“I think you should leave,” she said.
“Yes. I… yes.”
He went to the stairs, hurried down them without looking back at her. Outside, he stood for a moment in the cold sweep of the wind, letting it take the heat out of his face. Goddamn fool, he thought. Kissing her that way — unprofessional, because it gives her the upper hand. Never get anything out of her now. Childish. Grotesque. She looks enough like Katherine Bennett to be a relative.
He walked to Jordan Street, hunched against the night’s chill. He needed a drink — several drinks. And quickly.
Chapter 12
He went south on Jordan, into Silver’s red light district near Long Gulch Creek, and found his way into a deadfall called Mother Mack’s. The place was bedlam — two pianos competing with each other, hurdy-gurdy girls dancing with burly miners and leaned-down cowpunchers, roulette and faro and chuck-a-luck games receiving heavy play, and a noisy poker match in progress in one corner. Quincannon found elbow room at the bar and drank two double whiskeys in rapid succession. This was the place for him tonight, the kind of low dive he belonged in. The haunt of whores, sure-thing men, bunco steerers, thieves — and other murderers. They were fitting company for the likes of him.
He ordered a third whiskey, and would have drunk it straightaway, to obliterate Katherine Bennett and Sabina Carpenter from his thoughts, if the man next to him hadn’t departed just then and left a copy of the Owyhee Volunteer on the bar.
It was the most recent edition, the one that had come out this day, and Quincannon saw that it carried a front-page editorial under the heading ANOTHER CHINESE OUTRAGE. He drew the paper over in front of him. Will Coffin had waxed eloquent and indignant over the second illegal entry of the newspaper office, accusing “unsavory elements of the Chinese population, among them the scurvy merchant Yum Wing” as the culprits and claiming that the crimes were “in retaliation for public condemnation, in this newspaper, of the vicious practices of selling opium and encouraging opium addiction in our fair city.” He went on to say that “anyone guilty of such mean acts, whether he be a Chinaman or a white man, would steal the leather hinges off a blind woman’s smokehouse and ought to be dealt with accordingly. The time has come to put an end to such open lawlessness, a fact with which City Marshal Wendell McClew must surely agree.”
Quincannon pushed the paper aside. Chinaman or white man, he thought.
He drank his third whiskey, slowly. His mind seemed clear again, empty for the moment of the self-loathing that had brought him here, focused once more on the business at hand. One of the hurdy-gurdy girls began to rub her bosom against his arm, to murmur enticements — half an hour of dancing for fifty cents, more intimate activities for a dollar and up. Her voice and her painted face repelled him; he brushed her away. The deadfall itself repelled him now: he no more belonged in this part of society than he did among the cloistered rich on San Francisco’s Nob Hill. He belonged to no part of society, not anymore. He was a man alone, who answered to no one on this earth, not even the United States Government; who would answer only to God.
He threaded a path through the noisy throng, went outside and put Mother Mack’s behind him. For the first block he was a little unsteady on his feet, but the wind soon remedied that. He walked up Washington Street and over to the office of the Volunteer, found it dark. From the third passerby he stopped he learned that Will Coffin’s home was on Union Street, off Morning Star north of Jordan Creek.
He found his way to Union Street. Coffin’s house was a weathered frame structure perched apart from others on the steep hillside, with a second-story privy curiously set on stilts and connected to the house by a catwalk. Lamplight made a yellow rectangle of the front window. He climbed the stairs, lifted the brass knocker on the door and let it fall.
It took Coffin almost a minute to respond. He was in shirt sleeves and stocking feet, galluses down and his hemp-colored hair tousled; he blinked sleepily at Quincannon, stifled a yawn, and said, “Well, you do surprise me, Mr. Lyons. This is the second unexpected visit from you in two days.”
“Have I come at a bad time, Mr. Coffin?”
“No, no. I was reading and I must have fallen asleep. I was up until all hours last night, getting out this week’s edition of the paper.”
“Yes, I’ve just seen it. An impressive editorial.”
“Thank you. I rather thought so myself.”
“The editorial is the reason I’ve come tonight. Can we talk inside? It’s a bit chilly out here.”
“Of course.”
Coffin led the way into the front sitting room. “I can offer you a brandy, if you like. I don’t keep whiskey on hand, I’m afraid.”
Quincannon hesitated, but then shook his head. “Thank you, no. I expect I won’t be staying long.”
“Well then. Sit down and tell me what’s on your mind.”
Coffin moved a heavy volume of Shakespeare off a Morris chair and settled himself down in its place; Quincannon sat on an overstuffed divan. A wood fire burned on the grate nearby. Its warmth took away the night’s chill that had lingered on his face and hands.
He said, “I’m curious about the illegal entries into the newspaper office and your home. Just how many were there altogether?”
“Two at the office and one here.”
“Was anything stolen on those three occasions?”
“Not that I have been able to determine.”
“Was there any vandalizing done?”
“Not of the usual sort, no. Files, type, clothing and such were strewn around, but nothing was deliberately destroyed.”
Quincannon said, “That sounds as if the culprits might have been searching for something.”
“Searching?” Coffin frowned. “What the devil could those heathens have been searching for at the Volunteer office or among my personal effects?”
“You’re certain it was the Chinese who were responsible?”
“Of course I am.”
“Then you found evidence that pointed to one or more of their number?”
“No,” Coffin admitted, “no physical evidence. But the first break-in occurred the evening my first anti-opium editorial appeared in the Volunteer. I’ve angered no white man in Silver, made no other enemies. It could be no one but the Chinamen.”
“I see,” Quincannon said, and what he saw was the bigoted inflexibility of Coffin’s perceptions. He mused for a time. Then he said, “Tell me, did Jason Elder happen to give you anything for safekeeping before he disappeared?”
The question made the newspaperman frown again. “No, he did not. What are you implying? That the Chinamen invaded my office and home looking for something that belongs to Elder? That is preposterous.”
“Perhaps it wasn’t the Chinese who broke in after all,” Quincannon said.
“White men? I still say the notion is preposterous. What could Elder own of sufficient value to warrant three illegal entries?”
What, indeed? Quincannon thought. He made no reply.
Coffin said, “Your interest in Jason Elder strikes me as excessive. Do you believe he had something to do with the death of your friend Whistling Dixon?”
“It is possible, isn’t it?”
“Not to my mind. Elder disappeared some time before Dixon was shot.”
“From public view, yes. Not necessarily from the Owyhees. And the two of them were acquainted.”
“You’ve found that out, have you?” Coffin gave him a long, calculating look. “You know, you’re rather a persistent and inquisitive fellow for a drummer. You act more like a lawman — a detective I once knew in Kansas City.”
