“I attach a condition, however. A small one. Of no importance to you, but absolutely essential to me.”
Reuben sank back in his chair, steepling his fingers against his chin. “I’m listening,” he said warily. Wing’s smile got weirder by the minute, and it was getting on his nerves.
“Miss Smith must bring the tiger. And she must come alone.”
“No.” He was on his feet, shaking his head, before Wing finished the first sentence. “Out of the question. Absolutely not, no way in—”
“Then we have no bargain.”
“Fine, then we have no bargain. It’s been nice—”
“Don’t be silly, Algernon, of course we accept Mr. Wing’s condition.”
“The hell we do. I’m telling you, Gus—”
She rose and went past him toward Wing, who was still lounging against the wall. When she stopped in front of him, a look of wonder erased the subtle antagonism in his face. She held out both hands, but he was too stunned to react; when his wits came back, he reached out as if she were handing him the keys to heaven. Or Nirvana. “It’s a deal, Mr. Wing,” she said in a low voice, holding his penetrating gaze.
“Tomorrow evening at nine?” he whispered.
“Yess.”
Was she mimicking him? Reuben felt torn between amusement and outrage. “Hold it. Hold on one damn minute. She’s not coming by herself. Not at night, not at any time, and that’s—”
“Until tomorrow,” Grace murmured, sultry and oblivious. Wing hadn’t heard a word he’d said either. Reuben watched, open-mouthed, as they squeezed each other’s hands and drifted apart. “Coming, Algernon?” She glided by him into the white corridor. The tiny servant must have been lurking by the door; she bowed to Grace and walked away. Grace followed, calling, “Algie?” over her shoulder.
Stymied, he glared at Wing. The Godfather hadn’t recovered yet; he was still grinning a big, stupid grin, like a man realizing his river card gave him a belly-buster straight. “Forget it, she’s not coming,” Reuben threw at him, and stalked out of the room. The last thing he noticed was the bronze bodhisattva on the table by Grace’s chair. Priceless, for all he knew. She hadn’t taken it, and he was glad.
Glad? Glad? He hurried after her, primed for a fight.
10
That there is a devil is a thing doubted by none but such as are under the influence of the devil.
—Cotton Mather
“ARE YOU STARTING UP again? Reuben, my throat’s sore from arguing with you. I’m going in, by myself, right now.”
Although he was close enough to touch her, he could barely see her through the fog. Across the street from where they were standing, nothing but a wavering pool of yellow light marked the door to No. 722. The sidewalk was muffled in damp silence. Occasionally a cloudy human form loomed out of the wet mist and disappeared back into it, quiet as smoke.
“I don’t want you going in there alone.” His own voice sounded strange, almost disembodied. Also hoarse from arguing, which they’d been doing for the better part of the last twenty-eight hours.
Grace stamped her foot on the wet pavement. “You told me yourself they only hurt each other. You said no matter how vicious the tongs are, they never do anything to white people, they keep the violence inside their own quarter and never—”
“I said usually.” The urge to stuff his handkerchief in her mouth had never been stronger. “This tong’s already broken the rules by holding up a Wells Fargo stage and terrorizing the passengers. Wing isn’t playing with a full deck, Gus, so we can’t predict what he’ll do.”
“He wants the statue,” she countered stubbornly. “That’s one thing we can predict.”
“Not as much as he wants you.” They always came back to that. For the life of him, Reuben couldn’t understand why that didn’t end the argument, with him the hands-down winner. But she treated his best, most salient debate point as if it was some whiny, childish irrelevancy.
“Oh, for Pete’s sake, Reuben. Wing might be a little unhinged, and I’ll admit he does seem to have a yen for me—” She broke off to nudge him in the ribs, trying to make him laugh. He didn’t. She sighed. “I’m a big girl, I can take care of myself. Wing doesn’t frighten me—I’ve handled plenty of men much scarier than the Godfather.”
“Oh, I’ll bet you have,” he snapped before he could stop himself. She went stiff as a poker. “Damn it, Grace, is that supposed to make me feel better?”
“I couldn’t care less how it makes you feel,” she said icily. “I’m going in, and you can’t stop me.”
“The hell I can’t.” They glared at each other through the mist. As usual, they weren’t getting anywhere.
“Look,” she said after a minute, stiff-lipped but trying to sound placating, “we’ve been through this a hundred times. He won’t give us the money unless I go in by myself and get it. Nothing will happen to me. He’ll flirt a little, I’ll be nice to him, he’ll hand over the money, I’ll leave. Give me one hour—”
“Half an hour.” He couldn’t stand the thought of Grace being nice to Wing for a whole hour.
“No, an hour,” she insisted. “It’s not likely that I’ll need it, but I want the extra time just in case. Along with everything else, I don’t want to have to worry about you charging in at the wrong minute to rescue me.”
He hated it, but he finally said, “All right,” through his teeth.
She sighed, and lost a little of her combative posture. “Good.” She looked over her shoulder at Wing’s house. “Do you have the gun?”
He patted his coat pocket.
“You won’t need it, of course. But just in case, remember—it only fires two shots, and it’s no good beyond about six feet.”
“I’ll remember,” he said grimly. “And you’ve got the tiger?”
She patted the purse under her arm.
“Okay.”
“Okay. Well. Guess I’d better go.”
“Yeah.”
But she didn’t move. Did she want him to touch her? He wanted to—but he was afraid if he did, he wouldn’t let go. He’d drag her all the way home and kiss ten thousand dollars good-bye.
At the last second, he reached for her anyway. She was in the act of turning away; his hand brushed her shoulder blade clumsily, as if he were patting her on the back. She muttered something and kept going. In seconds the fog swallowed her.
She reappeared in the pool of light across the street. He saw her lift the dragon knocker and let it fall, but the thick mist pillowed the sound; he could barely hear it. The heavy door swung open.
“This is crazy.”
He said it out loud, and the truth of it had him moving toward the house at a jog, stumbling once over some invisible obstruction in the road. He was stepping up on the opposite curb when Grace vanished through the door. It closed behind her with a muted, final-sounding thud, and Reuben pounded to a halt. Even from here, the entrance to the house was hardly discernible, swaddled in the chilly, dripping, shifting mist. Yesterday he’d joked to Wing’s servant about a moat, and now the fog made one; the illusion of impregnability was persuasive, and it kept him planted where he was. Kept him from storming the castle.
He streaked his hands through his wet hair. Maybe he was acting like the worried old maid Grace had been calling him all afternoon. He moved toward the street lamp on the near side of the Beckett Street corner; taking a position against the damp wall of an anonymous, unlit building, a foot or two beyond the weak circle of light the street lamp cast, he waited.
And waited. It was too dark here to read his watch. How the hell was he supposed to know when an hour was up? The hell with that anyway, he’d knock on Wing’s door any damn time he felt like it. Like now, for instance. The fog and the quiet were stretching his nerves. He decided to reconnoiter.
An alley ran between Beckett and Kearny streets; the back of Wing’s fortress of a house must face on it. He wished he’d worn shoes instead of boots, so he wouldn’t make so damn much noise when he
walked. Beckett Street was deserted, but in the alley a rat party was in progress. The lure must be the rotting garbage he could smell all around him.
Moving east, he stopped when he calculated he was looking up at the mesh of windows and fire escapes at the back of Wing’s building. Where would the Godfather entertain Miss Smith? He peered hard at the lighted windows, but most of them were curtained, and the ones that weren’t were empty.
To his left was another three-story building, and every one of its windows was lit up, although most were covered with thin, discreet shades. With a start, Reuben realized it was Wing’s brothel. The House of Celestial Peace and Fulfillment.
While he watched, the figure of a woman passed a third-floor window of the whorehouse, reappearing an instant later in an adjacent window of Wing’s house. It took him a second to register the significance. They connected! “Very convenient,” Doc had labeled the proximity of the two buildings. Wait until Reuben told him how convenient. He was shaking his head in amused disgust when a noise behind him made him freeze. A rat, probably, or maybe a cat, since it was louder than—
Sparks ignited in front of his eyes, in time with a resounding fwack and an excruciating thud against his left temple. The ground coming up didn’t hurt; a black pillow cushioned his fall. Nothing. Zero.
“Careful, these stairs are sometimes a trifle sslippery.”
Not half as sslipery as you, thought Grace, avoiding Wing’s helping hand by pretending not to see it. How the hell had she gotten herself into this predicament? The deal was done: he had the tiger and she had the money, all ten thousand of it, safely tucked away in her pocketbook. It was time to go home, not take a tour of the catacombs.
But Wing had been so insistent, so persuasive. He’d offered a toast with sam shu—Chinese brandy—to the successful conclusion of their “bissness affair,” and invited her to have a look at his art collection. Right around then he’d started calling her “thee” and “thou,” speaking of “thy gracious goodness,” and how she couldn’t deny him the pleasure of showing off a few trifles from his humble little museum. It would give him so much pleasure, especially since he rarely had an opportunity to show the collection to anyone, “for reasons I’m certain I don’t have to explain to you, Miss Ssmith.” Meaning he’d stolen it, she assumed. The honor of being taken into the Godfather’s confidence was a dubious one, particularly when all she could think about was getting out of here, flying home with Reuben, and celebrating their incredible windfall. But she had to admit she was curious about Wing’s art collection. “Then too, surely you are anxious to see the tiger sculpture back among its fellows at lasst? Come, it will take but a moment, and I promise you shall be amply rewarded for your time.” An intriguing invitation, but he’d left out one little detail: the collection was in his basement.
So here she was in the damp, drafty, not very clean cellar, moving down a narrow stone corridor, trying not to touch the sooty wall on her right or the swinging arm of her peculiar host on her left. At a turn in the corridor, a door stood half open. She caught a glimpse of two men laboring inside, pushing wooden casks around and stacking them against the walls. Wing’s firm hand on her elbow got her moving again, at the same instant she remembered when and where she’d seen wooden chests just like those: three nights ago, on the sidewalk outside the opium parlor, being loaded through a trapdoor into the cellar. Did that mean Wing stored the drug for his own dens right here? Right in his own basement?
They came to a closed door, illuminated by a shuttered lantern hanging from the ceiling. Wing withdrew a key from the pocket of his conservative black frock coat, unlocked the door, and threw it open.
“Oh, my,” Grace breathed, a reaction that seemed to please him immensely.
He spread out his arms. “Thiss—thiss is my gallery,” he said, his creepy whisper echoing strangely in the enormous room. “Welcome, Miss Ssmith.” His voice went even lower; he clasped his hands and screwed up his face, like a hungry beggar. “Or … Augustine? May I call thee Augustine?”
“Sure,” she said, distracted.
He crossed his wrists over his heart and bowed low. “My thanks,” he whispered fervently.
“Don’t mention it.” She turned away from his unnerving ardor to gaze around the room. It really was a gallery, as high, wide, and opulently furnished as any of the exhibition rooms she’d seen in the San Francisco Museum of Art. The walls were of dark oak paneling, not damp stone; the carpet on the floor was a thick, breathtaking Oriental; discreet gas lights on the walls and ceiling created the illusion of natural light. Even the air was sweeter here than in the musty basement corridor they’d just left. Watercolor paintings, scrolls, and silk screens covered three of the paneled walls, and long glass cases full of sculpture and ceramics lined the fourth. A sound like plucked harp strings was coming from behind a tall painted screen. Grace sent Wing a questioning glance. “For thy enjoyment,” he simpered, with another theatrical hand wave. Stepping sideways, she saw that behind the screen sat a young girl in a red satin gown, playing a pear-shaped instrument vaguely resembling a lute. If this was a seduction, it was having the opposite effect on Grace, who had an almost overwhelming urge to giggle. Wouldn’t Reuben love this when she told him?
“Ah, you are drawn to the paintings, I see.” He sidled closer, and she realized she was staring at a watercolor drawing of a robed man with a long goatee and a topknot. “As works of art, paintings satisfy the Western aesthetic more readily than sculpture or ceramics, do you agree? That is a portrait of Li Po, our greatest poet. It’s not very old, only five hundred years or so. Liang K’ai is believed to be the artist.”
“One of my favorites.”
“Indeed?” He looked charmed. “Thiss, Augustine.” He moved to a bust on a pedestal in the middle of the room. “She is also a bodisattva—an angel, if you will, of mercy and kindness. The phissical resemblance is not as marked as with the small statue I offered thee yessterday,” he said with gentle reproach, “but the spirit of selflessness and generossity is the same. Dost thou not see it?”
“You bet.” What was this “Dost thou not” business?
He pulled something from his pocket. “Take this.”
She reached out automatically. “What is it?”
“A simple piece of jade. Touch it, Augustine. The purity of the form, its cool smoothness, the extreme simplissity—they lift the soul in a kind of ecstasy, beyond the world of appearances. Do you feel it? Do you know that you and I are the same?”
“Beg pardon?”
“The universal essence, the oneness, the unity of all things. Within the One, differences are only illusions of the senses. Thou, Augustine, and I: we are one and the same.”
She dropped the lump of jade back into his palm. “That’s an interesting philosophy, Mr. Wing. I’ll give it some thought, but right now I think I’d better be running along.”
He hung his head. Heavy white hair slithered over his shoulders, curtaining the sides of his face. The plunking music stopped; Grace heard rustling behind the screen, and a moment later the girl in the red dress came toward them, bearing an ebony tray. Two lotus-shaped bowls full of some dark red liquid rested on the tray. Wing took one of the bowls and handed it to Grace—”Oh, no, one’s my limit,” she tried to say, but he pressed it into her hands firmly—and took the other for himself. The servant bowed and retreated behind the screen.
“Thiss is my final oblation,” Wing hissed sorrowfully. “I fear thou and I shall never meet again.” He raised his cup to her, a sad, beseeching look in his eyes.
I’ll drink to that, thought Grace, and downed hers in three swallows. The cool, sweet liquid was delicious, and tasted more like fruit than alcohol—which she guessed meant Wing had given up on seducing her. He had his peculiarities, no doubt about that, but he also had some undeniable good points. Generosity, for example. And let’s not forget urbanity. He wasn’t all that bad to look at, either. She smiled to herself, thinking he was starting to sound like one of Reuben�
��s wines—”Suave and attractive, with a big heart.”
“Hm?” Wing intoned, moving in closer.
Good Lord, had she said that out loud? This,” she clarified hastily, waving her lotus leaf at him. “What is it?”
“Rice wine.”
“Really?”
“In China we have an expression—to drink rice wine together. It means to become friends. Companions.”
“Sweet.” She looked around for a place to set the empty bowl, but couldn’t see one. “Well, guess I better be going now. My brother’ll be wondering what’s keeping me.”
Wing’s thin lips compressed. “He is very devoted to thee.”
“Who, Algernon? Oh, yeah, very.” Still carrying her bowl, she let him take her arm and escort her out of the gallery and into the damp, drafty corridor.
They turned right where she could’ve sworn they were supposed to turn left, and a few feet later they stopped in front of a door she knew she hadn’t seen before. Wing pointed to painted Chinese writing above the door, then translated it for her with his lips close to her ear: “The Realm of Eternal Life.”
“Sounds nice. Gotta go.”
His flat hand between her shoulder blades prevented her from backing up. “A moment only. So important.”
“No, really.”
“Plees.”
“I’m already—”
He reached past her and pushed open the door. The fact that there were lights and people inside lessened her trepidation. When Wing motioned her over the threshold, she shrugged and stepped inside.
Two men in rough work clothes were kneeling at the base of a gigantic stone rectangle, hollow inside, applying gold paint to tiles inlaid around the arched entrance. More men were busy inside the rectangle, a sort of squat, windowless building, with trowels and plaster. “What are they making?” she asked.
Wing’s black eyes, usually somber and flat, shone like polished coal. “They are making my tomb.”
“Oh, your tomb.” She stopped nodding abruptly. “Your tomb?”
Crooked Hearts Page 17
