The Body Snatchers Affair Page 7

  “Ailment?”

  “My herbs and tonics are all genuine, imported from the provinces of China. Guaranteed effective for any ailment. You are familiar with Emperor Shen Nung?”

  “No.”

  “He was the ancient father of plants. A thousand years past, in old China, Shen Nung examined many plants to learn their medicinal value. His wisdom, like that of Confucius, has survived the centuries.”

  “I expect you know why I’m here,” Quincannon said, “and it’s not to buy herbs and tonics.”

  “Ah, but they are all that I dispense.”

  “Information is what I’m after. Like the police, I am investigating the assassination of the Hip Sing attorney James Scarlett last night. On behalf of my client, and as a near victim of the boo how doy hatchet man myself.”

  Mock Don Yuen might have been wearing a mask for all the reaction the name produced. After a few moments he turned away from Quincannon, and without hurry went around behind the counter. He removed one clawlike hand from the sleeve of his robe and ran fingers, the nails of which were some two inches long, over a section of the blue-lacquered cabinet. They came to rest on a drawer a third of the way down. The fragrance of herbs, already strong in the shop, seemed to become even stronger when he opened the drawer.

  “May I recommend some lizard tea?” he said. “Most nourishing, a boon to the digestion.”

  “The police believe that Bin Ah Kee’s remains were stolen and Scarlett murdered by Kwong Dock highbinders to provoke a tong war with the Hip Sing. Is that your belief as well?”

  Mock Don Yuen opened another drawer. “Gum of the Koh-liu from Sumatra? An excellent general tonic.”

  “Who else might be responsible? Fong Ching?”

  Another drawer. “Powdered lily? It has many fine properties. Among them the dispelling of grief, easement of the pain of piles, and the promotion of a male offspring.”

  Irritably Quincannon said, “I’m not grieving, I don’t suffer from piles, and I have no interest in producing an offspring of either sex. Pay mind to me, Mock Don Yuen. No matter who is behind the fomenting of a tong war, you’re in a position to prevent it as the Hip Sing’s new president.”

  “Ginseng, sir? Very fine. Ginseng soup, properly brewed, provides strength and a long life.”

  “No one in Chinatown will have a long life if there’s a tong war. I’ll warrant you don’t want bloodshed any more than I or the police do. I intend to find the men responsible and see them punished. Cooperate with me, and you and the Hip Sing will both benefit.”

  “Deer’s tail from Hwei Chung? Like ginseng, it is one of mankind’s greatest blessings.”

  Blast the man! Quincannon tried a different approach, managing not to scowl or growl as he said, “I know Scarlett was acting as your private counsel. A troublesome legal matter, Mock Don Yuen?”

  “Mint leaves? Excellent for combating fire in the human body. Lavender water mixed with ink, for the banishment of headache?”

  “Or was it related to the Hip Sing? An expansion of illegal activities, such as the Kwong Dock engages in? Something to do with the disappearance of Bin Ah Kee’s remains?”

  “Cinnabar, perhaps, for the increase of one’s lifespan?”

  “Bah!” Quincannon could contain himself no longer. “For all I know you arranged the body snatching and Scarlett’s assassination—that you’re the one who wants tong warfare!”

  Not even that caused a flicker in the venerable tong leader’s impassive calm. “No herbs, sir? No fine tonics? There are more than one thousand prescriptions in the book of Li Shih-chen, the great physician of the Ming dynasty. Those I have mentioned and many others would be of benefit, to assure you health and longevity.”

  “Better take them yourself, then. You’ll need them more than I will.”

  Behind his thick glasses, Mock Don Yuen’s eyes were steady on Quincannon’s face. Bird’s eyes: it seemed they hadn’t blinked once the entire time he’d been there and they didn’t blink now.

  “You are familiar with Chinese folklore, sir?” he said. “Most interesting. We have sayings appropriate to all occasions. For instance there is that which states, ‘Loud bark, no good dogs; loud talk, no wise man.’”

  Quincannon forbore offering up one of several pithy and borderline obscene Western sayings that crossed his mind, turned on his heel, and left the shop. The tinkling of the bell over the door as he went out was not unlike the sound of mocking laughter.

  8

  QUINCANNON

  Fowler Alley was a typical Chinatown passage: narrow, crooked, packed with long-pigtailed men and women mostly dressed in the black clothing of the lower-caste Chinese. Brightly hued paper lanterns strung along rickety balconies and the glowing braziers of food sellers added the only color and light to a tunnellike expanse made even gloomier by the day’s overcast sky.

  Quincannon wandered along, gazing at storefronts and the upper floors of sagging firetraps roofed in tarpaper and gravel. Many of the second and third floors were private apartments, hidden from view behind dusty, curtained windows. Some of the business establishments were identifiable from their displayed wares: restaurants flying three-cornered yellow silk pennants, herb shops, a clothiers, a vegetable market. Others, tucked away behind closed doors, darkened windows, and signs in Chinese characters remained a mystery.

  Nothing in the alley aroused his suspicions or pricked his curiosity. There were no tong headquarters here, as Price had made clear last night; no opium resorts or sporting houses; and nothing even remotely suggestive of blue shadows. One of the Hip Sing’s fantan parlors might be operating here, but even if so, there would seem to be little connection between the tong’s gambling enterprise and James Scarlett’s last words.

  Quincannon retraced his steps through the passage, stopping the one other white man he saw and several Chinese. Did anyone know Scarlett, the Hip Sing attorney? The Caucasian was a dry-goods drummer on his second and what he obviously hoped would be his last visit to the Quarter; he had never heard of Scarlett, he said. All the Chinese either didn’t speak English or pretended they didn’t.

  Fowler Alley lay open on both ends, debouching into other passages, but at least for the present, Quincannon thought bleakly as he left it, it was a dead end.

  * * *

  Once called Pike Street, Waverly Place was one of Chinatown’s more notorious thoroughfares. Here, temples and fraternal buildings stood cheek by jowl with opium and gambling dens and the cribs of the flower willows. Last night, when Quincannon had started his hunt for James Scarlett, the passage had been mostly empty; by daylight it teemed with carts, wagons, buggies, half-starved dogs and cats, and human pedestrians. The noise level was as high and constant as that on Dupont Avenue, a shrill tide dominated by the lilting dialects of Canton, Shanghai, and the provinces of Old China.

  Two doors down from the three-story tong building was the Four Families Temple, a building of equal height but with a much more ornate façade, its balconies carved and painted and decorated with pagoda cornices. On impulse Quincannon turned in through the entrance doors and proceeded along a narrow passage to what was known as the Hall of Sorrows, where funeral services were conducted and the bodies of the deceased highborn were laid out in their caskets for viewing.

  Candlelight flickered; the pungent odor of incense assailed his nostrils. The long room, deserted at the moment, was ceiled with a massive scrolled wood carving covered in gold leaf, from which hung dozens of lanterns in pink and green, red and gold. At the far end were a pair of large altars, a red prayer bench fronting one. Smaller altars on either side wore embroidered cloths on which fruit, flowers, candles, and joss urns had been arranged.

  It must have been in the vicinity of those altars that the remains of Bing Ah Kee had lain. The thieves had slithered in sometime during the early morning hours and pried up the lid of his coffin, sealed after the last viewing, in order to make off with the corpse—a risky venture even in the middle of the night. At least four men had to
have been involved, two to remove the body, a third to act as lookout, and a fourth to drive whatever conveyance was used. Such a mission required careful planning, and careful planning meant a definite purpose. Yet no word of the body snatchers’ intentions had been forthcoming—none, that was, that had as yet reached Occidental ears.

  The ground floor of the Hip Sing Company was a fraternal gathering place, open to the street; the two upper floors, where tong business was conducted, were closed off to visitors and would be well guarded. Quincannon entered freely, passed down a corridor into a large common room. Several black-garbed men, most of them elderly, were playing mah-jongg at a table at one end. Other men sat on cushions and benches, sipping tea, smoking, reading Chinese-language newspapers. A few cast wary glances at the Occidental intruder, but most ignored him.

  A middle-aged fellow, his skull completely bald except for a long, braided queue that extended below his shoulder blades, approached him, bowed, and asked in halting English, “There is something the gentleman seeks?”

  Quincannon said, “An audience with Mock Quan,” and handed over one of his business cards.

  “Please to wait here, honorable sir.” The Chinese bowed again, took the card away through a doorway covered by a worn silk tapestry.

  Quincannon waited. No one paid him the slightest attention now. He was loading his pipe when the bald man returned and said, “You will follow me, please.”

  They passed through the tapestried doorway, up a stairway so narrow Quincannon had to turn his body slightly as he ascended. Another man waited at the top, this one young, thickset, with a curved scar under one eye and both hands hidden inside the voluminous sleeves of his blouse. Highbinder on guard duty: Those sleeves would conceal revolver or knife or short, sharp hatchet, or possibly all three.

  As the bald one retreated down the stairs, the highbinder and “foreign devil” eyed each other impassively. Quincannon had no intention of relinquishing his Navy Colt; if any effort were made to search him, he would draw the weapon and take his chances. But the guard made no such attempt. In swift, gliding movements he turned and went sideways along a hallway, his gaze on Quincannon all the while. At an open doorway at the far end, he paused and stood aside, stiff and straight as if at attention. When Quincannon entered the room beyond, the highbinder filled the doorway behind him as effectively as any panel of wood.

  The chamber might have been an office in any building in San Francisco. There was a long, high desk, a safe, several stools, a round table set with a tea service. The only Oriental touches were a red silk wall tapestry embroidered with threads of gold, a statue of Buddha, and an incense bowl that emitted a rich, spicy scent. Lamplight highlighted the face of the man standing behind the desk—a man of no more than thirty, slender, clean-shaven, his hair worn long but unqueued, Western style, his body encased in a robe of red brocaded silk that didn’t quite conceal the shirt and string tie underneath.

  “I am Mock Quan,” he said. His English was unaccented and precise. “It is I with whom you wish to speak, not my honorable father?”

  “I’ve already spoken with Mock Don Yuen at his shop.”

  “About what, may I ask?”

  “The murder of James Scarlett.”

  “And was it a satisfactory conversation?”

  “It would have been if I was interested in buying herbs.”

  “Ah. So now you have come to me. But I fear you have wasted your time, Mr. Quincannon. I know nothing about the unfortunate incident in Ross Alley.”

  “Would you tell me if you did?”

  “The best interests of the Hip Sing Company are for the council of elders and my father to decide, not I.”

  “That’s not what I asked you.”

  “A man of my lowly station has few answers to important questions. On this matter I have none.”

  “Lowly station, Mock Quan? The ambitious son of the Hip Sing’s new president?”

  A slight lifting of one shoulder. “Ambition in a young man does not mean he is worthy.”

  Horseapples, Quincannon thought. He smiled, the kind of razor-edged smile that had caused many a man to begin quaking in his boots. Not this young rascal, however.

  “No more evasions, Mock Quan. We both know James Scarlett was murdered by a Hip Sing highbinder.”

  “Your assumptions are false. The Hip Sing would never countenance the assassination of an Occidental.”

  “No? Then who would?”

  “The Kwong Dock and their cowardly leader, Fong Ching.” The response came quickly, without hesitation. So much for Mock Quan’s man-of-lowly-station-with-no-answers pose.

  “Why would they want Scarlett dead?”

  “He was acting counsel for the Hip Sing Company and as such privileged to certain confidences. You are surely aware of this.”

  “I am. I also know that one of his clients was your father. The question is in what capacity.”

  “That is no concern of yours, Mr. Quincannon.”

  “It is if it has a bearing on Scarlett’s murder.”

  “It does not. The unfortunate Mr. Scarlett had become a slave to ah pin vin; it may be that the drug clouded his judgment, made him unstable enough to betray his trust and sell out to the Kwong Dock. If so, he was an expendable pawn in Fong Ching’s vicious and unscrupulous hunger for power.” The young Chinese’s lips thinned as he spoke. “Fong Ching hates and fears the Hip Sing Company, for we are stronger than any of the tongs under his yoke. He wishes to destroy the Hip Sing so he may reign as king of Chinatown.”

  “He’s the king now, isn’t he?”

  “No!” Mock Quan’s anger came like the sudden flare of a match. Almost as quickly it was extinguished, but not before Quincannon had a glimpse beneath the cultured façade. “He is a fat jackal in lion’s skin, the son of a turtle.”

  That last statement revealed the depth of Mock Quan’s loathing for Little Pete; it was the bitterest of Chinese insults. Quincannon said, “Jackals feed on the dead. The dead such as Bing Ah Kee?”

  “Oh, yes, it is beyond question Fong Ching is responsible for that outrage.”

  “What do you suppose was done with the body?”

  Mock Quan made a slicing gesture with one slim hand. “Should the vessel of the honorable Bing Ah Kee have been harmed in any fashion, may Fong Ching suffer the death of a thousand cuts ten thousand times through eternity.”

  “If the Hip Sing is so sure he’s responsible, why has nothing been done to retaliate?”

  “Without proof of Fong Ching’s treachery, the decision of the council of elders was that the wisest course was to withhold a declaration of war.”

  “Even after what happened to James Scarlett? His murder could be termed an act of open aggression.”

  “Mr. Scarlett was neither Chinese nor a member of the Hip Sing Company, merely an employee. Evidently an untrustworthy one.” Mock Quan took a tailor-made cigarette from a box on his desk, fitted it into a carved ivory holder. “The council of elders met again this morning. It was decided then to permit the American Terror, Lieutenant Price, and his raiders to punish Fong Ching and the Kwong Dock, thus to avoid the shedding of Hip Sing blood. This will soon be done.”

  “What makes you so certain?”

  “It is the only way to crush the life from the turtle’s offspring and prevent tong bloodshed.”

  “Did you have a say in the council’s decision?”

  The question discomfited Mock Quan. His eyes narrowed; he exhaled smoke in a thin jet. “I am not privileged to sit on the council of elders.”

  “But I’ll wager you have your father’s confidence as well as his ear, and that your powers of persuasion are considerable.”

  “Such matters do not concern you.”

  “Anything relating to Scarlett’s murder concerns me,” Quincannon said. “I was nearly shot, too, in Ross Alley. And I’m not as convinced as you are that Little Pete is behind the death of James Scarlett or the disappearance of Bing Ah Kee’s remains.”

  Moc
k Quan made an odd hissing sound with his lips, a Chinese expression of anger and contempt. There was less oil and more steel in his voice when he spoke again. “You would do well to bow to the superior workings of the police, lest your blood stain a Chinatown alley after all.”

  “I don’t like warnings, Mock Quan, much less threats.”

  “A lowly Chinese warn or threaten a distinguished Occidental detective? My words were merely ones of caution and prudence.”

  Quincannon’s smile this time was a thin lip-stretch. He said, “I have no intention of leaving a single drop of my blood in Chinatown or anywhere else in this city.”

  “Then you would be wise not to venture here again after the cloak of night has fallen.” Mock Quan smiled in return, his as counterfeit as Quincannon’s. So was the invitation which followed. “Will you join me in a cup of excellent rose-petal tea before you leave?”

  “Another time, perhaps.”

  “Perhaps. Ho hang la—I hope you have a safe walk.”

  Quincannon said, lying in his teeth, “Health and a long life to you, too, Mock Quan.”

  * * *

  On his way out of Chinatown, a shouting newsboy drew his attention to the fact that the Evening Bulletin had appeared. He bought a copy and glanced over the front page. Hell, damn, and blast! As he’d feared, some copper at the Hall of Justice had leaked his name to that scoundrel Homer Keeps. The bold headlines caused his blood pressure to soar.

  One of them read: NOTORIOUS PRIVATE DETECTIVE IMPLICATED IN CHINATOWN SLAYING. Notorious! The story, which of course bore Keeps’s byline, was even more outrageous—littered with allusions to Quincannon’s “history of blatant disregard for human life,” “past excursions into the city’s netherworld of violence,” and “escapades of dubious legitimacy,” and with sly insinuations that he was partly to blame for James Scarlett’s death and that his presence at the opium resort indicated he, too, might be a “dude fiend” hop smoker. Altogether it amounted to another of Keeps’s deliberate attempts at character assassination—potentially damaging not only to Quincannon’s personal reputation but to that of Carpenter and Quincannon, Professional Detective Services. And yet so carefully worded that it was not quite actionable.