“Which we only have Kevin’s word for,” Sanjay added. “It was never locked.”
Kevin lunged across the table and grabbed the carving knife. Before anyone could react, Kevin landed on his feet next to Priya.
“I don’t want to hurt you,” he said, grabbing hold of her and holding the knife against her neck. “This was only about Broderick, not you. I hadn’t made millions like the rest of you, and he took advantage of that when he bought my idea for hardly any money at all. Don’t anyone step closer!” He pushed the knife closer to Priya’s neck. Sanjay watched in horror as her eyes narrowed. Not with fear, but with anger. She was going to act.
“If you don’t want me to get snot all over you,” she sniffled, “at least let me get a tissue from my pocket.”
Kevin nodded, and Priya’s quivering hand reached into her pocket. Sanjay looked on helplessly as Priya’s fingers emerged from her pocket gripping not a tissue, but a small silver canister. After only a moment’s hesitation, she raised her arm and sprayed mist into Kevin’s eyes. He screamed and let go of his grip, giving Vik and Sanjay the opportunity to tackle him.
“What the hell was that?” Kevin cried.
“This island is shrouded in fog,” Priya said, standing over Kevin. “I’m a woman with thick Indian hair. Did anyone think I’d walk around this place without hair defrizzer?”
“It was never supposed to be an impossible crime.” Sanjay pressed his knee into Kevin’s back. “I bet you didn’t think anyone would go up to their rooms until we broke up after dinner, when nobody would have an alibi.”
Kevin grunted but didn’t speak.
“It might have worked,” Sanjay said, “if Priya hadn’t been cold and left the dinner table to get her sweater.”
“When did he do it, then?” Elena asked.
“When the sea lions barked,” Sanjay said, struggling to remove a piece of rope from his bowler hat to tie Kevin’s wrists. “That was the only time we split up, when we all went looking for them. Someone ‘accidentally’ left a music player behind in the conservatory. I bet when we check it out, we’ll find it has the sound of sea lions.”
“A distraction,” Vik said, holding Kevin as Sanjay secured the rope.
“Thanks, old friend.” Sanjay knotted the rope, sat back, and placed his magic bowler hat back on his head.
THE TWITTERING OF SPARROWS
by
Louise Herring-Jones
— :: —
Maque called them the “sparrows” after her own name and after the game they wished to learn. And like sparrows, the three young white women occupying the basement would not be quiet. The patrons in her father’s Mahjong parlor upstairs might hear them.
Father will be angry, very angry.
Maque wagged her finger and cursed in Cantonese.
The women laughed.
Maque threw a roll of Hong-Kong imported silk on the floor.
“Thawp!”
The sparrows fell silent.
“You must not speak loud enough to be heard upstairs.” Maque spoke in Cantonese, but made gestures, drawing her hand from her mouth, frowning, and pointing to the ceiling.
The three women giggled and turned back to the suits of Mahjong tiles she had provided them. They shuffled the tiles back and forth around the table’s surface. The tiles clicked and clacked, twittering like sparrows.
Mahjong.
White women had discovered the ancient Chinese game in this modern decade of the 1920s and would stop at nothing to play. But at least the silly women in her care were occupied and quiet.
For the moment.
Maque sighed.
* * *
Two days ago at midnight, she had stepped into the dark alley near Seattle’s harbor. She wanted a breath of fresh air, unpolluted by the smoke of opium pipes in the dimly lit parlors behind her. The chill mist from the wharves reeked of moldering fish and the salt tang of Elliott Bay, but she could inhale deeply without becoming dizzy.
A truck rattled across the paving stones and down the alley. Maque ducked against the door but peered beyond the poles that held a lean-to roof over the loading dock.
Who would be out at this hour?
The truck stopped. Doors opened on both sides of the cab. Two Asian men stepped out, dressed in almost identical Western-style dark suits and low brimmed fedoras. Pale stripes ran down the jacket and pants of the taller man’s suit, the lines resembling chalk dividers on a bookie’s tote-board. She did not know these men and named them “Chalk-stripe” and “Plain-suit” in her own agile mind.
Plain-suit opened the tailgate to the bed of the truck. Chalk-stripe climbed the stairs to the back door and stopped, reaching inside his jacket when Maque stepped out of the shadows.
“It is too late for a delivery,” she said in Mandarin, emphasizing the dignity of the Royal Dragon House.
Chalk-stripe withdrew his hand and bowed. She tilted her head in reply. He stood upright and waved his hand toward the truck.
“We seek an audience with the Dragon who is head of your house and offer a gift in return for that honor.”
“My father has no need of a broken down truck. Take your tithe elsewhere.” She put her hand on the iron bar attached to the door.
Chalk-stripe laughed. “I need my truck, Maque, my little sparrow,” he said. “Your reputation for hauteur precedes you.” He used the French word for “attitude” and English words that she did not understand.
Unable to speak English, but nimble enough in French, Maque also changed languages for emphasis. “N’est-ce pas?” she said, admitting that the rumors might be true. “But take yourselves and your truck out of our alley.”
“Not until my humble offering is delivered.” He made another grand sweep with his hand. Plain-suit pushed three misshapen hundred-pound bags onto the loading dock. The bags’ labels stated “rice” in bold Chinese characters.
We do not need cheap rice,” she said, pointing her toe at the nearest bag. She bent her knee to kick, but Plain-suit grabbed her ankle.
“How dare you touch the Dragon’s daughter,” she cried, struggling to keep her balance.
“My partner will release your delicate foot if you promise not to damage our gifts.” Chalk-stripe pointed at her imported slippers, not tiny in size, but skillfully embroidered with cranes in flight. “Perhaps not so delicate.” He motioned to Plain-suit and his partner released his grip.
Maque felt heat rise in her cheeks. She kicked Chalk-stripe in the shin.
“Little sparrow has a spur,” he said, wincing. “Too bad your mother did not insist on proper foot-binding as would befit a lady.” He hacked and spit a quivering glob of phlegm at her feet. “She must have known that ladies are born, not made, and did not try to change your base nature. But learning a game or embroidering your slippers will not turn a lowly sparrow into the crane of Mandarin authority.”
He jumped off the porch and waved his arms in an all-encompassing gesture. “Be proud of your heritage. Even American women are desperate to learn the ways of our ancestors.”
Chalk-stripe climbed halfway into the truck, but twisted his torso to point at Maque. “Wait until we turn the corner before you open the bags or I will report your insolence to your father. He may not approve of you assaulting his future allies.” He slipped inside and slammed the truck’s door. Plain-suit joined him.
Maque fumed, tapping her insulted foot until the truck’s taillights disappeared at the alley’s end. Careful not to stain her silken robe on the spittle or the black ink script of the crudely printed burlap, she pulled a thread to open the first bag. Blond curls spilled out of the opened seam.
She ripped the thread completely out. A white woman, very fair and young, no more than twenty years old, lay unconscious within.
“Yon!” she called for her servant and bodyguard. About her own age, the half Norwegian, half Alaskan native had entered her father’s service as a gangly boy, homeless and orphaned when his parents, uprooted to Bremerton by the Grea
t War, had succumbed to Spanish influenza. Now grown to a great hulk of a man, he could be trusted to carry these unwelcome women out of sight until she spoke to her father.
“Great Dogs of Fo, help us,” she said, invoking the Buddha’s guardians against evil. “What trouble have these ruffians left on our doorstep?”
* * *
Yon carried the rice bags one by one down the steep steps to the basement storeroom that doubled as domestic quarters. Maque unrolled sleeping mats.
“Oof.” He laid the final sack onto a pad.
“Careful,” Maque cautioned. Two opened sacks had revealed young women, She unraveled the twine tying the final bag together and split the seam open. A third woman slept within. Fair of skin and obviously young, the woman’s dark brown hair contrasted with the blond curls and auburn locks of the first two rice bag refugees.
“Where did they come from?” Yon asked, glancing across the row of dozing young women.
“I don’t know,” she said, but remembered Chalk-stripe’s comments about Americans. “I think they may want to learn Mahjong. It does not matter what they want. They are a gift to my father from another tong, brought by strangers who do not know that my father does not dirty his hands with white slavery.”
Yon caressed the salmon fetish scrimshaw pendant he always wore, a legacy from his dead parents. “You can’t give people away. Not in America. Someone will report them missing. You must go to the police.”
“And risk bringing shame on the Dragon’s house?” Maque asked.
Yon knelt on one knee. He shook his head as he studied the sleeping women. “Your father is a good man and a fair master. What do you think he will do with them?”
“That will be his decision,” she said, straightening to her full height of five foot one. She glared down at him. “Wait with them here. I will return. If they wake, send a maid to me.” She gestured to the young women. “Do not allow them to leave. Bind them if you must.”
“But—” Yon began. Maque silenced him with a hiss.
* * *
“You personally shall provide the best of care for the sparrows,” her father announced. He called the three young women by the term that Maque had used, discarding any unknown and unutterable American names. “Mar Tuck wishes to pay tribute so he may remain in Seattle. I have accepted this payment on behalf of the Hip Sings, but we must sell these women in order to pay Mar Tuck’s dues in coin to our tong members.”
“But Father, I have heard of this Mar Tuck and his dealings with the Suey Sing in San Francisco. He is a boo how doy, a tough tong fighter.” Maque wailed, balling handfuls of her silk robe into her fists. “He smuggles prostitutes from China to service men who have travelled here without wives. I do not know how he has persuaded the sparrows to come to us. They are too agreeable.”
“That is why I am sending them to China,” her father said. “Keep them quiet, out of sight, until buyers may view them.”
“Father, please do not do this. The sparrows are white women, Americans, not courtesans from a Shanghai pleasure house. Yon says they will be missed.” She paused, gathering her courage. “You have never engaged in white slavery before.”
He crossed the room and patted her shoulder. “Daughter, you are a grown woman now. Yon is a useful guide to American ways but he does not understand our tongs. You do. We must process Mar Tuck’s payment. Perhaps if you had refused his gift, we could choose another course, but our path is before us.” He tilted her chin up so that he could look into her eyes. “You must obey me.”
Maque blinked, willing away tears and trying to escape the intensity of his stare. She could not honorably look away.
“Yes, Father,” she said.
But I will not allow Mar Tuck to harm our house.
* * *
Maque had no female relatives in Seattle and no women servants free from other duties who could assist her with the sparrows. Once they awakened from their long sleep, the young women seemed delighted to see her. They were even happier to relieve themselves in chamber pots behind a screen in one corner of the basement room and slip naked into the copper tubs filled with hot water that Yon had prepared for their use. He would also remove and empty the chamber pots. Maque would not stoop to the indignity of hauling night soil.
The sparrows arrived without a change of clean clothing and their garments reeked of the truck’s exhaust. Maque added the grimy bundles of dresses, stockings, slips, and disgusting under-panties to the delivery for the laundry next door. Her own garments, loose trousers, and tunics with embroidered robes fit the sparrows well enough, although she had to send Yon to buy slippers in larger sizes for their overgrown American feet, larger even than Maque’s.
Binding would have been a blessing for them.
The sparrows dressed in Maque’s finery. She provided them with combs and braided each woman’s hair into a long queue only different in texture and color from her own. The Americans’ hair tended to curl while Maque’s blue-black straight strand gleamed like star-lit skies.
The likeness ended at their similar hair braids. Maque’s complexion shone with golden health. The sparrows each had skin as light as crème, although the colors on their cheeks and lips were different, like ripe pink strawberries for the blond, peaches for the redhead, and bright red apples for the brunette. The names they repeated when pointing at their buxom chests were stuffed with sounds that Maque could not wrap her tongue around. She stopped thinking of them as anything but the sparrows.
It will be easier to sell them if they do not have names and I do not think of them as persons.
Late on that first long day of caring for the women, after finding noodles and dim sum that they would eat and teas for them to drink, Maque gave them three suits of Mahjong tiles to amuse themselves. The women giggled and greedily took their share of the tiles, building walls and trying to match pairs and make sequences even though Maque could not explain traditional rules to them with only limited hand gestures.
When their attempts to match tiles improved, she gave them more suits and the women played as if they knew how, making up their own game as they moved pieces around the table. They ignored Maque, only asking for another pot of tea or another plate of dumplings from her as if she were their maid. The sparrows played through the night.
Maque dozed, but the blond girl shook her awake after dawn, pantomiming her head resting on a folded pillow. Yon answered Maque’s call and dragged in mattresses for the women’s use. Maque lay down beside them, mindful of her promise to Father.
I must not become fond of them. They are not pets, but goods to be sold.
* * *
Maque woke and left the still sleeping sparrows in Yon’s charge while she enjoyed a calming, late afternoon cup of tea in their storefront tea room. She sat behind the serving counter and sipped a caramel scented Dongding oolong grown in the foggy mountains of Formosa and imported exclusively by her father. The door opened, ringing the suspended bell of temple brass and disturbing her break.
A young man entered the tea room from the street side of the Royal Dragon House. In spite of his Western suit, he bore the stocky build and jaundiced pallor of the Sichuan province. He approached Maque and held out a white business card, printed in unfamiliar lettering. He bowed.
“Are you the proprietress?” he asked in flawless Cantonese with only a slight accent of the North.
“I manage the tea room for my father.”
“Then my business is with him.”
“My father is a busy man, an important man.”
“And I am a federal marshal,” he said. He pulled a shining badge from his inside jacket pocket. “My name is Wa Wobing.”
Maque choked down a giggle at the marshal’s ridiculous name.”Why do you wish to see my father?”
“Three young women are missing from San Francisco. They were last seen playing Mahjong in the company of two members of the Suey Sing tong. These men are believed to have murdered their tong boss and fled north. Your father is the
leader of the Hip Sing tong here in Seattle. If anyone knows what is going on between the tongs, and within them, it is your father, the venerable ‘Dragon.’ ”
“He is not here now,” Maque lied. “You must come back tomorrow if you wish to speak with him. But I am sure you are wrong. My father is a respectable businessman. He does not associate with criminals.”
“Then you will not object to me searching your premises?”
“I cannot allow it, not without my father’s consent.”
The bell above the entry jingled as the door opened. A stooped old man walked across the threshold, bearing a paper-wrapped parcel across his shoulder. “Madam Maque,” he said. “We have laundered and pressed the dresses and, uh, other garments you sent us for cleaning.” He dropped the bundle from his back and onto the nearest table. “I want you to be satisfied that we have totally removed a mustard spot.” Ripping open the package, he revealed the top dress.
Wa Wobing strode across the room. He touched the dress and folded back the one underneath to expose a third garment. “Whose clothes are these?”
Maque scurried across the room and grabbed the parcel before the marshal could dig further. “How dare you riffle through my garments? Leave now or I will call my bodyguards.”
The old man backed up and crept out the door without so much as a ping from the bell.
“Why does a Chinese tea room operator need American dresses? Or bodyguards?” Wa Wobing growled with irritation.
“That is none of your concern. I do not know the laws of this new country, but you are not a Mandarin and cannot command me to do anything. If I ask you to leave, without an imperial edict, you cannot stay here.”
“Not an edict, a warrant, you pigheaded woman. You are not in China any more. But I will return with enough men to defeat your guards. I will search your palace.”
Wa Wobing banged the door as he left. The bell rang a discordant jangle that made Maque shudder.
“Yon!” she screamed.
* * *
After the sparrows packed the Mahjong tiles into a carrying bag, Maque and Yon pushed the three young women out the back door of the building and down the stairs into the alley. Yon whispered, “My friend’s boat is tied a few blocks away. We can return the women to San Francisco and be back within a week.”
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