While Watson wrote of “bodies lying in strange fantastic poses, bowed shoulders, bent knees, heads thrown back,” I just saw a dozen logy-looking Chinamen. The sudden appearance of a Stetson-topped cowpoke and a red-haired giant who had to bend at the knee just to keep from scalping himself on the ceiling seemed to make as much of an impression on them as a beautiful sunset makes on your average cowpie. They had eyes only for the long-stemmed pipes they occasionally rousted themselves from their cots to pack with gooey gray paste and light up, fingers all afumble. A few seconds sucking up the acrid fumes from the gurgling pipe, and they had no need for eyes at all—their bodies went slack, their faces vacant as they beheld wondrous visions invisible to all but themselves.
“I’ve seen that look before,” I said.
Gustav was walking slowly between the opium eaters’ bunks, headed for the back of the room. “Yeah?”
“Sure. On your face. Every time you get to cogitatin’.”
I dropped my jaw and went cross-eyed.
“These fellers here ain’t tryin’ to think,” Old Red muttered. “They’re tryin’ not to.”
“Like Holmes with his cocaine?” Diana asked, taking a cautious step deeper into the den.
Gustav threw a scowl back at her.
We’d only learned of the great detective’s not-so-great habits recently, from the stories in The Adventures of Sherlock Holmes. At first, the revelation that his hero had been a hophead bothered my brother, but he’d shrugged it off soon enough.
“A brain like that, a man’s gonna get bored from time to time—crazy bored,” he’d said. “That stuff with the needle . . . it probably kept him sane.”
“You got yourself a big of brain, yet you don’t feel the need to pickle it when there’s nothing to set it to,” I told him.
“I got my distractions,” he’d said—and he jerked his head at his copy of The Adventures, from which I’d been reading aloud.
“This ain’t nothing like what Mr. Holmes done,” he said to Diana now. “Holmes, he was occupyin’ his mind however he could. But them . . .”
He looked around at the opium fiends—most of them skeleton-thin men in dark, baggy clothes as shapeless as shrouds.
“They wanna forget they got minds at all.”
“I’m guessing these men have a lot they’d like to forget,” Diana said. Her large, brown eyes picked up the light of the brazier, and for a moment they seemed to glow like twin coals. Some of the hoppies even tore their gaze away from paradise or Xanadu or Wallawalla or wherever so as to look upon an even more unworldly beauty instead—her. “You can’t sympathize with that?”
“Miss,” Gustav said, staring straight into the fire of her eyes, “a man shouldn’t ever forget. Not nothing?’ Then he looked past her, at Charlie, and waggled his thumb at the nearest cot. “So any of these gents Fat Choy?”
Charlie shook his head.
“Alright, then. Just one more place to look.”
Old Red turned and took hold of the curtains that walled off the back of the room.
“Wait!” Charlie barked before my brother could pull the gray drapes apart.
Gustav froze. “Yeah?”
Charlie looked back at the hunchback, and the two Chinamen had a “conversation” that consisted of two words, a shake of the head and a grunt.
The words were “fan kwei.”
“Alright,” Charlie told Old Red. “Go ahead.”
Gustav opened the curtains. There was nothing behind them but two more cots and a smoke-smudged wall.
“What goes on back there?” Diana asked.
“The same thing as out here,” Charlie replied. “It’s just that some of the more . . . discriminating customers expect separate accommodations.”
“You mean the white customers, don’t you?” Old Red said.
“Yeah—the fan kwei,” I threw in. “Seems like I been hearin’ that phrase all day. What’s it mean exactly, anyway?”
Charlie laughed—the hunchback, too.
“Foreign devil,” Charlie snickered.
“Oh, is that all?” Diana said. “I assumed it was something much harsher than that.”
“Me, too. Still, it’s a mite pot-callin’-the-kettle-black, ain’t it?” I turned back to Charlie. “You’re the foreigners.”
Charlie’s chortling choked off.
“I was born in San Francisco,” he said.
“Oh, you know what I mean. You Chinese. This here’s our country, and yet you—”
“Otto,” Diana said before the rest of my leg could follow my foot up into my mouth, “I think you need to stop talking now.”
I clamped my lips and nodded.
“Well, I’ll be damned,” Gustav marveled. “If I’d known that’s all it took to shut him up, I would’ve tried it a long—”
The hunchback called out something in Chinese, and as we swiveled around to face him he went lurching away into the tunnel—smiling and waving at someone we couldn’t see.
Charlie spread out his spindly arms and started shooing us back like a farmboy trying to get a gaggle of geese into their pen.
“Move. Now.”
We hustled behind the curtains, and Charlie pulled them closed quick but quiet.
“What is it?” Diana whispered.
Charlie peeled back the drapes just enough to peek out. “Trouble.”
This, of course, I had already guessed. I leaned in over Charlie’s shoulder to see what kind. Not wanting to be left out, Old Red pushed his way in, too, squatting down to peer out from a height roughly even with Charlie’s belly button.
Fortunately, Diana was content to leave the peeping to us, for there was no room for her at the curtain unless she clambered up onto my back or went down on her hands and knees.
This is the sight she missed seeing: the hunchback returning to the room with a husky Chinaman dressed entirely in black.
We were being joined by Madam Fong’s head hatchet man. The Chief.
“Charlie?” I whispered.
“Yeah?”
“How do you say, ‘Oh, shit,’ in Chinese?”
22
HAIL TO THE CHIEF
Or, Madam Fong’s Right-Hand Hatchet Man Gets Another Swing at Us
We were unarmed, opium dens don’t have back doors, and Diana was all out of brass bands. So there was simply no getting around it: We were buggered six ways to Sunday. Maybe even seven.
Hell, a million.
The Chief and the hunchback had stopped at the front of the room to talk, and after a moment another Chinaman stepped out of the shadowy passageway to join them—the other hatchet man from Madam Fong’s. His right cheek was still puffy and red from taking a bowl of peppermints to the puss during our little bric-a-brac barrage, and as is so often the case with men who’ve just had their teeth loosened, he did not look happy.
“Otto,” my brother whispered, “when the time comes, you just get Miss Corvus outta here, understand?”
“I most certainly do not,” I whispered back. “I’m ‘Big Red,’ remember? You should be the one hustlin’ the lady out, ‘Old.’ I’ll take care of them tong boys.”
“And how do you reckon you’ll do that? By bluntin’ their hatchets with all the rocks in your head?”
“Well, what’re you aimin’ to do? Bore the poor bastards to death with your—”
My collar suddenly went choking tight, and I was jerked away from the curtain by a hard yank on my shirt.
“Shut . . . up,” a voice hissed in my ear.
And not just my ear—Gustav’s, too. Diana was giving my brother the same scruff-of-the-neck tug.
“Yes’m,” I wheezed out.
All Old Red could manage was a nod.
Diana let us go. I would’ve complimented her on the strength of her grip, but I was afraid she’d just give me another demonstration.
My brother and I leaned in next to Chinatown Charlie again and peeked back out through the drapes—wordlessly, this time.
The Chief and hi
s pal had begun walking slowly past the cots, pausing over each to inspect the bleary-eyed wretch stretched out upon it. The hunchback was chattering at their backs, but they seemed to be ignoring him now: The only response he got was a couple grunts from the Chief that seemed to be the Chinese equivalent of what Diana had just said to me and Gustav.
For their part, the hopheads just lay there, still sucking on their pipes even as the hatchet men passed over them like the Angel of Death. I almost envied them their calm, and if one of their pipes had been passed to me just then, who knows? Maybe I would’ve tried a puff. I sure as hell wouldn’t have said no to a shot of whiskey.
The two highbinders were just five cots from the back of the room.
Then four.
Then three.
Old Red and I moved away from the curtains again and readied the only weapons we had at hand: our fists. Charlie took a couple extra steps backwards, putting himself behind us, with Diana. I couldn’t blame him—he’d said he wouldn’t fight for us. I just hoped he would fight for the lady.
I drew back my right arm, readying it for a roundhouse.
The hatchet men were close enough now for me to hear their footsteps, the rustle of their clothes, their breathing. I could go ahead and throw that punch, and it would probably connect. The Chief was mere feet away . . . inches, more like.
The footsteps stopped. The curtains rustled.
A man spoke.
“Yak yak Fat Choy yak yak?”
The words came out raspy, parched. It sounded like the kind of voice a pile of sawdust might have.
More yak yaks followed, deeper but less hoarse—the Chief’s voice. The first man replied, and after some back and forth, the footsteps started up again.
Heading away from us.
After a last exchange of yaks between the Chief and the hunchback, the place grew quiet but for the low burbling of the opium pipes. Gabriel could come down there a-blowing his horn, it seemed, and those hoppies wouldn’t miss a single puff.
Charlie crept up to the crack in the curtains and took a look out.
“They’re gone,” he announced, and he threw the drapes open wide.
“What was all that talkin’ about?” Old Red asked him.
“Saving your skins.”
Charlie stepped out of our nook and squatted down next to the nearest bunk. The man lying on it grinned up at him toothlessly. He was either a well-preserved sixty or a prematurely decayed thirty, it was impossible to tell which.
The two chatted a moment, then Charlie stood up again.
“You owe this man ten dollars.” He jerked his head at the hunchback. “But you can give it straight to him. That’s where it’s going anyway.”
Diana dug into her handbag once again. “Lucky for us I brought my pin money with me today.”
“You already laid out a lot more than pin money . . .’ less your pins is solid gold,” Gustav said. “How’s a railroad spotter come to have so much ready cash, anyways?”
The lady’s only response was a smile that splatted up against Old Red’s suspicious glower like an egg hurled at a brick wall.
“So,” my brother said sourly, turning back to Charlie, “this feller put them tong boys off the scent, did he?”
Charlie nodded. “They weren’t looking for you, anyway. They’re trying to find Fat Choy.”
Gustav’s eyes popped wide, then immediately narrowed back to a wary squint. “Oh, yeah?”
“Yeah. Still, it was pretty obvious we didn’t want any boo how doy finding us” He waggled a thumb at the gummy-mouthed opium eater. “So Ah Chu there said he’d seen Fat Choy in one of the other opium dens.”
“Which was a lie?” Old Red asked.
Charlie nodded again. “A lie.”
“How nice of your friend to help us ‘foreign devils,’ ” Diana said dryly.
“Not ‘nice of,’ ” Charlie said. “ ‘Profitable for.’ ”
“Hold on a tick.” I pointed at the hophead who’d saved us. “What’d you say this feller’s name was?”
“Ah Chu,” Charlie replied with a roll of the eyes. “And please don’t bother saying, ‘Gesundheit.’ ”
“I wouldn’t dream of it,” I said . . . as I pulled out a handkerchief and held it out to him.
Charlie didn’t take the hankie. “Sure, go ahead—laugh. Just be glad you don’t know what ‘Big Red’ means in Mandarin.”
“Alright, enough flapdoodle,” my brother said. “Charlie, I assume this ain’t the only opium den in Chinatown.”
“Just the only one on this block.”
“Well, then, let’s get our asses over to the others. We can shilly-shally around givin’ each other the giggles when this is over and done with.”
And off he and Charlie went. Once the hunchback got his share of Diana’s “pin money,” she and I set off after them.
“It’s actually lucky for us we ran into Big Queue,” Charlie said as we staggered out of the pit into eye-searing sunshine.
I tried to blink away the purplish ink-splotches that blinded me, yet for the next few seconds Charlie and the others still looked like nothing so much as giant talking prunes.
“Ran into who?” I said.
“ ‘Big Queue.’ You know him. The Kwrong Duck hatchet man. He’s, you know—”
“Big,” Old Red said.
“Very.”
So the Chief had a name—sort of.
“Seeing him means we’re on the right track,” Charlie said.
I squinted over at him. “I’m too blind to tell . . . are you jokin’? Cuz I kinda thought ‘the right track’ would be the one that doesn’t leave us with meat cleavers stickin’ outta our skulls.”
Blinded or not, my brother wasn’t wasting any more time—he started off again, heading out of the alley fast.
“The right track’s whatever leads us to Fat Choy and Hok Gup.”
“Exactly.” Charlie galloped past Old Red to take the lead. “Remember, Fat Choy’s a Kwong Duck himself. So if the Ducks are looking for him, that means he’s not holed up in one of their safe houses or fan tan parlors. And there’s the good luck for us, because those places are like fortresses. Even I couldn’t get you in.”
“We ain’t just learned where Fat Choy’s not,” Old Red said as Charlie swerved left onto Jackson Street and the rest of us stumbled after him like a string of baby ducks. “We can do some deducifyin’ on why he’s not there.”
“And what do you deduct?” I asked.
“That them Kwong Ducks got a beef with Fat Choy. Or, more like, they want something from him.”
“The Black Dove,” Diana said.
Old Red nodded. “Charlie said Madam Fong wouldn’t give that gal up cheap. Maybe she never meant to give her up at all.”
“So the madam sics Fat Choy on Doc Chan,” I said slowly, “only ‘stead of bringin’ Hok Gup back to the cathouse, he tries to keep her for hisself?”
“Could be,” Gustav said. “If we wanna know the real truth of it, I tell you this much for sure—we gotta find that gal ’fore the hatchet men do.”
“But it’s not just about knowing ‘the real truth’ about Chan, is it?” Diana asked. “Not anymore.”
Old Red moved his head sideways, gazing out over his left shoulder, as if he meant to look back but stopped himself just in time.
“That’s right,” he said, looking ahead again. “The last thing the Doc did on earth was take that gal outta that whorehouse.” He clenched his fists—and picked up his pace. “If she goes back in, it’ll be over my dead body, too.”
“Madam Fong and her boys would probably prefer it that way, don’t you think?” I said.
If Gustav grunted or growled or gave any kind of response at all, I didn’t catch it. He was weaving his way through the usual sidewalk swarm at an almost frantic pace, and the closer he rode Charlie, the faster the Chinaman went. It was hard to keep up—and impossible to keep up a conversation. Which seemed to be the point, at least in part.
Old
Red was trying to win a race to the Black Dove, true, but it almost seemed like he was running from something, too.
Whatever it was, I got the feeling it was gaining on him.
23
A CHINAMAN’S CHANCE
Or, We Learn How Charlie Lost His Ticket Out of Chinatown
Over the next now, we descended into five more opium holes. Each was a slight step up from the last, until the final one seemed almost like something fit for human beings rather than just roaches or voles or the spirits of the damned.
Two things remained consistent, though (beyond the smell of charred peanuts and the cadaver-eyed stares of the opium denizens): Nowhere did we find Fat Choy or any word of his whereabouts, and everywhere we were a step behind the Kwong Ducks. Only half a step at one place, for we spotted Big Queue and his chum leaving just as we got set to go inside. We saved our skins by ducking into a butcher’s shop where what looked like a bobcat was in the process of losing his.
Yet in the end, our tour of Chinatown’s “hop joints” produced nothing beyond throbbing headaches for the lot of us.
“Well, thank you for the sightseein’ tour, Charlie, but that ain’t what you’re gettin’ paid for,” Gustav grumbled as we stumbled from the last of the opium dens. “You’d best have a stronger card up your sleeve.”
“Don’t worry—there’s lots more up here,” Charlie said, giving one of his sleeves a tug. “But first we need to see what the word on the street is.”
“The word on the street,” as it turned out, wasn’t just an expression. Charlie whisked us up and down more alleys and side streets until we were facing a brick wall near the corner of Dupont and Clay. The wall was plastered from the ground to a height of nine or ten feet with broadsheets chock full of Chinese writing. Here were words aplenty—for those who knew how to read them.
We’d passed other such bulletin boards in our various scamperings around Chinatown, but this was by far the busiest. A steady stream of men shuffled past, pausing here and there before what I assumed to be the freshest and most gossip-worthy postings.
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