Bill Pronzini - The Bughouse Affair

Duff’s primary profession was receiver and disburser of stolen goods. Burglars, box men, pickpockets, footpads, and other felons far and wide beat a steady path to his door. Like other fencemen, he professed to offer his fellow thieves a square deal: half of what he expected to realize on the resale of any particular item. In fact, his notion of fifty-fifty was akin to putting a lead dollar on a Salvation Army tambourine and asking for fifty cents change.

He took a 75 percent cut of most profits, an even higher percentage from the more gullible and desperate among his suppliers. Stolen weapons of all types were his specialty-often enough at an 80 or 90 percent profit. A Tenderloin hockshop might offer a thief more cash, but hockshop owners put their marks on pistols, shotguns, and the like-marks that had been known to lead police agencies straight to the source. Hockshop proprietors were thus considered hangman’s handmaidens, and crooks generally stayed shy of them, preferring smaller but safer returns from men like Luther Duff.

Despite being well known in the trade, Duff had somehow managed to avoid prosecution. This was both a strong advertisement and his Achilles’ heel. He had a horror of arrest and imprisonment and was subject to intimidation as a result. Quincannon was of the opinion that Duff would sell his mother, if he had one, and his entire line of relatives rather than spend a single night at the mercy of a city prison guard.

A bell above the door jingled unmusically as Quincannon entered the shop. On the instant, the combined smells of dust, mildew, and slow decay pinched his nostrils. He made his way slowly through the dimly lighted interior, around and through an amazing hodgepodge of furniture that included a Chinese wardrobe festooned with fire-breathing dragons, a Tyrolean pine coffer, a saber-scarred Spanish refectory table, a brassbound “pirate treasure” chest from Madagascar, and a damascened suit of armor. He passed shelves of worm-ridden books, an assortment of corpses that had once been clocks, a stuffed and molting weasel, an artillery bugle, a ship’s sextant, a broken marble tombstone with the name HORSE-SHY HALLORAN chiseled into its face, and a yellow-varnished portrait of a fat nude woman who would have looked more aesthetic, he thought, with her clothes on.

When he neared the long counter at the rear, a set of musty damask drapes parted and Luther Duff emerged grinning. He was short, round, balding, fiftyish, and about as appetizing as a tainted oyster. He wore shyness and venality as openly as the garters on his sleeves and the moneylender’s eyeshade across his forehead. The grin and the suddenness of his appearance made Quincannon think, as always, of a balky-eyed troll jumping out from under a bridge in front of an unwary traveler.

“Hello, hello, hello,” the troll said. “What can I do for … awk!”

The strangled-chicken noise was the result of his having recognized his visitor. The grin vanished in a wash of nervous terror. He stood stiffly and darted looks everywhere but across the counter into Quincannon’s eyes.

“How are you, Luther?” Quincannon asked pleasantly.

“Ah … well and good, well and good.”

“No health problems, I trust?”

“No, no, none, fit as a fiddle.”

“Sound of body, pure of heart?”

“Ah, well, ah…”

“But it’s a harsh and uncertain world we live in, eh, Luther? Illness can strike any time. Accidents, likewise.”

“Accidents?”

“Terrible, crippling accidents. Requiring a long stay in the hospital.”

It was cold in the shop, but Duff’s face was already damp. He produced a dark-flecked handkerchief, twitchily began to mop his brow.

“Of course, there are worse things even than illness and accident,” Quincannon said. “Worse for some, that is. Such as those who suffer from claustrophobia.”

“Claustro … what?”

“The awful fear of being trapped in small enclosed spaces. A prison cell, for instance.”

“Gahh,” the troll said. A shudder passed through him.

“Such a man would suffer greatly under those circumstances. I would hate to see it happen to someone like you, the more so when it could be easily avoided.”

“Ah…”

Quincannon simulated a tolerant smile. “Well, no more of that, eh? We’ll move along to my reason for calling this morning. I’m after a bit of information I believe you can supply.”

“Ah…”

“It happens that I have urgent business with a lad named Dodger Brown. However, he seems to have dropped from sight.”

“Dodger Brown?”

“The same. Wine dump habitue, gambler, and burglar by trade. You’ve had recent dealings with him, I understand.”

“Recent dealings? No, you’re mistaken.”

“Now, now, Luther. Remember what I said about prison cells? Cold, unpleasant-and very, very small.”

Duff fidgeted and perspired. “What … ah … what business do you have with Dodger Brown?”

“Mine and none of yours. All you need do is tell me where I can find him.”

“Ah…”

“You must have some idea of where he’s holed up.” Quincannon let the smile slip away, his voice harden. “It wouldn’t be in your best interest to tax my patience.”

“Oh … ah … I wouldn’t, I won’t,” Duff said. The tip of his tongue flicked over thin lips. “An idea, perhaps. A possibility. You won’t say where you heard?”

“No one need know of our little talk but us.”

“Well … ah … he has a cousin, a fisherman known as Salty Jim.”

“Does he now.” This was news to Quincannon; there was nothing in the Dodger’s dossier about a living relative.

Duff said, “Dodger Brown bunks with him from time to time on his boat. So … ah … so I’ve heard on the earie.”

“Where does this Salty Jim keep his boat?”

“Across the bay … the Oakland City Wharf. He … ah … he’s involved in the oyster trade.”

“The name of his craft?”

“Something with ‘oyster’ in it. That’s all I can tell you.”

“Is it? Cudgel that cunning brain of yours, Luther, and see if you can recall the exact name.”

Duff cudgeled. To no avail. At length he shook his head so miserably that it seemed his memory really had failed him.

“Good enough,” Quincannon said. “Now we’ll move along to other matters. Did you sell the Dodger a revolver recently?”

“Revolver?”

“Specifically, a brand-new Forehand and Wadsworth thirty-eight-caliber.”

“No. No, absolutely not.”

“That had better be the truth.”

“It is! I swear I sold him no weapon of any kind.”

“When did you last see him?”

“I … ah … don’t remember…”

“Luther.”

“… Yesterday. Yesterday morning.”

“And you paid him cash for whatever goods he brought. What were they, and how much?”

“I don’t, ah, know what you mean. He came to see me, yes, but it was only to discuss selling certain property…”

Quincannon drew his Navy Colt, laid the weapon on the countertop between them. “You were saying?”

“Awk.”

“No, that wasn’t it. You were about to identify the items and how much you paid Dodger Brown for them. In fact, in the spirit of cooperation and good fellowship between us, you were about to show me these items. And don’t tell me you don’t still have them all. I know how you operate.”

The troll swallowed in a way that was remarkably similar to a cow swallowing its cud. He twitched, looked at the pistol, nibbled at his lower lip like a rat nibbling cheese.

Quincannon picked up the Navy and held it loosely in his hand, the barrel aimed in the general direction of Duff’s right eye. “My time is valuable, Luther,” he said. “And yours is fast running out.”