Stringer in a Texas Shoot-Out

Adventures

CHAPTER ONE

Stringer might not have found the Municipal Morgue at midnight cheerful even with the gas lights flickering brighter, the white wall tiles dripping drier, and a heap more ventilation. The naked oyster-gray cadaver on the zinc autopsy table had spent considerable time on the muddy bottom of Frisco Bay before enough gas had built up in its soggy tissues to bust it loose from the sash weights provided in a vain attempt to keep the waters off North Beach tidy.

As he stood there watching the awful things the forensic team had to do to a cuss who’d already been a mite mistreated, Stringer was glad he hadn’t dined at Fisherman’s Wharf in recent memory. For the crabs served up steamed there had been dining on the dead man’s features, to the point where not even his mother could have recognized him, but Stringer was able to opine, uncertainly, Since nobody here’s asking me to bet my own money on it, I’ll allow this dead gent of the oriental persuasion looks more like Fan Tan Tommy Fong than any other missing hatchet man I can come up with.

Since Sergeants Killdare and O’Boyle of the Chinatown Detail had already offered the same opinion with even more certainty, the bored-looking cuss from the coroner’s office allowed that was the way he’d record the matter until such time as Fan Tan Tommy turned up alive, or some other damned Chinaman was reported missing.

When Stringer asked Killdare who, if anyone, they meant to pick up for further questioning, the burly plainclothesman snorted at him wearily and demanded, What would you have us do with the killer of this murtherous gaboon if we knew who he might be. Which we never shall in this world, or the next, unless Father Dolan is wrong about the final destination of all thim poor benighted heathens!

O’Boyle added that nobody issued medals for that particular form of public service and added, There’d be dead and dying Chinee strewn from here to Seattle and back if our darling Tommy hadn’t been done in with the full blessings of all the tongs.

Killdare nodded and stated, as if for the record, Fong was a real bastard, even for one of them. It was his own who was after taking care of him, so why should any of us care more than they do?

Stringer couldn’t argue. He ran neither the San Francisco P.D., nor even one of the Honorable Societies within pistol range of Grant and Clay streets. So, he left in search of fresh air and enough paper to do at least a column-and-a-half obit on the poor soggy hatchet man while his own memory was still fresh.

Fresh air was a relative term, coming up out of the basement of a morgue in the wee small hours. Stringer found the seaweed-scented fog and the acrid fumes of the bayside coffee-roasting plants one hell of an improvement over Fan Tan Tommy Fong as he strode along the dark, deserted streets of the downtown business district. They called him Stringer at the San Francisco Sun because he kept refusing the softer and better paying staff jobs offered him in favor of the freelance freedom, or illusions of freedom, enjoyed by a stringer or part-time writer paid by the word instead of the clock. Writing as a stringer instead of a staff man allowed him to write the news as it happened instead of being chained to an infernal desk like a galley slave, forced to row the same no matter what seemed to be going on up on deck. Thus, it came to pass that the night shift at the San Francisco Sun found it more surprising than Stringer did when he strode in out of the night fog around one A.M. to commandeer a day man’s desk and Remington Grasshopper to knock off as interesting an obit as most dead Chinamen ever got this far from, say, Shanghai.

It came to a little more than a column and a half, as he’d hoped it might. One of the reasons they put up with his independent nature at the Sun was that he never padded a piece with extra bull. His old rival and occasional drinking buddy, Jack London, had often told him he’d get famous, too, if ever he learned not to stick to the truth in such a nit-picking way.

Stringer, however, didn’t want to make up bullshit about fighting wolves barehanded any more than he wanted to sit at a desk all day making sure he spelled some infernal bride’s maiden’s name right. So, as soon as he’d put down all there was to put down about the life and times of Fan Tan Tommy Fong, he ended the obit with /30 SMK and took it into old Sam Barca’s frosted glass cage.

The crusty feature editor he worked for wasn’t in at this hour, of course. Stringer placed the obit atop the cigar box he knew Sam would reach for first, even before he put on that dumb green eyeshade. Then, having assured his weekend eating money, if not next month’s rent, Stringer left the premises with a clear conscience and undecided erection.

He decided this would be a mighty desperate time to go skirt chasing, since anything left unescorted at this ungodly hour would no doubt be too ugly or too expensive to contemplate. So he went home to turn in alone for a change. He figured it wouldn’t really endanger his health and, looking on the bright side, he’d be able to cash his check for the Fong obit that very afternoon if he got to the office before old Sam could duck out for lunch on him.

Robert Burns had been on the money, though, when he’d written that bit about mice and men. Everything went as planned between Stringer climbing the stairs to his small dormer room and striding up to the cast iron classic portals of the Sun around ten the next morning, all bright-eyed and bushy-tailed. He even wore the sissy gray suit and tie everyone along Montgomery wore in the daytime since the Sidney Ducks had been cleaned out by the Vigilantes, but nevertheless, his weekend plans blew up in Stringer’s face the minute he strode into Sam Barca’s cubbyhole with an expectant smile.

Barca had armed his brown hatchet-face with a Parodi cigar and that fool eyeshade, as if ashamed to meet Stringer’s eyes as he told him morosely, I read it. Can’t run it as more than five lines if, and that’s only if you’d like to get me the funeral home, if any, and some survivors, if the son of a bitching coolie left any.

Stringer sat down weakly on the bentwood chair he’d hauled in after him, knowing in advance that Barca never offered a guest a seat, even though he hadn’t expected to be greeted this rudely!

He reached absently under his jacket for the makings, lest he ball a fist, as he protested, Damn it, Sam, Fan Tan Tommy Fong was no coolie. In his day, he was the head hatchet man for the Ong Leong Tong, and they say he killed at least a dozen jaspers before he ever came over here from Canton.

Sam Barca shrugged and said, This ain’t his day. No news is good news when it comes to the pigtails and pajamas set. Since they rammed through the Oriental Exclusion Act back in ’82 the average human being has lost interest in the Chinese.

Stringer tried to control his voice by carefully tracing a line of Bull Durham the length of a neatly creased cigarette paper as he said soberly, Sam, the average human being is a Chinese woman who’s maiden name was likely Wong.

But Barca just chuckled fondly and replied, When she’s ready to subscribe to the Sun we’ll make sure we spell Wong right. You sound as loco en la cabeza as your pal, Jack London, making up all that stuff about a Yellow Peril and us going to war some day with either the Chinese, the Japanese, or both!

Stringer rolled his smoke tightly and sealed the gummed paper with the tip of his tongue before he grudgingly said, I don’t know whether old Jack’s right or wrong about the yellow races catching up with Teddy Roosevelt’s Great White Fleet someday. However, you can’t just dismiss the murder of an important Chinese criminal, Sam.

Barca said, Sure I can. I just did. An important Chinese is a contradiction in terms, old son. Nobody’s important unless the rest of the world considers ’em important. You take that obit you did for us on the recent demise of Calamity Jane Canary, for instance...

Damn it, Sam, Stringer cut in, Martha Jane Canary was, at best, an old bawd who liked to make up whoppers and some say she held the title of Calamity after giving the same client the clap, the siph, and the blue balls.

Sam Barca chuckled and blew Parodi smoke at Stringer, smugly saying, Some said she was a lesbian, too. But as one old-timer replied to that, who cared what religion she might be as long as she told such swell stories? I know for a fact that poor James Butler Hickok was happily wed to a lady trapeze artist all the time Calamity had him risking his health with her up Deadwood way, but …

Damn it, Sam, Stringer cut in, since it was your grand notion to bring Hickok up, may I humbly point out that San Francisco’s own more recent Fan Tan Tommy Fong killed at least twice as many men as Hickok, with Billy the Kid thrown in?

Sam Barca chuckled indulgently and allowed, Both those boys were inclined to brag a mite. But you’re missing the point, Stringer. It’s quality, not quantity, as counts. What do our readers care about dead Chinamen in any numbers when, as you just said, this old world seems to suffer an oversupply of such pests?

Barca took a ferocious drag on his gnarled cigar, saw it was still lit, after all, and added, You write me a seventy-five-hundred-word obit on some desperado the public’s ever heard of and I’ll run it at space rates as a Sunday feature. But as for this dead hatchet man, well ... I suppose we can use two hundred words, tops.

Stringer protested, Damn it, Sam, that’d barely pay for my weekend if I spent it alone!

Barca shrugged and replied, You could always go back to punching cows for a dollar a day if you feel we’re abusing you. You know the kind of human interest features I stand ever-ready to take off your hands at a cent a word plus expenses, you stubborn young cuss.

Stringer lit his own smoke and blew some of it out his nostrils with a disgusted snort before he growled, You know how tired I am of that Wild West shit you like me to write, Sam.

To which Barca replied, more calmly, Our readers aren’t half as tired of cowboy stories as you Calaveras County cowboys seem to be. As a kid who grew up on a cattle spread with a hankering to someday be a newspaperman, you sort of missed out on the dreams of a normal American childhood.

Stringer quizzically cocked an eyebrow, which inspired Barca to explain, Most of us never got that pony we wanted. So we planned on growing up to be cowboys. Not one kid from my old neighborhood said word one about running away to become a Chinese hatchet man and, if I admit the west was tamer in spots than Ned Buntline and Buffalo Bill let on, I’ll thank you to allow parts of it are still wild enough for you to take more seriously, damn it.

Stringer wearily got to his feet, saying, This town ain’t big enough for both of us, Buck. Mayhaps I’ll catch the ferry over to Oakland and see if Alameda County means to indict Borax Smith on those electricated streetcar bonds.

Barca swore and snapped, Don’t you dare! If I’ve told you once I’ve told you a hundred times that you’re better off writing about things you know about, MacKail! Nobody has you licked at covering a crooked rodeo or livestock swindle, but you’re just not sophisticated enough to savvy the machine politics of our so-called Gilded Age.

Stringer dragged his chair back outside and abandoned it against a cast iron pillar amid the clatter and chatter of the outer office. He was really stuck for a sensible next move, now that the feature he’d been banking on had been rejected by that stubborn old cuss back there. If Sam didn’t want anything on the Oakland Streetcar Scandal, there was still that stink about spoiled army rations over at Fort Mason and... right, the Sun would surely want an exposé on a big meat packer who sprang for weekly full-page ads.

The clickety-clack of a ticker tape and the flash of red hair that seemed to go with it at the moment attracted Stringer’s attention before he could make it out to Montgomery Street in quest of Lord only knew what. Her name was MacTavish, making her the member of an enemy clan as well as a twist who worked where he picked up his eating money. But what the hell, he’d no doubt be too broke to take her up on any offer in any case and, meanwhile, there was nothing half as grand to look at in any other direction he’d been planning to drift. So he ambled over to see what the wire service might have to offer, aside from Miss MacTavish. He was still working on just how to start up with her when she turned to him, eighteen inches of yellow tape in her dainty hands, to ask him, as if confident he’d know, where Comanche Woe, Texas, might be.

Stringer shrugged and said, Sounds like West Texas, which still leaves us some looking if it’s worth digging out a map, Miss MacTavish. That’s for you, not me, to say, of course. What sort of news might be coming in from such a morosely named place?

She dimpled at him mighty sweetly when one considered the way her ancestors had behaved at the Battle of Inverhaven and confided, I’m not at all certain it’s important. I’m only filling in for Miss Tracy on the machine this morning. It seems some gentleman called Mysterious Dave, whoever he was, just lost a gunfight in Comanche Woe, wherever that is. Do you think their Mysterious Dave might rate an obit in our paper?

Stringer smiled down at her incredulously to declare, It depends on whether they’re talking about the one and original Mysterious Dave Mather of Dodge City.

So she glanced down at her tape to emit a delighted gasp of admiration before she said, They told me you knew just about everything about the wilder parts of our country. I fear Mysterious Dave Mather was before my time, though.

He nodded and confided, Mine, too. I was still in grade school when they were excluding orientals and shooting up Dodge with such monotonous regularity. I don’t recall exactly what Mysterious Dave did in Dodge to get so famous. That’s likely why they called him Mysterious.

He gave himself some time to think as he got rid of his used-up smoke in a nearby fire bucket. Then he told her, more sure of the story, now, Come to study on it, the saga of Mysterious Dave sort of proves a point I was just trying to make with old Sam Barca. Could I take this tape off your hands, Miss MacTavish?

She not only handed him the whole wire service release but managed to brush her soft fingers against his in a manner suggesting other parts of her anatomy tingled even nicer. He tingled back at her, but marched back to Sam Barca’s cubbyhole in triumph, his virtue still intact. As he strode in waving the fistful of wire service tape, the feature editor glanced up, bemused. Before he could ask what was up, Stringer announced that Mysterious Dave Mather was down, dead as a dog in some obscure Texas trail town.

When Barca nodded and said he could use a column or more on that, Stringer said, I gotcha! Thanks to you and your infernal thirst for Wild West features I’ve likely spent more time pawing through the morgue files than I ever planned to, while taking Journalism at Stanford.

I know who Mysterious Dave Mather was, said Barca, defensively.

Stringer laughed and said, Everyone who ever passed through Dodge during its short-lived beef boom must have. But tell me something, Wild Sam, what, in fact, did Mysterious Dave ever do, in Dodge or anywhere else?

It was Barca’s turn to study on his smoke, although he relit his cigar instead of snuffing the odorous thing out while he pondered the past and finally came up with, I think he gunned a noted killer they called Nixon, along about the mid-l880s, right?

Stringer grinned like a mean little kid winding up to bust a window and replied, more surely, Thomas Nixon is on records as a slayer of many a buffalo, back when they were shipping more buffalo robes than beef out of Dodge. As the town changed, Nixon wrangled a position on the city council and went into business, the saloon business, with another cuss called Bond.

Barca nodded and said, "I remember now. Dave Mather arrived in Dodge mysteriously, a man with no past, to open up the Black and Mather Opera House and Dance Hall. Mysterious Dave undercut Nixon and the other established saloon keepers by selling drinks