features. Known traits: close-mouthed, seldom works with confederates. Known confidantes: Clara Wilds, extortionist, otherwise none. Known habits: a taste for Chinese prostitutes and frequenter of parlor houses that employ same; regular customer of cheap-jack gambling halls and Barbary Coast wine dumps. Current whereabouts unknown.” He lowered the dossier, nodding thoughtfully. “Little enough information, but perhaps enough.”
Sabina said, “If he recognized you last night, he may have already fenced his swag and gone on the lammas.”
“I don’t think so,” John said. “It was too dark for him to see my face any more clearly than I saw his. For all he knows, I might have been a neighbor who spotted him skulking or the owner home early. A greedy lad like the Dodger isn’t likely to cut and run when he’s flush and onto a string of profitable marks.”
“After such a narrow escape, would he be bold enough to try burgling another home on the insurance company’s list?”
“As like as not. He’s none too bright and as arrogant in his yegg’s fashion as that daft Holmes impostor. It was a bughouse caper that landed him in Folsom prison two years ago. He’s not above another, I’ll wager.”
“So then you’ll reconnoiter again tonight at another of the residences on Great Western’s list?”
“Aye, and I’ll put the fear of God into him if he comes. Scruffs like the Dodger can be made to confess their sins.”
“Strongarm tactics, John?”
He pretended to be mildly offended at the suggestion. “The threat of violence is often as effective as the use of it,” he said sagely.
“You intend to avoid Jackson Pollard for the time being, I suppose?”
John nodded. “Not only cash was stolen last night, but also a valuable necklace the banker’s wife neglected to lock away in their safe. I suggested Truesdale wait before filing a claim with Great Western, but he refused. Pollard won’t take kindly to the claim.”
“No, he won’t.”
“If he should call while you’re here, tell him that blasted English impostor is responsible for the night’s fiasco and I’m busy working to atone for his interference.”
That wouldn’t placate him, Sabina knew. Great Western’s claims adjustor was not a tolerant man. Bungling was bungling, in his view, no matter what the reason or excuse.
“It’s not likely either of us will have to talk to him today,” she said. “I’ll be leaving shortly and I expect to be gone the rest of the day.”
“Your pickpocket investigation?”
“Yes. I spotted the woman at the Chutes yesterday afternoon and followed her to the Ambrosial Path on Kearney Street. She struck again there before I could stop her, and vanished into the crowd.” Sabina added ruefully, “So you’re not the only one who suffered a setback last evening.”
“Were you able to identify her?”
“No. She wore a hat and clothing fashioned to obscure her features and conceal the shape of her body. She seemed familiar, though-I did get close enough to determine that. I’ll know her the next time my path crosses hers. And when it does, she won’t get away from me again.”
“Nor Dodger Brown from me,” John vowed.
7
QUINCANNON
Even in daylight hours Quincannon walked soft and wary, and made sure his Navy Colt was fully loaded, when he entered the heart of the nine square blocks that comprised the Barbary Coast.
The district, named for the coast of North Africa where Arab pirates attacked Mediterranean ships, housed every imaginable type of crime and vice and the thousands of thieves, cutthroats, footpads, swindlers, crooked gamblers, shanghaiers, and hordes of prostitutes who carried them out. Sudden death lurked in its crowded streets and buildings, the danger so great that no coppers in uniform ventured there after dark except in twos and threes and heavily armed with pistols, Bowie knives, and skull-bashing truncheons a foot long. Only the most notorious felons were pursued and caught by the police, and of those, few were ever punished for their crimes.
For the most part, though he was known as a detective, Quincannon was tolerated in the district. He had lived and worked in the city long enough to make the acquaintance of several Barbary Coast denizens, among them members of the underclass who were willing to sell information for cash; he caused no trouble and gave no grief while within its boundaries; and if he chanced to be after one of the scruffs who inhabited the Coast, he made the fact known to such prominent members of the ruling class as Ezra Bluefield-men who were not averse to giving up one of their own in return for money or favors. Sabina didn’t quite approve of these sometimes less-than-scrupulous dealings, but she admitted that more often than not they produced results, and trusted him not to cross a line that would endanger the agency’s reputation.
His first stop on today’s venture into the Coast was Jack Foyles’ on Stockton Street, a known hangout of Dodger Brown’s. Foyles’ was a shade less disreputable than most wine dumps, if only because it was equipped with a small lunch counter where its habitues could supplement their liquid sustenance with stale bread and a bowl of stew made from discarded vegetables, meat trimmings, bones, and chunks of tallow. Otherwise, there was little to distinguish it from its brethren. Barrels of “foot juice” and “red ink” behind a long bar, rows of rickety tables in three separate rooms lined with men and a few women of all types, ages, and backgrounds, a large open-floored area to accommodate those who had drunk themselves into a stupor. Porters who were themselves winos served the cheap and deadly drink in vessels supplied by junkmen-beer glasses, steins, pewter mugs, cracked soup bowls, tin cans. There was much loud talk, but never any laughter. Foyles’ customers had long ago lost their capacity for mirth.
No one paid Quincannon the slightest attention as he moved slowly through the crowded rooms. Slurred voices that spanned the entire spectrum of society rolled surflike against his ears: lawyers, sailors, poets, draymen, road bums, scholars, factory workers, petty criminals. There were no class distinctions here, nor seldom any trouble; the drinkers were all united by failure, bitterness, disillusionment, old age, disease, and unquenchable thirst for the grape. If there was anything positive to be said about wine dumps, it was that they were havens of democracy. Most customers would be here every day, or as often as they could panhandle or steal enough money to pay for their allotment of slow death, but a few, not yet far gone, were less frequent visitors-binge drinkers and slummers who found the atmosphere and the company to their liking. Many of these were crooks of one stripe or another, Dodger Brown among them.
But there was no sign of the Dodger today. Quincannon questioned two of the porters; one knew him and reported that Brown hadn’t been to Foyles’ in more than a week. Did the porter know where the lad might be found? The porter did not.
Quincannon left Foyles’ and continued on his rounds of the devil’s playground. During the daylight hours, the district seemed quiet, almost tame-a deceit if ever there was one. Less than a third as many predators and their prey prowled the ulcerous streets as could be found here after sundown; the worst of the rapacious were creatures of the night, and it was the dark hours when the preponderence of their victims-mainly sailors off the ships anchored along the Embarcadero-succumbed to the gaudy lure of sin and wickedness.
Some of the more notorious gambling dens and parlor houses were open for business, as were the more scabrous cribs and deadfalls, but they were thinly populated at this hour. And mostly absent was the nighttime babel of pianos, hurdy-gurdies, drunken laughter, the cries of shills and barkers, and the shouts and screams of victims. Quincannon was anything but a prude, having done his fair share of carousing during his drinking days, but the Coast had never attracted him. He preferred to satisfy his vices in more genteel surroundings.
Near Broadway there was a section of run-down hotels and lodging houses. He entered one of the latter and had words with the desk clerk, a runty chap named Galway with whom he’d done business before. Galway admitted to having seen Dodger Brown a time or two in recent weeks; he thought the Dodger might be residing at Foghorn Annie’s, one the seaman’s boarding houses on the waterfront.
Just outside the Barbary Coast on Montgomery Street, Quincannon found a hack-he and Sabina both preferred cabs to trolleys and cable cars when clients were paying expenses-and was shortly delivered to the Embarcadero. The trip turned out to be a waste of time. Scruffs were known to seek shelter among seafaring men now and then,
