LEFT WITHOUT A FATHER at the age of three and having struggled through most of his life as a two-bit miner and laborer, Joe Coyne was more than a might bit proud of what he had accomplished since coming to San Diego. In a dozen years as the county’s chief law officer, he had amassed a tidy sum. Not from his government salary, mind you, but rather cash proffered by those who desired a slightly different interpretation of the law than what was officially on the books.
Make no mistake, Sheriff Coyne would not brook violence of any sort. And in his years at the helm, he had managed to rid San Diego of much of its Wild West reputation (thanks in no small part to his hiring of Cradoc Bradshaw). But victimless crime was another matter. Much of what transpired in the Stingaree district was technically illegal. Yet the vice trades—prostitution, opium, and gambling—flourished in open view. Try as they may, local do-gooders could not stem the ever-rising tide of sin. Primarily because members of the political and business establishment were amongst the trade’s best customers and partially because the purveyors of vice contributed handsomely (and often) to Coyne’s personal “retirement fund.”
Coyne had used those funds to buy a piece of the rock—a house on Banker’s Hill. And while his home may not be nearly as grand as those of the business and finance establishment, it was pretty damn good for a poor kid from Ohio who had ventured west at the age of fifteen with nary a penny in his hole-filled pockets. Yes, the man had done well for himself.
With a city charter on the horizon—and the built-in job security that would keep Coyne in office until whatever age he should deem to retire—there was no reason to continue busting his balls. The sheriff still rose at the crack of dawn. But unlike days gone by, he now took his time getting to the jailhouse, preferring instead to take breakfast on the front porch of his two-story clapboard home, a ritual he cherished to no small end. On mornings when it wasn’t foggy or overcast, he would contemplate sunrise over the bay and the bustling waterfront town that had rendered him so much good fortune. He would listen to the birds and breathe in the sea breeze, and the Mexican maid would bring him toast and coffee. One by one, the newsies would deliver the daily papers to his doorstep, and Coyne would spread them out on his breakfast table. He relished the Sun for its malicious and often spurious gossip. He was more of a Union man when it came to political bent (thoroughly Republican). Yet the sheriff would be the first to agree that neither could hold a candle to the Times when it came to crime. Even Coyne had a grudging respect for Nick Pinder.
On this particular Sunday, Coyne grabbed the Union first, scanning a front-page article about an upcoming visit by Governor Waterman to San Diego. He read through some of the tittle-tattle in the Sun. Last but not least, he picked up the Times and just about choked on his toast. The banner headline screamed: VIGILANTE KILLER STALKS SAN DIEGO.
“What in God’s name!” Coyne blurted out. He read on, expecting some trumped-up account of murder in the Stingaree, a crime of passion perhaps, two sailors fighting over a gal. What he got instead was the shock of his long and distinguished law enforcement career: A letter from an anonymous author confessing the murder of Zebulon Archer to avenge the death of a transient Chinaman twenty-odd years before. Whoever penned the letter had details about the crime withheld from the general public, details Coyne himself knew from the autopsy report. Pinder had also cited newspaper articles from 1865 about the drowning of a Chinese merchant by the name of Sam Ah Choy in the San Diego River, as well as the testimony of a local priest who had arranged the burial of the deceased pagan in a non-Christian plot.
The sheriff felt himself go faint. This simply could not be true! Not in my town! Not on my watch! Flinging the paper over the balcony and flipping over the breakfast table, he rushed back inside to get dressed.
An hour later, Coyne stood before his entire staff in the jailhouse. Not a single deputy was left on the streets, and those off duty had been roused from their beds. If the local rogues had known about the gathering, they could have had their way with the banks and mercantiles.
“By thunder!” Coyne demanded. “I want the bastard arrested straight away!”
“We don’t know who he is,” Fatty Rice reminded him.
“I’m not talking about the killer, you dolt. I’m talking about Pinder. I want him shackled and behind bars! Prosecuted to the full extent!”
“I don’t believe he’s broken any laws,” Cradoc Bradshaw said from the back of the room.
But that just made Coyne even more steamed. “You of all people! Defending Pinder!”
“I’m not defending him. I’m just saying we don’t have a valid reason to detain him. So why bother?”
“Why bother?” The sheriff’s voice went up a full octave. “Because one of our most prominent citizens was just brutally murdered. And Pinder seems to be the only one with any clue who the killer might be.”
Coyne spat out a huge glob of tobacco—straight onto the floor rather than into the lobby spittoon—shoved another wad in his cheek and glared at Cradoc. “You think it’s true? That Archer drowned that Asian fella?”
“I don’t remember his name. It was a long time ago, and I was pretty young. But there was a Chinese man found dead in the river. A lot of people—including my father—suspected that Archer had something to do with his death. But it was never proved and soon forgotten.”
Given the motive stated in the letter, one had to assume that the author/killer must be Chinese, too. There weren’t a lot of white folks, no matter how outraged, who would exact gruesome revenge for the killing of a yellow man. They would have to double check, but the marshal didn’t think any of the Asians currently residing in and around San Diego had been around when the drowning described in the letter took place. Most of them had arrived in a later wave of Asian émigrés. As for the other Chinese who had come with Choy, they had fled San Diego shortly after his murder and never been seen nor heard from again.
Besides, the language just didn’t seem right. Cradoc read a passage from the letter out loud. “That sound like a foreigner to you?” he asked Coyne.
“Nope. But I hear there’s some pretty smart Chinamen.”
“Yeah, but smart and fluent in English are not one and the same. This sort of writing requires formal education, not worldly wisdom. And there aren’t an awful lot of Chinese in San Diego that fit that bill.”
“Maybe he’s not from these parts,” Coyne mused. “They left San Diego, right? They wound up somewhere else? Maybe this Ah Choy fellow had kinfolk, you know sons or something, who got educated and pledged to avenge his death once they came of age.”
“I’m not saying that’s impossible,” the marshal responded. “But my gut tells me the killer is a horse of a much different color than what most folks will likely assume.”
The sheriff let out a deep and distressing sigh. “We gotta jump on this straight away. I don’t wanna see it escalating into the biggest thing since indoor crappers. The sooner we catch whoever wrote this letter—and put a noose around his neck—the better for all concerned.”
The marshal knew exactly what the boss meant. Rather than the general public, Coyne’s “all concerned” were the local powerbrokers, a handful of men who had made a fortune from San Diego’s land rush and didn’t want anything to upset their juicy apple cart. If would-be migrants perceived San Diego as the wild and wooly frontier rather than the tranquil seaside oasis portrayed in the railroad station posters, they might stop coming. And that would spell financial disaster for those who had staked their futures on the sale of sunshine and sod.
Like the sheriff and nearly everyone else in town, Cradoc’s financial well-being was largely dependent on extenuation of the real-estate boom. If the bubble burst, he might be out of a job, along with hundreds or possibly thousands of others. Truth be told, he would have loved to see the house of cards come tumbling down and San Diego revert to its sleepy old ways. Going back to the past would suit him just fine. If the murder of Zebulon Archer proved the spark for such a collapse, so be it. Not his concern.
On the other hand, catching Archer’s killer was his concern. And even if the marshal wasn’t driven by the righteous indignation or intellectual curiosity that had spurred him in past, there was his sense of duty. “We’ll get him,” he pledged on his way out the door.
“How can you be so sure?” asked Coyne.
“Because the bastard wouldn’t have wrote that damn letter if he didn’t wanna be found.”
By dusk on Sunday, the Times had broken its all-time sales record, more than ten thousand papers sold, roughly one copy for every white adult male in San Diego. None of the other newspapers had ever come close to that total. And while that may have paled in comparison to the daily figures of the leading New York or San Francisco papers, it was unprecedented for the bottom half of the Golden State.
The newsroom had broken into spontaneous celebration, everyone having a jolly old time on Clive’s dime. The publisher of the Times had never been miserly when it came to rewarding his charges. It encouraged them to work even harder. And even if it didn’t, Clive enjoyed any excuse to throw a party.
Although it was the Lord’s Day and the town much more sedate than the previous evening, word spread of the merriment. The newsroom flooded with freeloaders looking for a good time, including writers and editors from the other papers, who were all at once envious and awed by Pinder’s journalistic coup. But the crowd had grown to encompass all manner of citizenry—attorneys and merchants, soldiers and ship captains, and politicos of every persuasion, including those who just a few hours prior had advocated swift (and unofficial) retribution against the town’s flaxen-skinned inhabitants. Clive Bennett would later claim this merriment, rather than sagacious law enforcement, had averted a lynching spree.
By eight o’clock that evening, the celebration had spilled onto the plaza outside. When yet another case of hooch arrived by buckboard—this time courtesy of Nick Pinder—a loud cheer went up from the drunken throng. It had been years since San Diego had witnessed such a delirious response to a news event, going back to the end of the war when word reached town that North and South had finally brokered peace.
But the moment was about to be shattered. Because making his way across the plaza, up the stairs, and into the newsroom was Cradoc Bradshaw. “I need the letter,” he said flatly, addressing both Nick and Clive, sitting with a dozen others around the copy desk.
“It’s in the paper,” Nick said flippantly.
“The original,” said Cradoc with an even harder edge.
The revelry continued around the periphery of the newsroom. But those nearby fell silent, an expectant air charged with the possibility of violence.
“Relax,” said Nick with a crooked smile, well oiled by now and slurring his words. “You’re not going to learn a damn thing from that original that you haven’t already read in the Times. We published it word for word.”
“I’ll make my own judgment,” Cradoc said curtly. Bennett spoke up. “Marshal, you simply cannot prance in here and make demands.”
“Archer’s killer is still at large,” Cradoc reminded him. “The quicker we apprehend him, the better for everyone, including the ladies and gentlemen in this room.”
“You’re not going to find anything new,” Nick repeated, lifting a drink to his lips.
“I don’t want to argue with you, Nick. Just hand over the letter.”
By now every eye in the newsroom had fallen on the two of them, watching the showdown between the former allies turned adversaries, wondering who would yield first. The marshal was taking a big chance trying to bully Nick in front of this bunch, the entire press corps and many of the town’s leading politicians and business owners. And Nick wasn’t backing down. If anything, he was enjoying the confrontation, because it cast even more attention his way. And he wasn’t going to let anyone, least of all Cradoc Bradshaw, spoil his big night.
“Take a load off, Cradoc!” Nick patted the back of an empty chair like it was the head of a large, friendly dog. “Wendell! A glass for my old friend! Better yet—a bottle!” Turning back to the marshal, he said, “Shall we debate the case, swap theories? Like old times.”
A shadow of indecision fell across the marshal’s face. A slight twist of the lips, an extra blink of the eyes. Enough for Nick (but no one else) to realize that Cradoc might actually be considering his offer.
But the marshal’s hesitation vanished as quickly as it had appeared. “It’s too late,” he spat back, kicking the empty chair with a boot.
“Don’t be so bloody melodramatic. Here’s your letter,” said Nick, removing an envelope from his jacket. Emboldened by his journalist triumph and surrounded by his own people, Nick wasn’t the least bit intimidated by Bradshaw’s bravado. “If you wish to scrutinize it further, be my guest.”
He flicked it sideways across the copy desk. The envelope hit Cradoc square in the chest and dropped to the floor like a dead bird. The marshal glared back, clenched his fists, but otherwise checked his temper.
A bystander retrieved the letter, passed it to the marshal. And Cradoc retreated without further comment. He had what he’d come for—the original dispatch. His challenge now was advancing the investigation beyond mere words on paper.