A Bitter Feast

by S. J. Rozan

  “This is Henry,” Bill said, lighting a cigarette. He offered one to the kid, who jerked out a hand to take it and went through two matches before he could make one work. “Henry, Lydia.”

  I nodded to Henry. His eyes skittered from me to Bill, and he said, “You sure she’s cool?”

  Bill nodded. “Don’t worry, Henry, you’re safe with me.”

  Henry’s twitchy hand shoved his cigarette between his lips. “Yeah.” The cigarette jiggled as he spoke. “I always feel just great when you’re around.”

  “Just tell Lydia what you told me before,” Bill said, “and then we’re out of here.”

  We waited a few moments; then, “Come on, Henry,” Bill prompted. “I haven’t been sitting here nursing beers all night with you because I like you.”

  Henry scowled at that, in no one’s particular direction. He said, “Yeah, okay,” but he didn’t say anything else.

  Bill spoke. “Henry’s a junkie,” he said, talking to me, looking at Henry. “He spends his days hunting up a fix, and then floating on it, and then hunting up another one.”

  “Screw you, Smith.” Henry made an effort to sound belligerent. “I don’t have to—”

  “Yes, you do,” Bill said. That stopped Henry again, so Bill went on. “Henry lives down here, in a squat with a bunch of other junkies. Henry’s father lives in Scarsdale. He won’t come down here himself. Considers it dangerous and, even worse, distasteful. But he hired me twice to bring Henry home. I did it, but Henry doesn’t like Scarsdale, so he came back here.”

  Henry pulled sullenly on his beer.

  “Henry’s father doesn’t try to bring him home anymore. But every now and then he gives me a little money to give Henry, make sure the kid is eating, that kind of thing. Henry spends it on junk.”

  I looked at Henry, his bad skin, his bony wrists sticking out of a long-sleeved flannel shirt. He was jabbing his cigarette butt in the ashtray, over and over. “Hey, I’m doing you a fucking favor, Smith—”

  “No, you’re not. You’re talking to me because if I tell your father I’m through, you lose that Scarsdale lifeline. And I’m fed up with both of you, so that could happen any time. So.”

  Bill stopped, drank some beer, and waited.

  Henry turned his watery eyes to me and glowered, but Bill continued to say nothing. Henry finally spoke.

  “I don’t see what the goddamn big deal is,” he said. “My connection didn’t come through, so I hadda go somewhere else. So fucking what?”

  “Your connection?” I said, more to get into this conversation than anything else.

  “Yeah. Cupboard was bare. But so what? I got fixed up.”

  “Lydia doesn’t give a damn whether you got your junk or not, Henry,” Bill said. “She wants to know why you had to scramble.”

  “Because,” Henry said, with the exaggerated patience of a chipped-plaster saint, “my connection, he came up dry because his connection got shorted.”

  “Got shorted how?” I asked, still mystified about what I was doing in this unappealing bar talking to this unattractive boy.

  Henry shrugged. “Word is, someone boosted a piece of his shipment.”

  “Who?”

  “Oh, man, I don’t know. Don’t even think that.” Fear sprang into Henry’s eyes.

  “Why not?” Bill asked.

  “Because they say he’s pissed the hell off. He’s gonna blow away whoever took his shit. No way I want him thinking I had anything—” A light went on in Henry’s eyes, making them bounce wildly from me to Bill. “Jesus Christ!” He clambered to his feet, shoving his chair back. “She’s with him! Oh, man, you set me up—”

  Bill leaned forward in his chair, put a hand on Henry’s arm, and spoke more gently than I might have expected. “No, Henry. She’s not with him and I didn’t set you up. You can go in a minute. But tell Lydia why you thought she might be with him.”

  “With the fucking Duke? Why the hell do you think?” Henry bounced lightly on the balls of his feet as though he were about to break into a sprint. “Because she’s goddamn Chinese.”

  I turned to Bill; the light had gone on for me, too. “The Duke?” I said. “Duke Lo?”

  “Seems that way. Sit down, Henry.”

  “No, man. No.” Henry shook his head. “I got to go.”

  “The Duke,” I said to Henry. “His name is Lo? He’s the guy who supplies your heroin connection?”

  Henry stared, then dropped sharply onto his chair. “Jesus Christ, don’t talk so loud.”

  I looked around. No one in the bar seemed to have moved since I walked in.

  “Yeah,” whispered Henry almost frantically, in what was probably an attempt to head off anything more from me. “My man, he gets his from this guy, the Duke. I don’t know his last name. I don’t know anything else, I swear it.” He gave me the look of a cornered puppy about to get swatted.

  “And the Duke’s Chinese?”

  He nodded.

  “When did this happen?” I asked. “That someone took some of his junk?”

  “A month,” Henry said. “I don’t know, something like that. Look, can I go now? I mean, that’s what you wanted, right?” He rubbed his mouth with a dirty hand and turned to Bill. “I got to go.”

  “Okay, Henry,” Bill said before I could ask anything else. He took out his wallet and pulled two fifties from it. “One from your father, one from me. Try to eat something.”

  “Yeah, man, sure.” Henry grabbed the bills and stuffed them into his pocket as he jerked to his feet. “Yeah. See you. Uh, nice meeting you,” he said to me, and he was gone.

  I turned to Bill. “Nice meeting me?”

  “A well-brought-up boy,” Bill said. He took his cigarette from his lips. “A tenor sax player. Damn good. His father wanted him to be a lawyer.”

  “So he left home and came down here?”

  “No. He tried it his father’s way. NYU, prelaw. He hated it. Started to play, late nights, around the Village, while he was still in school. He was sitting in with some of the best inside of a few months. He’s good,” he repeated.

  “But his father didn’t like it?”

  “He said, ‘Forget that, spend your time studying.’ Henry didn’t stop. So his father said, ‘Either give up that damn thing or go out and make a living with it.’ He cut him off, told him not to come home until he was ready to stop playing.”

  “My God,” I said. “So that’s what he does now?”

  Bill shook his head. “He tried, but talent’s not enough. He was too young, too soft for that life, the places you hang in, the people you meet. For Christ’s sake, he was raised in Scarsdale.” Bill jammed his cigarette butt into the ashtray. “Lately he was playing less and less. Six months ago he pawned the sax to buy junk.”

  I stared down the length of the bar to the front door, where Henry had gone. “Does his father know?”

  “Of course he knows. That’s why he brought him home, to put him in rehab.”

  “But it didn’t work?”

  “Programs work for some junkies, not for others. He was in two, but they didn’t work for him.”

  “What do you think will?”

  “For Henry?” Bill finished off his beer and, eyes on the bottle as he carefully placed it on the table, said, “Nothing.”

  Bill and I left Parnell’s in silence. Third Street, when we came out onto it, was silent and peaceful, watched over by a silver moon. As if by agreement, we walked west for a few blocks without a word. The avenues were clogged with honking traffic and each block west collected more and more people, scurrying from one place to another, determined to have a good time on a Saturday night.

  When we reached Broadway, I stood on the corner feeling as though the things I knew now, the things I still didn’t understand, the traffic and the crowds, were spinning my head around.

  Bill said, “Come on back to my place. I’ll make you a cup of tea.”

  The thought of Bill’s spare, quiet apartment, familiar and empty, was lik
e the call of the oasis to a desert traveler. I thought about the cactus beer bottles on the tables at Parnell’s and nodded. Bill hailed a cab and we were on our way.

  “Turtle’s eggs,” I finally said, after a few silent blocks of watching the city slip by.

  “What?”

  “Duke Lo called them ‘turtle’s eggs.’ The waiters. He did have a reason to hate them, after all.”

  “So you’re thinking what I am? That one of them was a courier, and stole the package he was supposed to deliver?”

  I nodded. “It explains Three-finger Choi. And that nasty waiter at Dragon Garden said one of the roommates had a get-rich secret.”

  Bill said, “You think this could be what Deluca meant by goods the government doesn’t want?”

  I looked over at him. “Mind reader. But if these are the goods they’re getting that they don’t want, where are they getting them and what are the goods they do want?”

  “Or, to rephrase, which one of these guys is the courier and how did he get here?”

  “Is that the same question?” I turned to watch through the window as three laughing high-heeled teenagers jaywalked in front of our cab. “Duke Lo.” I sighed. “Running drugs.”

  “Is it surprising?”

  “Not to me, especially since we met him. And Mary said, ‘No crime too big or small.’ She’ll love this. It could make her career.”

  “If she could prove it.”

  I frowned. He had a point: all we had was hearsay from a strung-out kid.

  “Do you know who Henry’s connection is?”

  “He won’t tell me.”

  “If Mary arrested him and then cut him a deal, a lighter sentence or something, he might tell her.”

  “No.” Bill spoke calmly but his voice was like a stone. “No.”

  “Jail would get him off the street—” I started.

  “Jail would kill him,” Bill cut me off. “No.”

  “To get at Duke Lo—”

  “Duke Lo’s not my problem.”

  “He sent someone to beat me up!”

  “And I’ll personally break his legs for that if you want. But he’s not the only drug dealer in town. Getting him would make us feel good and get Mary a promotion, but not much more. I won’t sell Henry out for that.”

  I stared at him. “You don’t even like Henry.”

  “That’s true. But I started with him and I’m stuck with him.”

  I put my hand softly over Bill’s. “That’s how I feel about the waiters,” I said.

  He threaded his fingers through mine. “Then we’ll find them. And if they stole Duke Lo’s dope, that’ll give Mary what she needs. Henry showed us the problem, but I don’t see that anything else changed. You’re still more likely to find these guys than the cops are, even if they know why they’re looking.”

  He was right. I squeezed his hand and leaned back against the seat of the cab. “Speaking of looking,” I said, “how did you find him?” I looked out the window, still seeing a skinny kid slipping out of a dim bar with two fifty-dollar bills burning a hole in his pocket.

  “Henry? He’s not hard to find. His friends know I usually mean money, so they steer me to him.”

  “No, I mean, what made you go looking for him?”

  “Those damn SOBs—Deluca and March—they made me too edgy to sit still. I wasn’t looking for Henry in particular; he was just a lucky hit. While you were dealing delicately with your countrymen, I thought I’d poke around a little, on the off chance that someone involved in this case wasn’t Chinese.”

  I turned from the window to him. “You think I’ve been handling this case wrong?”

  His forehead creased. “No. I didn’t say that.”

  “I can’t help it,” I said, “that everyone involved is Chinese.”

  “But they’re not,” Bill said. “Deluca and March aren’t. Henry and his connection aren’t. I didn’t think it would hurt to widen our net a little, and I made a lucky catch. What’s wrong? Did you not want me striking out on my own?”

  “It’s not that. You always do when we work together.”

  “Isn’t that good?”

  “Of course, it is. It’s just … it’s …” I leaned back against the seat again. “I don’t know what it is.”

  Bill was silent for a while as the city blocks swept by. Then he said, “It’s that you’re afraid there’s something going on you think I won’t understand. Something Chinese that I’ll screw up.”

  “No,” I said. Then, after a while, “Yes. Well, not exactly that. But …” I searched out the window, trying to find the words. “These people—I mean, H. B. Yang brought my father over here. I used to dream about him.” I looked at Bill, who didn’t look at me. “Does that make sense?”

  He nodded, but said nothing for the rest of the ride.

  At Bill’s place, we climbed the stairs still in silence. He unlocked the door, switched on the light, and threw his jacket over a chair. I hung my coat in the closet while he filled the kettle in the kitchen.

  “Do you want me out?” he said.

  “What?” I listened to the rush of water, to the clink of the kettle onto the range.

  “Of the case. Do you want me out?”

  “You’re crazy.”

  “What you said in the cab—”

  “I said this is more complicated than other cases. That’s all I said.”

  “You could be right. I could mess it up.”

  “I didn’t say that, you did.”

  “Still.”

  “No.” I walked toward him, over to the counter separating where I was from where he was. I leaned on it, watching him.

  “What kind of tea do you want?” he asked.

  “Chamomile.”

  “I have that?”

  “Uh-huh. Second shelf, on the left. Bill?”

  He turned to me as he rummaged through his cabinet.

  “You won’t mess it up. I don’t even think you will. I’m just afraid.”

  He found the tea I knew was there and put the box down on the counter. “Afraid of what?”

  I looked at the tea box, not at him. “Afraid we won’t find those men. Afraid Peter won’t be all right. Afraid I’ll screw something up with H. B. Yang and that will humiliate my mother. I’m afraid I’ll mess it up.”

  Bill’s eyes found mine. I blinked and looked away.

  “I’ve never heard you talk that way before,” he said.

  “Maybe I’ve never felt this way before.”

  “Funny,” Bill said, as he came around the counter and wrapped me in his arms. “I feel that way all the time.”

  We stood, just holding each other in this big silent room where there was no one but us, until the kettle started to sing. Then Bill pulled away and went to take care of the tea.

  “Nice shirt,” I said.

  “What?”

  “Your shirt. It feels good against my cheek.”

  He grinned from the kitchen. “You don’t mind if I don’t follow that line of thinking?”

  “In fact I’d prefer it.” I smiled back, it was Bill and me again, and he got busy with the tea.

  He made my chamomile in a mug and poured boiling water into one of those press-down coffeemakers for himself. Bringing everything into the living room, he said, “Okay. Since I’m still on the case, you want to talk about it?”

  “Joe Yee,” I said. “He said he came to me because we’re both Chinese. If what this is about is a bunch of idiots stealing dope from Duke Lo, where does he fit in?”

  “Maybe he works for Duke Lo.”

  “He could. But he doesn’t seem Lo’s type. Although,” I said, thinking back to the Fifth Precinct squad room, “Mary said Lo climbed up fast, backed by more loyal soldiers than you’d expect a new guy to have.”

  “You don’t sound convinced.”

  “Are you?”

  “No.”

  I sipped my tea, trying to think.

  “Just tell me,” Bill said.

  “What
?”

  “Just tell me what happened. Maybe something will come out.”

  I nodded; that was how we usually did it. So I did that now, filling Bill in on my evening with Joe Yee. My tea disappeared as the story went on, and Bill, listening, got up and made me another cup.

  “Well,” he said, sitting again, lighting another cigarette, “what do you think he’s up to?”

  I tried, against the call of exhaustion, to think logically. “I believe he doesn’t know what the problem is, because if he did, he’d have told me he knew but he wasn’t going to tell me. But you know what was weird?”

  “What?”

  “His reaction when I asked him about Deluca.”

  “How?”

  “I think he really didn’t know who Deluca was. But when I said State Department Security he seemed to get spooked. He left pretty soon after that.”

  “That would make sense, if that’s where the Feds saw my car.”

  “So he has something to do with the dope?”

  “Or with the shipments the government does want.”

  I sighed. “Okay,” I said. “That’s our work for the morning. I can’t think anymore tonight. God, I’m tired.”

  I put my tea mug down and leaned back into the sofa cushions. I thought about the steamy, herb-filled bath I’d looked forward to steeping in, and the cool sheets I’d been hoping to slip into, before Joe Yee and the metallic clangor of Lightning Rod’s, Henry and the disconsolate filth of Parnell’s, had filled my evening. The tension in my shoulders began to melt; the fresh, sweet scent of chamomile lingered in the air. I closed my eyes.

  “You can stay,” Bill said.

  My eyes flew open and my forehead creased into a frown. I looked at him; he was smiling softly.

  “It’s not a proposition,” he said. “I have a spare room; I’ll behave. Or I can get you a blanket and you can stay where you are. It’s just that you look like someone who doesn’t want to move.”

  “I don’t,” I agreed, sighing. My eyes wandered over the room again: the white walls hung here and there with charcoal drawings or black-and-white photographs; the figured Persian carpet under the piano—“to soften the edges,” he’d once told me, and that had surprised me; I hadn’t known Bill was interested in softened edges—the shelves of books, the desk, the neat kitchen. It was more than the physical effort of getting up, which was becoming harder to contemplate by the minute; it was going out, after I got up, into a street where you have to keep your eyes open, to a cab where you have to study the cabbie’s name and license number, to a home where I’d have to watch every word I said to my mother. All those things, as opposed to the sofa cushions and chamomile tea in Bill’s apartment.