The Paradise Affair

5 Quincannon

The trolley rattled through the swampy lowlands, then ran inland between rows of coconut palms. It stopped often to take on or disgorge passengers of half a dozen or more races, very few of them Caucasian; the slow progress and the oppressive heat inside the car did nothing to improve Quincannon’s disposition.

So this was Hawaii, the Crossroads of the Pacific, the place Sabina had quoted Mark Twain as describing in one of his notebooks as “the most magnificent, balmy atmosphere in the world — ought to take dead men out of grave.” Smiling native girls in little more than grass skirts and flower leis? The only ones he’d seen so far that even came close to fitting that description had been those waiting outside the pier shed; and they, like all the women on this infernal trolley, were well covered. The men were even more stoic, baring their teeth only in panting frowns. One burly fellow, in fact, seemed to study Quincannon’s neck as if measuring it for a noose or a knife blade.

Paradise?

Bah!

He focused his thoughts on Lonesome Jack Vereen and Nevada Ned Nagle. He had considered canvassing the hotels for them but discarded the notion. It was not likely the unholy pair would have taken rooms in one, even if the present lack of hotel space in Honolulu permitted it. Their modus operandi was to arrange for private lodging places while working one of their swindles; that was what they had done during the bilking of R. W. Anderson, and they would surely have followed suit here if they were setting up another con. A hotel canvass would be a waste of valuable time, not to mention a daunting task for a stranger in this strange land.

No, his best course of action, like it or not, was to enlist the aid of George Fenner. According to the information supplied by the Pinkertons, Fenner was both an experienced and a competent detective. Until three years ago he had been a member of the Honolulu constabulary, under the authority of the marshal of the kingdom of Hawaii. He had been a security officer in the entourage accompanying Kalakaua, the last king of Hawaii, who had visited San Francisco in 1891 and had eventually died there. When the Sandwich Islands Kingdom breathed its last, two years later, Fenner had supported Marshal Charles B. Wilson in refusing for several hours to turn over the police station to the new provisional government, an act of insubordination that had cost him his job and led him to open his own investigative service.

All of this spoke well of him, but a man’s past history could be misleading. This was especially true, in Quincannon’s experience, of flycops in general. What was Fenner like today and in person? Would he be willing and able to do Quincannon’s bidding at a reasonable price? Yes, and if so how long would it take him to produce results?

The trolley finally turned on King Street and entered the city proper, passing a massive concrete-faced structure set inside a broad square that must be the Royal Palace. Despite the kona weather, the cobblestone street was crowded with buggies, men on horseback, pedestrians that included uniformed soldiers and American naval personnel. Quincannon joined the foot traffic at the intersection with Bishop Street. The motorman had told him when he boarded that the quickest route to Nuuanu Street was via Merchant Street, which was one block mauka — toward the mountains.

Merchant Street turned out to be a narrow little avenue flanked by heavy, square buildings built of stone that had been brought to the islands in the holds of New England windjammers. (Quincannon knew this from the pamphlet Sabina had inflicted on him before their departure.) The Honolulu Police Station was one of them. A sign identified the imposing structure as such; otherwise he would have passed it by without recognition, for there were no uniformed officers in sight. He continued northward beneath the arcades of countinghouses and the Inter-Island Steamship Company building. Few others were abroad here, the packed-earth street mostly deserted.

Nuuanu Street ran along the head of Merchant Street. It, too, was narrow, flanked on the north side by the shabby buildings and temples of Chinatown. Quincannon turned mauka again, the correct direction to Fenner’s residence according to the building numbers. There was more activity here, though not nearly as much as there would be at night when sailors off ships in the harbor prowled for liquor, games of chance, and soiled doves. Nuuanu was called Fid Street by the locals (this fact courtesy of the Pinkertons), a reference to the seafarer’s term for grog; its reputation among sailors as a “Port of Hell” was evidently justified. Bagnios and gambling halls proliferated in the area, as did saloons bearing such names as Royal Union, Ship and Whale, South Seas Taps. By night they would be lantern-lit and boisterous with music, laughter, bawdy talk; by day they had the same tawdry, semi-deserted appearance as their counterparts in the Barbary Coast.

Quincannon passed them all by. If Vereen and Nagle gravitated here, it would be after dark. And a stranger asking questions about them was sure to be met with silence, hostility, or both.

In the next block, adjacent to a saloon whimsically called the Trader’s Rest, he came to a two-story clapboard building that housed a sailors’ outfitter downstairs and Fenner’s office and living quarters upstairs. He climbed a somewhat rickety outside staircase. Evidently Fenner did not believe in advertising his profession; there was no shingle at the foot of the staircase or on the door at the upper landing.

Two sets of knuckle raps brought no response. Quincannon tried the door latch, expecting it to be locked, but it wasn’t. He opened it, stepped into a deserted office that contained a sluggish ceiling fan, a swarm of flies, a jumble of inexpensive furnishings, and a room at the far end separated by a beaded curtain. He called Fenner’s name, received no answer to that, either. The only interior sounds were the dull buzzing drone of the flies.

The room’s centerpiece was a rattan desk, atop which sat a two-quart tin bucket and a coconut-shell mug. He stepped over to look into the bucket. One-third filled with beer, not stale but fresh; foam and bubbles appeared when he nudged the bucket. So Fenner had been here recently, and it seemed likely that he would be back, else the door would not have been left unlocked. Gone to answer a beer-induced call of nature, mayhap. There would be no indoor plumbing here.

Quincannon resisted an impulse to prowl the premises, sat instead on a wooden chair. He had been marinating in sweat for three or four minutes when the door opened and a large fat man in a rumpled tropical suit entered. The fat man showed no surprise to find that he had a visitor. His only reaction was to say, “Ah,” in a raspy voice.

Quincannon rose to his feet. “George Fenner?”

“None other. And you are?”

“Quincannon, John Quincannon. I hope you don’t mind my taking the liberty of coming in to wait.”

“Not if you’re here on business.”

“I am. You were recommended to me by the Pinkerton office in San Francisco.” He presented Fenner with Carpenter and Quincannon, Professional Detective Services’ business card. “As you see, we are in the same profession.”

Raisin-like eyes nestled in fat pouches studied the card, then lifted to take Quincannon’s measure. What conclusion Fenner came to, if any, remained hidden. He gestured for Quincannon to be seated again, crossed to the desk with the card held between sausage-size thumb and forefinger. He neither waddled nor moved ponderously, but rather with a kind of fluid ease reminiscent of a jungle cat. The chair behind the desk groaned in protest as he settled into it. He must have weighed close to two hundred and fifty pounds and measured an inch or two over six feet. His shoulders were wide, his ovoid head completely hairless except for a thin brown ruff above disproportionately tiny ears. An imposing specimen, even sitting down.

The presence of the bucket of beer and coconut-shell mug had made Quincannon dubious about Fenner’s competency. But the man was not drunk, nor even close to it, and the way he moved and the gleam of intelligence in the dark little eyes indicated the presence of a hard shell beneath the coating of lard, a shrewd brain inside the hairless skull.

At length Fenner said, “Well, then. What can I do for you, Mr. Quincannon?”

“I am on the trail of a slippery pair of confidence men who swindled a client of mine. They arrived here from San Francisco one week ago on the Matson steamer Roderick Dhu.”

“And you’ve come all the way to Hawaii in pursuit. Your client must be a wealthy man.”

“He is. And I am a tenacious detective.”

“The best kind. Only just arrived in Honolulu and in need of help in locating them, is that right?”

“It is.”

“You haven’t been to the police?”

“No. You can guess why, I’ll wager.”

“I can. A smart decision in any event. They have their hands full now — the coming annexation, the flood of troops bound for Cuba or remaining to protect Pearl Harbor.” Neither of which prospect met with Fenner’s approval, judging by the slight lip curl that accompanied the words. “I take it a large amount of money is involved?”

“Not so much cash money,” Quincannon said, “as other valuable items that might well be in their possession. I would rather not say what the items are nor how much they’re worth.”

“Once you locate the men and recover the valuables, if you do, what then?”

“Turn them over to the police, of course.” He didn’t add that he meant only the two grifters; if he did recover the bonds and stock certificates, he would sequester them until they could be safely returned to R. W. Anderson.

Fenner dipped his chins; that statement did meet with his approval. Once a copper, always a copper, Quincannon thought, not necessarily a bad thing if he was in fact competent.

“Why did they choose to come to Hawaii?” the fat man asked. “A long way to travel to spend ill-gotten loot.”

“I suspect it was a new and potentially lucrative swindle that brought them.”

“But you have no idea what it might be?”

“Not yet.”

“What are their names?”

“I’ll tell you that, and provide other pertinent information, if we reach an agreement.”

The sluggish fan was doing little to alleviate the stifling heat in the room. Trickles of sweat made the remains of Quincannon’s left ear itch. Fenner mopped his red face and glistening dome with a bandanna-size handkerchief, then reached for the beer bucket. His jowls quivered slightly when he peered inside.

“Just enough left for two mugs,” he said. “Join me?”

“No, thanks.”

The refusal was met with a flicker of relief. Fenner filled the coconut-shell mug, emptied half of it in one long quaff. “Beer is my one weakness,” he said. “I’m the saloon next door’s best customer. Three buckets a day in this kona weather.” He paused and then said, “I can drink four and still retain full control of my faculties.”

“I don’t doubt it,” Quincannon said truthfully.

“Well, then. If the two birds you’re after are still in Honolulu, I should be able to find them for you wikiwiki. If they’ve gone to another island, or sailed for the Orient or the South Seas, I can find that out wikiwiki, too.”

“What does ‘wikiwiki’ mean?”

“Speedily. Do they know you’ve trailed them here?”

“No. They can have no idea of it.”

“No more than two days, then, as long as they haven’t gone into hiding for some other reason. Longer, in that case. Satisfactory?”

“Yes. And the cost?”

“My fees are reasonable, but I’ll need an advance.”

“How large an advance?”

“The charge for one day’s work. Forty dollars, American.”

Reasonable enough, as long as it could be charged to R. W. Anderson for reimbursement. Though if Fenner was more than two days on the job, his fees would make serious inroads in the amount of cash he and Sabina had brought with them.

“Agreed,” he said.

“Now I’ll have their names.”

“Jackson Vereen, known as Lonesome Jack, and E. B. Nagle, known as Nevada Ned. Those are their real names. The aliases they used to buy steamer passage are James A. Varner and Simon Reno. Likely they’ll still be using them here.”

“Descriptions?”

Quincannon provided them in detail. He emphasized the likelihood that the pair had sought private rather than hotel accommodations, provided the fact that Nagle was a morphine addict who might need to procure more of the drug if the supply he brought with him should run out, and finished by saying, “They may have frequented the local saloons and bagnios since their arrival, but not more than a sampling if they’re pursuing a new swindle.”

“What type of swindle do they specialize in?”

“Fake stocks when they can find a suitable mark, but they’ll work any con that has a substantial payoff. Whatever scheme brought them here has to have that kind of potential.”

“So it would seem.”

Quincannon said, “You should have enough to go on now, Mr. Fenner. Can you get started right away?”

“As soon as you leave. Where are you staying?”

“In Waikiki, with a couple named Pritchard my wife and I met on the ship. They invited us and she talked me into accepting.”

Fenner elevated a thick eyebrow. “You brought your wife along on a hunt for two crooks?”

“She is also my business partner, a former Pinkerton operative and a detective the equal of any man.” His tone and narrowed eye challenged Fenner to make an issue of this.

The fat man merely shrugged. “I don’t know the Pritchards. Their address?”

Quincannon had gotten it from Lyman and repeated it.

“I’ll get a message to you as soon as I have news,” Fenner said. “But you’ll have to come here to collect it and pay the balance owed in full. Satisfactory?”

“Satisfactory.”

Quincannon paid him the forty-dollar retainer in greenbacks. They shook hands — Fenner’s was rough-skinned and surprisingly dry — after which Quincannon went to the door. As he let himself out, he saw the fat man rising to his feet. True to his word to immediately commence earning his fee. Either that, or he was on his way to the Trader’s Rest to replenish the empty bucket.