The Bughouse Affair: A Carpenter and Quincannon Mystery by Marcia Muller, Bill Pronzini Page B
Authors: Marcia Muller, Bill Pronzini
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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, by pretending to be former sailors themselves or by paying extra for the protective coloration. Dodger Brown was known at Foghorn Annie’s, but not as a current resident. Visits to two other houses in the area produced neither the Dodger nor a clue to his whereabouts.
Hunger prodded Quincannon into a waterfront eatery, where he made short work of a dozen oysters on the half shell, a large bowl of fish stew, and a slab of peach pie. His appetite had always been prodigious. He had inherited all of his father’s lusty appetites, in fact, along with his genteel Southern mother’s love for poetry. Sabina had once remarked that he was a curious mixture of the gentle and the stone-hard, the sensitive and the unyielding. He supposed that was an accurate assessment, and the reason, perhaps, that he was a better detective than Thomas L. Quincannon, the fearless rival of Allan Pinkerton in the nation’s capital during the Civil War. He knew his limitations, his weaknesses. His father had never once admitted to being wrong, considered himself invincible—and had been shot to death while on a fool’s errand on the Baltimore docks. John Frederick Quincannon intended to die in bed at the age of ninety. And not alone, either.
Another hack returned him to the outskirts of the Barbary Coast. He found and spoke with three more individuals who had sold him information in the past—a Tar-Flat hoodlum named Luther James, a bunco steerer who went by the moniker of Breezy Ned, and a “blind” newspaper vendor known as Slewfoot. None of them had anything worthwhile to sell this time.
Enough of roaming the Coast, Quincannon decided. The time had come to call on Ezra Bluefield again. He had already approached the man once within the past week, seeking information on the house burglaries and possible fencing of the loot, and Bluefield grew testy when he was asked for too many favors. But if there was one lad in the devil’s playground who could find out where Dodger Brown was holed up, it was Bluefield.
Quincannon walked to Terrific Street, as Pacific Avenue, the district’s main artery, was called, turned into an alley, and entered a large building in mid-block. A sign in bloodred letters above the entrance proclaimed the establishment to be the SCARLET LADY SALOON . A smaller sign beneath it stated: EZRA BLUEFIELD, PROP.
At one time the Scarlet Lady had been a crimping joint, where seamen were fed drinks laced with laudanum and chloral hydrate and then carted off by shanghaiers and sold to venal shipmasters in need of crews. The Sailor’s Union of the Pacific had ended the practice and forced the saloon’s closure, but only until Bluefield had promised to give up his association
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, by pretending to be former sailors themselves or by paying extra for the protective coloration. Dodger Brown was known at Foghorn Annie’s, but not as a current resident. Visits to two other houses in the area produced neither the Dodger nor a clue to his whereabouts.
Hunger prodded Quincannon into a waterfront eatery, where he made short work of a dozen oysters on the half shell, a large bowl of fish stew, and a slab of peach pie. His appetite had always been prodigious. He had inherited all of his father’s lusty appetites, in fact, along with his genteel Southern mother’s love for poetry. Sabina had once remarked that he was a curious mixture of the gentle and the stone-hard, the sensitive and the unyielding. He supposed that was an accurate assessment, and the reason, perhaps, that he was a better detective than Thomas L. Quincannon, the fearless rival of Allan Pinkerton in the nation’s capital during the Civil War. He knew his limitations, his weaknesses. His father had never once admitted to being wrong, considered himself invincible—and had been shot to death while on a fool’s errand on the Baltimore docks. John Frederick Quincannon intended to die in bed at the age of ninety. And not alone, either.
Another hack returned him to the outskirts of the Barbary Coast. He found and spoke with three more individuals who had sold him information in the past—a Tar-Flat hoodlum named Luther James, a bunco steerer who went by the moniker of Breezy Ned, and a “blind” newspaper vendor known as Slewfoot. None of them had anything worthwhile to sell this time.
Enough of roaming the Coast, Quincannon decided. The time had come to call on Ezra Bluefield again. He had already approached the man once within the past week, seeking information on the house burglaries and possible fencing of the loot, and Bluefield grew testy when he was asked for too many favors. But if there was one lad in the devil’s playground who could find out where Dodger Brown was holed up, it was Bluefield.
Quincannon walked to Terrific Street, as Pacific Avenue, the district’s main artery, was called, turned into an alley, and entered a large building in mid-block. A sign in bloodred letters above the entrance proclaimed the establishment to be the SCARLET LADY SALOON . A smaller sign beneath it stated: EZRA BLUEFIELD, PROP.
At one time the Scarlet Lady had been a crimping joint, where seamen were fed drinks laced with laudanum and chloral hydrate and then carted off by shanghaiers and sold to venal shipmasters in need of crews. The Sailor’s Union of the Pacific had ended the practice and forced the saloon’s closure, but only until Bluefield had promised to give up his association
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