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 and 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?”