Then he let her go, grinning his cocky grin. “So long, Gus, it’s been fun. See you in church,” he said with a wink.
Wing looked murderous. Ignoring the danger, Reuben put a loose, heavy arm around his shoulders, turning him. “So, Mark, what’s to do at your house? You don’t play poker, do you? Is your cook any good? I’m starved, by the way. Say, do you know any nice girls? I’m really …”
The rest was lost as the door to the Red Duck closed behind them.
20
In olden times, sacrifices were made at the altar—a custom which is still continued.
—Helen Rowland
THE GODFATHER’S IDEA OF hospitality was to keep Reuben locked in his room, feed him well, and send him a whore every night. He welcomed the whores; at least they talked to him and kept him apprised of world events (the world consisting of two connecting buildings on Jackson Street), but for the rest, he might as well have been in solitary confinement. He hated it, and complained loudly and often, for all the good it did him, to the impassive hatchet son on the other side of the door. With cold, contemptuous courtesy, the guard would listen to his complaints, bow, close the door in his face, and relock it. Reuben might’ve pressed the issue harder if not for the unsheathed bowie knife in the guard’s belt.
What he hated most about his imprisonment was all the time it gave him to contemplate how completely and spectacularly he’d botched this swindle. Manfully resisting the temptation to shuffle all the blame onto Henry, whose brainchild it had been, he had hours to own up to the truth that he’d behaved exactly like one of his own victims by letting greed cloud his judgment. “A mental thimble trick,” he’d called it. “He won’t see the one-time dodge going on right under his nose.” How embarrassing. A clearer case of wishful thinking motivated by avarice and revenge he’d never seen.
On the third night of his captivity, a Thursday night, he sat up in bed and stubbed out his second-to-last cheroot. His room was large and lush, with a peculiar mix of Oriental and Occidental furnishings—Venetian blinds on the windows and a dragon frieze below the plaster cornice; a homey hooked rug on the floor and painted storks and water lilies on the ceiling. Books and magazines were plentiful, but he was sick of reading. The clock on the mantel struck midnight. The house was finally quiet.
Out of the debacle, he could discern only one good thing, that Grace was out of it and at least temporarily free of Wing’s clutches. But she was coming back, because she had some half-baked plan that would save the day if it worked and get them all killed if it didn’t. But what the hell was the plan? The wedding was definitely on; he knew that much because Wing had paid a visit to his opulent prison cell this evening to tell him the opium transfer had gone off without a hitch this afternoon, and the blessed nuptials would commence tomorrow in the courtyard, weather permitting, at eleven A.M.
For two days, from his third-floor window, Reuben had had a good view of the preparations going on below, the cleaning, sweeping, and whitewashing, the extravagant decorating with potted trees, banks of flowers, hanging lanterns, tinsel, streamers, wreaths, and on and on. The colorful spectacle depressed the hell out of him. Henry was going to be the priest, and Wing had relented enough to allow one wedding guest: Doc Slaughter. What Reuben couldn’t figure out was the mechanics of the getaway, the “outlet,” in bunco lingo, after the ceremony was over. How were they going to escape with their skins still on, much less a hundred thousand dollars in their pockets? Granted he’d done a lousy amateur’s job of helping to plot the first scheme; it still drove him crazy that he had to cool his heels while Grace and Henry and Doc plotted the second one.
Lying in his arms that last night at the Claymore, Grace had made a shame-faced confession. The other thing she had against the scheme was that even if it succeeded, all Wing would lose was money, which he could easily afford. It wasn’t very Christian of her, but she couldn’t help it: she wanted something bad to happen to him.
At the time, he’d sympathized with the sentiment, but not enough to consider altering the plan they’d set in motion to accommodate it. But something had happened since then to change his mind.
The prostitute Wing had sent him tonight and last night was Toy Gun, the plain-faced little girl Reuben had terrorized with the derringer in the House of Celestial Peace and Fulfillment. Tonight, over a peculiar card game she’d taught him called foo-foo, she’d told him about her life in the brothel—not much, since she was still shy and distrustful, but enough to chill him. Her poor but reasonably happy childhood had been cut off abruptly at the age of fourteen when her parents had sold her to slavers in Hong Kong for two hundred dollars. But she’d sold on the barracoon for two thousand, she bragged with pathetic pride, and she’d been one of Kai Yee’s singsong girls ever since. How did she like her new life? he’d asked, and she’d shrugged her small shoulders. Was she ever mistreated? Oh, no. No one beat her? Oh, no. No? Well, sometimes, but only when she was bad. When was that? Oh, when she was lazy, when she didn’t please a customer, when she wasn’t respectful enough to her masters. Did Kai Yee ever beat her? She wouldn’t answer that; she’d paled and hidden her face, but not before he’d seen the stark fear in her eyes. She was tiny, demure, hardly bigger than a child; the thought of someone raising a hand against her—or a belt, or a whip—made him feel sick.
Would she leave if she could? he’d asked her. The adult stoicism in her little-girl face was heartbreaking. “Never go.” But if she could! “Never get away. Never.” She told him the story of Quee Ho, a sixteen-year-old singsong girl who had tried to run away from the house last year. Wing’s highbinders found her and beat her to death—accidentally, thereby bringing down the Godfather’s wrath on their own heads for destroying valuable property. Toy Gun knew other stories, of girls in other brothels who’d had their feet cut off for trying to escape, or their tongues cut out for telling lies. She’d never heard of anyone who’d successfully gotten away. “Never leave,” she repeated stolidly. “Never.”
Tonight, when it was time for her to go—Wing’s generosity didn’t extend to letting a working girl stay with a non-paying customer for longer than a few hours—she’d begged Reuben not to tell anyone that she hadn’t “pleased” him, that all they’d done was play cards. Why, he asked, because she’d be punished for it? She wouldn’t answer. “Don’t tell, okay?” she repeated, anxious. He gave her all the money he had, which wasn’t much, and said okay.
He was in sympathy with Grace now. He very much wanted something bad to happen to the Godfather.
He started again on his familiar pacing route—bed to window, window to door, door to bed. It reminded him of Grace pacing in the hotel room the day before the meeting at the Red Duck, glaring at him and Henry, saying, “Well, somebody’s got to worry about all the things that might go wrong!” The shoe was on the other foot tonight. She had a plan by now—she’d better have a plan—but what if Wing saw through it as easily as he had the last one? What if he didn’t believe Henry was a priest? What if he called the wedding off, forcibly evicted everybody but Grace, and had his way with her? He was already more than a little deranged; what if he went completely around the bend, killed everybody but Grace, and had his way with her?
Reuben stopped at the window in mid-circuit. No fog tonight. The courtyard below was dark and quiet, and empty except for the hatchet man on duty at the street door; from here it looked like his old pal, In Re. Only a few windows in the brothel were still lit, and whatever was going on behind them was going on silently. In the dark stillness, Reuben accidentally let his guard down. Just for a second he saw clearly the lurid picture his mind had been battling for two days—the picture of the Godfather bending over Grace on a bed. He saw his silk robes and white, slithery hair; smelled the sweet reek of opium; heard the soft slide of sallow skin over white. If Wing got his hands on her again, she’d be scared, no matter how many drugs the bastard gave her, how much dope he made her smoke.
Snarling, Reuben picked up a ceramic vase—priceless,
he hoped—and flung it at the door, where it smashed to bits with a loud, satisfying crash. Immediately the key turned in the lock and the door swung open. Reuben charged the shocked guard, who took one look at his face, jumped back, slammed the door, and locked it as fast as he could. Reuben kicked at the door until his toes ached, then limped back to the bed and set a match to his last cigar.
Wing was a fiend, and he would put his hands on Grace over Reuben’s dead body. His dead body. It was terrifying to realize that finally, at last, there was someone in the world he cared about more than himself. It seemed impossible; he’d have denied it, laughed at it, if the circumstances hadn’t gotten so dire that the truth was staring him in the face. But there it was. And even though it was terrifying, it was also exhilarating; wonderful, really, in a horrible kind of way. He lay on his back and blew two perfect smoke rings, wishing Grace was lying beside him so he could tell her the news. Painful, intense longing gripped him; he needed her now, right now, not just to touch her but to tell her what he was thinking.
But would he? If he did, it would be for the first time ever. Why was it so hard to say out loud the things he was feeling? Why couldn’t he even imagine himself saying to her, “Grace, I’m in love with you”? To say to her straight out, “I love your toughness, and how smart you are, the way you make me laugh. I never knew a woman with so much courage and guts. You’re so damn beautiful, sometimes it hurts to look at you, and when we make love I feel like I’ve got a soul. A soul, Gus”—How could he say those words to her? Even thinking them, lying here thinking them, was making his face turn red, he could feel it.
The last night at Willow Pond, before they’d all packed up and come to San Francisco, Ah You had given him a piece of advice. They’d met under somewhat awkward circumstances—in the dark hallway at dawn, as Reuben was sneaking back to his room from Grace’s. Ah You had looked like a convict in a black and white striped nightshirt.
“You know story about two stars, Mira and Hamel?” he’d asked without preamble. Used to his roundabout-parable style by now, Reuben had simply said no and waited. “They live in sky, Mira a fisherwoman, Hamel a cowboy. Fall in love, all happy, till Hamel quit doing cowboy duties and make God of Sky mad. God of Sky make Hamel mute for punishment.” Reuben yawned without covering his mouth, hoping to speed things along. “Now along come handsome fisherman name Didra, fall in love with Mira. All day, Didra say love words to Mira while poor Hamel watch, can’t talk. Mira give Didra big carp for present, go off together, love-love. Too late, Hamel make big scratch in sky with horseshoe, write, I LOVE MIRA. Too late—Mira already go. Too late. Sad, sad.”
The main thing that had bothered Reuben about Ah You’s tale was its lack of subtlety. He’d never known the pesky Chinaman to be so damn literal with his unsolicited hogwash. The other thing that had bothered him was how the hell Ah You could know so much about his private business, stuff he didn’t even know himself, or not for certain.
Well, he knew his own mind now. He could even wonder now why it came as such a big surprise to realize that he loved Grace. Hadn’t he broken a thirteen-year moratorium on truth for her sake? Nobody in the world except Grace knew he was a Ukrainian Jew from lower Manhattan—not that there was any shame in that; it just wasn’t the sort of thing that got a man very far here in the land of the free. He guessed it was ironic that he’d given his poor, inexperienced heart to a woman who was arguably even . more untrustworthy than he was, and unquestionably as big a liar. But there you were again. Hearts went where they would, and his was solidly in the hands of a larcenous, yellow-haired angel.
He’d never get a wink of sleep tonight, he thought as he extinguished his cheroot and blew out the candle stub by the bed. This was a night for worrying. He owed Grace that much, considering all the worrying she’d done and all the times he’d told her to relax, everything would be fine. “Trust me. We’re going to live happily ever after.” What insufferable arrogance. He’d make partial amends by staying awake tonight and worrying. It was the least he could do.
A good intention. But he was asleep before the clock struck one, dreaming of a happy ending.
“Lovely day for a wedding,” Doc Slaughter opined, hands in the pockets of his sober blue morning coat, gazing across the fragrant, flower-bedecked courtyard. The black-robed boo how doy standing around in whispering clusters looked like crows in an exotic garden. Armed crows: everybody sported one or more pointed, sharp-edged implements of destruction in his belt. Doc himself resembled a stork, Reuben thought; he’d never seen him in formal clothes before, but his long, gaunt frame took to them perfectly. Maybe even more than a stork, he looked like a prosperous undertaker.
Reuben was in black himself—he hoped not prophetically—and felt grateful to Doc for thinking to bring him some clean wedding duds. Wing hadn’t thought of it, and the clothes Reuben had been wearing since Tuesday had gotten a trifle ripe.
“I think the prostitutes are a nice touch,” he said to Doc, who nodded and glanced up at the singsong girls, gaping down at them from every window in the whorehouse. Reuben tried to spy Toy Gun among them, but couldn’t find her.
Behind him, Tom Fun cleared his throat. Reuben glanced back, and the hatchet man sent him an evil glare, ostentatiously fingering the ivory handle of his sword. If not for his ubiquitous presence, Reuben could’ve asked Doc what the hell was going on, what exactly the plan was. But Tom made sure they were never more than two or three feet away, so there was no opportunity.
“He looks radiant, doesn’t he?” Reuben said to the hatchet man, shrugging a shoulder in Wing’s direction. Tom Fun bared his teeth—predictably; it was so easy to get his goat, it wasn’t even fun anymore. But Reuben’s observation was the literal truth: the Godfather positively glowed with excitement and anticipation. His wedding attire was sober in the extreme, and Western to a fault. He wore a gray tweed frock coat and plain trousers, a dark waistcoat, high-collared white shirt, and a butterfly bow tie. He was saving himself, finery-wise, for the Chinese wedding following the Catholic ceremony, when he would don a bright orange Ming robe with a multicolored girdle and silver scimitar. (Reuben knew this from Toy Gun, who had gladly passed on all the wedding gossip she knew.) Right now the bridegroom looked stereotypically nervous; he was pacing, in fact, to and fro in front of a newly erected temple to Nu Wo, goddess of creation.
Reuben checked his watch: eleven-ten. The bride was late. For that matter, so was the priest. Beside the temple, a little band was tuning up. Reuben had heard them practicing on their cymbals, gongs, and drums yesterday. He hoped to God they wouldn’t start playing their unbelievably awful racket now; his nerves were shot already.
He couldn’t hear the knock, but the hatchet man on duty at the courtyard door leading to the street swung the big door open to admit a new arrival.
Reuben stared, blinked, and stared some more. If he hadn’t been expecting Henry, he’d never have recognized the balding, portly, red-nosed, patently Irish clergyman who bustled bowleggedly into the yard, staring around in a vaguely scandalized way at the milling hatchet men, the joss house, the tuning instrumentalists in the corner.
“Father O’Brien,” Wing exclaimed animatedly, coming toward him with outstretched hands.
Henry kept his disapproving air throughout the murmured greetings and introductions. Ignoring Tom Fun, Reuben went closer. Father O’Brien wore a black cassock and a white clerical collar; he carried a prayer book and a small black case with a handle. “Most irregular,” he was blustering to Wing, and something about having to waive the banns. He had a watch fob attached to the breast of his cassock; he made a show of checking the watch, and Reuben clearly heard him say, “Sure, and where’s the bride? I’ve got a major funeral across town at noon, I can’t be stayin’ here a second past eleven-tharty.” Wing said nervous, placating things, and checked his own watch.
Tom Fun put a warning hand on his shoulder, but Reuben shrugged it off and strode up to Father O’Brien. “Pleased to meet you, Father,” he
said, shaking hands. “I’m Algernon Smith, Augustine’s brother.”
“Lovely garl,” Henry muttered distractedly, and looked at his watch again.
This time Reuben heard the knock at the door, an irresolute two whacks followed by a plucky, stouthearted four. Everybody turned toward the sound, and In Re opened up. And there stood Grace in the portal, splendid in a wedding gown of virginal white satin, complete with train and eye-popping decolletage, and a floppy leghorn hat trimmed with orange blossoms. She carried more flowers in a bouquet in one hand and a saucy white parasol in the other. The Godfather’s delighted smile faltered, and Reuben recalled gleefully that in China white was the color of bad luck. Wing pulled himself together quickly, though, and hurried to greet his bride.
As soon as he touched her, just his hand on her hand, Reuben moved toward them, careless of the growling noise Tom Fun made behind him. Grace’s gaze skittered over his, the blue eyes glittering with nerves. She looked so beautiful he couldn’t stand it. “Sis,” he greeted her, but Wing kept him from touching her by pulling her to his side and anchoring her there with a steely arm around her waist.
“Hello, Algie,” she said, smiling tensely. “How are you?”
It wasn’t a casual question; she wanted to know if anybody had been using him for sword practice. “I’m fine,” he said adamantly, and the relief in her eyes made him miss a couple of heartbeats.
“Weel, now,” said Henry, rubbing his hands together in a priestly way, “are we after bein’ ready, then? You want to stand here by this—this shrine, is that it?” He opened his black case and began taking out vestments, a long white nightshirtlike garment that Reuben thought was called a surplice, and a shiny green scarf affair that went around his neck and hung down to his knees. Where had he gotten this stuff? Even Reuben felt slightly shocked to think he might’ve robbed a church.
Crooked Hearts Page 32
