“Or a boat,” Diana added.
“Or a crick.”
Old Red blinked his way from his stupor. “You know, when I say ‘noted,’ that means I am well aware of whatever it is you’re pointin’ out. Which means you can stop pointin’ it out.”
“Which means ‘shut up,’ ” I translated for Diana.
“I sabe,” she said.
Old Red sighed.
“You know, I wish them Salvation Army fellers was still around,” I said. “Seems to me the only thing left for us to do now is huddle up and pray for divine intervention.”
“Only miracle we’re gonna get’s the kind we think up ourselves,” Gustav said. “We gotta lay into it with some deducifyin’. Figure out what Mr. Holmes would do if . . .”
His gaze drifted away, settling on something beyond the both of us.
“Hel-lo,” he said.
“You thunk something up already?”
“Nope.” Old Red stretched out a hand and pointed up the street. “I’m just wonderin’ what he wants.”
Diana and I turned to see a slender young Chinaman hustling toward us. He was dressed in saggy, baggy, gray clothes that looked like they’d been tailored for a man twice his size, while atop his head was an equally shapeless—and very American—flat cap. He didn’t look like any of the tong crowd we’d tangled with, that was for sure, but I braced for a tussle all the same, clenching my fists and putting myself between the stranger and Diana.
“That’s not necessary,” she said.
“We’ll see about that.”
Gustav solemnly held up a hand as the Chinaman slowed to a stop a few feet away. “Hello. Sabe Englee?”
The Chinaman put up a hand of his own—then gave it a dismissive swipe. “Please. I don’t just ‘sabe’ English. I speak it.”
“Oh,” my brother said.
The man had no accent whatsoever. Had I been blind, he could’ve been introduced to me as “Joe Smith” and I’d have been none the wiser.
Diana stepped out from behind me. “Can we help you?”
“I’m not the one who needs help,” the Chinaman said. “I can’t even believe I found you in time. I thought some boo how doy would’ve given you the chop by now for sure.”
Old Red squinted at the man as if he suspected his almond-shaped eyes and jet-black hair were merely makeup and a wig. “Do we know your?”
“You do now . . . and not a second too soon.” The man held out his hand. “I’m Chinatown Charlie—the guy who can keep you alive long enough to find Gee Woo Chan’s killer.”
“Well, well,” I said as Charlie and my brother exchanged a handshake. “Hallelujah!”
20
GOOD LUCK
Or, We Buy a Stool Pigeon and Get a Bead on a Kwong Duck
There were introductions all around, and when it came time for me to pump Chinatown Charlie’s hand, I nodded at his tweed cap.
“You don’t happen to have a halo tucked up under there, do you?”
Charlie smiled. “I’m no angel. Just a businessman.”
“Your business being what, exactly?” Diana asked. “Protection?”
“Do I look like a bodyguard?”
The Chinaman held out his long, thin arms. He was about Gustav’s age—in the neighborhood of twenty-seven—yet he still had the gangly frame and gawky bearing of a boy of half as many years.
“I’d be more what you might call a native guide. Someone who can translate, tell you the wheres, whys, and whos, scout around—”
“Keep us alive,” Old Red said.
Charlie nodded. “Like I said before, that’s part of the package. But only in a ‘Run for your life!’ kind of way.” He shook a bony finger at us. “I’m not gonna take on any hatchet men for you. I have a hard enough time keeping myself alive around here. What I can do is steer you clear of the tongs—and maybe help you find the Black Dove while I’m at it.”
Gustav’s eyes popped so wide I could’ve sold them to the corner greengrocer as goose eggs.
“You certainly know a lot about what we’ve been up to today,” Diana said.
“Hey, someone leads a marching band into a Kwong Duck parlor house, it tends to draw attention. Especially when the band ends up running down Pacific Avenue screaming their lungs out.”
Charlie chuckled, savoring the image in a way that suggested it wasn’t just hearsay for him—it was a memory.
“Not that there wasn’t plenty of talk already,” he went on. “Three Southern Pacific detectives show up at Gee Woo Chan’s . . . and one’s a woman and another’s a cowboy? Believe me—you were noticed. And watched. There’s only one person in Chinatown who doesn’t know you snuck back into Chan’s place after Mahoney left, and that’s Mahoney.”
“Well, well, well.” I turned to my brother. “I do believe you owe Old Green an apology. Sounds like it don’t matter one whit that he was—”
“So,” Gustav said, talkin’ over top of me, “with folks ’round here doin’ all this lip-flappin’, anybody let slip what really happened to Doc Chan? Cuz this suicide business Mahoney’s tryin’ to peddle is pure eye-wash.”
“Half of Chinatown agrees with you,” Charlie said. “And even the half that doesn’t thinks Gee Woo Chan was pushed to kill himself.”
“ ‘Pushed’?” Diana said. “What do you mean by that?”
Charlie gave his head a quick shake. “Sorry, lady. We haven’t agreed on terms yet.”
“We ain’t got time to dither, mister,” Old Red snapped. “Case you haven’t noticed, there’s a man dead and a girl probably good as, ’less we find her quick.”
“Yeah, I noticed,” Charlie shot back. “And could be I’m good as dead just for standing here letting you bark at me. Look around. We’re not exactly meeting in secret here, are we?”
He spread his arms out again, this time swiveling back and forth, sweeping his gaze up and down the block. Every doorway and window seemed to have someone in it pretending (not particularly well) that they weren’t watching us.
“The Kwong Ducks knew I was talking to you ten seconds after I walked up and opened my mouth. So you want my mouth to stay open, you better make it worth it to me. And if you need any help making up your mind, just remember how cooperative the good citizens of Chinatown have been today. No one else is gonna stick his neck out to help a bunch of fan kwei stir up trouble with the tongs. No one.”
“What makes you such an upstanding citizen, then?” Diana asked. “It can’t just be greed.”
“It could be . . . but for once it’s not. The truth is, my neck’s already stuck out even further than yours.”
As Charlie himself had just pointed out, he’d been far from sneaky about speaking to us. Yet now he leaned in close and dropped his voice down low.
In Chinatown, it seemed, certain things are said in whispers no matter what the circumstances.
“I crossed Little Pete. It was an accident . . . but that’s all it takes. He could put up red paper on me any minute. And if he does—”
Charlie sliced one finger across his thin neck and made a sheee sound that, while not English, needed no translation.
“We should hire you cuz the biggest badman in Frisco wants you dead?” I said. “I hate to tell a feller how to go about his business, but that ain’t exactly what I’d call an enticement.”
“How’s this for an enticement, then: I speak Hoisanese and Mandarin, and you don’t. Simple enough for you?”
“Not really,” I said. “What we need is someone who speaks Chinese.”
“Otto . . .” From the look on Diana’s face, I knew I’d just said something extra-special stupid, even for me. “Hoisanese and Mandarin are both Chinese dialects.”
“Oh.”
“Look,” Charlie said, “you need help, and I need running money. And I need an answer.” He locked eyes with Old Red, perhaps sensing—correctly—that my brother was the most likely to make things difficult. “Now.”
He didn’t get his now, though. Gustav m
ade him wait while he sized him up, eyes narrowed, mouth pressed into a small, tight line.
“Well, hell,” Old Red finally sighed. He peeked over at Diana. “You’re the one with the greenbacks. I reckon it’s really up to you.”
“Right.”
Diana opened her handbag and pulled out a roll of cash.
“I’ll give you fifty now and fifty if we find Hok Gup,” she said, peeling off five bills and holding them up in the air.
Charlie opened his mouth and shook his head.
“And then there’s the tip,” Diana cut in before he could commence to bitching. “Five hundred more, wired to you anytime, anywhere.”
Charlie closed his mouth and nodded.
Stiffly, bit by bit, Diana brought down the hand with the cash in it like her arm was a drawbridge slowly being lowered. When the money was within reach, Charlie snatched it up and stashed it beneath his loose gray blouse.
My brother’s gaze remained fixed on the lady, though. And he didn’t look particularly grateful, either. In fact, he was eyeing her as he’d just eyed Charlie—and he seemed wary of what he saw.
“You wanna find Hok Gup, you need to find Fat Choy,” Charlie said. “You wanna find Fat Choy . . . come with me.”
And he started off as Gustav so often does, moving fast, not looking back, simply assuming you’re hitched up behind him. Old Red didn’t look happy to be on the other end of the harness for once, but that didn’t stop him—or me and Diana—from following.
As we hurried after Charlie, I noticed something I hadn’t seen when the Chinaman was facing us: Like Chan, he wore no ponytail “queue.”
“Just who is Fat Choy, anyway?” Diana asked as we caught up to him.
“Another boo how doy. A hatchet man. For the Kwong Ducks,” Charlie said. “He got his start over at Madam Fong’s, guarding the door.” He glanced over at me and my brother. “You know the type.”
“Oh, absolutely,” I said. “Big. Chatty. Homicidal.”
“That’s Fat Choy—especially the last part.” Charlie swung left at the corner, taking us north up Stockton Street. “In fact, that’s how he got his name.’ ”
“ ‘Choy’ means ‘killer’?” I asked.
Charlie coughed up a scoffing chuckle. “No. And ‘Fat’ doesn’t mean fat, if that’s what you’ve been thinking. ‘Fat Choy’ means ‘good luck.’ They call him that because meeting him usually isn’t. Get it?”
I nodded. “Oh, sure. Like if folks got to callin’ my brother ‘Mr. Sunshine.’ ”
“So” Old Red piped up from behind us, “Fat Choy worked at the cathouse. And . . . ?”
“And he fell in love with one of the sing-song girls. I assume professional detectives like you can figure out which one.”
Charlie gave us a few seconds to do our figuring—not that we needed it.
Still, the break in the chatter was good for something beyond dramatic effect: It gave me a moment to notice all the looks we were getting . . . and how they’d changed.
Before, Chinatown folk had felt free to gape at us openly, brazenly. But now it was more like they were peeking, stealing little glimpses before looking away—or even ignoring us altogether in that stiff-necked, staring-at-nothing way that can be every bit as obvious as a pop-eyed gawk.
It gave me the uneasy feeling there was something all those Chinamen didn’t want to see. Something that might happen at any moment.
“Fat Choy tried to buy the girl himself a while back,” Charlie said, picking up his tale again. “Couldn’t afford her. The Black Dove’s a big draw for Madam Fong. Her best earner. A smart mack like the Madam doesn’t give that up easily. But it looks like Fat Choy wasn’t ready to give up, either.”
Old Red stared at Charlie so hard he would’ve walked smack into a streetlamp had one appeared in his path.
“Meanin’ what, exactly?”
“Gee Woo Chan was seen bringing Hok Gup home with him this morning,” Charlie said. “And Fat Choy was seen storming into Chan’s place less than half an hour later.”
“And who was doing all this seeing?” Diana asked.
Charlie shrugged. “Everybody.”
“And nobody’d tell us that?” my brother fumed. “Nobody’d even tell the damned po-lease?”
“Nobody around here trusts the damned po-lease.”
Charlie veered right, steering us into what felt like the fiftieth dark, dank alleyway we’d entered that day.
“Anyway, everybody saw Fat Choy go in, but nobody saw him come out. The front door was wide open, so after a while, one of the neighbors went in to check on Chan. You know what he found upstairs: the gas on, Chan dead. The back door was left open, too, so it looks like Fat Choy took the girl out that way. But that’s just a guess. No one’s seen them since this morning.”
Charlie finally came to a stop.
“And here we are.”
“Here” was a mere hole in the ground—a pit dug out beside a dilapidated, grime-blackened tenement house. It was on an incline, ramp-style, and one could walk down into it and keep on going right under the building itself.
This was no storm cellar, though. There were no stairs, no doors, no frame, no indication of structure of any kind. It was like the entrance to a huge dugout or den—the home, perhaps, of the world’s most colossal gopher.
At the end of the pit was . . . nothing. Black nothing.
Oh, there was more, that we could tell from the sour smells that came seeping out from beneath the building. There were voices, too—muffled grunts that could have been words or groans, either or. But it was as if these were the scents and sounds of the blackness itself, for it was hard to believe there could be anything down in that pit but oblivion.
And in a way, that’s all there really was.
“Fat Choy took it hard when he couldn’t buy Hok Gup,” Charlie said. “He tried to dull the pain with—”
“Opium.”
Diana was staring down into the hole. For the first time since I’d met her, I saw something on her face that looked a little like fear.
“That’s an opium den?” I asked.
“The worst in Chinatown. Which makes it just about the worst anywhere. A man wants to disappear”—Charlie nodded down into the darkness—“that’s the perfect place to do it. You really want Fat Choy, this is where to look first.”
I think Charlie was expecting a moment of tremulous reflection, a little pause while the white folks fussed and fretted and reappraised their commitment to their little crusade.
And I would’ve given him all that, too, if it had been up to me. But, as is so often the case when my brother’s around, it wasn’t.
“Well, what are we waitin’ for?” Old Red said, and he marched straight into that ditch and disappeared into the shadows.
“Someone to talk us out of it?” I called after him.
Our squabblings aside, I’ve always said I’d follow my brother to hell and back. Now it looked like that was being put to the test . . . literally.
I dropped into the pit and walked into the abyss.
21
CURTAINS
Or, A Tourist Trap Lives Up to the Name
One surprising thing about hell: There’s not nearly so much headroom as you’d expect.
The trench I’d hopped down into quickly turned into a tunnel, and before my eyes could adjust to the dark, I scraped my already-tender scalp against the slats of rotting wood that were either the ceiling or the ground floor of the building above. The little yelp I let out didn’t slow Gustav, though. The tunnel jogged off to the left, and he jogged with it.
A dull orange-yellow light was leaking out around the corner Old Red rounded, and I moved toward it stoop-shouldered and sore-headed.
As I came around the curve, I found my brother stopped before a small, long-whiskered Chinaman who was even more bent-backed than me. I would’ve thought he was trying to touch his toes if he hadn’t been glaring up at Gustav, his head cocked at such an extreme angle it almost seemed to
be fitted to him backwards. The man jabbered at us in Chinese, then twisted his neck even further to eye something behind us.
“Give him five dollars,” Chinatown Charlie said. Diana was beside him. “That’s his usual fee when I bring people down here.”
“You’ve done this before?” I asked.
“Oh, only about eighty or ninety times.”
“Hold on,” Old Red said. “You mean to say you’re a . . . a . . . a . . .”
“Tour guide?” I offered.
My brother snapped his fingers. “Yeah, that’s it. You’re a tour guide?”
Charlie shrugged. “Among other things. What did you think I was? A streetcar conductor?”
“And you actually get tourists who want to see a place like this?” I asked.
“Every day. The only place they enjoy more is the slave market under St. Louis Alley.”
I waited for a smirk that never came. If Charlie was joking, he was doing it with a face as straight as a razor.
“Go on.” He nodded at our hunchbacked host. “Pay the man.”
Diana looked at Gustav, and he gave her a sharp nod. As she fished out her bankroll, the hunchback scuttled toward her, clearing the way for my first good look at a genuine opium den.
I’d read of such things in magazine stories, of course—one of them being “The Man with the Twisted Lip” by Sherlock Holmes’s pal Dr. Watson. And though the good doctor had been writing about a “vile murder-trap” in faraway London, most of his description fit our new surroundings snug enough.
The den he’d depicted was “a long, low room, thick and heavy with the brown opium smoke, and terraced with wooden berths, like the fore-castle of an emigrant ship.” Ours was just as tubelike and smoky, lit only by two low-burning lanterns and the orange-red coals of a small brazier. But there were no “berths,” just tattered canvas cots, and it felt less like the hold of a ship than a coal mine converted into a flophouse. Or a peanut mine, perhaps—opium smoke, it turns out, smells almost exactly like burnt goobers.
The far end of the room was cordoned off by a series of dingy-gray curtains, for the purpose, I assumed, of affording the classier clientele a little privacy. The other customers got none whatsoever—nor did they seem to care.
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