by Max Lockhart
He caressed her shoulders. "I can help you get a new start somewhere."
Her eyes were brighter, and her back straighter, as if life and youth and hope were returning. "My brother is still in jail. I won't leave him and they know that."
Cleary grinned, suddenly feeling as if he had thrown the winning touchdown, kissed the prettiest girl, inherited a million dollars. "Your brother's bail is five grand." He released her and picked up the gym bag. "And there's a little more in there to get started. After tonight, they won't have anything on him. You'll be free, both of you."
He touched her cheek, relishing the soft warmth of her flesh, then turned and walked away.
"I'm not her, Cleary. This money won't bring her back."
A pain ripped through his chest, and he smelled jasmine all of a sudden. He turned around. "I don't know what you're talking about."
She smiled at him, her lower lip trembling just slightly. "Everyone in Chinatown knows that story."
"Then you know I have to do this," he said, holding back the past by strength of will. "Get your things together. I'll be back for you later."
He walked out of the studio and into the street before the scent of jasmine faded.
The Division Street Underpass was a desolate, urban no-man's land, wrapped in silence and smelling of diesel fuel, rotten garbage, and industrial waste. Cleary waited in one of its ominous shadows and listened to the faint scratching of rats, the rattle of discarded paper cups blown by the wind, and his own breathing. The tension of the stakeout had long since dissipated and pure tedium had replaced it, when minutes passed like hours, and men fought to stay awake. He put out his cigarette and checked his watch.
He heard the crunch of gravel and turned as a cigarette butt landed in a shower of sparks at his feet. A figure moved ponderously out of the shadows.
"Put your corsage in the refrigerator, Cleary. Your date's a no-show," said Sfakis, gesturing at the small leather suitcase at Cleary's feet.
Other figures started moving out of hiding until Fontana, Hine, Johnny, and two more plainclothes detectives circled him. Like vultures, he thought suddenly. Gathered around the carrion of his dead hopes.
"An hour and a half crouching in an aqueduct at my age. How come every time I'm around you, Cleary, my lumbago starts acting up?" asked Hine, rubbing his lower back with both hands.
"It happens, Jack," said Fontana sympathetically. "It was a long shot anyway."
Cleary nodded, looking up the tracks toward Chinatown and wondering what happened. "Why, Charlie? Johnny said the voice on the phone was emphatic about the meet. Why didn't they show up?"
Johnny kicked the gravel, spreading it over the train tracks. "Maybe they smelled a setup, Cleary."
"But how?" asked Cleary, looking around at the faces. There was no response, no expression except puzzlement, or disinterest. It was a familiar scenario. He had seen it before in Chinatown: cops standing around discussing why something hadn't worked. But there was something else, something about the people here.
Hine kicked the suitcase and licked his chops. "What does ten grand look like, anyway?" he asked. "I've never seen that much money together in one place."
Sfakis picked up the suitcase, tested the weight, and with two loud clicks, snapped it open. Hine flicked his flashlight on it. "Shit, Cleary," he gasped. "Who you playing games with?"
Sfakis pulled out a handful of cut-up newspaper. "You trying to make up for your loss of pension, Cleary?"
"Where's the money, Jack?" asked Fontana quietly. Cleary forced his words through taut lips. "Technically it's not the department's money, Charlie, so I didn't need your approval. I gave it to the kid's sister. It'll help with the bail. If there'd been more, I'd have given her that, too."
Sfakis snorted, snapped the suitcase shut, and slapped it playfully into Cleary's stomach. "I don't know about you, but I've had enough fun for one night. My shift's been over for two hours. Come on, Hine. I get hungry just coming down here. Let's grab some chow mein."
"Another half hour, Jack. That's all I can give you," said Fontana.
Cleary didn't hear him. He watched Hine and Sfakis crunch away over the gravel, side by side like dissimilar twins, two cops, so familiar to Chinatown, no one ever noticed them. Yet they were always the first on the scene in Chinatown...
... "You got enough?" Hine asked the photographer.
"A couple more," replied the photographer as he lowered his bulky camera and quickly sniffed nasal spray up his nose. Like Hine and Sfakis, he was totally disinterested in this dead Chinese hooker in the scarlet dress.
"I get hungry just coming down here. Come on, Cleary, we're going to grab some chow mein," said Hine as...
... Cleary turned to Johnny, a sense of urgency making him brusque. "Stay with the stakeout."
"Hey, where you going, man?" asked Johnny.
"The masked men. They're just like Sadie. Above suspicion."
"Who the hell is this Sadie?" Johnny asked Fontana as Cleary ran up the tracks toward Chinatown.
TWENTY-TWO
Cleary pushed his way through the madness of a Chinatown parade, a celebration that jammed the streets with laughing, drunken Chinese. Another block to Kai-Lee's studio, another eternity of shoving the seething, dancing, singing humanity aside to take a step. In the cacophony of Chinese music, huge brightly colored dragons, emerald green and fire-engine red, swirled and dipped to an exotic, Oriental rhythm. The air was filled with pieces of paper, like a snowstorm of confetti, emanating from the exploding balls tied on high poles. Firecrackers burst in endless strings of popping noises, showering bystanders with sparks. The crowds on the sidewalks flowed into the street in waves of masked and costumed celebrants.
Cleary pushed harder, slipped by a weaving Chinese in a tail mask, ducked under the head of a dragon and gained the curb. A half block to go, one more street to cross. Blessing his height, he peered over the heads of the shorter Chinese and saw her. She was seated on a suitcase in the dark, recessed entrance to her studio. Relief made him almost lightheaded. She was leaving Chinatown, had in a sense already left it, because she sat quietly, staring out at the passing festival but taking no part in it. She was breaking her bonds one by one.
"Kai-Lee!" he yelled as he saw a man in a mask grab her. He saw her mouth open in a scream, saw her yank the mask off, then sink back against the door, limp-looking from relief. The man, a middle-aged Chinese, drunk and happy, laughed and slapped his knee at her reaction. Still grinning happily, he joined the parade, leaving her slumped in the entranceway.
Cleary blinked away the sweat that ran down in his eyes and took several deep breaths to calm his pounding heart. Maybe he was wrong in his suspicions. It wouldn't be the first time. Maybe he was going off half-cocked. Maybe he was too tired, too depressed, too guilty to think straight. And maybe he was doubting himself because that was the easier choice. Just like the last time.
He waved both arms above his head to catch her attention as he saw her peer our from her entranceway past the flowing river of celebrants. A paper dragon, the fire-engine red one he noticed, passed in front of him, cutting off his view of the studio.
Cleary fought his way through the crowds, using shoulders and elbows to brutally force the celebrants aside. The old, familiar dread was tightening his chest, quickening his step as he outran the dragon and looked directly across the street to Kai-Lee's studio. "Oh, God!" he screamed as he saw two clowns in round, odd, happy-scary Chinese masks suddenly veer away from the parade, grab Kai-Lee and her suitcases, and disappear into her darkened storefront studio.
"No!" he roared, and ducking his head, ripped through the crowds thronging the street. Temporarily blocked by a mother holding a little girl by the hand, he looked up and saw the two clowns viciously beating Kai-Lee in a perverse parody of a comic routine.
Suddenly stooping, he picked up the mother and her child and set them behind him. Turning back around, he gained several feet by knocking down two drunken laborers who smelled of f
ish. Glancing quickly at the studio windows, he saw Kai-Lee holding on to her briefcase for dear life, using it as a shield against the worst blows. Backing up toward the wall, Cleary saw her grab a knitting needle off one of the sewing machines, and raising her arm, wildly stab one of the assailants.
"You bastard! I'll kill you!" screamed Cleary as the other clown clubbed her with his gun, knocking her to her knees, then grabbed her long black hair to hold her head still, pointing his gun at her temple.
With a final, desperate rush that left at least one Chinese trampled on the sidewalk, Cleary crashed through the front window. Falling on the floor in a shower of glass, he saw the two clowns grab the bag of money and run up the stairs to the roof.
Crawling over to Kai-Lee's body, he reached out to touch her, the scent of jasmine overpowering him, sending him reeling back into his worst Chinatown nightmare. "I tried," he said softly, and not to the girl lying so still on the floor. "I tried this time. But I couldn't stop them."
The scent of jasmine faded as a shadow crossed in front of him on the floor. The two clowns on the roof raced past the neon sign and cast a shadow through the skylight onto the floor. Cleary looked up and threw himself to one side as the clown with a sawed-off shotgun fired through the skylight and blasted a hole in the floor where he was standing.
With a rapid movement Cleary thought he was too beat to make, he turned and fired, bringing the clown with the sawed-off shotgun crashing through the remaining shards of glass in the skylight to fall dead at his feet. Ripping the mask off, Cleary saw the face of Sfakis.
"Why?" he whispered, frozen for a moment with grief for the old, good times. "Why did you do it?" Shaking off his paralysis, he raced for the stairs. Sfakis couldn't answer his question, but there was one who could. Barreling out of the door, he saw the clown just ahead and chased him across the rooftops. Through antennas, pigeon coops, the guts of neon signs, exhaust pipes spilling out steam, and vents pumping out noxious fumes, he ran, the clown always just ahead. Around him was the neon and chaos and night of Chinatown.
"Hine!" bellowed Cleary, stopping and bracing himself, gun hanging loosely in one hand.
The clown stopped and turned around to face Cleary. Ripping off his mask and dropping it, Hine managed an ugly smile. "Fucking mask. It gets hot under these things."
Cleary faced Hine, saw the gun in his hand, and felt resigned. Below him, he could hear the melee of the street celebration going on. It was fitting, he thought. He had come to slay a dragon, and that called for a celebration.
"Did you know that in Chinese mythology, the dragon is not a symbol of evil, Hine?" he asked.
"What are you talking about, Cleary?"
"In our European fairy tales, the dragon is evil. If I'd remembered that, maybe I'd have dropped on you and Sfakis sooner. I should've looked for a Caucasian dragon, not a Chinese one. It's all very simple when you understand it."
"You're fucking crazy. You've been crazy since that hooker got in the way and had to be killed."
Cleary smelled jasmine. "It was you and Sfakis, wasn't it?"
Hine shrugged. "We were just starting out. It was before we learned that shaking down the tong was easier than holding up restaurants. Shit, Cleary, we never thought you'd go nuts over a Chink hooker."
He sounded almost apologetic, as if he and Sfakis had accidentally run over a pet of his, and Cleary surrendered to his rage. "You're going to die like you lived, Hine."
Hine laughed. "That's right, Cleary. With a lake house at Arrowhead, a Lincoln in the garage, and six years of Chink pussy and booze under my belt." He laughed again, looking with disgust at Cleary's dishevelled appearance. "And how's your life been, Boy Scout?"
"It's looking up," said Cleary.
Hine made the first move, raising his gun. Cleary brought his up and began firing. A bullet from Hine's .38 ripped through his left shoulder, numbing it to the wrist, but he kept firing, hitting Hine in the chest, throwing him backward. Hine landed in a sitting position on the very edge of the low wall surrounding the rooftop.
"Not yet, Cleary," he said with a bloody smile, and raised his gun again.
Cleary fired his last round, hitting Hine square in the chest again, throwing him backward off the rooftop. The briefcase opened, and the money flew out like green confetti, filling the air, raining down on the parade below.
Cleary staggered to the edge, blood running down his shoulder, soaking his shirt, and dripping onto the roof. He saw Hine's body, crumpled on the ground, the parade detouring around it, and the money showering down to cover it. He holstered his gun, wincing with pain as he touched his shoulder, and turned back to the stairwell, back to Kai-Lee.
Passing the ancient raised skylight, he saw her lying motionless on the floor of the studio below, a sewing machine throwing a grotesque shadow over her body. He stared at her lifeless form. "No," he whispered as the scene wavered...
... becoming a street of Chinatown in front of a restaurant. Bodies lay on the sidewalk, some motionless in death, others moaning and writhing as the pain from gunshot wounds burned through them. Police cars were parked angled toward the curb, their headlights serving as spots for the crime scene. Ambulances pulled up in a stream to help the living, take away the dead. Cops stood around in the inevitable circle: Dibble, Hine, Sfakis, Fontana—and Cleary.
A beautiful Chinese hooker in a scarlet dress slipped out of the crowd and walked hesitantly toward Cleary. He saw her motioning, and he dropped out of the circle. He noticed her pale face and wide frightened eyes. She ought to be frightened, he thought.
She was breaking all the taboos of Chinatown by talking to a cop.
"Please," she said, clutching at his arm.
"You got anything for us? Someone must have seen something. Nobody could shoot up a place as badly as this and do it without being seen," said Cleary, lighting a cigarette.
"Will you help me?" the hooker whispered, her eyes veering toward the circle of cops behind him.
Cleary took a drag off his cigarette, and deliberated. "That depends," he said, studying her face...
... "I'm sorry," he whispered as the street dissolved into the rooftop and the ancient skylight. The scent of jasmine grew stronger.
Escaping from the roof, he rushed down the stairs and fell to his knees besides Kai-Lee's prone, lifeless body. "I'm sorry," he said, his voice hoarse and thick with guilt.
Taking her in his arms, the scent of jasmine became overpowering. "I can't do anything," he cried to the past, then instinctively, urged by something he couldn't explain, he checked Kai-Lee's carotid pulse. "You're alive," he said, clutching her tighter, watching her eyes beginning to flutter open.
"An ambulance is on the way," a voice said.
Cleary looked up to see Frank Tang standing over him, studying him. "Thanks," he said, and turned back to Kai-Lee, brushing her hair away from her face, cushioning her brutalized body against his chest.
Feeling Frank Tang's eyes still on him, he glanced up again. "I thought I could make a difference this time."
Frank Tang nodded, a faint smile twisting his lips and casting its shadow in his eyes. "This time you did."
Cleary nodded, and looked down at Kai-Lee again. The scent of jasmine was gone, and its absence felt permanent.
Table of Contents
PROLOGUE
ONE
TWO
THREE
FOUR
FIVE
SIX
SEVEN
EIGHT
NINE
TEN
ELEVEN
TWELVE
THIRTEEN
FOURTEEN
FIFTEEN
SIXTEEN
SEVENTEEN
EIGHTEEN
NINETEEN
TWENTY
TWENTY-ONE
TWENTY-TWO
&n
bsp;
