he started pushing his cart away. “I look ‘fat choy’?”

The Chinaman nodded. “You look fat choy.”

“Well, you look like a thievin’ bastard to me,” I spat back.

There was no time to demand a refund, though. I just spun on my heel and went diving for cover with the cabbage still clutched against my gut. I landed under the open window between Old Red and Diana.

The cabbage man shambled off grinning like the cat who ate the canary—and then had the goldfish for desert.

“You’re wasting your time up there,” I heard Mahoney say. “You know as well as I do—hatchet men don’t work like this. Not even Scientific. If Little Pete finally had Chan done in, he wouldn’t be
subtle
about it. He’d have him hacked to death in the middle of Dupont.” The cop’s heavy footfalls started up again. “Chan killed himself, and that’s all there is to it.”

“May-be,” someone replied. “May-be not.”

The words were heavily accented, the voice lilting—and familiar. It was Woon.

The thud-squeak-thud of footsteps on the stairs doubled, grew louder, then shifted to quieter shuffles. The two detectives were in the storage room, mere feet away from us.

“Hey,” Diana whispered. “What if they come out this way instead of out the front?”

The back door was so close, it’d smack my brother in the butt if it swung open now.

“Then we’re in a hell of a lot of trouble,” Old Red whispered back.

“Woon,
listen
,” Mahoney said.

His footsteps stopped.

I got set to start up my own—in a hurry.

“I know Chan was a Six Companies man,” Mahoney went on, and Diana, Gustav, and I each let out a quiet sigh of relief. “You’ve got Chun Ti Chu to answer to. Fine. Just spend the next couple days banging your favorite sing-song girl, then tell him you couldn’t dig anything up. Believe me, that’ll be a better use of your time than asking a bunch of stupid questions. Chan wasn’t murdered . . . no matter what Bullshit Bill Cody said.”

I glanced over at the man I assumed was “Bullshit Bill.” He wasn’t just keeping an ear to the window anymore—he’d leaned out far enough to get a peek inside.

I gave his leg an “Are you crazy?” swat.

He replied with a “Go away” flap of the hand.

“You right,” Woon said. “Probably.”

“Pra-bah-ree?” Mahoney sneered, mocking the Chinaman’s accent. “Jesus, Woon—you said yourself there was a suicide note. Speaking of which . . . you
were
gonna give that back to me, right?”

There was a brief silence before Woon answered.

“Of course.”

Then it went quiet again—so quiet I could hear the whisper that slipped from Old Red’s lips even though he didn’t put a puff of wind behind it.

“Hel-lo.”

I tried to poke up for a peep at whatever he’d seen, but Gustav laid his hand flat against the top of my boater and pushed me back down.

“Gee . . . thanks, Woon,” Mahoney said, his snide tone smearing the words like mud he was wiping on the other man’s shoes. “Now why don’t you do us both a favor? Don’t you ever—
ever
—try to slip anything past me again. Cuz the next time I catch you playing one of your little Chink games, I’ll break your fat neck. Sabe?”

Apparently, Woon nodded to show he had indeed sabed (whatever that meant) for Mahoney said, “
Good
. Now come on. I’ve wasted enough time here already.”

I braced again to make a break for it, maybe lob the only weapon I had—my cabbage—at Mahoney’s head. But the sound of footsteps that followed faded away quickly. Woon and Mahoney were headed out through the front of Chan’s shop, not the back.

Old Red finally let me stand up now, and I took a look in through the window. The storeroom was empty but for the boxes, bins, and crates stacked up here and there.

“Well, ‘Bill’—whadaya make of all that?” I said.

“Ain’t got enough data for theorizin’,” my brother muttered.

“Perhaps. But we do have
some
data,” Diana said. “Whatever it was you saw in there, for instance.”

She pivoted to peer into the storeroom, the move bringing her shoulder to shoulder with me. For the next few seconds, my shoulder was very happy indeed.

“Yeah, Brother,” I said. “What was you hel-loin’?”

Gustav’s gaze went faraway, fuzzy. For a man who said he wasn’t ready to theorize, he sure seemed to be doing some awful deep thinking.

“Woon. He didn’t give that phony ‘suicide note’ back to Mahoney,” he said slowly.

“Sure as heck sounded like he did.”

Old Red shook his head slowly. “He gave Mahoney
something
, but it wasn’t the same paper I found on Chan. It was smaller. Didn’t have no fold to it, neither.”

“And Mahoney didn’t notice the difference?” I asked.

My brother hacked out his usual little cough of contempt—“Feh!”

“Woon could’ve handed over a slice of ham and that fathead wouldn’t have noticed the difference,” he said. “Still, he had Woon pegged on at least one thing: The man’s workin’ his own side of the fence. Got something to do with that ‘Shun Tea-Chew’ and ‘Six Companies’ Mahoney was yappin’ about, most like.”

Gustav cleared his throat and looked at his toes—a sure sign that his next words were directed at Diana.

“Seems like I’ve heard of ’em both somewheres, too, but I can’t quite recollect how . . . .”

Diana smiled primly, looking like a schoolmarm savoring the opportunity to remind her pupils who has all the answers.

“If you’ve heard of one, you’ve heard of the other,” she said. “The Six Companies is an association of Chinese businessmen that acts as a sort of local government. Around here, the president of the Six Companies may as well be the mayor—and the current president’s name is Chun Ti Chu.”

“Sure. I remember now,” I said. “Chu pops up in the papers sometimes. Law and order type. Tong fighter. The only Chinaman powerful enough to stand up to Little Pete.” I shook my head. “Poor Doc Chan. If he got caught up in some kinda feud between this Chu feller and the tongs—”

“Don’t kick that pony up to a gallop just yet,” Old Red cut in. “We ain’t even got the bridle on.”

I whistled and gave Gustav an admiring nod. “That’s a good one, Brother. Real quotable-like. How long you been waitin’ to spring it on me?”

Old Red gave me a glare so sharp you could shave with it.

“I’m gonna go make me a reconnoiter,” he growled. “You just stay here. And stay
quiet
. . . if that’s something you’re capable of.”

He pushed the window up higher, then swung up a leg and slipped over the sill. Diana and I watched side by side as he crept through the clutter to the pass-through separating the storage room from the rest of the shop.

“Thank you for standing up for me a few minutes ago,” Diana half-whispered to me. “With your brother, I mean.”

Awww, let her stay
—
we can’t get rid of her anyway
. That’s all I’d really said to Old Red. It didn’t strike me as much of a stand. It barely amounted to a crouch.

Still, who was I to turn away the lady’s gratitude?

“You’re welcome,” I whispered back. “Usually, Gustav takes what I say with a grain of salt the size of a Conestoga wagon. I’m pleased he listened for once.”

Inside, Old Red peeped around the pass-through into the rest of the store. When he’d satisfied himself that Mahoney and Woon were gone, he turned and tiptoed toward the stairs without so much as a glance over at us.

“You can be honest with me, Otto,” Diana said. “Why does my presence put your brother on edge so?”

I snorted out a chuckle as Gustav disappeared up into the stairwell.

“Miss, that man wakes up on edge. Goes to bed on edge, too.
Dreams
on edge, for all I know. You shouldn’t take it personal.”

“There you go again,” Diana sighed theatrically, mock-exasperated. “Trying to protect my delicate female sensibilities—when I don’t have any. Your brother doesn’t like me, that’s obvious. I’m simply curious as to why.”

I turned away from the window and leaned back against the building. The cheap, rotten wood seemed to sag under my weight, and I straightened up again for fear I’d crash right through the wall.

“It ain’t that he don’t like you,” I said (or maybe lied—I wasn’t sure myself). “It’s just that he’s got his head so filled up fulla mysteries and murder and whatnot it makes him a mite mistrustful. And your bein’ a gal don’t make it any easier for him to let down his guard.”

“Why’s that?”

“Oh,
now you’re
the one bein’ coy,” I chided her. “It’s hard for Gustav cuz he’s a man and you’re a woman. He ain’t spent much time around lady-folk the last few years. Gals . . . they jangle him up a bit, that’s all.”

“Well, I suppose that’s something else your brother has in common with his hero,” Diana said. “Though Mr. Holmes wasn’t so much ‘jangled’ by women as disdainful of them. In fact, there were always rumors that his lack of interest in the fair sex extended to . . . well . . .”

Diana didn’t come right out and say it, of course, but she gave me the kind of look that puts the word in your head.

Sex
.

“Whoa, there! You sayin’ Sherlock Holmes was . . . ?”

I squinted one eye and waggled one hand.

Diana shrugged. “People will gossip . . . .”

“Well, it ain’t nothin’ like that for Gustav,” I insisted a little too loudly for a fellow who was still supposed to be laying low. “Like I said, he’s just skirt-shy. Bein’ around a pretty woman—especially one with a little culture to her. It’s kinda embarrassin’ for him. On account of he’s . . . y’ know . . . .”

“Illiterate” seemed like such a harsh brand to burn onto a man as sharp-witted as my brother, and I groped around for a better word. But the only substitutes I could think of were “uneducated” or “ignorant,” neither of which struck me as much of an improvement.

I settled on “got his limits.”

Diana arched an eyebrow at me. “I’ve met many a man with ‘limits,’ Otto. Believe me—most of them don’t let it scare them away from women.”

“Oh, I know the type,” I said, tempted (as a man of limitations and little fear of females) to dare a wink. Somehow, I managed to restrain myself. “But that just ain’t Gustav’s way. He’s always been bashful . . . and
mopey . . . and cantankerous. Of Casanova himself wouldn’t have got so much as a peck on the cheek if he’d been saddled with all that.”

“So Old Red’s never even had a sweetheart?”

I pushed my boater up high and gave my head a scratch. “You know, miss . . . you sure are askin’ a lot of questions about my brother.”

Diana chuckled softly. “Once a detective, always a detective, I suppose. I’m sorry if I seem nosy.”

“Oh, don’t apologize.” I flashed her my most dazzling grin—the one designed to blind women to all the faults they’d otherwise see in me. “I’d just like it a lot better if you was askin’ questions about
me
.”

Before the lady could either slap me or laugh, Gustav came tromping down the stairs and walked to the window.

“Alright—it’s clear. You may as well get in here.”

“Ladies first,” I said to Diana.

“Oh, no,” she replied. “Vegetables first.”

And I finally remembered I still had a rotten cabbage tucked under one arm.