Black Dove (20 page)

Or, Chan’s Neighbors Don’t Listen to Us—but the Man Upstairs Does

Being encumbered by a
bustle and petticoats and shoes designed more to please the eye than support the feet, Diana couldn’t move any quicker than a sort of skipping lope. Ever the gentleman, I hung back to keep her company (and enjoy the occasional glimpse of stockinged calf flying out from beneath her bunched-up skirts).

We lost sight of my brother within a minute.

We knew where he was headed, though, and after a few more zigzags across Chinatown, we were back where it all began: the block where Dr. Chan kept shop. Up ahead, we spotted Old Red walking into one of the stores next to Chan’s pharmacy . . . and walking out again less than thirty seconds later. We reached his heels just as he headed into the place next door.

Thirty seconds after that, we were back on the sidewalk. The conversation inside had gone something like this:

OLD RED
: Excuse me—

SHOPKEEPER
: No sabe Englee!

OLD RED
: I just need to—

SHOPKEEPER
: No sabe Englee!

OLD RED
: Look, we’re friends of—

SHOPKEEPER
: No sabe Englee!

OLD RED
: Well, shit.

SHOPKEEPER
: No sabe Englee!

ME
: Yeah, we kinda figured that out!

And so it went in the next store and the next all the way to the end of the block.

“You can’t tell me
nobody
’round here speaks English,” Gustav groused as he stomped out of a butcher’s shop where the proprietor at least spared us another “No sabe Englee” . . . by pretending to be deaf.

“They probably all do,” I said. “They just don’t wanna speak it to
us
.”

“Perhaps we should try a new approach,” Diana suggested. “Something less intimidating.”

“I ain’t intimidatin’ nobody,” Old Red said sourly.

“Not intentionally. But these people have little reason to trust a white man. I think a more . . . genteel front might serve us better.”

“Like a white
woman?
” I said.

Diana nodded. “If I were to go in alone, I think we’d see better results. White, black, or Chinese, men accommodate a lady in ways they’d never help another man.”

“Especially a lady
as persuasive
as yourself, huh?” Gustav pushed back the brim of his Stetson and rubbed his forehead. “Well . . . it’s plain we ain’t gettin’ nowhere with me doin’ the talkin’. So fine. Next place, you give it a go. We’ll be right outside, though.”

Whether my brother was assuring her that protection would be close at hand or warning her not to get up to any trickery, I didn’t know. Nor could I tell what the lady made of the remark—she just nodded again, then crossed the street and strolled alone into a corner market.

“How much you wanna bet she walks outta there with Fat Choy’s home address and telephone number?” I said.

My brother shook his head. “I wouldn’t take that bet.”

We headed across the street and made a painful stab at nonchalance while lingering just outside the market door. Gustav fished out his pipe and began sucking on it unlit, while I knelt down to tie my already firmly tied shoes.

“So,” I said, “you admit she’s good at detectivin’?”

“Admit it?” Old Red scoffed, practically spitting his pipe out like a
watermelon seed. “I ain’t never denied it. Hell, she’s so good, I can’t believe the Southern Pacific would toss her out with the bathwater the way she says.”

“Yeah, it’s stupid alright. I can see the S.P. firin’ Colonel Crowe—after all, the man was crazy enough to hire
us
, right? But why Miss Corvus would have to . . .
what
?”

Gustav was giving me that hard, appraising/disappointed stare he shoots me sometimes—the one that seems to be searching for a head on my shoulders but finds only empty air.

“I didn’t say her gettin’ the sack was stupid. I said I can’t believe it.”

I was still parsing this pronouncement when Diana joined us outside.

“So?” Old Red said.

She shook her head brusquely and, without a word, swept up the street and into the next store.

The pace picked up after that: Once again we were hopscotching our way down the block, with Diana spending less than a minute in any one shop. While she was inside utterly failing to work her womanly wiles, my brother and I continued our conversation stop-start style outside.

“You sayin’ she still works for the S.P.?”

“I’m sayin’ she might. It’d explain why she went to the trouble of trackin’ us down—and why she’s taken an interest in Chan’s murder.”

“How’s that?”

And on to the next store.

“Could be the S.P.’s keepin’ tabs on us. After all, we know what really happened on the Pacific Express. And Doc Chan, he knew a little of the real story, too.”

“You think the Southern Pacific Railroad would give a big enough shit about nobodies like us to ‘keep tabs on us’?”

And on to the next store.

“Don’t forget, Brother—the lady warned us the S.P. wouldn’t like it if your book about the Express ever came out.”

“Oh, that wasn’t a threat-warnin’, remember? It was a friendly advice warnin’.”

“Jee-zus Key- . . .”

And on to the next store.

“. . .
-rist
. I know you have a hard time thinkin’ straight under the best of circumstances, but put you around a pretty gal and your brain twists up like a pretzel.”

“Oh, yeah? Well, I seem to recall a certain pretty gal gettin’ a
rise
out of you a little earlier, if you know what I mean.”

“She was sittin’ on my damn lap!”

“Think that’d buffalo ol’ Holmes? No, sir. Anyhow, it ain’t only that. It’s how you been all day. There’s a big damn burr under your saddle, Brother, and it ain’t just Doc Chan gettin’ done for. What the hell is eatin’ at—?”

And then we were done.

“Gentlemen,” Diana said, stepping out of the dingy shop she’d walked into so very shortly before, “I beg your pardon.”

“For what?” Old Red asked.

“
Shit
,” she hissed. “That. I hope you’re not offended.”

“Oh, don’t worry about us,” I said. “No sabe Englee.”

“You’ve got plenty of company around here, then,” Diana said. “Or so they’d have us think. I tried everything . . . even the truth. Nothing worked. These people won’t talk to us.”

“That’s gonna make it a mite difficult to dig us up any new data,” I said to my brother.

He nodded, glassy eyed, as he slipped his pipe back into his pocket. “Noted.”

“As things sit now, we could stroll right past Fat Choy or Hok Gup both and not even know it was them,” I went on. “One’s tubby and one’s a dark-haired looker—that’s all we got to go on.”

Gustav gave me another nod with the same blank stare. Wheels were turning—but they didn’t seem to be getting anywhere.

“Noted.”

“It’s startin’ to feel like we’re up the crick without a paddle,” I said.

“Or a boat,” Diana added.

“Or a crick.”

Old Red blinked his way from his stupor. “You know, when I say ‘noted,’ that means I am well aware of whatever it is you’re pointin’ out. Which means you can
stop
pointin’ it out.”

“Which means ‘shut up,’ ” I translated for Diana.

“I sabe,” she said.

Old Red sighed.

“You know, I wish them Salvation Army fellers was still around,” I said. “Seems to me the only thing left for us to do now is huddle up and pray for divine intervention.”

“Only miracle we’re gonna get’s the kind we think up ourselves,” Gustav said. “We gotta lay into it with some deducifyin’. Figure out what Mr. Holmes would do if . . .”

His gaze drifted away, settling on something beyond the both of us.

“Hel-lo,” he said.

“You thunk something up already?”

“Nope.” Old Red stretched out a hand and pointed up the street. “I’m just wonderin’ what
he
wants.”

Diana and I turned to see a slender young Chinaman hustling toward us. He was dressed in saggy, baggy, gray clothes that looked like they’d been tailored for a man twice his size, while atop his head was an equally shapeless—and very American—flat cap. He didn’t look like any of the tong crowd we’d tangled with, that was for sure, but I braced for a tussle all the same, clenching my fists and putting myself between the stranger and Diana.

“That’s not necessary,” she said.

“We’ll see about that.”

Gustav solemnly held up a hand as the Chinaman slowed to a stop a few feet away. “Hello. Sabe Englee?”

The Chinaman put up a hand of his own—then gave it a dismissive swipe. “Please. I don’t just ‘sabe’ English. I speak it.”

“Oh,” my brother said.

The man had no accent whatsoever. Had I been blind, he could’ve been introduced to me as “Joe Smith” and I’d have been none the wiser.

Diana stepped out from behind me. “Can we help you?”

“I’m not the one who needs help,” the Chinaman said. “I can’t even believe I found you in time. I thought some
boo how doy
would’ve given you the chop by now for sure.”

Old Red squinted at the man as if he suspected his almond-shaped
eyes and jet-black hair were merely makeup and a wig. “Do we know your?”

“You do now . . . and not a second too soon.” The man held out his hand. “I’m Chinatown Charlie—the guy who can keep you alive long enough to find Gee Woo Chan’s killer.”

“Well, well,” I said as Charlie and my brother exchanged a handshake. “Hallelujah!”

Or, We Buy a Stool Pigeon and Get a Bead on a Kwong Duck

There were introductions all
around, and when it came time for me to pump Chinatown Charlie’s hand, I nodded at his tweed cap.

“You don’t happen to have a halo tucked up under there, do you?”

Charlie smiled. “I’m no angel. Just a businessman.”

“Your business being what, exactly?” Diana asked. “Protection?”

“Do I look like a bodyguard?”

The Chinaman held out his long, thin arms. He was about Gustav’s age—in the neighborhood of twenty-seven—yet he still had the gangly frame and gawky bearing of a boy of half as many years.

“I’d be more what you might call a native guide. Someone who can translate, tell you the wheres, whys, and whos, scout around—”

“Keep us alive,” Old Red said.

Charlie nodded. “Like I said before, that’s part of the package. But only in a ‘Run for your life!’ kind of way.” He shook a bony finger at us. “I’m not gonna take on any hatchet men for you. I have a hard enough time keeping myself alive around here. What I
can
do is steer you clear of the tongs—and maybe help you find the Black Dove while I’m at it.”

Gustav’s eyes popped so wide I could’ve sold them to the corner greengrocer as goose eggs.

“You certainly know a lot about what we’ve been up to today,” Diana said.

“Hey, someone leads a marching band into a Kwong Duck parlor house, it tends to draw attention. Especially when the band ends up running down Pacific Avenue screaming their lungs out.”

Charlie chuckled, savoring the image in a way that suggested it wasn’t just hearsay for him—it was a memory.

“Not that there wasn’t plenty of talk already,” he went on. “Three Southern Pacific detectives show up at Gee Woo Chan’s . . . and one’s a woman and another’s a
cowboy
? Believe me—you were noticed. And watched. There’s only one person in Chinatown who doesn’t know you snuck back into Chan’s place after Mahoney left, and that’s Mahoney.”

“Well, well, well.” I turned to my brother. “I do believe you owe Old Green an apology. Sounds like it don’t matter one whit that he was—”

“So,” Gustav said, talkin’ over top of me, “with folks ’round here doin’ all this lip-flappin’, anybody let slip what really happened to Doc Chan? Cuz this suicide business Mahoney’s tryin’ to peddle is pure eye-wash.”

“Half of Chinatown agrees with you,” Charlie said. “And even the half that doesn’t thinks Gee Woo Chan
was pushed to
kill himself.”

“ ‘Pushed’?” Diana said. “What do you mean by that?”

Charlie gave his head a quick shake. “Sorry, lady. We haven’t agreed on terms yet.”

“We ain’t got time to dither, mister,” Old Red snapped. “Case you haven’t noticed, there’s a man dead and a girl probably good as, ’less we find her quick.”

“Yeah, I noticed,” Charlie shot back. “And could be
I’m
good as dead just for standing here letting you bark at me. Look around. We’re not exactly meeting in secret here, are we?”

He spread his arms out again, this time swiveling back and forth, sweeping his gaze up and down the block. Every doorway and window seemed to have someone in it pretending (not particularly well) that they weren’t watching us.

“The Kwong Ducks knew I was talking to you ten seconds after I walked up and opened my mouth. So you want my mouth to
stay
open,
you better make it worth it to me. And if you need any help making up your mind, just remember how cooperative the good citizens of Chinatown have been today. No one else is gonna stick his neck out to help a bunch of
fan kwei
stir up trouble with the tongs. No one.”