“I will tell him,” Madam Fong said, and she hocked out a wad of harsh, guttural sounds. Whatever she was calling us, I assumed it’d make “foreign devil” seem like a compliment.
Her words didn’t calm Fat Choy. If anything, his eyes went even wider with fear.
Behind him, though, Hok Gup seemed to take some strength from what the madam said. She uncurled out of her cower, revealing herself to be taller than I’d first reckoned, and I saw what might have been a glimmer of hope upon her face—a hope that was directed at us. It brought out the beauty in her, and for the first time I noticed how her large eyes were both black and gleaming, dark yet flashing with life.
“What’d that pimp-mistress just say?” Old Red asked Charlie.
Charlie looked over at Scientific.
The highbinder answered the unasked question with an indifferent shrug. From the way he was holding Mahoney’s gun, it was hard to tell if it was pointed at us or at Big Queue beyond us.
“That you’re just a bunch of meddling fools,” Charlie said. “Friends of Gee Woo Chan who don’t know what they’re trifling with.”
“You put it too nice,” Madam Fong sniffed. “But it doesn’t matter. What matters is what we do with the fan kwei.”
“Which ‘we’ are you referring to, exactly?” Diana asked. “Because it seems to me that you and Mr. Scientific here aren’t necessarily a ‘we.’ ”
“We are until you are dealt with,” the madam replied.
Scientific said something to her in Chinese, and her cool went straight to a boil. She snapped something back fast, and within seconds they were yapping at each other at the same time, hands flapping at Hok Gup and Fat Choy and all us white folks.
“Care to translate?” I asked Charlie.
“Not this time.”
“It’s not hard to guess,” Diana said. “They’re debating. Haggling. Who gets who—”
“And who does what to who,” I finished for her. “Miss, I am truly sorry we got you into this mess.”
“Think back, Otto,” the lady said. “Who talked you and your brother into helping Dr. Chan?”
I rubbed my chin. “Oh, yeah. I reckon you owe us an apology.”
Then I had to back up and brace myself for more trouble—as if we could be in more trouble.
Mahoney was pushing himself to his feet.
“Just go ahead and shoot it out, why don’t you?” he shouted at Scientific. He whipped around to jeer at Big Queue, too. “You! You’re no coward! Go on—drill the little bastard! You know he’ll plug you the first chance he gets!”
The highbinders ignored him. Charlie didn’t.
“That’s what you’d really love, isn’t it? If we’d all just kill each other.”
“Save decent people a lot of bother,” Mahoney sneered.
Gustav stepped past him, out toward the end of the pier. When he was between Scientific and Madam Fong, he stopped.
“Before you two come to some agreement or do each other in, either one, there’s something you oughta know,” he said to them. “It’s you who don’t know what you’re triflin’ with.”
The hatchet man and the madam just kept talking around him.
Big Queue grunted and waggled the derringer at the rest of us, his meaning plain.
Get back. Over there.
My brother didn’t budge.
“We know everything,” he said. “What it’s all about.”
Big Queue took a step toward him.
“Mah fung,” Old Red said.
Madam Fong and Scientific finally shut up.
Big Queue froze.
Fat Choy frowned.
Hok Gup closed her eyes.
Mahoney blinked.
And me and Diana, we just gaped.
The only one who didn’t act like he’d just been hit upside the head was Chinatown Charlie.
“What’s syphilis got to do with anything?” he asked.
“Syphilis? Nothing,” Old Red said. “I’m talkin’ about mah fung.”
“But—,” Charlie began.
Gustav stopped him with a raised hand. “Please, Charlie. It was plain as day you were lyin’ about that medicine Fat Choy bought. I mean, Lee Kan doesn’t exactly cater to high society fat cats, does he? Highbinders, hopheads, and chippies—that’d be his clee-on-tell. Yet he ain’t gonna stock a remedy for Old Joe?”
My brother shook his head.
“Naw. We got the truth out of him after you cleared out. Then Miss Corvus here, she went straight to a telly-phone and rang up her friends at the Examiner. And whoo-eee, were they ever wound up. Front page stuff, they said. Am I right?”
Old Red looked back at Diana, one eyebrow arched.
How’s that for devious? he was saying.
The lady nodded her approval. “The morning edition’s probably on the presses even as we speak.”
“Well, there you have it,” Mahoney said. He turned a gloating grin on Scientific. “Within a few hours, the whole town’s gonna know. The whole country. And if anything happens to us tonight, it’s gonna go all the worse for your kind all the quicker.”
Gustav spun around to face the copper. “Sounds like you know about the mah fung, too.”
“Well, I didn’t know the Chink word for it till just now . . . not that I care. But yeah. Sure.” Mahoney looked over Old Red’s shoulder, toward the end of the dock, his face contorting with disgust. “I know all about it.”
He was staring at Hok Gup.
As was Fat Choy now. And funny thing—he looked every bit as revolted as Mahoney.
“M-m-mah fung?” he said with a stammer that built up into a screech. “Mah fung!”
Hok Gup opened her eyes—and seemingly opened the flood gates, too. In an instant, her face was wet with tears.
“Mah fung?” Fat Choy screamed again. When he didn’t get an answer other than silent crying, he started to walk away, leaving the girl alone on the edge of the pier.
Hok Gup grabbed hold of his arm, babbling hysterically, her words quickly breaking down into wracking sobs. When he couldn’t tug himself free, Fat Choy lifted up a hand and slapped the girl hard across the face.
She crumpled to the planks in a wailing heap.
The highbinder stalked away from her.
Scientific, Big Queue, Madam Fong, Mahoney—they all stood there staring down at Hok Gup with cold contempt, like she was some mewling, filthy animal that ought to be put out of its misery. Charlie at least had the decency to look more saddened than sickened. Yet, like the others, he made no move to help her. Which left it to us.
Old Red reached her first, squatting down and awkwardly patting her on the back. Diana came up next, whispering words of comfort Hok Gup probably couldn’t even understand. Together, we helped her to her feet.
It was like lifting an anvil, and a closer look at the creases and bumps in the girl’s bulky clothes told me why: Underneath the suit, I now saw, she was wearing Doc Chan’s bulletproof chain-mail vest.
“You lie,” Scientific said as we got Hok Gup upright. “You not know mah fung.”
“What makes you say that, Sci?” I asked.
“It’s obvious, you dumb son of a bitch.” Mahoney jutted his chin out at the weeping, wobbly-kneed girl we were still holding up. “Nobody wants to touch a leper.”
37
THE ISLAND OF DEATH
Or, the Last Pieces of the Puzzle Come Together, and It Isn’t a Pretty Picture
There are certain words your body just reacts to, no brain work required. “Look out,” for instance. Someone shouts it, you up and look. Same with “Fire!” or, if you’re a drover, “Stampede!”
“Leper,” I learned, is one of those words, too. The moment Mahoney said it, I found myself flinching back from Hok Gup, shoving away the slender arm I’d been supporting with such chivalry just a second before, Gustav and Diana had the same reaction—letting go, jerking back. Even after the shock wore off, we didn’t stop moving away, shuffling back warily like Hok Gup was a puma cro
uched for a pounce instead of a sniveling girl alone and forlorn under the lantern at the end of the pier.
“I see it now,” my brother muttered. “I see it . . . .”
We stopped next to Mahoney and Fat Choy. It certainly wasn’t the most welcome company, but we couldn’t have sought out better had we tried. Not with Scientific and Big Queue—and their guns—blocking our way back to the Ferry House.
“Yee Lock must’ve found out first . . . or suspected it, anyhow,” Old Red said, his voice low and slow, like he was mumbling for his own ears only. “He’d have noticed the signs when he was inspectin’ the gals over to Madam Fong’s. But leprosy . . . that’d be a damn sight more serious than what the old man was used to. Crabs and the clap and what-have-you. So he brought in another doctor, just to be sure. One of the most respected healers in Chinatown. Did it right in front of my eyes, too.”
“When he fetched Doc Chan yesterday,” I said.
Gustav nodded. “Chan, he would’ve seen the danger straight off. And not just sickness-wise. That’s why he went to Chun Ti Chu for money . . . and got it. Hok Gup”—he looked over at Mahoney—“she’s the bomb that could blow up all of Chinatown, ain’t she?”
The copper puffed out his chest and curled his lips into a haughty sneer. He may have been a prisoner, but he wasn’t about to admit he was powerless. Even a chained dog can still bite.
“Not just Chinatown, Tex. A Chink whore leper? Spreading her filthy disease to white men? When word gets out—and it will, mark my words—they’ll never let another slant eye into this country again.”
“And that’s so important to you?” Old Red asked, looking both perplexed and strangely saddened, as if what went on in Cathal Mahoney’s mind wasn’t just a mystery but the great mystery of mankind. “Worth killin’ for?”
“What the hell are you talking about?” Mahoney snarled.
Scientific jumped in with his own “What do you say?” While Madam Fong contributed a “What?” I, for once, was the soul of brevity: All I said was “Huh?”
“Yee Lock is dead,” Gustav said, turning first to the hatchet man, then the madam. “The sergeant here beat him to death.”
“Why, you crazy little hick . . . .”
Mahoney took a step toward my brother. I took a step toward him. We stopped with our chests a hair’s width apart.
“How’d you find out about the gal’s leprosy if not from thrashin’ the old man . . . huh, Sarge?” Old Red said. “I can’t imagine anyone in Chinatown racin’ to you with news like that. And don’t forget—I seen how you work when we was at Little Pete’s place. You’re a feller likes to kick a man when he’s down. Double him up holding his gut while you put your toe in—just like we found the old-timer. And his face?”
Gustav grimaced at the memory.
“Only thing could do that would be a brick or brass knuckles. I doubt if you got a brick on you, but I know you carry knucks . . . cuz you waved ’em under my nose not two hours ago.”
Mahoney swung an arm out toward Scientific and Big Queue.
“Oh, like they don’t have brass knuckles? Like they don’t kick people? Open your eyes! Some Chinaman killed another Chinaman, that’s all. It happens all the time—and nobody gives a damn. The real issue here is that girl. She’s living, breathing poison! How many men are going to die because of her?”
For a moment, no one spoke, which spoke volumes in itself. Mahoney’s pathetic attempt to change the subject, his obvious desperation—that said it all. We didn’t have enough people out there to make a proper jury, but it was clear enough we’d reached a verdict: guilty.
Old Red broke the hush.
“I don’t know about any other men dyin’. I’ve just been tryin’ to work out what happened to one.” He turned toward Hok Gup. “Gee Woo Chan.”
The girl stared back at him, utterly still but for the wisps of dark hair that fluttered in the biting-cold breeze off the bay. She’d lost her bowler when Fat Choy hit her, letting the long, straight tresses pinned up inside cascade over her shoulders and down her back. Doc Chan’s spectacles she’d taken off so as to better wipe the tears from eyes.
She had nothing to hide behind anymore, and even knowing there was something unclean, diseased inside her, I saw her true beauty at last. I saw the Black Dove.
Then, for the first time, I heard her, too. She started haltingly, stammering, but she picked up speed as she went along. Her voice had a musical quality to it, rising and falling so that it almost sounded like a melancholy song.
I didn’t understand a word.
“Tell us what she’s sayin’, Charlie,” Old Red said.
Charlie’s eyes darted over to Scientific.
“For god’s sake, Charlie,” Diana snapped, “speak for her!”
“Alright, alright. I’ll try,” Charlie said. “But her Hoisanese . . . it’s pretty bad.”
“You mean she don’t even speak Chinese?” I said.
“Barely. Just look at her—she’s not from the mainland. She was probably grabbed off some little island in the South Seas. I bet she doesn’t even know its name.”
Charlie said something to the girl then, putting out both hands palms up and curling the fingers in twice. Coaxing.
Keep going.
She did.
“She says she liked him,” Charlie said. “Gee Woo Chan. He was kind. Gentle.”
The girl looked at Madam Fong, and I knew her words had turned bitter even before Charlie turned them into English.
“The madam treats her girls like caged animals, and she knew the heartless . . . uhhh . . .”
“Bitch?” Diana suggested.
“Yeah,” Charlie said, avoiding Madam Fong’s venom-spitting glare. “She knew the heartless bitch would toss her in the gutter when she was used up. So when Gee Woo Chan bought her, she was glad. Landing a husband like him—”
Fat Choy suddenly took an angry stomp toward the girl, eyes ablaze. Whatever she’d just said, he didn’t like it. “—that was luck she hadn’t even dared hope for,” Charlie finished.
The gaunt highbinder spat something at Hok Gup, shaking his fist. I grabbed his bony, upraised wrist and jerked him back hard.
“Charlie, be so kind as to translate this,” I said. “ ‘Leave the girl be or I’ll snap you in two like a dried twig.’ ”
Charlie obliged, and Fat Choy backed away muttering.
Hok Gup watched the hophead shuffle away with an expression that seemed half-hateful, half-tender. Then she started talking again, and she was just plain misery through and through.
“After Gee Woo Chan brought her home, he told her the reason he’d bought her,” Charlie said. “The numbness in her hands and feet, the bumps she’d started to notice on her face. They were the first signs of mah fung. Leprosy. She wasn’t to be Gee Woo Chan’s wife. She was to be sent to Molokai.”
The girl stifled a sob as that last word left her lips, and even Charlie couldn’t say it without a shudder. I’d read enough about the place in magazines and newspapers to feel a little chill myself.
“Leper colony out in the Hawaiian islands,” I explained to my brother. I thought it best not to add what its nickname was: the Island of Death. I reckoned we were all feeling plenty morbid as it was.
Hok Gup choked back tears, fighting to finish her tale.
“Gee Woo Chan said he was sorry,” Charlie said. “But it was the only place she could go. She couldn’t stay in Chinatown. She couldn’t stay with people. Not normal people. And when she heard that, she was so heartbroken, so frightened, so angry, she went wild. She kicked him, slapped him, threw things. She . . .”
Charlie gaped at the girl a moment, speechless. Yet I knew exactly which words were stuck in his throat. I’d felt them coming for a long time now.
I looked over at Gustav and saw that he’d been bracing for them, too. His mouth was puckered shut, his jaw clenched, as if there was something he was trying to keep from crawling up out of his gut.
Then he opened his mou
th, and out it came.
“She killed him.”
38
THE END
Or, The Black Dove Brings Her Tale of Woe to a Close
Hok Gup put her hands together as if praying, and as she continued with her story, fresh teardrops trickled from her dark eyes. It had grown so cold out there over the water I wouldn’t have been surprised to see the tears freeze into icicles dangling from her apple cheeks.
“She wants you to know it was an accident,” Charlie said, his voice husky, strained. “A statue she threw—it hit Gee Woo Chan in the back of the head. When she realized what she’d done, she was going to just run out the door, keep going for as long as she could. She didn’t know what else to do. But then Fat Choy showed up looking for her, and she thought maybe she had a chance after all.”
The girl turned toward Fat Choy, her palms still pressed together in a plea for understanding.
“Fat Choy was the only person who could help her,” Charlie said. “So she told him what he wanted to hear. She loved him and she’d said as much to Gee Woo Chan and he’d flown into a rage—that’s why she’d killed him. All lies. But she had no choice.”
Fat Choy snorted scornfully, unmoved. I got the feeling he would have actually spit in her face if he hadn’t been afraid I’d put a fist to his.
Hok Gup gave up on him and told the rest of her story straight to me and Gustav and Diana, the friends of the man she’d killed. Scientific, Madam Fong, Big Queue, even Charlie, her voice for the fan kwei—them she ignored.
“They faked the suicide,” Charlie said, not just translating but condensing now, too. This part of the story we already knew. “They hid in Gee Woo Chan’s basement. They tried to leave on the ferry to Oakland. They were caught.”
“Yeah,” I said under my breath. “Thanks to you.”
“No. Thanks to him.”
Charlie jerked his head at my brother, trying to dump all his guilt that way in the process.
“There’s just one last thing I need to know,” Old Red said, sounding weary. He’d already accepted the burden Charlie was loading him with—the blame—and I could see it weighing on him so clear it could have been a pack saddle strapped to his back. “Doc Chan didn’t die of a blow to the head. He died from the gas. Did she know that? Did she know she and Fat Choy was killin’ him when they left him up there on that bed?”
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