Since then, there was no record of any criminal activity. To the unschooled eye, Wilds might have been inactive during this period. At the extortion game, possibly, but not in her other criminal pursuit. She may have been picking pockets for years, and managed to avoid being caught, or she may have learned the game more recently and spent the past year or so perfecting it. Not surprising in either case; criminals of both sexes sometimes adopted new and more lucrative or less risky specialties.
If Wilds was still keeping company with Dodger Brown, Quincannon reflected, it would make his and Sabina’s tasks much easier. Snaffle one, snaffle both. The difficulty lay in finding one or the other.
* * *
His first order of business was to write the letter of reference he’d promised Ezra Bluefield. When he left to keep his one o’clock appointment with R. W. Jackson, he would give the letter to the messenger service in the building next door. It would cost extra to have it delivered to the Barbary Coast, but that was a small price to pay for Bluefield’s continued assistance.
Next he finished his report on the Jackson investigation, a chore he disliked even though it allowed him to do a certain amount of justifiable boasting; he was a man of action, not a sedentary wordsmith. The client, R. W. Jackson, was an investment broker who ought to have known better than to fall victim to a stock swindle, but instead had been gullible enough to lose five thousand dollars to a pair of confidence men known in the underworld as Lonesome Jack Vereen and the Nevada Kid. Quincannon had tracked down the thimbleriggers, who were in Redwood City running another of their con games, the gold-brick swindle, and not only pinched them but recovered the full amount of R. W. Jackson’s loss. The five thousand dollars was being held in escrow for him, payable once he had in turn paid the agency’s fee. Which he would do today upon receipt of the final report.
Still no word from Bluefield by the time Quincannon finished. He was about to put on his coat when the door opened to admit a frog-faced youth wearing a cap with a sewn decal proclaiming his employers to be Citywide Messenger Service. Quincannon’s first thought was that old Ezra had taken to employing a legitimate service rather than sending a Coast runner as was his usual custom, but no such luck. Nor was the message from his partner. “For Mr. John Quincannon, Esquire,” the youth said-a term neither Sabina nor the deadfall owner would ever have used.
He accepted the envelope, signed for it, and tore it open. The messenger, looking hopeful, remained standing in place. “Well?” Quincannon said to him. “You’ve done your duty, lad. Off with you!”
The command, accompanied by a scowl and a step forward, sent the youth into a hurried exit. If Sabina had been there, she would have insisted that he be tipped the customary nickel. But Sabina wasn’t there and Quincannon didn’t believe in tipping. As a matter of fact, he felt that he’d done the lad a good turn by not giving him a nickel; at his young age, he would only have spent it profligately.
The envelope contained a sheet of bond paper that bore the letterhead and signature of Andrew Costain, Attorney-at-Law. The curt message, written in a rather shaky hand, read:
I should like to discuss a business matter with you. If you will call on me at my offices at your earliest convenience, I am sure you will find it to your financial advantage.
A business matter, eh? It must have something to do with the burglaries; Costain had never before sought his professional assistance. The lawyer’s name was one of the three left on Dodger Brown’s target list, and the man had struck him as a Nervous Nelly.
Quincannon glanced again at the paper. The number of lawyers he liked and trusted could have danced together on the bowl of his pipe. The phrase “financial advantage,” however, was too powerful a lure to be ignored.
“At your service, Mr. Costain,” he said aloud. “For the right price.”
11
SABINA
The boarding house the dossier had listed as Clara Wilds’s last known address was on Washington Street south of Broadway, on the fringe of the Barbary Coast. Upper-class women were seldom seen in this neighborhood, and none would dare to walk the squalid and dangerous streets within the one-square-mile of gambling hells, cheapjack saloons, brothels, and opium dens nearby. Sabina’s hack driver looked startled when she gave him the lodging house address. For a moment she thought he might try to dissuade her, but then he shrugged and urged his horse away along the cobbled streets.
The lodging house was a dilapidated wooden structure with cupolas at either end of its sagging roof, and a faded sign proclaiming HOUSEKEEPING ROOMS next to the front door. Trash clung to the foundation; its windows were speckled with dirt; a bundle of discarded newspapers lay on its front steps. The woman who answered Sabina’s ring owned a coarse middle-aged face and gray stringy hair, and wore a stained and ill-fitting housedress; most of her front teeth were missing, and the few that were left were chipped and discolored.
Her surprise at finding a well-dressed young woman on her doorstep was evident. “What do you want?” she demanded.
Sabina neither presented her card nor otherwise identified herself as a detective. Such would gain her nothing but scorn and suspicion. Women such as this landlady would find it difficult to believe that one of their sex was a professional detective, and would be close-mouthed as a result.
She said only, “I am looking for a woman named Clara Wilds.”
“Who?”
“Clara Wilds. She was one of your tenants eighteen months ago-”
“Eighteen months! How do you expect me to remember that far back? I can’t remember half the ‘ladies’ I got living here now.”
Sabina described Clara Wilds. The landlady started to shake her head, but then the light of remembrance came into her eyes. “Oh, her. A trollop and worse. She’s long gone, and good riddance.”
“When did she move out?”
“You mean when did I throw her out. Right after she got out of jail. The police come here and arrested her-just the kind of thing I don’t need. Gives my place a bad name. My roomers ain’t exactly the cream of society, but they’re not criminals, either.”
“Do you have any idea where she moved to?”
“No, and I don’t care. What do you want her for, anyway?”
“A personal matter. Do you know a friend of Clara Wilds’s named Dodger Brown?”
“Who?”
“Dodger Brown. A small man of about forty, with a fondness for wine. She was known to keep company with him.”
“Not in my place, she didn’t. I don’t allow no men in my house, not even in the parlor. I wouldn’t even let her uncle in if he come calling.”
“Uncle? I didn’t know Clara Wilds had an uncle.”
“Well, he don’t advertise the fact.”
Likely he was an uncle by marriage, Sabina thought, which was why the information had escaped mention in the dossier. “Where does he reside?”
“How should I know? All I know is where he has his business.”
“And where would that be?”
“The California Market. Sometimes when that trollop needed money she’d help Tony out in his fish stall.”
“How do you know that?”
“He told me, that’s how. Back when he knew she was lodging with me. I buy my fish and seafood from him.”