Crooked Hearts

by Patricia Gaffney

  She had never exposed herself to anyone to such an intense degree before—physically, of course, but even more, emotionally. It was as though she’d taken off her skin along with her clothes, and shown Reuben her raw nerves, her stark-naked neediness. And he’d saved her. How easily the situation could have turned ugly, or foolish, or degrading. But he’d made it all right; perfect, in fact. Was that when she’d begun to fall in love with him? Maybe. Oh, but last night … last night she’d taken the real plunge, and landed at the bottom in a hopeless, helpless heap. She was a goner.

  Who knew lovemaking could be like that? It never had been for her, not even with Reuben. The fire had still been there, but they’d banked it for long, slow hours, touching each other with a different sensibility. Tenderness that’s what it was, so unbearably sweet sometimes that she’d wept. The hot desire they knew best hadn’t come until the end, but then it had burned them to ashes. And every kiss, every soft, murmured word, had added a link to the thick chain that bound her to him.

  Reuben, Reuben, Reuben. She leaned close, aiming her thoughts directly at his left temple. Why can’t you fall in love with me, too? Weren’t we made for each other?

  In bed he told her she was beautiful, she drove him wild, he was dying, he was crazy for her—but never a word about love. If she could trust only her senses, she might believe he loved her anyway, because of the way he touched her. Before last night she’d never dreamed there could be gentleness and generosity like that between two people, never imagined such sweetness could exist without embarrassment, without the sheepish need to make it into a bit of a joke. But it still wasn’t love, not for him. Reuben had strong passions and an affectionate nature; he thought of her as his friend and he liked sleeping with her, but he wasn’t in love with her.

  He wanted to see the world and live on a ranchero, drinking champagne with his feet up. He wanted children.

  Her throat swelled; the old familiar ache throbbed in her chest. She wanted him to be happy, truly she did, but oh, if only he could love her! Was it because he didn’t trust her? She didn’t trust him either, but that hadn’t stopped her. One of her worst daydreams was that she ran away with him after bilking Wing out of thousands of dollars, and one morning, in Caracas or Paris or Timbuktu, she woke up to find him gone, and all the money with him.

  “Would you do that?” she wondered, leaning close to whisper in his ear. “Would you?” No answer.

  Sighing, she kissed him for the last time, and slipped out of bed. Faint sounds from outside the window said the world was waking up. Time to steal back across the hall to her own room. She found her nightgown in a trampled ball on the floor; while she put it on, she thought of all the lovely things Reuben had said to her last night when he’d taken it off. And before that, the look on his face when he’d answered her shy tap at his door—so glad, so … joyful. Rubbing her arms, she tiptoed back to the bed. The temptation to wake him rose again, stronger than before—but no; he was sleeping so soundly. It would be wrong.

  If only she could stop time right here, right now in this dim, neither-nor hour between night and day. So far, they hadn’t spoken a word to each other about the future, or what would happen between them once their business with Wing was finished. It was easy to imagine Reuben giving her one of his killer grins and saying, “Well, Gus, it’s been fun.” A good-bye kiss, a sexy, teasing squeeze. And he’d walk away. Oh, it was too easy to imagine that scene.

  They might not have a future, but they still had a present.

  “Reuben,” she murmured. No response; he slept on like a dead man. What a shame to wake him. She leaned over and kissed him on the lips, trailing her fingers down to the small of his back. His eyebrows twitched. She rubbed her mouth softly across his lips, taking tiny nips, feeling his warm breath on her cheek. His breathing changed; she felt the subtle shift to wakefulness under her hand as she stroked the silky smooth skin of his back.

  “Gus,” he mumbled, opening one eye.

  “I’m sorry,” she lied, voice contrite, “I didn’t mean to wake you. I just wanted to kiss you good-bye.”

  “What time is it? You don’t have to go yet.”

  “I should.”

  “What time is it?”

  “Still early, but—”

  “Don’t go. Stay a little longer.”

  She pretended to consider while he pulled on her elbow and made her sit down beside him. He took her hand and pressed it to his chest, palm down, right over his heart; his soft, sleepy smile was irresistible.

  “Well, okay,” she conceded, with a sigh that said this was against her better judgment. She put her arms around him. “But just for a minute.”

  “A minute?”

  For a man who’d been asleep thirty seconds ago, he moved fast; she was naked, in his arms, and under the covers before she could say boo how doy. “Or so.” She grinned up at him, already breathless.

  The Red Duck was a big, dark, nondescript alehouse on the eastern outskirts of Chinatown—neutral territory, since its clientele ran roughly fifty-fifty, Caucasian to Chinese. Grace had no doubt that she and Reuben had raced by it any number of times the night they’d spent fleeing from the Godfather’s hatchet men. The prospect of seeing Wing again disturbed and demoralized her, but she’d spent the last day and a half hiding her nervousness out of a fear that if he fully understood it, Reuben might cancel everything, and it was much too late for that. Sitting beside him at a scarred, gin-soaked table in a dark corner of the Red Duck, she took furtive opportunities to touch him, just her shoulder against his or a soft hand on his wrist, to keep up her courage.

  Across the table, Doc Slaughter signaled the waiter for another rum, which he was drinking with a beer chaser. Reuben sipped a weak whiskey and water. Grace had elected to have nothing, figuring she’d need all her wits when Wing arrived; but as the minutes stretched and her nerves tightened, she began to regret that decision.

  “He’s here,” Doc said quietly. With an effort, she didn’t spin around; she forced her shoulders to relax, and loosened the grip she had on the edge of the table. “He’s got three bodyguards,” Doc continued. “One’s coming over.”

  With dismay but no surprise, she looked up at Tom Fun, the Godfather’s Chief Swordsman. He bowed. His ugly, pockmarked face was completely expressionless, so it must’ve been his hooded eyes that radiated the hostility.

  “Hey, Tom,” Reuben said amiably. “Care to sit down? Oh—sorry, I forgot.”

  The hatchet man’s sallow complexion pinkened and his scar turned crimson. “Who is this man?” he said through his teeth. “You were told to come alone. Kai Yee will not sit with a stranger.”

  “Well, you tell him this gentleman is Dr. Hayes, and he’s an integral part of the business opportunity we’ve come to discuss.”

  Tom Fun bared his eyeteeth and made scary flexing movements with his right hand. Grace’s grip on Reuben’s elbow tightened in a warning, but the Chief Swordsman turned away without a word and walked, stiff-legged, back to his master.

  “Reuben,” she hissed, “he’s going to cut your ears off if you don’t stop teasing him!”

  “I can’t help it, the guy rubs me the wrong way.”

  A moment later, Wing glided up. He stood beside the table quietly, expectantly, as if waiting for them to stand up and bow. Nobody moved. Grace could hardly look at him, so suave in his sober brown coat and tan trousers, his long white hair tied back tonight with a silk ribbon. His languid elegance was obscene to her now. She remembered too well the silky soft touch of his hands on her bare skin, and the stench of his breath. The gurgling sound of opium cooking at the end of a long pipe. She shuddered.

  He took the chair at the end of the table, on her right. “Thiss is an unexpected pleasure,” he said very softly. “It seems such a long time since lasst we met.”

  As usual, he looked only at her. His avidity made her skin crawl. Rather than cower, she lifted her chin and stared straight back at him. She couldn’t prevent the flare of her nost
rils, though, or the slight curl of her lip. “Really? It seems like only yesterday to me.” She loathed his smile; there was nothing behind it but corruption. How had she ever, even for a second, found him good-looking?

  Reuben shifted against her; she could feel the tension in him, and the restless, hair-trigger anger.

  Finally Wing looked at him. “Your messenger spoke of a bissness proposition,” he said neutrally. “Since I am a bissy man, p’raps you will come to the point directly.”

  Reuben folded his arms. “Well, that’s Western of you,” he drawled, insulting him on purpose. “Okay, I’ll be direct. We do have a business proposition. I won’t say we weren’t a little peeved with you after our last encounter, but—”

  “Peeved?”

  “Yeah, you know, pissed off. You did steal our tiger, after all—”

  “My tiger.”

  “—and you took a few liberties with my sister that weren’t very sporting. Not what we fan kwei would call gentlemanly, you know what I mean?”

  Wing kept his lips pursed and didn’t answer.

  “But in spite of that, we’re willing to let bygones be bygones, in a spirit of cooperation and forgiveness. Why? Because that’s the American way, and also because if we work together we can all get rich.”

  The Godfather spread his hands. “But I am already rich.”

  “Right, but you won’t be for much longer. Not without the help of some entrepreneurial white devils.”

  Grace could feel Wing’s enmity like heat from an iron; if anything, he hated Reuben even more than Tom Fun did. He turned a jade ring around on his pinky finger and said calmly, “In what way can you be of serviss to me?”

  “You’ve got the question backwards,” said Reuben. “Ever heard of the Burlingame treaty?”

  Wing lowered his eyes, but not before something flickered in their obsidian depths. Grace felt a premonitory flutter of triumph, and beat it back superstitiously; it was way too early to celebrate. “Perhapss,” he said softly.

  “Good, that saves time. Then you know as well as I do that your days as an opium boss in Chinatown are over unless you find a middleman to take delivery of the stuff for you. A Caucasian middleman.”

  Unexpectedly, the Godfather laughed. “You are absurd, Mr. Smith, as well as a thief and a scoundrel. The customs officials would never permit you to import opium. Under your country’s new law, it can only be sold to drug and medical-supply companies.”

  “That’s true. Are you personally acquainted with the heads of any drug and pharmaceutical companies?”

  Wing stared back stonily. “It is a problem on which I am currently working.”

  “Well, that’s good, but listen, Mark: it’s a problem on which we’ve already worked. Where are my manners? Mark Wing—alias the Godfather, alias Mother, alias Ah Mah, alias who knows what all—meet Jonathan Hayes. That’s Dr. Jonathan Hayes, M.D.”

  The two men eyed each other without moving or speaking.

  “So much for manners.” Reuben took a sip of his drink.

  “Am I to unnerstand that you represent a drug company, Dr. Haiss?” Wing asked finally. He was interested, Grace could tell, but not willing to show it. This was a poker game, and everybody was bluffing.

  “Not exactly.” Doc’s bass voice rumbled up from his scrawny chest as if from inside a deep, dark cave. He reached into his coat, and Wing tensed slightly until Doc brought out a packet of folded papers. “But with these, I could convince the agents of the San Francisco Customs House that I do.”

  Wing’s long-fingered hands opened the papers, his fingertips touching only the corners as he studied them—an annoying affectation, Grace decided. One of the forms, she knew, was a certificate of incorporation, which, along with a couple of other miscellaneous documents, validated the lawful existence of Hayes Pharmaceutical Company. There was also a Customs Service drug import license, beautifully forged, and a so-far unexecuted sales agreement between Mark Wing and Hayes Pharmaceuticals for the purchase of twenty-five thousand, four hundred sixty-six pounds of opium at a price of ninety thousand, two hundred dollars.

  Wing’s eyes narrowed when he came to the sales agreement. “You have been very thorough,” he noted. It was clear their thoroughness didn’t please him. He must find it galling to learn that—thanks to Ah You’s cousin—they knew he had ninety thousand dollars’ worth of opium sitting in a harbor warehouse, utterly useless to him unless he accepted their offer.

  Long minutes passed. At last Wing looked up and asked in a monotone, “How much do you want?”

  “Half,” Reuben stipulated.

  Wing blew a little puff of air through his nose in derision. “This is a pointless conversation.” But he didn’t get up.

  “Half for us is better than nothing for you. Of course, if you’re not interested, I’m sure any number of others would be. The leader of the Hip Sing tong, for example. Or Mr. Low Yet of the Chee Kong.”

  Wing stiffened, then sneered. “I do not need your help, Mr. Smith. There are other ways to obtain the product I need for my bissness.”

  “You mean smuggle it in?”

  “There are many who do. To avoid the tariff.”

  “True, but why take the risk? With us you can do it legally. Well,” he smiled, “almost legally. The customs people only care about collecting their duties; after the stuff is in, taxed, and warehoused, they don’t pay any attention to what the purchaser does with it. That keeps you out of the circle, see? You’re invisible. But if you smuggled it in and got caught, they’d deport you. Last I heard, that wouldn’t be such a good deal for you. What was it?” He scratched his head, trying to remember. “Something about a celestial lamp?”

  Wing’s flat nostrils flared, but he waved his hand dismissively. “Do not try to frighten me, Mr. Ssmith. You only make yourself foolish.”

  Reuben had told her, as usual, to keep quiet and let him do the talking, but Grace was tired of sitting there like a bump on a log. “It might be helpful to look at the situation in a broader context, Mr. Wing,” she said politely, even though the sight of his face, softening with sudden tenderness as he turned toward her, made her feel sick. “I can see years of profitability ahead if we all try to think of this as only a first step in a long and mutually satisfying business arrangement.” In other words, don’t look at my hand, look at my face while I palm this card.

  “How so?” he asked mellifluously.

  “Well, I’m sure I don’t have to tell you that in this country we don’t always live up to our democratic ideals, especially in the way we treat people who weren’t born here. Or whose skin isn’t the same color as ours.”

  “No, Miss Ssmith,” he said, eerily quiet, “you don’t have to tell me that.”

  “And that puts you, as a shrewd and dynamic entrepreneur, at an unfair disadvantage. You’ve succeeded brilliantly in the carefully defined area where society has allowed you full expression of your talents—but why should you have to stop there? It’s unfair and it ought to be illegal, but the sad fact is, if you want to extend your empire beyond the narrow boundaries of Chinatown, you’ll need representatives to act on your behalf.”

  She folded her hands. “So we’re proposing a partnership. Think of it as a corporation in which you’re the majority stockholder. We’re your surrogates in the places where you can’t go. The trade we’re offering is your financial backing for our skin color and expertise, and the first transaction will be a test of our skill and good faith.”

  “You intrigue me, Miss Ssmith.” It was the truth: he was practically drooling on her. She had to look away. “Forgive me,” he said, turning to Doc, “but are you really a doctor?”

  “Of course. I’ve been a doctor for twenty-two years.”

  “Do you have a medical specialty?”

  “No, I’m a generalise”

  “Ah, a generalist. Where do you practice?”

  Doc gave him his crummy Balance Street address.

  Wing’s lips thinned derisively. “Then you do
have a sspecialty,” he corrected. “In knife wounds and abortions.”

  Doc didn’t reply. His hands shook ever so slightly as he downed another rum shooter. The grotesque scar on the left side of his face was shadowed but still visible. She knew him to be a fastidious man, but he’d nicked himself shaving this morning, and he’d put on yesterday’s shirt—two small touches that were all the more convincing because of their subtlety.

  “So,” said Reuben, breaking the nasty silence. “Here’s what we have in mind. You’ve got a few tons of opium stashed in a warehouse that all of a sudden you can’t touch. If you want to stay in business, you need to sell it to somebody who looks legitimate, and who’ll sell it back to you as soon as nobody’s looking. That’s us. So what you do is deposit ninety thousand dollars into the special account Doc Hayes here is going to open. In cash—it’ll have to be in cash; you can’t have any traceable connection to it, to protect yourself.” Grace kept her eyes lowered, knowing this was the one absolutely vital element in the plan, and that to look up might betray her anxiety. “Doc writes a promissory note on the account made out to you,” Reuben continued. “You sign the sales agreement, and he takes it to the customs office along with the note when he goes to pay duty and take delivery of what’s now Hayes Pharmaceuticals’ shipment of medical supplies. They’ll think you sold it to him. It’s delivered, all nice and legal, to the Hayes warehouse—Where’s that warehouse again, Doc?”

  “Second Street, a block from the China Basin.”

  “Right. After a suitable length of time—say an hour or so, ha-ha—you get your people to transfer the stuff to wherever it is you store it in Chinatown. And for this swift, untraceable service, all we’re asking is half the wholesale cost of the merchandise. Forty-five thousand, up front and in cash.”

  Grace’s folded hands tightened on the table. Wherever it is you store it in Chinatown. For the first time since that awful night in Wing’s house, she thought of the wooden chests she’d seen the workmen shoving around in his basement. He stored his opium right in his own house! She couldn’t wait to tell Reuben. “Prepossterous,” Wing whispered, but she had a feeling he was stalling for time, weighing the pros and cons in his mind.