Black Dove (40 page)

If it wasn’t just me and Gustav and Diana out there by our lonesome—if there was some big unseen
we
backing us—the three of us might just have a chance. Mahoney wouldn’t be missed, but Scientific would have to figure we might be.

“All done, then?” he said. “On honor?”

Diana nodded. “On our honor.”

She turned to me.

“Absolutely,” I said. “On every shred I got.”

We both looked at Old Red, dreading what he might say.

Which turned out to be nothing. He simply nodded glumly, mute.

Scientific spoke to Charlie in Chinese, and our former guide replied with a nod of his own.

“Just so you know, I’m vouching for you,” Charlie told us. “You may be
fan kwei
, but . . . I’d trust you.”

Madam Fong shook a finger at us and piped up with what sounded like an objection. I’m guessing
fan kwei
were
fan kwei
in her book, and we weren’t to be trusted no matter who vouched for us.

Scientific sighed, stepped toward her talking softly—then lightning-quick whipped to the side, stripped the derringer from Big Queue’s hand and sent a foot up into the highbinder’s broad face, all in one smooth motion. The burly
boo how doy
slowly toppled backwards like a felled tree while Madam Fong shrieked with rage.

“You much lucky my boss like you,” Scientific chided us lightly, not winded in the slightest. He paused just long enough to throw both the derringer and Mahoney’s Colt into the bay. “Now go . . . and never come back to Chinatown. I told don’t kill you unless have to.” He shrugged. “Next time, maybe have to.”

“If he doesn’t do it, we will!” Madam Fong screeched as Diana and I dragged Gustav away. “Set foot in Chinatown and we’ll hack it off! Kwong Ducks never forget!”

“I thought that was elephants,” I muttered under my breath.

As we drew closer to the Ferry House, Old Red found his footing and shrugged free of us.

“We can grab us a hack out on East Street or Market,” he said, his voice gaining strength with each word. “Don’t know how we’ll pay for it, but we ain’t got no choice if we’re gonna beat the rest of ’em back.”

“Beat the rest of ’em back
where
, exactly?”

“To Chinatown, of course. We got one last thing to take care of there.”

“What about your word of honor?” Diana asked.

“A nod ain’t a word,” Gustav said. “Anyway, what good’s a feller’s honor if it gets folks killed?”

He glanced back at the end of the pier. All we could see there now were dim shapes shifting in the red-tinged lantern light.

“What good’s the truth if it’s just gonna lead to
that
?”

Or, Loose Ends Are Tied Up Even as Old Red Comes Unraveled

Our last errand in
Chinatown was a return trip to Yee Lock’s pharmacy. Wong Woon was mightily surprised to see us—and downright stupefied when we cut him loose.

“The girl’s gone for good, that’s all you need to know,” Old Red said as the portly detective sat up and rubbed his wrists. “Yee Lock’s killer, too. That part of things is done.”

“And . . . the rest?” Woon asked warily.

“Chun Ti Chu will hear from us about that tomorrow,” Diana said, just as we’d agreed during the hansom-ride over. “I suggest you help him accept our perspective on the matter.”

“We could’ve just left you here hog-tied next to
him
.” I jerked my head at Yee Lock’s bloodied body without looking at it. I’d had enough of that kind of thing for one day. “So we’re savin’ you big
mien tzu
lettin’ you go like this. Don’t you forget it.”

Woon ruminated a moment, eyeing us each in turn, then gave a jowl-shaking nod.

“Alrighty, then,” I said. “Let’s get the hell out of here.”

Our hack was waiting around the corner, and Old Red, Diana, and I hurried out to it, climbed inside, and made our way to our last stop of the night: Diana’s hotel, the Occidental on Montgomery Street. It’s not the
fanciest digs in Frisco, but it’s close, and I expected a doorman to hustle me and my brother out the service entrance any minute. Diana seemed to feel right at home, though, and as long as we stuck close to her we were spared the bum’s rush.

After a brief chat with the wax mustache who ran the place, Diana collected enough cash from the hotel safe to pay off our cab and secure a room for me and Gustav. My brother didn’t cotton much to bunking on Diana’s bill—or borrowing money for tickets to Oakland, as we also did—but we had no choice, broke as we were. Talk about a loss of
mien tzu
.

We said our good nights in the lobby, agreeing to meet there again the next morning to wrap everything up. We’d done some planning since leaving the pier, but what had actually happened out there we’d avoided like the . . . well, like something one avoids. Diana came closest to speaking of it as we parted for the night.

“Please . . .
sleep well
,” she said to Old Red, and she reached out, took his hands in hers, and gave them a squeeze.

Gustav pretended he didn’t know what she meant, grunting out a “You, too” as he pulled back and headed for the stairs.

“Pleasant dreams,” I said to the lady before hurrying after him.

She just smiled grimly, looking like she was thinking, “Not likely.”

She stayed behind as Old Red and I trudged upstairs—she had an ur-gent call to make on the manager’s private telephone.

Although we’d asked for the smallest, cheapest accommodations the hotel had available, Gustav and I soon found ourselves in a room with almost as much floor space as the farmhouse in which we’d both been born. The bed alone seemed as big as our entire kitchen growing up, and it was so cushy-soft it could’ve been stuffed with cotton candy.

After undressing and turning down the gas-lit wall lamps, I stretched out on one side of the bed, my brother on the other.

“Just so you know . . . I don’t wanna talk about it,” Old Red said. He was flat on his back, face pointed upward, and I imagined him there searching the blackness above us for answers that weren’t there.

“I understand.”

I let a moment slide by in silence.

“Of course, if you change your mind, you can always—”

“I said I don’t wanna talk about it.”

“Sure. Fine. We’ll just let it lie, then.”

“
Good
.”

“But, you know,” I added a minute later, “it can really help a man unburden himself if he’s willing to—”

The bed creaked, linens rustled, and I felt something spongy and thick thump across my face.

“Alright, I’ll shut up,” I said, voice muffled by linen and feathers. “But just for that, you ain’t gettin’ your pillow back.”

And he didn’t. When I awoke the next morning, Gustav was still lying there on his back staring straight up at the ceiling.

“Sweet Jesus, Brother,” I said through a yawn. “Did you catch yourself a single wink?”

Old Red rolled out of bed and got to dressing himself. “I don’t want to talk about it.”

He couldn’t avoid talking forever, though. At the appointed hour, we found Diana awaiting us, and it was decided we should hash out the final particulars in the Occidental’s dining room.

Having not eaten since noonish of the day before, when I’d snagged myself a handful of pork buns while on the run down Dupont, I was hungry enough to eat not only a horse but its saddle, bridle, and probably rider, too. Sadly, the hotel offered only a “continental breakfast,” which (to my considerable disappointment) translates as “no taters, no grits, no eggs, no meat.” Still, I managed to fill my plate, and as Diana gave us her report, I had to peer at her around a pile of pastries that reached nearly to the ceiling.

“I was able to reach Col. Crowe’s friend Dr. Battles last night. He didn’t know much about leprosy himself, but he consulted with a colleague and called me back early this morning. I was told the disease
is
communicable, but it’s not highly contagious. You may have heard of Father Damien? The famous leper priest of Molokai?”

I nodded.

Old Red just stared. He had no heap of sweets before him to peek around, just a cup of coffee and an unbuttered—and untasted—slice of bread.

“Well . . . he was on the island for years working with lepers every day
before he finally contracted the disease. You almost have to try to catch it.”

“So Hok Gup didn’t pose no real threat to nobody?” I asked.

“Probably not, if you’re just talking about the leprosy. But the stigma attached to it, the uses it could be put to—”

“We talked all that through last night,” Gustav cut in irritably. “If the gal wasn’t infectin’ folks, we’d keep our mouths shut. That’s what Doc Chan died for—so this wouldn’t get out to foamy-mouthed SOBs like Mahoney. The thing to do now is telly-phone Chun Ti Chu and—”

It was Diana’s turn to interrupt now, and it looked like she enjoyed taking it.

“Already done. I spoke to Chun Ti Chu this morning and offered the terms for our silence. He said he needed some time to think on it . . . then rang back two minutes later and accepted.”

“My, oh my,” I marveled through a mouthful of Danish. “You
are
persuasive, ain’t you?”

“When and where?” was all Old Red said.

“Portsmouth Square. Ten o’clock.”

Gustav snatched his hat off the seat next to him and hopped to his feet.

“Well, what are we sittin’ around here for?”

“Cuz I’m starvin’ and we don’t need to leave for another half hour?” I suggested.

“I ain’t gonna chance this just so’s you can pack yourself fulla strudel,” Old Red snapped, and he whipped around and stalked off.

“Sorry, Otto,” Diana said as she got up to follow him out.

A moment later, I was on the fly behind her—with an entire cruller in my mouth and pockets abulge with cinnamon buns.

I finished my breakfast on a bench in the Plaza. Diana sat beside me.

Gustav paced.

And then there they were at the southwest corner of the square, one big and round, the other small and scraggy as a stick. They lingered there a moment, coming no closer. That was the deal. We just wanted to see them together: Wong Woon and Hok Gup’s brave little friend from Madam Fong’s. Ah Gum.

But then the girl spotted us, and the deal didn’t matter. She bolted toward us.

“I really don’t wanna have this conversation,” my brother muttered.

“I don’t think you got much choice.”

Ah Gum was making a beeline straight for him.

“You find her? You find her?” she panted as she drew up close. She jerked her head back at Woon, who was clumping up the path after her. “Fat one tell me nothing.”

She stopped directly in front of Old Red, eyes on him alone.

“Ummm . . . you see . . . the thing is, miss . . . Hok Gup’s . . .”

Gustav looked away, as if the girl’s hopeful gaze was the noonday sun—something so bright it pained a man to face it.

“Hok Gup’s gone,” he said. He forced himself to look at her again. “That’s all I can say. That . . . and I’m sorry.”

Ah Gum’s slight shoulders went into such a slump it took a full inch off her height—and she didn’t have much height to spare, teeny thing that she was.

She blinked up at my brother, brow knit in confusion.

“And now
you
buy
me?
”

“Oh, no no no no no,” Old Red stammered. “We . . . uhhh, well . . . we kinda talked this acquaintance of ours into buyin’ you off Madam Fong. Not for hisself, you understand. For
you
.”

“Ol’ Woon here’s gonna take you to the Presbyterian Mission House,” I said, giving the detective a slap on his broad back as he lumbered up to join us. “Over there, you can learn you a trade, pick up some more English. Maybe even scrape up enough money to get back to your family in China.”

Ah Gum finally spared me a glance—or a glare, more like. To her, it seemed, I was just something that dragged along after my brother, a glob of muck stuck to his heel.

“Thank you,” she said. To Gustav, of course.

Woon shrugged my hand off his shoulder and said something to the girl in Chinese. “Time to get a move on,” apparently, for she nodded and started toward him. After a couple steps, though, she whirled around, dashed back to my brother, and planted another kiss on him, just as she had the day before. She even whispered in his ear again.

The blushes Diana had slapped across Old Red’s face the past few
days had nothing on the one he was wearing now. Ah Gum may as well have slathered his cheeks with strawberry jam.

“Yeah, alright . . . uh-hum . . . that’s mighty sweet of you,” he croaked hoarsely as the girl backed away. “Good-bye, now, miss. And
fat choy
to you.”

All Gum gave him a little curtsy—and a little smile—before turning and walking off with Wong Woon. Needless to say, I didn’t get so much as a wave or even a “Good riddance.”

I turned toward Gustav set to needle him about his newfound way with the ladies, but the expression on his face stopped me cold. I was expecting embarrassment, relief, chagrin, maybe even satisfaction, for once—just about anything other than the bitter disappointment I saw.