“I’ll try.”
She nodded, blinking back sudden tears. “See you,” she said, then she turned and rushed down the stairs.
Ed, as confused as he always was whenever he tried talking to a woman, made his way back to his apartment, where Tom was stirring a pot of soup on the stove. To Ed’s surprise, the gnome had not said a word to him since he’d awoken. It was becoming unusual for the thing to be absent for more than a few minutes at a time.
“Did she leave?” Kajdas asked. When Ed nodded, he continued. “I arranged it so you’d have a couple weeks off. If anyone asks, you were t-boned at the corner of La Cienega and Beverly. You got pretty banged up, but you should’ve seen the other guy.”
Ed laughed in spite of his throbbing head. “Thanks, Tom.”
“Don’t mention it. I had my guys take care of some paperwork, so nothing should look amiss even if your boss starts digging around.”
“I guess I wouldn’t be much help to you if they fired me.”
“Nonsense. The main thing is that you’re okay. Oh—I hate to bring it up when you’re not feeling well, but Albert called me last night about our project. The pieces are almost all in place. You’ve been doing great work so far, but the hardest part is coming up.”
Ed frowned at the countertop.
“You’re not having any reservations, are you? Because once we get a green light, we’ll be depending on you to do your part.”
Ed found a banana among the items Doris had bought. He peeled it and took a bite, chewed and swallowed. “I’ll do my part,” he said.
“Any doubts you want to get off your chest?”
“No,” Ed lied. “I’ll get it done.”
Tom patted his shoulder and smiled at him warmly. “I know you will.”
21
Kingfisher
The smoke-filled air was burning Danny’s throat and making his eyes water. He leaned back in his chair—the other three men at the table watched his movement suspiciously—and rubbed his eyes. Between working for his mother during the day and for Wang at night, there were few hours left for sleep. And those hours were interrupted by the incessant dreams of the bearded man Blake and his crowd of followers. Every morning Danny awoke to the clacking of his broken alarm clock and rolled out of bed feeling like he hadn’t slept at all. Where he had once been troubled by occasional headaches brought on by his mind-reading, he was now in almost constant pain. Tonight it was just a dull ache behind his eyes which, bad as it was, was a welcome change from the stabbing pain that sometimes left him barely able to function.
Tonight he was barely holding his own against three middle-aged men who were all skilled at the game. The worst of them, an imposing middle-aged man named Ho who sat across from Danny, was an aggressive player who fought for high-scoring hands at every opportunity. He shifted strategies rapidly, changing from defense to offense on the turn of a single drawn tile and back again just a few turns later. Danny was able to prevent him from winning most of the time, but this often tipped the game in favor of the other two players, who were almost as skilled as Ho. The man to Danny’s left, Leung, was more courteous but no less dangerous a player. Three hours into their game, Danny was ahead by only a few hundred dollars, which put him far in the hole after Wang took his portion.
It didn’t help that Ho was a condescending worm who mocked Danny endlessly.
“You know,” Ho said, smiling so widely that the black tooth on the upper right side of his mouth was clearly visible, “you have the same haircut as my wife. Does it cost you much to get it done?” The other two men snickered.
Danny held his tongue and discarded the Two Sticks. He had learned, to his detriment, that engaging in an argument with his opponents was not looked upon kindly by Mr. Wang. Danny had gotten himself thrown out of the establishment two weeks earlier for suggesting that one of the players wore women’s underwear and lacked male genitals. It had seemed like an innocuous comment at the time, and almost certainly not untrue, but the man had taken the remark out of context and had seen to it that Wang had Danny escorted outside and tossed onto the sidewalk. The huge bouncer, Fu, who Danny had learned was also one of Wang’s personal bodyguards, had been quite apologetic as he had walked Danny upstairs and pushed him out the door.
Tonight Danny kept his temper on a short leash and kept his X-Ray Vision focused on Ho’s constantly shifting thoughts, which switched rapidly between the game, the derriere of the petite girl who was carrying drinks to the players, and something he thought of as Kingfisher. Danny watched the images for a long time, lost in Ho’s thoughts and wondering if this was the same kingfisher that the angry man, Chiu, had been thinking of during Danny’s first game, until a comment from the player to Danny’s left brought both of them back to the game. Danny drew a tile from the wall and absently discarded it without looking at it, inadvertently giving his impatient opponent a meld he’d been waiting for.
Kingfisher. It had come up in the thoughts of several of Danny’s opponents over the last few weeks. Always the older men; the younger ones didn’t seem to know anything about it. The term seemed to refer to a plan that Wang and some of his more senior associates were working on. At least Danny assumed Wang was involved; none of the others ever explicitly connected him with the plan. As far as he could tell, Kingfisher had something to do with jewelry. Lots of jewelry, being transported into the U.S., processed by Wang’s customs brokerage, and diverted to a hundred different importers who produced falsified records about the whereabouts of the jewelry after its arrival. Danny had pieced this together over the course of dozens of mahjong games, and after returning home early each morning, had been painstakingly writing down every single detail he could remember. The notes were hidden under his mattress, and every game night he forced himself to stay awake until he had squeezed every single detail from his memory onto paper. He did this without a clear idea of how he would put the information to use, reasoning that there must be a way it could be used to help him get out from under Wang’s thumb. Possibly by taking down Wang himself, although the old man kept himself insulated from the schemes of his associates. So far Danny had not seen anything that would link Wang himself to Kingfisher or any other crime.
“Wake up, boy,” Ho snapped, pulling his attention back to the game. Danny examined the discards to see what the others had thrown out, but there were too many tiles and he couldn’t figure out what he had missed. He threw out an East Wind, giving Ho the final tile he needed for a moderately high-scoring victory, and gave up most of the evening’s winnings with that one careless discard.
Like most of the older men he’d played against, Ho was deeply involved in a number of interconnected schemes. Kingfisher was the biggest by far, but there were others. As he forked over a large portion of his money to Ho, Danny fantasized about taking Ho down with his cache of damning evidence.
For now, all he could do was pay up and hold his temper.
The next round began. Danny rubbed his eyes again and helped mix and stack the tiles. He was finding it increasingly difficult to concentrate; his thoughts wandered to his mother, who was upset with him and became more so every morning when he handed her his previous night’s winnings. He hadn’t told her where he was getting the money, but she knew. She knew, and hated it, but she accepted the money. It still wasn’t enough. Combined with Alice’s library earnings and what they made in the fortune business, there was just enough to pay for the necessities with little left over to put into renovating the shop. Repairs were expensive, even with cheap Chinatown labor, and were progressing slowly.
“Pong,” said the man to Danny’s right as he picked up one of Danny’s discarded tiles to form a three-of-a-kind meld. Danny reassessed his hand. In his exhaustion he had thrown away several tiles he should have kept from his opponents. He had five pairs and still had not managed to claim a single pong of three identical tiles during this round. This late in the game, his chances of winning were practically zero.
He drew his next tile f
rom the wall. A hong zhong, the red dragon, one of which he was already holding. Six pairs. He forced his face to remain blank to avoid alerting the others. He hadn’t considered the possibility until now. Seven pairs was a winning hand, and a good one—a hand that could only be obtained by drawing all the necessary tiles from the wall rather than by picking up discards. But the round was almost over; the other players would be only one or two tiles away from winning. He looked around to see if any of them were getting fidgety or sweaty, but these men were too practiced to display their emotions so openly.
“Good pick, was it?” Ho said mockingly. Apparently Danny hadn’t hidden his reaction as well as he’d hoped. There was nothing to be done about it in any case; his entire hand was still hidden, and his discards had not, as far as he could tell, revealed any particular focus in his hand. It came down to luck. Which was a good thing, Danny surmised; his luck had been so uniformly bad lately that it couldn’t possibly stay that way.
He had little choice of what to discard. Glancing around at the others warily, he threw out the Six Circles. No one claimed it. Leung, on his left, drew a tile from the wall, thought for a long moment, and discarded it. No one gave Leung a hard time for thinking too long, Danny noted with some bitterness.
He watched Ho’s face closely as the black-toothed man drew a tile and immediately threw it away. Ho was waiting for one final tile; his actions and body language made that much clear. The player to Danny’s right did the same, shaking his head slightly and muttering to himself.
The wall of tiles was almost down to the end. If no one won during the next four turns, the game would end in a draw. Danny picked up the next tile, slid it toward himself face-down, and paused for a second before looking at it. If it was the Eight Wànzi tile—the Chinese character tile—to match the Eight he already held, the round was his. If it was anything else, he would have to decide whether to throw it away or keep it and discard his Eight.
He flipped the tile up. Four Sticks. He already had two of those; it was unlikely that the fourth one would come his way to give him two pairs. He sighed and started to discard it, but hesitated. Ho was collecting Sticks. Leung was collecting Wànzi tiles. If Danny wasn’t likely to win, he needed to make sure his discard didn’t help the wrong person. He decided he’d rather give the winning tile to Leung than to Ho. With some regret, he kept the Four and threw out the Eight. The other three men leaned forward to watch his discard eagerly, then leaned back again in uniform disappointment.
Leung drew a tile, scowled at it, and tossed it into the discard area. Ho did the same. The man to Danny’s right picked the last playable tile from the depleted wall, shook his head, and threw it away.
It was the last Four Sticks.
Danny lunged forward to claim it. In the same moment, Ho snapped it up and turned the rest of his hand face-up. “Win,” said Ho.
“That’s my tile!” Danny shouted, much louder than he intended.
“You didn’t speak in time,” said Ho.
“It’s the boy’s,” Leung said. “He was next in rotation.” The fourth player nodded agreement.
Ho pressed his lips together and narrowed his eyes. “Let’s see what he has, then,” he said in a soft voice full of long-pent-up anger.
Danny revealed his hand. Seven pairs of mixed suits, Dragons, and Winds. Two of the pairs were the same—the final Four Sticks had given him two identical pairs.
“That’s not a winning hand,” Ho protested, pointing at the Fours. “See, he has two pairs the same.”
Leung shook his head. “There’s no such rule. It’s a good hand.” He slapped Danny appreciatively on the back.
“No!” Ho was beginning to turn red. “For seven pairs, all pairs must be different!”
The fourth man was shaking his head too. “I’ve never heard that,” he said.
The room had grown quiet while they argued, but Danny realized that the silence was not just due to Ho’s petulant shouting. Mr. Wang had emerged from his office and was making his way over to their table.
“What’s the trouble?” Wang asked, looking at each of them in turn.
“The boy cheats!” Ho yelled in a high-pitched voice.
Wang put a hand on the back of Danny’s neck and squeezed. Not hard enough to hurt, but just hard enough to let Danny know that he wasn’t going anywhere. “How so?” Wang asked softly.
Ho pointed to Danny’s hand. “He claims seven pairs, but the pairs are not unique! Look—four of the same!”
Wang bent down to examine Danny’s tiles. His grip on Danny’s neck grew a little tighter. Then, to Danny’s astonishment, he began to laugh. He laughed until tears oozed out of the corners of his eyes. “Ho, you’re making up rules! The boy wins.” He shook Danny playfully by the scruff of his neck. “Don’t blame your poor skills on others. The boy plays well!” Then he went back to his office, still chuckling to himself. Just before he closed the door, he gave Danny an approving nod.
Later, after the parlor had started to clear out and the waitresses began cleaning up the empty glasses and full ashtrays, Danny went to the office to drop off Wang’s portion of the winnings. Usually he just handed the money to one of Wang’s bodyguards and had to submit to a thorough search, but tonight was one of the rare nights that Wang was in his office at the end of the night.
“Nice work, Tien-Ming,” Wang said, counting the money and tucking it into a drawer. He handed over an extra hundred dollars. “You brought Mr. Ho down a few rungs, eh? I can always count on you to humble them.”
“That’s what you pay me for, sir” Danny said respectfully. He had learned to guard his tone around Wang; the man was prone to outbursts when he thought he wasn’t being properly respected.
“You’re my secret weapon, you know.” Wang’s smile faded as he said this. “If Li ever catches on... But we won’t let that happen, will we?”
Danny swallowed. “No, sir.”
Wang nodded. “Because Li ever approached you for recruitment, I would need to know about it. You would tell me if that happened, wouldn’t you?”
Danny hadn’t considered that possibility. He filed this away as something that might be useful. “Yes, sir.”
“I know you would. Remember that Li wouldn’t treat you as kindly as I do if you worked for him. Besides, if I ever found out you were betraying me by working for him...” He shrugged as if to say, I would have no choice but to do unpleasant things to you. Danny got the point.
* * *
It had been an especially cold spring, but the weather on this night was comfortable. Danny was only half a block from his apartment building when a white man stepped out of an alley and stood right in his way. The man was small for a bok goy, maybe five-foot-four, and Danny thought even he could take him if he had to. But he wouldn’t have to.
“Gimme your wallet,” the man said. He pulled out a pocket knife and spent several seconds trying to get it to unfold. Danny glanced across the street during this interval and saw his opponent, Ho, watching from a discreet distance. “Okay,” said the white man, who had finally gotten the knife open. “Wallet.”
This was the last word he managed to get out before Wang’s thugs got to him. They had been following some distance behind, as usual, and had waited to make sure they were really needed before barging in. Once the knife came out, they started running (as much as a man of their size could be said to run). One of them was Mr. Fu. They both contacted the lofahn at the same instant, knocking the pocketknife out of his hand and clobbering his head on the sidewalk. A couple of hard punches to the face took care of any remaining fight in him, and he lay unconscious on the ground.
“He’s with that guy,” Danny said, pointing across the street, but Ho was already gone. It was all right; Wang would take care of Ho as soon as he heard about this. The bodyguards walked across the street to look around.
Danny looked up at his building. All the lights were off except for one on the third floor that belonged to that old woman who never slept. His mother a
nd sister would have gone to bed hours ago. He hoped Ching wasn’t there; his friend had made it a point to avoid being seen with Alice, but Danny knew they were still seeing each other. No longer feeling quite so tired, he slipped around the corner before Wang’s thugs noticed that he hadn’t gone into his building. What he really needed, more than sleep, was a good long walk.
Danny wandered through empty streets, thinking about Wang and Kingfisher. Mostly what he thought about was how to escape this trap he’d fallen into. He wanted nothing more than to get away from Wang, but now he’d gone and proven himself useful. Wang would never let him quit now.
Could he go to the police with the information he had about the crimes of Wang’s associates? Danny had considered this before, but it could only lead to even deeper trouble. Many of the police in Chinatown were on Wang’s payroll. If he attempted to topple Wang’s empire and failed, he’d find himself dead in an alley as soon as Wang’s henchmen could get to him. And even if he escaped Wang’s wrath, his mother and sister were vulnerable. He couldn’t take such a risk without making sure they were safe first, and that would mean moving them both out of the city. His mother would never agree to such a thing. For now, Danny decided, he would bide his time and wait for the right opportunity.
A five minute walk took him to Canal Street, where there were still some people about. He walked past the dentist’s office where they got all their cleanings and fillings from the eccentric old dentist with the sadistic streak (as all dentists surely had). Beyond that, he passed a shop with a sign outside that said, simply, “PAIN.” Danny always wondered if pain was something they cured there, or something they sold.
After that was the elementary school with its fenced-in playground and the big brick wall covered in graffiti. He stopped and admired the wall for a few minutes. People had sprayed political messages like “JONSON KILLS” and “BAN THE BOB,” interspersed with peace symbols and one large Mercedes Benz logo. There were pictures, too—some of them quite nicely done.
Forest of the Mind (The Book of Terwilliger 1) Page 19
