Билл Пронзини - The Bags of Tricks Affair

“What do you want, Mr. Gaunt?”

“I’ve been told you and your partner are leaving Grass Valley today.” His drawling voice was without inflection of any kind.

“There is nothing further to keep us here.”

“But you intend to return to testify at my sister’s trial.”

“Naturally.”

“That would be a mistake.”

“And why is that?”

“She didn’t shoot Jack.”

“Of course she did, despite her claims and yours to the contrary. I saw her do it.”

“Mistakenly, in a time of turmoil. Or perhaps deliberately to further your own agenda.”

“I have no agenda,” Sabina said sharply, “except for the pursuit of justice.”

“Be that as it may, your unfounded accusations that she is a card mechanic and a murderess have destroyed her reputation and her livelihood. That is reprehensible enough. I won’t allow her to be convicted of crimes she didn’t commit and sent to prison. Her handicaps would make even a short incarceration a living hell for her.”

“Perhaps so, but it’s a jury’s decision to make, not yours. Or mine.”

“I intend to hire the best lawyer in this state to represent her. If you fail to testify, she’ll be acquitted and vindicated. I suggest you give that option due consideration.”

“Are you threatening me, sir?”

Gaunt said nothing.

“I don’t take kindly to threats,” Sabina said. “Nor does my partner.”

His mouth twitched upward in a brief travesty of a smile.

“Attempting to intimidate a witness in a murder trial is a serious felony, Mr. Gaunt. So, as I shouldn’t have to remind you, is any attempted infliction of bodily harm.”

“I said nothing about the infliction of bodily harm.”

“You implied it. I could have you arrested.”

“As you caused my sister to be arrested — on the basis of misinterpretation and enmity. Besides, there is no one else here. It would be your word against mine.”

He stared at her a few moments longer, as if trying to will her to show fear or weakness by averting her eyes, and when he received no satisfaction he turned abruptly and walked off down the hall.

She shut and locked the door. He hadn’t frightened her in the least; she was far too experienced, strong-willed, courageous to be swayed by threats implied or otherwise. Nevertheless, the afterimage of his frigid eyes and the crawly sensation on her back lingered while she finished her packing.

She waited to tell John of Gaunt’s thinly veiled threat until after they were aboard a Southern Pacific passenger train bound from Colfax to Oakland. She knew he’d be furious enough to go storming off to confront the man, and that would have served no purpose except to escalate what might turn out to be a tempest in a teapot.

She said as much to him when he’d calmed down. “We’ve been threatened before, John, and nothing has come of it. Men like Gaunt are usually nothing more than blowhards.”

“Usually, but not always. You saw how fiercely protective he was of his sister last night.”

“Yes,” Sabina admitted, “I did.”

“If you’re unable to testify at Lady One-Eye’s trial, she may well go free. You were the only witness to her actions after the shooting.”

“She could go free even with my testimony,” Sabina said. “A handicapped woman is a sympathetic figure, even one with Lady One-Eye’s reputation, especially if she’s represented by a canny criminal attorney. Gaunt knows that as well as you and I do.”

“But we don’t know Gaunt, what lurks behind that stoic façade of his, what he’s capable of.”

“Yes, that’s true.”

“A man of dark and hidden depths,” John said ominously, “that’s my estimation of him. A dangerous man. You’re to be very careful from now until the trial, my dear.”

“I’m always careful, you know that.”

“Extra cautious in the city, triple cautious when the time comes for us to return to Grass Valley.” He lit his pipe, scowling, and puffed up a great cloud of foul gray smoke. “By God,” he muttered, “if that damned rascal comes anywhere near you...”

Sabina rested a steadying hand on his arm, smiled when he looked her way. His deep concern touched her. He really did care, not only for her as a partner but as a woman he would do anything in his power to keep safe. If that wasn’t love, it was the next thing to it.

His first order of business the morning after their return to San Francisco was a visit to the Hall of Justice at Portsmouth Square and the office of the only man in the police department he trusted, William Price, head of the Chinatown “flying squad.” He had been instrumental the previous year in helping Price avert a deadly tong war and put an end to one element of police corruption, and the lieutenant had been grateful. When he explained what had taken place in Grass Valley, Price agreed to grant him the favor he asked: any information that could be obtained through official channels on the activities of Jeffrey Gaunt and Blanche Gaunt Diamond, aka Lady One-Eye, in California and other western states.

Quincannon’s next stop was the Western Union office on Market Street, where he composed and sent two wires. One was to Sheriff Hezekiah Thorpe in Grass Valley, apprising him of Gaunt’s threat, asking that he, Quincannon, be notified immediately if Gaunt were to suddenly leave Nevada County. The other wire, marked “Urgent reply requested,” was to the Pinkerton Detective Agency’s branch office in New Orleans. If Gaunt, Lady One-Eye, and/or Jack O’Diamonds had run afoul of the law in that part of the country, the Pinks would find it out and supply details.

Stop number three was the newsstand of the blind vendor known as Slewfoot, their most reliable informant and information peddler. And number four was Ezra Bluefield’s Redemption Saloon on Ellis Street in the Uptown Tenderloin. He had once saved Bluefield’s life when the old reprobate owned the Scarlet Lady, a Barbary Coast deadfall, and later helped him realize his desire to purchase the much more respectable Redemption. Quincannon had long since used up his quota of return favors, but this was a special case; he knew he wouldn’t be turned away with Sabina’s welfare at stake, and he wasn’t.

Slewfoot had contacts among the shady characters who operated on the edges of the city’s underworld, Bluefield many acquaintances still among the denizens of the Coast. If anyone in San Francisco knew anything about Jeffrey Gaunt and his sister, as problematical as that possibility was, one or both men would ferret it out. Leave no stone unturned.

It was past noon when he entered the offices of Carpenter and Quincannon, Professional Detective Services. Sabina, cool and radiant as always (except when she’d been guised as the Saint Louis Rose), looked up from behind a pile of paperwork on her desk and said, “Well, it’s about time, John. Where have you been?”

He told her. “The more we know about Gaunt, the better. He may even be wanted somewhere.”

“Possible, but unlikely. You don’t intend to keep focusing your energies on him, I trust.”

“That depends on what we find out about him.”

“If anything other than what little we already know. We’ve other business to attend to after a five-day absence. Elizabeth received three inquiries from prospective clients during that time.”

Elizabeth Petrie, a widowed former police matron and sometime operative when a woman’s services were required, had kept the agency open while they were away. She was more than competent. In fact, Sabina had suggested that, considering the amount of work that often kept them both away from the office, hiring Elizabeth as a full-time employee might be a sound idea. The widow, whose only other activity was quilting, and who thrived on detective work, might be amenable to the idea. Quincannon had no objection other than the cost of her salary, but he hadn’t voiced this to Sabina; she considered him tight-fisted and money-grubbing enough as it was. (Which was nonsense, of course; he was merely a thrifty Scot.) Besides, they could afford the expense, the more so now that he had badgered Amos McFinn into paying the balance of their fee before they departed Grass Valley.