9
Man was created a little lower than the angels, and has been getting a little lower ever since.
—Josh Billings
“YOU JUST KEEP YOUR mouth shut and look pretty.
I’m doing the talking, Gus, and that’s final. The subject’s closed.”
She drew herself up, clicked her heels together, and saluted.
Reuben turned away in disgust, muttering under his breath. The door knocker on No. 722 was an upside-down dragon. He lifted the snout and hammered it against the bronze plate underneath twice. Before he could bring it back for a third whack, the heavy door swung open and a Chinese manservant in baggy blue pajamas appeared. “Yes, I can help you?”
“We’re here to see Mr. Wing.”
“Yes, you are named?”
“Smith. We’re the Smiths.”
“Oh, say, that’s brilliant,” Grace said out of the side of her mouth.
“You are known to be coming?”
“We’ve got a four o’clock appointment,” Reuben assured him.
“Yes, in re?”
“What?”
The servant looked baffled, as if he’d been challenged to a duel. “In re?” he repeated hopefully.
“With regard to,” Grace translated, as if speaking to children.
“Ah!” said Reuben, in unison with the enlightened manservant. Apparently a password was expected. “In re a tiger,” he said meaningfully, wriggling his eyebrows.
The servant’s bland-featured face turned crafty. “Follow me,” he said in a conspirator’s voice, turned his back on them, and walked away.
It was a surprise to find they weren’t in the house yet. The front door turned out be set in a thick stone wall, a false front; and instead of leading to the house, it led to an outdoor courtyard, grassless and treeless, cement-covered, resembling an army parade ground more than somebody’s front yard. Three stories of brick and stone encircled it, with numerous windows, balconies, and catwalks covering the walls. In Re didn’t dawdle; he marched straight across the courtyard to another door, this one heavier than the first and studded with big iron nails. “No moat?” asked Reuben. “No sharks?”
Inside the house, they stood in an anteroom the size of his entire apartment, with whitewashed stone walls decorated with weapons and medieval armor. “Now this is cozy,” Grace murmured, standing under an eight-foot pikestaff with a gleaming silver blade. “I like a house with its weapons on display. You know where you stand.”
“Good afternoon.”
They both jumped. Behind them loomed a gaunt-faced man in a long black robe, an unsheathed sword stuck in a sash around his waist. In Re said something to him in Chinese, bowed, and vanished through the door to the courtyard.
“Mr. Wing?” Reuben inquired, careful to keep his eyes off the glittering sword blade.
The black-robed man lifted his top lip in disdain. A thin scar from his forehead to the end of his nose adorned a face already ugly from smallpox. “I am Chief Swordsman to Kai Yee. My name is Tom Fun.”
“Well, that doesn’t surprise me a bit. Does that surprise you, Gus? Doesn’t he look like the kind of guy who’d always be up to some wacky shenanigan or other?”
Tom Fun sneered again, showing his teeth, and this time he fingered the ivory and silver handle of his naked sword. “Come with me.”
Making faces at each other—for courage—they followed him down a long, plain, white-walled corridor and into a small, bare, white-walled chamber: another anteroom. This one preceded a spacious hall where, from the sound of chanting inside, some sort of ceremony seemed to be in progress. Tom Fun stationed himself at the arched doorway between the two rooms, but to the side so that they could clearly see the festivities going on behind him. “Is it a birthday party?” Reuben inquired politely. The Chief Swordsman ignored him. Being blade-shy, Reuben would’ve been content to view the celebration from a distance, but Grace took his arm and moved him closer to the door. “I want to see,” she whispered when he hung back. Tom Fun had no objection; he stared straight ahead, arms akimbo, not deigning to look at them. Reuben had a suspicion they were supposed to watch the ceremony—that their arrival had been timed, in fact, on purpose to coincide with it.
The principal player was a man with long, straight, snow-white hair, reclining on a high throne chair. The Godfather, no doubt. Surrounding him were about twelve other men, all wearing the same long black robes as Tom Fun. And all, Reuben couldn’t help noticing, armed with one or more sharp objects—swords, knives, hatchets, machetes, sickles, cleavers. His mouth dried up; he felt a prickle of revulsion sidle up the skin of his neck to his scalp. Concentrating on the Godfather, he took note that he too wore a long, flowing robe, but his sported every color in the rainbow. When he held up his hand, the chanting abruptly stopped. A young man Reuben hadn’t noticed before, wearing only a pair of baggy saffron trousers, walked slowly around to the back of the throne. The white-haired man—he had to be Kai Yee—clapped his hands once; the young man dropped to his knees and, to Reuben’s astonishment, crawled underneath the throne chair and disappeared behind its gilded brocade draperies. Then the chanting started up again.
“Did he drop something?” Reuben asked Tom Fun, who slanted him an evil look and said nothing.
The Godfather clapped his hands again, the chanting ceased, and the man in yellow pajamas crawled back out from under the chair. Some of the black-robed hatchet men lit incense and pieces of gilded paper and tossed them into a brazier in front of the statue of some ferocious-looking idol in a sort of temple affair in the corner. Somebody dragged a wooden box in front of the Godfather’s throne, reached inside, and lifted a live rooster out by the neck. Kai Yee rose from his chair, pulling a curved saber from the bright orange sash around his waist. Even knowing what was going to happen, Reuben didn’t look away in time. The Godfather’s arm rose and fell in time with a barbaric, hair-raising yell. The rooster’s head hit the floor with a rubbery-sounding slap, and blood spurted like a fountain.
Grace bit off a disgusted curse and put her face against Reuben’s chest. He held her in a firm, manly grip, swallowing repeatedly to control his nausea.
More chanting and shouting. Finally the initiate—the man in yellow drawers—donned one of the long black robes everybody else was wearing. The Godfather handed him a sword, made a short speech, and the ceremony was over. All the hatchet men, including the new recruit, filed out through a rear door. Tom Fun went inside, spoke a few words to the Godfather, and followed.
“Now, that’s entertainment,” Reuben said in Grace’s ear. She still looked pale, but her breathy, nervous chuckle told him she was all right. Taking her elbow, he guided her into the throne room, careful not to step in any rooster blood. Out of the corner of his eye he could see the bird’s torso, tossed on the floor near the shrine, still twitching. Kai Yee remained beside his chair, tall and unmoving, the ruddy, dripping sword dangling from his fingers. The silence stretched longer, tighter; to Reuben it began to seem intentionally dramatic. “Hi,” he said to break it. “Hope we didn’t interrupt anything. Some kind of party, huh? Looks like a good time was had by all.”
Mark Wing didn’t move or speak, just continued to stare at them. No, not at them—at Grace. Reuben might as well have been invisible, or nonexistent, for all the notice Wing took of him. The sensation was eerie; from the tense grip she had on Reuben’s forearm, he knew she felt it, too.
In the queer new silence, he saw that Wing was much younger than he’d thought at first; the stick-straight, unbound, silvery-white hair was deceptive, for his unlined face was that of a man only in his forties. He was slender, austere, perversely handsome, with dark brows and intense black eyes, a flat nose, and thin, feminine lips. And he couldn’t take his eyes off Grace.
“What was that,” she asked, “some sort of initiation ritual?” Her manner was courteous, but Reuben knew her motive in speaking was the same as his—to break the weird silence.
She had better luck. Wing’s
soft lips curved in a smile as he laid his sword down and began to untie the sash around his waist. “Yesss,” he answered in a spooky whisper, “a rite of passage. You found it quaint?”
“Quaint,” she repeated, with a pretense of thoughtfulness. “That’s not exactly the word I’d use.”
He shrugged out of his parti-colored kimono, under which he was wearing—surprise—striped trousers and a sober gray morning coat. The Western clothes transformed him: except for the hair, he now looked like a banker. He tossed the robe aside and strode toward them, smiling broadly. His hand was pale and bony, but he gave Reuben’s a strong California shake and said, “How do you do, Mr.—Smith?”
“Algernon Smith. This is my sister, Augustine.”
Wing took Grace’s hand and bowed over it, holding it in both of his. His hair hung down on either side of his head from a perfect center part, hiding from view whatever he was doing to her hand with his mouth. When he finally straightened, his black eyes snapped with a peculiar kind of fire, and Grace’s cheeks flamed pink. “Yesss, an initiation ritual, as you say. I am leader of a group of bissness and community leaders; we are called the Society of the Perfect Harmony of Heaven. Today we inducted a new member. No doubt it seemed quite pagan to you. But the old ways are still strong among many of us in the Dai Fow—Chinatown,” he explained with a bow, “and” keeping up the ancient traditions encourages loyalty and morale.”
“I doubt the chicken would agree,” murmured Grace.
Wing smiled, delighted. “A symbol only.”
“Of what?”
He held her gaze without blinking. “Of the fate of one who betrays the Ssociety,” he hissed, back to the creepy whisper. “In a figurative sense, of course.”
“Of course.” She swallowed. “And the crawling under the chair?”
“Ah, that. Another symbol, this one of rebirth. As head of the Society, I am sometimes called Ah Mah, or Mother. The novitiate is reborn, so to speak, as a member of the company, or hong.”
“Don’t you mean tong?”Reuben put in.
Wing finally looked at him. “We are not a tong, Mr. Ssmith,” he said evenly, “we are a benevolent society. A brotherhood.”
“I get it. And you’re the mother and the godfather.”
His feminine smile thinned. Instead of responding, he took Grace by the arm and abruptly led her out of the room. Reuben followed on their heels.
They went back along the white corridor, past a number of closed doors, and into a large, dark-paneled room with English hunting prints on the walls and Venetian blinds over the windows. A huge oak desk covered with books and papers confirmed that this was Wing’s office; but it could’ve been Henry Frick’s office or J. P. Morgan’s, so determinedly Western were the room’s style and furnishings.
“Since you have come today to discuss bissness, perhaps we will be more comfortable here,” Wing said courteously, escorting Grace to a leather armchair and waving Reuben into an identical one next to it. He said something in Chinese then, and Reuben turned in surprise to see a girl hovering in the doorway. Where had she come from? She wore a green satin robe tied at the waist with a gold sash, and high, cork-soled shoes on her tiny feet. She was barely five feet tall, and probably not yet twenty years old, and she had the face of a tragic doll. After listening with care to Wing’s instructions, she bowed deeply and shuffled backward out of sight.
In minutes she returned with a heavy tea tray; she set it on a table and began passing out cups, saucers, and plates with cookies and little sandwiches—an English tea. Reuben would have preferred a glass of bourbon. He didn’t mention it, though, because there was something about the way Wing issued orders to the tiny doll-servant that set his teeth on edge.
“And now,” their genial host began, after dismissing the girl with a flick of his long, pale hand, “plees tell me how I may be of service to you. The message I received was pussling; it spoke of a recovered object, an article of funeral sculpture, if I recall correctly. But I confess I am at a loss as to how this concerns me, or how I might be able to help you.”
Reuben draped his ankle over his knee. He decided to light a cigar, not because he wanted one, but because he figured it would annoy Wing. “Maybe you’re confused because you’ve got it backwards. See, Mr. Wing, we’re the ones who can help you.”
“Indeed.” He had to hurry over with a priceless-looking jade bowl before Reuben flicked a hot match onto the expensive carpet. He left the bowl on Reuben’s chair arm and went back to his own seat. “How can that be, Mr. Ssmith?”
Reuben had about a third of Wing’s attention; the rest was still riveted on Grace, to whom he seemed to have taken a shine. She did look spectacular today, no denying it, in a cream silk suit with an Eton jacket and a little vest, cream-colored high-heeled shoes, and black silk stockings. She had her hair up in one of those heavy, two-tiered affairs popular with the ladies these days, an engineering marvel Reuben could never figure out, even though he’d watched carefully in more than one lady friend’s boudoir while it was performed. On Grace it was particularly stunning, because her hair was such a pretty color. Old gold, he’d called it once, and lately he’d refined it to yellow topaz. Exactly the color of a ring, long since hocked, that he’d stolen from his shrewish stepmother about twenty years ago. If he’d kept it, he could’ve given it to Grace and said flowery things about it and her hair. It might’ve worked; you never could tell.
From experience, he could see that the Godfather was prepared to be polite and inscrutable all afternoon, until his cunning and courtesy finally wore them down and they laid their cards on the table. Why waste time? And why give him the satisfaction? Flicking a fat ash in the general direction of the jade bowl, Reuben came to the point.
“Mr. Wing, we’ve got the tiger. You’ve got the dog and the monkey, the goat and the rat—you’ve got all the rest, but they’re no good to you without the tiger. My sister and I are prepared to sell it to you for ten thousand dollars.”
That got his attention. He raised a porcelain cup to his lips and took a silent sip, dark eyes hooded. Reuben liked the idea that good old American directness had thrown him off his subtle Oriental stride. Of course, if he now said, “I have no idea what you’re talking about, Mr. Ssssmith,” they’d be back where they started. After a long, intense moment, during which Wing kept his flat black eyes fastened on Grace, he set his cup down and rose, his movements languid and, to Reuben, offensively graceful. A tall glass-and-teakwood case stood in the corner by the window; he went to it, opened the door, and took out a small object. Then he crossed back to Grace’s chair and made her a low bow. “Miss Smith, a gift for you.”
Reuben slid down farther in his chair. First Doc, now the Godfather—what was it that compelled sensible men, within minutes of meeting her, to shower Grace with presents? This one was a miniature bronze statue of a woman, he noted sourly, about the size of his little finger. Even from here, he could see that it was lovely. He hoped it was worth a fortune.
“Oh, she’s beautiful,” Grace gushed, cradling the statue in her palms. “Thank you very much—I couldn’t possibly accept it.” She didn’t hand it back, though.
“But I insisst. You must have her—I knew it as soon as I saw you. She is a bodhissattva—an earthly guide to Nirvana in the Buddhist faith; to you, a kind of guardian angel.”
Reuben groaned and sank lower.
“She is very old, from the Tang dynasty. Much older than this tiger of which you speak, Mr. Smith, and—forgive me for being crasss,” he apologized to Grace with another bow, “much more valuable. I am a wealthy man, it’s no ssecret. My art collection is, permit me to say, extremely fine. The piece you claim to have is only a Ming bauble, and so I am at a losss. Why would I pay the ridiculous amount you suggest, even if I were in possession of the rest of the collection?”
Reuben blew a smoke ring at the ceiling. “Well, I don’t know, Mark, it’s your obsession, not mine. The only reason I can think of is because some rich Ming guy got himsel
f buried with this bauble, and that warms your peculiar little heart.”
The only sign of rage was the flush on his sallow cheeks and the fleet, serpentine dart of his tongue over his thin lips. He stayed motionless for ten seconds, then pivoted with the grace of a dancer and moved leisurely back to the window. There he took up a pose, hands in his trouser pockets, one ankle crossed negligently over the other, head back against the wall. The. confident San Francisco businessman—except that he had white hair down to his elbows, and all the warmth of a rattlesnake in his dead black eyes.
Deliberately, Reuben waited. Just as Wing opened his mouth to speak, he cut him off. “My sister and I didn’t come here to haggle or negotiate. The price is ten thousand, period. Take it or leave it, and don’t waste our time.” He took out his watch and flipped it open. “It’s up to you. We’ve got an appointment in thirty minutes with another potential customer.” He snapped the watch closed and drummed his fingers on the chair arm.
Through stiff-lips, Wing managed to say, “Do you have the tiger with you now?”
Reuben laughed rudely. “That’s a joke, right?”
“How do I even know you have it?”
“You don’t.”
His cheeks were mottled, his hands balled into bony fists in his pockets. He was too angry to speak, and Reuben decided he’d pushed him far enough.
“As you say, you’re a wealthy man,” he said placatingly; “ten thousand’s nothing to you. Then too, what good is your zodiacal calendar if it’s got a year missing? Think what a shame it would be if you botched up your one chance to complete the set, Mark, just because you and I can’t stand each other.”
Wing had himself under control again, the reptilian smile back in place. “What you say is sensible, Mr. Ssmith. I find that, on second thought, I am agreeable to your terms.”
“The statue for ten thousand?”
“Just so.”
“When?”
“Tomorrow.”
“Good.” Hiding his jubilation, Reuben put his hands on his knees and started to get up.
Crooked Hearts Page 16
