The Body Snatchers Affair

17

No sooner had he emerged from the building that housed Carpenter and Quincannon, Professional Detective Services, than he was accosted by Homer Keeps. The flatulent little muckraker for the Evening Bulletin had an air of sweaty eagerness, his puffy cheeks glistening in spite of the coolness of the afternoon. In the pocket of his cigar-ash-spotted coat he carried a folded copy of what was probably the latest edition of the rag that employed him.

“Ah, finally,” he said. He removed the derby from his bald head, with its scraggly fringe of brown hair, and used it to fan himself as he spoke. “You’re a difficult man to track down, sir.”

Quincannon’s desire to do Keeps bodily harm had cooled somewhat, though his fingers flexed and his palms itched at the man’s nearness. He said, “And you’re a difficult one to avoid,” and kept on walking down Market Street.

Keeps scurried after him, caught his arm. This brought him once more to a halt, and earned the reporter a sharp swat on the knuckles. “Hands off, you little toad.”

“Now, now.” The reporter sounded aggrieved, but there was malice in his subsequent grin — one which revealed large nicotine-stained teeth any horse in the city would have been ashamed to own. “I merely took hold of your sleeve. I could press charges for assault, you know,” he said, rubbing his knuckles. “And sue you for slander for the name you called me.”

“You wouldn’t dare do either. You use a pen filled with poisonous lies and innuendo to do your dirty work.”

“I write the truth as I see it.”

“Bah. Go away and stay away, Keeps. I have nothing to say to you.” He began walking again.

The little muckraker hurried to keep pace. “What are you trying to hide, Mr. Quincannon?”

“From you, anything and everything.”

“In particular the nature of your involvement in the Chinatown shooting, eh?”

“Bah,” Quincannon said again. “I tried to prevent the death of James Scarlett while acting on behalf of a client. I was almost shot and killed myself, as you no doubt know.”

“So you say. But is that the true version of what happened in Ross Alley?”

“It is, no matter how you try to twist it otherwise.”

Keeps showed his equine teeth again. “Mrs. Andrea Scarlett is your client, is she not? What have you done with her?”

“Done with her? What kind of question is that?”

“She’s nowhere to be found. Hiding her for some reason, are you?”

“If I were, which I’m not, I wouldn’t admit it to the likes of you.”

“What’s your connection with the Chinaman known as Little Pete?”

“None whatsoever. Why mention his name?”

“We both know he is behind the theft of Bing Ah Kee’s corpse.”

“Do we? I’m sure I don’t know it.”

“The police think he is,” Keeps said. “Why else would the Chinatown squad have raided Little Pete’s shoe factory today?”

Quincannon scowled. “What’s that?”

“Don’t tell me you don’t know about the noon-hour raid.”

“I will tell you that because it’s the truth. But I won’t ask you for the details; you’d only distort them.”

“Read all about it in the latest edition of the Bulletin. I was fortunate enough to finish my bylined account just before deadline.”

Keeps tried to hand over the folded newspaper; Quincannon refused to take it. “My reading habits don’t include trash.”

The comment warped Keeps’s mouth into petulant lines. He produced a small notebook and began to scribble in it, muttering, “Private detective refuses to answer questions pertaining to attorney’s murder and raid on shoe factory, or his involvement with the heathen Chinee … caugghh!”

The last utterance, a crowlike squawk, was the result of Quincannon taking hold of his throat in one splay-fingered hand. He didn’t squeeze as hard as he would have liked, barely squeezed at all as a matter of fact. But the grip was strong enough so that Keeps dropped the notebook and fumbled with both hands in a futile attempt to break free. A passing pedestrian, witnessing this, detoured widely around the two men.

“Now you have genuine cause to charge me with assault,” Quincannon said menacingly. “But you won’t do that, will you?”

“Caugghh.”

“Nor will you publish any more vicious lies about me. Not if you value what’s left of your miserable life.” He relaxed his grip and then removed his hand. “Well? Do we understand each other?”

Either Keeps had nothing to say or he had temporarily lost the power of speech. What he saw in Quincannon’s face caused his eyes to bulge even wider; he bent swiftly to retrieve his notebook, spun on his heel, and went scuttling away, casting several backward glances as if he were afraid of being chased.

The Hall of Justice was quiet in the aftermath of the raid on Little Pete’s factory. A small clutch of newshounds lurked in the vicinity of the front desk; Quincannon managed to avoid two of them, curtly refused comment when a third attempted to buttonhole him, and hurried upstairs to the detective division.

Lieutenant Price was present but away from his office. Quincannon sat on a bench outside the slatted room divider and waited with as much patience as he could muster. He smoked one bowlful of shag and was halfway through another when Price finally returned.

The American Terror looked like nothing of the sort. He appeared even more frazzled today, the luggage beneath his eyes larger and darker, both corners of his mustache now chewed into raggedness. He was not overjoyed to find Quincannon waiting for him.

“You wouldn’t be here because you have information for me, I suppose?”

Quincannon was not ready to share his suspicions about Mock Quan, and wouldn’t until he was able to back them up. He shook his head.

“Because of the raid this noon, then.”

“I just learned of it, yes.”

Price sighed heavily. “Well, all right, come into my office. I’ll give you five minutes.”

Once they were seated in the small, cluttered office, Price rubbed his tired eyes and gnawed a few more hairs off his mustache before he spoke. “There being no new developments overnight, Chief Crowley decided we’d waited long enough. I tried to talk him out of it but once his mind is made up…”

“Did you lead the raid?”

“Yes. Better me than Sergeant Gentry. I don’t mind saying he’s a hothead. If he’d had his way, there likely would’ve been more violence than there was.”

“How much was there?”

“One man dead,” Price said bleakly. “One of Pete’s bodyguards drew a knife and Gentry was forced to shoot him in self-defense. Unfortunately in one sense, perhaps fortunately in another.”

“How do you mean?”

“The highbinder had a letter in his possession bearing James Scarlett’s letterhead and signature.”

“Oh? What kind of letter?”

“One linking Scarlett and Fong Ching.”

Quincannon scowled. “I find that hard to believe. If Scarlett was a traitor to the Hip Sing, why wasn’t he shot by one of their hatchet men instead?”

“Working both ends against the middle, perhaps.”

“Are you certain the letter is genuine?”

“It would seem to be.”

“But you’re not convinced?”

“No. Although I can’t think of any plausible reason why it should have been faked.”

Neither could Quincannon at the moment. But the piscine odor tickled his nostrils again. “If it is genuine,” he said, “why would Little Pete’s bodyguard have had it in his possession? Why not Pete himself? For that matter, why would it have been kept at all?”

“All questions without answers yet.”

“What did Pete have to say?”

“He denied any knowledge of the letter, of course — loudly and indignantly proclaimed it a forgery. Denied any involvement with Scarlett whatsoever. He defied us to find any more such evidence on the premises or anywhere else in his domain.”

“And you found none.”

“We went over his office and the rest of the factory with a fine-tooth comb. His home as well. Not so much as a scrap tying him to Scarlett, or to indicate he was responsible for the Bing Ah Kee snatch.”

“So you didn’t take him into custody.”

“No. Gentry argued that the letter was sufficient cause, but without additional evidence…” Price essayed a frustrated shrug.

“Have there been any repercussions from the raid?”

“Not as far as we know. The sergeant was all for raiding Kwong Dock headquarters, too, but I quashed that notion. It would have been incendiary as well as another waste of time.”

“The pot’s bubbling hot enough as it is,” Quincannon agreed.

“Close to boiling over is more like it.” Price glanced at the Seth Thomas clock mounted on one wall. “Your five minutes are up.”

Quincannon stood. “Before I go,” he said, “would you allow me a look at the letter found on the dead bodyguard?”

“I might if I had it, but I don’t. The chief took possession, and I’m not about to invade his office on your behalf.”

“Would you at least tell me the gist of it?”

“It refers to payments allegedly made by Little Pete to Scarlett for inside information about Hip Sing activities. Amounts totaling nearly five thousand dollars.” Price rubbed again at his bloodshot eyes. “On your way. And don’t forget your promise to bring me anything pertinent you might come up with.”

“I won’t.”

The letter was a forgery for sure, then, Quincannon thought as he left the lieutenant’s office. Even an opium addict would not have been fool enough to commit to paper word of such underhanded dealings. But a forgery ordered by whom? Mock Quan?

No one else had passed through the portal marked J. H. SCARLETT, ATTORNEY-AT-LAW since Quincannon’s nocturnal visit. Or if anyone had, it’d been without any further disturbance of the premises.

He set about once more sifting through the dead lawyer’s papers. His previous search had been as hasty as his predecessor’s, and it was possible that they had both overlooked something of importance.

No, not a possibility but a fact, as he discovered when he carefully examined the documents pertaining to Scarlett’s work for the Hip Sing. The hunch that bit him after several minutes of this had plenty of teeth: One name reappeared in similar context in several of the files, and the more he saw it, the more furiously his nimble brain clicked and whirred. When he stood at last from the desk, hunch had become certainty. He gathered the files together and tucked them under his arm. His smile and the oath he uttered through it had a wolfish satisfaction as he left the office.

He knew now most of what there was to know. Only a few of the game’s pieces were still missing, the largest of them the one that had eluded him from the first — the significance of Fowler Alley.