The Body Snatchers Affair Read Online Free Page B

husband’s connection with the Hip Sing, but that’s all. He never discussed his work with her, legal or otherwise.”
    â€œThat fits with what we know about him,” Price said. A big man, imposing in both bulk and thickly mustached countenance, he had a deserved reputation in Chinatown as the “American Terror,” the result of raiding parties he’d led into the Quarter’s more notorious dens of sin and corruption. “Closemouthed about his work for the Hip Sing.”
    Crowley said, “Then why was he targeted for a rubout?”
    â€œUnreliable because of his opium addiction, maybe. Or else did something to displease the Hip Sing elders.”
    â€œYou ask me, it wasn’t a Hip Sing highbinder who shot him.” This from Gentry, a bantam rooster of a man with the purple-veined cheeks of the habitual drinker. His gold-braided, gold-buttoned uniform, unlike those worn by his two superiors, was as immaculate as if he had only just come on duty. “Little Pete’s behind this, sure as the devil. No one else in Chinatown would have the audacity to order the shooting of a white man.”
    â€œWhy would Little Pete want to kill Scarlett?”
    â€œFor the same reason he ordered the Bing Ah Kee snatch. To start a tong war so he can take over the Hip Sing. That bloody devil already controls every other criminal tong in the Quarter.”
    This, Quincannon knew, was an exaggeration. Fong Ching, alias F. C. Peters, alias Little Pete, was a powerful man, no question—a curious mix of East and West, honest and crooked. He ran several successful businesses, participated in both Chinatown and city politics, and was cultured enough to write Chinese stage operas, yet he had for years ruled much of Chinatown’s criminal activities with such guile that he had never been prosecuted. He had numerous enemies, however, and went about the Quarter outfitted in a steel-reinforced hat and chain-mail armor and accompanied by a trio of bodyguards. But other than his association with the Kwong Dock, his power was limited to a few sin-and-vice tongs. Most tongs, in particular the Chinese Six Companies, were law-abiding, self-governing, and benevolent.
    Quincannon charged and fired his favorite briar and shook out the sulphur match before he said, “The Hip Sing is Pete’s strongest rival. Granted, Mr. Price?”
    â€œYes. Granted.”
    â€œAnd he’s not above starting a bloodbath in Chinatown to gain control of it,” Gentry said. “He’s a menace to white and yellow alike.”
    Price ran a forefinger across his bristly mustache. “Not so bad as that,” he said. “Pete already controls most of the extortion and slave-girl rackets, and the Hip Sing is no threat to him there. Gambling is their primary enterprise, and under Bing Ah Kee there was never any serious trouble with the Kwong Dock or any of Pete’s other outfits. That shouldn’t change much under the new president, Mock Don Yuen.”
    Crowley said, “It could if that sneaky son of his, Mock Quan, ever takes over.”
    â€œAlso granted.”
    â€œPete’s power-mad,” Gentry said, continuing his argument. “He wants the whole of Chinatown crime in his pocket.”
    â€œYes,” Price agreed, “but he’s wily, not crazy. He might have ordered the snatch of Bing’s remains—though even the Hip Sing aren’t convinced he’s behind that business or war would have been declared already—but I can’t see him risking the public execution of a white man, not for any reason. He knows that’s one thing Blind Chris won’t stand for, and that it’d bring us down on him and his highbinders with a vengeance. He’s too smart by half to take such a risk.”
    Quincannon tended to agree. Saloonkeeper Christopher A. “Blind Chris” Buckley was head of the city’s powerful Democratic political machine and so