Dead Leprechauns & Devil Cats

by Grady Hendrix

  A scrawny Chinese lad wearing a billowing white blouse approached the table bearing a box of cigars on a tray. His hands were shaking so badly that the tray rattled. Tom Lee took one of the cigars and lit it with a massive jade lighter, blowing out a cool jet of blue smoke that hung over the table like a long silence.

  While Augustus turned this proposition over in his mind, I let my gaze wander, coming to a rest on the silk banners hanging from the ceiling.

  “Ah, I see you notice our Five Thousand Year Flags,” Tom Lee said. “Each flag belongs to a single clan and it is handed down through the centuries, the father of each generation painting on it his name and the name of his descendants. Any Chinese who wants to know the name of his great-great-great-great-grandfather merely needs to consult our Five Thousand Year Flags. These treasures are hardly what you would find in the evil Tong House of the Hip Sings.”

  “How shall we know where to look?“ Augustus asked. “Chinatown may be small but its roots are deep and its shadows are dark. We will need a guide.”

  “Take Ping,” Tom Lee said, indicating the underfed youth. “He was an apprentice dishwasher when I selected him to work here. He understands your English. When you have found Zu Guo he will guide you back here by secret passages.”

  “I accept your task,” Augustus said, standing up suddenly. “I will find your Zu Guo and return it to prevent violence from erupting in Chinatown. All life, even Chinese life, has some value.”

  “Very good, Mr. Mortimer. Very good,” Tom Lee grinned and he said something in his heathen tongue to the other men in the room and they all broke into smiles. “Ping will lead you to the basement and escort you to Doyers Street by the tunnels. It is best if you are not seen leaving this house.”

  “That was a bit thick,” I said to Augustus as Ping led us down the rickety wooden stairs to the basement. “Even Chinese life has value?“

  “It has been studied,” Augustus replied. “The Chinese soul weighs almost one half the soul of a white man.”

  “Impossible,” I said.

  “Science,” Augustus answered.

  And Ping led us down into the secret tunnels below the streets.

  Fifteen minutes later we emerged, blinking, into the crazed carnival of Chinatown and for a moment I felt as if we had been transported into the pages of an enormous book that was being slammed shut. The absurdly narrow street was hemmed in by vertiginously rising buildings that hid all but a thin slice of sky, and all around us streamed Chinese letters. Black characters marched down every surface, pasted to walls, pasted to windows, pasted to the green, gold, and red wooden balconies hanging off the fronts of buildings like flowering vines. The cobblestones were carpeted with discarded Chinese newspapers and the awnings, the gables, the dormers, the goods piled outside shops, the door jambs, and the doors themselves were covered with layer after layer of writing. We were afloat in a sea of Chinese.

  On all sides we were buffeted and spun about by their bodies. An endless ocean of black felt hats and half-shaved heads shoved past us, hawked gobs, clustered around Chinese Bulletin Boards, read Chinese proclamations, stood by doors shouting “Fan tan, fan tan,” pulled patrons inside darkened storefronts, dropped bundles, lifted baskets, hustled thrill seekers, greeted friends, lit cigars, and generally acted as if they were in their own country.

  “Too...many...Chinese...” I stammered as my vision swam.

  “Get ahold of yourself, William,” Augustus snapped, slapping me sharply across my face. “I have a plan.”

  I struggled to maintain a semblance self-control.

  “What do we do?“ I managed.

  “We need to find the leader of the Hip Sings,” he said.

  “What?“ I gasped in disbelief.

  “If they stole this Heavenly Pearl then it’s likely they have it hidden in their den. Ah, that’s what I was looking for.”

  He pushed off through the crowd towards a towering Irishman with a blue police coat buttoned up to his chin. I followed as best I could.

  “Officer, my name is Augustus Mortimer,” Augustus said.

  “And I’m policeman John Young, and the exit from Chinatown is that way,” he said, jerking his thumb over his shoulder. “If you want a tour of the gambling hells and opium joints you’re going to have to hire your own lobbygow because I’m an officer of the peace not your personal servant.”

  “I wish to know the location of the worst Hip Sing gambling hell,” Augustus said. “The most sinister ulcer of Oriental iniquity.”

  “No you don’t,” John Young said, in his thick brogue.

  “Yes, I do.”

  “Sir, I plunge into this boiling pot of Celestial vice to keep the peace and make sure none of our white lasses are molested by these coolie bastards. I keep them penned by betwixt Bayard, Baxter, and the Bowery and I have no time to babysit slumming swells like yourself. I recommend you find a nice white lobbygow like Chuck Connors and have him show you one of his good, clean tourist joints where you can puff a pipe of his adulterated tar and look at Opium Annie’s bubbies. Now please, piss off because I have better things to do than change yer nappies and mop yer chin.”

  “Sir, you misunderstand me. I am here to bring peace to the Tongs at the behest of Old Tom Lee himself,” said Augustus.

  There was a silence as John Young examined Augustus’ face, his red whiskers bristling with concentration, and then he burst out laughing and walked away, spinning his nightstick, Chinese scattering in his path.

  Augustus quivered with rage.

  “Perhaps we should — ?” I began, but Augustus seized Ping.

  “Ping, where is the vilest gambling hell of the Hip Sings? Where do I find Mock Duck?”

  Ping turned pale and shook his head in fear, trying to pull away from Augustus.

  “Tell me, you little Oriental imp! Tell me where to find Mock Duck!”

  A few bystanders were slowing down to watch, eager to see a white man beat a Chinese boy with his cane.

  “I will report you as an obnoxious person,” Augustus said. “And they will ship you back to China in chains if you do not tell me!”

  I had not thought it possible for Ping to look any more terrified than he already did, but somehow he managed to find an even more frightened expression in his repertoire as he lifted his arm and pointed across the street to a storefront marked in English as the Yee Hing Company

  “Yes,” Augustus said, and he dashed into its dark doorway.

  “My god, Ping,” I shouted. “What have you done? You’ve sent him to his death!”

  I chased after Augustus.

  “Fan tan, fan tan,” the men lolling outside the doorway said, barely moving their terrible eyes as I plunged past them. Their hands made secret signs to some unseen party lurking in the shadows as I burst into the gambling hell, right on the heels of Augustus.

  First, I heard nothing but a roaring silence. Then my eyes adjusted to the gloom and I saw that the room was sloshing over with Chinese who were all doing the exact same thing: staring at me. Their ivory gambling plaques lay forgotten on the tables as they fixed me with a collective look of either fear or hatred — I couldn’t tell which.

  Ahead of me, Augustus was just disappearing into another doorway from which the sound of game play still spilled. I raced after him, crashed through the doorway, and plowed into his back. This room was better heeled than the one we had just left, with fewer tables and richer Chinese.

  “Now what?” I whispered out the side of my mouth.

  “Now we get ourselves abducted by the Hip Sing,” he said.

  Before I could react he strode to the nearest table and upended it, sending dominoes and cups of tea flying. The Chinese scattered like startled chickens and Augustus roared:

  “Where is Mock Duck?”

  He raged about the room like a madman, tipping tables, as the Chinese seized their winnings and fled before him and it would have been amusing if not for the large group of men emerging from a trap door in the floor armed with
snickersnees and evil expressions.

  I was going to call out to warn Augustus, but suddenly I was scooped up in an enormous sack and the last thing I thought to myself was:

  “Not again.”

  “Wake up, white bastards!” shrieked a shrill Oriental voice.

  I opened my eyes and saw rough splintery wood all around me. I rolled over on my back, helped along by the silken shoe that was kicking me in the ribs. Above me were dozens of incomplete faces, missing eyes and nostrils, teeth and lips; one was missing his chin entirely. What they had in common was that they were all kicking me with great abandon.

  I glanced to my side and saw Augustus and a little further along, thrown against the wall like a sack of old laundry, Ping. Augustus was also being thoroughly kicked, but the savages were ignoring Ping. He had probably led us right into this trap. Then I remembered Augustus up-ending the pai gow tables and I thought that perhaps this might be one trap we had walked into ourselves.

  “You want see Mock Duck?” The same annoying voice shouted. “Mock Duck want see you too. Mock Duck want see you dead!”

  Arms hauled me up into a sitting position and Augustus was hauled up next to me. Across from us, oddly enough, was an enormous crayon portrait of Frank Moss, the lawyer for the New York Society for the Prevention of Crime. Before this incongruous artifact squatted the ugliest, most insolent man I had ever seen. He was wearing a stained silk blouse that barely covered a chain mail shirt, a battered and dusty bowler hat was perched on the back of his head and in his right hand was a hatchet.

  “What you want me for?” Mock Duck shrieked.

  “You brought us here,” Augustus said. “What do you want us for?”

  “No want you. You come in my house. You break my tables. You die.”

  “Look here, Mock Duck,” Augustus said.

  “No, you look here,” Mock Duck screeched. “You really piss me off! That my pai gow room. Big money from pai gow. Now everyone think I look like asshole. I show you the asshole. Carve you up until all that left is asshole. Tough, chewy asshole.”

  “Policeman John Young saw us go into your gambling hell,” Augustus said. “If we go missing he will come looking for us. Consider that before you do something rash.”

  Silence descended on the room. Then Mock Duck howled and spat a long, green gob onto Augustus’s waistcoat.

  “I watch. Mr. John Young, he hate you. He hate you guts! Go to basement. Get dead fast, dummy.”

  “You won’t watch us die, Mr. Mock Duck?” Augustus challenged. “You won’t deliver the killing blow yourself?”

  “I no watch white man die,” Mock Duck said. “They scream like little girls. You ever hear little girl scream? Give me indigestion. I go to Delmonico’s tonight, no want hear white man screaming while I eat Oyster Rockefeller.”

  As he passed Ping he toed the prostrate boy with his foot.

  “And chop off head of this cherry boy,” he said to his henchmen, and left the room.

  Then his henchmen dragged us to the basement, giggling all the way.

  “Augustus — ” I whispered as the four henchmen marched us down the groaning wooden halls.

  “Quiet,” he said. “This is going exactly as I planned.”

  I was flummoxed. This was going to plan? We were surrounded by highbinders who were taking us to the basement of one of the most notorious Tong Houses in the city to execute us and no one knew where we were. If this plan had been presented to me earlier then I would have happily pointed out several of its glaring flaws. I began to suspect that Augustus might not actually have a plan.

  We passed a door guarded by two bored-looking Chinamen, scratching idly at their buttocks and smelling their fingers. Our four captors called out greetings, which were returned, then we turned a corner and were in a dirt-floored cell. A gas jet on the wall was lit and we were shoved into the far corner, little Ping clinging to my legs. I had forgotten the pup was even with us. He was acting most unmanly for a lad of fifteen, which I judged to be his age.

  “Come on, Ping,” I growled at him. “Face your fate like an American.”

  But I don’t think he understood me.

  One of the Chinamen had been carrying Augustus’s hat and his damnable cane and, affectation of affectations, Augustus made it known through gestures that he wanted them both. The Chinese villains laughed at this and handed him his hat but no sooner had the cane touched Augustus’s hand than it was suddenly animated with a life of its own.

  “Ahoy!“ Augustus shouted and he was lashing out with it in every direction at once. The cane cracked one Chinaman behind the ear, it smashed another’s temple, then invaded the eye socket of a third. Augustus posed like a bullfighter and then uttered a triumphant, “Ho!”

  “Augustus,” I exclaimed looking at the fallen forms. “How did you — ?”

  “Cane fighting. I learnt it from a band of geriatric sailors whom I encountered while investigating the Zombie Parrots of Jamaica. Come, speed is of the essence.”

  Ping and I were bounding along after him, trying to keep up as he ran through the basement halls.

  “William, to my right. Hurl Ping!“ he commanded, and I knew instantly what he had in mind.

  I scooped up the surprised lad, who weighed next to nothing, and as we rounded the corner I flung him with all my strength at the two bored guards who were not laughing so heartily now. Ping caught one of them full in the face and they went down in a tangle of limbs. Augustus was in amongst them with his fighting stick and I gave one of them several stern remarks with my fists.

  “If my calculations are correct, Zu Guo is behind this door,” Augustus said and, needing no further encouragement, I put my foot to the lock and bashed it open.

  What lay behind that door was a wonder I still think of to this day. The room was crudely furnished with only a chair and a bed but on that bed sat the most beautiful woman I had ever seen. She was a Chinese, but her beauty softened the savagery of her Oriental features. Her face was perfectly formed, her eyes were dark shining pools, and her skin was as pale as snow.

  “Bin go wah?“ she said in alarm.

  Ping mumbled something from the floor in their heathen tongue and it must have soothed her for she stood and took a step towards me, reaching out with one of her perfect hands to touch my arm. As she did so, I felt something touch my mind as well and I was no longer in that basement at all.

  I was home.

  The nursery fire crackled in the grate while outside the sky was dark and stormy and the street lamps were on early. Rain lay over the house like a blanket, but the nursery was snug and safe. There was the occasional pop from the hearth as Nanny read to me the tale of Ivanhoe, recounting the adventures of that young knight, turning the pages with one hand, and stroking my head where it lay on her skirts with the other.

  Then I was dumped back into that disgusting basement. I saw that Ping had been affected too for he sat stunned, gasping for breath. The beautiful woman, Zu Guo, I now realized, was lying unconscious on the bed with Augustus’s broken walking stick next to her. A drop of blood trickled from her temple. I didn’t realize that I had been crying until I brought my hand to my face and found that my whiskers were wet.

  “Ping, fetch me a sack,” Augustus commanded. “Sorry, old friend,” he said to me. “I saw that she did something to your mind and so I disabled her at my earliest opportunity. What was it, then?”

  As he spoke, Ping produced an enormous black sack from somewhere beneath his blouse.

  “I was home, Augustus,” I said. “She reached into my heart and took me home.”

  “Oh, well, that explains it,” he said brusquely. “I did see a few things: the old homestead, dog, mother, father. All dead now, you know. No point in getting sentimental about it.”

  Then we bundled Zu Guo up into the black sack. After being bundled twice myself that day, I was not surprised to find that I had acquired a knack for it.

  “Now, Ping,” Augustus said, to the dazed boy. “Lead us back to
Tom Lee.”

  We stood once more in Tom Lee’s meeting room as his minions checked the sack to make ensure their prize was intact. She was just waking up and one look at her made my heart ache. Ping stared at her as if she were a goddess.

  “We’ve returned your slattern,” Augustus said. “Now arrange a carriage so that I might examine her in my rooms for the three days and nights that you promised. I am anxious to get this creature open and examine its workings.”

  At first I thought Tom Lee had stomach trouble, but then his lips split and merry laughter spilled forth. His shoulders shook as he bounced up and down in his chair with mirth.

  “Mr. Mortimer,” he said. “You are so naive. Why should I share such a treasure with you or with the filthy coolies and juk sing who litter the streets of Chinatown? They can spill their seed on white prostitutes and you can research apes and monkeys but Zu Guo, she belongs to me.”

  “But,” I blustered, astounded at his avarice. “There will be war between the Tongs!”

  “No war,” Tom Lee said. “No war because poor Zu Guo was murdered! It was a very terrible thing. Two white men and a Chinese boy stole her from the Hip Sing Tong and killed her after slaking their lusts. Then they tried to burn her body. I even have a body. It was very expensive to get a Chinese woman into your country just to kill and burn her, but worth every penny.”

  He paused to let it all sink in.

  “You won’t get away with this,” Augustus said.

  “What will you do? Go to the police? Hire lawyers to say that I am lying? Will it be your word against mine?”

  “Yes!” Augustus shouted.

  “Look outside,” Tom Lee said. And I looked.

  The streets were still crowded but they were no longer bustling. Everyone was standing still and they were all looking up at the On Leong Tong. Thousands of Chinese standing shoulder to shoulder and glaring up at me with cruel hatchets in their hands.