Charlie stopped us a discrete distance away.
“Wait here,” he said, and he hustled across the street and elbowed his way into the crowd.
Several of his fellow Chinamen slinked off silently, eyes down, upon noticing him in their midst. But one old graybeard had the opposite reaction: He stepped up to Charlie, waved a finger in his face and tore into a rant—which our guide studiously ignored as he perused the newer posters.
“Nothing,” Charlie said when he rejoined us a moment later.
“What woulda been something?” Old Red asked.
“Yeah,” I said. “What’s on all them broadsides over there, anyway?”
“A few are newspapers, but they’re mostly announcements.”
“Like, ‘For sale—one slave girl, slightly used’?”
Gustav glared at me.
“That’s just a for instance,” I said.
“And not a funny one,” my brother growled.
“Actually, I’ve seen some that come pretty close to that.” Charlie pointed at a large red handbill, then another, then another. “But that’s what I was really looking for. Chun hung. Proclamations from the tongs.”
“Proclaiming what, exactly?” Diana asked.
“Pretty much the same thing every time. Something like, ‘The House of Far-Reaching Virtue’—that’s the Kwong Ducks—‘offers $300 for the killing of So-and-So for . . .’ And then they’ll put in some kind of justification. As if it matters.”
“So around here the outlaws post the bounties?” I said. “Sweet Jesus. And I thought Texas was wild.”
“You didn’t see no bounty out for Fat Choy, did you?” Old Red asked Charlie.
“Or us?” I added.
Charlie shook his head. “No. Not yet.”
“You know,” I said, “you coulda just stopped at ‘no’ and left me feelin’ a hell of a lot better.”
Charlie offered me a halfhearted shrug. “Sorry.”
“The authorities allow the tongs to openly post death warrants?” Diana asked.
“Which authorities are you talking about?” Charlie replied, drizzling so much acid over the word “authorities” I could practically hear it sizzling.
“How about the police?” Diana said. “The Chinatown Squad.”
Charlie scoffed. “The police don’t have much ‘authority’ around here. And even if they did, Mahoney wouldn’t do anything about the chun hung. He’d love it if we all hacked each other to death.”
“Well, what about the Six Companies, then?” Diana persisted. “Chun Ti Chu’s supposed to be a powerful man. Why doesn’t he put his foot down?”
“Chun Ti Chu is powerful . . . but no more so than Little Pete.” Charlie curled the fingers of each hand into hooks, then locked them together tight. “The Six Companies and the tongs, they’re like yin and yang.”
“Who and what?” I said.
“Opposing forces in perfect balance—always at odds yet equal and inseparable.” Charlie’s mouth slid sideways into a smirk. “Kind of like you and your brother.”
Now it was my turn to scoff. “Opposite, I’d buy. But equal? Not the way I get treated.”
“Anyway,” Gustav said, “that geezer that was givin’ you an earful . . . what had him so riled up?”
Charlie sighed. “Me.”
“What about you?” Diana asked.
“Everything about me. But mainly this.” Charlie swept off his cap and ran a hand through his thick, dark hair. “I’m juk sing and ki di to boot—I was born here, not in China, and I don’t wear a queue.”
“Folks ’round here care that much about your haircut?” I said.
“Yeah, they do, actually. The queue’s not just ‘a haircut.’ Back in China, you have to wear one. It’s the law. Not having one . . . it’s like spitting in the emperor’s face.”
“Is that what you’re doing?” Diana asked.
“Not really. He’s not my emperor. I wouldn’t go out of my way to spit in his face or kiss his fat . . .” Charlie eyed Diana uncomfortably. . . . ring.
“Cuz you think of yourself as an American,” I said.
“Because I am an American, no matter what some people say.” Charlie nodded at the men across the street. Only one was looking our way: the crotchety old-timer. Everyone else seemed to be taking special care to keep their backs to us.
“You know what they call themselves? ‘Sojourners.’ Meaning they’re just visitors here. Temporary. They come over, scrounge up as much money as they can, then go back to Kwangtung or wherever, take a pretty wife, and lord it over everybody in the village—the bigshot Gold Mountain man.”
Charlie snorted.
“Not for me. This is my home. And not just Chinatown—San Francisco. From the time I was six years old, I was a houseboy in Pacific Heights. A ‘faithful.’ Fourteen years with the same household. I was practically a member of the family. They were even going to send me to college.”
“That explains it,” I said. “I been thinkin’ you talk the lingo pretty danged good for a Chinaman.”
“And I’ve been thinking you speak English pretty poorly for a white man.”
“Excuse me?”
Charlie smiled, indicating that this was just a little joke he liked to spring on the tourists every now and again. No hard feelings, ha ha.
Yet there was a hardness to it. An edge—and a sharp one.
“What happened to your patrons?” Diana asked.
“The Panic. They had all their money tied up in silver.” Charlie shook his head but couldn’t quite shake the look of bitterness from his face. “They may as well have invested in mud.”
“So that’s how you come to be ‘Chinatown Charlie,’ Frisco’s foremost opium den tour guide,” I said.
Charlie nodded, suddenly too glum for more sparring with me.
“Whatever chance I had to get out of here, move up . . . it’s gone. The way the Anti-Coolie League’s been whipping people into a lather about ‘the heathen Chinee’ lately, there’s no way I can get on with another family. The society crowd’s only hiring Irish or Mexicans these days. So since the one real skill I’ve got’s pleasing fan kwei . . .” He threw out his long arms and slapped a broad, minstrely grin across his face. “Here I am!”
“But there’s more to it than that, ain’t there?” Gustav said. “You said earlier you got Little Pete peeved at you. How’d you manage that?”
Charlie seemed to shrink in on himself, his grin shriveling, arms wrapping around his sides.
“He asked me to do something for him, and I said no.” He managed a slight, tight-shouldered shrug. “A person like me’s not supposed to say no to a person like him.”
“What exactly did you said no to?” Diana asked.
“If I was the kind of person who’d talk about that, I wouldn’t have been allowed to live as long as I have.”
“Suffice it to say, Little Pete wasn’t askin’ if you could pick up his laundry or loan him five bucks till payday,” I said.
Charlie nodded. “Yeah. That suffices.”
“Well, how about Doc Chan, then?” Old Red said. “Seems like Little Pete was mad at him, too. Word ever get around as to the why of that?”
Charlie stared at my brother as if he’d just accused Little Bo Peep of killing Chan.
“I don’t know what you’re talking about. And anyway, Little Pete leads the Som Yop tong. Fat Choy’s a Kwong Duck, and he’s the one who killed Chan . . . right?”
“I grant you it looks thataway.” Old Red slid a hand into one of his coat pockets. “But just take a gander at this.”
Out came the scorpion we’d found in Chan’s flat. Or most of it, anyway. Both the pincers had broken off, as had a couple legs. The brittle little critter was coming apart.
Charlie leaned in close to peer at it—and he wasn’t the only one. The Chinamen thereabouts had been anxious to ignore us before, but a cowboy showing off a scorpion on a street corner’s a mite hard to overlook, even when you’re trying.
&nbs
p; But though we got curious stares aplenty from passersby, I saw nothing in those gaping faces that looked like recognition or fear. Just curiosity and disgust aimed at the scorpion and us in equal measure.
Charlie whispered what I assumed was Chinese for “Jeez Louise,” followed by “a scorpion” in English.
“That’s right,” Gustav said. “Whadaya make of it?”
Charlie grimaced as he stepped back again. “Ewww.”
There was a long pause, during which one could actually watch the hope slide off Old Red’s face like trickles of rain down a window pane.
“That’s it?” he finally said. “ ‘Ewww’?”
Charlie shrugged. “Ewww . . . yuck?”
“I think my brother was hopin’ you’d recognize that thing,” I explained.
“Oh.” Charlie bent forward to give the scorpion another once-over. “Well, I’ll be. I do recognize it!”
“Yeah?” Old Red said.
“Sure.” Charlie straightened up. “Her name’s Fanny. She’s a dancer over at the Bella Union. Didn’t recognize her without her tights on.”
My brother stuffed the scorpion back in his pocket. “Two wiseasses I gotta put up with now . . . .”
“So that means absolutely nothing to you?” Diana said to Charlie. “Even as a symbol?”
“Sorry. No. Where’d you get it, anyway?”
“Oh, that don’t . . . hel-lo.” Gustav pointed across the street, his expression brightening a bit, going all the way from suicidal to merely woebegone. “Looks like another of them ‘fun chunks’ is goin’ up.”
“Chun hung,” Charlie corrected. He swiveled around to peer at the Chinese workman who was pasting up a fresh poster on the news-wall. “And they’re always on red paper.”
The new handbill was white. But it caused quite the stir all the same, with nattering, gesticulating men pushing in all around. Some even dared glances our way.
“I’d better check it out,” Charlie said, and he hustled across the street again. The crowrd around the poster parted for him, giving him a little leeway on both sides, as if the Chinamen thought being a juk sing or ki di might be contagious.
Charlie spent all of ten seconds reading the flyer then whirled around and hurried back to rejoin us.
“It’s a reward notice: one thousand dollars for information leading to the Black Dove and Fat Choy.”
I whistled. “A thousand bucks? Them Ducks are gettin’ desperate.”
Charlie shook his head. “That’s the strange thing about it. It’s not the Kwong Ducks offering the reward.”
“Oh?” Gustav’s ears pricked up so quick it’s a wonder they didn’t knock off his hat. “Who is it, then?”
“The Six Companies.” Charlie waggled a thumb over his shoulder. “That comes from Chun Ti Chu himself.”
“Chu?” I said. “I thought he was supposed to be your respectable, pillar of the community type. Why would he be stickin’ his clean nose into a low-down dirty mess like this?”
It was Charlie I was asking—and my brother who did the answering.
“I been ponderin’ on that quite a spell already,” he said. “And I reckon it’s about time we up and asked him.”
24
YIN
Or, We Try to Pull a Fast One and End Up Looking None Too Swift
“About time we up and asked him’?” I said to my brother. “Just like that? We simply waltz in and grill the most powerful man in Chinatown?”
Charlie clasped his hands together again yin-yang style. “Don’t forget Little Pete.”
“Right, right,” I said. “One of the two most powerful men in Chinatown.”
Charlie nodded his approval.
“Why not?” Old Red said. “Chun Ti Chu’s obviously got some of his own head mixed up in this here herd. ‘Chan was a Six Companies man.’ That come right outta Mahoney’s mouth when we was eavesdroppin’ on him and Woon, remember? And the way Mahoney talked, it sounded like Woon was a ‘Six Companies man’ hisself.”
“If you’re talking about Wong Woon, you’re right,” Charlie said. “He’s a ‘Chinatown special’—a private detective on the Six Companies payroll.”
“Really?” I said. “He sure seemed awful cozy with the Ducks when we seen him at Madam Fong’s a while back. Birds of a feather, looked like to me.”
“Naw.” Gustav shook his head. “That wasn’t cozy so much as courtesy—the kind yink might show yank whenever the two ain’t tryin’ to tear each other apart.”
“Well, what was he doin’ there, then?”
“Lookin’ for Hok Gup, of course, Why do you think that re-ward poster just went up? Woon’s been tryin’ to track her down for Chu, only he ain’t had any better luck than us.”
“So Chu wants the girl . . . because she’d know who killed Chan?” Diana said.
My brother shrugged. “Maybe. But I’m startin’ to think this crick runs a mite deeper than that.”
“I’m startin’ to think this crick’s the Mississippi,” I said. “Or maybe just Shit Crick, pardon my French.”
“That would be ‘Merde Crick,’ ” Diana corrected.
Charlie gave us what I assume was his “oh, those inscrutable white folks” look.
“So,” he said, “you plan to just march into Six Companies headquarters and demand that Chun Ti Chu tell you why he wants the Black Dove?”
“Nope. We’d best go about it more sneakylike than that.” Gustav sighed. “ ‘Course, ‘sneakylike’ ain’t exactly my line . . . .”
He turned to Diana and said no more. He didn’t need to.
He was handing her the reins. And she took them, too—as well as his Stetson, which she plucked right off his head.
“Alright, boys. I’ll show you how to do sneaky.” She turned to Charlie and snatched away his cap with her other hand. “But first—let’s go shopping.”
Fifteen minutes later, we were marching into the offices of the Chinese Consolidated Benevolent Association, a.k.a. the Six Companies. “We” didn’t include Charlie, though. Being a known (and obviously less than beloved) character thereabouts, he was waiting for us a couple blocks away . . . wearing my brother’s white Boss of the Plains.
And another thing about that “we”—it’s not Otto Amlingmeyer, Gustav Amlingmeyer, and Diana Corvus it refers to. No, it was three newspaper reporters who came barging into Six Companies H.Q. that afternoon: John Lestrade of the Chronicle, Jabez Holmes of the Examinery and Hatty Adler of the Evening Post.
These newshounds were foaming at the mouth over a tip they had (supposedly) just received. Dr. Gee Woo Chan, prominent Chinese physician and survivor of the infamous Pacific Express disaster, had been found murdered that morning. The reporters requested—nay demanded—that Chun Ti Chu himself comment on this heinous crime and the bloody smear it left on Chinatown’s already rather soiled reputation.
Most of the talking was done by “Miss Adler.” The slight, carrot-topped “Holmes” and the strapping, dashing “Lestrade” (who kept his own hair underneath a tweed cap pulled down almost over his ears) limited themselves to ejaculations of the “Yeah!” and “You tell ’em!” variety (it having been determined by the lady that they spoke with too much “twang” to be believable as big-city reporters).
The first obstacle we faced—a pop-eyed, middle-aged, clerk-ish fellow seated at a desk in the building’s smallish lobby—slowed us about as much as a tumbleweed slows a stampede. Diana had barely launched into her harangue before he hopped up and scurried away, the silk of his loose trousers shush-shush-shushing as he hustled through a nearby doorway.
An eerie silence fell over the place akin to the quiet of a church come any day but Sunday. With its mixture of ornate woodwork, stained glass, desks, and filing cabinets, the Six Companies office came off as both exotic and mundane—half-temple, half-shipping office. The clerk we’d encountered could’ve returned carrying lit incense for the altar or forms for us to fill out in triplicate, and either way it would’ve fit.
As
it was, he returned with neither. Shush-shush-shush and there he was again, a younger, mustachioed Chinaman at his side.
“Hello,” the young man said. “I understand that you—”
“You’re not Chun Ti Chu,” Diana snapped.
“No. I’m—”
And that was as far as he got. Diana tore into him about the power of the press and the precarious position of the Chinese community and the manifest folly of denying us an interview with Chun Ti Chu (since we’d just make up our own quotes if we didn’t get to talk to the man face to face).
The new fellow lasted longer than his predecessor. Maybe all of ten seconds, even. Then he, too, turned and shush-shushed away—though at least he had the courtesy to say, “A moment, please,” before he left.
“He fetchin’ Chu?” I asked our other host, who watched us nervously from the doorway as if afraid we might make off with his fountain pens or paperclips.
“No sabe Englee,” he said with a little apologetic bow.
“Oh, yeah? Then I guess you won’t mind if I call you a lyin’ son of a bitch, will you?”
I eagle-eyed the Chinaman for any sign he understood, but all he did was offer me a miserable shrug.
“I think this one actually means it,” my brother said.
“Good.” I turned to Diana and went on in a whisper. “Seems to me these Chinese fellers wouldn’t know a ‘twang’ from a stutter from the strummin’ of a banjo, seein’ as half of ’em don’t even speak the lingo. So how is it they’re gonna pick out our accents? And no offense, but I don’t think they’re gonna pay us much mind with a woman doin’ the talkin’. Now if I was to start doin’ the jawin’—”
“We stick to the plan,” Old Red cut in, his voice quiet but firm. “We’re just here to help prime the pump, Brother. Don’t you worry about the lady. She can get what we need without givin’ nothing away. Just remember what The Man said.”
“The Man said a lot of things,” I pointed out.
Gustav jerked his head at Diana. “About . . . you know.”
“Oh.” I rolled my eyes. “That.”
“Let me guess,” Diana whispered. “You’re referring to Mr. Holmes’s belief that women are ‘naturally secretive’?”
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