Quincannon stepped over the fallen Chinese, hurried across the coffin room and into the rear corridor. Fortunately for him, he had the presence of mind to ease the outside door open and poke his head out for a look around, instead of rushing through. It saved him from having some tender and perhaps vital portion of his anatomy punctured by a bullet.
As it was, the gunman lying in wait in a nearby doorway fired too hastily; the slug thwacked into the wall several inches from Quincannon’s head, which he quickly jerked back inside. There were no more shots. He stood tensely, listening. Was that the slap of footfalls? He edged the door open again and poked his head out at a lower point than the first time.
Footfalls, indeed. The assassin was on the run. Quincannon straightened and stepped outside, but before he could trigger a shot the black-outfitted figure vanished into the walkway to Fowler Alley.
Mock Quan, of course, in his highbinder’s guise. The fact that he’d made this attempt at homicide in broad daylight was an indication of just how desperate Quincannon’s discovery had made him. So was the craven way he’d taken flight after his first shot missed its mark.
That was the difference between despots such as Little Pete and would-be despots such as Mock Quan, Quincannon mused. Both were rapacious and reckless, but the true tyrant was too arrogant to give himself up to panic. The would-be tyrant was far easier to bring down because his arrogance was no more than a thin membrane over a shell of cowardice.
When Quincannon arrived at the Hall of Justice he found Price, Gentry, and a dozen other men of the flying squad already preparing for the night’s assault on Chinatown. The basement assembly room was strewn with coils of rope, firemen’s axes, sledgehammers, artillery, and bulletproof vests similar to the coats of chain mail worn by the boo how doy.
He drew the lieutenant aside and did some fast talking, the gist of which was that he had information which would render the raids unnecessary. Fifteen minutes later he was once again seated in the chief’s office, holding court before the same three officers as on his previous visit. As he spoke, he noted that the expressions worn by the trio were more or less the same, too: Crowley’s stern and disapproving, Price’s intently thoughtful, Gentry’s hostile.
None of them commented until he finished and leaned back in his chair. Then each spoke in rapid succession.
Crowley: “That’s quite a tale, Quincannon.”
Gentry: “Hogwash, I say.”
Price: “Fact or fiction, we’ll find out soon enough. I want my own look inside that undertaking parlor.”
“What good will that do?” Gentry argued. “Even if Mock Quan is behind all that’s happened, old Bing’s bones will be long gone by the time we get there.”
“I think not, Sergeant,” Quincannon said. “Mock Quan likely has nowhere to move the body on short notice. And he won’t destroy it for the same reason he didn’t before — fear of the wrath of the gods and all of Chinatown. Even if he were able to remove the body, there are bound to be ties between him and the mortician. Put pressure on that party and his terror of tong reprisal will bring out the truth. I’ll warrant the whole house of cards can be collapsed around Mock Quan in a few hours, and that he knows it as well as I do. I wouldn’t be surprised to hear that he has already left the city — on the run ever since his bullet missed my head.”
“Nor would I, if you’re right,” Price said. “And I’m beginning to believe you are.”
The chief leaned forward. “You really think Mock Quan is capable of plotting such a scheme, Will?”
“I wouldn’t have until now. He’s sneaky and ruthless, yes, but not half so clever as Little Pete. Still...”
“The plan wasn’t his alone,” Quincannon said. “He had help in its devising.”
“Help? Help from whom?”
“A blue shadow.”
“What the devil are you talking about?”
“James Scarlett said two things before he was killed. One was ‘Fowler Alley’; the other was ‘blue shadow.’ And the truth is, he was as afraid of a blue shadow as he was of Mock Quan. His guilty knowledge wasn’t only of the body snatching, but of the identity of Mock Quan’s partner — the man who followed Scarlett’s wife to my offices yesterday and who arranged for Mock Quan to follow me in Chinatown last night.”
“What partner?” Chief Crowley demanded. “What does blue shadow mean?”
“It means a shadowy person in blue,” Quincannon said. “Not a plain blue suit, as the partner wore yesterday, but a blue uniform — a policeman’s uniform.” He paused dramatically. “One of the policemen in this room is Mock Quan’s accomplice.”
All three officers came to their feet as one. Gentry aimed a quivering forefinger as if it were the barrel of his sidearm. “Preposterous nonsense! How dare you accuse one of us—”
“You, Sergeant. I’m accusing you.”
The smoky air fairly crackled. Price and Crowley were both staring at Gentry; the sergeant’s eyes threw sparks at Quincannon. The cords in the short man’s neck bulged. His color was a shade less purple than an eggplant’s.
“It’s a dirty lie!” he shouted.
“Cold, hard fact.”
Price said with contained fury, “Can you prove this allegation, Quincannon?”
“I can, to your satisfaction. After I left here last night, I went to James Scarlett’s law offices. They had already been searched sometime earlier, likely soon after Mrs. Scarlett visited my offices. At first I believed the job was done by one of the highbinders, hunting any incriminating evidence Scarlett may have had in his possession. But that wasn’t the case. The search hadn’t the stamp of the tong man; it was much more professionally conducted, as a policeman goes about such a frisk. Gentry’s work, gentlemen.”
“For the same reason?”
“More probably to look for evidence of his conspiracy with Mock Quan. If there was any such evidence, Gentry made off with it. He also made off with a letter written on Scarlett’s stationery and signed by the attorney — the same letter you found on the Kwong Dock highbinder who was killed last night. Killed by Gentry, wasn’t he? And the letter found by Gentry afterward?”
“Yes, by God. Right on both counts.”
“He tried to put a knife in me!” Gentry cried. “You saw him, Lieutenant—”
“I saw nothing of the kind. I took your word for it.”
“A clever attempt to tighten the frame against Little Pete,” Quincannon said. “As was Gentry’s constant urging of you and Chief Crowley to crush Pete and the Kwong Dock.”
“Lies! Don’t listen to him—”
The other two officers ignored him. Price said, “Go on, Quincannon.”
“When Gentry searched Scarlett’s offices he carried off any direct evidence he may have found, as I said. But he failed to notice indirect evidence just as damning. Scarlett’s legal records indicate the sergeant was in the pay of the Hip Sing, just as Scarlett himself was, long before Gentry and Mock Quan cooked up their takeover scheme. He was mixed up in nearly all of the cases in which Scarlett successfully defended a Hip Sing member. In some, his testimony — false or distorted — resulted in acquittal. In others, it’s plain that he suppressed evidence or suborned perjury or both.”
Gentry started toward Quincannon with murder in his eye. “If there are any such lies in Scarlett’s records, you put them there, you damned flycop! You’re the one trying to pull a frame—”
Price stepped in front of him. “Stand where you are, Sergeant,” he said in a voice that brooked no disobedience.
Quincannon went on, “Another piece of proof: Last night, if you recall, Gentry suggested taking the flying squad to find evidence of Little Pete’s guilt in Scarlett’s death — the bogus evidence he later planted himself. He also said, ‘Evidence to point to the cold storage where old Bing’s bones are stashed.’ Yet for all any of us knew at that point, the body might have been burned, or buried, or weighted and cast into the Bay, or had any of a dozen other things done with it or to it. Why would he use the specific term ‘cold storage’ unless he knew that was what had been done with old Bing’s remains?”