Ralph Compton - Bounty Hunter

Slowed by the crowds and hundreds of hand-drawn carts, the cab traveled on for another fifteen minutes before stopping at a timber building set back from the street.

“We’re here, John,” Weimin said. “You will be among friends, Tong like me.”

Eager hands opened the door of the cab and Tone shoved the Enfield into the pocket of his peacoat before he stepped into the street. Weimin followed and the cab clattered away.

A man in traditional Chinese dress stood at the door of the house. He bowed low as Weimin approached, then indicated that the two men should step inside.

Tone walked into a long hallway, lined on both sides by a dozen almost-naked women. Their entire bodies were shaved and they stood at the doors of their cribs, displaying what they had on offer. Obviously this was a house of prostitution aimed at Americans, because a sign tacked to a low beam of the roof read:

Two bits lookee

Four bits feelee

Six bits doee

The air inside was thick and cloying, heavy with the smell of perfume, incense and warm woman flesh.

“This way, John,” Weimin said.

The man did not even glance at the women as he and Tone passed, and they in turn bowed their heads and averted their eyes. Chinese women were considered chattel, and whores were valued much less than that, worthless playthings to be used for a while, then tossed aside.

Whoever he was, Tone decided, Weimin was a man of such considerable power and influence in Chinatown that no fallen woman dared to look at him directly.

There was a stairway at the end of the hall and Weimin beckoned Tone to follow him. Yet another hall, this one with fewer rooms on each side, and the Chinese man walked to the last door on the right and opened it wide.

“This is where you will stay for a few days,” Weimin said. “When I think it’s safe, I’ll get you out of San Francisco. In the meantime, you will be supplied with food and drink and I’ll get someone to wash your clothes.” The man smiled. “You stink like the bilge of a ship.”

“Well, thank you very much for that,” Tone said, laying on his sarcasm like frosting on a cake.

If Weimin noticed, he didn’t let it show. “One more thing, John: don’t use the women. They are diseased, all of them.” He waved a hand around the room, expensively furnished in the overly ornate Victorian style then in fashion. “In the meantime, make yourself comfortable.”

He nodded to a filled bookcase. “I’m sure you’ll find books to your taste that will help pass the time.” Weimin smiled, a rare occurrence for him. “The last gentleman I sheltered here occupied this room for six months. He read so many books, he told me he’d gotten an education. He also got a dose of the clap. So be warned.”

“I’ll bear that in mind,” Tone said. Weimin turned to leave, but Tone’s voice stopped him. “Thank you for what you did tonight. You saved my life.”

“And you saved the life of my sister. The men who attacked her would have cut her throat after they’d finished with her.”

Tone smiled. “Then we’re even.”

“Not yet. When I get you out of San Francisco safe and sound, then we will be even. Not before. I’m a man who pays my debts in full. That is the way of the Tong.”

Without another word Weimin turned on his heel and left, closing the door behind him. The only sound in the room was the tick of the grandfather clock in the corner and the crack of the log fire in the grate. But the smells of Chinatown filtered through the windows, strange, exotic, alien . . . playing their own lost music.

Chapter 12

By the third day of his confinement, John Tone decided he’d had enough.

Despite excellent food and the congenial company of Mr. Dickens and Mr. Scott, Simon Hogg’s treachery chafed at him like a pair of cheap britches.

It was time for a reckoning.

As night fell on Chinatown, Tone dressed in freshly laundered clothes and shoved the Enfield into a pocket of his peacoat. He stepped into the hallway, looked around, then made his way downstairs.

Only a couple of women were in evidence, but the rhythmic squeals of cot springs and the salivating grunts of bucking men told him this was a busy evening in the whorehouse.

The Chinese man who had first bowed Tone through the door stepped out of a room, saw the big man dressed for outside and threw up his hands in alarm.

“No! No! You stay! Mr. Weimin no like.”

Tone smiled. “I’ll be back.”

“No! I send you woman, two woman, all for free. You stay, doee all night.”

The little man looked genuinely scared. Weimin owned the dive and he was not a man to cross.

Tone grabbed the Chinese man by his shoulders and looked into his alarmed black eyes. “I’ll be back, I said. Mr. Weimin need never know.”

The man shook his head. “Many mens after you, hunting blood. If you die, Tong lose face. Bad things happen then, to me, to all in this house. You go back to room, jiggy-jig pretty girls, no be big dumb son of a bitch.”

Not inclined to spend any more time arguing with a Celestial in the lobby of a brothel, Tone again assured the man that he would return before first light. Then he stepped past him, opened the door and entered the teeming street.

As Tone walked away, the angry little man stood at the door, hurling after him what he guessed was a string of Chinese invective. That was confirmed when the man ended with a heartfelt, “You big bassard! Rotten son of a bitch!”

No one in the passing crowd paid the least attention. A brothel keeper yelling curses at a sailor was nothing new in Chinatown.

It took Tone an hour to reach the waterfront, partly due to the crowds but mostly because he continually lost his way in a tangle of misty streets and alleys.

When he reached Hogg’s place he stood at the entrance to a passageway and watched the building for a few minutes, trying to form a coherent plan. He was mainly motivated by revenge, enraged by Hogg’s cold-blooded betrayal. In return for money, thirty pieces of silver from the fat banker Edward J. Hooper, the man had turned his back on his solemn pirate’s oath.

Simon Hogg deserved to die. But Tone would leave that pleasure to Lambert Sprague.

His immediate concern was to get Hogg to tell him where he could find Hooper and start earning his bounty money.

His mind made up, Tone left the shelter of the alley and stepped into Hogg’s place. The tavern on the ground floor was crowded with sailors and women, and the air was thick with pipe smoke, cheap perfume and the smells of sweat, spilled beer and urine, the pervading odor of every dive along the waterfront.

His watch cap pulled down to his eyebrows, collar up around his face, Tone pushed through the noisy throng, his eyes searching for Hogg. The man was nowhere in sight.

He made his way to the bar and when he caught the bartender’s attention, he asked in a gruff tone: “Hogg?”

“Who wants to know?” the man asked suspiciously,

“Mr. Hooper sent me.”

The bartender’s face cleared and he nodded to the hallway outside the tavern’s side door. “Try the kitchen.”

Tone retraced his steps, his hand on the butt of the gun in his pocket. The kitchen lay at the end of the corridor, its door ajar. Quietly he stepped inside. A gray-haired woman was at the burdened stove and when she turned and saw him, Tone jerked a thumb over his shoulder. “Get out,” he said.

The woman had spent too many years on the waterfront not to recognize trouble when she saw it. She threw Tone a frightened glance, then dashed past him, closing the door behind her.

Out of the corner of his eye, Hogg had seen the woman leave. He came from behind a counter and yelled, “Hey, Maria—” He stopped dead in his tracks, his face draining of color. “You!”