Black Dove (13 page)

“Why, thank you,” I said, and I opened the window wider (to accommodate my broader backside) and clambered inside with as much grace and dignity as I could muster. Which wasn’t much.

“Why are you still luggin’ around that damn cabbage?” Gustav asked.

“Cuz it cost me every cent I had, that’s why. I ain’t just throwin’ it away.” I held the cabbage up as if admiring its wilted splendor. “He could be our mascot. We’ll call him . . . Old Green.”

My brother just shook his head and walked away, leaving it to me and Old Green to help Diana through the window. By the time I had the lady settled both feet on the floor, Old Red was already halfway up the stairs again.

Diana and I set off after him through a chest-high maze of boxes and crates. The Chan I’d known had been exceptionally tidy, ever neat and proper in dress and deportment. So it struck me as strange that he’d keep his storeroom in such a state. It made me wonder if the man’s outward orderliness had been mere facade—a cover for a messier, murkier soul lurking within.

We found the body gone when we got upstairs, of course. What’s
more, the blanket that had been beneath it was gone, as well. It was as if the police had simply wrapped Chan up like a Mexican burrito rather than bother with a sheet or shroud.

Gustav pawed over the bed a moment, then dropped to all fours and began searching the floor in Holmes’s hound-dog style—nose down, ass up. It made for quite a sight, but Diana didn’t waste more than a second’s worth of smirk on it. Instead, she commenced her own search, moving to the corrugated paperboard boxes pushed against the wall.

“These are stacked neatly enough,” she said. “Not like that mess downstairs.”

“Already noted,” Old Red said gruffly.

Diana started flipping the boxes open. In the first were stacks of carefully folded socks and underwear. The next contained similarly trim piles of shirts. The next, suit clothes.

“Chan only moved here recently,” Diana said. “He didn’t even have time to unpack.”

“Already noted,” Old Red said.

“His old place must’ve been a heck of a lot bigger—even boxed, his stuff fills this dump up.” I looked over at my brother, who was crawling around Chan’s bed, eyes down. “And just so’s you know, I wasn’t
notin’
that
tot you
. It was for myself.”

“Noted,” Gustav said.

Bent over as he was, his backside presented an awfully tempting target for my boot-toe. So I removed myself from temptation by drifting off to the kitchenette adjoining the main room.

Tucked around the corner was a luxury I hadn’t expected to find in such dilapidated digs as this: a water closet complete with commode and sink. It wasn’t just a surprise—it was a blessing, for I’d begun to hear the call of nature so loud it was a wonder it didn’t deafen me. I left Old Green on a countertop and slipped inside.

I couldn’t close the door behind me, though. If I had, the tiny privy would’ve gone blinding black, leaving me nothing to aim by. And for all I knew, there was still enough free-floating gas in the place to barbecue the lot of us should I fire up a light. So I had to ask Diana to plug her ears for a moment while I saw a man about a dog.

“Don’t worry, Otto,” she called back from the other room. “I grew up around men, most of whom weren’t nearly as gentlemanly as you. Believe me, I’ve overheard a
lot
of conversations about dogs. I won’t be offended. In fact, from now on, both of you should feel free to piss, cuss, belch, fart, or pick your nose whenever the urge arises. You don’t have to keep apologizing.”

“Uhhh . . . is there anything we’re
not
allowed to do?” I managed to ask despite a jaw that had practically dropped into the commode.

“You two don’t chew tobacco, do you?”

“No, miss,” I heard my brother answer, his voice so low I half-suspected he’d crawled under the bed to quietly die of embarrassment.

“Good. Now
that’s
a disgusting habit.”

Despite Diana’s dispensation to be as crude as I pleased, I gave the toilet-chain a yank before taking leave of my morning coffee. As I stood there staring down, I noticed a wastebasket shoved into the gray shadows beneath the sink beside the John. A crumpled-up newspaper lay atop it in a way that seemed altogether too . . . something. Once my bladder was totally tapped, I buttoned myself up and bent myself down.

The newspaper had been wadded, but only enough so as to fit snugly across the top of the ash can. When I plucked the paper out, I saw what it was meant to cover: jagged pieces of painted porcelain and, curling out from beneath the largest shard, what looked from above like a small length of dark rubber or rope. I reached down and pinched the coiled whatever-it-was betwixt my forefinger and thumb.

It felt surprisingly brittle, and as I drew it out into the murky light, I saw that there was something large and blobby attached to the other end. I had it halfway to my face before I realized what it was.

I don’t know what a man with the proverbial tiger by the tail is supposed to do. But I can sure tell you what a fellow with a
scorpion
by the tail does, whether he wants to or not.

He screams.

Or, Chan’s Flat Yields Yet Another Stiff

“What?
What?
” Old Red
shouted as he dashed into the kitchenette.

“That!
That
!” I shouted as I dashed
out
of the WC.

I spun around and pointed at the privy floor.

“Hel-lo! Is that a—?”

“It sure as hell is!”

Diana crowded into the cramped room behind my brother.

“Don’t get too close, miss,” I said to her between panting, panicked breaths. “That there’s a—”

“I know what it is.” The lady leaned forward, squinting at the floor. “Only that one looks dead.”

Indeed, the scorpion was laying just where I’d dropped it.

Perfectly still. On its back.

My brother bent over and crept up cautiously until he was crouched down over top of it.

“Yup. Dead.” Gustav glanced back at a me. “You probably scared the poor thing to death with your shriekin’.”

“Be fair enough if I did. That ugly SOB like to scare
me
to death first.”

Old Red reached down, picked the critter up by one of its big pincers, and brought it to eyeball level. If scorpions know how to play possum,
this one had just tricked its way close enough to my brother’s face to give him a sting on the nose.

It was no trick, though. In fact, the scorpion remained so unnaturally stiff, I started to wonder if it had ever been alive in the first place.

Up till then, all the scorpions I’d run across (and from) had been a mustardy yellow—the better to blend in with sand and desert rock. But the one Gustav was holding now wasn’t just twice as large as any I’d ever laid eyes on, it was a dozen times darker. The only place this fat black bastard would blend in was a nightmare.

“That thing even real?” I asked.

“Yup,” Old Red said. “Been dried out, though. Ain’t much more than husk now.” He held said husk out to me. “Wanna see for yourself?”

“I
been
seein’. It’s touchin’ I ain’t so keen on.”

“May I?”

Diana stepped forward and plucked the critter from Gustav’s fingers without waiting for an answer.

“Doesn’t look like any scorpion I’ve ever seen,” she said, holding it straight up by its tail like it was a candied apple on a stick.

“And just how many
have
you seen?” my brother asked her.

“A few. There was a time I had to check my shoes for them every time I got dressed.” She handed the scorpion back to him. “What do you think it means?”

“Maybe somebody was tryin’ to sic it on Chan,’ I suggested. “Only the gas killed it first.”

Old Red shook his head. “This thing ain’t just dead. Its leathered. Gas wouldn’t do that.”

“Then maybe it’s the ‘hok gup’ that peddler feller spoke of. Could be he wasn’t talkin’ about a black bird at all. He was talkin’ about a black scorpion.”

Diana put her hands together and fluttered the fingers over her head, just as the cabbage man had down in the alley. “Scorpion?”

“Alright—that don’t wash, neither,” I conceded. “So let’s try this on for size. It’s like them five orange pips from the Holmes tale. You remember, Brother. What was that one called?”

“You mean ‘The Five Orange Pips’?” Gustav sighed.

“Yeah, right, anyway—maybe that’s the kinda thing we’re lookin’ at here. It’s a threat. Only not from the Ku Klux Klan, like in the story. From the tongs.”

It was my best theory yet, I thought, but Old Red just waved it away like it was more stink from the gas pipes.

“I’ll tell you exactly what this means,” he said, giving the scorpion a little shake. “It means Chan had a dead scorpion in his jakes. And that’s
it
until we round us up more data. Now . . . where was it you found this? I assume it wasn’t just sittin’ on the crapper readin’ the paper.” He threw a little sidelong peep in the general direction of Diana’s knees. “By your request, I ain’t apologizin’ for that remark.”

“Noted,” Diana said.

I stepped closer to the privy and pointed at the wastebasket under the sink.

“It was in there. Looked like someone tried to cover over the top, so I got to scroungin’ around to see what I could see. Found Blackie under some busted-up pottery or somesuch.”

“Busted-up pottery?”

My brother pushed his way past me, knelt down next to the ash can, and took a look at the jagged pieces of brightly colored porcelain inside. They didn’t come from any plate, that was for sure—there were too many bulges and ripples to them.

Gustav began rooting around amongst the shards with his free hand, seeming particularly interested in the smaller bits and dust that had sifted to the bottom of the basket.

“Don’t look like no ‘pottery’ I ever seen. Seems more like . . . hel-lo.”

He lifted out a grooved disc about the size of a silver dollar. It was mostly a ghostly pure white, though there were splotches of red, green, and black here and there.

Red lips. Green eyes. Black eyebrows.

It was a woman’s face.

“A doll?” Diana asked, leaning in for a peek over Old Red’s shoulder.

“Looks thataway.”

Gustav slipped the shard into one of his coat pockets, then stood and gently lowered the scorpion into another.

“But Chan didn’t have no kids—least not that we ever heard of,” I pointed out. “Why would he keep a china doll lyin’ around?”

“And why would anyone want to destroy it?” Diana added.

My brother shuffled back toward the bedroom listlessly, lost in thought. “When y’all have you some
answers
, would you let me know? Cuz Lord knows I don’t need no more questions.”

“Not even ‘What next?’ ” I said as Diana and I trailed him.

“Whadaya mean, ‘What next?’ ” Old Red went down on his hands and knees and got back to playing bloodhound. “We keep huntin’ for clues, that’s what.”

“Any
particular
clues?” Diana asked. “I mean, if I can avoid wasting time determining Dr. Chan’s shoe size or examining the droppings in his birdcage, that might be to our advantage, don’t you think?”

I expected Gustav to snip back something like, “Can’t be particular about what I ain’t seen.” Instead, he gave the lady something he so often withholds from me: a straight answer.

“We’re lookin’ for a chain-mail vest, a derringer, spectacles, bits of broken china, bloodstains, a black bird, and anything else that looks cluey-like to you.”

A look of supreme satisfaction spread across Diana’s face.

“Thank you.”

My brother just kept sweeping the floorboards with his mustache.

“Now, let’s see,” Diana mused, tapping a slender finger against her lower lip. “The spectacles are obvious: When we saw the body, Chan’s glasses were missing. You’re wondering why anyone would take them. The same with Chan’s chain mail and derringer. Why aren’t they here? Unless . . . may I venture a deduction?”

“Would it stop you if I said no?” Old Red mumbled, momentarily distracted by a small, mysterious object that turned out to be a dead roach.

“Probably not.”

Gustav tossed the little bug husk aside. “Well, then don’t bother askin’ next time.”

“Alright, then. I think perhaps the killer took the vest and the gun because he wanted to hide the fact that Chan was in fear for his life.”

“I can’t imagine that was much of a secret ’round Chinatown.” I took
off my boater and ran a hand through my hair. “You know . . . what with the doc creasin’ folks’ scalps and all.”

“Of course.” Diana slumped, looking chagrined. “But the other things . . . the broken porcelain, the blood . . .” She took in a deep breath and straightened her spine. “I’m going to try again.”

Gustav heaved an exasperated sigh—and swiveled around so he could sit facing her Indian-fashion. “I obviously can’t stop you.”

“That’s right,” Diana said. “So. You said we should be looking for bits of china. Which means you think that doll might have been broken out here. Which reminds me of the ‘gravel’ you told Mahoney you’d found in Chan’s hair. Which means maybe that wasn’t gravel at all—maybe it was shattered porcelain. Which would explain the blood you told us to look for, too.”