Bill Pronzini - Quincannon

The Chinese, Quincannon saw when he reached the plank, was fat and middle-aged, with a graying wisp of mustache and his hair braided into a long queue down his back. He stood with his arms folded and his hands hidden inside the sleeves of his black coolie jacket — an aging Buddha surveying a temple of his own construction.

Quincannon said, “Yum Wing?”

A small bow. “How may I serve you?”

“I’m looking for a customer of yours, a white man named Jason Elder.”

Yum Wing’s round, smooth face might have been a mask for all it revealed. “Why does your search bring you to me?” he asked. He spoke English precisely, with much less accent than most frontier Chinese. An educated man, Quincannon thought. And a dangerous one, if his eyes and his demeanor were accurate indicators.

“Elder was a good customer, wasn’t he?”

“Many fan quai are good customers of my humble shop.”

Fan quai. Foreigners — foreign devils. Quincannon had worked among the Chinese in San Francisco; he was familiar with their language. And familiar with men such as Yum Wing, men who hated Caucasians, who pretended to be subservient to the white race while cheating and plotting against them at every opportunity. Yes: Yum Wing was a dangerous man.

Quincannon said, “Yo yang-yow mayo?”

If Yum Wing was surprised that Quincannon spoke his language, he gave no sign of it. “I have opium for sale, yes,” he said in English. “Very fine opium, from Shanghai.”

“Elder bought it from you, is that right?”

“I have many customers for my opium.”

“How much do you charge?”

“Enough for one pill, two bits.”

“You have yenshee, too?”

“Very fine yenshee. One ounce, one dollar.”

“How much opium a day did you sell Jason Elder?”

Silence.

“How much yenshee?”

Silence.

“Where did he get the money to pay you?”

Silence.

“When did you last see him?”

“You will purchase opium? Yenshee?”

“If you tell me where I can find Elder.”

A small shrug. “I have not seen him in four days.”

“Did he say anything then about leaving Silver City?”

“I am only a humble Chinese merchant,” Yum Wing said. “Not worthy of such confidences.”

“Have you any idea where he went?”

“I have no idea. I have goods for sale. Very fine goods, very fine opium.”

“Will Coffin, the newspaper editor, doesn’t think so.”

Silence.

“You’ve had trouble with Coffin, haven’t you?”

“No trouble. China boys avoid trouble with white men.”

“Not always. Sometimes they have cause not to avoid it.”

Silence.

It was pointless to continue, Quincannon decided. Yum Wing would not admit to even knowing Will Coffin. And if he knew why Jason Elder had disappeared, or where Elder was now, he would not admit that either.

Quincannon said, “Will Coffin isn’t your true enemy, Yum Wing. Greed and hate are.” He turned and moved away through the dark, cramped, silent room, out into the sunlight and the throbbing noise from the stamp mills.

Owyhee Street was a short distance away: he found it without difficulty. It curled up one of the bare hillsides, petered out near a wood-and-tarpaper shack that had been built at an odd angle against a shelf of rock, so that its entrance was hidden from the road. This was the shack that Jason Elder occupied, according to what Quincannon had learned on his saloon rounds last night.

A beaten-down path led through a section of dry sage and weeds that separated the shack from the street. Two crabapple trees grew alongside the dwelling, shading it and further concealing its entrance. The single facing window, Quincannon saw as he passed under the trees, was glassless and covered with crude wooden shutters. Tacked onto the front wall was a rickety porch of sorts; he stepped up onto it, reached for the door latch.

It jerked inward in that same instant. And someone came hurrying out and ran right into him.

The collision threw them both off balance, knocked something loose from the other’s hand and sent it flying out into the dry grass. Quincannon blindly caught hold of the person’s clothing to steady them both; felt flesh under it that was soft, rounded — distinctly feminine. Hands slapped away his hands, shoved him back.

He was looking into the startled and angry face of Sabina Carpenter.

She was wearing a plain skirt today, with a buckskin jacket over a white shirtwaist, and her dark hair was mostly hidden by a Portland-style straw hat. No reticule, which struck Quincannon as odd: it was his experience that women seldom went anywhere without a bag, unless they had a good reason. Two spots of color glowed on her cheeks; she rubbed at one as if to make the color disappear. “My God,” she said, “you frightened me half to death. What are you doing here?”

“I might ask you the same thing.”

She made no reply. She was peering out to one side of him, at where the object that had been in her hand lay on the ground. He followed the direction of her gaze, saw that the object was a fold of heavy parchment paper; he moved at the same time she did, so that he blocked her way with his body and reached the paper first.

Sabina Carpenter said angrily, “Give me that,” and tried to pull it from his grasp. Quincannon held her away, unfolding the paper with his free hand so he could determine what it was. A stock certificate — two hundred and fifty shares in Oliver Truax’s Paymaster Mining Company. It had been made out in the name of Helen Truax, but on the reverse side, Quincannon saw just before Sabina Carpenter kicked him and then wrenched the certificate away, was Helen Truax’s endorsement and Jason Elder’s name as the new owner of the stock.

Her breath coming rapidly now, the Carpenter woman had backed off a few paces clutching the certificate. There was a wary tenseness in her, but no apparent fear. If he moved toward her, Quincannon thought, she wouldn’t turn and flee, as most women would in such a situation; she would stand her ground and fight him.

He said mildly, “Thievery, Miss Carpenter?”

“Of course not.”

“That certificate has two names on it, neither of them yours.”

“It was lying on the floor inside,” she said. “Mr. Elder isn’t home and I thought… well, it seems valuable. I intend to take it to the marshal for safekeeping.”

“Why not return it to Mrs. Truax?”

She hesitated before she said, “It belongs to Mr. Elder now. Besides, I hardly know the woman.”

“Elder must know her quite well, to be the recipient of such a large amount of stock.”

“I couldn’t say.”

“And you must know Elder quite well yourself, to be inside his house alone.”

“Your innuendoes are offensive, Mr. Lyons,” she said stiffly. “I know Mr. Elder no better than I know Mrs. Truax. I came to see him about a hat he ordered. The door was open, so I simply walked inside.”

She was lying, Quincannon thought, making up her answers out of whole cloth. He said, “Then you aren’t aware that Elder has been missing for four days.”

“Missing? How do you know that?”

“Will Coffin told me.”

“I see. And why are you here, then?”

“Whistling Dixon. You’ve heard about his murder, haven’t you?”

“Murder?” Her surprise, at least, seemed genuine. “No, I hadn’t heard.”

“Yes. And I’ve learned that Dixon and Elder were acquainted. Were you aware of that?”

She shook her head. “I told you, I hardly know Jason Elder. And I did not know Whistling Dixon at all.”

He studied her for a time, and received the same sort of scrutiny in return. He felt stirred by her again, by her resemblance to Katherine Bennett and by her odd actions and by some intangible quality that he could not quite define. Uneasiness formed in him, made him yearn for a drink of whiskey.