Oddments Read online

  ODDMENTS

  Bill Pronzini

  Digital Edition published by Crossroad Press

  © 2011 / Bill Pronzini

  Copy-edited by: Erin Bailey

  Cover Design By: David Dodd

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  Contents

  The Highbinders (a Carpenter & Quincannon story)

  Wishful Thinking

  Shade Work

  I Think I Will Not Hang Myself Today

  The Man Who Collected "The Shadow"

  Out of the Depths

  Bank Job

  And Then We Went to Venus

  Putting the Pieces Back

  The Arrowmont Prison Riddle

  Caught in the Act

  Liar's Dice

  The Dispatching of George Ferris

  The Big Bite (a "Nameless Detective" story)

  The Highbinders

  (a Carpenter & Quincannon story)

  In his twenty years as a detective, Quincannon had visited a great many strange and sinister places, but this May night was his first time in an opium den. And not just one—four of them, so far. Four too many.

  Blind Annie's Cellar, this one was called. Another of the reputed three hundred such resorts that infested the dark heart of San Francisco's Chinatown. Located in Ross Alley, it was a foul-smelling cave full of scurrying cats and yellowish-blue smoke that hung in ribbons and layers. The smoke seemed to move lumpily, limp at the ends; its thick-sweet odor, not unlike that of burning orange peel, turned Quincannon's seldom-tender stomach for the fourth straight time.

  "The gentleman want to smoke?"

  The question came in a scratchy singsong from a rag-encased crone seated on a mat just inside the door. On her lap was a tray laden with nickels—the price of admittance. Quincannon said, "No, I'm looking for someone," and added a coin to the litter on the tray. The old woman nodded and grinned, revealing toothless gums. It was a statement, he thought sourly, she had heard a hundred times before. Blind Annie's, like the other three he'd entered, was a democratic resort that catered to Caucasian "dude fiends"—well-dressed ladies and diamond-studded gentlemen—as well as to Chinese coolies with twenty-cent yenshee habits. Concerned friends and relatives would come looking whenever one of these casual, and in many cases not so casual, hop-smokers failed to return at an appointed time.

  Quincannon moved deeper into the lamp-streaked gloom. Tiers of bunks lined both walls, each outfitted with nut-oil lamp, needle, pipe, bowl, and supply of ah pin yin. All of the bunks in the nearest tier were occupied. Most smokers lay still, carried to sticky slumber by the black stuff in their pipes. Only one was Caucasian, a man who lay propped on one elbow, smiling fatuously as he held a lychee-nut shell of opium over the flame of his lamp. It made a spluttering, hissing noise as it cooked. Quincannon stepped close enough to determine that the man wasn't James Scarlett, then turned toward the far side of the den.

  And there, finally, he found his quarry.

  The young attorney lay motionless on one of the lower bunks at the rear, his lips shaping words as if he were chanting some song to himself. Quincannon shook him, slapped his face. No response. Scarlett was a serious addict; he regularly "swallowed a cloud and puffed out fog," as the Chinese said, and escaped for hours, sometimes days, deep inside his pipe dreams.

  "You're a blasted fool, all right," Quincannon told the deaf ears. "This is the last section of the city you should've ventured into on this night. It's a wonder you're not dead already." He took a grip on the attorney's rumpled frock coat, hauled him around and off the bunk. There was no protest as he hoisted the slender body over his shoulder.

  He was halfway to the door with his burden when his foot struck one of the darting cats. It yowled and clawed at his leg, pitching him off balance. He reeled, cursing, against one of the bunks, dislodged a lamp from its edge; the glass chimney shattered on impact, splashing oil and wick onto the filthy floor matting. The flame that sprouted was thin, shaky; the lack of oxygen in the room kept it from flaring high and spreading. Quincannon stamped out the meager fire and then strained over at the waist, righted the lamp with his free hand. When he stood straight again he heard someone giggle, someone else begin to sing in a low tone. None of the pipers whose eyes were still open paid him the slightest attention. Neither did the smiling crone by the door.

  He shifted Scarlett's inert weight on his shoulder. "Opium fiends, tong rivalry, body snatching," he muttered as he staggered past the hag. "Bah, what a case!"

  Outside he paused to breathe deeply several times. The cold night air cleared his lungs of the ahpin yin smoke and restored his equilibrium. It also roused Scarlett somewhat from his stupor. He stirred, mumbled incoherent words, but his body remained flaccid in Quincannon's grasp.

  Nearby, a streetlamp cast a feeble puddle of light; farther down Ross Alley, toward Jackson Street where the hired buggy and driver waited, a few strings of paper lanterns and the glowing brazier of a lone sidewalk food seller opened small holes in the darkness. It was late enough, nearing midnight, so that few pedestrians were abroad. Not many law-abiding Chinese ventured out at this hour. Nor had in the past fifteen years, since the rise of the murderous tongs in the early eighties. The Quarter's nights belonged to the hop-smokers and fan-tan gamblers, the slave-girl prostitutes ludicrously called "flower willows," and the boo how doy, the tongs' paid hatchet men.

  Quincannon carried his burden toward Jackson, his footsteps echoing on the rough cobbles. James Scarlett mumbled again, close enough to Quincannon's ear and with enough lucidity for the words—and the low, fearful tone in which he uttered them—to be distinguishable.

  "Fowler Alley," he said.

  "What's that, my lad?"

  A moan. Then something that might have been "blue shadow."

  "Not out here tonight," Quincannon grumbled. "They're all black as the devil's fundament."

  Ahead he saw the buggy's driver hunched fretfully on the seat, one hand holding the horse's reins and the other tucked inside his coat, doubtless resting on the handle of a revolver. Quincannon had had to pay him handsomely for this night's work—too handsomely to suit his thrifty Scots nature, even though he would see to it that Mrs. James Scarlett paid the expense. If it had not been for the fact that highbinders almost never preyed on Caucasians, even a pile of greenbacks wouldn't have been enough to bring the driver into Chinatown at midnight.

  Twenty feet from the corner, Quincannon passed the lone food seller huddled over his brazier. He glanced at the man, noted the black coolie blouse with its drooping sleeves, the long queue, the head bent and shadow-hidden beneath a black slouch hat surmounted by a red topknot. He shifted his gaze to the buggy again, took two more steps.

  Coolie food sellers don't wear slouch hats. . . one of the badges of the highbinder...

  The sudden th
ought caused him to break stride and turn awkwardly under Scarlett's weight, his hand groping beneath his coat for the holstered Navy Colt. The Chinese was already on his feet. From inside one sleeve he had drawn a long-barreled revolver; he aimed and fired before Quincannon could free his weapon.

  The bullet struck the limp form of James Scarlett, made it jerk and slide free. The gunman fired twice more, loud reports in the close confines of the alley, but Quincannon was already falling sideways, his feet torn from under him by the attorney's toppling weight. Both slugs missed in the darkness, one singing in ricochet off the cobbles.

  Quincannon struggled out from under the tangle of Scarlett's arms and legs. As he lurched to one knee he heard the retreating thud of the highbinder's footfalls. Heard, too, the rattle and slap of harness leather and bit chains, the staccato beat of horse's hooves as the buggy driver whipped out of harm's way. The gunman was a dim figure racing diagonally across Jackson. By the time Quincannon gained his feet, the man had vanished into the black maw of Ragpickers' Alley.

  Fury drove Quincannon into giving chase even though he knew it was futile. Other narrow passages opened off Ragpickers'—Bull Run, Butchers' Alley with its clotted smells of poultry and fish. It was a maze made for the boo how doy; if he tried to navigate it in the dark, he was liable to become lost—or worse, leave himself wide open for ambush. The wisdom of this finally cooled his blood, slowed him to a halt ten rods into the lightless alleyway. He stood listening, breathing through his mouth. He could still hear the assassin's footfalls, but they were directionless now, fading. Seconds later, they were gone.

  Quickly he returned to Jackson Street. The thoroughfare was empty, the driver and his rig long away. Ross Alley appeared deserted, too, but he could feel eyes peering at him from behind curtains and glass. The highbinder's brazier still burned; in its orange glow James Scarlett was a motionless bulk on the cobbles where he'd fallen. Quincannon went to one knee, probed with fingers that grew wet with blood. One bullet had entered the middle of the attorney's back, shattering the spine and no doubt killing him instantly.

  If the Kwong Dock tong was responsible for this, Quincannon thought grimly, war between them and the Hip Sing could erupt at any time. The theft of Bing Ah Kee's corpse was bad enough, but the murder of a Hip Sing shyster—and a white man at that—was worse because of the strong threat of retaliation by police raiders and mobs of Barbary Coast and Tar-Flat toughs. All of Chinatown, in short, was a powder keg with a lighted fuse.

  The Hall of Justice, an imposing gray stone pile at Kearney and Washington streets, was within stampeding distance of the Chinese Quarter. Quincannon had never felt comfortable inside the building. For one thing, he'd had a run-in or two with the city's constabulary, who did not care to have their thunder stolen by a private investigator who was better at their job than they were. For another thing, police corruption had grown rampant in recent times. Just last year there had been a departmental shakeup in which several officers and Police Clerk William E. Hall were discharged. Chief Crowley claimed all the bad apples had been removed and the barrel was now clean, but Quincannon remained skeptical.

  He hid his edginess from the other three men present in the chief's office by carefully loading and lighting his favorite briar. One of the men he knew well enough, even grudgingly respected; this was Lieutenant William Price, head of the Chinatown "flying squad" that had been formed in an effort to control tong crime. He had mixed feelings about Crowley, and liked Sergeant Adam Gentry, Price's assistant, not at all. Gentry was contentious and made no bones about his distaste for flycops.

  Short and wiry, a rooster of a man in his gold-buttoned uniform, Gentry watched with a flinty gaze as Quincannon shook out the sulphur match. "Little Pete's behind this, sure as hell. No one else in Chinatown would have the audacity to order the shooting of a white man."

  "So it would seem," Quincannon allowed.

  "Seem? That bloody devil controls every tong in the Quarter except the Hip Sing."

  This was an exaggeration. Fong Ching, alias F.C. Peters, alias Little Pete, was a powerful man, no question—a curious mix of East and West, honest and crooked. He ran several successful businesses, participated in both Chinatown and city politics, and was cultured enough to write Chinese stage operas, yet he ruled much of Chinatown crime with such cleverness that he had never been prosecuted. But his power was limited to a few sin-and-vice tongs. Most tongs were law-abiding, self-governing, and benevolent.

  Quincannon said, "The Hip Sing is Pete's strongest rival, I'll grant you that."

  "Yes, and he's not above starting a bloodbath in Chinatown to gain control of it. He's a menace to white and yellow alike."

  "Not so bad as that," Price said. "He already controls the blackmail, extortion, and slave-girl rackets, and the Hip Sing is no threat to him there. Gambling is their game, and under Bing Ah Kee there was never any serious trouble between them. That won't change much under the new president, Mock Don Yuen, though it could if that sneaky son of his, Mock Quan, ever takes over."

  "Pete's power-mad," Gentry argued. "He wants the whole of Chinatown in his pocket."

  "But he's not crazy. He might order the snatching of Bing's remains—though even the Hip Sing aren't convinced he's behind that business, or there'd have been war declared already—but I can't see him risking the public execution of a white man, not for any reason. He knows it'd bring us down on him and his highbinders with a vengeance. He's too smart by half to allow that to happen."

  "I say he's not. There's not another man in that rat-hole of vice who'd dare to do it."

  Quincannon said, "Hidden forces at work, mayhap?"

  "Not bloody likely."

  "No, it's possible," Price said. He ran a forefinger across his thick moustache. He was a big man, imposing in both bulk and countenance; he had a deserved reputation in Chinatown as the "American Terror," the result of raiding parties he'd led into the Quarter's dens of sin. "I've had a feeling that there's more than meets the eye and ear in Chinatown these days. Yet we've learned nothing to corroborate it."

  "Well, I don't care which way the wind is blowing over there," the chief said. "I don't like this damned shooting tonight." Crowley was an overweight sixty, florid and pompous. Politics was his game; his policeman's instincts were suspect, a failing which sometimes led him to rash judgment and action. "The boo how doy have always left Caucasians strictly alone. Scarlett's murder sets a deadly precedent and I'm not going to stand by and do nothing about it."

  Gentry had lighted a cigar; he waved it for emphasis as he said, "Bully! Finish off Little Pete and his gang before he has more innocent citizens murdered, that's what I say."

  "James Scarlett wasn't innocent," Price reminded him. "He sold his soul to the Hip Sing for opium, defended their hatchet men in court. And he had guilty knowledge of the theft of Bing's corpse, possibly even a hand in the deed, according to what Quincannon has told us."

  "According to what Scarlett's wife told my partner and me," Quincannon corrected, "though she said nothing of an actual involvement in the body snatching. Only that he had knowledge of the crime and was in mortal fear of his life. Whatever he knew, he kept it to himself. He never spoke of Little Pete or the Kwong Dock to Mrs. Scarlett."

  "They're guilty as sin, just the same," Gentry said. "By God, the only way to ensure public safety is to send the flying squad out to the tong headquarters and Pete's hangouts. Axes, hammers, and pistols will write their epitaphs in a hurry."

  "Not yet," Price said. "Not without proof."

  "Well, then, why don't we take the squad and find some?

  "Evidence that Pete's behind the killing. Evidence to point to the cold storage where old Bing's bones are stashed."

  "Pete's too clever to leave evidence for us to find."

  "He is, but maybe his highbinders aren't."

  "The sergeant has a good point," Chief Crowley said. "Will, take half a dozen men and go over those places with a fine-tooth comb. And don't take any guff from Pete a
nd his highbinders while you're about it."

  "Just as you say, Chief." Price turned to his assistant.

  "Round up an interpreter and assemble the men we'll need."

  "Right away." Gentry hurried from the office. Quincannon asked through a cloud of pipe smoke, "What do you know of Fowler Alley, Lieutenant?"

  "Fowler Alley? Why do you ask that?"

  "Scarlett mumbled the name after I carried him out of Blind Annie's. I wonder if it might have significance."

  "I can't imagine how. Little Pete hangs out at his shoe factory on Bartlett Alley and Bartlett is where the Kwong Dock Company is located, too. I know there are no tongs headquartered in Fowler Alley. And no illegal activity."

  "Are any of the businesses there run by Pete?"

  "Not to my knowledge. I'll look into it."

  Quincannon nodded, thinking: Not before I do, I'll wager. He got to his feet. "I'll be going now, if you've no objection."

  Chief Crowley waved a hand. "We'll notify you if you're needed again."

  "Will you bring Mrs. Scarlett word of her husband's death?"

  "I'll dispatch a man." The Chief added wryly, "I imagine she'd rather not hear it from you, under the circumstances."

  Quincannon said, "I expect not," between his teeth and took his leave.

  The law offices of James Scarlett were on the southern fringe of Chinatown, less than half a mile from the Hall of Justice. Quincannon had visited the dingy, two-story building earlier in the day, after leaving Andrea Scarlett with Sabina. The place had been dark and locked up tight then; the same was true when he arrived there a few minutes past midnight.

  He paid the hansom driver at the corner, walked back through heavy shadows to the entranceway. Brooding the while, as he had in the cab, about the incident in Ross Alley. How had the gunman known enough to lie in ambush as he had? If he'd been following Scarlett, why not simply enter the opium resort and shoot him there? Witnesses were never a worry to highbinders. The other explanation was that it was Quincannon who had been followed, though it seemed impossible that anyone in Chinatown could know that Carpenter and Quincannon, Professional Detective Services, had been hired by Mrs. Scarlett to find and protect her husband.