Marcia Muller: The Body Snatchers Affair

He used a police call box to report the whereabouts of the lawyer’s corpse, left before the coppers arrived and coroner’s wagon came to claim the body, and made his way directly to the Hall of Justice.

He disliked dealing with the city’s constabulary; he’d had a number of run-ins with individuals of one rank or another who did not care to have their thunder stolen by a private investigator who was better at their jobs than they were. There was also the fact that police corruption had grown rampant in recent times. Not long ago there had been a departmental shake-up in which several officers and Police Clerk William E. Hall were discharged. Chief Crowley claimed all the bad apples had been removed and the barrel was now clean. Quincannon, however, remained more than a little skeptical.

But in this case, with James Scarlett murdered and a tong war a very real threat, he had no choice but to communicate what he knew and what he suspected. Not that he intended to work in consort with the police, even if Crowley would have allowed it. The murder of a man in his charge was not only a failure of professional responsibility but a personal affront, as was the possible attempt on his life tonight. He owed satisfaction to both his client and to himself, and that meant conducting an investigation of his own.

The Hall of Justice, an imposing gray stone pile at Kearney and Washington Streets, was within stampeding distance of the Chinese Quarter. Ten minutes after his arrival there, he was in the company of Chief Crowley, fortunately working late on this night, and two other ranking officers in the chief’s private office.

One of the men he knew well enough, even grudgingly respected; this was Lieutenant William Price, head of the Chinatown “flying squad” that had been formed in an effort to control tong crime. He had mixed feelings about Crowley, and liked Sergeant Louis Gentry, Price’s assistant, not at all. The feeling was mutual; Gentry made no bones about his distaste for flycops. But he seemed less contentious than usual tonight, evidently because of the gravity of the situation. The imminent danger of a bloody tong war was too great for personal feelings to interfere.

The three listened to Quincannon’s tersely told tale without interruption and, for once, there were no hostile comments about his involvement in a criminal matter. The chief did demand the name of his client, and while he disliked revealing confidential information, the circumstances here dictated that he continue to be reasonably candid. Openly refusing to cooperate would be counterproductive.

“Scarlett’s wife, eh?” Crowley said. He was an overweight sixty, florid and pompous. Politics was his game; his policeman’s instincts were suspect, in Quincannon’s view, a lacking which sometimes led him to rash judgment and action. “Hired you for what reason?”

“He hadn’t been home in two nights, and naturally she was concerned and wanted him found.”

“Afraid something might have happened to him?”

“Either that, or he’d gone off on a hop binge of longer than usual duration. Something had been bothering him lately, had him on edge and fearful.”

“Something to do with the Hip Sing?”

“Mrs. Scarlett doesn’t know.”

“Or does know, and is keeping the knowledge to herself?”

“Doesn’t know.” She’d been vehement in her denial and Quincannon believed her. “She’s aware of her husband’s connection with the Hip Sing, but that’s all. He never discussed his work with her, legal or otherwise.”

“That fits with what we know about him,” Price said. A big man, imposing in both bulk and thickly mustached countenance, he had a deserved reputation in Chinatown as the “American Terror,” the result of raiding parties he’d led into the Quarter’s more notorious dens of sin and corruption. “Closemouthed about his work for the Hip Sing.”

Crowley said, “Then why was he targeted for a rubout?”

“Unreliable because of his opium addiction, maybe. Or else did something to displease the Hip Sing elders.”

“You ask me, it wasn’t a Hip Sing highbinder who shot him.” This from Gentry, a bantam rooster of a man with the purple-veined cheeks of the habitual drinker. His gold-braided, gold-buttoned uniform, unlike those worn by his two superiors, was as immaculate as if he had only just come on duty. “Little Pete’s behind this, sure as the devil. No one else in Chinatown would have the audacity to order the shooting of a white man.”

“Why would Little Pete want to kill Scarlett?”

“For the same reason he ordered the Bing Ah Kee snatch. To start a tong war so he can take over the Hip Sing. That bloody devil already controls every other criminal tong in the Quarter.”

This, Quincannon knew, was an exaggeration. Fong Ching, alias F. C. Peters, alias Little Pete, was a powerful man, no question — a curious mix of East and West, honest and crooked. He ran several successful businesses, participated in both Chinatown and city politics, and was cultured enough to write Chinese stage operas, yet he had for years ruled much of Chinatown’s criminal activities with such guile that he had never been prosecuted. He had numerous enemies, however, and went about the Quarter outfitted in a steel-reinforced hat and chain-mail armor and accompanied by a trio of bodyguards. But other than his association with the Kwong Dock, his power was limited to a few sin-and-vice tongs. Most tongs, in particular the Chinese Six Companies, were law-abiding, self-governing, and benevolent.

Quincannon charged and fired his favorite briar and shook out the sulphur match before he said, “The Hip Sing is Pete’s strongest rival. Granted, Mr. Price?”

“Yes. Granted.”

“And he’s not above starting a bloodbath in Chinatown to gain control of it,” Gentry said. “He’s a menace to white and yellow alike.”

Price ran a forefinger across his bristly mustache. “Not so bad as that,” he said. “Pete already controls most of the extortion and slave-girl rackets, and the Hip Sing is no threat to him there. Gambling is their primary enterprise, and under Bing Ah Kee there was never any serious trouble with the Kwong Dock or any of Pete’s other outfits. That shouldn’t change much under the new president, Mock Don Yuen.”

Crowley said, “It could if that sneaky son of his, Mock Quan, ever takes over.”

“Also granted.”

“Pete’s power-mad,” Gentry said, continuing his argument. “He wants the whole of Chinatown crime in his pocket.”

“Yes,” Price agreed, “but he’s wily, not crazy. He might have ordered the snatch of Bing’s remains — though even the Hip Sing aren’t convinced he’s behind that business or war would have been declared already — but I can’t see him risking the public execution of a white man, not for any reason. He knows that’s one thing Blind Chris won’t stand for, and that it’d bring us down on him and his highbinders with a vengeance. He’s too smart by half to take such a risk.”

Quincannon tended to agree. Saloonkeeper Christopher A. “Blind Chris” Buckley was head of the city’s powerful Democratic political machine and so notoriously corrupt that he was regularly vilified in the newspapers. It was common knowledge that Little Pete, among others, paid protection money to the “saloon boss” in order to remain in business. But as if to balance his corruption, Buckley was also noted for charity work and other civic contributions; he would never countenance an attack on a member of the white community. Honest officials such as Crowley, and Price and his Chinatown squad, were able to act independently of Buckley’s criminal influence, but they needed clear-cut and indisputable evidence to do so without hazarding political consequences.