The Bughouse Affair (7 page)

Some of the more notorious gambling dens and parlor houses were open for business, as were the more scabrous cribs and deadfalls, but they were thinly populated at this hour. And mostly absent was the nighttime babel of pianos, hurdy-gurdies, drunken laughter, the cries of shills and barkers, and the shouts and screams of victims. Quincannon was anything but a prude, having done his fair share of carousing during his drinking days, but the Coast had never attracted him. He preferred to satisfy his vices in more genteel surroundings.

Near Broadway there was a section of run-down hotels and lodging houses. He entered one of the latter and had words with the desk clerk, a runty chap named Galway with whom he’d done business before. Galway admitted to having seen Dodger Brown a time or two in recent weeks; he thought the Dodger might be residing at Foghorn Annie’s, one the seaman’s boarding houses on the waterfront.

Just outside the Barbary Coast on Montgomery Street, Quincannon found a hack—he and Sabina both preferred cabs to trolleys and cable cars when clients were paying expenses—and was shortly delivered to the Embarcadero. The trip turned out to be a waste of time. Scruffs were known to seek shelter among seafaring men now and then, by pretending to be former sailors themselves or by paying extra for the protective coloration. Dodger Brown was known at Foghorn Annie’s, but not as a current resident. Visits to two other houses in the area produced neither the Dodger nor a clue to his whereabouts.

Hunger prodded Quincannon into a waterfront eatery, where he made short work of a dozen oysters on the half shell, a large bowl of fish stew, and a slab of peach pie. His appetite had always been prodigious. He had inherited all of his father’s lusty appetites, in fact, along with his genteel Southern mother’s love for poetry. Sabina had once remarked that he was a curious mixture of the gentle and the stone-hard, the sensitive and the unyielding. He supposed that was an accurate assessment, and the reason, perhaps, that he was a better detective than Thomas L. Quincannon, the fearless rival of Allan Pinkerton in the nation’s capital during the Civil War. He knew his limitations, his weaknesses. His father had never once admitted to being wrong, considered himself invincible—and had been shot to death while on a fool’s errand on the Baltimore docks. John Frederick Quincannon intended to die in bed at the age of ninety. And not alone, either.

Another hack returned him to the outskirts of the Barbary Coast. He found and spoke with three more individuals who had sold him information in the past—a Tar-Flat hoodlum named Luther James, a bunco steerer who went by the moniker of Breezy Ned, and a “blind” newspaper vendor known as Slewfoot. None of them had anything worthwhile to sell this time.

Enough of roaming the Coast, Quincannon decided. The time had come to call on Ezra Bluefield again. He had already approached the man once within the past week, seeking information on the house burglaries and possible fencing of the loot, and Bluefield grew testy when he was asked for too many favors. But if there was one lad in the devil’s playground who could find out where Dodger Brown was holed up, it was Bluefield.

Quincannon walked to Terrific Street, as Pacific Avenue, the district’s main artery, was called, turned into an alley, and entered a large building in mid-block. A sign in bloodred letters above the entrance proclaimed the establishment to be the
SCARLET LADY SALOON
. A smaller sign beneath it stated:
EZRA BLUEFIELD, PROP.

At one time the Scarlet Lady had been a crimping joint, where seamen were fed drinks laced with laudanum and chloral hydrate and then carted off by shanghaiers and sold to venal shipmasters in need of crews. The Sailor’s Union of the Pacific had ended the practice and forced the saloon’s closure, but only until Bluefield had promised to give up his association with the shanghaiers and backed up the promise with generous bribes to city officials. The Scarlet Lady was now an “honest” deadfall in which percentage girls, bunco ploys, and rigged games of chance were used to separate seamen and other foolhardy patrons from their money.

As usual, Bluefield was in his office at the rear. He was an ex-miner who had had his fill of the rough-and-tumble life in various Western goldfields and vowed to end his own rowdy ways when he moved to San Francisco and opened the Scarlet Lady. He had taken no active part in the crimping activities, and was known to remain behind his locked office door when brawls broke out, as they often did; the team of bouncers he employed were charged with stifling trouble and keeping what passed for peace. It was his stated intention to one day own a better class of saloon in a better neighborhood, and as a result he cultivated the company and goodwill of respectable citizens. Quincannon was one of them, largely because he had once prevented a rival saloon owner from puncturing Bluefield’s hide with a bullet.

Bluefield was drinking beer and counting profits, two of his favorite activities. The profits must have been considerable, for he was in a jovial mood and seemed not to mind being visited again so soon.

“I’ve nothing for you yet, John, my lad,” he said. “You know I’ll send word when I do.”

“I’m the one with news today,” Quincannon said. “The housebreaker I’m after is Dodger Brown.”

“The Dodger, is it? Well, I’m not surprised. How did you tumble?”

“I came within a hair of nabbing him in the act last night. He escaped through no fault of mine.”

“So he knows you’re onto him?”

“I don’t believe he does, as dark as it was.”

“He’ll still be in the city then, you’re thinking.”

“Or somewhere in the Bay Area.”

Bluefield raised his mug of lager with one thick finger, drank, licked foam off his mustached upper lip. The mustache was an impressive coal-black handlebar, its ends waxed to rapier points, of which he was inordinately proud. “And mayhap old Ezra can find out where he’s hanging his hat, eh?”

“If anyone can, it’s you.”

“You flatter me, Quincannon. Not that I mind.”

“Then you’ll put out word on Dodger Brown?”

“I will. For a favor in return.”

“Name it.”

“There is a saloon and restaurant just up for sale in the Uptown Tenderloin. The Redemption, on Ellis Street.”

“I know it. A respected establishment.”

“I’m looking to buy it,” Bluefield said. “It’s past time I put this hellhole up for sale and leave the Barbary Coast for good. There’ll never be a place better suited or better named for the likes of me to own so that I can die a respectable citizen. I have the money, I’ve made overtures, but the owners aren’t convinced my intentions are honorable. They’re afraid I have plans to turn the Redemption into a fancy uptown copy of the Scarlet Lady.”

“And you’ve no such plans.”

“None, lad, I swear it.”

“Is it a letter of reference you’re after?”

“It is. Your name carries weight in certain quarters in this city.”

“No greater weight than yours in other quarters.”

“The letter in exchange for my help, then?”

“You’ll have it tomorrow, by messenger.”

Bluefield lumbered to his feet and thumped Quincannon’s back with a meaty paw. “You won’t regret it, lad. You and Mrs. Carpenter will always have free meals at Ezra Bluefield’s Redemption.”

Quincannon had never once turned down the offer of anything for free—anything reasonably legitimate, that was—nor would his thrifty Scot’s blood ever permit him to do so. But it wouldn’t do to press his luck with a man of Bluefield’s mercurial temperament.

“I’ll settle for the whereabouts of Dodger Brown,” he lied glibly.

“Within forty-eight hours,” Bluefield said, “and that’s a bloody promise. Even if it means hiring a gang of men to comb through every rattrap from here to China Basin.”

8

SABINA

Sabina spent the rest of the morning in pursuit of information from the pickpocket’s victims and their families, following a route she had mapped out after studying the list Lester Sweeney had given her.

Her first destination was the residence of Mr. William Buchanan on Green Street near Van Ness Avenue. Mr. Buchanan was not at home, the maid who answered the door told her. He and Mrs. Buchanan had gone to their country house on the Peninsula for two weeks.

The driver of the hansom she’d hired and left waiting took her next to Webster Street in the Western Addition, where she had somewhat better luck. The house there was large and well kept, and its owner, John Greenway, the man who had been robbed of a wallet containing nearly forty dollars, chanced to be home. He greeted Sabina cordially, and when she presented her card and stated her purpose in calling, he showed her into the front parlor where he introduced her to his wife, who was quite obviously expecting a child.

“Of course we’ll help in any way we can,” he said then, “but I’m afraid there isn’t much we can tell you. I didn’t see the woman who robbed me. Mrs. Greenway did, but only a fleeting glimpse.”

Mrs. Greenway nodded. “She was rather tall and wore a white hat with a sun veil that covered part of her face. That’s all I remember about her.”

“What were the circumstances of the theft?” Sabina asked.

“We had ridden the water slide and stopped at the refeshment stand for a glass of lemonade,” Greenway said. “The ride was ill-advised—it made Mrs. Greenway feel unwell. There was a large crowd watching a juggler near the gates, and while we were passing through it the woman bumped into me and I felt a sudden sharp pain in my side. It caused me to stumble and fall to one knee. My wife and a young fellow in the crowd helped me up, and that was when I discovered the theft.”

“What caused the sharp pain you felt?”

“I don’t know. I thought at the time that it was a gastric attack, a result of the food we’d eaten combined with the ride, but upon reflection it seemed more a jabbing or pricking sensation.”

A jabbing or pricking sensation. Sabina had overheard the frock-coated victim on the Cocktail Route last evening make a similar complaint, which he attributed to having eaten too many oysters on the half-shell at the Bank Exchange. Coincidence? Or a clever pickpocket using some sharp object to distract her mark—an object such as a hatpin?

*   *   *

No one came to the door at either of the next two victims’ residences, but at a small Eastlake-style Victorian near Washington Square, Sabina was greeted by the plump young daughter of Mr. George Anderson. Her father was at his place of business, the Orpheum, a vaudeville house on O’Farrell Street, she said, and her mother was out shopping. Did she know anything about the robbery of her father at the Chutes? Oh, yes, she had witnessed it.

In the small front parlor, Ellen Anderson rang for the housekeeper and ordered tea. It came quickly, accompanied by a plate of ginger cookies. Sabina took one as Miss Anderson poured and prattled on about how exciting it was to make the aquaintance of a lady detective.

Sabina directed her back to the business at hand by asking, “Were you alone with your father when his purse was stolen?”

“No, my mother and my brother were also there. But they didn’t see what happened.”

“Tell me what you saw, please.”

“We were near the merry-go-round. It was very crowded, children waiting to board and parents watching their children on the ride. Allen, my brother, was trying to persuade me to ride with him. He’s only ten years old, so a merry-go-round is a thrill for him, but I’m sixteen, and it seems so very childish.…”

“Did you ride anyway?”

“No. But Allen did. We were watching him when suddenly my father took hold of his middle, groaned, twisted round, and staggered a few paces. Mother and I both thought he’d had a seizure. We managed to keep him from falling, and when we’d righted him he found all his money was gone.”

“What caused him to take hold of his middle?”

“He didn’t know. Gastric distress, he supposed.”

“Does he normally suffer from digestive problems?”

Ellen Anderson shook her dark ringlets. “But earlier we’d eaten hot sausages at the refreshment stand.”

“Did his distress continue afterward?”

“Father’s not one to talk about his ailments, but … no, I don’t believe so. We assumed the sausages were what affected him and that the thief had taken advantage of the moment.”

Not so, Sabina thought. And definitely not a coincidence that the dip’s victims had all suffered sharp pains before being relieved of their valuables. There was little doubt now that the woman’s method of operation was to inflict physical pain on her victims, as well as the kind caused by the loss of their valuables.

*   *   *

Two more fruitless stops left her with a final name on the list: Henry Holbrooke, on Jessie Street. Jessie was something of an anomaly as the new century approached—a mostly residential street that ran for several blocks through the heart of the business district, midway between Market and Mission. Old, crabbed houses and an occasional small business establishment flanked it, fronted by tiny yards and backed by barns and sheds.

The muslin curtains in the bay window of Henry Holbrooke’s house were open, but Sabina’s ring was not immediately answered. She twisted the bell again, and after a few moments she heard shuffling footsteps and the door opened. The inner hallway was so dark that she could scarcely make out the person standing there—a thin woman of upper middle age dressed entirely in black.

“Mrs. Holbrooke?”

“Yes.” The woman’s voice cracked, as if rusty from disuse.

Sabina gave her name and explained her mission. The woman made no move to take the card she extended.

“May I speak with your husband?” Sabina asked.

“My husband is dead.”

“My condolences. May I ask when he passed on?”

“Ten days ago.”

That would have been less than a week after he was robbed of his billfold at the Chutes. He had been one of the pickpocket’s first victims.

“May I come in, Mrs. Holbrooke?”

“I’d rather you didn’t. I’ve been … tearful. I don’t wish for anyone to see me after I’ve been grieving.”